Floyd-Rosneyhad expected that the restoration of the child to the mother would effect an immediate reconciliation with his wife. Therefore, he attained a serenity, a renewal of self-confidence which he had not enjoyed since the humiliatingcontretempsat Union Station. In the dismissal of his bill for divorce—theretraxitcraftily worded and expressing with a dignity that might have seemed impossible under the circumstances his contrition for the hasty and offensive assumptions of his mistake, a sweeping recantation of all his charges and a complete endorsement of his wife’s actions in every relation of life,—he considered he had offered her an ample apology for his conduct and had held out a very alluring olive branch. He had a relish, too, of the surprise he had planned, partly to avoid a more personal method to court her forgiveness, in sending the child in charge of her favorite servant, old Aunt Dorothy, to alight unheralded from the train at Ingleside. He imagined her delight and gratitude and awaited, in smiling anticipation, altogether devoid of anxiety, her ebullient letter, brimming with thanks and endearments, and taking the blame, as she was wont to do in their differences, in that she had so misunderstood him and precipitated this series of perverse happenings that had exposed him to such cruel public misconstruction.
But this letter did not come.
He began to frown when the mail was brought in, and to sort the missives with a hasty touch for something that he did not find. The servants, always on the alert to observe, and agog about the successive phases of the scandal which they had witnessed at such close quarters, collogued over the fact that he laid the rest of the mail aside unopened for hours, while he sat with a clouded brow and a reflective, unnoting eye in glum silence, unsolaced even by a cigar. It was not good to speak to him at these crises, and the house was as still as a tomb.
Floyd-Rosney’s ascendency in life had been so great, so fostered by his many worldly advantages, that he could make no compact with denial, defeat. He had not yet reached the point where he could write to his wife and beg her forgiveness, or even reproach her with her agency in the disasters that had whelmed their domestic life in this unseemly publicity. He developed an ingenuity in devising reasons for her silence. She was too proud; he had let her have her head too long. She would not write—she would not verbally admit that she condoned his odious charges, which he often declared he had a right to make, if he were to believe the testimony of his eyes, witnessing her flight with her old lover, Randal Ducie, as he was convinced, boarding the train together. She would simply return unheralded, unexplained,—and that was best! He had himself inaugurated this method in restoring the child without a word. It was a subject that could not be discussed between them, with all its sensitive nerves, with its open wounds quivering with anguished tremors. No! She would come to her home, her hearthstone,her husband, as she had every right to do, even paying all tribute to her pride, to her sense of insulted delicacy. He saw to it that the papers containing the text of his full retraction and explanation of the circumstances were mailed to her, and then adjusted himself anew to waiting and anticipation.
He had been spared in the details of his life all the torments of suspense which harass men less fortunately placed. It may be doubted if ever before he had had cause to anticipate and await an event, and hope, and be deferred and denied. He could scarcely brook the delay. He began to fear that he should be obliged to write and summon her home. Once he even thought of going in person to escort her back, and but that he shrank from meeting her eye, all unprepared as she would be, he would have followed little Ned to Ingleside. Something might be said on the impulse of the moment to widen the breach. He could not depend upon her—he could not depend upon himself. She knew the state of his mind, he argued. Those papers, most astutely, more delicately than any words of his might compass, had depicted his whole mental status. Doubtless, after a seemly diplomatic interval she would return. The sooner the better, he felt in eager impatience. He had hardly known how dearly he loved her, he declared to himself, interpreting his restiveness under the suffocations of suspense and anxiety as symptoms of his revived affection. He became so sure of this happy solution of the whole cruel imbroglio that he acted upon it as if he had credible assurance of the fact. He caused certain minor changes, which she had desired, to be made in the house—changesto which he had no objection, but he had never taken thought to gratify her preference. He ordered the suite of rooms that she had occupied to be thoroughly overhauled in such a fever of haste that the domestic force expected to see the lady of the mansion installed in her realm before a readjustment was possible. At last everything was complete and exquisite, and Floyd-Rosney, patrolling the apartments with a keen and critical eye, could find no fault to challenge his minute and censorious observation. A new lady’s maid was engaged, of more skill and pretensions than the functionary he had driven from his service, and had already entered upon her duties in the rearrangement of her mistress’s wardrobe, and the chauffeur took heedful thought of the railroad timetables, that he might not be out of the way when the limousine should be ordered to meet Mrs. Floyd-Rosney at Union Station.
Under these circumstances the filing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill for divorce and alimony fell like a bombshell upon the defenseless head of her husband. It was a genuine and fierce demonstration, evidently calculated to take advantage of every point that might contribute to the eventuation of a decree. The allegations of cruelty and tyranny, of which there were many instances that Floyd-Rosney, in his marital autocracy had long ago forgotten, including the crafty blow which he had given her under the cloak of the child in her arms, were supplemented and illustrated by the secret removal of her child from her care, and the determination to ship her out of the country against her will. Thus she hadbeen constrained in defense of her personal liberty to flee to the home of her uncle, her nearest relative, although she was obliged to borrow the money for the railroad fare from a mere stranger whom she had met only once before. Notwithstanding the fact that her husband was several times a millionaire, he permitted her no command of money, her fine clothes and jewels and equipages being accorded merely to decorate the appurtenances of his wealth and ostentation. She recounted the indignity she had causelessly suffered in the allegations of his bill for divorce, all baseless and unproved as was evidenced by their complete retraction under oath in the precipitate dismissal of the bill. Her petition concluded by praying for an absolute divorce with alimony and the custody of the child.
This document was not filed without many misgivings on the part of Major Majoribanks and of horrified protest from his wife. Ingleside was remote from modern progress and improvements, and such advantages as might accrue from successfully prosecuting a suit for divorce won but scant consideration there. The worthy couple were firm in their own conviction that marriage should not be considered a temporary connection. It was, to their minds, a lifelong and holy joining together, and should not be put asunder. Mrs. Majoribanks made some remarks so very old-fashioned as almost to excite Paula’s laughter, despite the seriousness of the subject. It was a wife’s duty to put up with her husband’s foibles, to overlook little unkindnesses; the two should learn to bear and forbear in their mutual imperfections. Had she ever remonstratedgently, with wifely lovingness, with Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s harshness?
“I didn’t dare,” said Paula. And the mere phrase was an instance in point.
A woman’s craft in reading hearts is a subtle endowment. Mrs. Majoribanks had not kept step with the onward march of the world, but she struck a note that vibrated more in accord with Paula’s temperament when she said:
“It is often a hardship in point of worldly estimation to be a divorced woman.”
She looked cautiously at Paula over her spectacles, for in the old days no one had been more a respecter of the opinions of smart people than her husband’s niece.
“Oh, that isn’t the case any more,” said Paula lightly, with a little fleering laugh, “it is quite fashionable now to have a divorce decree.”
“You may depend upon it,” Mrs. Majoribanks said in private to her husband, “Paula is reckoning on winning back Randal Ducie! And, to my mind, that is the worst feature of the whole horrible affair.”
