Book I.
Chapter I.
St. Martin's Grave-Yard.
In an old and ricketty arm-chair, its upholstery whitened-green, (frayed and fringed with age, by a wood fire in his unpretentious cottage, and with the expression of a man prostrate in the abysmal depths of despair, sat Christopher William Whitworth, Right Worshipful Grand Master of the Orange Societies of Shrewsbury, in England, and member of the Local Government Board.
Upon his expansive brow, delineated with furrow upon furrow and the autographs of time, reigned in stern severity embarrassment and unspeakable gloom. His hair was flaxen, long, thickly streaked with grey, and his large blue eyes, full of absorbed and preoccupied expression, told that he was brooding intently over some one particular idea, for he scarcely moved for hours from the chair between the table and the fire.
In the previous year he had left England, and with all his family he had settled in the warmer clime of the Southern States of America, for the amelioration of his eldest son's health. For forty years nightly had he sat meditating in that old arm-chair before retiring to rest; revising in the abstract work completed, or planning out programmes for future occupation. Trained he had been in the art of architecture, and for thirty-five years he had toiled in a double capacity: as an architect on his own account, and as a land-surveyor for the Government of England.
Leaning on his elbow against the little square table, he looked towards a large quarto volume dealing with practical home remedies for the treatment of the sick, as if he had failed to find some information which he had been seeking in its contents. His old-fashioned spectacles lay across the pages opened on the subject of consumption of the lungs, and still he reclined on the old American arm-chair, like a man thwarted, conquered and utterly broken down, until the starlight glow of the summer skies was slowly vanishing before the awakening king of day.
Something unusual must have occurred that day, or was expected to occur that night; something that seemed to banish all thought of sleep from his mind, bind his mental faculties together and focus them, not upon any newly-contemplated building, nor upon any threatening deadlock in the government treasury pay-offices. Foreign to the present trend of his thoughts these former and frequent denizens of his brain, when—as he pondered and sighed and pondered, with a suppressed click the passage door swung on its hinges and there stole into the room towards where he was sitting Miriam, for thirty years his self-denying wife and his constant equal sharer in all eyes and wants Eugene,"
In a hushed tone of voice: "He opened his eyes and wants Eugene," she said as the old man turned on his chair, "I'm going up to the school for Eugene; better sit in the bedroom till I come back."
The old Dutch clock pointed to half-past three; but to remonstrate with the active and agile Miriam was only labour in vain. Indeed, in all matters which she could attend to herself, any offers of assistance were resented as stumbling-blocks to her expedition, while anything requiring quickness and despatch she could carry out with the dexterity of an athlete in full training.
Bareheaded, excepting an old Paisley shawl which she threw over her head and shoulders, on she sped in that darkest hour before the dawn, up the long and steep Galveston hill, beyond whose summit stood the renowned academy of Maximilian Arnold, Master of Arts, of Cambridge; its lofty, tapering spire, in keeping with the motto of that illustrious trainer of the intellect— "Sic itur ad astra"—pointing bolt upright and glimmering in the dark inwards the twinkling stars.
Since his father had settled in Galveston, Eugene Percival Whitworth had been a weekly boarder at the college, giving forth every day new signs of promising distinction, and carrying off with éclat the medals and academical honours. Now he was the don of the school.
Calling up old Matthew, the college porter, Miriam was marshalled to the little dormitory on the third floor, where Eugene lay in wakeful dreams, disturbed by the memories of his suffering brother in Lily Cottage. Hastening back to the scene of the old man's meditations, and the side of his doomed first son, her progress now and then was arrested by a palpitating heart. She held, halting for hreath, upon the arm of Eugene Flurried and panting, they entered the door which she had left ajar, and stood before the death-stricken Gordon, in anguish and tears together.
His voice reduced by Iaryngeal phthisis, the secondary signs of consumption, to a whisper: "I know I am going to die." he said; "I am only a burthen here, and I am quite resigned and happy. I cannot live more than a few hour, and I only wanted to see you Eugene: for I have been dreaming of the sunny days when we chased the butterflies together amongst the yellow dandelions on the hills, and I thought I was a child again among the butterflies and the flowers in the sunniest heavens. In a few hours I shall be free from this slow, overpowering disease. I know it is leaving me because all my pains and distresses are gone, and soon I shall be with my Father in Heaven."
"Pure and undefiled," said Eugene, as with downcast eyes he watched his brother fading away through the gate of death, while smiles illumined his soft, dark eyes, and the hectic crimsoned on his cheeks. Whispering "good-bye" with white parted lips, he reached out his wasted hand to his brother, while, overwhelmed with tears, Miriam smoothed down his raven clusters and around his neck folded her arms with the undying lave of a Magdalen. His face was as calm as that of a child fallen asleep. Not a stir, not a sound was heard again, but a choking convulsive sob from his shuddering father, and the Spirit of Gordon Vincent Whitworth soared in majesty away into the painless realms of peace for ever.
No symbol of ostentatious mourning; no token of loud lamentation, was observable in that disconsolate home; no more than the still deep waters of a sense of irredeemable loss. Wreaths, garlands, crosses and other floral immortelles covered the remains of that spotless life; for Gordon Whitworth had been well-beloved by all who knew him, and his relatives were held in greal regard in the neighbourhood and in the town.
With their own hands Miriam and Eugene laid him and adorned him in the coffin, the perfervid love of his mother forbidding strange hands to touch him, as she knelt beside her coffined love, night and day, until the time appointed for the funeral arrived, again and again repeating her favorite prayer—"Teach us to love one another in Thee and for Thee, and in the world to come unite us at Thy feet, where peace and love are perfect and everlasting."
The death of the deeply-loved Gordon banded with silken cords still more firmly together the ever strong union of that humble household, though none at the time could have foretold what torments for some of its members were in store.
Two days afterwards, on a Friday, the body was laid in the grave in St. Martin's cemetery, situated on the face of a slope breaking away from the Great Rocky Chain, the pall-bearers, Miriam, his father and two brothers, and his last farewell a souvenir of white chrysanthemums and waxen chalice lilies, which Miriam had moistened with the dew of her tears and thrown upon the coffin as it lay in the grave. Sweets to the sweet, farewell!.
The chief study of Miriam now was devoted to the erection of a monument, as an emblem of her supernal love for the son whom the gentle Redeemer bad taken away from the valley of tears, to shine through his good works like the stars of the firmament for ever.
Reduced at the time to straitened circumstances by the pressure of exorbitant medical charges; discharged from the crown lands office, where he had served the government of England so long, on a small superannuation pension, being over sixty years of age, and with high collegiate fees to pay for Eugene, the monument of such a splendour as alone would satisfy the ambition of Miriam was scarcely within the reach of Christopher Whitworth.
It was, however, remembered that an allowance was due to his departed son, insomuch he had been strong and healthy, before he entered the service of the Local Government Board at Shrewsbury, and and had contracted the illness to which he succumbed by overwork at the secretary's offices late into the wintry nights of England.
Thus it was, that, after instituting inquiries into the amount, the school-boy Eugene drew out a claim on behalf of his father for the sum of two hundred pounds. After six months' delay, during which claim forms were entered, received, referred, withdrawn, passed, signed and counter-signed by legions of supernumerous and idling clerks clerks in the government pay offices, and with the influential assistance of a minister of justice and several members of the house of commons and the House of Lords, the claim of two hundred pounds was ultimately paid. The difficulty about the monument was cleared away, and the schooner "Lycidas" brought it from the eternal city of Rome.
Now, there on that elevated prairie plateau overlooking a vast expanse of sea and mountain range, towering and picturesque she stands with spreading wings and outstretched arms—an angel of spotless Italian marble, appealing to the great architect of the universe. At her feet sat Miriam, after a long walk laden with flowers, evening after evening, speaking to the grave as if it were a tomb of the living and her compassionate voice was heard by the invisible spirit of Gordon. Happy she felt in the thought that her darling boy was surrounded in death by the graves of seven little children, for were they not all of the kingdom of heaven, and were not her happiest days the days when her own were young? To sit beside the grave or loiter among the crypts, the vaults and sin and sorrow were no more—a land of rest and balm, whose portals no evil thing ever entered. Other mourners came to plant the graves of their departed once a week or once a month or once a year: Miriam was there for hours almost every day, and no flower in her vases and urns ever drooped its withering head during a cycle of thirty years.
The blossoming grass grew long and tangled around, and throughout the enclosure the grey headstones here and there slanted or even had fallen, while some of the inscriptions were hidden by lichens and moss. Over the place hovered shadowy silence only broken by bird-cries, the rustle of the leaves and other wood sounds, or from among the long prairie grasses the faint tinkle of a cow-bell. Cypresses stood dark and glamorous against the blue sky, swaying and sighing under thesoft breezes; while in the topmost arms of the pines the magpie and the brown hawk built their nests and the cricket chirruped its evening cadences among the graves. The hum of the locust resounded from over the plain.
Sailing home in the merchant wool-packet "Baltimore" after a long voyage to Australia, China. Japan and the islands of the East Indies, swaggered into Lily cottage a sailor-boy, who, from running away to sea with the aspiration of visiting every port in the world, and from his seafaring propensities in general, was commonly known by the name of the "Flying Dutchman." although his proper name was Roderick. In Lily Cottage he was always called Dolly.
Sunburnt and robust with the bronze of the sea, and swaggering with the roll of the buoyant wave, his first inquiries were concerning his brother, with whom he had parted two years before, and although Gordon was ill at the time, Dolly imagined that by then he would be better, if not recovered. Saddened by the news of his death, and asked if he had not seen his mother, who had, as old Christopher supposed, gone to meet him when the "Baltimore" came to her moorings, the roving sailor replied that he had met nobody whom he knew on the Galveston quay.
Wondering for a while where Miriam could have gone, the old man surmised that she would be found in the cemetery, whereupon Christopher Whilworth and the youthful midshipman who had just come home bent their steps thither together. Over the hills they wended their way to the prairie, where the rising yellow moon scattered her phosphorescent beams over the land of the dead, and where they found Miriam sitting as ever in wonder and prayer alone. Their footsteps muffled by the carpet of the fallen leaves, they walked under the arching ailanthus to the grave.
"Poor Gordon, poor Gordon," muttered Dolly, his eyes filling with tears at the reminiscences of the departed flower of the family. "I thought you would be well again when I came home —well again when I came home.
Turning to his mother, he looked in compassion upon her annnish-stricken pain-wrought face, and repressing his own emotions, he continued—"I am home for good after that last trip, mother; I am tired of the sea and we have been ship-wrecked twice since I left home. I am going as fireman on a Mississippi steamer around the Gulf, so that I shall be home every few days, and at least every Sunday."
Exultant in the warmth of her love and in the ecstasy at her sailor-boy's return; imploring him to relinquish the roving life of a sailor, and stay with her in his dead brother's place, as Eugene was going to the University of Philadelphia, and only Brosie was left at home, she kissed his sun-burnt cheeks in the overflow of her joy, and the re-union of Dolly, the Flying Dutchman, with his mother was undisturbed by the boatswain for years.
Chapter II.
Adam Quain, the Resurrectionist.
Situated in the vicinity of Galveston, no common school was that over which Maximilian Arnold presided. Thirty thousand dollars had he spent on the building alone, and the grounds around it covered an area of three square miles. Pine-forests hemmed it around. Within its confines the pinus insignis and canariensis, the araucaria excelsa, or Norfolk Island pine, the beech, the fir, the larch, and the sycamore abounded. The golden bloom of the mimosa skirted its extensive grounds, where many a cricket match and baseball battle in inter-collégiate contests had been fought and won by the Galveston boys.
In Spring-time the large garden was one mass of gorgeous bloom. Petunias, white, crimson and parti-coloured; yellow asters, syringas and zinias of raonbow hues; mounds of violets; rock-geraniums and gloire de Dijon roses joined with the rich magenta Virginia creeper, the clematis and the cape-jessamine in swelling out its floral bosom with, a wealth of inflorescence.
From all parts of the Southern States of America and the islands of the West Indies came the flower of the land for academical training, cores every year left the college for the universities. It outstripped all other colleges in training and erudition, and poured numbers every following year into the university to undergo a further embellishment before entering the legal and medical professions. Among its tutors were the most distinguished scholars in the continent, and Maximilian ruled over all with a velvet glove. He was the presiding genius for forty years.
A proud man, and a man of great ability, no master ever made his boys feel so much at home, or in their leisure hours was more homely amongst them. The rudimentary departments shared, equally with the higher and advanced branches, the great advantage of breathing the same atmosphere and feeling the personal touch of the master mind of Maximilian ipsô persona while they tarried, under his fosrering care.
"What I teach you, you will never forget," he would say; and if they did forget before they left that school, the attitude of Maximilian would do credit to a horrified actor on the stage. The look of genuine chagrin, the whites of his rolling eyes shutting out the blue, and his hands fidgetttng and jingling the dollars in his pockets, were potent incentives to the youthful memory. In the mortified stare of Maximilian there was more than a Philippic oration.
"Here is this boy Whitworth from the common school of a man from Battersea translating Virgil, and mine can't. Come away into my office!" he would exclaim in a great theatrical passion, when his Own pet pupils had been found wanting and Eugene in the first year won the gold medal. Many a penalty was paid in his little cell-like office, but never a thrashing was ever known to be given. His look and his attitude, as he thumped his fist on the table, answered all purposes, whereas words were quite superfluous and might have spoiled the very pronounced and effective reproof.
It was one bright morning in September. The garden was never more luxuriant, or the academical routine in fuller swing, when there plodded his heavy clod-hopping way to the seat of learning, with a broken-down old hollow-backed prod and a load of firewood in tow, one Adam Quain. Ninety-five was his age, although judging by his appearance he must have passed one hundred and fifty.
No living soul ever saw Adam wearing a coat, albeit he alleged that he kept one at home, in a beautiful carpet bag, for tea-fuddles, weddings, and funerals; and no living soul ever saw Adam perfectly sober. When making any important assertion, his cheeks would tremble like jellies, his arms would spread out like the wings of an albatross, his hands would wave and the tips of his fingers quiver until he had stated the case, when he would drop them into the position of attention at once. The load of wood was intended as a propitiatory offering to Maximilian to pave his way to the interior of the college and obtain for him an interview with Eugene, whom old Adam imagined he had adopted.
Fearing that the prod might run away with the load, he unfastened the bar of the great iron college gates that led into the star-studded temple, and, unable to read the motto—Sic itur ad astra—emblazoned in gold beneath the shield of Minerva, he swung the ponderous battle-axe-mounted barriers wide open and, towing inside the whole concern, shutting the gates and stalking over the beds of petunias, asters, and the exquisite lawn, he strode straight for the big front door. So did the prod, carrying all down before him with the load of wood in tow, to watch the petals of the victoria regia unfold in the mirror lake, and then lay him down on the bank, as if he were in for an afternoon's sport with the gold-fish.
Opening the big front door without ringing the bell, the straggling Adam first encountered the scholarly Maximilian himself. "I coomed a' seein' on my boy Eugene, and I brought ye some good box and birch, yer lordship. I want him to make out a bill for me, and I want ye to send him out to my place at Christmas. Me and my old 'ooman will be glad if ye can come yerself: bring yer wife and family, and all the other boys for a few days shootin' amongst the parrots, for they're a killin' and eatin' o' me wholesale."
"Sit there, my good man," said Maximilian (the load of box and birch in his eye), "and I'll send for Master Eugene."
"Aye, aye, yer lordship, thankye, he's a good boy so he is, and a good shot among the birds. He's very handy with the pen, and if its not axin' too much on yer lordship ye oughter let him come out with me to-day in my dray. Will yer 'ave a drink, yer honour? I've got a bottle of beer in this sack."
The seraphic, recondite Maximilian was getting disgusted, and left in a most unmannerly style, when in marched Eugene to interview the gentleman who he was told had come to see him. The interview was short, and resulted in a promise to spend the Christmas holidays with old Adam Quain and old Bathsheba—the old woman of Adam.
Practical and experienced man of the world was old Adam Quain. He left the gates wide open on leaving, without depositing the box and birch, to make it appear some other hollow-backed, old, and broken-down black prod, with a load of box and birch in tow, had been enjoying an afternoon's fishing; and although the truth was closely suspected, the mystery of who opened those gates was never solved by his "Lordship" or his "Honour."
Three weeks brought in the Christmas holidays and Eugene to the cockspur of the ranges by the Colorado River where for fifty years Adam Quain was monarch of the land for miles. His locale was notified to the public, consisting of an occasional tramp, by an enormous signboard, on which he had daubed with a tar-brush the following words:—"Adam Quain, carpenter and jiner, clock-mender, blacksmith and wheelrite, paint and paperanger, glacier, farior, undertakor and General Repairs," although most of his time he was what he called "cockatooing."
There was no chimney in Adam Quain's mansion; the end of the kitchen was simply built out a few feet with long stones left open at the top, and an ordinary fire consisted of a tree put into the cavernous fireplace. You had to sit at the sides of the hobs near the fire to let the heat shoot past, or else be roasted at the farthest end of the room.
There sat the venerable Adam performing every evening. The inns and outs of his dreams he related, and his grounds for the affirmation that he was to be the last man left on the face of the earth. He sang several times every evening a song called "The Farmer's Boy," and the lucky day-ay he came that way-ay for to be a far—mer's boy; alternating the refrain on special occasions with one called "Bonfire Nights," and another with the paradoxical appellation of "The Bag of Water."
Bathsheba was never united to Adam in the holy bonds of matrimony. He bought her and paid seventeen pounds for her—a fair and just computation—to her lawfully-wedded husband, who had been committed to jail for seven years for sheep-stealing. After the term of seven years was done, the lawful husband was always made quite welcome to his wife's domicile. He would spend half his time under her roof, sleeping on the sofa in the kitchen, generally reserved for sundowners and swag-tinkers, and observing the conditions of the covenant and sale with the most scrupulous honour. Adam always treated him as a perfectly honourable man; the sheep-stealer would blow Adam's trumpet wherever he went, and would tell everybody that "old Adam is very good to I; very good to I is old Adam."
The singing of the old veteran of so many trades was the feature of the evening performance. He had a tremendous goitre in his neck, the hollow of which gave greater vocal resonance to his basso-profundissimo voice, and made it sound as if a kettle-drum were reverberating inside the goitre; yet notwithstanding the tuneful melodies of the old man Bethsheba complained of nightly headaches.
Returning from his multifarious labours one evening, he displayed a horny hand with a large splinter sticking into the palm. Eugene pulled it out, and old Adam asserted far and wide that he performed the operation with such consummate skill that Eugene was born to be a doctor. He undertook to provide a corpse for Eugene to practise upon out of the adjoining grave-yard. So interested in the matter did the old man become that he would solemnly declare, and positively seemed to believe, that a spirit came and ordered him to procure a fresh live corpse from a new grave, hinting at one of the shepherds, who had died a week before. Ready and willing he always professed himself to overcome the demurs of Eugene and obey the spirit's manifesto.
One bright moonlight night, when not a sound could be heard but the swaying and soughing of the giant pine-trees, the harsh screech of the lonely wild-goose, the wawa, and the croaking of the frogs in the marsh, with a spade and a pick, iron hooks, tackling, and the old black mare in the shafts of the creaky old cart, he undertook to go to a spot where, twenty years before, he said, a Red Indian had been buried. Inducing the boy to go with him on the pretence of shooting owls, through the dismal pine-tree forest he led the old black mare, over fallen logs and ditches and through the thick acacia scrub, to discover the grave of the red-skinned heathen, unearth his bones, and cart them back to the hut.
Not even the bark of a dog or the cry of a bear disturbed the silence of the night; but hooting owls and bats hovered around in hundreds. Nearing an old shanty where, years before and still, sly-grog was sold by an ancient widow whom he called "Green-gin Mag," he deemed it best to sheer off the light, burning as it was then at two o'clock in the morning, and going around a meandering way he finally reached the scene of the grave.
Coming to a halt, his brawny arms spread out like wings, the tips of his fingers vibrated, and he ordered Eugene to stand about a hundred yards away, under the dark shade of a pine-forest king, where he was to mount guard, and if anything occurred, to fire.
Pulling up a small wooden cross, he threw it to one aide, and set to work in real earnest to dig out the contents of the grave. His old hardened thews and limbs worked with the regularity and strength of a digging machine till, when half-way down, he called for beer, which he had in the cart.
Still no sign af anything to frighten him or interfere with his gruesome work, and again he picked and shovelled and picked, the clink of the pick against the stones echoing afar in the dead silence of the night. Fully eight feet had the old man sunk in the grave, and could not be seen from the sentinel's post, when the light in the shanty went out, and a dark form appeared where it had been just before.
Bang! from the mounted guard, and up from the grave in terror sprang the old digger, to pause till all was safe again.
"That's old Mag—never mind old Mag," he walked to the outpost and said, with the fluttering pinions out again. Into the grave again, he soon came upon a bit of a pillow-slip and a tin plate, whereon a name had been painted, but corroded by the worm and the rust. His old lanky bony hands grovelling in the pastime, next he clutched at a worm-eaten bronze-coloured skull, with a hole in the base; thigh-bones, leg-bones, one foot, and the bones of the upper and lower arms, but no ribs could the old man find, though he dug two feet below the level of the skull. Strange, no ribs!
Uneasy about the disappearance of the light and the appearance of the dark form amongst the swaying trees, he shovelled back the earth into the grave, stuck the cross in the middle of the mound again by driving it in with the head of the pick, hurriedly put the remains of that once living form into the creaky old cart, and back to the hut again they meandered just as the moon had described her circle and the dawn appeared in the eastern sky.
As if balanced on the ends of an ethereal see-saw, the moon set and the glorious sun arose, diffusing his matutinal beams through the window of the old bark hut. Adam emptied the bag of bones from the rifled grave upon the greasy kitchen table, and proceeded to scrape away the clay clinging to the ridges and in the crevices where the tendons of powerful muscles once had found their attachments; and to scoop out the debris from the cavity of the exhumed grim and ghastly skull. Holding up the skull, into the round orifice where the spinal column had been jointed with it he poked his horny thumb, and, smacking his very lips, he cried, "By George! look at yon for a throat, my boy; many a good quart of swipes from old Mag's has gone down there."
The notion of their scientific uses was soon exploded. From an anatomical point of view they were of no use at all. Time had effaced the markings for the insertion of muscles, the grooves for the conduit of nerves and bloodvessels; it had corroded away the condyles about the joints, and in places had produced a general absorption of the osseous tissues. An anthropologist might have deemed them a rare prize, but an anatomist would have thrown them away.
The embryo doctor kept them, and a few days afterwards trudged home with them, away from the monarch of the Colorado ranges for thirty-five miles to Galveston, where, musing and praying over those of her own lost darling, he met his bereaved mother in Lily Cottage.
Disconsolate and despondent, she sat knitting socks at the little cottage window as he marched into the room with the gun, the bones and the skull strapped over his shoulder. In enthusiasm over the great acquisition which he had made, he unfastened the straps of the resurrected bones, and displaying them before his father he related the history of the previous night.
Sickened at the gruesome spectacle, Miriam swooned away and fell with a thud on the floor. Christopher, raising her from the floor, strong intelligent man as he was, and always in sympathy with the earnest efforts of his aspiring son, gathered them together, and, taking them out of the room, nailed them down in a box, avowing that he would take them back and replace them in the despoiled grave that night himself.
"When you wanted to be a lawyer," he said, facing him with a look of reproval, "I told you that they were nothing but a gang of rogues and scoundrels, preying upon the simpleness of the living; but here are tokens that you have already begun, which is worse, to rifle and ravish the sacred tomb of the helpless dead."
"They are only some old Red Indian's bones," replied Eugene; "and the grave was not in a consecrated cemetery."
"All God's earth, my son," he rejoined, "is consecrated wherever beneath its surface repose the remains of man. Consecrating the cemetery is merely a formality ordained by man: 'dust to dust' was the fiat of the great Creator Himself. I'll stand over that old villain to-night while he digs up that grave again and puts every bone in that box back into its appointed place."
This noble intention was never fulfilled. It soon spread about the town that old Mag had been sitting up late that night baking scones, and had reported to the police that she had seen two men with a horse and cart, apparently camping out for the night, near the little bush graveyard. She had heard them digging and picking at stones; further, that out of curiosity she next day had visited the place and had found the wooden fence removed, the cross stuck upside down, and the grave itself disturbed.
The myrmidons of the law scoured the country round about, examined the loosened earth, and dug up the grave again. Startling and sensational reports of the Mystery of the Colorado Ranges appeared in the daily newspapers as Eugene Percival Whit worth left the scene and his name was enrolled in the lists of students in arts and medicine at the university and the hospitals of Philadelphia.
Many and absurd were the theories propounded for the elucidation of the mystery, some declaring that the body had been removed by relatives contrary to the refusal of the Minister of Justice to grant an order for its exhumation and transference to a private tomb; some, that the body bad been removed to prevent any traces of murder being discovered, and the name of old Mag was mentioned as having poisoned the man with green gin.
The majority, however, inclined to the theory that the spoliation of the grave had been the work of some anthropologist or medical student, and among the majority was included the whole police force of the United States.
On shooting excursions, young Whitworth had frequently been seen in the vicinity of the grave, and it was surmised by the detectives in charge of the case that he had been aided and abetted in the perpetration of the deed by his college tutor, William Swinbourne. Government detectives called upon the tutor of language and logic, and hung about the gorgeous garden for hours, their whole acumen and search-lights impinging upon the quiet bookworm who was as innocent of the deed as Miriam herself, and in every way morally unfit for it. The sight of the skull would have made William quail. The captious Maximilian, fully convinced that the swoop of the detectives was properly directed, twitted and jeered at the simple-minded tutor till he could suffer the taunts no longer, and left the school in umbrage and disgust.
"Mister Swinbourne." he would sarcastically say, jingling the dollars in his pocket. "I give you four hundred and fifty dollars a year, and you go picking up bones," following William about the school every chance he could get.
No admission or incriminating points could be elicited from Adam, and before the clue was relinquished, a visit to Eugene himself was determined upon, and carried out with creditable skill and adroitness. Three of the most celebrated mouchards and informers were marshalled into the operating theatre of the Philadelphia hospital one morning, when an operation for the removal of a malignant tumour was being performed in splendour by the bejewelled Professor Garde. The spokesman of the three sleuthhounds introduced himself as detective Lloyd, and his colleagues, detective Trail and detective Floyd, as well as the subject of the mystery of the Colorado ranges to Eugene.
The suspect candidly avowed that he had some bones, and that he would be glad to demonstrate them at his lodgings near the meadows of the university. Three o'clock was appointed as the hour for the meeting, and the three detectives, who had conducted themselves in the most affable and gentlemanly manner, quietly withdrew from the operating theatre. Instead of waiting till three o'clock, one of them placed himself in possession of the lodgings forthwith; one loitered about the vicinity of the hospital gates, and the third kept guard at the outside of his rooms until they met at an hour later than had been arranged for Eugene to meet them all together again.
