CHAPTER XX
Mr. Dalton, hearkening professionally to the adventure, took charge of the legal aspects of the matter in the interests of his client. He notified by telephone the local officials of the death of the guide, and also by the long distance wire the marshal of the district of the probable location of the still, and in each communication offered on the part of Lloyd and young Laniston to be prepared to give their testimony whenever it should be required.
Then, since caution is always concomitant with conscience in a certain organisation, he proposed that the summer sojourners should depart New Helvetia forthwith.
"There is no use in mincing matters," he said. "These moonshiners are very desperate men. They may make an effort to prevent this direct and irrefutable testimony against them from ever reaching the ear of the authorities, Federal or local. For a while they may not know who Mr. Lloyd was, as he appeared judgment-wise in the niche, like the miracle of the writing on the wall of the palace of Belshazzar. But the rescue party will of course spread the details far and wide through the countryside, and the lives of both Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Laniston might be much endangered in lingering in this sequestered place. In fact this wild region is not now safe. I am not an alarmist, but I should recommend indeed the immediate closing of the hotel and the departure of all the guests from New Helvetia at this very critical juncture."
There were grave faces contemplating the glowing log fire in the great chimney-place of the hotel office as he talked. Few people relish the role of scapegoat. The idea of becoming a sacrifice to a possible mistake of identity for either of these formidable witnesses, the billet for the bullet of a distiller's rifle fired from the ambush of the shrubbery of the lawn one of these dark moonless nights, seemed far from a fitting sequel to the placid summer pleasuring at New Helvetia. There was also the possibility, unpleasing indeed to anticipate, of the incendiary destruction of the hotel, with all its guests, to make sure of the witnesses in the holocaust, to shield the crime of the murderous distillers. The personality of the adviser went far to commend his counsel, and the fact that the host ardently seconded the proposition made it manifest that the owner of the hostelry was not without fears for his property and person. A short consultation resulted in the resolution of the guests to quit the place early the next morning, no one caring after dark to encounter in addition to possible attack by the wayside the dangers of the precipitous mountainous road in the descent from the heights.
The night was already coming on, clouded and drear; the white cumuli so gaily racing with the wind through the blue matutinal skies had grown grim in heavy grey tumultuous threats of storm. The wind was still astir amongst the tossing cumulose tumult and falling weather seemed hardly yet imminent, but when Lucia, refreshed by rest and sleep under the influence of bromide administered by her aunt, joined the group in the office, the gusts were beginning to dash torrents of rain against the great black windows, all adrip, and the shouts of the riotous powers of the air filled the outer voids of mountain and valley and the utter darkness of the moonless night.
Mrs. Laniston had deemed it better when the girl returned that afternoon from the ill-starred jaunt, exhausted and half hysterical from fright and horror, that as scant regard as possible should be accorded her nervous agitation. She urged Lucia to exert her will-power to throw off the influences of the disastrous day, even its recollection. The evil results upon her mind and physique would be best nullified by slipping with as slight jar as might be into the normal routine of life.
"Think of it no more, dearest Lucia," she said pettingly. "Wear your prettiest gown and come down to tea. If you lie here and brood over this to-night, you may not to-morrow be able to quit the subject."
But Lucia found naturally enough the theme still rife about the fireside in the office. The question of transportation, the problems of conveyances and horses had already been settled, partly with the aid of the hotel stables which were usually available only for pleasure trips, a Colbury livery establishment having the monopoly of the general travel; but on this occasion every vehicle and horse at New Helvetia were brought into requisition, so eager was the proprietor to be rid of such a source of danger as his pleasant guests seemed now likely to prove. An arrangement was made by telephone by which the Colbury livery stable was to send up additional vehicles for baggage and servants, and the business interests thus satisfactorily concluded, the minds and conversation of the group reverted forthwith to the sensation of the day and the solution of details of mystery, not altogether comprehended in the jejune accounts that had at first reached the hotel.
The views of Mr. Dalton, by reason of his profession and his close association with the chief actor in the sensation, commanded much respect and were very generally adopted.