Major Majoribanks did not altogether concur in his wife’s views of the possible efficacy of gentle suasion on Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s irascibilities. Perhaps he knew more of the indurated heart of that type of man. The Major had been greatly impressed by the attempt upon his niece’s personal liberty, as he interpreted the insistence on the Oriental tour and, although he welcomed little Ned with an enthusiasm that might have befitted a grandfather, he was apprehensive concerning the child’s return as an overture of reconciliation. He felthis responsibility in the situation very acutely. He did not favor the plan of seeking merely a legal separation and maintenance, which his wife advocated, because it was not conclusive; it would be regarded by Floyd-Rosney as temporary and would render Paula liable to pressure to recur to their previous status. He did not consider his niece safe with her arrogant and arbitrary husband, as the attempt to enforce a tour alone with casual acquaintances to the Orient amply proved. The extreme measure of secretly removing the child from her companionship and care as means of subjugation might be repeated when circumstances of public opinion did not coerce his restoration. Mrs. Majoribanks had not a more squeamish distaste for divorce than her husband, nor did she entertain a deeper reverence for the sacredness of the bonds of matrimony. But he reflected with a sigh of relief that it was not his duty to seek to impose his own views on his niece. Paula was permitted by law to judge and act for herself, and she had had much experience which had aided in determining her course. He could not bring himself to urge her to condone the insupportable allegations in the bill of divorce which Floyd-Rosney had filed and allowed to be made public, and to trust herself and the child once more in his clutches. She had now the wind of public favor in her sails. Her husband had committed himself so openly and so irretrievably that it was probable that the custody of the child would be awarded to her in view of his tender years. Later, when time should have somewhat repaired the tatters of Floyd-Rosney’s status in the estimation of the world, when the inevitable influence and importance of so rich a manshould begin to make themselves felt anew, it might be more difficult for her to contend against him. If ever she could hope to free herself from him and his tyrannies, and his unimaginable machinations in the future, now was the opportunity and this the cause of complaint. He might not again give her so palpable and undeniable an occasion of insupportable affront. Major Majoribanks, even in the seclusion of Ingleside, took note of the penniless estate of the wife of the millionaire as she fled from her richly appointed home, and gave due weight to the fact that the decree would assure her future comfort by requiring alimony in proportion to the husband’s means. There was no obligation on him to deprive her of her due maintenance and protection by the urgency of his advice, although his wife goaded him with her strict interpretations of his duty, and his brow clouded whenever she mentioned her belief of the influence of the expectation of winning back Randal Ducie upon Paula’s determination.
Paula had thus the half-hearted support of her relatives in her proceedings, and she was grateful even for this, saying to herself that with their limitations she could hardly have expected more. She was eager and hopeful, and, to Mrs. Majoribanks’s displeasure, not more sensitive to the mention of the proceedings than if they had involved a transaction concerning cotton or corn. The three Majoribanks boys were excited on the possibility of an attempt to kidnap little Edward, since the filing of the bill, and they kept him, in alternation, under close and strict surveillance night and day.
“It would be impossible to spirit him away fromIngleside,” they bluffly contended, and to their mother’s great though unexpressed displeasure their father did not rebuke their bluster.
“We all talk of getting the decree,” she said in connubial privacy, “as if it were a diploma.”
He nodded ruefully. But he was the more progressive of the two.
And in this feeble and sorry wise the influence of modern civilization began to impinge on the primitive convictions and traditions of Ingleside.
Adrian Duciewas affronted beyond measure by the unseemly notoriety given to his part in the Floyd-Rosney incident, in the subsequent publications emanating from various sources. The serious menace, however, that the circumstances held for Randal moderated for a time his indignation. He thought it not improbable that Floyd-Rosney would shoot Randal Ducie on sight, and he greatly deprecated the fact that his brother was chronicled by the New Orleans papers as having quitted that city, on his way to Memphis, returning by boat.
“Why didn’t the fellow stay where he was until matters should have developed more acceptably?” Adrian fumed in mingled disgust and apprehension. His anxiety was somewhat assuaged in the meantime when Colonel Kenwynton’s letter appeared, and more especially when Floyd-Rosney withdrew his petition for divorce—a definite confession of his clumsy mistake. Still in Adrian’s opinion latent fires slumbered under the volcanic crust, as this sudden eruption had proved. This city was no place for the bone of contention between husband and wife. The season for the preparations for cotton planting was already well advanced. Assuredly it was seemly and desirable for Randal to repair to his plantation and supervise theoperations of his manager and his laborers. Adrian found his own stay in the city harassing to his exacerbated nerves. The questioning stare of men whom he passed on the streets, who looked as if they expected salutation, in default of which surmised that this was the twin brother, hero of the Floyd-Rosneyesclandre, annoyed him by its constant repetition, and gave his face a repellant reserve which the countenance of the gentle and genial Randal had never known. A dozen times he was more intimately assailed, “Hey, Ran, old man, how goes it?” with perhaps a quizzical leer, or an eager hopefulness that some discussion of the reigning sensation of the day might not be too intrusive. When the stranger was enlightened, not abruptly, however, for Adrian was cautious to refrain from alienating Randal’s friends, the comments on the wonderful likeness implied an accession of interest in the significant incident in Union Station, and, doubtless, many a surmise as to what had betided heretofore to arouse the lion in the husband’s breast. Obviously, both the brothers for every reason should be removed from the public eye till the story was stale; but, although Adrian felt this keenly, he himself could not get away in view of the interests of his firm in an important silk deal with a large concern desiring to treat directly with the representative of the manufacturers.
He had never cared so little to see his brother as one day when the door of his bedroom in the hotel unceremoniously opened and Randal entered. He had deprecated the effect of all this publicity on the most sensitive emotions of that high-strung and spirited nature. He was proud, too, and wincedfrom the realization that all the world should be canvassing the fact of Randal’s rejection by Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in her girlhood days. She had treated him cruelly, and had dashed her plighted troth, his love, his happiness to the ground with not a moment’s compunction, for a marriage of splendor and wealth—“and,” said Adrian grimly to himself, “for it she has got all that was coming to her.”
He felt for Randal. His heart burned within him.
“Why, who is this that I see here?” cried Randal gaily, as he entered. “Not myself in a mirror surely, for I never looked half so glum in all my life.”
There was a hearty handclasp, and a sort of facetious fraternal hug, after the fashion of men who humorously disguise a deeper emotion, and they were presently seated in great amity before the glowing fire.
“This is imported Oriental tobacco,” said Adrian, handing his brother a cigar.
“Imported from where—the corner drugstore?” demanded Randal, laughing, his face illumined by the flicker of the lighted match.
“Genuine Ladikieh,” protested Adrian.
“It’s like carrying coals to Newcastle to pay duty on tobacco in America.”
“I didn’t say I paid any duty, did I?”
“Oh, you haven’t the grit to smuggle anything through, and if you had you would have brought enough to generously divvy up with me.”
He sent off a fragrant puff, stretched out luxuriously in his armchair, and turned his clear eyes upon his brother.