Pouncing upon the fiat bones of the hip, detective Floyd wanted to know why a saw-cut had been made in the bone. He appeared somewhat crestfallen when Eugene explained that it had been done to expose the pyriformis muscle, whereas the hole, where according to Adam Quain the quarts of beer had gone down, Trail thought was a sign of a brutal murder.
Finding nothing to convince them that the bones which he showed had come out of a grave made twenty years before, and inclining to the belief that they were, as Eugene stated, supplied to him from the dissecting rooms of the university, and were those of a highwayman who had been lynched, the articulations of the hanged bushranger's skeleton were pieced together again by the medical student, and hung up on the hat-peg of the bedroom door; whereupon Eugene awaited the further pleasure of the police mouchards.
Quietly came the staggering question from the mouth of detective Lloyd,—"Have you got the gun you were shooting with that night, Mr. Whitworth? I found one of your cartridges when we dug up the grave among the loosened earth."
"There is the gun," replied Eugene, "there in the corner."
"Will yon oblige me by fitting that cartridge into the barrel of the gun?—or perhaps I had better do it myself," said detective Lloyd.
Convicting confidence and a smile lit up the face of detective Lloyd as he took the cartridge from his waistcoat pocket. Dismay sponged out that smile, and that confidence was disconcerted in toto when he found that the cartridge was too large and would not fit into the barrel. It was a number 11 cartridge, but the bore of the barrel was number 12.
To leave no stone unturned, the dissecting room of the university was visited in company with Eugene. When he had conducted the three detectives thither, the first salutation they received was a realisation of Tam o' Shanter's dream and a broadside of human beef-steak. Professor Scarpa confirmed the account given by Eugene of his receipt of the bones by the medical school. The government detectives had done their duty; no further clue was obtained and the other bones were consigned to permanent rest at last by the Flying Dutchman beneath the bows of the good ship "Baltimore," or to make pastime for the great leviathan and the things creeping innumerable—deeper than plummet lies—in the sea.
Adam Quain had disturbed the grave of no red savage in his lengthy life. What he had unearthed were the bones of a man almost forgotten at the time, but never forgotten nor forgiven by Adam—the bones of one who had worked with him on the same farm in his earlier days, of one who had been as good a customer at the sly-grog shanty as old Adam Quain himself, and of one who had betrayed and seduced his only daughter, the only ray of sunshine in the old man's life.
Laban Jarves he had been called by such as knew him. He had died of alcoholic pneumonia. The old man knew whose grave he ravished beneath that moonlit sky, and he chuckled in his very soul at the thought.
This wretch had lodged in the old man's hut; he had been fostered by him and employed by him. In return he had led astray the idol of the old man's heart, and had haunted that old man's dreams for years after his body was committed to the grave. He had been the bane and curse of the life of Adam Quain, who like a red Indian waited for his revenge, and grovelling like a fiend dragged his remains in pieces from the ground.
Chapter III.
The Museum of Natural History at the University.
The archæological and zoological museum of the University of Philadelphia in the year 1835 was a handsome and stately edifice, overlooking a beautiful and translucent lake, teeming with paradise and California ducks; its walls were covered with English ivy, and bowers of Maréchal Niel roses flourished here and there, filling the surrounding air with fragrance. As the light breezes whispered together, the classical imagination could picture fauns peeping from amongst the orange and pomegranate trees. Every specimen in natural history it contained, from the mammoth whale to the most infinitesimal being of the insect order, and it was thrown open to the public three days a week
Hundreds of thousands of visitors every month were counted by the self-registering turnpike gate, and all day long thronged through its corridors, niches and galleries from all parts of the States. Students in arts, natural history, science, and embryo doctors of medicine lingered listlessly about the museum; some investigating the minute anatomies of Nature's wondrous artifice and engrossing themselves sedulously with their labours: others apathetic and more inclined to display the cap and gowned form of Adonis, for the edification of the young ladies, with all the side and swagger of a brass-bound sailor.
Retiring in disposition, a hard worker, ever mindful of the exigencies of his seaside home, brimful of energy, determination and ambition, none could allure Eugene Whitworth away from the object which he held in view, and that was to be emancipated from the schools of science and to relieve his father of the expense. Exhibitions and scholarships which he gained contributed largely to his support, but with his father's income greatly reduced and his mother pining away at the foot of his brother's grave, what else could he do but work and wait, till he could ameliorate the conditions in Lily cottage himself? No feminine frippery or finery attracted him to the museum, the kaleidoscopic whirligig of the young ladies had no charm for Eugene. The ossification of the mammalia, or the spore-breathing apparatus of the insect tribe took him there and kept him there for an hour or so during the week in his early terms.
One morning in June, when the call of the blue-bird re-echoed through the orange and pomegranate trees and the gaudy tout ensemble was wandering through the corridors of the museum, he sat in the neighbouring library of the university alone, amidst three hundred thousand volumes at the little table he had sat before during the past year.
Tripping lightly up the long white marble steps and in mistake opening the large folding doors of the library, there peered in amongst the volumes two girlish faces, and presently there stood before Whitworth the matchless forms of what seemed to him to be angels. He had scarcely spoken to a woman in his life, excepting his mother, and the vision as of angels from another world quickened his pulses and overcame him like a charm. Her irradiating violet eyes beamed towards Eugene, and the blonde supernal girl inquired in the most guileless manner if the museum was open that day.
Without rising from the table, he replied that they had come to the library, and directed them down the marble steps again and through the quadrangle to where the museum stood. The sublime vision vanished from his eyes, and at once he regretted that he had not gone down to conduct them to the museum personally. As they closed the door behind them, the flashing eyes of the young brunette turned towards him. Descending the steps, she remarked that he was a very impolite fellow: while her companion thought that he was in charge of the library, and could not leave.
Assuming his cap and gown—pause Eugene Whitworth! the day will come when that trifling inattention may be re-paid, and when those eyes, flashing with love-light, like a will-o'-the-wisp will allure you away into the marsh of your incautious life—he betook himself down the marble steps and through the quadrangle to the laboratory for students in biology, through whose little window he peered again upon the ineffable vision, as his erst-while visitors sauntered slowly amongst the manifold beauties of Nature.
Her face in contour like the profile of Juno, the fairer was dressed in a soft white muslin, embroidered with a soupçon of Valenciennes lace, its folds falling gracefully about her statuesque form and gathered at the waist with a white moiré sash. She wore a large Gainsborough hat with a fleecy white ostrich feather, and a pearl necklace. She carried a cream sunshade with an air negligé, as her superb and matchless form moved among the show-cases with the grace of a classic sylph.
Her companion, though apparently about the same age, was not so tall. Her complexion was dark. The beauty of the brunette was the beauty of Psyche. Her piercing gleaming black eyes glittered beneath her massive black eyebrows and the wealthy fringe of her jet black hair. The mobile lineaments of her attractive face seemed, as she wreathed her lips into expressive pouts and showed her pearly teeth, to change with every varying mood. Diamonds sparkled on her neck and on her wrists. The collar of her gorgeous dress was yellow, while the bodice shone with the hues of cinnamon, and the skirt was peacock blue. Her parasol, which she manipulated to show herself off to greater advantage, showed again the deep dark green hues of the peacock, and it was thickly bordered with blue passemeterie lace. The peacock was evidently her favorite bird and her household crest, for again around a cinnamon toque, glinting with the sheen of richest satin, was twisted upon itself and fastened down to the rim an enormous peacock's feather, looking like a gaudy-skinned snake asleep. Beneath the ruffled surface of her face volcanic forces seemed to be at work, kindling contending emotions in her mind. There was more below than came to the surface.
Wavering in his intentions to approach the engrossing dćbutantes, he was about to open the door when Marmaduke Payne, a friend and fellow-student, came into the laboratory.
"Who are those ladies there by the bird-cases?" said Eugene. "Don't know," said Marmaduke, "but it doesn't make any difference. I'll introduce you; can't see very well from this window, but I fancy the girl in white is Guinevere Hood."
Taking Eugene by the arm, they walked towards the bird-cases, and as they drew near Marmaduke stopped, while Eugene withdrew his arm and walked out of the door alone. Payne remained behind; he entered into conversation with the blonde and seemed to have known her before.
Meeting Eugene the next day, "That was Guinevere Hood," he said, "that fair girl in white, and a lovely girl she is too. I don't know the other one, but I heard Guinevere call her Marvel. She went away when I spoke, but I have known Guinevere since Christmas. She comes from the same village as I did, and her father was a medical man at Maconville. Everybody likes Guinevere, but its very seldom she comes out at all. She said the other girl thought you were a fool not to show them the museum; but Guinevere is a glorious girl, she never sees any faults in anybody. Why are you so interested about them?"
"Oh! nothing," said Eugene, "a mere nothing, a passing fancy, and only a look."
"The fates of empires have depended on a look," he replied, "Peacock plumes—trifles, light as air, are to the lover the poisonous darts of little Cupid."
The memory of the previous day faded like a flower from the mind of Eugene; but like rare foliage, it was pressed between the leaves over which he traversed in his studies of Spinoza and Sir Henry Lewes on philosophy.
Natural science with language and logic was the school to which Whitworth devoted most of his early labours. Through the dying year his lamp might have been seen shining in the tower of the college till the big bell of the city clock boomed out three; when, in the middle of a translation of "Highland Mary" or "Ye banks and braes" into Greek, he would fall asleep, to awake betimes in the morning for the revisals of the most brilliant scholar in the Western World—the patriarch of the affiliated college. There oft till dawn he sat over the binomial theorem outwatching the bear, and with thrice great Hermes unsphering the spirit of Plato.
The end of the year was fast approaching, and a big stake was to be disputed at the university. Big it was in Eugene's eyes, for it afforded him the emolument of eight hundred dollars for the ensuing year, as well as the gold medal of the university.
Fierce was the contest for the science scholarships; but Whitworth all through was the favorite, and, when the honour lists were posted in the quadrangle, first in the list of first-class honours stood the name of Eugene Percival Whitworth.
Miriam's pulses beat, bounding with pride. Soon again they fell, for soon fell his own.
One Sunday morning he wandered about absent-minded, as indeed he always was, into the cloisters of the Sacred Heart Cathedral, where the intonation of the voice of the priest sounded like a weird, fantastic, re-duplicatingreduplicating bell, whose echoes reverberated without ceasing in his ears every stride he took back to the college.
His appetite failed, his head swam, and his brain seemed to be reeling and floating within. Dark spots changed to blue and purple before his eyes; illusions and phantasmagoria danced before his mind; as, deserted by sleep, he lay in the tower and was not noticed for days. The constitutional fever raged; delirium followed, and for a week he was on the verge of coma.
His only visitors were the rector of the college, Marmaduke and Guinevere. His friend had brought her one morning; she waited and brightened the scene all day. She often came again, bringing him oranges, lemons and delicacies, and her sweet and gentle ways infused convalescence into the air of the tower.
Stranger she was to Whitworth when he first became ill; but to know her was to love her. Her voice was the most exquisite music; her sweet smile a medicinal charm. She brought Dr. Moore to him; but for her he would certainly have died. Typhoid fever in a virulent form was rife in the city and suburbs, and the mortality was rapidly increasing every day. Strong in physique, he passed through the various stages and the third week, which the doctor told Guinevere was the most dangerous. At the end of another he was convalescent. The roar and bubble of the waning fever resounded in his brain for weeks; but it was only a transitory after-effect, and escaping all the dangers of the devouring typhoid, the trend of Eugene's life continued on the tide of time.
Chapter IV.
St. John's Chapel, Galveston.—Ambrose Vernon Whitworth.
"The bells of Shandon they sound so grand
On the silent waters of the river Lee."
St. John's Chapel, Galveston, contained in the interior of its lofty tower, a complete set of costly and ponderous bells. At six o'clock in the morning they roused out the sleepers from their beds: at short intervals clanking, clanking, clanking, and rattling the windows, smashing the crockery, and shaking the houses for miles like intermittent earthquakes.
High ritual was the order in St. John's. There was a performance at seven, a performance at eleven, a performance at three, and a performance at seven again, every day in the year. Each performance was announced by an hour's clanking of the bells, essaying the chimes of the 'Church's one foundation,' till people wondered how much longer that foundation would stand, and winding up with half-an-hour's swinging tolls, at minute intervals, as if the mayor of the town died four times every day.
If a baby came to be christened, the bells rejoiced: if a bride was to be seen, they burst forth in peal upon peal of hilarious merriment; but if ever the governor of the State paid a visit to the town the bells tumbled topsy-turvy over one another as if they were being shaken up in a huge dice-box. With the tumultuous vibrations the earth trembled for a distance of forty miles.
These clanking, jarring bells of Shandon tinkled forth the sweetest melodies to Miriam. Together with another devout old party, she sat perishing within the four walls of St. John's before she had kindled the fire for breakfast, and late into the dewy eve, through all the christian year.
The divine service was a sort of three-cornered performance: the bachelor of divinity shining on the reredos, at the top angle, Miriam and the old woman, who was known by the sobriquet of 'Holy Sarah,' at the bottom angles of the scene of the triangular play. After the verger had finished his smoke in the porch, around the large congregation he would stalk, with a crimson plush bag tied on the end of a cedar pole, poke it under the noses of every attendant, merely as a matter of form, then poke it at the stomach of the bachelor of divinity, and quick-march down the aisle, holding the palms of his hands flattened against his hips after the fashion of a mummy, and looking as if he had not had a smoke for a year. The two soldiers would then dismiss, after a short discourse on the debrutalisation of man; while the bells hammered away at the national anthem of the Netherlands, "Wilhelmus van Nassauwen," or sometimes the dead march in Saul.
The Flying Dutchman never saw the inside of that euphonius sacred edifice: but he often caught himself swearing at the bells. In this respect he was a trifle inconsistent; for, practically speaking, he thought that cleanliness was a good thing to observe, and Sunday morning was the time set apart for its observation.
With marvellous magnanimity, "I don't think I'll go this morning, mother," (as if he ever had been there) he said every Sunday morning after breakfast, most of which he handed over to an ill-bred bull-dog, which he adored: "You go, and I'll clean up the ranch a bit," pulling out a black cutty pipe and heaving a profound sigh, with the air of one for whom the world had no pleasure in store.
At the last shock from the bells of Shandon, the performance in St. John's would begin, and simultaneously the performance in lily Cottage. With a huge stable-broom, strong and heavy enough to clear away six feet of snow from the streets of Shrewsbury, he would fill the rooms of Lily Cottage with what appeared to be all the dust in the town: roll up the mats, shake them against the verandah posts, spread them down at the doors again, and put all the red geraniums and trumpet lilies he could find into an old dipper upon the table; sucking the cutty and heaving the sighs at the finish of every act. With buckets of water and bars of magic soap, he would fall to, all fours, on the kitchen floor, with the dandy-brush or the stable-broom, as if he was quite at home on the "Baltimore," and washing down her glorious decks again.
No exactly so, gentleman Ambrose. Brosie stayed in bed, as sometimes an enemy bad put whisky into the ginger wine the night before, in consequence of which treachery Brosie's head was often like a foundry in full operation, and his Stomach rebelled at the idea of getting up for breakfast.
With the dandy-brush floating in the bucket and the stable-broom slung over his shoulder, Dolly would, of malice prepense, disturb the frowsy slumbers of the unfortunate Ambrose. The performance on the organ at St. John's was now an hour in full swing, and Brosie's nasal organ was like a regiment of buglers on the march playing a lovely quintet with the clarionet, the oboe, the picollo, the bassoon, and the big trombone.
"Get out of that you lazy, skulking hound; go and feed that pig out there." (First salute of the Flying Dutchman.)
"Shut up, you marlin'-spike, and let a gentleman get a bit of sleep." (Fort of Ambrose opens out on Baltimore.)
"Gentleman, be jiggered! get up your lubber or I'll throw the bucket of slops over you." (First volley from the Flying Dutchman.)
"Clear out you old woman and let a gentleman alone. Don't you know I am born to be a gentleman? A gentleman takes it out on Sunday mornings: I take it out on Sunday mornings; a gentleman keeps dogs for coursing and dogs for the gun; I keep dogs for coursing and dogs for the gun. My nature is to give orders, not to carry them out. Go and groom that horse, you fat porpoise, and when he's ready I'll get up and ride him out like a gentleman." (Shell explodes over Baltimore.)
"Go to the devil, you and your 'gentleman.' I'll clean out that stinking ferret and make a start with the dinner." (Second volley and profound sigh from the Flying Dutchman.)
"Good thing when you go back to China or Fiji and we get a proper servant, if I have to pay her wages myself." Whereupon, after the hit, the palpable hit, of Ambrose, the Flying Dutchman hoists a flag of truce, and the Strauss orchestra plays the 'Conquering hero' and an allegro in B flat major from Schumann's "Faschingsschwank aus Wien." Brosie's snores were tunes.
Big of heart, hot in temper, and strong as a cask, with great masses of muscle standing out on his limbs, the quondam sailor looked upon the Sunday morning's diversion as a nice little change. He had been lucky in the balloting for new candidate for employment in the service of the Mississippi Steam Navigation Company, and was now an entered apprentice engineer, the first steps of which consisted in brushing up the green coats of the steam engines. Wipers, they called themselves, and Dolly was champion wiper in the company's service.
Coming home to breakfast, after being up all night on the night-shift in the engine-room, he looked like a Christy minstrel off the stage, everywhere coal black, excepting the whites of his eyes. Whether he had been out for a short stroll or had come back from the Christy minstrel performance, he would invariably swell out his burly chest with a deep inspiration, and blow out a cyclopean sigh with the force of a steam-jet, as if all the troubles in the world were upon his shoulders.
If ever Brosie had a thimbleful of whisky in the ginger wine, the prodigious sigh came from the abysmal depths of his soul. He had appointed himself to the post of monitor over the erring Brosie, and became his good genius and guardian angel. He often spent hours together at night squaring (as he called it) another Christy minstrel to do his work on the night shift, while he would often root Brosie out of some shanty and bring him home in a cab, with his legs hanging out of the window, and sitting on the top of him.
Hauling him out of the cab and towing him in like some young forty barrel right whale he had captured, "Here is the beauty," he would say, shoving Brosie in before his father, and throwing every stumbling-block he could in the way of Brosie's efforts to sheer off to bed.
"Where did you find the hidiot?" would come from old Christopher, jumping up off the sofa, with his hair standing on end.
"In the back parlour of the 'Dogs and Guns,'" Dolly would respond; but Brosie one night forestalled the reception by declaring in a blustering speech, "I'm not drunk, father, I'm not drunk," as he stood propped up at the back by the Flying Dutchman, his hat stove in, his eyes half closed, and some of the ginger wine running out of his mouth, while the sleeve of his coat and the knees of his pantaloons had just come out of the mud. "I've done a good thing to-night. I'm going as clerk to the bub—bub—bub—brewery. Ten dollars a day once a week," squeezing with his hand below the region of his liver as if the barb of the harpoon was sticking there still.
Honour to whom honour is due. The young gentleman was remarkably precocious and shrewd. No one of his years had ever before held the honorable position of judge at the great international-horticultural-agricultural, pigeon, poultry, canary and dog show, held in the reserve at New Orleans.
He could rattle off at a moment's notice all the precise and proper tints on the legs and beaks of all the birds in the air and the fowls on the land. From an ungainly Malay game or brahmapootra all through the numerous varieties down to a pert little duckwing bantam, his knowledge of 'points' was incontrovertible. He could go through the genealogical tree of any fox-terrier or greyhound of note in the land, and describe the set of his nose or the curve of his tail, and all the minutiæ of his pedigree to a nicety. No tricks of painting faulty feathers in a silver-pencilled Hamburg rooster ever escaped his notice at the show, for he had performed the same tricks himself before, and had prizes for them hanging up over his bed.
When he went for a ride on the old grey horse, his chief object was to coax a clutch of eggs from some fowl-fancier; none knew better how to trim his sails when there was anything in the fowl or dog line to be got. He would bite off the ends of the tails of all the fox-terrier puppies in the town to get his pick of the litter. By holding up a duck-egg to the sun, he could tell if it contained a prolific germ, or if it had been boiled or pricked with a needle to deceive him, and neutralise its virtues.
At one time he reigned supreme over twenty-seven greyhounds and thirty-nine fox-terriers, and he was unanimously elected president of the Louisiana Fox-terrier Club. The cardinal rule of the Louisiana Fox-terrier Club was to first catch a squirrel in an onion net, shut it up in a box, knock one of the knots in the wood out of the side of the box, and deliberately starve it from Monday morning till Saturday afternoon. It was then let out on the stroke of three by the duly appointed trapper before the gaze of a motley throng of spectators, laying and taking the odds which of two dogs would bump up against it first, this being all that was necessary to kill the squirrel, for it could not run and was scared out of its life before it got out of the trap.
The services of Brosie, as accountant, were duly inaugurated in the brewery; but he resigned at the end of the week, when he got into the bottle-works. He left the bottle-works and got into a paint-shop, a wool-store, an estate-agency, a rope-works, and back to the brewery again. Out of the brewery again and into a merchant's office, a recreation club, a billiard room, a soap-boiling establishment, a coffee palace, and into the brewery again. Out of the brewery again and into the stearine works, where he stayed for six weeks. He had cosmopolitan and philanthropical ideas and tried to help all he could. His variegated avocation from one post to another during three months culminated in his entering the rooms of a dental firm known as Foster Wax and Co. Eight hundred and fifty dollars were paid as premium for his admission, part of it being prize-money won at the university, and the first orders which the young gentleman received were to sweep out the rooms in the mornings.
"Jumping Jehosaphat!" screamed Brosie, "I haven't worn petticoats since I was a two-year-old, and my old governor has nothing left now to buy them."
Unfortunately Dolly was too much occupied in the science and art of wiping, or he would have washed out the place every morning into the bargain. A ragged-tailed street-arab was thereupon engaged to sweep the rooms. Brosie towered over him as a subordinate, and congratulated himself on skipping so lightly over the first lessons in the art of surgical and mechanical dentistry. This urchin he drew into a conspiracy, so that, whenever the boy met Miriam in the town, he would in a barrel-organ like way accost her with the following remark on every occasion:—"Good day, Mrs. Whitworth. Mister Brosie is not drunk, Mrs. Whitworth, but he might not be home, Mrs. Whitworth, till late, as he has to stop in the workroom, Mrs. Whitworth, watching the vulcanizer. Good day, Mrs. Whitworth."
On his exemption from the preliminary duties and studies in the fashionable art, the new apprentice was sent out to deliver a large number of the monthly accounts. These, slipping round the corner, he coolly tore to pieces, threw them into the first dust-bin, and filled in the remainder of the day acting as referee at a couple of cock-fights, or "battles" In the terminology of the gallinaceous club.
Having thus diligently initiated himself into the mechanism of the mouths of the people, he was raised a step higher in the mechanico-scientific ladder. He performed for three months with one foot upon a treadle machine, while he stood up from ten to four every day on the other, and held a tooth-plate against a revolving brash between the two balls of his thumbs, without taking his eye off the spinning brash for a second.
He introduced the art of homing pigeons into the dental emporium, and brought it to the pitch of a monomania, which preyed upon not only the operatives in the laboratory, but attacked even Foster Wax himself and and all the faculty of the Co., who thought they had done a grand stroke of business when they paid forty dollars for a pair of blue-chequered antwerps, wattle-eyed carriers, or fiery dragons, with little crops of warts around their orbits. Every morning they would all arrive with a pigeon in each pocket, put them all at the same time, to a tick, in a box and work the totalisator, or take odds from Brosie. Wiper Dolly would call for the consignment and send them off in the steamer, to be liberated in the adjoining State, never to return, never to return any more.
Christopher William Whitworth was by nature a very credulous man. Honest, as he was to a fault, he thought everybody else was honest too; so overflowing was Christopher with the milk of human kindness, that if anybody asked him for his eye-teeth he would willingly hand them over.
Brosie was a born past-master at rigging up a scheme, and a born orator at expounding that scheme before his father. He was a perfect artist of fiction, especially whenever he got into a scrape. One evening after having appropriated all the money he could from Foster Wax and Co., by invariably, in the betting, laying against the return of the warty-eyed antwerps, he preambled with the avowal that all that mortal man could learn at the emporium of Foster Wax and Co. during the full term of his apprenticeship, he had acquired in the four months on the treadle.
Next he stated that to complete his studies in the mechanico-scientific art of dentistry, and to finish him off as a first-class extractor and gold filler, Chicago, Lake Michigan, was the only place in the wide world. As great as he had suddenly become in his own estimation as an extractor of teeth, still greater did he loom as an extractor of money from his father. Six months he stipulated as sufficient in Chicago; after which he could set up an emporium of his own in the city of New Orleans. He wished to perfect himself in pivotting, and the specialty of crown-and-bridge work, in which he opined in every mouth there was a miniature fortune. No other school but that of Chicago could impart this recondite art, and to Chicago, Lake Michigan he must go, or throw the thing up altogether and go back to the brewery again.
He did not, however, mention the fact that during the dinner hour, when Foster Wax was away, he treated in the operating room any clients that called, and nearly ruined the business. Before he had treadled a month, he persuaded the bought and sold old woman of Adam Quain into a new set of ivory. He cut down and patched up with bird-wire an old set which his grandmother had left behind her, and, drilling holes in the old shrunken jaw of Bathsheba, he laced them in with the bird-wire. He gilded the wire, and charged Bathsheba fifty dollars. The death certificate, written out some years after, contained the words—"Cause of death: primary, 'necrosis of the jaw-bone'; secondary, 'blood-poisoning from suppuration of the jaw.'" The disease worried the old woman for the rest of her life.
His early attempts at surgical dentistry were undoubtedly original and heroic; he even performed an extraction and bleeding combined on old Adam himself, when he called one day during the dinner hour with the "hell o' a' diseases." It was hanging to his gum.
"Gas?" said Brosie, looking down the old man's cavernous throat.
"Wa'al we don't know much about gas t'ome; you'd better give me karosene." said Adam.
Brosie gave him a wineglass-ful of peppermint water, pulled the "hell o' a' diseases" out with his fingers, and charged him ten dollars for calorific fluid!
The scheme with all its inns and outs thoroughly cut and dried, having been with great painstaking promulgated before old Christopher Whitworth, Brosie waited his answer, with his mouth open, and his tongue hanging out.
"I think, Brosie, you had better see Eugene about that, and if Foster Wax will return some of the eight hundred and fifty dollars, I daresay we might manage it," came forth from the oracle.
Thereupon, he performed a monetary extraction upon his brother, who thought it was advisable to knock the heroics on the head, and that probably they would do so in Chicago The whole family saw him off by the New York steamer, and Miriam was left in Lily Cottage, with the sighing Christy minstrel—the Flying Dutchman, once again.
Chapter V.
Guinevere Catherine Hood at the Altar.
"At length the bell.
With booming sound,
Sends forth, resounding round,
Its hymeneal peal, o'er rock and down the dell."
Longfellow.