"I take it," he was saying as Lucia entered and Lloyd rose and offered her a chair—the lawyer glanced up from where he was comfortably ensconced with his cigar in a rocking-chair before the blazing fire, "Good-evening, Miss Laniston—I trust you are fully recovered from the ill effects of these unlucky excitements—I take it that the man met the horseback party merely by accident, and having some deep and murderous grudge against Mr. Lloyd——"
"Someone in the rescue party," interrupted Frank, "when the body was found and identified, was saying that his sweetheart had thrown him over, and that he suspected that it was the influence of her foolish admiration of Mr. Lloyd, whom she had seen at the Street Fair, where she danced."
"And that's arrant nonsense," Lloyd instantly asseverated. "She did a song-and-dance turn, like any other coryphée, and had no more consideration for me than the Flying lydy or the Fat lydy who perform in their own interests."
"At all events," Mr. Dalton said, "this Eugene Binley thirsted for your blood. He was unarmed—which surprises me very much——" Mr. Dalton fitted the tips of his fingers accurately together as he pieced out his bits of evidence—"really surprises me. These mountaineers, if to all appearances without weapons, usually carry what they call a shooting iron in the leg of their long boots. He could not kill a professional athlete like Mr. Lloyd in a fist-fight; he could not probably get an opportunity to push him when off his guard into an abyss—though this is what I think he contemplated when he refused to accompany Mr. Laniston back for the ladies or to wait alone."
"That idea occurred to Mr. Jardine—after we had remembered seeing the man in disguise at the Fair and in the Ferris Wheel," said Ruth, who, being far more phlegmatic than Lucia, and having been tortured by fears for her relatives rather than physical hardships and the sight of a hideous deed, had readily recovered her equanimity when their safety was assured. "That's why we gave them so little time to return before we rode off and raised the community as we went."
"This man's plan was well laid and evidently was evolved almost on the spur of the moment." Mr. Dalton continued his research into the motives of the deed. "He bethought himself that the moonshiners would not stay their hand should a presumable spy be detected looking in upon their illicit still. Thus he led Mr. Lloyd to their lair within their view. He must have had a grudge at the moonshiners too, for he had provided himself in Mr. Laniston and Miss Lucia with witnesses to the nefarious deed. What a precious shifty rascal this was—committing a murder by proxy!"
"A wonderful escape for Mr. Lloyd," said Mrs. Laniston. "And where do you go, Mr. Lloyd, from New Helvetia?" She was seeking to change the subject on Lucia's account. The young girl was looking very pallid, though delicately lovely in a gown of white voilé over white silk. She wore a belt of old gold brocade which had as a clasp a fine old topaz, a bit of the antiquated jewelry that recent fashions have caused to be delved out of old cases and brought to light in new settings. This had been a great brooch, and three other stones, similar but smaller—once the ear-rings and bracelet-clasp of the same set,—were now mounted in a "dog-collar" of filigree gold about her delicate neck. In her hair Lloyd noted a cluster of golden-rod, a relic of the ride to-day.
"Where am I going?"—Lloyd repeated the question—"as soon as I can get away from the coroner's jury I shall go to my own house—I am due there on the tenth at any rate."
"To receive your cousin Mr. Thomas Jennico Lloyd, I suppose?" said the gentleman who was well acquainted in Glaston and who had manifested much interest in the transformed showman.
"And his wife and his daughter, Miss Geraldine Lloyd."
Mrs. Laniston looked bewildered. "But isn't this rather early to go so far south? The danger from yellow fever is by no means counteracted by these light frosts in the upper country."
The gentleman who had connections in Glaston surveyed her in surprise. "Why, there has never been a case of yellow fever to originate near Glaston—they feel no apprehension whatever."
"Mr. Lloyd's home-place is within a few miles of Glaston," Mr. Dalton explained.
In common with most talkative women Mrs. Laniston could not silently await developments. "Oh—I thought his home was near us—in Louisiana—beyond the bight of the bayou."
"That——" said Mr. Dalton, with undisguised disregard, "why I understand that that plantation has only a little house on it—a neglected place, too. I think that Mr. Jennico only took it for a debt."