There was a momentary silence.
“I read the report of your address in the papers. It was very able and convincing.”
“I’d care more for your compliments if you understood the subject,” declared Randal cavalierly. Then, roguishly, “Is thatallyou have read about me in the papers lately?”
Adrian stared, dumfounded. And he had so wincingly deprecated the effect of this limelight of publicity upon the shrinking heart of the rejected lover.
“I think it very hard you should be subjected to this,” he began sympathetically.
“Who—I? Why,—I was never so pleased in my life!”
“Why—what do you mean, Randal? It is a very serious matter; it might have had a life-and-death significance.”
“Serious enough for Floyd-Rosney,” Randal laughed bluffly. “Did ever a fellow so befool himself, and call all the world to witness! Of course, I deprecate the publicity for the lady, but everybody understands the situation. It does not injure her position in the least. That is the kind of husband she wanted—and she has got him.”
Adrian silently smoked a few moments.
“I never was so affronted in my life,” he said.
Once more Randal laughed. “I was simply enchanted,” he declared.
“Honestly, Randal, I don’t understand you,” said Adrian, holding his cigar delicately in his fingers.
“Oh, I am very simple, quite transparent, in fact.”
Adrian shook his head, restoring his cigar to his lips. “Don’t make you out, old man.”
“Because you have never been told by a lady totake foot in hand, and toddle! Discarded—rejected—despised! Therefore”—with a strong puff—“you can’t know what a keen joy it is to realize that you are still important enough to be the cause of domestic discord between husband and wife, when you haven’t seen the lady but once in five years, and then in his presence, besides, being five hundred miles away, meekly babbling about levee protection.”
Adrian stared. “And you like that?”
“Like it? It goes to the cockles of my heart.”
“Randal, I should never have thought it of you,” said Adrian rebukingly.
“Because, kid, I am older than you and know many things that you haven’t learned. I got a little bit the start of you in life and I have kept ahead of you ever since,” Randal declared whimsically.
“I can’t comprehend how you like to be mixed up in that miserable misunderstanding.”
“Why, it flatters me to death. She couldn’t put me out of her heart, although she could and did lacerate terribly my heart. Floyd-Rosney is jealous of my very existence. But for that he would have inferred no more from seeing me, as he thought, assisting her to board the train than any incidental acquaintance tendering that courtesy. He is not disturbed thatyouboarded the train with her.”
“You are jealous of Floyd-Rosney,” said Adrian abruptly.
Randal thrust his cigar between his lips and spoke indistinctly with this obstruction. “Not I,” he laughed. “Not under these circumstances.”
Adrian was frowning anxiously. The two faces, so alike in feature, were curiously dissimilar at themoment, the one so genially confiding, the expression of the other, alert, expectant, with a grave prophetic rebuke.
“Look here, Randal,” Adrian said seriously, “you perturb me very much. You speak actually as if you are still—still sentimentally interested in this woman—another man’s wife—because you discover——”
“That both she and her husband are sentimentally interested in me; ha! ha! ha!” Randal interrupted.
“I could never imagine such a thing,—it perturbs me,” Adrian persisted seriously.
“It perturbs me, too,” declared Randal quizzically, “to have you gadding about in my likeness, escorting other men’s wives,—the gay Lothario that you are!—and gettingmeinto the papers, the public prints. Oh, fie, fie.”
“And sheisanother man’s wife,” remonstrated Adrian.
“She won’t be long if she has a spark of spirit left,” declared Randal boldly. “She will bring suit for divorce herself.”
“But I doubt if she can get it,” said Adrian in dismay.
The difference of mood made itself manifest in the tones of their voices—Adrian’s crisp, imperative, even tinctured with sternness, Randal’s careless, musical, drawling.
“Oh, she can get it fast enough. I should think from what I observed of his manner to her she could prove enough instances of cruelty and tyranny to melt almost any trial judge.”
Adrian reflected silently upon the episodes on theCherokee Rose, but kept his own counsel, while the smoke curled softly above the duplicate heads.
“When I saw them together,” observed Randal, “he impressed me as being a veritable despot, and in a queer way, too. I can’t understand his satisfaction in it. He arrogated the largest liberty to criticize her views and actions, as if his dictum were the fiat of last resort. I tell you now, kid, criticism and cavil in themselves are incompatible with love. No man can depreciate and adore at the same time the same object. When he thinks the feet of his idol are of clay the whole structure might as well come down at once. He seemed to have a certain perversity, and this is a connubial foible I have seen in better men, too; a tendency to contradict her in small, immaterial matters for the sheer pleasure of contrariety, I suppose,—to oppose her, to balk her, merely because he could with impunity. I imagine he has enjoyed a long lease of this impunity because his perversity has attained such unusual proportions, and her plunges of opposition had the style of sudden revolt rather than the practiced habit of contention. She has lived a life of repression and submission with him. Her identity is pretty much annihilated. The Paula of her earlier days is nearly all disappeared.”
For a few moments Adrian said nothing in response to this keen analysis of character, which corresponded so well to his longer opportunity of observation, but sat silently eyeing the fire in serious thought.
Suddenly he broke out with impassioned eagerness.
“Randal, you are my own twin brother——”
“I am obliged to admit it,” interpolated Randal flippantly.
“—my other self. The tie that binds us seems to me closer than with other brothers. We came into the world together; we have lived hand in hand almost all our lives; we even look alike.”
“And make a precious good job of it too,” declared Randal gaily.
“We feel alike; we believe alike; we have been educated in the same traditions; we respect the sanctities of the old fireside teachings; we have not strayed after strange gods.”
Randal had taken his cigar from his lips and in his half recumbent position was gazing keenly at his brother.
“What are you coming to, kid?”
“Just this—you are not looking forward to this divorce in the hope—the expectation of marrying this woman? Are you? Tell me.”
Randal’s eyes flashed. “What do you take me for?” he said angrily between his set teeth. “She could never again be anything to me,—not even if Floyd-Rosney were at the bottom of the Mississippi River.”
“Oh, how this relieves my mind,” cried Adrian.
“You may set it at rest,—for I could never again love that woman.”
“I know that I have no right to interfere or even to question—but you always appreciate my motives, Randal. You are the best fellow in the world.”
“I always thought so,” said Randal, smoking hard.
“I believe she will expect it,” suggested Adrian, still with some anxiety.
“She will be grievously disappointed, then,—and turn about is fair play.”
“I want you to guard against any soft surprise,” said Adrian. “She seemed so sure of you. She said you were the only friend she had in the world. She came to the Adelantado Hotel to find you—that you should lend her ten dollars for the railroad fare to Ingleside!”
“The liberal Floyd-Rosney!”
“I want you to look out for her. She is a designing woman. She is heartily tired of her bargain, and with reason, and she wants to pick up the happiness she threw away five years ago——”
“With me and poverty.”
“She has enjoyed an artful combination of real poverty and fictitious splendor. I want you to be frank with me, Randal, and confide in me, and——”
“Take that paw off my arm.”