The quality of Guinevere Catherine Hood lay not alone in the fulsome wealth of her bountiful heart: she was gifted with a high type of intellectuality, as well as a strong desire to acquire a knowledge greater than that of her superiors in social rank, and with a firm purpose she devoted herself to its acquisition. She acquitted herself at the expiration of her career in the ladies' college at Rosemary Point at the matriculation examination with great credit and distinction, and triumphed over many of her male confreres in the university examination hall.
She entered the alma mater as a matriculated student, and child of Nature that she was, she joined the classes addicted to the study of natural science and history. For two years she remained at the university, and among its lady habitués she was the observed of all. The square black university cap, with its long silk tassel, adorned the fine chiselled contour of her pale classical face in more becoming contrast than her white and fleecy Gainsborough hat, and the black flowing gown formed an admirable back-ground to the loose white robes beneath.
No infirmity harassed her healthy and vigorous frame; no spectacles spoilt the beauty of her violet eyes, whereas among the other lady students they were quite the indispensable fashion, and lent to them quite a sage and elderly appearance. No counterfeit show of wisdom: no affected indifference to the outside world; no sacrifice of her supernal nature, was ever observed in Guinevere. Love of the science of Nature, and a remarkable adaptation for it, required no distorting auxiliary aids to make it appear genuine.
In her nonchalant ways, as at the close of her term she surpassed the more assiduous ladies of the school, she incurred the tacit but bitter envy of all her inferiors. In classical studies as well she showed the light of her rare intellect, and in her rambles around Parnassus she often came in contact with Eugene. The paths from the affiliated college to the university, were lined in places with orange and pomegranate trees, and in any dilemma she would bend her steps along those shady walks and meet Eugene as he came down from the college.
The light zephyrs amongst the orange tress mingling with the sound of her voice, meeting him one fresh April morning she said, "Oh! what an awful man was this Euripides! What is the meaning of this, and this, and that, and that?" pointing with her finger to the text of Shilleto. "The text is corrupted," said Eugene; "but the purport of it is that the heaven of woman is love: throw it away, Guinevere, and keep to the birds."
Then and there she threw the work of the great tragedian away, but Eugene picked it up and put it into his bag. Time after time had he sat on the seats below the orange trees translating and re-translating the choicest gems of English and the golden treasury of classical poetry for the delectation of Guinevere, till now, the following morning, he pressed the petals of the flowers which she had brought him when he was ill into the leaves of the the outcast Euripides and, writing upon its last page—
"Go, lovely rose,
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows
"Whene'er I liken her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be"
—he handed her back the book and smiling walked away.
Her angelic stately form he often saw in the precincts of the university; he sometimes met her on the paths around the museum, and, now and then, as she was on her way home he accompanied her as far as the entrance-gates.
"Who was that lady with you when you first came into the library?" enquired Eugene one evening as she was saying goodbye.
"Marvel Gould," she replied. "She was at the ladies' college last year, but she is at home now. Marvel and I are old friends, but the other girls quarreled with Marvel and spoke what I am certain were untruths about her. They said her father took her out of the college for flirting with a married man after school hours, and they used to say she had a most abominable temper; but I always liked Marvel, and I think the other girls were jealous of her and slandered her. Marvel is a brilliant pianiste, and I am sure she is very pretty—don't you think so?"
"Yes," said Eugene, "remarkably attractive and pretty;" when, shaking hands with Guinevere, he slowly returned to the sombre affiliated college.
The memory of the black flashing eyes, the wreathed smiles, and the expressive pouts—vivid, bewitching, and alluring—haunted the mind of Eugene for years.
Guinevere came in the morning and Guinevere departed in the evening month after month, but Eugene could not leave the grounds. Often towards the close of the year he had seen her in deep conversation with Marmaduke Payne, sometimes sitting on the green knolls by the lawn together, sometimes walking by his side on her way home, for he lived in one of the suburbs and so did Guinevere. The year was fast drawing to a close and the honour examinations fast approaching when, ail at once, she became very uncertain in her attendances, and finally ceased to come.
When the academical year ended, and the lists were posted in the endowed ceremonial hall, first again in the honour lists appeared the name of Eugene Whitworth as winner of another science scholarship, the gold medal of the university, and the degree of Master of Arts; while in another list stood the name of his friend Marmaduke Payne as having attained to the degree of Bachelor of Laws. In the honour lists for lady students there were no names in the first class, and that of Guinevere did not appear anywhere. She had not presented herself for examination at all.
It was by a mere chance that Marmaduke had obtained his degree. Dreamy and negligent of his duties, during the latter part of the year he had spent most of his time outside the gates of the University, and when he did come, it was to saunter about listlessly on the lawn in amorous resignation with the gentle Guinevere.
Not a month had passed, when one cloudless Wednesday morning, over the city and the grounds of the university the tuneful melodies of chiming and pealing marriage-bells in the Sacred Heart Cathedral Tower burst forth in ecstasy as a prologue to the wedding. Fifteen hundred students filled the front portion of the cathedral, and a thousand of the populace the back. Carriage after carriage drew up at the gates, and discharging their occupants, passed out of the thoroughfare. More richly caparisoned than the others came four white horses in silver-mounted harness, with streamers of primrose and white from their bridles, careering before a superb victoria carriage, and coming to a halt at the gate, where the footman unfastened the door for the bride and her brother inside.
Nervous, inside the cathedral waited Eugene beside his friend before the the altar. In agitation he trembled, for the angel of his soul was near. After the great cathedral organ had pealed forth the grand tones of 'O Salutaris,' and while the choir sang 'Tantum Ergo,' like Juno, of whom Virgil sang as pacing the heavens, amongst a sea of admiring faces down the long aisle came the ethereal Guinevere, attended by four bridesmaids in faun crépon and brown straw hats trimmed with yellow roses. The glorious ceremony of the Roman Catholic Church was soon concluded, and Guinevere Hood was the wife of Montague Payne. She wore a dress of ivory white satin, draped around the bodice with Brussels lace, the long court train attached to her shoulders by diamond brooches and she carried a bouquet of yellow and white roses, and white lilac fringed with maidenhair.
Thoughtful, sad, and forgetful of his duties as groom's man at the wedding, Eugene retraced his slow steps back to the cloistered halls of science. Was not the good angel who had watched over him, as he lay at the entrance into the valley of the shadow of death, and the rare girl who scattered roses before his paths in the university,—his belle ideále, his loved and only companion amongst women, cut off from Eugene for ever?
How saddens at first the heart at the loss of one whom we have for long accompanied! How terrific the loss when it is the loss of one whom we loved and cherished! How appalling the anguish when that loss will last for ever; leaving nothing but the sick pain of absence behind! The long avenue of years which he had passed through in those sombre scientific palaces, and those orange-tree fringed and shady groves, had brought alone one star to shine from its ethereal dome over the dull firmament of his life. To him that brilliant star had set for ever. No other woman had embellished his life since he left the home of Miriam. No sister's voice was ever heard by Eugene. No gentle tone but that of the benign Guinevere ever shed its mellowing irradiating influence over his being.
The following year took Eugene in the Cunard Maritime Steamship Company's s.s. "Venetia" back to the land of his birth and the medical schools of Great Britain, Ireland, and the Continent of Europe, where, with the same unremitting application he attained to the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine, and Master of Surgery of the University of London, and Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He had won the principal scholarships of the University of Philadelphia. These entitled him to emoluments of great financial assistance, and largely supplemented the bank drafts received from his father. Before leaving England he obtained the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and became the gold medallist of the University of London. After which he studied for short periods at the leading hospitals of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. He was also made a surgeon in the Imperial army, and served for a short campaign in the Afghan War.
These events marked an important epoch in the historiette of Eugene Whitworth. No student had scorned delights or lived laborious days more so than he had done. None was more upright or purer in thought and in deed. None more exemplary in character,—never a whisper was heard to disparage his name. With a strong constitution, a host of scientific and medical degrees, and a good face, he seemed to be a type of a coming successful surgeon, and ready and willing he was to undertake the boldest work in the annals of surgery.
The millstone of university life was now thrown off his neck. He was a man fitted and well armed for the great battle of life that through all the rolling ages waged outside. Prepared he was to take his place amongst the noblest, the bravest, and the best. His condescension knew no bounds. If he saw any meritorious principle in the poorest and worst of his fellows, his practice was to cultivate, cherish and make a close companion of its promulgator. To be respected by man was not his aim; but to put rich and poor, the prince and the pauper, the curled and befrilled darling lolling in the lap of luxury, and the homeless waif and stray upon the one universal plane, was ever one of the guiding principles of his life.
How different, Eugene Whitworth, your future condition of life would have been if you had not neglected and despised the rich, and assimilated so much with the poor! His prolonged university career, where he had breathed the atmosphere of the noblest, the best, and the greatest, had not eliminated this cardinal law of his mind. He would have preferred to sit and listen to the songs and dreams of old Adam Quain again to escorting a bejewelled princess to the opera.
His friend and fellow-student, Marmaduke, was of an obverse character, Marmaduke never forgot Marmaduke, and would no more associate in his successful days with an inferior than he would make up his mind to lie down in the gutter. On the other hand, he would desert his friends and hurry himself off to new ones, if he fancied the new ones were better than the old—the longing of the moth for the star. For years, these two characters had existed in shoulder to shoulder attrition; but their angular incongruity was never effaced. "Like repels like, and like attracts unlike," is an axiom as applicable to moral philosophy as it is to electricity. Eugene was a counterpart of Marmaduke, and Marmaduke was an antithesis of Eugene.
There was but one respect in which these two opposite characters merged into one another; in which for a short period in the one case, and a long period in the other, they ran a parallel course, side by side, soon again to diverge; the one at that point of divergence to exhaust itself in that one particular similarity, the other to pursue its way alone till Fate herself had cut its thread. This it is that will haul down your flying pennons, Eugene Whitworth; this it is Marmaduke Payne, that will hurl you into an early, a watery, and an ignominious grave.
Chapter VI.
Madame Pompadour and the Ambrosial High-Priest.
From the East India Docks, London, as medical officer of the sailing-ship "Harbinger," Eugene sailed for the scene of the Afghan War. Through the translucent blue of the Mediterranean, the scorching Red Sea and the fair Trade winds, he reached Bombay. Soon after the outbreak ended, and he finally sailed for the purlieus of his youth and his home by the Atlantic Steamship Company's s.s. "Savannah." On the quay he was welcomed by his old parents and Christy-minstrel Dolly, who by leaps and bounds had risen to the position of third engineer in the service of the Mississippi Steam Navigation Company.
The six months in Chicago, stipulated by the young gentleman of the family, although he had gone there five years before, had not yet expired, but the extraction process was still in full swing. Letters arrived every mail from Brosie, explaining that he was fast becoming one of the greatest lights of the dental kosmos in America and other parts of the world, and urging his father to forward on to him every dollar he could put his hands upon at once, as he was preparing to return and wanted to get together a full stock of instruments pertaining to mechanical and surgical dentistry.
In every letter he would conclude with the declaration of coming American independence: in that the ball was at his foot in Louisiana, and all he had to do was to kick it off, when out of it would roll a fortune for every one of his relations and friends. Two years he was preparing to return, working not a spinning treadle but a double-handled pump up till the day of his departure: one letter coming to his father asking for more and more, and another to his brother, the doctor, imploring him to send dollars by the hundred, without saying anything about it to "the old man."
One "General Wash," of Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America, wrote several seemingly inspired letters, filling sheet after sheet of foolscap and extolling Brosie to the skies; but whether General Wash was in command of a Salvation army, or whether he was in charge of the American State militia, as distinct and alien to the Salvation army, nobody in Lily Cottage could divine. Judging from Brosie's former characteristics, it was surmised that General Wash was some beggarly old tap-room loafer who had been ironically or facetiously nick-named "The General."
All this time the young gentleman was riding the high horse in Chicago. He had obtained his certificate as Doctor of Dental Surgery years before he returned, and was simply painting the city of Chicago red. Dinners, where champagne and rich viands covered the table a quarter of a mile long, all the students of Chicago College, Apricot Street, were supplied with by poor old Christopher Whitworth's money. Race-meetings, where the cheques for instruments were melted in backing some outsider that always remained an outsider; faro-banks, lotteries and policy-shops; methodical losses at nap, spoil five, and sing-tai-loo; bouquets, the size of frying-pans, as presents to barmaids, and wholesale convivial shoutings for the crowd inside and outside the bars of the cafés were, when all was said and done, potential grounds for Brosie's necessitous appeals. Indeed, it was looked upon as a perfect feat and a miracle that he could feed so many with the money which he received from Lily Cottage.
Shortly after his brother, the Doctor of Medicine, had arrived in America, he received an appointment to carry on the practice of a deceased medical man at Augusta, on behalf of the widow, a comely lady, who had been left by her departing husband in debt and with the legacy of thirteen children to support. In this appointment he remained eighteen months, playing a sort of game of chivey or chess against the efforts of the forlorn lady to keep him friendly with her step-daughter, and dodging the charms of the fair Caroline herself.
Caroline was a gay and petite blonde, with large, mellow blue eyes as big as saucers, and a fine contralto voice. A piebald pony spanked along every morning with Carrie a couple of miles to the residence of a pro-prietorproprietor of a bone-mill. The proprietor of "The Sun Bone Mill" was known by the name of Hind, and his wife, who was generally known as Madame Pompadour, that being her nom de plume as a costumière before she married Hind, had all the airs and graces of a lady-in-waiting at the court in the time of Queen Anne, if not more. Madame was highly proficient in all the fashionable fiddle-faddle of the town. The bone-miller was doing a roaring trade at the time, and had been polished up by the courtly and prim Madame Pompadour, alias Mrs. Hind the fifth, before he made his début amongst the fin de siécle society of her friends.
He was a very crude, diminutive, smart, wiry looking old man about sixty-seven, with full-blown cheeks, a stubbly red beard and a moustache like a worn-out scrubbing brush; but after four years' tuition at the hands of his fifth and prudish wife, he could handle a knife and fork with any man of his age in the town, and was even so fastidious as to manipulate them around a bunch of grapes. Sometimes, however, if he felt sure nobody was looking, he would suck his fingers, drink the wine out of the decanter, and wipe his mouth with the table-cloth.
There was a splendid school within a stone's throw of the bone-miller's mansion, but it looked far more aristocratic to have a special governess coming to the place; so Carrie, whose mother was an old friend of Madame Pompadour, received the patronage of the appointment and one hundred dollars a year.
A lout of a groom, with a soft slouch hat on the back of his head and a pipe stuck eternally in his mouth, would bustle up the piebald pony to within a hundred yards of the mansion, when Carrie would alight behind a big tree to shut out the profile of the lout and the pipe from the view of the high-born Madame. Then the piebald pony would spank back again and take the doctor on his rounds among the lodge patients; spank up to the bone-miller's to bring Carrie home to dinner; wait till Carrie had her dinner; spank back to the bone-miller's again, return to take the doctor to see some more lodge patients; spank home with him, and spank up and down again for Carrie.
Madame had a dress, if she liked to put it on, for every day in the year; but her chief and very effective affectation was a costume of Royal blue foulard, carrying out the idea of falling water, with rippling lines of white on a blue ground; while on the left side of the front nestled some beautiful pink roses, from which fell a rain of violets: Parisian black bonnet and a natty black sunshade with a very long handle and a black ribbon tied around it in the middle. The sunshade seemed to be always in mourning for the bone-miller's former wives—none of her own people were dead. She would pick up with any conceited bit of a boy, and so entrance him that he would follow her home all the way the piebald pony had to spank so many times a day. The boys appeared to afford good practice to Madame for flirtation. She would look down into their faces with a gloriously curving smile, and a face like the diagrams of the rising sun in Ayer's Almanac, bend low her head, and with overweening grace rear it into a vertical position again as if she were describing the arc of a circle with her head in the air, and had a gate-spring in her corset to enable her to do it properly. Some thought that the beads off the black bonnet were constantly dropping down her back, and she was manœuvering to let them drop out altogether.
In every point of etiquette of the drawing-room, the quiet evening, the musical evening, at dinner, in church, the street, the afternoon, a garden party, the ball-room, and indeed in all matters pertaining to calisthenic deportment and vanity in general, she had few rivals. Even the pronunciation of her words was studied with the view of adding primness and prettiness to her lips. She was ungrammatically voluble in speech, profuse in gesture, and altogether highly voyânte and theatrical.
Strange! everybody who knew her said there was no affectation whatever about Madame, albeit there was not a drop of Gallic blood in her composition, and that all her actions were perfectly in consonance with her inborn nature. Another theory, that she was a trifle deficient, was hinted at, and a story that she had, in a fit of puerperal mania, painted a new-born bone-miller all over with tar and stuck feathers in it, lent some weight to this proposition. Still, she carried the sunshade before the alleged playful peculiarity. The little bone-miller died. Poor little bone-miller!
"Rudolph, my dear," said Madame one morning to the old bone-miller, "the Bishop of South America is coming to Augusta next week, and I am going to send cards to a few (two hundred) of my friends, requesting the pleasure of their company in meeting him, my dear. What day, my dear, will you be going to New Orleans?"
"Thursday, my dear," replied Rudolph, and he brushed the rouge off her face with the worn-out scrubbing brush kissing her, and going out shouted—"Never mind me, my dear, fire away with the Bishop—so long, my dear."
Madame issued two hundred pretty blue cartes d'invitation, gilded on the edges, with an ear turned down at the right hand corner, daisies imprinted on them, and returnable for Thursday. With her own hands, she helped in the kitchen with the sociable afternoon cakes, petit fours, and other knick-knacks, and tapped the admiral of every barrel of wine the old bone-miller had in the cellar.
For Thursday she wore an apple-green satin gown and a brocaded train, of pale citron colour, lined with bright orange satin, and covered with yellow and white daisies: the bodice tres decolletée, and trimmed with a kind of Lorne sleeve lace. Before getting out of bed on Thursday she practised sundry evolutions, after the manner of a juggler, with a large swansdown fan. Calling up all her powers of fascination, she received each guest in the handsome and spacious drawing-room.
From the city came first a fawning and impudent barrister, bringing with him his dowdy down-in-the-mouth wife, with an air of aristocratic morgue about her, to whom, from her regular fecundity, attached the complimentary title of "the Cow." A swarm of small fry then swam in, followed by a thick flight of the insect tribe, each little atomy receiving an elaborate Indian salaam, the swansdown fan adding considerably to the effect, always maintaining its proper position, according to the book of rules on etiquette for the afternoon and evening, and working like an automaton in perpetual unison with Madame's peachy face.
Caroline carolled, that she could never forget one night in June upon the Sabine River, to her own accompaniment, and accompanied the barrister who, unasked, sang—"The Happy Princess," avowing before Madame, in one part of the song, that the happy Princess followed him, while "the Cow" languished in the corner like a figure from the waxworks.
Eugene arrived in his ordinary clothes, which, if he had taken off his Coat, would have disclosed blood on his shirt sleeves. This, however, did not detract from the profundity of the salaaming salutation, and Madame looked as if she had got a crick in the back after it was performed. Indeed, Madame seemed to show a penchant for Whitworth, and unfurled a lengthy rigmarole of rubbish into one of his ears and out of the other.
His brother, Dolly, who had discarded the Christy minstrel costume for a few days holiday, had received an invitation, and came in the rig of a midshipman, with a brass-bound coat, blue serge bell-bottomed pants, and a badge with the name of Shaw, Savill and Co. on it in brass letters. Perhaps, he thought there might be a hornpipe wanted at the fancy-dress ball in honour of the Bishop, if not a shanty. When questioned if he sang, he replied with another question—if anybody had a concertina or two bones in his waistcoat pocket. Nobody had a concertina or two bones anywhere, so he rendered the solo of "The Hairy Man from Egypt," without music. He then consulted his silver watch, the size of a plate, and coolly walked out of the room to borrow a mouth-organ from the servant in the kitchen.
The last song, touching upon scriptural history, brought the Bishop, Whose delay up till then had kept Madame's pulses falling fast; but every symptom of apoplexy set in when the butler put his powdered head into the room and announced the Venerable the Moderator of the Synod of Melanesia, and almost in the same breath "His Lordship, the Bishop of South America."
Two Titanic salaams, two great oscillations of the fan, and the chiefs of of the Church militant were informed that they were as welcome as the flowers of May.
The Venerable the Moderator of the Synod appeared to have brought a guitar with him. He fell, in his habitual patriarchal way, upon the neck of Madame and upon the necks of all the ladies, young and old, and kissed them all in turn; while the brusque Dolly returned wondering if the Moderator was old Hind, the bone-miller. Then, pulling up the baggy knees of his trousers, the venerable man flopped down upon an ottoman and took the green baize cover off the guitar. When the cover was taken off it was not a guitar. It was a gridiron. He felt anxious to show it to Madame, as it was something new, and he had recently brought it from New York. It looked like two frying-pans tied together, open face to open face, and had special grooves for catching the gravy. Not a drop could escape. He carried it about the town, smacking his chops, with the object of explaining to the ladies what an invention it was and what wonders came from New York.
The Venerable man was a perfect bon mouche and gourmet, and he would never accept an invitation unless he had been to the house before and felt sure of a good feed. If a duck was left on the table, on the party leaving the house, he would slip into the room again and slip the duck into his pocket or his hat. On his return from New York, during his sojourn in Augusta, wherever he visited, the gridiron accompanied him, and his fatherly old chops would slober over the young ladies at every opportunity, until some reporter satirised him in the newspapers, in an article headed—"The Patriarch of the Tropic of Capricorn and the Gridiron." The patriarch threatened to crack the skull of the reporter for ridiculing him; the old-gooseberry proprietor of the paper apologised and the patriarch kissed the girls never any more.
His Lordship the Bishop was a man about 6ft. 4in. high. His face was like that of Apollo. He was one of the few great beacon lights of the church and was esteemed throughout the length and breadth of the States. A great historian and a paragon orator, he discoursed before thousands hermeneutics, apologetics, Celtic heathendom, the writings of the Talmud, and Zoroastrianism.
He had no ear for music. His stalwart and statuesque form stood leaning against the mantel-piece most of the afternoon talking to Whitworth, the Bar coming up occasionally to examine and cross-examine the bishop after putting everybody else in the room with his eye-glass through the ordeal of the witness box. The bishop had known Eugene before at the London University, and, when at the outset Madame had proffered a mutual introduction, she was check-mated by the bishop saying he had known him before; whereupon the face of the hostess assumed an expression of disconcerted morgue as she sniffed at the bouquet of Catherine Mermet and yellow roses brought by Caroline.
Shortly after, she approached Eugene and drawing him away from the bishop, "Dr. Whitworth," she said, "Carrie is going to sing and might I in all due difference and in all due observance to the proprieties and in all due difference to high and proper decorum together with the fall knowledge that your entente cordials with Carrie is so great in her own proper home which needless for me to remark is your own proper home as well as Carrie's proper home and in all due respect to her dear Ma my very esteemed and amiable friend who is doing me the honour of her company this evening and with all the modesty I hope and trust and always will possess suggest that you should be so gracious as to conduct her to the piano and to stand beside Carrie on the right hand side which is needless for me to remark according to the book of etiquette for the drawing-room is the true position for the gentleman while we listen to Carrie's charming and mellifluous voice."
"With the greatest of pleasure, Madame," said Eugene. "in fact, I was just going to do what you say; "but he looked as if he wasn't thinking of Carrie.
He stalked over to the piano, where the young lady was already sitting. He asked her to wink her eye when she wanted him to turn over a page of the music which she intended to play instead of singing a song. It was a piece like Brahm's variations of a theme by Haydn—"The Ride of the Walkyries." Afterwards, she sang to "the Cow's" accompaniment, that if to remember her would give him pain, he could remember her no more, for which everybody but the bishop said 'thank-you.' It sounded like a spoken, subdued, little chorus. After a play the Roman actors used to say "nunc plaudite." Madame led off and directed the chorus with the fan, while Eugene, whose manners and ignorance of the etiquette for the drawing-room were positively execrable, left Carrie standing at the piano with "the Cow," and went out with his lordship to have a smoke in the stable.
After a game of "beggar my neighbour," charades and "hunt the slipper," the Bar, having examined and cross-examined every witness in the room, proceeded to address the jury with a long recitation declaring he was not mad, and when dinner was announced it seemed as if Madame had obtained a loan of St. John's bells for the occasion.
Madame field-marshalled the guests. Bar presumptiously appropriated most of the young ladies, examining and cross-examining them closely with the eye-glass on the march. His lordship showed Madame where her own dining-room lay, after she had made the little arrangement that Eugene should pilot in Caroline. This arrangement, however, was a bad one. Carrie did not forget that Eugene had left her unceremoniously at the piano, and he was afraid to open his mouth in case Carrie would snap his nose off, so that, thinking there was sufficient noise, Eugene and his protégé marched in silence behind the Synod and "the Cow."
Who should be perched at the head of the table in the dining-room, holding the carving knife and fork with the handles downwards and the points up in the air, but the old bone-miller himself! He had missed the train to the city, and would not miss "the evening" for the world. He was very glad to see the bishop, and told his lordship to make himself at home and not to break any bones over the thing. The young gentlemen, especially the Bar, attended in a most chivalrous manner and cavalierly style to the requirements of the young ladies. Poor Carrie was left to look after herself, Eugene going once the length of begging her pardon for his inadvertence in not passing her the salad in the silver-plated caviar dish surrounded by little wells for holding cracked ice. So great was the floral decoration of the table that the guests could not see their opposite neighbours.
"Do have one of my rosaniline jellies, Dr. Whitworth: I must confess I made it myself," said Madame, her voice escaping from among the nosegays, and putting one on a plate which the waiter placed under his nose. It looked like a sea-anemone. He frowned at it, and thinking it was alive, tickled it up with the fork, while Dolly, at the far end of the table, in martyrdom, sat looking very much like a jelly-fish out of water, or casting side-long glances at his brother. The jelly looked almost perfect in colouring, but he felt suspicious of the noté hurlante of its aniline vices.
Soon, with proper and preconcerted action, as the old bone-miller sat simpering and grinning at the powerful phrases of the majestic bishop, Madame rose upborne like a queen-bee, and all the bees swarmed after her back to the drawingroom hive.
"I am afraid, Dr. Whitworth," said Madame, sitting down beside him on the flower-figured sofa, "you do not enjoy my evening. I had some hopes you would enjoy my evening and not to make a story too long which is I maintain one of the principal rules in conversation brevity is the soul of wit as the poet says and according to the recentest works on etiquette for the table and thinking that as how we should all have the felicity of listening to that love-inspiring contracting and mellifluous voice which howsomever you often have the pleasure of living in the same house as the exquisite contralto owner and as most of the ladies at my drawing-room this afternoon remark that loved recollections and blighted hopes and hearts and darts find congenial soil in a quiet evening it occurred to me as I was about to say that something akin to fond memories might find also a blissful home in a musical evening which however is scarcely to the point as I may say as the saying goes inasmuch as not knowing how often yon might have the treat of hearing those mellifluous tones to remind you of the voice of the martingale in your own home which by the way is Carrie's home as well it occurred to me as I was just about to remark when the dinner-gongs rang that it might have been expected that it would have contributed in some measure to your enjoyment of my evening to hear those tones floating in the air and wafted upon the sighing breeze among some of my dear respected friends who all think in due difference that you would be a very fortunate man if as I was going to say——"
The Flying Dutchman, always shrinking and purblind in surroundings of vanity, had gone home, but old Hind the bone-miller and the venerable the Moderator, after finishing all the brands on the table, floundered into the drawingroom as red as two turkey-cocks, and both as merry and as jolly as the old wine-god himself. After the Bar had impeached the prisoners, appeared for the defence, and crown-prosecuted them and addressed the jury on their behalf, his lordship summed up the evidence, the jury returned their verdict of Guilty without leaving the box, and the roystering bacchanalians were sentenced by the head of the Church to execration, exorcism and excommunication for life.