"Mr. Lloyd's home-place, the old Jennico place, near Glaston, is one of the finest country seats in the whole South," the gentleman who knew Glaston said, with almost local pride. "It is positively baronial. I should think, Mr. Lloyd, that you would be very happy to own it."
Lloyd smiled, his eyes on the fire. "I saw it only once," he said.
"Yes—yes——" exclaimed Mr. Dalton delightedly, "the time you called on your grandfather, Judge Lloyd, when he was visiting there. Ah ha! you took no notice whatever of the plump little gentleman reading the paper in his easy chair in the bay-window—and listening to every word. Charles Jennico always had more curiosity than any woman! He had intended to leave all his property to the eldest grandson of his friend and cousin, Judge Lloyd—this Thomas Jennico Lloyd. 'But by George, I made up my mind then that I'd divide my estate evenly between the two grandsons,' he told me when he gave me his instructions to draw up his will. He said, 'I wouldn't do anything then; I wouldn't interfere with the young cock's independence—I honoured him for it. But I never saw anybody who would grace wealth better and I made up my mind that he shouldn't eat the bread of carefulness all his days.' And that's how our young friend came to be the residuary legatee and devisee."
The priggish gentleman, who was of the type who grudges a fellow-creature nothing so much as self-satisfaction, remarked with sour emphasis: "Your Street Fair colleagues, Mr. Lloyd, will have marvellously little trouble in advertising themselves with your accession to fortune. The newspapers are beforehand with them already. You are spread all over the New York papers,"—and he turned a sheet trembling and crackling in his hand as he unfolded it, and read the following flaring headline:
"A Windfall. From Mountebank to Millionaire."
Mrs. Laniston could not forbear so sharp an exclamation of surprise that Mr. Dalton turned and looked interrogatively at her.
"Why—we have made no secret of it," said he. "I mentioned that a good bit of money went with the real estate."
"Oh," Mrs. Laniston explained, faltering and flushing, "I had no idea that it was as much as that." Then recovering herself as best she might she continued, "I suppose I received that impression because I had heard you say that his grandfather, Judge Lloyd, was so reduced in fortune."
"Judge Lloyd left nothing," said Mr. Dalton. "This fortune comes from Charles Jennico, a very distant relative who was a childless widower and much attached to Judge Lloyd's family."
Lloyd's eyes were fixed discerningly upon Mrs. Laniston for one moment, with that infrequent sternness that was yet so definite in his face. He wondered if the girl's course toward him to-day had been prompted by her influence. He reflected that Lucia had shown,—she had said indeed,—that she loved him. And yet she would not tolerate his suit. This he felt sure was the work of the cautious chaperon, under the mistake that his affluence was but a most limited competence. Doubtless she had subtly argued, urgently constrained, really overwhelmed the young girl's mind and preference, for independent and self sufficient as Lucia affected to be she was in reality docile to authority and in any matters of importance easily controlled, as he could see, by the judgment of her aunt, whom she loved and respected and trusted.
Mrs. Laniston could not disguise her dismay when once more Lucia and she were together in the upper story of the hotel. The apartment seemed bare and wintry as the storm beat upon the resounding roof and gables of the building, and the infinite stretches of the tempestuous clouds, above the vast purple mountains and the untenanted valleys, showed in the occasional broad flashes of the lightning through the uncurtained windows, as the summer birds rifled their temporary nests and made ready for their flitting on the morrow.
"Oh, Lucia, Lucia, my dear," wailed Mrs. Laniston. "I have made such a terrible mistake! I have destroyed your splendid chances—for you loved that man, and but for me you would have married him."
And Mrs. Laniston sat on the side of the bed in the sparsely furnished fireless summer room and wrung her hands in wretchedness.
Lucia's face was wan and wistful as she stood tall and slim and beautiful, in her sheer white dress with the shimmer of the silk beneath it, against the background of the dark window with the fluctuating view of the tempestuous landscape without. She held in her hand the golden-rod that she had drawn from her hair and she looked like the personification of the departing joys of summer.
But she had taken strong control of her nerves and she held it.