“—and,” continued Adrian, removing his hand, “not make an outsider of your own, only twin brother.”
“Heaven protect me from two twin brothers like unto this fellow,” laughed Randal. “Make yourself easy, Adrian; when I am finally led to the altar I shall countenance an innovation in the marriage ceremony—the groom shall be given away by his own only twin brother.”
“She broached the matter herself when she had an opportunity to speak aside to me on theCherokee Rose,” said Adrian, his reminiscent eyes on the fire.
“What? Divorce and remarriage?”
“Oh, no—no. The course she had pursued with you.”
Randal’s eyes glowed with sudden fire; his face flushed deeply red.
“That was very unhandsome of her,” he said curtly, “and by your leave it was very derogatory to both you and me for you to consent to discuss it.”
“Why shouldIdecline to discuss it when she introduced the subject,—as if I felt thatyouwere humiliated in the matter or had anything to regret?”
“It would seem that neither of you were hampered with any delicacy of sentiment or sensitiveness.”
“She spoke to me of a gift of yours that she had failed to return. She wished me to convey it to you. But I referred her to the registered mail or the express.”
“That was polite, at all events.”
“I told her that the relations between my brother and myself were peculiarly tender, and that I would not allow her to come between us. And, with that, I bowed myself away.”
Randal’s eyes gloomed on the fire, with many an unwelcome thought of an old and shattered romance. But when he spoke, it was of the present.
“Adrian, I am sorry I was so short with you. Of course I know you could not openly avoid the topic forced upon you in that way. I am sure, too, that you did not fail to take full cognizance of my dignity, as well as your own. I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for a million dollars.”
“Well, you did it,” retorted Adrian, “and nobody that I know of has offered you so much as fifty cents. It was a gratuitous piece of meanness on your part. And you can take that paw off me,” glancingdown with affected repugnance at Randal’s caressing hand laid on his sleeve.
“Well,” said Randal, with a long sigh, “she closed the incident herself. She gave me the trinket in her husband’s presence—and you can imagine Floyd-Rosney was all eyes.”
“She placed it on the table among the Ducie jewels the previous night,” said Adrian; “and, as I was occupied in reading the papers, I asked her pointedly to take charge of it. And she looked most awfully cheap as she repossessed herself of it.”
“Adrian, you really have a heart of stone in this connection,” smiled Randal, “and after she had been chiefly instrumental in restoring to us the Duciehurst papers and jewels!”
“What else could she do—commit a felony and keep them? I certainly entertain no fantastic magnanimity on that score.”
Randal laughed, but the solicitous Adrian fancied this phase of the subject might develop a menace to the future, and hastened to change the topic. “I wish you would come with me and confer with our lawyers to-day, Randal,” he suggested. “It is better to have both principals in interest present at any important consultation. I have an engagement with them at three,” drawing out his watch for a hasty glance.
“Agreed,” said Randal, springing up alertly. “Where’s your clothes-brush?—but no, I suppose there is not a speck of the dust of travel on me, for, when I tipped the man on the boat, he practically frayed all the nap off my clothes to show his gratitude. I am presentable, eh?”
He stood for a moment before the long mirror,then broke forth whimsically in affected alarm. “Adrian, who is this in the mirror, you or I? I am all mixed up. I can’t tell us apart. What are we going to do about it?” he continued, as if in great agitation, while Adrian, with a leisurely smile—for he had often taken part in thisgambade, a favorite bit of fooling since their infancy—looked about for his hat.
“Let’s go downstairs and get somebody to pick us out,” suggested Randal, “for, really, I don’t want to be you, Adrian. You are too solemn and priggish; why, this must be I, for, if it were you, you would have said ‘piggish.’ You are so dearly fraternal. Don’t come near me, I don’t want to get mixed up again. I begin to know myself. This is I.”
But, notwithstanding this threatened peril of proximity, they walked down the street together, arm in arm, to the office of the counsel, followed by many a startled glance perceiving the wonderful resemblance, and sometimes a passing stranger of an uncultured grade came to a full halt in surprise and curiosity.
There were many consultations with the legal advisers in the days that ensued, which Randal Ducie found very irksome, accustomed as he was to an active outdoor life and a less labyrinthine species of thought than appertains to the purlieus of the law. Unexpected details continually developed concerning the interests involved. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill for divorce was filed in the meantime, and because it had a personal interest paramount to its importance in the Duciehurst case it brought up again the matter of taking her deposition in theseproceedings which had been pretermitted by reason of affairs of greater magnitude.
The decision was reached on a day when to Randal’s relief he was able to dub facetiously the counsel “the peripatetic philosophers” by reason of a journey which they thought it necessary to take in the company of their clients and which he found much more tolerable than the duress of their offices and their long indoor prelections. The four men boarded a packet leaving the city at five o’clock; it being deemed advisable that the lawyers should make a personal examination of the locality and the hiding place of the Ducie papers and other valuables, before conferring with the Mississippi counsel retained in the case. The question of summoning Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was discussed as they sat on the hurricane deck in the approaching dusk between the glitter of the evening sky, all of a clear pink and gold, and the lustrous sheen of the expanse of the river, reflecting a delicate amber and rose. The search-light apparatus was not illumined and looked in the uncertain half twilight as if it might be some defensive piece of artillery of the mortar type, mounted on the hurricane deck. The great smoke-stacks, towering high into the air, had already swinging between them the green and red chimney lamps, required by law, but as yet day reigned and all the brilliancy of the evening bespoke a protest against the coming night.
Adrian Ducie doubted the availability of summoning Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in their interest. The proof could inferentially be made without her, by those who saw her deliver the box and witnessed its opening and contents. Besides, here were thepapers to speak for themselves. But Randal Ducie urged the deposition. It would seem conscious not to call her. Why should she not give her testimony. It was disrespectful to imply that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney would be reluctant to do this.
“Mr. Floyd-Rosney is a mighty touchy man,” suggested the junior counsel. This practitioner was about forty years of age, thin, wiry, eager, even fidgetty. He had a trick of passing his hand rapidly over his prematurely bald head, of playing with his fob chain, of twisting a pencil, or his gloves, or his eyeglasses—these last also, perhaps, a prematurely acquired treasure. Apparently he had burned a great deal of midnight oil to good purpose, for he was admittedly an exceedingly able lawyer, destined to rise very high in his profession.
His associate in the case was in striking contrast, in many respects, to Mr. Guinnell. He was a portly man, with a big head, and a big frame, and a big brain. It was his foible,—one of them, perhaps,—in moments of deep thought to close his eyes; it may have been in order to commune the more closely and clearly with the immanent legal entity within; it may have been more definitely to concentrate his ideas; it may have been to shut out the sight of Mr. Guinnell’s swiftly revolving pencil or eyeglasses; whatever his reason, the habit had a most unnerving effect on clients in consultation, suggesting the idea that their affairs—always of vital importance to the parties in interest—were of slight consequence to their adviser and of soporific effect. Both gentlemen were serious-minded, and, which is more rare in their profession, abysmally devoid of a sense of humor.