The venerable the Moderator subsided on the sofa into a sonorous oboe-tuned sleep, while the old bone-miller roamed at large like a Russian bear intoxicated and let loose in the room, and every one of the jury poked borax at him, while Eugene began to enjoy the evening at last.
The musical evening having thus reached the proper climax, the church, the operating theatre, and the court rose for the night, sine noete; the bees dispersed to their proper homes, and followed not the queen into her own hive. The piebald pony spanked along in a howling slanting thunder-storm, with Carrie, the doctor, the Bar, the Cow, two débutantes, young ladies of sweet seventeen, the lout, slouch hat and pipe, while one of the bees returned to the hive just as the queen was putting on her nightdress. He jangled the bell so hard that the Russian bear opened the door, and found it was the venerable the Moderator of the Synod, who held his foot between the door and the doorpost and insisted on seeing Madame.
The humming voice from the bedroom directed the bear to show the Church into the dining-room, where Madame, after re-robing, followed him, and the bear went out for more "auld Scottie" whisky; returning with which, he found the Church pouring forth some rigmarole from the psalms of David in knee-worship before Madame.
"Have a 'doch an' dhuris,'" said the bear.
"Right you are, old man," said the Church, as it staggered up again on its foundation, and fell with a flopping plish-plash succussion of the contents of its commodious abdomen upon the dining-room floor.
Next morning as the servant entered to sweep the room she found the Moderator lying there as if he were dead; while the old bone-miller, still drunk, lay beside him inaudibly whispering in his ear.
Chapter VII.
The Ball in the State of Georgia.
"and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily, and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell."
Byron.
Like a slave for eighteen months that gallant little piebald pony spanked his ten miles every day till windgalls, splints and spavins made him hors de combat by crippling his legs. One of them swelled to the size of a watermelon. Carrie would not take the risk of Madame's displeasure by walking to her duties, and the forty lodge cases which Whitworth was expected to visit every day were in sore need of his frequent attendance daily.
In a neighbouring Indian village was bred and reared the handsomest dark chestnut mare that ever stepped in Augusta. Whitworth bought her. Her arched neck, her fiery eye, her soft satin skin and her playful carriage and action, reflected the love and care which he bestowed upon her; and as he rode her out in the afternoons she was the pride of his life and the picture of every street. She was everywhere known as "Rose." She was as sportive as a kitten, docile as a dog, and her step as light as the foot of the roe.
The system of medical attendance upon lodge patients involved a vast amount of thankless labour, with a disproportionate monetary return; and when the town and district hospital had lost its medical officer, who had resigned and gone to England, out of a goodly number of applicants Whitworth was duly elected resident surgeon to the hospital and its affiliated asylums, as well as government medical officer for the State of Georgia. The position was a decided improvement upon his former appointment, and the office was one of the most coveted in the southern States of America.
The hospital building itself comprised four blue-stone blocks — two main buildings and two wings — and its fifteen wards could accommodate three hundred patients. It was stuccoed down on every face, and from its battlements a view of the whole town could be obtained—standing as it did upon the beetling brow of a lofty hill, and looming out imposing and picturesque in the moonlight. A handsome and spacious new blue-stone residence had been erected for the resident surgeon at a total cost of eight thousand five hundred dollars, so that in this magnificent abode Whitworth was to live. The departed surgeon had a very large family, and occupied the whole of the building, bat it was a puzzle to Whitworth to know what to do with the residential mansion.
The duties of the new appointment consisted in his attendance chiefly in the mornings; for an hour or so in the afternoons he was free. These leisure hours he regularly spent riding upon the back of Rose, as he had called her, after a little child a daughter of Mrs. Downward, of which little girl he had been very fond, and often carried upon his mustang's back—the Rose of Downward upon the Rose of Whitworth.
Cantering past Madame's mansion one autumn afternoon, he met Madame Pompadour walking along the road.
"Are you going to the ball, Dr. Whitworth?" she began; "not as I am aware that it is any breach of etiquette to make any fulsome enquiries but thinking that now you are so lonely all alone in that commodious house and don't have much company beyond that darling little horse"—"She's a mare," said Eugene, as Madame raised the parasol to stroke her neck, and Rosie pirouetted over to the other footpath—"I often see you pass by going home alone before the shades of eventide have begun to close upon us it occurred to me to think that you would perhaps be one of the ball committee and needless to say how disappointed I was when I looked for your name on the cards and could not find it there which nevertheless need not prevent you from going as I have been in hopes of all the same."
"I didn't know there was to be a ball," returned Eugene; "but I must take a few lessons in dancing before going to balls."
"Come to my place in the afternoons" she quickly rejoined, "and I'll teach you in a week all about dancing if you promise me you will go to the ball when I have done with you."
"It's a bargain," said Eugene, as the mare grew restless and fretful to canter away. "I'll be there to-morrow."
Good as his word, every afternoon repaired the improving Eugene to the calisthenic halls of Madame, where down in the cellar the indispensable accomplishment was to be imparted. Carrie had of course to be brought down into the cellar, together with a large bundle of rags made into the form of an effigy with a wooden head, which the juvenile bone-millers had been using as an Aunt Sally for cockshies at her head with a billet of wood.
Madame and Carrie stood, side by side, at the top end of the cellar, all sniggers and smiles, while the doctor stood on the stone floor, and Aunt Sally sat up on a beer barrel, vis-à-vis, at the bottom. He had to curtsey to Aunt Sally, swing Aunt Sally, when Madame elaborately curtseyed to, or airily swung Caroline, put her down on the barrel when Madame and Caroline stood to attention, chassez-croissez with Aunt Sally and promenade with Aunt Sally, till his arms ached and she fell on her head upon his toes.
He wanted to bring his mare down the cellar, or adjourn to the hay-loft, but Madame was inexorable and would insist on his sticking to his aunt and the barrel, or else forego the instructions.
He felt very much relieved when the week, as stipulated, had expired, and began to suspect that the ladies were making fun of him. Madame presented him with a book on dancing and a book whose title was "The etiquette of the ball-room," both of which he read through in five minutes and put into his waistcoat pocket, Carrie declaring that they were of no use at all, as it took five years to learn even a schottische. Eugene said he would be able to dance on his head by that time, mounted his horse and galloped away.
The hospital wardsman, a portly and portentous man, and his bony little feather-weight wife then took the young elephantine dancer in hand, and put the finishing touches upon him in the hospital kitchen, the washer-up or assistant cook being assigned to the resident surgeon as a partner. He might as well have had the butcher's block they danced around in the kitchen for a partner, for if Eugene knew nothing about dancing, Susan Jane knew less, and only served as an encumbrance and a nuisance to Terpsichore. She endeavoured to throw a cloak over her own awkwardness by tittering and giggling at Eugene.
The ball at the orderly room was to be a fancy-dress ball, but some of the party attended in their evening dress with desert wastes of shirt fronts and swallow-tail doe-skin coats. Not so Lilliecrap, the hospital wardsman. He borrowed Whitworth's university cap and gown, and strung four hoods around his neck, displaying the white, blue, pink and crimson lining to great advantage by turning the hoods inside out. His hoary hair he dyed black, with a mixture of nitrate of silver and sulphur, and greasing it all over with castor oil be plastered the forelock well down flat on his forehead.
It was really a blessing—that ball that was to be—to some of the bedridden patients; for they showed a great desire and aptitude to take up their beds and walk to the ball, to see Lilliecrap and Lilliecrap alone, though some of them, from apoplectic strokes, broken backs and paralysed legs, were unable to move for years. One blind old woman, who had been the heroine of a coal-mining rack-a-rock explosion, actually did go to have a look on among the stately matrons, and sneered at the wardsman about the smell of the castor oil.
The large hall of the garrison buildings of the third battalion of the American States militia never saw a greater profusion of floral wealth than that of the countless garlands that decorated its walls on the night of Friday, the twenty-ninth of December, 1844.
For two days previous the carpenters had been at work building a stage for the musicians, partitioning off a spacious supper room, and fixing laths along the walls and ceilings for hanging festoons, flags, and Chinese lanterns. Apple and other fruit blossom was gummed all over the walls and ceiling, together with what seemed to be all the flowers of the country, prominent among which were mauve orchids, caladium leaves and frenium; while gigantic cocos palms, almost touching the ceiling, and artistically-arranged sprays of crimson roses turned the garrison hall into a positive floral fairy-land. A huge basket, decorated with rainbow inflorescence and gauze silks and chiffon, from a deep rich old gold to a pale cool cream, was made to hide the orchestra on the platform, as if the appearance of the performers did not agree with the sweetness of the strains they produced.
The Nonpareil band of Mobile, a sea-side town near the metropolis, was liberally paid to play the dance music to the Terpsichorean movements of the youth and beauty of the States of Louisiana and Georgia. Standing around the door for hours was a vast concourse of spectators, elbowing each other and stretching their necks for a good position to view the pageantry of the celebrities as they entered the floral fairy-land.
Before nine o'clock, carriages upon carriages poured their flowing cargoes into that great mouth of the garrison hall, and drew aside to make room for more; drivers with cockades and drivers without cockades, and prancing horses, cannoning against each other amidst a Babel of shouting voices in the street, under the control of an increased posse of police. Madame came, covering herself with glory, in a superb landau, with Caroline inside, and the old bone-miller bear on the box, escorted, as no other carriage was, by two outriders.
"I wonder if he will keep his promise Carrie," she said; "I do believe notwithstanding all my week's pains and not taking into account the two volumes I gave him that it might so eventuate that in spite of loved memories and cherished hopes we may yet find ourselves disappointed as it may happen that some accident may unfortunately occur that will prevent him appearing to-night and even if no accident occurred my dream not that I attach much consequence to such stuff as dreams howsomever true they may turn out to be but what I was going to say was that my dream may be true and that he won't come at all for in his heart of hearts—Oh! Carrie dear,—I believe he is in every respect and particular very bashful and rather inclusive when one comes to find him out."
"I suppose he has only himself to please," said Carrie, although she didn't mean exactly what she said, and the great mouth of the orderly room swallowed the ladies like two feminine Jonahs into its bewildering interior,—Madame, wearing a pale blue pompadour silk gown and a diamond tiara, with her hair a la mode, while Caroline appeared in a fraise-coloured satin, with broad shoulder straps of petunia velvet, relieved with white, and a lovely rope of pearls. Anon, among the three hundred flaneurs, they fantastically sailed to the strains of 'Tausend und einer nacht' and the Blue Danube waltzes, Madame's eyes rolling all over the divans in search of Eugene.
It soon reached eleven o'clock, and the tyro dancer was nowhere to be seen. One of the outriders bad been thrown from his horse in a collision and had been taken to the hospital. He was only Madame's cook, an old sailor not used to horses, prevailed upon to do extra duty as an outrider; he was the man with the powdered wig who had announced the Church at the party. His collar-bone was broken and his shoulder dislocated, the reduction and bandaging of which occupied a considerable time, as Eugene had to find the necessary splints and other apparatus himself, Lilliecrap having left for the ball just after sundown, saying he wanted to get a good start of the others in case the old blind woman might follow him to the garrison hall.
At eleven o'clock, in his ordinary evening dress, Eugene, smoking a cigar, strolled leisurely down to the dance-room, where he waited for some little time, peering through the little window of the dressing room at the airily floating forms within.
There was Carrie's mother, in an old costume, in the circling grand chain of the lancers, posing in the character of Cleopatra. The wardsman's wife had adopted the becoming costume of "Frost," in a white lace dress that had the appearance of having been dipped in a bucket of glue size and had little pellets of the hospital cotton-wool sticking all over it. She certainly looked very snowy and frigid. The Bar from New Orleans he could make out when once the Bar shifted his masque. He was dressed red-hot, like the devil in Faust. The portly wardsman he knew by his own university attire; fussing about here and there and excitedly busying himself with meddlesome attention to the ladies. Weighed down with the heavy gown and hoods, and looking like an enormous variegated and bright-hued tropical butterfly, he dropped melted castor oil and fatness wherever he flew around among the flowers. Eugene could see him clambering up to the window sills to open or close the little casements; very like a large baboon in a cage trying to tear down the iron bars of the windows.
What was it that suddenly made every nerve in the frame of Eugene to quiver; every chord of his heart to quicken; spread the ivory pallor of amazement over his eager face and fix his deep blue eyes on one spot in that hall; as he stood gazing and gazing, as if at a vision of the opening heavens?
Suddenly sending the janitor for Lilliecrap, the wardsman quickly hurried into the dressing-room, breathing as if he had just danced fifty miles, and sweating like a bull, while the track he left behind was thickly spotted and slippery.
"Here!" said Eugene, "here, look here; straight before us, near that third window, sitting in the rose-bower under the gas-jet," as he kept pointing through the dressing-room window.
"Yes?" said Lilliecrap.
"Find out who they are," said Eugene, and the wardsman re-entered the ball-room.
Through the window Eugene watched him approach Madame, who had been engaged in a long conversation with a military officer, and saw him look in the direction of the rose-bower, and Madame's head turn, to slily peep over the fan there too. A word and Lilliecrap was back.
"Mrs. Payne, from the city, in the white silk dress," he said, "chaperoning Miss Gould, in the peacock."
Spell-bound stood Eugene, while the lights of other days flashed before his mind again; his monotonous life at the universities; the phantasmagorial delirium at the affiliated college; the loss and marriage of his fair friend and companion; the verse he had written in the outcast tragedian; the fauns and dryads in the pomegranate and orange trees, and the angels at the library door: all appeared fitted together into a kinetoscope, and he was drawn towards them once again.
Straightway he walked through the wondering crowd of floating forms, and looking into the rosebower he said: "My old friend, once Guinevere Hood!"
"Oh! good gracious, Dr. Whitworth!" she replied, holding out her gloved hand. "This is Miss Gould, you remember the young lady at the library once," as Miss Marvel Gould resumed her seat after the lancers. "You know I told you then I would introduce you some day, and here she is. How you have changed! Marmaduke is coming up by the last train tonight. He will be glad to see you again. I have been staying with Mrs. Gould for a week. Marmaduke and I have often talked about you since you have been away; but perhaps you have forgotten us now."
Assuring her that he had far from forgotten her, he asked for her programme.
"Oh! there's plenty of room in mine, you can fill it up all over the vacancies if you like," said Guinevere.
Turning to Miss Marvel Gould, her keen, black eyes pierced him through and through, and with an exquisite pout upon her carmine lips, "Mine is full," she said, "it was full before I was here ten minutes," as an epauletted young naval officer asserted his claim to a waltz, and walked away with her on his arm. Vanitas vanitatum!
A year or so older she looked, but the gleaming black eyes were as lustrous as the tiara of sapphires and diamonds which she wore around her neck and the scintillating jewels on her bangled arms. With the same magnetic gestures as he had seen her show in the museum, her hair and the massive semicircular brows had the sheen of ebony, while a costly glittering diamond butterfly sparkled at the side of her fringe, and two large diamonds twinkled like stars set in the lobes of her ears. She was the picture of a girl treading the primrose path of life.
His eyes followed her through the mazy and serpentine movements of the dance, and as he sat talking of byegone days to Guinevere, he fancied she now and then glanced towards the rose-bower. The music ceased. Marvel soon came back to Guinevere, and with the love-light flashing in her eyes at Eugene, she recalled with an air of outraged dignity the day when he had neglected them in the library; but without replying he listened and stared like a man bewitched and enthralled – the charm of the bird by the glistening serpent.
When the spirit-stirring music of the Anglo-Hungarian band, which so few could resist, heralded in the lancers, the old college friends were, ominously for one of the two, arranged at the top. She had guided him through a struggle on a former occasion, and he prayed she would guide him through another that night. As, statuesque, she rose for the dance she seemed to waft the waves of the rose-bower perfume over Eugene, and queen-like she walked, dressed in an ivory Duchesse skirt, with box-pleated bodice, trimmed with lace and lilies of the valley; one corner of the train turned back, with a white lace fan and a trail of lilies and ribbon bows, while around her neck was a necklet of diamonds and pearls.
The voluminous books of Madame, the Aunt Sally, the beer barrel and the butcher's block in the hospital kitchen had left no traces on his memory, and all he could do was to trust to Providence and Guinevere, or act the elephantine donkey before them all. These proved unerring guides, and as in the middle of the grand chain he clasped the hand of Guinevere his memories filled with transcendent and supernal joy. They promenaded around the room together, arm in arm, before the criticising stares of the matrons and the wall-flower dames, all wondering how he had come to know Guinevere: when, as soon as he had conducted her to her former seat, Madame intruded upon them.
"Oh! do come quick Carrie is dying," she said. Following her quickly into the ladies dressing room, the air of which was crowded to suffocation, on the floor lay Carrie, while the ladies drenched her with jug-fuls of water. With a little hypodermic syringe he injected sulphuric ether into her veins. She quickly rallied from the fainting, and was taken away by her mother in Madame's landau.
"She seemed despondent and fretful all the evening several asked her to dance but she made excuses and notwithstanding not to put too fine a point on it as Sir Thomas Shakespeare says who can tell as it seemed to me myself that if some one she had known better it not being polite to mention names had only asked her to dance she might who can say otherwise not have been so downcast as to faint and so fretful. I do hope you will come up and see her to-morrow poor girl as she may be very ill for months and perhaps another lesson or so will be no harm," said Madame, in another little "olla podrida" volume; but he replied that he did not intend to stay much longer, and was going to meet a friend of his coming by the last train.
Returning to the rose-bower, he prevailed upon Miss Marvel for an impromptu waltz. It was the Myosotis. Conducting her back to Guinevere, additional charms infringed upon his affections; as in her resplendent peacock-blue duchesse dress with a garniture of jewelled lemon-coloured embroidery and jewelled tulle in the pouches of the bodice, and an apricot berthe of magnificent point de gaze she played ostentatiously her gorgeous colours, and full upon Eugene the flashing love-light of her large black eyes impinged.
The dancing abilities of the Paradisal bird and her perfervid enjoyment of the ball seemed never to reach their full climax. Among the créme de la créme at the grand ball she was the dazzling gem of them all. She was well known it seemed by all, as the gayest among the gay; the attraction demolishing and throwing into the shade all other attractions; the pet of her own family, and the idol of others; the sparkling girl at whose feet half the gentlemen in that military hall would kneel, and whose glance would allure even a philosopher. By these characteristics was Marvel well known. The beauty of her dark face showed a soupçon of the Gipsy; but, as her swelling bosom heaved in the waltz, the venom and gall within it were known to none, and Eugene little knew what changes that Myosotis-Myosotis to him would bring. Strange that she should still wear the same colour as she wore six years before; surely she did not always wear those colours, becoming as they seemed to be. Inexpressibly charming and beyond compare he thought her. Had he any charm to return? After waltzing with Guinevere to the strains of "Il n'y a que toi," he returned with her to the bower to gaze upon Marvel. A few more dances, in which be did not take any part, and as the grand flaneurs were threading their way to the supper room, he walked towards Guinevere and escorted her into the room, where she took a few strawberries, and Eugene tasted the hock cup. Marvel came in on the arm of a soldier and Guinevere returned with her to the bower. Telling them where he was going, he strolled to the station to await the incoming train.
Meeting the returning landau, he heard that Carrie had quite recovered, and was only prevented by her mother from returning to the garrison hall. He walked over to the hospital, as the train had been signalled half-an-hour late on the line, and returned to meet Marmaduke Payne. When the train drew up at the station, out stepped with a few others his old friend and fellow student, holding the hand of a little boy. He did not appear to know Whitworth and passed him by; when, going through the turnpike gate, Eugene touched him on the shoulder and called out "Marmaduke Payne."
He knew Eugene at once. They walked together to the Seven Stars Hotel, Marmaduke explaining that he had come to Augusta to practise as a barrister, not having been able to succeed in the overcrowded city, and that his wife always improved in the open country air.
"Deuced fine old fellow, old Gould," said Marmaduke: "do you know him?" but Eugene replied that he did not know many outside of Augusta.
They both walked back to the hall, where they met the ladies coming out, when the inattention of six years ago Eugene repaid by opening a way for Miss Gould to the carriage. He opened the door for her, and, as she held out her open hand through the window—"I hope you'll forgive my rudeness at the library now," he said, and she and the Paynes were whirled away in the carriage as the clock struck four in the morning, while the rhythmical measures of untiring dancers continued until the triumphant sun peered in through the windows and proclaimed the concomitant day.
Chapter VIII.
The Gardens of Georgia. The Chronic Broncho-Asthmatical Auntie.
Smoking his solitary way home to the hospital, Eugene improvised for himself a bed in one of the rooms of the main building, used in cases of emergency when the resident surgeon was likely to be required during the night. He lay down to dream of empyreal angels floating through sapphire-blue and diamond-bespecked skies in the glorious domes of the universe, and singing to him "Sleep no more, sleep no more," as they beckoned him away to some unknown scene.
Arising early, he wandered through the garden to a large aviary of canaries, and like little fluffy yellow balls, cold from exposure in the chilly night, they fluttered down and fed from his hand. Tiny automatons of gold they seemed to him to be; the blue sky above him the brightest sapphire, the trees, the lawn and the green knolls to be emerald. For him the birds trilled their sweetest melodies; the cattle lowed in the meadows, the brooklet prattled merrily; fauns and wood-nymphs peeped from amongst the boughs of the myrtle, the laurel and the arbutus; the leaves and the breezes whispered together through the tall pines. The stilled waters of his unfathomed affection were troubled and he felt the transition stealing over his soul.
Going in a perfunctory sort of way around the wards, the rest of the cloudless morning was frittered away with the lumbering, loitering Lilliecrap, who related every little episode of the ball to every one of the patients, and went about humming the refrain of "Tausend und einer nacht." Forgetting about dinner, he wandered abstractedly in the afternoon to the horticultural reserve of the State. There, at the border of the translucent lake, its island stocked with arboreal and ornithological rarities, mosses and ferns, he lounged on one of the seats and threw berries into the water for the paradise ducks and white swans. Musing still over the benign Guinevere, he blamed his long stay at the university and the verse which he had written in the book for her loss. Groups of lilacs with their feathery purple blossoms made a deep cool shade, and lilac stars floated on the water. Suddenly turning his head where a few old-fashioned flowers were sparsely blooming surrounded by spacious beds of the rich soft grass over which played the moving shadows of elm-trees in interlacing tangles, coming through the rear entrance gate of the gardens, and passing him a short distance away, her opened, sky-blue parasol thrown over her shoulders and shading her face from view, she passed out of the gate he had shortly before entered. The swans glided towards him in dozens, and the nimble little paradise ducks navigated their passages hither and thither among the broad leaves of the water-lilies and the trailing lotus, when, back again by the same gate, appeared the face and the blue robed form of Marvel. Arch, daintily trimmed, prim, pretty and piquant she looked, tripping along the emerald lawn, and, as he heard her dress rustling nearer and nearer, he stood captivated by her graceful movements and the negligé carriage of her azure parasol. Silver bells of memory!
All her auxiliaries to fascination in full play, "I've been thinking about you," she said. "Not many books about here, are there? How many cart-loads of books have you read? I've only read four myself: one with a yellow back, one with a green back, and two with a peacock-blue."
He had never read any with such pretty colours as those, and walked with her along the shaven sward to the opposite entrance.
"I suppose you and Mrs. Payne were very friendly at the university when she was there," continued Marvel.
"Oh I yes," returned Eugene. "Guinevere is an old friend of mine, and I often called her my sister at the university. Her husband and I are old friends too. We occupied the same room at University College for twelve months, and his then fiancée was inordinately kind to me when I was ill there. I am very glad they are coming to live at Augusta. I shall have somewhere to spend the evenings, for there is nothing at the hospital but old Hemlock in an otherwise empty home."
On and listlessly on they walked together, stopping here and there admiring the flowers and passing through the rear entrance gate which the uncouth Eugene had let her open for herself. She banged it after her, and told him he could have opened it just as well for her as himself. Another stumbling apology from Eugene, and they walked on to a small orchard which Marvel called "Sunnyside."
"My aunt lives here; come in and see her, will you?" said Marvel, as archly she opened the little broken paling gate that hung on one hinge. He followed. Crossing a little foot-bridge over a small creek, her uncle appeared—a man of remarkably short stature, but very broad and plain-looking. He was busily employed feeding, out of a wheat bag, a motley, crowing, clucking, quacking, and gobbling collection of fowls, ducks and turkeys. Eugene, mentally making a note of it, thought of bringing Brosie there when he came from Chicago. A big peacock perched screeching upon the roof of the brick cottage, and a few pea-hens strutted about on the ground, as Marvel led Eugene into the dainty parlour and asked him to take a seat. She then marshalled into the room her aunt, Mrs. Hornblower, a lady with her skin as close fitting on her bones as the paper on the walls. She had a stooping gait, a cadaverous, pain-sick face, and a red shawl thrown over her head and pinned together at the neck with a safety-pin. She was Marvel's father's sister. She leaned on one crutch like a caryatid and showed a very uncommon peculiarity—varicose veins on her arm.
At first blush she looked like an Indian hawker without a bundle; and without waiting for her niece to introduce her, "My trouble," she began, "is with my chest. My distressing malady is so far advanced that I am obliged to stay at home all the winter." Here she took a long inspiration and proceeded to expire the carbonic acid gas as follows—"I can never get out at all scarcely in the winter, and most of the time I am confined to my room. I have been a martyr to asthma for ten years (long breath). Dr. Leghorn has been very good to me, and has tried all the latest remedies, but with no apparent effect. This clay pipe which I have in my pocket (dive for a black cutty like that smoked by the Flying Dutchman), I have smoked (long breath) Datura tatula with so long that it is now so strong that it makes me quite sick, and I must get (long breath) Augustus to bring me a new one. I have heard of you before, Dr, Whitworth, as being very (long breath) clever. The Wesleyan minister was here only yesterday, and praised you very highly. He said he could highly (long breath) recommend me to ask you if you knew of anything good, as you come from a newer medical (long breath) school than poor old Dr. Leghorn, kind and good as he always (long breath) was to me,—kind and good to me." She uttered every word with the slowness peculiar to long sickness and she appeared to be trying to hear herself speak. "I am always sick and weak and unhealthy," she concluded: "just look at my tongue." It was as rough as a gooseberry-bush and as red as a lobster.