"You meant for the best, Aunt Dora," she murmured. "All that you said is true—as true now as then."
"But, oh, child, money makes such a difference—opportunity, travel, splendid environment. The incompatibility I feared, the bizarre influences of his past life, his language, his opinions, his manners, his lack of education would all be condoned by the world in a man of great wealth. And, even without it, you loved him." After a pause, "Lucia," Mrs. Laniston pleaded tremulously, "can't you try to lure him back. It would do no harm to try."
"I will not," cried Lucia with sudden passion. "I would not—for all his fortune—have him to think that it made the difference to me."
Mrs. Laniston could not herself have attained such dignity of poise, but she had a dreary satisfaction that Lloyd could perceive no suggestion of change in Lucia's manner wrought by the revelations of the magnitude of his windfall, no token of relenting in the scanty association that remained to them during the journey and the final parting.
His detention in Colbury was slight. In that short dazzled bewildered moment when he had looked down upon the still in the cave he had not recognised any face or figure among the distillers. No facts could be adduced against the Pinnott family in connection with the moonshining evidently practised in the cavern, and he was not sorry that they should go scot free despite his suspicions. Clotilda had obviously lost little in losing her lover, but it was because of this he thought that she seemed dazed and dull and dense to him when he told her of his windfall and bestowed upon her and the old crone and Daniel Pinnott's wife and child such gratuities "to remember him by" as he fancied might please their taste. Then he was gone and she heard of him never again.
Mrs. Laniston did not lose sight of him. She was wont to scan with pangs of self-reproach the reports of the social world in the newspapers, and bitterly noted the fulfilment of her prophecy how easily it might reconcile itself to peculiar antecedents and endowments when the wealth was commensurate—and in justification of this mundane appraisement it might be urged that the prestige of family distinction was great also. In the shortest imaginable interval Lloyd became noted in the social whirl; he was a patron of the theatre and the fine arts; a great devotee to outdoor sports, master of the fox-hounds, prominent in the country club and at the horse show, and he soon grew interested in the turf as an owner of fine racers. His attractive personality, and his inherited claims to fine social position speedily made him a favourite in certain high and exclusive circles. He became, so to speak, the fashion; his traits were admired and imitated; his sayings were repeated; his every movement was chronicled; and when it became bruited abroad before many months that he was about to marry his cousin's only child, Miss Geraldine Lloyd, his popularity rendered it a matter of very general satisfaction that the great Jennico fortune, which had been divided in his behalf, was once more to become a single interest to his further advantage.
When this news came to Louisiana Lucia Laniston was moved to take her way in a solitary walk down toward his little neglected plantation which she knew lay beyond the bight of the bayou near the swamp. The narrow path kept the summit of the levee along the Mississippi River, the great embankment covered with the thick mat of the Bermuda grass,—the still, deserted plantation fields on one side, the crisp sere stalks flaunting here and there a flocculent lock, "dog-tail" as the ungathered remnant of the cotton is called, and on the other side shining pools, where the encroaching river was creeping up into the area of the "no man's land" between the protective levee and the treacherous current. A lonely region this; she met no living creature, and as she, herself, swiftly walked along the embankment, her tall slim figure in her gray cloth dress with her gray chinchilla furs—the only note of vivid colour being the red wing with the grey ostrich plume in her hat—might have been visible a long way off, had there been any observer in view. When she quitted this path she followed the quiet country road, along its many windings to Lloyd's little plantation, a pilgrimage of final farewell to a cherished thought, and stood at the padlocked gate, and looked long at the little humble unpainted house, which was without a tenant now. The soft bland air of the Southern winter was about her; the sheen of the sunlight had a glister like spring; the eternal green of the hedges of the Cherokee rose and the never-dying foliage of the live oak above the roof aided the illusion. She had never regretted his millions, but looking over the gate locked against her, she saw herself as once heretofore rocking in her chair on the porch of his house, and again, with blowsy hair and red cheeks, planting lily bulbs in the high turfed flower beds of fantastic shape, and she knew that she had had then as now a vision of happiness.