“The filing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill for divorce and alimony complicates the situation,” continued Mr. Guinnell, “although I have thought since the Union Station incident,” he hesitated slightly, glancing toward Randal,—“you will excuse me for mentioning it in professional confidence.”
“Certainly; I often mention it myself as a mere layman,” said Randal, debonairly.
“I have thought that Mr. Floyd-Rosney will make a stiff fight on the hard letter of the law,—à l’outrance, in fact,—with no contemplation of such concessions as would otherwise present themselves to litigants, looking to compromise, settlement of antagonistic interest by equitable adjustment. In the present development of his domestic affairs he will find it quite intolerable for his wife to give testimony in the interest of Mr. Randal Ducie and his brother. Mr. Floyd-Rosney will wince from it.”
“It is a good thing that something can make him wince,” declared Randal hardily. “A stout cowhide is evidently what he needs.”
“I hope, Mr. Ducie,” said Mr. Harvey, the senior counsel in alarm and grave rebuke, “that you will not take that tone in testifying. All the circumstances in the case render the situation unusual and perilous, and we want to do and say nothing that will place either you or your brother in personal danger from Mr. Floyd-Rosney.”
“The only cause for wonder is that your brother was not shot down at Union Station, being mistaken for you,” Mr. Guinnell added the weight of his opinion to his partner’s remonstrance. “If Floyd-Rosney had chanced to wear a revolver Adrian Ducie would not be here to-day to tell the tale.”
“Count on me; I am yours to command,” declared Randal, lightly. “I am a very lamb, when necessary, and you may lead me through the case with a blue ribbon and a ring in my nose. I’ll eat out of any man’s hand!”
The ponderous senior counsel looked at him soberly. The junior twirled and twirled his fob-chain.
“We wish to conduct this case to the best advantage,” said Mr. Harvey, “and leave no stone unturned that can contribute to success. But we wish to be conservative—we must keep that intention before us, to beconservative, and give Floyd-Rosney no possible opportunity for outbreak at our expense, either in regard to the interests of the case or the personal safety of our clients.”
“I will order my walk and conversation as if on eggs,” declared Randal, with a wary look.
“I do not apprehend any unseemly measures or conduct on the part of the opposing counsel,” continued Mr. Harvey. “They are gentlemen of high standing. But Mr. Floyd-Rosney has a most unruly and unreasoning temper and he has placed himself at a deplorable public disadvantage in this matter, which, be sure, he does not ascribe to himself. We will go slowly and safely—coming necessarily into contention with him. But we shall take Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s deposition by all means.”
And thus the matter was settled.
On the third day the boat made the Duciehurst landing, and some hours were spent in exploring the ruins of the mansion. Later the party separated, the lawyers repairing to the inland town of Caxton for a conference with the local legal firm who wouldprosecute the interests of the case in Mississippi, and the two Ducies making a prearranged excursion to a plantation which Randal had leased at some distance higher up the river. As the residence on this plantation was comfortable and in good repair he had quitted his quarters at the hotel in Caxton and had taken up his abode here. It had been a wrench to him to relinquish the operations on the Ducie estate; but he was advised that his claim to rightful possession might be jeopardized by consenting to hold under Floyd-Rosney, which course, indeed, he had never contemplated. As the two, mounted on the staid farm horses, rode through the fields and speculated on their possibilities, Randal would often pause in the turn-rows—the cotton of last year a withered stubble—in systematic lines, with here and there a floculent “dog-tail,” as the latest wisp of the staple is called, flaunting in the chill spring breeze, and would descant on the superior values of the Duciehurst lands compared to these, illustrating sometimes by the fresh furrows near at hand, showing the humus of the soil, for the plows were already running. Now and again he turned his eager, hopeful eyes on his brother as he declared, “This time next year, old man, I shall have the force busy getting ready to bed up land for cotton at Duciehurst.” Or “When the estates of our fathers are restored to us I shall live in formality at our ancestral mansion, and if you dare go back to France I shall revenge myself by marrying somebody.”
“Anybody in view?”
“Apprehensive, again? Well, to set your mind at rest, I was thinking, pictorially merely, how statelyHilda Dean looked walking down the grand staircase with her head up. How beautifully it is poised on her shoulders.”
“She is truly beautiful,” Adrian said heartily, “and during all that trip down the river I was impressed with her lovely character, and her sterling qualities of mind and heart. Her beauty, great as it is, really is belittled by the graces of her nature. Pray Heaven your visions of Hildegarde as your chatelaine at Duciehurst may materialize.”
“One more year,—one more year of this toilsome probation, and then,” Randal’s face was illumined as if the word radiated light, “Duciehurst!”
Adrian, looking over the river which was now well in view from the fields, began to speculate on the approach of a skiff heading down stream, and running in to the bank. “I wonder if that is the boat that your manager was to send for me for my trip to Berridge’s?”
For, although the terror of the fierce pursuit of the riverside harpies inaugurated by Colonel Kenwynton had swept the others in flight from the country, not a foothold of suspicion had been found against Berridge and his son. It was known that Captain Treherne had spent the night at their amphibian home, and had gone thence to his conference with Colonel Kenwynton on the sand-bar; so much he himself had stated, but he declared positively that neither of the Berridges was with the miscreants who had waylaid him on his return and conveyed him bound to Duciehurst. It was beyond his knowledge, indeed, that this choice twain had later joined his captors at the mansion. Their strength of nerve, however, failed them when they were notifiedthat the Ducie counsel desired an interview with them on this visit to the vicinity to ascertain if their testimony would be at all pertinent in the matters preliminary to the discovery of the documents. Even their non-appearance this afternoon did not excite unfavorable comment. It was supposed that in the depths of their illiteracy they had not understood the nature of the communication, if indeed they had received it, and Adrian Ducie promised the counsel to see old Berridge or his son personally and explain the matter in order to have them present in Caxton the following day when the lawyers should be in conference.
“Oh, I will go instead,” cried Randal; “I really ought not to let you go on this errand, for,” with a quizzical smile, “you are ‘company,’ you know.”
“Not very formal ‘company.’ You ought to see to the placing of that new boiler in the gin-house,—and I have nothing to do. Yes,” continued Adrian, still regarding the approach of the skiff, “that is your man Job, and he can take this horse back to the stable.”
He dismounted hastily and throwing the reins to Randal, he ran lightly up the slope of the levee. He paused on the summit to wave his hand and call out cheerily, “Ta, ta—see you later,” and then he threw himself in the skiff, which was dancing on the floods close below, the boatman holding it by the painter as he stood on the exterior slope of the embankment.