Eugene replied that he thought the place, situated as the house was low upon the creek and adjoining a marsh, was not suitable for anybody, let alone one suffering from asthma; whereupon she rejoined that Augustus would not leave it, as it was quiet and suitable for poultry breeding. When the irritating particulars of the old auntie's troubles had been fully gone through, Marvel played, with masterly execution and with remarkably evident control over the key-board, the exquisite music of the Myosotis and Blue Danube waltzes, Beethoven's C minor symphonies and Weber's "L'invitation à la Valse."
While Eugene listened to the music, the old Indian hawker broke in with three long breaths—"My niece is the best pianist e in the country. Nobody could ever have heard a sweeter musician than my niece, Marvel, the dear Bird of Paradise, beauteous Marvel. Heigho (sighing long breath.) She won six medals at the Ladies' College for harmony and composition. She is a perfect genius in dance measures. Wont you stay to tea?" He thanked her, and stayed.
When the cream-cakes, tea-cakes, lettuce, radish, water-cress and tea were gone the big kerosene lamp was introduced—lo! the vase and shade of the lamp, woe betide him! were peacock green. A pack of cards was furnished by Mrs. Hornblower, and they all sat around the little oval table to spend the evening at games of chance. Napoleon was played. A roulette-table was brought in, with a painted disc and an indicator spinning round segments painted red, blue, orange, faded-green, yellow, indigo, violet, white, peacock-green, and peacock-blue. The last two colours were pointed at as the indicator stopped, and Eugene, thinking that the apparatus could not lie, handed over a twenty-dollar bill to the Indian hawker, who still affected the red shawl. With varying chances the games had flitted past till the kitchen clock sharply struck twelve, and the asthma wouldn't stand it any longer. Eugene rose to leave, promising to call back the following Friday evening, and walked home to the hospital, to dream again of peacocks and birds of Paradise. Fairy pictures and airy castles brought phantasmal colours before his view, but the one pervading hue ever grew clearer and more defined.
While he lived in the hospital building and slept in the spare bedroom on the left wing his chief attendant and valet was the elongated living and breathing skeleton of an old—a very old—maid. Her name was Emma. The wardsman called her Hemma, and Eugene called her Hemlock. Emu-like she stalked on her hind legs into his bedroom and roused him up in the mornings; stalked into the breakfast room with coffee on a tray, and stalked out again without saying a word. Not a tooth in her head, she never opened her mouth if she could keep it closed. The skirt of her wincey frock reached to within a foot of her ankles, and she wore long white stockings and a pair of men's boots. Her long bony fingers, in accord with her lanky frame, looked like eagle's tabos, and on her billiardball head she wore and slept in a greasy black-beaded cap. The few sounds which she uttered strongly resembled the cawing of a crow, and if she was addressed or questioned her only vociferation was a cough and a sound like Ha-Ha-Ha. The cawing had many meanings, according to the gesture and the tone in which it was uttered. It might mean a reproval, an approval, an affirmation, or a positive denial; an assent, a dissent, good morning or good night; an announcement or a request, a positive, a comparative, or a superlative; but it invariably conveyed to the initiated into the cypher code of Hemlock a whole conglomeration of words and sentences.
Hemlock was the full-blown matron of the hospital. Her elbow had a long spinous process like an abortive thumb. She made good use of it in spreading the table-cloths, which for fully five-and-forty years she had spread thrice daily in that room. Two long smoothing and flattening movements she adopted, and the thing was done. She would put the sugar into the coffee and taste it with the spoon to see if it was sweet enough for Eugene; and she chipped the top off the shells of his boiled eggs herself. She had been disappointed in love, and aspired to make herself his mother and Eugene her little boy. She watched over him with the most tender solicitude, and if ever he stayed out late at night, the next morning she would confront him with her reprimanding Ha-Ha-Ha.
In this manner he encountered her disapproval on the morning after the Nap and roulette party, and he thought it incumbent upon him to make some explanation.
"Do you know Miss Marvel Gould, Emma?" he enquired.
"Ha-Ha-Ha," replied Hemlock. It was plain enough to convince him that she did know a good deal about Miss Marvel Gould, and then, again, he fancied she was mocking the peacock.
The fussy little wife of the hospital wardsman proved a much more tractable medium of exchanges—indeed, few were better posted up in the pedigree and all the inns and outs of every family in the district. She knew the exact age, christening, and birthday of every baby, and could give a good off-handed rough guess at the state of every man's banking account. Every new arrival in the town was discussed with the neighbours till his ears warmed, over the back fence of the hospital, where she lived and helped in the nursing. All over the town she was generally knows as "The Evening Star." Not satisfied with this, she would put her bonnet on and deliver herself at the houses in the highways and byeways of the town. In this indirect way Eugene was well primed up in the interesting news by Lilliecrap himself, who, remembering that he had been put on the scent on the night of the ball, ferreted it all out of "The Evening Star," and communicated it to the resident surgeon.
She was the only daughter, according to the wardsman, of Julian Gould, a coal-mine owner and colossal speculator – a man who had knocked down fortune after fortune, and who, at that time, was comparatively down on his luck; but from his stolid perseverance in boring for coal no one could tell when he might reach an El Dorado in coal again, and pile up a kingly fortune. Lilliecrap himself knew a man then living in Augusta who had been, years before, an unlucky promoter in one of Gould's companies to the extent of two shares of four dollars each, and after paying seventythree dollars ten cents in calls he had surrendered and forfeited the lot, which were sold by public auction at his expense. "Miss Marvel is the pet of the old bloke's family, my missus says," he remarked, washing out medicine bottles at the sink. "and the best flower in the bunch. They call her Birdie at home, and some of them call her the bird of Paradise. She was born on the twenty-third of May, 1821; she was christened, my missus thinks—but she can find out for certain–on the twenty-sixth of July, 1821."
One Patrick Flynn, living on charity under the rose of his duties as groom to the doctor, no sooner read the first edition of "The Evening Star" containing the description of the coal-mine owner and speculator than he proclaimed that she was a "blatherin' idyut, and knowed no more of the man than the mare standin' forninst him." He declared that he knew more about the coal-mine owner and rock-borer than all the evening stars in the sky, the "Evening Star" of the hospital included.
"I carted for him," he said, "for two weeks, and I supploied him some of the foinest missmate timmer in the Alleghany forests, and as good as any in the Rocky Mountains. He bate me down, the blackguard, till the profit I had of it was three cents a ton, the ould grab-all; and by the holy Mary I carted for him no moore. I've stood perishin', me and that ould harse, for hours in the rain while he prated and pitched his dollars about in the bar of The Old Spade Bone betune a drunken lot of ould loafers that called themselves mimbers of the Boord o' Thrade. It's meself that knows him, and bad scran to his big scabby nose. He'd smell a bit of coal if it was a mile at the bottom of the sea, and expeck a man to fetch it to him for a dollar a day." Patrick wiped his nose with his hand, spat in the sink full of medicine bottles, changed his quid from the right cheek to the left, gave a hitch to his trousers and walked away, singing the songs of "Tatter Jack Walsh" and what a broth of a boy was "Ould Larry McHale."
While the pros and cons of the great mining speculator were being instilled into the ears of the resident surgeon, whose only thoughts were of the dark girl dressed in blue, the afternoon mail arrived, and a telegram came from Guinevere to say her little boy Cyril was very ill, and asking Eugene to go and see him without delay.
Telling the wardsman that he might come instead of Flynn, as he had such a prejudice against Mr. Gould, at whose house Cyril lay, Lilliecrap put Rosie in the buggy, and in half-an-hour they set out for the township of Maconville, while Flynn requested the wardsman to taunt "the ould blackguard" with the query as to the lowest price for firewood.
Chapter IX.
Cyril Payne with Diphtheria. Julian Jasper Gould, the Coal-King.
From Augusta to Maconville was two hours' drive. The deciduous leaves of autumn strewed the roads, and on the borders of the broad fields, with the ploughing in full swing, stood miles of the pinus giganticus, their heavy odours, after the previous night's showers, thickly impregnating the moistened air. More than half way there, "Do you see those black structures straight across there?" said Lilliecrap; "those are the skips of the Cyclops coal-mine, and the ones behind are the skips of the Agamemnon. The township of Maconville, such as it is, lies just over this rise, at the foot of the Alleghany mountains. Sloping down to the sea-board, you see the whole district lies in an amphitheatre of hills, and from the top of this rise on a fine day you can see the city, seventy miles away. That mine there is the Hercules, and those other two the Great Extended Consols and the Black Horse United. Pipes three hundred miles long bring the oil from them to the sea-board."
"What is that loud rumbling noise?" said Eugene, as they approached the little town.
"Gould's pumping engines," said Lilliecrap. "He experiments with all sorts of machinery as well as coal-mining. His house is some distance—over a mile, I reckon–on the other side of the township: but we'll be there in half-an-hour. The pumping engines are going night and day; all the place feels strange when they stop at twelve o'clock on Saturday night for twenty-four hours."
The sun was setting as they drew near the pumping machinery, whose thunder incongruously contrasted with the cloudless face of the sky as it shone in the west like a field of gold. In the changing canopy of the heavens, gold rolled into crimson, crimson rolled into a greenish-blue, and blue into dull leaden colour, when the sun went down, and standing at the gate they saw the pale statuesque Guinevere waving her handkerchief towards the hill, and with looks full of anxious watching. Her eyes filled with tears as the buggy drew up at the little wooden gate, and "her fair face paled against the rosy flame," while across the sky-line loomed the shadows of an airy city upon the sea.
"Thank God, you've come, Eugene," she said; "my little darling is so ill." As the tears trickled down her wan cheeks, he followed her to the bedroom down through the passage of Gould's house.
Supine lay the little sufferer whom he had carried in his arms a few nights before; his cheeks and lips livid, his eyes fixed on the ceiling and his laborious respiration fighting for air against a sense of impending death. The local doctor had been in constant attendance, and over his little cot,—the one in which Marvel had slept as a child,—pinned to its stanchions was spread a calico sheet, while a large tin-kettle with a long spout stood on a portable stove, forcing medicated eucalyptus steam into the air of the room. On the little table stood a row of medicine bottles; some with only a few doses taken out of them, and one containing a brown mixture of perchloride of iron and glycerine for an application to the diphtherial membrane inside the throat. The two medical attendants thinking that all medical aids had been exhausted in vain, that some "pis aller" remedy must be tried and an operation performed, with the object of immediately relieving that distressing respiration and the ultimate hope of saving the child's life, Dr. Seymour administered a mixture of chloroform, alcohol and ether as an anæsthetic. Handing Eugene his pocket case of instruments, he held the little sufferer's neck across the pillow, and assisted Eugene in the operation of tracheotomy. A silver tube was inserted through the artificial orifice into the windpipe, and Guinevere's eyes filled with gratitude and hope. Her darling could now breathe quite freely, and Eugene told her there were hopes of his ultimate recovery. "In children," he said, "under four years of age the operation never succeeds. Trousseau, the great continental authority on the diseases of children, never had a success in one of four thousand cases from that operation of tracheotomy on children under four; but Cyril is past four, and if the grey membrane will only keep off the end of the silver tube he will be certain to recover within a fortnight, as the life of a diphtherial germ only lasts fourteen days in artificial cultures. If there are any symptoms of its attacking the trachea below the end of the tube, I will put this long copper tube into the wind-pipe without cutting him again, so that if the tracheotomy fails, we still have the intubation to fall back upon. Have you been doing all the nursing?"
"Yes," she replied, "but Mrs. Gould comes in sometimes and cleans up the room. Marvel was here but she went away, frightened of catching it; she has gone to her aunt's, but I believe she is coming here this evening."
"Mrs. Gould," she continued, leading him into the dining room. "this is a very old friend of mine, Dr. Whitworth."
"What do ye think o' hit,"? said Mrs Gould; hit might as weel be dead, which hit will be I'm thinkin': there must be something wrong with hit's throat, but there's no tellin'."
Whitworth replied that there undoubtedly was something wrong with its throat, and that it was diphtheria, one of the most appalling of all diseases of the throat, and very fatal to children, but that he was in hopes of a recovery; upon which Mrs. Gould vouchsafed that it was just as well if hit did recover, and walking out of the room down the passage, returned with a broom and a worn-out maroon sheepskin mat in her hand.
She spread it down at the doorway, saying slantindicularly to Eugene, as he stood inside the door in the room, "I nae believe in they dochthers: when Birdie was a bairn, she had the measles, and I bundled they dochthers oot, and curit hit with castor oil mysel'."
Eugene said the operation was a dernier ressort, whereupon Mrs. Gould wanted to know, what sort of a thing was yon.
A strong-minded woman was Mrs. Gould, her harsh, decided. Scotch accent, unaltered by her staying in America, her hard face and her crossing, closely knitted brows, marks of the domestic battles which she had fought and the energy and doggedness with which she had faced them, gave her" at first sight an austere, domineering and repellent appearance: and yet under the outside crust, there seemed to be a layer of softness and hospitality. "He'll be here hisself, dochter: sit ye doon," she said, and Eugene sat down by the fire, while Guinevere retreated to the bedroom.
The little room was choke-full of furniture, so that in moving one had to go sideways between the big cedar chiffionier and the leather sofa. A full suite of imitation leather chairs filled up the space, where two or three would have done. Covering the chiffionier were tea and coffee services, silver-plated trays, cruets and spirit-stands, each article having a little wool antimacassar of its own; while on the mantelpiece stood massive bronze vases. Parian marble statuettes, and a brazen clock, with little cupid constituting a pendulum, in a glass case, pointing to the time as half-past one, whereas the proper hour was seven.
"He never bothers hee's heed about the hoose." said Mrs. Gould: "all machinery, machinery, machinery." just as heavy measured tread was heard in the passage, and the great and mighty Gould appeared.
No introduction necessary for him; indeed he gave no time for any. "Put that whusky on the table," he said, and the old woman put down two thin-glazed large tumblers on the table, a jugful of water and an imperial quart bottle of Glasgow blended mountain dew.
A big, burly, broad-shouldered man, he was little short in stature of Chang the Chinese giant, with a big head and an enormous nose. His hoary head was partly bald, and he wore a full white straggling bushy beard. His piercing steel-grey eyes glinted with their ever-changing and restless expression, lighting up his whole visage and speaking of a master mind. Intellect and an untiring determination and strength of will had driven him hard at the work of theoretical and practical coal-mining. He had given away his whole body and soul in the search for coal. Hard he drove the two hundred toilers down in the bowels of the earth, and dry he squeezed every pound of muscle in their bodies. Nothing daunted by failures, when company after company had dwindled down to a paltry few in numbers, Julian Jasper Gould was the last of the company to stand. The strongest among the strong, the undismayed among the dismayed, the most heroic of enterprising coal hunters, the lion-hearted veteran whose name was in the mouths of men, like Richelieu, knew no such word as 'fail.' Never relaxing his hold of the great grinding powers in his hand, he to ed with all his might and main over the stupendous plant of his powerful engines, and he ground down those men like a horde of Felaheen. Fortunes he had made and lost in striving for more, and fortunes he had squandered on machinery alone. Sixty-five he was now, yet his iron physique seemed as durable as ever. New machinery he wanted, and most of his winnings from the earth had been melted away on machinery. Now in despair he felt inclined to put one of his mines on the New York market, or commission one of the members of the stock exchange to proceed to New York and float it into a company for its better working. The scheme did not succeed, and he worked it single - handed though short of funds himself. He was a Scotchman, but most of his early life had been spent on the colliery fields of Merthyr Tydfil, in Wales.
"Help yourself, dochther," he said, pushing the big bottle across the table, after filling his own tumbler half full and swallowing it down in one gulph: "If so be as ye're in no great hurry back to that hospital o' yours, we'll go out after a while and have a game o' forty-fives with old Swiveleye Mack at the Old Spade Bone."
Fluent of speech, he sat discussing, as if in soliloquy, the early days of the Welsh collieries, the vanished American companies he now alone represented, and his old mate Geordie Hood, who had been drowned in the river riding home alongside of him from Alabama one night five years before. He declared that for a week after Hood was drowned he had not let a morsel of food cross his lips, and that Geordie Hood was altogether a grand chap.
Eugene told of his early acquaintauce with Guinevere, the old friend's daughter, and the old coal-hunter growing deeply interested, pushed the imperial quart of mountain dew over to Eugene again. Leads, stopes, drives, and gutters he traversed in the seeming soliloquy, and hot-air engines, hydraulic rams, air-compressors, pumping engines, Dick's driving belts, steam engines and boilers of every description, and rock-boring drills, he analysed in his discourse before Whitworth, who knew as much about what he was talking of as the child lying at death's door with diphtheria. Eugene made a good listener, and the veteran coal-miner felt quite satisfied. He called back the old man's memory to the Cucullin Hills, in the island of Skye, as he had once been there when a medical student. In this he made a most palpable hit, as it found favour in the old woman's affections too, for she had come from the same village as the mighty man himself – Rhu Hurish, in the wild island of Skye. She melted. The old man had two more draps o' dew, and then sang "The Bonnie Hills o' Sco-oatland."
While the confabulation about his protean machines was proceeding, a young lady, a daughter of Mrs. Hornblower, walked into the room, and in a most homely manner took her seat at the table, with a work-basket containing flowered chintz in her hand. She was a monster of a girl; she must have weighed eighteen stone, and stood over six feet high. She was a most ungainly, muddy and oilskin-complexioned, old-fashioned young lady, with small ferrety eyes and a western American twang.
"Sukey," said the coal-king, "bring in some cake," and Sukey reached the silver-plated cake basket from the chiffonier. "Sukey bring in a knife," which Sukey also reached from the chiffionier. He look the knife, talking away at a great rate, and scratched the back of his hoary head with the blade, pushed it down under his shirt and scratched his back. The little episode produced an expression of morgue or belly-ache on Sukey's bloodless lips, and a mortified frown that visibly moved the wig she wore.
Eugene thought to himself if Sukey was any relation of Marvel's it was a freak of creation. She was no more like Marvel than a rhinoceros was to a racehorse. The old man told him she was a niece of his, a daughter of the old auntie by her first marriage in Kansas. Sukey also sported a few of the paradisal plumes, but in spite of the embellishments of peacock's feathers a daw remains a daw.
"Were you not at the ball, Miss Hornblower?" enquired Eugene.
"Oh, yes, rayther," came the idiomatically western reply; "I was thar about with Marvel and Mrs. Payne, and I saw you thar, but Mrs. Payne forgot to introdooce me." It was the voice of the cat.
A buggy and pair pulled up at the gate. The sprightly Marvel waltzed into the room, wrapped in a long astrakhan far-lined diagonal blue mantle, and on her head a little brown boat-shaped toque, with an aigrette of peacockfrill in front. She stood in ostensible surprise at seeing Eugene there; when with a most delicious smile she advanced towards him to shake hands.
"Birdie," said the old man, "I'm going into Swivel-eye's; you can give the dochtor a tune."
Eugene began to fancy there was some family rivalry over a name for the Bird of Paradise, when her cousin called her "Days," which he imagined was an abbreviation of Daisy, and requested her to take off the cloak which in her agitation she seemed to have forgotten. Lilliecrap then came in, smoothing down the fat forelock on his forehead, with Mrs. Gould at his heels.
"When will dinner be ready?" said Birdie to her mother; "I'm pretty hungry, and I want to go back to Aunt's to-night," to which, with a large, rattling, old-fashioned tray in her hands, the old woman replied—"Ye'll nae get ony dinner, my leddie, till your faither comes ben: go and fetch him oot o' that bar yersel' and dinna be too fashus."
The flowered-chintz dropped; Sukey rooted the great and mighty man out of the bar of the "Old Spade Bone," when the wardsman, with his hair well plastered down upon his narrow forehead, sat down at the table before the bare tablecloth, and played a tattoo and a Chinese tom-tom tune with the knife. Then came in the plenteous, sumptuous feast. Mrs. Gould was evidently proud of her cookery, and begrudged nothing in the shape of eatables. The wardsman was, indeed, in clover. Boned turkey appeared to be the Piéce de resistance, and the old lady seemed to believe she held all the patent rights to its manufacture. Plenty of truffles made it look very tempting, and when she cut into it it fairly hissed. There was scarcely a vacant square inch on the cloth, which was entirely obscured by dishes and plates, while the clattering as Mrs. Gould brought them all in and took them all out herself was something not soon to be forgotten. The great speculator, chattering away as if he were addressing the boned turkey on the subject next to his heart,—air-compressors and hydraulic rams—sat at the head of the table and gave an exhibition of sword-swallowing. Mistress Gould sat at the opposite end, said nothing and ate nothing as though she were a servant hired to cut up the turkey and pour out the tea. The suety-headed wardsman sat vis-à-vis to the old woman, and prated away a hurricane about balls in her ear, while Eugene had the two young ladies, like a pair of ponies, in charge although the kerosene lamp was so big he could scarcely see them.
"Have some more of this tack?" Julian asked Lilliecrap.
"No thanks." replied Lilliecrap, "I'm full up to the neck," and Marvel smiled under the lamp at Eugene.
The meal did not last long, and the doctor went back to the side of the little sufferer and Guinevere. The now quiescent and unimpeded breathing whispered softly through the tube; the lividity had disappeared from his face, and the little child after drinking some milk had subsided into a calm and peaceful slumber.
"I think you will find him much better in the morning," he said; "I must go back to the hospital now; but if any change sets in, you might send me a telegram in the morning."
"I don't know how to thank you," replied Guinevere, "for I feel sure he will recover now."
By this time Lilliecrap had brought the buggy to the front gate, and to Eugene's astonishment the paradisal bird was seated therein too.
"There's plenty of room in your buggy," she said, "and, if you don't mind, I want to go back to Sunnyside."
Assuring her that he was very proud and pleased at the pleasure of her company, he stepped into the buggy, took the reins from Lilliecrap and drove away. In the still, starlight glow of the autumn night Lilliecrap's reminiscences of the ball were the chief topic of conversation.
"I must go and win back those twenty dollars on Friday night." said Eugene: "will you be there?"
"Oh! yes," replied Marvel, "I'll be there; I'm going to stay some time at auntie's now."
How he wished he had not brought the chattering wardsman with him on that celestial night; afraid, as he was, to give any appearance of undue attention to the charming girl whom he inwardly worshipped, knowing well that it would all filter into the office of the "Evening Star," so that most of the time was dedicated to the glib cockney tongue of Lilliecrap. They drove past the hospital shining gray under the moonbeams, and driving on, after depositing the weighty wardsman, to Sunnyside. Marvel alighted, and asked him if he were not coming inside.
"Not to-night," be said: "You'll be the cause of my leaving the hospital yet; but you can tell Mrs. Hornblower to gel the money ready for Friday night," and wheeling the buggy around, he drove slowly and thoughtfully home.
"How did you find old Scabby Nose?" said Patrick to the wardsman as he entered the gate, and Flynn had just come out of bed, in a pair of drawers, a strap, and a green cap.
"Best feed ever had in my life," said Lilliecrap: "You don't know the man at all," to which Patrick Flynn rejoined with a scornful utterance, a spit, and a bloodthirsty oath, and led the mare into the stable, apostrophising Rosie and telling her where she had been.
Chapter X.
Wilful Murder. Marmaduke Payne Appears for the Prosecution.
The morning broke. Not a cloud could be seen in the firmament. As the sunbeams danced among the ash, the laurel, the myrtle, and arbutus, and peeped in through the hospital windows, Eugene went his daily rounds among the patients, fed his saffron-hued canaries, and for the afternoon was perfectly free. The marybuds opened their golden eyes before him and the heart's-ease smiled upon him from their dewy beds; his life was one tenor in increasing exultation. With a fine social standing, a first-class salary, full of youth, health, strength and vigour, he felt as happy as a king. Behind him, as he plucked a violet boutonnière, the big iron gate grated on its hinges. He looked around. There in a black silk dress and a black bonnet, stopping for a long breath every few paces, came the Indian-hawker lady from Sunnyside – the afflicted chronic broncho-asthmatical auntie, cracking the gravel as she came along the hospital footpath with the girl in the peacock plumes by her side.
"Good morning (long breath), Dr. Whitworth. It is such a delightful morning that I (long breath) throught I would come down with (long breath) Marvel; as, although I have described most of the pulmonary (long breath) troubles with which I am afflicted and have been for year (long breath and snuffle), notwithstanding poor Dr. Leghorn was very good to me (snuffle), king and good to me, I don't think I mentioned at the time (long snuffle), that I also suffer from a further annoyance (long sonorous breath and snuffle), an affection above the roof of my mouth." It was a painful ordeal to listen to anutie.
"Indeed!" said the doctor, "come in here, Mrs. Hornblower," pointing to the hospital, "as I daresay it will be too much for you to climb up that hill to the house:" to which Mrs. Hornblower replied—"Oh! I can walk up hill better than down hill (three snuffles), and I don't mind going up to the house at all" (nasal twang increased).
He led the ladies up the steep hill to the new residence, rang the house bell, and the old matron, Hemlock, opened the door, saying. "Oh! its only you and good morning, ladies, both of whom I have often seen; and how are you this morning?" by simply ejaculating "Ha-Ha-Ha."
Showing his new acquaintances into the surgery of the house, he requested them to take a seat He then took an instrument which he called a nasal speculum from a cabinet drawer, and looked through it up the chronic broncho-asthmatico-snuffleo nostrils of the old auntie. The smell was abominable.
"It's a bit of dead bone." he said, "and if you like I'll twist it out now and there will be an end of it."
"Would you give me some chloroform, as I'm so dreadfully nervous," she said, as Marvel, with her back turned, inspected the photos on the mantelpiece, one of which was a photo of Guinevere.
"You don't want any chloroform for a thing like that," he said, inserting the spaculum into her nose again, when with a pair of long forceps he twisted out the feculent bone.
The blood streaming and the long breaths glugging in her nostrils, "I always (glug-glug) heard you were (glug-glug) very clever (glug-glug), and now (glug-glug) I will send (glug-glug) everybody (glug-glug) to you (glug-glug) in the town (glug-glugl)," avowed the old auntie.
"What is the fee." said Marvel "Ten dollars," said Eugene.
She fished her purse out of her peacock skirts, and lo! behold, the purse was made of peacock-coloured plush. She jingled the dollars on the table, but Eugene handed them back to Marvel and told her to keep them "in memoriam."
Leaning back against the marble mantelpiece, he asked the glugging patient if she had been there before, and she replied that she had in Dr. Leghorn's time, but that the doctor's furniture had all been sold, and she would very much like to see the new furniture. He showed the ladies through the four rooms which he had furnished, saying that four were enough for old Hemlock and him. A speck of dust in the room was as painful to Hemlock as if it had been in her eye, and she was at the time busily dusting the leather suite and the mantelpiece. He only opened the door and they simply looked in; but the critical eye of the hawker noticed the costly bronzes, the Dresden china ornaments, the Japanese screens, masterpieces of embroidery, and the marble statuary and statuettes on the mantelpiece, the woolly Turkey carpets, the chippendale furniture, and the porcelaine plaques. She took at a glance a mental inventory of every room. Walking into the bedroom, she opened the mirrored doors of the wardrobe, and took out a pair of leggings with spurs fastened on them; she wanted to know where he got the policeman's hat. He explained that they belonged to the English cavalry uniform, and showed her the black cloth tunic bordered with crimson, aid the black pantaloons.