So definitely was Lloyd present to her thoughts that as she turned and saw him standing on the border of Bermuda grass that fringed the road, she did not start with an appreciation of the reality of the apparition,—it affected her only as the continuity of her dream. It was indeed the surprise in his face, the embarrassment of his manner, the searching questioning look beginning to grow intent in his eyes as he lifted his hat that brought her suddenly to the recognition of the facts of the moment.
"You are not surprised to see me here," he said, ill at ease, flushing, consciously malapropos,—it was as if presumptuously recognising the fact that he must have been predominant in her mind at the moment.
"I was thinking of you." She regained her self-possession by a mighty effort, as she offered her hand. "We have heard the news. I am glad to have an early opportunity to congratulate you."
His mobile eyebrows went up at an acute angle of amazement. "Oh," he said at length, as if suddenly bethinking himself, "that happy man's name is 'Boyd'—not Lloyd. The similarity is giving us no end of confusion,—the gossips are all off the track. No, no," he added, "for myself I have nothing more serious on hand than a cruise in the Gulf,—my yacht is lying-to for supplies across the bend." He turned and glanced out at the great Mississippi, at high water resembling some vast lake, it stretched out so far, and the vermilion sphere of the sun, slowly sinking, made a great sheen of red glister on its murky rippling expanse. They could both see the smoke rising from the funnel of a yacht lying below the point where a fringe of pecan trees cut off the view, and a noisy bevy of green parroquets flitted in and out in search of nuts. "It struck my fancy, while waiting, to come ashore and view my possessions here."
He had thrust his hat back on his head and she winced as his look of critical, supercilious disparagement wandered cynically about the dreary, shabby, neglected little farmhouse.
"So this is the palatial home which you thought I had done you the honour to offer to you," he said, smiling ironically.
"Oh, don't—don't guy it,"—she cried with a sharp accent of pain, remembering her visions.
She had not kept the control of her nerves; she was consciously embarrassed and flushing painfully. She felt his intent eyes on her face, and she averted her own and looked up at the sunset aglow on the tiny panes of the blurred cheap glass of the windows.
"You thought little enough of it once," he said hardily,—he had acquired an assurance, doubtless through much adulation, which kept him from the fear of misapprehension,—"even after you had learned that it was not to be a home of poverty,—yes, indeed," he continued with an accession of bitterness, "you took pains to convince me that even wealth was powerless to commend me. I am not sensitive—but there was no need to turn and turn the knife in the wound."
He gave a short, angry sigh. "Well,—it is all over. I never meant to persecute you with my protestations again. I knew then that Mrs. Laniston urged you to reconsider,—that she would leave no stone unturned. I never expected to see you again,—and yet it is a melancholy pleasure,"—he looked at her with a sad smile in his eyes,—"and I take it mighty kindly of you that you don't deride the little place that you thought was the home I offered you."
"I love it," she cried with a gush of tears. "I have never regretted it but once,—and that was every moment and all the time, since I let a word of counsel,—a well meant word though it was,"—she hastily stipulated, "close its doors upon me."
He was at her side in a moment. "Then tell me why—whywere you afterward so cold, so silent, avoiding even a casual glance?"
"Lest you might think that the discovery,—the wealth,"—she faltered.
"Don't put that into words," he interpolated sternly. "I will not forgive you even an imaginary aspersion of your motives."
They had turned away from the padlocked gate, but they were together and there was no shadow of misunderstanding between them. As they took their way up the embankment of the levee in the direction of her aunt's house, revolving their plans for the future, Lucia glanced over her shoulder, then turned and with her wonted airy grace she kissed her hand to the dingy little cottage, so sombre and meagre beneath the gorgeous sunset sky.
"Au revoir, little home," she cried, her voice ringing out joyously in the silence. "I shall set up my staff here for a time at least. It is the trysting-place of Happiness, and all its dreams come true."
For she had romantically stipulated that their honeymoon should be passed here, where she had seen herself in visions so simply happy.
Lloyd looked at her, his eyes shining with a new glow. Then he, too, fervently kissed his hand toward the cottage and echoed her words.
"Au revoir," he said, "a low lintel, but that door will be the portal of Paradise."
THE END