The river was at flood height and running with tremendous force. But for the aid of the current Adrian’s strength plying the oars would have made scant speed. It was only a short time before hesighted the little riverside shanty which no longer showed its stilts, but sat on the water as flush with the surface as a swimming duck. Adrian was able from his seat between the rowlocks to knock on the closed door without rising. There was no response for a few minutes, although the building was obviously inhabited, the sluggish smoke coiling up from the stove-pipe into this dull day of late winter or early spring, whichever season might be credited with its surly disaffection. A child’s voice within suddenly babbled forth, and but for this Adrian fancied a feint of absence might have been attempted. With a slight motion of the oars he kept the skiff in place at the entrance, and at length the door slowly opened and the frowsy, copper-tinted hair and freckled face of Jessy Jane was thrust forth.
She was one of that type of woman to whom without any approach to moral delinquency a handsome man is always an object of supreme twittering interest, however remote of station and indifferent of temperament; however crusty or contemptuous. That he should obviously concern himself in no wise with her existence did not in any degree minimize the intensity of her personal absorption in him. Her face, sullen and lowering, took on a bland and mollifying expression, and with a fancied recognition of the rower she broke forth with a high, ecstatic chirp:
“Why, Mr. Ran, I never knowed ’twas you hyar!” though she had never spoken to Randal Ducie, and knew him only by sight.
“This is not Mr. Randal Ducie, but his brother,”said Adrian, and as she stared silently at him, noting the wonderful resemblance, he continued:
“I want to speak to Joshua Berridge,” he consulted a paper in his hand. “He lives here, doesn’t he?”
“My dad-in-law,” she explained, suavely; “but he ain’t at home just now, though”—with a facetious smile, “’twon’t be long ’fore he comes—most supper time, ye know. Won’t ye kem in an’ wait?”
Ducie declined this invitation and sat meditatively eyeing the waste of waters, for the river was now at its full scope, barring inundation, and stretched in great majesty to a bank scarcely visible on the farther shore.
“I ain’t sure, but what ye mought find him over on the oldChe’okee Rose,” she said, speculatively, for Ducie was very comely and she had a special impulse to be polite to so worthy an object of courtesy.
“Is the old steamboat there yet?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at the murky swirls of the swift current. There was now no sign of the sand-bar on which the ill-fated craft had stranded. The foaming waves raced past and submerged its whole extent. None might know where it lay. A deep-water craft, drawing many feet, might have unwittingly plied above its expanse. Only a fraction of the superstructure of the steamboat—the pilot-house and texas, and the upper part of the cabin, showed above the waste of waters to distinguish the spot where the steamer had run aground and the pitiless storm had flayed out all its future utility.
“The wreckers have been down time and again,” she went on with a note of apology. “They tuk offall the vallybles before the water riz,—the kyarpets, an’ funnicher, an’ mirrors, an’ sech—even the big chimbleys. The water got the rest, but wunst in a while ef us pore folks wants somethin’ that be lef’ fur lost—like some henges, or somthin’ we jest tries to supply ourse’fs ez bes’ we kin.”
Adrian was still silently looking at the wreck that he had such cause to remember, with all that had since come and gone.
“Well, I reckon Dad is over there now, hunting fur them henges,” said the woman, speculatively. “Leastwise,” holding her palm above her eyes, “’pears like I kin see a boat on the tother side, a-bobbin at the e-end of a painter!”
Adrian moved with a sudden resolution. The oars smote the water, and with curt and formal thanks for the information, he began to row strongly across the current that despite his best endeavors carried him continually down and down the river, and required him to shape his course diagonally athwart the stream to counteract its impetus.
The woman stood for a time aimlessly watching him, as the rhythmic oars plied, and the skiff, shadowless this dull day, kept on its way. At last she turned within and shut the door.
Theeffect on Floyd-Rosney of his wife’s legal proceedings was deep and radical. His counsel constantly noted in him a sort of stunned surprise, as if contemplating some fantastic revulsion of the natural course of events. He had fashioned this result as definitely as if he had planned its every detail, yet he regarded it with an affronted amazement that he should be called upon to experience events so untoward. He had a disposition to belittle the efficiency of the demonstration. He perceived with a snort of rage and contempt the seriousness with which his counsel regarded it and declared violently that she could never get a decree.
“You mean to defend the suit, then?” Mr. Stacey asked, very cool, and pallid, and dispassionate.
“What else?” thundered Floyd-Rosney, the veins in his forehead blue and swollen, his face scarlet, his hands quivering.
“I can’t see upon what grounds, in view of the terms ofretraxit.”
“Youdictated the terms of that precious performance,” declared Floyd-Rosney, with vindictive pleasure in shifting the blame.
But Mr. Stacey easily eluded the burden.
“Under your specific instructions as to the facts to which you made affidavit,” he said, coldly.
It was perhaps evidence how Floyd-Rosney wasbeginning to acquire a modicum of prudence under the fierce tuition of circumstance that he avoided a breach with his lawyers. He heartily cursed them in his heart, recollecting the many large fees they had received at his hands, minimizing altogether the arduous work and professional learning that had earned them. He broke off the consultation, which he postponed to a future day, and left them with a stunned realization that these men, whose capacity and experience he had so often tested, were of opinion that he had no defense against the preposterous suit of his wife, that she would receive her decree and be awarded the custody of the child and ample alimony which it would be adjudged he should pay.
He set his teeth, gritting them hard when he remembered how these lawyers had sought to induce him to defer filing his bill, to mitigate his allegations, to investigate the circumstances more closely. Their judgment had been justified in every particular, and though showing no triumph—Mr. Stacey was too completely a legal machine for such manifestation—he gave attestation of his human composition by the cold distaste, which he could not disguise, for the subsequent developments.
“Damned ifheis not ashamed to be concerned withme,” Floyd-Rosney said to himself, fairly staggered by the preposterous climax of the situation.
He began to have a great desire to get out of the country, to be quit of all the sights and associations of his recent life, but he had pressed the preparations for the Duciehurst suit, and his absence now as the date of the trial approached would have the aspect of a pusillanimous retreat, specially obnoxiousto him in view of the fact that the Ducies were his opponents. The overthrow of his plans and expectations of his wife’s return to him and the rehabilitation of their life together was like the demonstration of some great earthquake or cataclysmal disaster; it had destroyed all the symmetry and purpose of his life; his outlook was as upon a blank desert of despair, an “abomination of desolation.” That human heart of his, despite its overlay of selfish aims and turbulent pride, had depths seldom stirred of genuine feeling; he yearned for sympathy; he poignantly lacked the touch of his absent child’s hand; the adoring look in the limpid infantile eyes; he felt at every turn the loss of the incense of adulation that his wife had been wont to burn before him. It had made sweet the atmosphere of his life, and until it ceased he had never known how dependent upon it his very respiration had grown to be—it was as the breath of his life. While he sat in his solitary library, brooding and silent, reviewing in his enforced leisure and loneliness the successive steps by which the destruction of his domestic happiness had been compassed, his brow darkened and grew fierce as he fixed the date of its inception to the meeting with Adrian Ducie on theCherokee Rose, and the discovery that his wife could subtly distinguish between these facsimile faces of the two brothers the lineaments of her former lover. Even now his logic strove to reassert itself. Of course, the man’s face was intimately familiar to her; there must be tricks of expression, the lift of an eyebrow, the curl of a lip, methods of enunciation peculiar to one and alien to the other, distinctive enough to a keen and habituated observer. But, alack! this was not all,offensive as were its suggestions to his pride of monopoly. He said to himself that from the moment of the presentation of this vivid reminder of her old lover’s face was inaugurated the recurrence of the Ducie influence in her life. Here began that strange, covert revolt against him and all his theories and plans, which had grown inch by inch till it possessed her. She had never been the same, and he—fool that he was—through his magnanimity in withdrawing the allegations of his bill, had furnished her with the certainty of gaining a decree in her counter suit for divorce, of securing an ample fortune in the belittling name of alimony, and the opportunity of marrying and endowing with this wealth, derived from him, the penniless Randal Ducie, whose baleful influence had destroyed for him all that made life worth living.