"Didn't you know I was in the Afghan War, and since I came back to America I have been a lieutenant in the Georgia cavalry," he said. "Why I drill every Friday afternoon near your place on the parade-ground, and my little mare Rosie is the model and pearl of the field."
"How nice!" said Marvel, "and there's your rifle and sword. I could chop off heads with that. I like killing turkey gobblers; they don't sing out at all. Auntie and I will see the parade on Friday, and we can have our cards afterwards."
Walking into a large unfurnished room, the old auntie remarked that the other doctor's children used to sleep in it, and that they called it the dormitory.
"Yes: I make a carpenter's shop of it," said Eugene. "I had a friend, an old man who was a jack-of-all-trades, and I picked up a little from helping him when I was a boy. I made that wardrobe and all those bird-cages," pointing to a row of cages with linnets, skylarks, thrushes, goldfinches, canaries and blackbirds, "and if you come this way I will show you"—Ting-a-lingle-lingle at the door-bell, and Hemlock opened the door for Lilliecrap.
"Man shot his wife," he cried, and Eugene hurried away.
The road to the Georgia gaol, which lay about half-a-mile from the hospital, ran right past the latter, and along that road as Eugene descended the hill, came a big red-haired man, pale as death, handcuffed and walking between two stalwart policemen. Unemployed men followed, women traipsed along with all the scabby-eared urchins of the town at their heels.
In the casualty ward on the floor with her head propped against the wall, lay a female form, evidently one of the lower classes—a gruesome spectacle for even the case-hardened Whitworth. Her throat cut form ear to ear; her eyes and mouth wide open; her tongue swollen and lolling out of her mouth; her forehead so slashed that one side of it dropped down on her cheek; her hands hacked to pieces in her struggles with the murderer, and her long flaxen hair soaked, blackened and matted with blood. The sergeant of police stood over her, and a magistrate or justice of the peace knelt on one knee, holding a piece of paper and a pencil in his hand. He was vainly endeavouring to take her dying depositions.
"She is dead," said Eugene: "you are putting questions to a dead woman;" whereupon the sergeant avowed that she moved her lips after he brought her in, and that the magistrate came a few seconds after that.
"She will move them no more." said Eugene: "she is as dead as Hector on the plains of Troy."
Rebecca Graves was her name, and she lived with her mother at Raspberry Flat, about a mile away. Her husband, a blacksmith, out of work, had deserted her, without leaving her any means of support for years. That day he came back with a small phial of brandy, sat down in the kitchen, drank the brandy, pulled a Webley revolver out of his back pocket and fired point-blank at her, but the ball took no effect. Her mother rushed him from behind and wrenched the revolver out of his hand. He hurled the old woman out through the door and butchered his wife with the carving knife which he found on the table.
"The old woman came running out and roaring 'Murder' as I was passing the house," said a muscular young architect; "I saw Graves running away towards the bush; I followed him, grappled with him, and got him under; he had no weapon, and I fixed him and could have held him yet." He certainly looked as if he could. The name of the architect was Cosgrove.
Next morning the police court of Augusta was crowded to suffocation. There stood behind the bar the prisoner, tottering and white-faced; there sat a row of fifteen magistrates, representing all the trades in the town, from the undertaker down to the butcher, who was the warden of the bench. The police magistrate of the State of Georgia was out of the district, in consequence of which the warden of the borough presided. The clerk of weekly sessions called out—"John Graves, you are charged with the wilful murder of Rebecca Graves, your lawful wife; what do you say: Guilty, or Not Guilty?"
"Not Guilty," he faltered, and turned his hollow bloodshot eyes towards barrister Hallam, the counsel for the defence. Hallam had just arrived from New Orleans, and escorted the venerable the Moderator to a seat, chatting together about Madame's glorious evening.
Then, as State-Prosecutor, Marmaduke Payne began to drive in the salient points of the charge one by one, as if they were nails under a hammer. He welded together a chain of irrefutable proofs against the life of that unfortunate man from which none but a lunatic could ever hope to escape. He flourished over his head a warrant for the arrest of one John Graves, describing every line and mark in that identified and woebegone form, on a charge of stealing from his employer a Webley revolver. He brandished in the air in exultation the weapon which the mother-in-law had handed to the police, pointing to the Webley brand on the barrel. The ball which the police had found on the kitchen floor, as it ricochetted from the wall, he placed in the murderous firearm, and handed the exhibits to the bench.
In a feeble, half-hearted way, Hallam arose as counsel for the prisoner. It was, to his mind, clearly a case of justifiable homicide. Graves had bought the revolver, and telling his little boy it was a shooting-stick he gave it to him to play with in the kitchen. His wife had snatched it from the boy and fired it at his client, who, in trying to ward her off, had unfortunately caused her death, for which he was truly sorry; but no law could under such conditions convict a man of wilful murder. He prayed the bench, as he resumed his seat and said that was his case, to find no more than a charge of manslaughter against the prisoner, who quailed before the court with an ominous presentiment and a vague foreknowledge of impending doom.
Without consulting his brother magistrates—who indeed knew no more of the law than the boys playing outside—the warden of the bench de-livereddelivered the verdict. John Graves was committed to stand his trial at the next general city sessions of the criminal court on a charge of wilful murder. The prisoner was led away between two constables to the gaol, and the court was cleared after a few debt cases had been heard.
The sole engrossing topic throughout Augusta, the murder, was in everybody's mouth. The "Evening Star" published an extraordinary on the morning it occurred, and five editions the day before and the day after the trial in the police court. It had predicted an event of the kind years before, and had incited the populace with all that lay in its power to shun the wretch that was born to be hung. Its repeated warnings had fallen unheeded upon its readers, and now that it was too late to avert the crime its sole and sorrowful duty was to disseminate the full particulars. It had measured the quantity of blood spilt upon the floor and found it to be three bucketsful—not a drop remaining in the body of the victim; and it gave the precise direction and measurements of the wounds with perfect accuracy to the sixteenth of an inch. The horrible aspect as it first appeared to the reporter of the "Star"; every word the police said, and what the doctor said to the police, were reproduced as faithfully as a camera and phonograph could have reproduced them. It recounted the minutiæ of the evidence of the deceased's mother, the story of the young architect who had caught the prisoner, and the details of the autopsy made by Whitworth, who had described a track made by the bullet between the scalp and the skull, passing in at the side of the forehead and glancing off the bones to find its exit at the back of the head, and ricochette off the wall upon the floor. The cause of death (said the "Star") was hæmorrhage from the division of the carotid arteries of the neck, and what proved a fatal blow to the prisoner was the assertion that this hæmorrhage was the result of a wound inflicted by an instrument such as the carving-knife shown by the police.
That Friday afternoon Eugene, as lieutenant of the cavalry rifle corps of Georgia, rode out his favourite mare on parade for a couple of hours, and when the detachment was dismissed by the colonel he walked her slowly on to "Sunnyside," where the chronic broncho-asthmatical auntie, together with Marvel, waited eagerly expectant of the promised call, and for all he knew might have been out watching the parade. Dismounting, he fastened the bridle to the stirrup in military fashion, to enable the mare to pick the grass, as she rebelled against being tied to the fence, and entered the little cottage when Marvel opened the door. The tea-cakes emitted an inviting welcome to the little dining-room, and they all, including the little squat husband Augustus, sat down to tea.
"What a dreadful thing to happen!" said the old auntie; "what do you think they will do with him?"
"Do with him!" said Marvel; "do with him!"—the god of vengeance looking out of her fiery black eyes—"I should like to have the job of lynching him myself!"
"Marvel!" said auntie in reproof.
His bandolier slung over his shoulder and the spurs clanking at every movement of his feet, in his vain efforts to evade Marvel's questionings about the murder he vouchsafed but few replies, while the ravishing beauty of her eyes was to him a sumptuous feast.
Marvel's uncle was an inspector of cotton plantations in the government employ. Some blunder which he had made in condemning healthy plantations on the Alabama river on behalf of the department had necessitated the formation of a board to sit upon him. The probable decision of the board, then sitting, was descanted on by the diminutive uncle after tea with all its pros and cons before the doctor, who knew as much about blight in cotton plantations as he knew of stopes and gutters, hydraulic rams and drives. Sitting by the fire, the little man rolled Turkish tobacco into little slips of tissue paper making cigarettes which Whitworth smoked as fast as the dwarf made them, while Marvel—although he affected to listen to the inspector's blunders—was the only ray of light to Eugene in the room as she assisted the servant in clearing away the table.
"Now then," said auntie, "cards, Marvel please;" when they all fell in around the table and began to play. The little table was a very tight fit for four. The vivacity, the piquant, and the gleeful way in which Marvel handled the cards reached very often the climax of puerility; whenever she went nap and got through with it her excitement was as intense as that of the owner of the winner of the Corinthian Cup. She would garnish in the money, mostly quarter-dollar pieces, and making a little pyramid of them, count them over every hand that was dealt. The lineaments of her face changing with every varying mood, it was evident that some volcanic forces were at work beneath the external complacence of her smiles; for whenever she lost a quarter-dollar she became fretful, sour and morose. The uncouth dwarf spat on the floor several times, and auntie thinking the spits were coins stooped down and essayed to pick them up; but wetting her fingers, she told him that it took more money to keep him in cigarettes than it did to feed the turkeys or repair the blunder in the report and pay the expenses of the board. With this little contretemps the card party went nicely and smoothly along: but as it was close upon twelve o'clock, and he heard the mustang neighing in the paddock, he rose to leave. All his cash was gone, and the Bird of Paradise was inordinately buoyant and triumphant.
Chapter XI.
The Warning of Guinevere.
With varying chances and hourly fluctuations, the little life at Maconville floated on the undulating wave of diphtheria, now rising with the swelling tide, now ebbing far away from the shore.
Five days had passed since the doctor had inserted the silver tube, and the breathing was still clear. He had telegrams from Guinevere three times a day, and frequently saw her husband in Augusta. No sign of the encroachment of the membrane below the tube, and Dr. Seymour reported that it had disappeared from the tonsils and the back of the throat. The ardent hopes of Guinevere reached the perihelion of their mental horizon, when, now that nearly a week had passed, there was no return of the laborious respiration and the deadly struggles of the child, and Eugene rode out to remove the tube.
"He breathes entirely through the tube," she said; "how can he breathe if you take it away?"
"I'll put my finger over the opening first and find out if he can," said Eugene: "if he can't I'll put it back." He took the tube out of the artificial opening in the neck, and placed his finger to occlude the orifice, but the mouth gaped and the face grew livid again.
"Put it back; for God's sake put it back," she cried, "before he dies." He took his finger off, and the air entered the opening in gusts; then, after a few spasmodic catches at breath, the little nostrils opened, the blue lips whitened and closed, and Cyril breathed as well as ever he did in his life.
"There's no diphtheria there now," he said, "and in a few days that artificial orifice will fill in itself, and he will breathe as naturally as he did before."
"Thank God, thank God," she stooped over Cyril and cried; "My darling, my darling, thank God."
Not one of that very peculiar household rejoiced at the exultation of Guinevere more than the rough big heart of the old coal-miner himself.
"There wasn't any of they whistle things at the school I went to, dochther," he said, putting the big quart bottle again upon the table and pushing it over to Whitworth. "Help yoursel', I suppose you've no broken your own breath this morning with a taste. I've just been down at the skips telling the men, and I'm as pleased as if they struck another seam to see that little chap all right again. Did ye see anything of Birdie this week down your way?"
Eugene replied that he had seen her twice. "Will ye tell her the next time that she had better come home?" said the old man, "instead of gadding about the country's side and spending half her time with that old soft blundering booby and snivelling Mag, and flying about to balls and parties everywhere; tell her I said so, and that will do for her."
"I'll explain to her," said Eugene, "that there is no fear of any infection when you burn some sulphur on the fire-shovel in that room, and that you want her to go home to-morrow. So good-bye, and don't forget to burn it for three hours in all the rooms; leave everything in the room as it stands."
"I'll put the old woman up to it," he replied, and the doctor galloped rejoicing away.
Close by where the first interview between Marvel and the doctor took place, stood a nice villa ornée with large grounds, and a nice garden in front and at the sides of an encircling verandah. In the cold and stormy winter it looked bare; but in the spring-time and summer the golden lilies and Parma violets gave it a choice and elegant appearance, while the lavender growth of the wistaria and the trailing climbers on its trellised verandah added quite a grace and rustic charm to the view. Fond of quietude, it was a haven well suited to the tastes of Guinevere, and her husband took a lease of it for twelve months. There, on the first opportunity, she took the now convalescent Cyril, and a girl leaving the hospital was engaged as a general servant. Her husband was away in his town office for the greater part of the day, and Guinevere had little else to occupy her time besides strolling about the gardens in the reserve with her little boy. She often met Eugene, and on several occasions she saw him meet Marvel there, in a way that made her suspect that the meeting had been pre-arranged. With the lightning foresight and intuition of her nature, she imagined that he was losing himself in the charms, the ostentation, and the guiles of the paradisal Marvel. Always fond of him and always esteeming him ever since the days when he had revised her classical verses on the seats by the orange and pomegranate trees of the university, till the evening she had danced his first dance with him in the lancers at the garrison hall, and sylph-like she had moved to the chorus waltz of "II n'y a que toi," she now loved and regarded him as her noblest friend with all her heart and soul.
"Who saved my child's life?" she would say to herself: "Eugene and only Eugene. How can I repay him for that, even if I never heard of him before."
Turning the immediate circumstances over in her mind, dwelling upon the present outlook of events and the remarkable frequency of the meetings and the trysts of her two friends in the park, and instinctively feeling a sense of something wrong about to happen, she argued the case out in her own mind and decided upon speaking to her husband. The girl-mother, from whose lips no unkind word was ever known to escape, and on whose brow a frown was never seen, her deeper feelings stirred by the respect which she felt for Whit worth, on the return of Marmaduke one evening from his office approached him in a semi-apologetic way and said—"Do you know, Marmaduke, I believe that Dr. Whitworth is going to make a mistake for once in his life, and he may regret it for ever. I have seen him, time after time, in the park meet Marvel and stroll lovingly with her about among the flowers, and sit listening to her captivating voice for hours on that red seat over there by the lake. You know what a vain, frivolous and bad-tempered girl Marvel is, and he would never have a minute's peace if he was married to her."
"She is a very captious and capricious girl, I know," he replied; "but he knows his own business best, I presume; besides, she is the old man's pet, you know, Guinevere, and that old man may cut up pretty big some day, you know."
"Do I know?" she said with a touch of indignation; "he is not the man to make a fortune-hunter; but he is soft-hearted and is beguiled by that old auntie and her pretty niece, as she calls her. He will make a mistake as sure as his name is Eugene, and considering what he has done for us I think it only right that I should go out of my way for once and warn him of the danger to-morrow. I shall never forgive myself if I don't, and I feel sure what the end will be if I don't. I know he won't mind my speaking to him about it; he made my little pet better, didn't he, darling, and you say your prayers for poor doctor every night, don't you dear?" while Cyril, sitting on her knee, nodded his assent and approved of his mother's idea.
"Better for you to mind your own business," said Marmaduke.
"I intend making that my own business," she returned, "because I think it is incumbent on me to do so; we will go up to see the good doctor, to-morrow, won't we dear" tossing Cyril in her arms, "and naughty papa can stay at home."
Eugene never carried the full purport of her father's message to Marvel—he merely told her there was no danger of infection in the house.
Many and frequent were the meetings mentioned by Guinevere to her husband; but many and frequent were the meetings in the green moonlit park and the little house at Sunnyside she knew nothing about at all. Well-known residents passing them together in the gardens, the relations between Eugene and Marvel were soon bruited about the town, and no sooner had full and reliable reports been lodged at the head office of the "Evening Star" than elaborate accounts were distributed throughout its wide circulation.
Sometimes neglecting or procrastinating his duties in the hospital, he expended the whole afternoon frittering away his time on the lake with Marvel, the white swans and the paradise ducks, and his money on the little oval table at Sunnyside. His whole thoughts and homage were sacrificed before the shrine of his love for Marvel. If the millstone of the university had counterbalanced his regard for Guinevere when he inscribed that tender verse upon her book, the hospital stood in the light of his love not at all. Quick in decision and action, he would treat numbers of out-patients, go the rounds of the wards, perform grave and capital operations, with the voice of Marvel echoing like that of the Greek echoing goddess in his ears, and surrender the rest of his time to her whims, frivolities and fancies.
The old duenna, now that her ozœna was a thing of the past, would venture out for a promenade through the park at the very hour his inamorata would guess him to be there. There, in slow and dignified dawdling steps, she would accost and walk with him, pouring the love-poison into his heart, sweetened and flavoured by her artifices alone. To extol Marvel to the seventh heaven; to aggrandise and upheave her in his imagination; to supplement any of Marvel's own craftiness, and to secure him as Marvel's own for ever, was her constant aim and the goal of her ambition. With studied and attuned cadences, and the inevitable stoppages for breath, "My niece is always so excited," she would say, "and agitated when she knows you are coming (long breath), and after you are gone she wants to sit on the (long breath) same chair, and sometimes I have heard her when asleep calling out 'Eugene, Eugene.' She (long breath) loves the very ground beneath your feet, and her whole heart is in your grasp if (long breath) you only ask her for it. She is made for you, and you for her (long breath), and no sweeter bride ever walked to the altar than would (long breath) my Bird of Paradise, my bright birdie Marvel. Other girls may cover you with their (long breath) blandishments of love and their specious and knavish hypocrisy (long breath). Not so my sweet innocent Marvel." In spite of the asthma, the repugnant old lady busied herself by day and by night spreading her nets for him whithersoever he wandered; albeit Marvel was the fons et origo of all her schemes. Nolens volens she was determined to capture him; but with her sickening vapidities she was defeating her own ends, while her hopes were rising with the leap of a kangaroo because he affected to listen to all her flattering encomiums.
Dreamland and fairyland all seemed to be to Eugene, and though gladly he would receive the treasure that was so benignly proffered him the officious exertions of the old auntie seemed to be out of place, and he took little notice of her avowals. Like the elephant when captured herself, helping to captivate others, an artful professional matchmaker he thought her, but cunning, deceitful, and overdoing the part which she took upon herself to play. Little notice of anything indeed did he take, and what work he did he did as if it were some aggravating task and the sooner it was done and he was off to meet Marvel the better.
Wending her weary way on Sunday morning, and foregoing her usual attendance at the church, came what appeared to Whitworth another deputation—an antagonistic deputation concerning the mighty question at issue. It consisted of none other than Cyril and the pale Guinevere. Attired in olive-green silk, and wearing a coarse fancy straw picture hat with white bows, and with the hand of Cyril in her own, she directed her steps up the steep hospital hill and met him in the garden.
"Good morning, Cyril," said Eugene, picking up the child in his arms; "is anything the matter?" turning to Guinevere.
"How is Marvel?" she said, smiling.
"Marvel I" said the doctor. "Am I Marvel's keeper?"
"Not yet perhaps," she rejoined; "but everybody thinks you soon will be."
"Marvel is too superb for me," he said; "she's not within my pale."
"Oh! of course, as usual, you are going to under-estimate yourself. Now, if I hadn't known you so long, and if Marmaduke and I did not know yon saved Cyril's life, I wouldn't say anything; I was her only friend at school, and I have always been fond of her as a very bright and attractive girl; but if you are going to marry her you will rue it for ever. You don't know her as I do; there is worse below than comes to the surface, and so soon as the first gilt of her married life wears off, she will appear in her true colours; what you see now is all bright and glossy tints, what you would be chained to afterwards is irrevocable wormwood and gall. No girl is more attractive and engaging when she likes; no girl is more bitterly revengeful or more maliciously fickle. I have come purposely to warn you to beware of the shoals, for beneath a seemingly affectionate surface is engendered cantankerous passion, hatred and venom. Cross her, or show her the most trifling neglect, and your lovable Marvel will be your deadliest enemy; your cup of joy will be changed into a caldron of misery. Fickle, vain, wayward, captious and exacting, spoilt by her father at home, petted aud pampered by all her relations, fawned upon and flattered by her friends—she would never be satisfied if you laid down your life for her. The merest surmise will call out all her rankest and fiercest jealousies, and the giddiest fancy her false and treacherous traits. Instead of helping you, she will drag you down; instead of comforting you, she will be a thorn in your side. Marry Marvel Gould and you will writhe in unending torture."
The fairy of cross purposes touched his face with her magic wand. Listening to every word and noticing her eyes fill, the deeps of Eugene's emotion were moved, and telling her he never was more surprised in his life than he was to hear Guinevere speak unkindly of anybody, "I know it's very kind of you Guinevere," he said, with eyes downcast to the ground, "to show so true an interest in me; but few can see through other people's spectacles, and if the prospect is to be so dismal as you imagine, it may be my own fault for provoking these passions of which you speak. Marvel seems to me to be a treasure that would grace many a better home than I could offer her, and if I thought she had a true regard for me I would not regret it, even if I had every reason for regret. What is done cannot easily be undone: Euripides said it could not be undone at all. The man who regrets that he married a woman when his eyes were wide open is no better than a coward and a fraud. But come in and see my new abode; our mutual friend was here with her aunt, and I showed them through the house." She was just about to walk up the stone steps, when Lilliecrap appeared at the dividing fence.
"One of the patients is dying," he said, "the cook from Madame's; she is in the ward with him herself, and asked for you." Guinevere walked away, telling him if he had any time to spare to call that evening, and see Marmaduke at their home. He never called. Again his headstrong will and discourteous neglect whirled him out of his worldly senses like wild horses, and led him into paths of treachery, deceit and danger.
"He won't die, that man," he said to the wardsman, "he'll be up in a week, I gave him half a grain of morphia; bring in the atropine and I'll inject a little. Smack his face with a wet towel and give him strong black coffee, he only wants rousing a little. How do you do Madame?"
The greeting of the socially-experienced lady was cold and stiff; few and pointed her words. "Not thinking you were at home Dr. Whitworth as I was more inclined to suspect you were at dinner somewhere needless for me to mention I came into the ward with Mr. Lilliecrap but if you happen to have this afternoon I shall be glad of your company home to dinner with me as you think the butler will recover so soon."
Smelling another deputation in the air, and drawing his inferences from Madame's previous remarks, he explained with the greatest complaisance that it would not look well if he left the hospital under the circumstances, and if Madame could be so gracious as to excuse him, he would prefer to remain, and call upon her during the week. He never called upon her then, or ever after in his life.
Jubilant over his promise to call, he walked with her as far as the front gate, where they met Guinevere coming down the hill; when, upon his doing the honours of a mutual introduction, the noble mien of Guinevere contrasted signally with the elaborate demeanour of Madame. Walking along together, as their homes lay in the same direction, the mansion of Madame lying about half-a-mile from the gardens, the merits and the demerits of the new resident surgeon were discussed as a matter of course by the two ladies. In the one, the still untold platonic love tinged the conversation; in the other, the second-hand jealousy of Madame at the name of Whitworth being so often blended with that of Marvel. She had not forgotten her ineffectual attempts to bring about a rapprochement between him and her protegée, Carrie. The gate-spring well oiled and the long handled umbrella emphasising her volumes like a baton and according with the motions of the pendulating head, the minute physiognomy of Marvel's face, her idiosyncrasies and everything anybody had ever reported she had ever said or done, were thoroughly ventilated with as much detraction from her character as she could decently intersperse, and drummed into the absorbent ears of Guinevere.
"Can you explain to me my dear Mrs. Payne," said Madame, "how it is she gets that feathery name?"
"What feathery name?" said Guinevere, quite interested.
"Have you really and truly never heard her called the Bird of Paradise?" she stood and asked. "Her aunt says she had that name ever since she wore long dresses but for the life of me I can never see nor imagine how it can be an appropriate name unless it is that she is so often seen in peacock plumes and needless to mention and not forgetting that fine feathers make fine birds my dear Mrs. Payne my beauteous companion Carrie might be called the bird of Heaven itself." Madame did not know that Marvel was entitled to that name too.
"Bird—of—Paradise," repeated Guinevere; "that is an ornithological name; but the peacock is not the bird of Paradise. They belong to two different and disconnected families in natural history. The term ?bird of Paradise,' comprises a family of birds known by ornithologists as the Paradiseidæ, found chiefly in New Guinea and the islands of the New Guinea group, and remarkable for the splendour of their plumage. In all other respects they are related to the crow family, the corvidæ, and to them they exhibit a strong similarity in their habits, general form and voice. The male birds alone have brilliant plumage, while the females are common and small They show a singularly beautiful play of tints, and have a glossy and velvety appearance. Long tufts of feathers grow from the shoulders to the wings, and in the great emerald bird of Paradise (Paradisea apoda) these tufts are prolonged even beyond the tail. They are all of exquisite lightness and delicacy. In the genus Lophorina, elongated feathers spring out from the head like wings, and the birds can erect them at pleasure. The common bird of Paradise has a cross-like tail and two long downy feathers extended along the sides. When the monsoons change the birds migrate, and they are always very lively and active, or even pert and bold. They protect their feathers most scrupulously from soiling, and bestow a vast amount of care upon them. They live on the fruit of the teak-tree, figs, and large butterflies, which abound in the New Guinea islands."
"What colour are they?" enquired Madame.
"The common bird of Paradise," she continued," is about as large as a jay, and is a cinnamon, colour, the upper part of the head and neck yellow, while the throat is emerald green, and there are yellow tufts on the 'shoulders. The paradisea rubra' has long feathers of a carmine xolour and the birds on an average measure two feet in length."
"How beautiful," sad Madame; "any more?"
"Only about the the numerous fables attaching to the bird of Paradise." she replied, "such as that they spend all their time floating in the air. Their food was supposed to be dew and nectar, obtained from the flowering climbers on trees in the higher regions of the gorgeous sunshine of the tropical forests. Magellan, the great navigator, was a large exporter of their skins, the legs having been cut off by the islanders, in consequence of which they were supposed to be devoid of less. The natives attach quite a sacred character to these birds. They shoot them with arrows, and their skins are employed not only as ornaments but as a charm to shield the soldier in battle. They call them the Manuco-dewata or Birds of God, while in other languages they are known as birds of the air, birds of the sun, and birds of Heaven."
"Oh! my dear Mrs. Payne however did yon find out all that? what a wonder you are you must have been to New Guinea," said Madame; "it is just as I say she has no right to such a lovely name and its only because she wears that peacock skirt have you seen any peacocks in New Guinea?"