Floyd-Rosney had never been an intemperate man, but in this grim seclusion he began to drink heavily. He had piqued himself upon his delicate taste, his acumen as a judge of fine wines, but the Chambertin and Château Yquem remained untouched during his hasty dinners, while the brandy decanter had taken up a permanent position on the library table, and he had ordered up from the cellar an old and rich whisky that had been laid down by his father before he was born, and that he had, so far as the butler knew, never yet tasted.
It was difficult for the lurking magnate, in his sullen seclusion, to face the eyes of his own domestic staff; he could not bring himself to confront the questioning, speculative gaze of the streets, the club, the driving park. Even suchrencontresas chanced when he went to consult his counsel, whom, but forvery shame he would have summoned to him, he found an ordeal. He had grown poignantly sensitive and keenly perceptive as well, and was discriminating in minute points of facial expression and gradations of manner. He could differentiate embarrassment, commiseration,—and how pity stung him!—reprobation, and oftenest of all, a sort of covert relish, an elation, that with any personal relation would have meant triumph. “They are nearly as well pleased as if I were broken,” he would say cynically to himself. But there was no breach of courtesy, no abatement of the deep respect usually tendered to a magnate and millionaire. He was keenly alive to detect the insignia of a diminution of consideration, but his little world salaamed as heretofore, for he was by no means broken, not even if he should have to pay heavy alimony, and lose Duciehurst into the bargain. The experience of these encounters, however, weighed heavily on his nerves, now all a-quiver and jangling with the effects of his deep potations.
His home was odious to him; his covert speculations as to the deductions of the servants, whom ordinarily he would have disregarded as mere worms of the earth, afflicted him. He was keenly conscious of his humiliated position in their eyes, cognizant as he knew them to be of his expectation of his wife’s return, and the elaborate preparations he had made and personally supervised for her reception. He found a greater degree of privacy and comfort on his yacht, which he ordered up from New Orleans, where she had been lying for a month past, refitted and revictualed, awaiting his summons. He steamed down the river to the Gulfon one occasion, but finding himself out of touch with his counsel in the Duciehurst case, and realizing that some final decision must be reached as to his course in the divorce suit, he confined his wanderings to idly cruising up and down the river, stopping at prearranged points for mail or telegrams.
In this resource he experienced a surcease of the harassments that infested his life on shore. His skipper knew little and cared less of land-lubber interests—as maritime an animal as a crab. He had, indeed, with a brightening eye and a ready courtesy, asked, when Floyd-Rosney came over the side of theAglaia, if the madam was not going to favor the ship’s company with her presence. Being answered shortly in the negative he heartily protested his regret.
“The best sailor she is of any lady I ever saw,” he declared, and added that if they were to do some deep-sea stunts they need not consult the barometer for weather signs. She cared no more for weather than a stormy petrel. He always looked on the madam’s presence as a good omen, he said; he had a bit of the blarney and a bit of poesy in his composition, his ancestry hailing from the Emerald Isle.
“She has brought no good luck to her husband,” Floyd-Rosney reflected, grimly.
It was grateful to him, however, to perceive that the man knew naught of his recent discomfitures and humiliation; of very meager consequence such an opinion would have been ordinarily, but the evident ignorance of the skipper enabled him to hold his head higher. The skipper read nothing in the newspapers but the shipping news, and but for the changein Floyd-Rosney’s bibulous habit he might never have been the wiser.
“He’s drinking like a fish,” he said in surprise to the second officer. “That’s new with him.”
“Seems to me,” responded the subordinate, meditatively, “I heard something when we was in port in Boloxi about him and the madam havin’ had some sort o’ row.”
“I hate to trust him with the brand new dinky skiff,” said the skipper. “He ain’t a practiced hand; I seen him run her nose up on a drift log lying on the levee with a shock that might have started every seam in her.”
But the yacht, with all that appertained to it, was Floyd-Rosney’s property, and the skipper could only enjoy his fears for the proper care of its appurtenances.
For Floyd-Rosney had contracted the habit of scouting about in the skiff, while the yacht swung at anchor, awaiting his pleasure. The solitude was soothing to his exacerbated nerves. He could, indeed, be alone, for he took the oars himself, and as he was a strong, athletic man the exercise was doubtless beneficial and tonic. The passing of the congestion of commerce from the great river to the railroads had brought the stream to an almost primitive loneliness. Thus he would often row for hours, seeing not a human being, not the smoke of a riverside habitation, not a craft of any of the multifarious species once wont to ply the waters of this great inland sea. The descriptive epithet was merited by its aspect at this stage of the water. Bank-full, it stretched as far as the eye could reach. Only persons familiar with the riparian contours could detectin a ruffled line on the horizon the presence of a growth of cottonwood on the swampy Arkansas shore.
One of these days, when he was thus loitering about, the sky was dull and clouded; the river was dark, and reflected its mood. The tender green of spring was keen almost with the effect of glitter on the bank, and he noted how high the water stood against the levees of plantations, here and there, menacing overflow. When a packet chanced to pass he bent low to his oars, avoiding possible recognition from any passenger on the guards or officer on deck, but he uncharacteristically exchanged greetings with a shanty boat, now and again propelled down the stream with big sweeps; none of the humble amphibians of the cabins had ever heard, he was sure, of the great Floyd-Rosney. Sometimes he called out a question, courteously answered, or with a response of chaff, roughly gay. Once, being doubtful of the locality, he paused on his oars to ask information of an ancient darkey, who was paddling in a dug-out along the margin of the river.
“You are going to have an overflow hereabout,” added Floyd-Rosney.
The old darkey, nothing loath, joined in the dismal foreboding, keeping his craft stationary while he lent himself to the joys of conversation with so aristocratic a gentleman.
“Dat’s so, Boss; we’se gwine under, shore, ef de ribber don’t quit dis foolishness.”
“Whose plantation is that beyond the point, where the water is standing against the levee?”
“Dat, sah, is de Mountjoy place, but hit’s leased dis year ter Mr. Ran Ducie. I reckon mebbe you is’quainted wid him. Mighty fine man, Mr. Ran is, an’ nobody so well liked in the neighborhood.”