Replying that she had not been out of the United States in her life, but had known all about birds when she was a student at the university, Guinevere continued—"The peacock, or peafowl, known to ornithologists Phasianidæ; there are only two species, natives of the East Indies. The common: peacock—the pavo cristatus—has a very neat crest or aigrette of fine stiff feathers. The train derives its beauty from loose barbs of its feathers, the great number and the unequal length adding largely to its gorgeous hues, and producing the moon-like spot on its plumage. It is blue in the neck, green and black on the back and wings, and brown, green, violet and gold on the tail."
"So it is," said Madame.
"The play of the metallic tints, in changing lights, increases still further the grand effect. He strives to attract attention, labouring with ostentation and pride as he struts about, to show himself off to advantage."
"That's Marvel all over," said Madame.
"Those are the characteristics that make the name of the peacock proverbial," said Guinevere.
"So they are," said Madame; "I'm sure there's nothing about Carrie"—
"Sometimes in old age the female will assume the bright plumage of the male; some birds are pure white and some are pied. If you look at the Bible, in the book of Chronicles, chapter ix., verse 21, you will see that King Solomon's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram, and even' three years they brought to the king gold and silver and ivory and apes and peacocks; while Alexander the Great brought them to the Greek empire after his expedition to India, after which, in the days of the Roman empire, royal dishes contained peacocks' tongues and brains. You will find that in the Latin poets."
"I must ask my dear Carrie to look it up in Horace I think that's what she calls the book," said Madame.
"It was only the other day." proceeded Guinevere, that I was reading a description by Colonel Williamson of the Jungleterry forest of Siam. where he found whole woods covered with their gorgeous plumage, to which the setting sun imparted additional brilliancy on the plains where he had seen them feeding upon the mustard bloom in thousands: while their cries at early morning in Ceylon are so tumultuous as to banish sleep and amount to a positive inconvenience. There are only two species, and the other is the Japan or Javanese peacock (Pavo japonicus, javanicus or muticus); but it is smaller and, though similar, is not so brilliant; that species abounds in the South East of Asia, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and the neighbouring islands. It is supposed that the harsh cry of the peacock is imitated in the Greek name taos, from which is borrowed the Latin corruption pavo and the English, 'peacock'. I think Cyril is getting tired, so I must say good-bye. Madame."
"Good-bye my dear Mrs. Payne," said Madame. "You are a treat I have enjoyed this morning's walk and when I see Miss Marvel's auntie I shall confound her with my knowledge of birds of Paradise and peacocks. Good-bye but just a minute I'm sure they would not believe me if I quoted all the science in the museum but Bird of Paradise or no Bird of Paradise she will never make any man's home a Paradise more likely she will be the serpent crawling within it."
"You mean the serpent of the Garden of Eden," replied Guinevere; "the rose would smell as sweet were she not called the rose," as she opened the gate, and said good-bye to Madame again, promising to write out for her the natural histories of birds of paradise and peacocks, probably with the hope that it would expel from the mind of Madame her Penchant for all the fashionable fiddle-faddle and tarradiddles of the town.
Chapter XII.
The Race-Horse Moss Rose.
On the last day of every calendar month long lists of cases, to be heard during the ensuing month before the Chief Justice and his brother Justices at the Supreme Law Courts of New Orleans, were posted on easels in the vestibules of the buildings, and copied into the evening and the morning papers to be scattered broadcast all over the States. On the first of June that year the list of criminal cases to be arraigned before the presiding about the middle, the name of John Graves, and opposite his name the awful charge of wilful murder.
The little party from Augusta, comprising Cosgrove, the athletic architect, the mother of the victim, Hallam, Marmaduke and Eugene, together with three policemen, proceeded by the first train to the city. Stopping at the nearest station, into the same compartment walked the great and mighty Julian Jasper Gould, bent partly upon the same errand as they were.
"Good morn', Payne; good morn', dochther!" as he placed a little brown hand-bag on the net-rack of the railway carriage. "I suppose you're all on the same tack; I got a subpœna on Monday, but I don't see what I can have to do with the thing, and I shouldn't have come if I hadn't wanted a new cylinder for the air-compressor. I gave twelve hundred dollars for the damned thing last week, and one of the pipes has burst already. He worked as a blacksmith for me for a couple of years, but I couldn't keep him sober, and I cleared him out six months ago. She was a good little sort, his wife: I knowed her this ten year; suppose they'll hang him, Payne?"
"Hang him!" replied Marmaduke: "he hasn't a dog's chance;" while his learned friend Hallam sat reading the paper in the corner and said nothing Hallam had been out of the city suborning witnesses in Augusta.
Getting out at Montgomery, the midway station, they had ten minutes for breakfast, and a free-fight for chops; after which they scrambled to their seats, the whistle blew, and the train never stopped till it arrived in the city. Hailing a cab, the great man got into it and drove away to a foundry in one of the northern suburbs, while the others took the omnibus passing the law courts.
A case of assault and robbery was being heard, and the trial of Graves appeared next to it on the easel. Hanging about the doors was a large crowd talking in little knots together, or wandering aimlessly through the spacious corridors. An adjournment for lunch was made, and still the case was only part heard. The condition of "part heard" obtained for two more days, and so, by way of a change, Marmaduke and Eugene attended a sale of thoroughbred racing stock at one of the city horse bazaars, the proprietor of which was called Ralph Kiss. Paraded before a considerable portion of the horse-loving world, around and around a tanned arena were submitted for auction sales the entire stud of a deceased sportsman. Printed catalogues were in every man's hand, and, as the thoroughbreds were drafted into the big circle, the auctioneer trumpetted forth their manifold and meritorious points, and ran glibly through the whole gamut of their past performances.
"Now, gentlemen," he cried aloud, with wild gesticulations, "let me draw your attention to the highly-bred gelding, Thunderbolt, by Thunder King out of Queen-Consort; his sire, by Ironmaster out of Fishwife, and his dam by Coat of Arms out of Rose of York; Rose of York full sister to Camarine, the winner of the Ascot Gold Cup and the Carolina Plate; Thunder King and Ironmaster, gentlemen, the winners of the English Derby, the Two Thousand Guineas, the Grand Prix of the Bois de Boulogne: and Fishwife, the winner of the Goodwood and Florida Cups." The magnificient animal, whinnying, snorting and neighing, was led into the arena. "Look at his bold fiery black eye, his proud and ornamental head, his arched and glossy neck—the prince of them all, gentlemen; look at his well-constructed back and loins, his well proportioned barrel, and every leg as clean as a whistle; look at his well let-down quarters, giving him great propelling powers from behind. It's not for the front legs, gentlemen, to drag him along, but for those hind-quarters to lift him and drive him." Rearing his Titanic and jet-black form, he pawed and smote the air; while the offers from all parts of the circle piled Ossa on Pelion. Starting at ten thousand, his figure now was sixteen thousand dollars. "Any advance on sixteen thousand dollars? shall I say sixteen thousand five hundred dollars? I ought to say twenty thousand. No advance on sixteen thousand dollars—no advance—down. What name?" shouted Ralph Kiss.
"Mr. Julian Gould," said an agent for the great man, as he led Thunderbolt away to the loose-box. Thunderbolt never won a race in his life. With a tremendous turn of speed, he would fly like lightning for a few furlongs and die away like a falling star. He was built for speed, but he hadn't the heart of a pig, and if anything came near him after a furlong and a half he showed the white feather and would gallop no more.
With the great prize of the day in his hand, the groom was sent away to hand Thunderbolt over to the trainer, with whom Mr. Julian Gould had made arrangements at New Orleans. For months in his early work he was the cynosure of neighbouring eyes, what time the skylark sings his matin song; but no horse was better cursed by his owner and backers when they watched his form and performance in the field.
Dozens of other first-class horses were brought into the arena, and the prices which they fetched ranged from one to three thousand dollars. The love for race-horses in Whit worth was lighted; it quickly began lo blaze into an insupressible yearning to possess one himself.
Those figures are too high for me, Marmaduke," he said; "come and have look around the loose-boxes in the yard," and they both left the arena together.
Sitting on the pole of a dismantled buggy for half-an-hour, they discussed between themselves the qualities of a little black stallion, standing in one of the stalls, with a halter on his head and munching some dirty straw. Miserable and poor he looked; but the blood was there, and as Eugene entered to pat him on the neck, the little horse pushed him back to the door with playful lunges of his hind legs.
"He's game isn't he?" said Eugene. "I like his game head and he is a good colour; just look at those masses of muscle on his thighs: they prove him a born galloper," when the groom came and led the little black stallion away to the arena and Eugene with his friend followed behind.
"Now, gentlemen," cried the auctioneer, "we come to the next on the list: a smart little coal-black thoroughbred, poor and neglected, but as game a horse as ever trod the buffalo. His sire was the illustrious Guelder Rose, by Sunflower out of Catherine Mermet, and his dam, the famous Water Lily, by Lotus-Planter out of Streamlet, full sister to the mighty Borderer, winner of the Goodwood Stakes and Goodwood Cup. The turf-contributor of the 'New York Herald,' in this edition which I hold in my hand, says that for his inches he is the smartest horse in America. Rising four year old; ran twice, carried eight stone for a mile, and beat the best mustangs in Louisiana. He is a trifle too good for country races now, and only rising four; what shall I say for him? How much for Moss Rose? Shall I say twelve hundred dollars?"
"Two hundred," said an old buyer near Marmaduke.
"Three," said Payne following suit, after the knowing buyer.
"Put a little corn in him and he is worth a thousand dollars of any man's money," roared the auctioneer.
"Four hundred," said Eugene, his mind made up to have him if he spent the last dollar he had.
"Five," said the buyer. "Six." from the agent who bought Thunder-bolt for Julian Gould.
"Seven hundred dollars," said Eugene.
"Here, gentlemen," said the auctioneer, "I'm ashamed to say I'm offered seven hundred dollars for the finest black horse of his size in the country. I might as well give him away and a ton of hay with him: eight stone for a mile in one forty-four, and not likely to get any more weight"
"He'll take all sorts of blooming fine care he wont get any more weight." shouted, laughing, an old Indian buyer, whose acumen and judgment from long experience in horse-dealing was well known all over the American continent. This ejaculation being received with roars of loud laughter seemed to affect the market, and to choke off some of the fanciers of Moss Rose.
"Is there no advance on seven hundred dollars? No advance? Oh! well down he goes." He paused: held up the baton, surveyed the ring, and knocked Moss Rose down to Eugene.
The clamour continued, and the loud stentorian voice of the auctioneer could be heard above the buzzing throng, as Marmaduke and Eugene, after seeing the black horse to the stables, sought out their way back to the criminal court. They had just arrived when the assault and robbery case concluded, and the prisoner, a diminutive, sneak-thief larrikin, was sentenced to sis months' incarceration for a jewellery robbery and assaulting a huge constable by bumping up against him.
Taking a large brief from his bag, Marmaduke spread it out before him on the table, having been asked by the State prosecutor to conduct the case on his behalf. Eugene took a seat behind him. There sat the embodiment of the majesty of the law in a large pendulous wig and clothed in a loose-flowing crimson robe. He was a highly esteemed Justice of the State, and his demise soon after was universally mourned. His clean—shaven oval face and his large, lustrous, blue eyes gave him an expression of beneficence and mercy. His quiet, low and even tone impressed the whole court, and indeed the whole country, with a feeling of love and esteem. What a grace was seated on his brow as he faced the haggard Graves in the dock!
The associate after the jury was empanelled called out—"John Graves, what plead you, Guilty or Not Guilty?"
With a hoarse and husky voice and a gurgling in his throat, he replied that he was Not Guilty. A low murmur was heard throughout the court.
Brief in hand. Marmaduke rose and presented the case before the jury, his Ciceronian oratory completely eclipsing his speech in the court below. Then Hallam rose to address the jury for the defence when Marmaduke had finished, but breaking down, it was thought he was going to withdraw. The evidence of the mother of the deceased and the witness Cosgrove being concluded, "Call Julian Jasper Gould," said Marmaduke to the crier, when in marched the great and mighty coal-king, bag in hand, himself. He had known the prisoner for two years; he had employed him as blacksmith at the Agamemnon mine; he had dismissed him for drunkenness; he had known the deceased woman well for ten years: she was a hard-working woman, and she had often complained to him of her husband's violence and threats against her life; he had not seen the prisoner since he discharged him, and he had paid his wages to the deceased wife himself. Hallam rose as if to cross-examine the witness. but on second thoughts of the influence of the great man in the city, he straightway resumed his seat The examination and cross-examination was thus concluded, the latter apparently to the dissatisfaction of the prisoner, who utterly broke down. His burly form shuddering, he cried in sobs and throes of remorse—"If it hadn't been far you, there would never have been any rows."
Hallam abandoned the plea of justifiable homicide, and tried to put in a plea of insanity. The witness, he said, had been well-known to him personally for twenty years, and was a man of high integrity and honour, and a man who, instead of being by inuendoes accused of inciting quarrels between man and wife should be complimented for his broad-cast beneficence and his benevolence towards all. He had known this drunkard to spend his wages in the public-house, and to neglect his wife and children, and had purposely paid over his wages to the deceased wife in order to prevent this lunatic from starving his wife and children to death. This frenzied cur now, he said, was trying to cast an aspersion on the character of one of the most respected gentlemen in the whole mining community of the United States. Hallam went ahead at such a rate that the judge questioned him if he was defending the prisoner or defending the witnesses, and thus snuffing oat the flood of light which Hallam intended to throw upon the case, he proceeded, after the prisoner had made his statement, to sum up before the jury. Hallam was hoist with his own petard.
"Gentlemen of the jury, the case as it stands against the prisoner is," said the learned judge, "uncommonly strong. If a man makes an excuse and it is a lying and a bad excuse, he makes his case ten times worse. His excuses in the court below and here are of such a character. The theft of the revolver points clearly to willfulness and deliberation—malice prepense—and the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to bring about a conviction. The cause of death as stated by the medical witness from wounds of the blood-vessels of the neck, such as might have been caused by this Knife: you may now retire to consider your verdict."
The gentlemen whispered to each other, not deeming it necessary to retire from the jury-box, and the foreman in reply to the associate declared the prisoner guilty.
"John Graves," said the judge, as he drew over his face a black cap, "you have been found guilty by a jury of your fellow-countrymen of the awful crime of murder. It is not my intention to expatiate upon the enormity of the crime, or to add more than it is my duty to do to your present sufferings; I have only to pass the last dread sentence of the law, which is that you be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and form that place to a place which the President of the neck till you Government may direct, and that there you be hanged by the neck till you are dead; and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul." Not a stir not a sound could be heard in that court as the solemn tones re-echoed the sentence, and the life of John Graves was made forfeit to its Creator, as a thing that should never have been.
Engaging a horse-box and catching the last train back to Augusta, the doctor and the barrister travelled in the box with the horse, as the Railway Department insisted on someone being with the animal during the journey. They reached home close on midnight. Patrick Flynn took charge of the black mustang, caressing and fondling him like a baby. He placed him in the loose-box beside the old pet Rosie, and sat smoking beside Moss Rose the whole night long.
Chapter XIII.
The Betrothal of the Bird of Paradise. Marvel Imogen Narramore Gould.
Bedding him down and piling up the hay thick around the sides of his loose-box, at daylight he would be up every morning to lead him about the hills and the fields. Sieving his oats to separate any noxious dust; bandaging his legs with elastic woven silk bandages; brushing him up and smoothing him down with his hands, left Patrick Flynn for days without a dinner. So attached to his new attendant did Moss Rose become that he would allow no one else to enter the loose-box without a light lap from his heels, or a threatening retraction of his ears. Eugene was fast becoming a friend and welcome visitor, and would lean for hours over the tower half of the door talking to him or feeding him with carrots and thistles.
For a whole week, since his return from the trial of Graves, he had not caught a glimpse of or heard a word about Marvel. The old auntie had written a short note asking him if he could obtain two tickets of admission to the hanging of Graves, but whether she intended to give one of them to Marvel or not he could not guess. The new toy was to Eugene a substitute for Marvel, and for a week like a child he forgot everything else.
Now the day for the cavalry parade arrived, and go he must, as he had missed the last week's parade, and he was anxious to record all the attendances he could.
Engaging a diminutive disqualified jockey to ride the horse out over the adjoining fields by walking him about for an hour on the soft grass, he accompanied the boy on his riding hack, Rosie–his charger– as far as the training track, and left him there to canter on a mile to the parade. Passing the fence of the gardens, he reconnoitred the borders of the lake but not a soul was anywhere near. "Dreaming again;" he soliloquized, "she can't spend all her time feeding paradise ducks and swans, and I may call at Sunnyside this evening on the way home." No thoughts other than merely seeing her and speaking to her a few words, no idea of anything beyond what usually transpired between them: perhaps he might after parade go into the house and have a game of cards or so, and perhaps he wouldn't go in at all; only a passing thought. But what is that which makes him rein in the careering charger, and slow her down till she halts, as if he dared go no farther? "Woa, Rosie! woa, my pretty Rose! woa. Rosie!" as in temper she champed the bit, stamped her feet and pawed the grass. What makes his face to fill with a blood-red crimson; his voice to falter and his hand to release the rein? Was it a thought, a remembrance, a forgotten duty? No; it was the sight of the angel of his soul, again at the Sunnyside wicket gate, enthralling him again as it enthralled him six years before at the library door, and substantiating his sunny dreams with her own belle idiale reality. "It is she! Marvel! my own to be! my own true bird of a coming Paradise!" he muttered.
No airy vision, no untold tale, no subjective fantasia now hovered above him; on she came through the yellow bloom of the cape-broom and the gorse, with an inexpressibly sweet smile, as she drew near and said, "You are a stranger; it seems like a year since we saw you."
Hauteur, he fancied, there was in her tone, but it quickly melted away, and in more familiar coy accents she asked him why he was stopping there, in the middle of the road.
"I was hesitating," he said, "about going to parade at all to-day; I intended to call coming back, but now that you will most likely be away I was thinking of turning back." as he dismounted and threw the bridle over his arm to lead the disappointed Rosie behind him.
She was going home she said, as her father had sent a peremptory command that she must go. She related how she had fallen out with the chronic broncho-asthmatical auntie, through nothing else, she declared, but winning some few dollars from her the night before.
"Don't you like going home?" he said. "it might be better for you to be at home; and indeed I forgot to tell you that your father asked me to deliver a message—an order I should say—that you should go home about a month ago."
Her eyes filled, and tears coursed adown her damask cheeks; she dried them and putting her handkerchief in her pocket said, "Oh! it's not father; I don't mind father."
"Supposing I drive you home to-day and forego the parade," said Eugene. "I can spare the afternoon, and it would be a very great—"
"Would it be a very great pleasure?" she said, looking up with tearful eyes and a wreathed attractive smile.
"It would be a very great pleasure," he said impressively, "a very great pleasure indeed."
"Then I will," replied Marvel, "I'll be ready to leave as soon as you bring the buggy here. Will you bring it here or shall I meet you on the way?" She smiled daintily through her diamond tears.
"Of course I'll bring the buggy here." he said; "you had better get your things ready at Mrs. Hornblower's, and say good-bye to her. Don't go away in the middle of a quarrel with your aunt; you may want to go back there someday"
"I wont go near her place again." she returned, stamping her foot. "I won't, indeed I won't; she's an old cat, and I can get plenty of places besides her's to stop at. I won't say goodbye to her, or speak to her again," and the tears began to appear in her liquid orbs again in sympathy with her avowed determination.
"Will you sit by the lake then?" he said, "while I am bringing the buggy. I won't keep you long; it will be better than walking up to the hospital with me. Or, if you don't like waiting. I can get Mrs Payne's horse and you can ride Rosie; she is quite a pearl of a palfrey, and as quiet as a dove. Mrs. Payne often rides her out with her husband"
"That's what I like," replied Man-el enthusiastically. "and you could get their side-saddle; I'll be here in my riding habit in ten minutes," when she ran joyously back to Sunnyside.
In ten minutes he was back to the spot where they parted, mounted on Marmaduke's Arab chestnut, and leading his offended Rosie by his side The bird of the coming Paradisal home lost no time in changing, and quickly reappearing, she was assisted by her lover into the side-saddle on his mare. They both pranced merrily away.
Soon they reached the open country between Augusta and the township of Maconville, and entered the "vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended" as, proud of her new rider, that sweet dark chestnut mare through the long pine-forest avenues careered and danced with delight. Tossing her head, champing the bit and playfully manœuvering her feet over the plain, she was the apple of his eye and she carried for him the greatest treasure of all the treasures in the world. Marvel was a finished horsewoman and showed herself off to every advantage. Halting for breath every few minutes as she rode by his side. "Which horse do you like best?" said Marvel.
"Well, you know." said Eugene, "there is something about being off with the old love."
"Oh! yes." she returned, "before you are on with the new."
Coquetting and curvetting as she rode the marc alone, the military surgeon looked upon them as on some master-piece painting; but the voice within was silent still.
Not used to spurs and the clanking of the sword against hia ribs, Marmaduke's shying Arab, restless and fidgetty ever since they started from the gardens, as soon as the spur touched him bolted and left the mare a few lengths behind, when the gallant little Rosie—the blood of the famous Kirkconnel boiling in her veins—drew up to his quarter and stuck to his girth for miles. "Stop her, doctor! stop her!" cried the terrified Marvel, her face as white as ivory, her hair dishevelled, and her hat hanging by a blue bow which she held in her hand. On she came full of racing up to and past his breastplate; but, when essaying a lead into a sort of straight turning, the chestnut horse cannoned full up against her, and Rosie with her rider reeled off the road. The chestnut Arab, thinking the race over and won, slackened off his pace, and Eugene wheeled him around to his fair companion. There on the green siding they lay, rider and riderless, and he thought they were dead.
"I'm not much hurt," she called out, "but I can't get my foot out of the stirrup, and I'm afraid to move."
Trained as she was in the martial field to lie down, the mare looked up at her master and moved not a limb, while Eugene dismounted and released the stirrup. He bathed Marvel's face with his handkerchief beside a wayside streamlet, and soon, nothing daunted, she was raised to the saddle again, with only a slight pain in her ankle and some abrasions on one side of her face. The rest of the road, only two miles, they walked the horses, and reached Marvel's home without further mishap.
"My word, mother will be angry; I need never think of leaving home again," she said, as he helped her to dismount and Mrs. Gould appeared at the door, Coming out of the gate scowling, her brow contracted and flint and steel flashing out of her eyes—"Ha! Ha! my leddie," she savagely called out, "ye've been in the wars"—as a sort of slantindicular cut at the cavalry surgeon—"Serves ye richt, with yer gallivant in' tomfoolery. It's a peety it's nae waur; it would be a good cartion to ye. That'll keep ye in for a few weeks, my leddie," Without acknowledging the military salute from the doctor, she withdrew from the gate to the door of the house.
Under the shimmering phosphorescent sheen of the big yellow rising moon, with mingled feelings of indignation at the outburst of her mother and pity for Marvel, as the tears again welled into her dark eyes, he drew her away from the gate towards a gaunt canary pine, together with the horses, and leaning on the saddle of the mare with his elbow, he looked into her eyes and said, "Marvel, would you leave your home for me?"
"How do you mean?" she answered: "I'm sure they will never let me out again for months."
"Would you leave this place and come home with me?" he said, looking at her earnestly.
Bewildered, taken by surprise, between the devil in her mother and the deep sea of his affection, she looked the picture of amazement and perplexity. "Go—home—with—you?" slowly she repeated.
"Yes," he said, in deep, impressive and earnest tones; no rhapsodies, no unmeaning phrases of dilettante affection; nothing about hearts and darts and little Cupids adorning his unvarnished love; but in the plain, candid and honest words of a man—"Come home with me and be my wife."
She answered not a word, as she smiled and looked full up at his calm face; but the deep hidden meaning was patent to Eugene. Her head resting on his bosom, and holding her in his strong embrace, he impressed his lips upon the blossom of her own. Clasped in his arms, beneath the shade of the spreading pine tree, while the soft glow of the ascendant moon shed its silvery iridescence around, "Will you come with me, and stay with me, and blend your life with mine?" he said again; yet she answered not a word, and lay in his arms as if in a peaceful dream. The solace of her bruised feelings by the tenderness of his confessed love, the sudden crisis to her lonely meditations and the attainment of her longed-for position by his side, had' soothed her with an ineffable quietude, and for the while had closed her lips; but her spirit was in communion with Eugene, though her eyes were with her thoughts, and they were far away.
Amidst bouquets of sweet sentiments, presently the harsh, hoarse voice of her mother broke the spell, and awakening as if from a trance. she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, saying—"Yes, I will." and the lottery of Eugene's life was closed on earth for ever.
Releasing his passionate embrace, "I will write to your father when I get back," he said, "and perhaps you will come and stay at Sunnyside for a week or so longer."
"I will," she said; "but you write and tell me when to come." He kissed her as his own fairly-won prize once again, and saying au revoir, she hurried into her father's home, whereas Eugene with the two horses went galloping triumphant to Augusta in the silence and solitude of the night, majestic with a crown of countless stars.
That night the brain of Man-el Gould was in one unending whirl. The sole object of her existence during the past three months was un fail accompli; she was soon to be relieved of the harassing gibes of her mother—soon to take a position in the world that most girls would be proud to fill. She built enchanted castles in the air, and conjured up in her exhilarated mind fairy pictures of orange blossoms, marriage bells, wedding cakes and presents, trousseaux, honeymoon holidays, and the halcyon days which she would spend with her husband in the fine residence of the hospital at Augusta. In her heart of hearts she felt the inward comforting triumph of having won the prize, and outstripped all her rivals in bearing away the palm of the much-cherished Eugene's affections. How remorseful she felt at having quarrelled with her aunt, and how anxious she was to repair any fault of her own, by writing to her in the morning and asking her to forgiva and forget; to take her to her bosom again. Augusta was so far away, she argued within herself, and I want to be near him and see him every day. He didn't say when it was to be, she reflected; but that would have been premature, and besides there was no great hurry, because she felt sure she could trust him, and she had heard people call him the "true blue." This way and that way floated her thoughts about her husband that was to be, ever and anon trending to the constancy with which she meant to devote herself to him, to comfort and to please him, and do all that a wife could possibly do to make her new home a haven of peace and joy, a blessing to them both and an earthly paradise. In the first blush of her excitement, projects for promoting his happiness and advancing his professional interests placed themselves in tempting order before her awakened, active mind; but she kept it all a profound secret and never even told it to her cousin or her mother. His genuine fervent and lasting love nurtured her whole soul with the ambrosial nectar of happiness: she lived on the dew of his flowery words, sipping the wine from the chalice of his love. But how long, Marvel Gould, will your well-serried schemes of devotion and your noble intentions last? How long before those sacred vows will be dissipated and ignored? How long before all that is adorable and supernal in your amorous nature will crumble away to ashes and dust, and all those well-ordered and harmonious plans end in chaos and abysmal gloom?
The following morning she wrote to her aunt and apologised most abjectly for going away so unceremoniously, and saying she would be back in a few days.