Without another word Floyd-Rosney bent to his oars. Was there no escape from this ill-omened association of ideas?
The old darkey, checked in the exploitation of his old-time manners and balked in the opportunity of polite conversation, gazed in amazed discomfiture after Floyd-Rosney’s skiff, as it sped swiftly down the river, then resumed his progress, gruff and lowering, ejaculating in affront:
“White folks is cur’ous, shore; ain’t got no manners, nor no raisin’, nor no p’liteness, nohow.”
Floyd-Rosney’s equipoise had been greatly shaken by the strain upon his nerves and mental forces, this depletion of his powers of resistance supplemented by constant and inordinate drinking, contrary to his usual custom. Thus he had become susceptible to even the slightest strain on his self-control. He noticed that with the renewal of the mental turmoils that he had sought to elude—conjured up by the chance mention of the man’s name that meant so much to him in many ways—his stroke grew erratic and uncertain; once one of the oars was almost wrenched from his grasp by a swirl of the current. He was well in mid-stream, in deep water, and he realized that should he lose his capacity to handle the little craft he would be in immediate danger of capsizing and drowning, for his strength in swimming could never enable him to breast that tumultuous tide at flood height. The yacht was out of sight, lying at anchor in the bight of a bend, that cut him off from all chance of being observed and rescued by the skipper. He summoned his presenceof mind and let the boat drift for a few moments while he took from his pocket a brandy flask, and drank deeply from its undiluted contents. The potent elixir rallied his forces—steadied his nerves. With its artificial stimulus his hand was once more firm, his eye bright and sure. But its stimulus was not lasting, as he knew, and fearing an incapacity to handle the boat in this swirling waste of waters he directed his course toward an island, as it seemed, thinking that thence he would signal theAglaiaand wait for her to steam up and take him off. There he would be in full view from the yacht.
As he neared his destination he perceived—as he had not hitherto, because of the potency of the brandy—that the island of his beclouded mirage was the wreck of theCherokee Rose, still aground on the sand-bar, although waters swirled around her, and fish swam through her cabin doors and the slime and ooze of the river had befouled the erstwhile dapper whiteness of her guards and saloon walls. He lay on his oars for a space, regarding with meditative eyes the ruin, analogous, it seemed to the far-reaching ruin that had its inception here and that had trailed him so ruthlessly many a day. In his dreary idleness he was sensible of a species of languid curiosity as to the extent of the ravages of water and decay in comparatively so short a time. Only a few months ago, in the past October, he had been aboard the packet, when trim and sound, and immaculately white and fully equipped, she had run aground on this treacherous bar, where her bones were destined to rot. He wondered that the wreckers had left so much, unless, indeed, their operations were frustrated by the sudden impendingrise of the waters. The craft lay listed to one side, the hull evidently smashed like an egg-shell by the furious onslaught of the storm, but a part of the superstructure—the texas and the pilot-house—was still above water, though canted queerly askew.
Floyd-Rosney rowed briskly to the stair that formerly served to ascend to the hurricane deck, the skiff running up flush with the flight. He sprang out—first trying the integrity of the wood with a cautious foot, and tied the painter firmly to one of the posts that supported the hurricane deck, leaving the boat leaping on the ripples, as if seeking to break away from some ponderous creature of its own kind that would fain drag it down into the hopeless devastations of a lair in the depths.
With a deep sigh Floyd-Rosney slowly ascended the few steps of the stair above the current, and stood looking drearily down upon the structure wherein were lived those scenes so momentous in his fate so short a time ago. As he walked along the canted floor, his white cap in his hand, his head bared to the breeze, he glanced now and again through the shattered cabin lights down into the saloon, seeing there the water continuously swirling in the melancholy spaces, once full of radiance and cheer and genial company. All the doors of the staterooms had been removed, both those opening on the guards and the inner ones, of which the panels were decorated with mirrors and which gave upon the saloon. A vague jingle caught his attention; a fragment of an electrolier still clung to the ceiling and sometimes, shaken by the ripples, its glass pendants sent forth a shrill, disconsolate vibration, like a note of funereal keening. Suddenly fromamidst that weird desolation of shifting waters a face stared up at him. It was unmistakable. He saw it distinctly. But when he looked again it was gone.
Floyd-Rosney was trembling from head to foot. He had turned ghastly pale. But for the wall of the texas against which he staggered he might have fallen. He did not question the reality of his impression. It was as definite as the light of day,—a face strangely familiar, yet sinister, seen in the murky depths. He wondered wildly if it could be the drowned face of some victim of the wreck, or if this were now impossible, some curious explorer such as himself, meeting here more serious mystery than any he had sought. The next moment he broke into a harsh laugh of scorn. It was his own reflection! At the end of the saloon, where the craft lay highest on the bar, one of the mirrored doors, shattered doubtless in careless handling in process of removal, had been left as useless. In this fragment he had seen his face for one moment, and then the ripples played over the glass and the semblance was gone, returning now again. But Floyd-Rosney had no mind to watch these weird, illusory antics. It was horrible to him to see his face mirrored anew, distorted in those foul depths where he had been once well and happy and full of exuberant life and hope, with wife and child and fortune, every desire of his heart gratified, both hands full and running over.
As he turned away he was surprised to note how the shock had shaken his composure, his nerves. He was loath to quit his posture against the wall of the texas that had supported him. His long, intentgaze into the swirl of the waters had induced a tendency to vertigo, and he looked about for something that might serve for a seat. The pilot-house was but two or three steps above, and there were seats built into the wall, he remembered.
He made shift to clamber up the short flight. The door was still on its hinges, but so defaced and splintered as to be not worth removing, and so askew as to be difficult to open. With one strong effort, for Floyd-Rosney was a powerful man, he burst it ajar, although it swung back to its previous position, implying a like difficulty in opening it again.
He sat down on the farther side, on the bare bench, the upholstery having disappeared, and waited to regain his composure. Once more he had recourse to the brandy flask, now nearly empty. Once more the fires streamed through nerve and fiber, revivifying his every impulse. He felt that he was himself again, as he gazed through the blank spaces where the glass was wont to be, at the vast expanse of the great river, now a glittering sheen under a sudden cast of the sun. Beautiful chromatic suggestions were mirrored back from the sky; a stretch of illuminated lilac, an ethereal hue touched the vivid green of the opposite bank. A play of rose and gold was in the westward ripples, and one bar, athwart the tawny reach, of crude, intense vermillion betokened a cloud of scarlet, harbinger of sunset in the offing. He could see the little house on stilts to the left hand, now like a boat on the water. In the enforced stay here, when aground on the sand-bar, he had time to familiarize himself with even unvalued elements of the landscape.To the right was a bayou, the current running with great force down its broad channel, as wide as an ordinary river, and on the other side of the bight of the bend, lay theAglaia. He wondered if theCherokee Rosewas an object of the scrutiny of the skipper’s binocle. Floyd-Rosney thought that he should be on the watch for his employer’s return, which was doubtless the fact, as he had no other duties in hand.