The profound change was readily noticed by her mother and her cousin, who was staying for a few weeks' change at Maconville. She became as inordinately joyous as a newly-born antelope on the hills. They wondered and queried with each other but "la fiancie" uttered never a word of the secret. Her father was away and would not be back till the end of the week, and if she confided in anybody she would confide first of all in him, Her mother's directions and orders were treated with derision and scorn, and her common, ungainly cousin was flouted and despised. In the ecstasy of her gleefulness she was rebuked as being childish and silly, but she laughed in her sleeve at both of them, and called them a pair of old fossils. informing them that she was going back to Augusta in a day or so, whether they liked it or not.
Not seeing any light in Guinevere's house on his return that all-absorbing night, he took off the side-saddle which he had changed on the journey from Rosie's back to the Arab, having preferred to ride his mare, especially as Rosie seemed to be quite jealous of the chestnut. He led him into the stable at the back, put the saddle and bridle in their places, rugged him up for the night, filling his rack with hay, and rode home to the hospital happy as a king. The prospect to Eugene was all couleur de rose.
The little black thoroughbred Moss Rose, hearing the pad of her hoofs in the distance, commenced a series of wild neighings, and when the stable door was opened he whinnied and sniffed and snorted his welcome to Rosie home. "Paddy, here's the mare," called out Eugene, when up sprang the Hibernian groom from among the straw in the loose-box. He had fallen asleep there after bathing the racehorse's leg with hot water to take down some swelling around his fore fetlock.
"That harse," said Paddy, "knocked his leg agin' a thistle and I have a bran powltice on it."
Looking down as the "powltice" was removed, "It looks uncommonly like a prick with the stable-fork," said Eugene; "when you are bedding him down again hold the points of the fork away from him and he won't want any poultices; don't smoke in the stable, Paddy."
Not concurring with the diagnosis of the doctor, "Faith an' it's meself that knows it was a thistle when the bye had been exercising him to-day; and it's more than that bye can do to howld him, for he's as proud as a paycock, sure he is the darlin'; sorra word of a lie it was a thistle"
"Good night, Paddy," said the doctor. "Good night, sir," said Paddy, lifting the bright green cap, scratching his head ovar the theory of the "powltice," and singing to a jingling tune the fag-end of an Irish song.
"Call me in the morning, Paddy, at six, and I'll see him work for half-an-hour. It's Wednesday to-morrow, and he wants a gallop twice a week and a good bran-mash to warm him up afterwards. He must win his first race next week, so get that swelling down as soon as you can," said Eugene, as he walked away up the hill home. The big, hungry house was a dismal and disconsolate abode, and he felt the empty gap in his heart after parting from his future bride. There, there was nothing but old Hemlock and the birds, but he cheered himself up with the hopes that, when the idol of his life came, old Hemlock would relegate herself back to the tablecloth in the little room of the hospital, and his new residence would be transformed into a veritable mundane Paradise.
Arising next morning at the call of the groom, he rode over to the training-track, where the jockey took the race-horse a gallop of a mile and a-half. Coming back to the hospital stable, he watched the enthusiastic Paddy mix the bran-mash and put it into the feed-box, and retracing his steps up the hill he wrote the promised letter to the great and mighty Gould, in a few words asking of him the honour of his daughter's hand in marriage; and a further epistle to Marvel herself urging her to come back to Sunnyside as soon as she possibly could. Reflecting that the letter, if posted that day, would be lying in the house pending the coal king's 'return from the city, exposed to the danger of being opened by her wrathful mother, he kept the letter to Marvel till the following morning in his coat pocket, intending to post it himself. The letter to her father portrayed his great affection for Marvel, and disclosed his age as twenty-three. He was the resident surgeon of the Augusta hospital—one of the finest in the States—and his income was, approximately, four thousand dollars a year; that he had found Marvel willing to become his wife, and prayed for the consent and the goodwill of her parents. Dropping red sealing-wax on the lip of the envelope, he impressed it with his star-spangled seal and posted it to the great and mighty coal-miner upon the following day.
Chapter XIV.
The Alabama Races. Moss Rose! Moss Rose! Moss Rose!
The two letters—the one from Marvel to her aunt, the other from Eugene to Marvel's father—crossed each other, and on the Friday she was on her way back to the asthmatical auntie at Sunnyside. To auntie she related the magnificent offer which she had received from the doctor The good news melted away the animosities of the past few days, and made the afflicted auntie's sun to shine. The tidings were like the incense of fragrant cascarilla bark burnt before her to sweeten and perfume the air she breathed as in gaping long breaths she inhaled the honeyed words of the celestial paradisal voice. It was a great victory for herself she felt, for had she not encouraged him to her cottage, and aided and abetted Marvel in the great undertaking, and was it not she herself that had christened Marvel "the Bird of Paradise?"—a name sufficient to charm the heart of ihe vilest misogynist that ever lived.
"I must call Augustus and tell him the good news, my dear," and with the better lung of the two she screamed out—"Ah—gus—tus!" It sounded, in the first part, like the screech of the peacock on the roof, when the blundering booby approached with a can full of wheat under his arm and his mouth open.
"Marvel has got the doct—arr; got the doct—arr. Marvel has got the doct—arr," she shouted, and stood glowering, as if to say, "Augustus, I did it alone." Acting a sort of tableau vivant on the verandah, "I told you a week ago, you know," she said, "that I was (long breath) sure he was falling in love with Marvel, and it was all I could do to cheer her up all the (long breath) week he stayed away, for what reason I don't know."
"Oh! I know," said Augustus, trying to set in a word edgeways during a long breath. "He bought a––"
Suddenly he had to shut his mouth, for the old jubilant auntie continued—"Excuse
"That's just somewhere—"
He had to shut his mouth again, as the old heroine was not going to be interrupted, and recovering breath she went on—"Excuse me, Augustus; you don't know him as well as I do, and as I told Marvel it could not be that he was forgetful of her (long breath), and I think you ought to congratulate—"
"I was just—"
It was no Use, he had to shut his mouth again as snivelling Mag cut the long breath short and fired away—"Excuse me. Augustus; ought to congratulate her on the bright prospects of the wife of a distinguished (long breath), highly distinguished young gentleman with a handsome income and the high social (long breath) standing of a successful doctor." After the grand finale, Augustus concluded that it was something grand for them all; tableau vivants by the three were executed on the verandah; the peacock screeched from the roof, and all the ducks around the verandah, noticing the jubilation of Augustus, joined all together in the chorus—Io triumphe—quack-quack-quack, quack-quack-quack-quack.
On the Thursday afternoon the important missive to the great and mighty Gould had been duly posted by the doctor himself. He expected a reply early the following week, as he thought ordinary courtesy might reasonably ensure a reply to a letter of less importance than it was within that time. The following week had dragged its slow length along, but no reply had come.
His brother Dolly wrote a letter to him saying that somebody from Maconville had been visiting Galveston, and that he appeared to be very inquisitive about the social standing of the Whitworths; that he had noticed a big, flabby, lubberly, carrot-headed, broken-winded man, with an enormous verandah-like moustache, and that he had felt half inclined when he saw him ear-wigging one of the customs-house officials on the wharf to approach him with a tap on the jaw and then ask him what he wanted.
The letter which he had written to Marvel still remained unposted, and when the week had elapsed he sent it to her father's house. This letter too remained unanswered. He began to suspect something wrong had happened to his letters, and indeed, as it was subsequently discovered, this letter never reached Marvel, but had been purloined, opened, read, and burnt by her mother. Under the impression that his fiancie was in her father's house near Maconville, he never went near Sunnyside, and devoting his spare time to the training of the race-horse he omitted his attendance on parade that week.
The races were to take place the following week, and the little unknown black horse was a rank outsider. Odds of twenty-five to one could be obtained in scores of places to any amount, and the only friends the little fellow had were Eugene himself and Paddy. Seven stone ten was the weight allotted him for a mile, and eight stone for a six-furlong flash near the bottom of the card. The whole of Paddy's attention was given to the petted race-horse. He was with him body and soul. His leg had gone down, he was doing well in the stable, and wiping the eyes of all the hacks in the district who essayed to bring him home in his trial gallops. But to meet some of the best blood in the district—the races being confined to horses belonging to the combined districts of the Alabama River—was a very different thing from pacing alongside of hacks. So thought the few who watched him in his matutinal trials, and they never backed him for a cent.
Attending to his hospital duties, superintending the training and care of the horse, and watching every mail for the eagerly-expected letter, absorbed Eugene's time and patience till the day of the race-meeting arrived.
Alabama Park, which contained the racecourse, lay a few miles out of Augusta. It was a perfect jungle of overgrown scrub and interlocking pine-trees, the course having been fashioned out in the middle of it by grubbing the trees with forest-devils and clearing it for a diameter of half-a-mile. It consisted of a mile and a-half in circumference, it was connected by telegraph with Augusta, and it comprised a judge's box, stewards' room, jockeys' dressing-rooms, and a paddock lined with stalls as a bird-cagebirdcage for the horses. Although only a country course it was largely patronised by people from New Orleans.
Early that July morning, which the gods had specially provided for the race-meeting, straggled in from the city and the neighbouring towns tramps, pedlars, magsmen, tricksters, orange and lemonade men, bad cigar vendors, and all the riff-raff and scum of Georgia. Special trains poured in their promiscuous cosmopolitan cargoes, with bookmakers of the ring and bookmakers out of the ring, trainers, spielers, and cardsharpers thickly intersprinkling the excited assemblage; vehicles from anear and afar were brought up outside the park fence or admitted to the outside of the racing enclosure by ticket. Fully five thousand onlookers surveyed that rabbling scene as Eugene riding the mare came up to the fence among the carriages. "She may be here," he thought—"sure to be here," he soliloquised, "for her father's horse Thunderbolt is in the same race for the Cup. He might have answered my letter, and it will be some satisfaction if we only take Thunderbolt down."
So also thought Paddy as he came from the bird-cage towards the doctor and said in an Irishman's whisper, "What will I be afther tellin' the bye?"
Leaning down over the saddle he replied, "Tell him I'll lay him two hundred dollars to nothing, and to hold him and sit still till he reaches the turn, and then hit him with the spur and let him go."
Away went the devoted Paddy, trembling from head to foot with excitement. In ten minutes the saddling-bell rang, and the candidates came one by one into the field. The white and primrose silks of Whitworth, after a dozen had appeared in the straight, could nowhere be seen, and there was barely five minutes before the starting-bell would ring, when Moss Rose walked into the straight as if he trod on springs in the turf. Leaning forward and standing up in the stirrups, his jockey-boy sent him a furlong or so on the buffalo-grass track, and for a while he caracoled before the grandees.
"What's that?" said a young lady to her sister in the grand stand. "Those are the colours—look at the card- There is his name—Dr. Whitworth's Moss Rose, number ten. What a lovely action! what a pretty galloper he is! I hope I get him in the sweep. I like him better than that big Thunderbolt. He ought to carry Moss Rose on his back." Out of her father's hat she drew Moss Rose, number ten.
Moving about on the sward like a mermaid through the smooth green waves, he played and snorted, when ting-a-lingle-lingle rang the starting-bell, and the starter, on a white thick-set rocking-horse-shaped pony, with a red flag in his hand, marshalled the field at the starting-post. Fifteen horses faced the starter, the sheen of their glossy coats and the glistening silks and satins of the jockeys finishing the brilliant sunshine scene of the landscape. The white and primrose of Moss Rose looked quite meek beside the gaudy tartan of Thunderbolt.
"They're off!" cried a voice. "No! back again; false start," as the starter waved them back again with his flag, and, master that he was of the knack of the starter, dropped it the instant they got into line. Gliding along in a heap altogether for half a-mile, "He's in a good position," said Paddy—"he was off at the start like a deer;" as a backer cried in dismal tones, "There's that old fraud Thunderbolt throwing it up already!" Then the field seemed to divide into two parts. "One down!" said Paddy—"crimson; I think it's Bonnie Doon." At the turn they came seven horses abreast, held as with bars of steel, and Eugene watched the boy, true to his colours, move on the little black horse and touch him with the spur, "Moss Rose! Moss Rose! Moss Rose!" roared the crowd; "three to one Moss Rose!—two to one Moss Rose!" roared the hoarse throats of the ring. Challenged by a black mare—Adoration, the heroine of scores of battles—as "up to his quarters and on still the boy brought her, and up to his girth, to his breastplate, she drew," and a brown horse—Lucullus—swung round at his side. Bumped by the black mare, he quickly recovered, and at the distance the lead of Moss Rose was as good as ever, while the brown and the black were in trouble. Strong as a lion and full of running, his rider never moved again, and the Cup was Eugene's—won by two lengths
"What did you get?" he asked Paddy.
"I got on forty at twenty-five to four," said Paddy, with the green cap in his hand.
"I took fifty at threes when I saw him at the turn. Are you going to stay here?" said Marmaduke, who had just come up to the fence.
"No, I'm just going round with Paddy to the scale; better come and have a look at the Cup winner," said Eugene, and they adjourned to the paddock—Paddy to see the boy weighed in, and Eugene to take over the horse that could bring out all his emotional nature and fill his eyes with rapture as he stroked his neck and caressed him.
"The old man's Thunderbolt boiled over again," remarked Marmaduke.
"Is he here?" said the doctor, as he talked to the winner.
"Oh! rather," replied Payne; "he swears he will chuck up the game and content himself with sweeps; his daughter and niece are in the grandstand with him. I was with them when one of the girls drew Moss Rose in a one-dollar sweep; Mrs. Hornblower is there too. Guinevere is there with Madame Pompadour; better come up and speak to them. But Eugene felt more inclined to stay with the horse, and watch the other races, promising that he might call at night.
Two minor races had been run before the Cup race, and after it was over, the Flying Stakes, a hurdle race and two handicaps brought in the Alabama Stakes about three hours after the Cup, when Eugene resumed his old position outside the course, to watch the race again. Seven out of eighteen horses had accepted, and seven came into the field. Thunderbolt. at a short price for a six furlong flash, tried his luck again, and Moss Rose, with a seven pound penalty incurred by the Cup win, carried eight stone seven. The brilliant victory in the Cup race enlisted in his favour hosts of admiring friends and backers, but even money could only be obtained, and the bookmakers seemed reluctant to lay at all. Some of the more knowing ones among Eugene's friends tried hard to persuade him to strike the horse out from the race, telling him that it would only send up his weight and that it would be better to keep him for something big at New Orleans.
"He is not at all distressed," said Eugene: "I like to see him win all he can."
"Take a fool's advice," said Hallam, "and run him stiff; you don't know what you've got hold of in that horse; there might be a fortune in him if you manage his racing judiciously."
So there would have been, but Eugene was not the man to take it out of him. Honest as steel, game as an eagle, with a great turn of speed and a calibre of wrought iron, properly trained, any owner who knew the modus operandi of manipulating the races and working him in the market could have relied upon the little black horse for untold gold. Eugene could not bear to see him beaten, even if he was beaten with some ulterior object in view, and he always wanted and expected him to win. "I don't want to have anything to do with their swindling and bamboozling ways." he said on a subsequent occasion; "if ever he races, he races to win if he can." With this mistaken but indomitable principle he threw his chance of a fortune away. Not given to gambling, he put very little money on the horse, and what Paddy did put on for him went, when he won the race, into the pockets of the jockeys and himself. The stakes went where everything else year after year had been going: over the waving prairies to feed and make merry the ribald friends of his bother in Chicago. The distingui dentist appeared to be gifted with a wondrous power of telepathic prophecy. Brosie could predict a win, although he had never seen the horse, all the way from Apricot Street. About a day or so before any to get him out of some scrape, or for the purchase of new instruments. The horse would win, the draft would be sent to Chicago, and Brosie would send back a message by telegraph that it had just arrived in the nick of time.
Tingle-a-lingle-lingie from the starting bell again, and the seven horses champed at their bits in a line. The red flag fell and they were off, Moss Rose shooting out like a rocket from the start, followed all the way home by the emulous six, and walking in, as the turf phrase goes, his mouth wide open, and a big grey horse, Moonlyong, three lengths away, second: Thunderbolt a bad last. It was only a six furlong scamper, but it was won with such ridiculous ease that during the remaimder of that brave little black horse's career, albeit be was the lightest and smallest horse in the field, his weights in all his classical races were put on a par with the weights allotted to some of the best blood of the land.
Scarcely speaking after the Cup race was over, sullen and disconsolate, with a peculiar foreboding that her perfervid hopes were not to be fulfilled, sat Marvel through the rest of the race-meeting, with her father and her cousin by her side. "Why on earth does he not come here?" she thought to herself: "he loves me, and still he holds aloof from me to-day; why did he not write to me too, as I asked him to do? Would to Heaven that father would write to him, and ask him to come and see him! I'm sure he would not stand in my way." She saw him walk slowly away, by the side of Moss Rose, riding his mare, and knew their carriage was to follow in the same direction. She rejoiced when it came, and they were seated and ready to start for home; but her father was drinking whisky in the booth, and seemed inclined to stay there. Her cousin was in the secret now, for it had been openly discussed at home when her father had read the letter, and Sukey was almost as much enamoured of the proposed marriage as Marvel herself. She looked upon the doctor as a decided prize in the matrimonial market. Her brother, who was also an offspring of the asthmatical auntie by a former marriage, had instituted inquiries about the Whitworths, and found everything satisfactory in spite of the Flying Dutchman.
"We will go without him," said Sukey, "and wait for him outside the park," and straightway they drove off in the same direction as Eugene and the horses had gone. Overtaking him as he walked alongside the cup-winner, they stopped, when Marvel summoning all her petite charming faculties and with the most enchanting of smiles, said—"Eugene! I had him in the Cup sweep and won thirteen dollars; isn't he a darling? I knew he would win, and beat that horrid old Thunderbolt. I was at auntie's last week, and I am going again to-morrow. Will you come tomorrow evening? Father said he was going to write, and let me bring the letter with me."
"I am grateful to think he accords it an answer," replied Eugene: "I was beginning to despair of getting a reply, I hope it's a favourable reply, but I can wait till you bring it to-morrow night to Sunnyside,"
Sukey invited him to wait till the great man came up; but Eugene walked on raising his hat by the side of his thoroughbred conquering hero home-ward bound. Home he was led as fresh as when he left the gates in the morning, to lounge on a bed of knee-deep hay; while Paddy and some of the old cripples sneaked out to the nearest inn—The Spink's Nest—and celebrated the victory, more hibernico. "I'll back that harse to give Thunderbolt half the distance in a mile, and bate him by tin lingths before his nose sees the post," declared Paddy; and so he would have done, hut not one of the cripples had any money to lay against Moss Rose or or any other Rose.
The following morning Eugene was called before the house committee, about that time given to sticking their noses into the hospital kitchen, prying under the beds and into the cupboards. They requested some explanation from the resident surgeon as to how it could have been that four of the inmates of the hospital had found their way out at night through the gates after hours, and had to be brought back, two of them at least blind drunk, by the police.
He endeavoured to meet the charge by ridiculing it, and stumbled over a plea that one of them was an old woman blind with cataract, which he intented to extract by an operation, and that she must have been leading the others astray into the ditch of the adjoining tavern. One member of the committee in particular, an exceedingly cantankerous, querulous, officious and diminutive snub-nosed green-grocer, not satisfied with this jesting way of evading the question, wished to probe the matter to its depths, and tabled a motion that a special meeting be called to enquire into the matter, and report to the house committee, the house committee to the general committe, and the general committee to the annual meeting of the subscribers. He also remarked, qualifying the remark with some deference, that horse-racing was scarcely consonant with the noble and self-denying duties of a medical practitioner; to which the resident surgeon replied that it was only for half-an-hour about five o'clock in the morning, when all the patients were asleep, and at such times as the great bulk of the inhabitants attended the races that he relinquished his duties at the institution for horse-racing, as the member of the house committee called it. He pointed out that a far more reprehensible practice was the habit of the green-grocer himself—calling regularly every morning for a glass of the hospital porter and sending his children there for billy-cansful of linseed-meal and castor oil; whereupon the indignant member withdrew his motion. Lilliecrap wrote an article to the papers about the porter, the castor oil, and the linseed-meat, and as most of the other members of of the committee were dabbling racing-men, and looked for tips from the surgeon to put their "bits" on, the affair came to an ephemeral end.
The Friday evening came, and he proceeded to the little cottage at Sunnyside; but be could not determine upon any fixed idea as to what answer the little missive Marvel had brought would bring. He met her at the gate waiting and watching for him, with the all-important letter in the bosom of her dress.
"Well Marvel, what is it be?" he smiling said, as she handed him the note. Hastily breaking the blue-dragon seal of the great and mighty Gould, written in a frail thready and unsteady hand, he read, word for word out to Marvel—"Dear dochther, I am agreable to what you intend to do. I should have wrote before, but to tell ye the truth I've been on the tank. Take care of her and she'll take care of you.—Your father-in-law, Julian Jasper Gould."
Fixing him with her keen black flashing eyes, "I suppose you mean what you said on Friday evening," she said with some show of haughtiness.
"I always try to mean what I say," he returned, and suiting the action to the word he kissed her blushing cheeks as an emblem and a seal of his love. He placed a ring on her finger as a symbol of her betrothal, and saying that it was impossible for him to remain away from the hospital that night, he invited her to come up to the house in the morning. He bade her adieu: the sight of her waving handkerchief faded from his backward turned eyes, and the barque of Eugene's life was launched upon the uncertain seas of matrimony.
Chapter XV.
The Return of Brosie by the Good Ship Mararona Bringing in the Sheaves. The Wedding of the Paradisal Bride.
The sunbright morning shed its radiance upon the cattle browsing and lowing upon the green, the twittering of sparrows on the roof, the waving ash, the pine, the myrtle, the laurel and the red-berried arbutus, as the smoke drifts from the hospital chimneys wafted skywards, and Marvel accompanied by the chaperoning auntie found their way to the hospital residence about eleven.
Eugene himself opened the door and bowed before the congratulating incense of auntie. The naming of the day of days was discussed at great length, and there seemed to be a consensus of opinion that there was no need for delay. The house was ready, the doctor was lonely, and Marvel generously asked that he should fix the day himself, so that all he had to do was to prepare himself for the wrenching away from Hemlock for good. The arrangements about wedding-cards and other preliminaries for the marriage were to be entrusted for the most part to Marvel and her relations, the doctor undertaking the task of writing a letter to secure the attendance of the Reverend Paul Hayman. Everything, in fact, was duly planned out and agreed upon, when Marvel suddenly, and seemingly without premeditation, thought of the ring which he had given her. Holding out her hand, "I don't like this ring you bought," she said, her lips curving into an expressive pout; "couldn't you give me a thicker one." He replied that he had not bought it himself, but had asked the old housekeeper, Hemlock, to buy it for him, and that probably she had bought one to suit herself; but he promised to buy a thicker one himself to make sure it was thick enough for Marvel.
"You had better keep the one you have in the meantime," exclaimed the old auntie in a little scare; "a bird (long breath) in the hand (long breath) is worth two (long breath) in the bush (long breath)." She went on further to remark that she was a witness to the contract, in case there should be any breach on his part. The first of September was fixed as the day sacred to the marriage, deo volente, and the two self-complacent ladies left the scene, the old auntie still fawning upon Marvel in her suave and silky ways.
The signal event in Eugene's life could not decorously be enacted without the added grace of the much-travelled gentleman Brosie. He had left Chicago in July on a short tour around the United Kingdom, so that the first of September would, taking into account the time fixed for his embarkation from Plymouth, be certain to find him present at the marriage ceremony, and probably standing as best-man for his brother.
Letters were sent to old Christopher Whitworth, and with Dolly they bustled their arrangements to acquit themselves in becoming style at the marriage. The dutiful Dolly, with the fancy dress ball again in his mind, brushed up the brass-bound suit which he always reserved for state occasions in order to lend a variety to the scene by appearing, not in his high-seas rolling and swaggering about on the coal-fields.
The Mararona was signalled off the Florida Keys on the twenty second, and gave the æsthetic Ambrose plenty of time to adorn himself and parade the embellishments which he had received at the hands of the Generals of the United States army of independence or salvation, and the lofty-minded staff of the Chicago Dental College, Apricot Street. He arrived on the twenty-fourth.
Into the multiple mouth of the Mississippi, with its multitudinous bays and promontories, past the choice sandstone villas, almost dipping down on the sandy shore, majestically sailed the swift Mararona and glided into her berth on the Mississippi Quay, where, when his marine friendships were severed, all that was required for disembarkation was to step ashore into the heart of the city. Down the accommodation-ladder he stepped with a sailor of the good ship Mararona bringing in the sheaves, singing tempo moderato, Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves: the good ship Mararona bringing in the sheaves.
His proud father and anxious mother had hailed the day when they were to meet him and help him to carry home the sheaves. The sheaves were shown the light of day in the customs-house, and proved to be an enormous Yankee trunk or travelling box, containing two dirty shirts, three holey socks and three well varnished handkerchiefs, while the cleanest end of the fourth stuck out from his pocket beside the butt-end of a "little persuader." "Montes laborantur parturiet riduculus mus;" but wait—wait till he produces that long tin can like a spy-glass, and he spreads out that scroll of parchment on the table of the nearest inn, and calling for two long cock-tails and a small glass of sherry, displays the all-important certificate of a Doctor of Dental Surgery of the greatest college in creation, and tells his father that if that air not the correct ticket he guesses and calc'lates he could ride him on a rail.
On the morning of the first of September old Mr. Whitworth, who took all things aux serieux, surrounded by an old-fashioned frock coat, fitting so tight that he looked as if he had been born in it, and on his main-top a napless bell-topper that once the cat had kittens in, together with Dolly in the ruse of a midshipman and Brosie in a ready-made suit with a lavender boutonnière, a shirt-front like the breast of a pouter pigeon, milky blue gloves, and tight-fitting boots, proceeded in the van of the goods train to Maconville, the compartment supposed to be sacred to members of the legislature, railway employées, their wives and manifold connexions.
Oh! day of days! as with new silk hat, fashionable black surtout and a pink rosebud in the button-hole, stood the resident surgeon of the provincial hospital on the verandah of his residence as his relations arrived. Strong, vigorous and active, he looked in the pink of health and condition; while his well-chiselled features and his bright blue eyes gave him quite a distinguished and attractive appearance. Since he had left the schools of science, the out-door life seemed to have tinted his face and he looked even younger than he often did then, wearing as was his custom no beard or moustache. Were not those woods more free from peril than the envious court? Above him the soft siroccos breathed through the jessamine as it trained its delicate branches into a thick roof of silken green, while far away, folded in a silver or purple haze, the quiet hills still doze and dream; the crimson-crowned olive green woodpecker creeps like a lizard up the bark of the hollow pine-tress and slides down again like a sailor down a rope, busily tapping and harking for the sounds of wood-burrowing insects; the skylark rings his clear carol above the tall yellow corn, and the cuckoo calls from the silence of the wood. It was a glimpse of the summer of the heart.
Into the carriage he stepped, attended by his father and brothers, when a hailstorm of rice and a shower of white roses from the hospital nurses covered them over and whitened the floor. Crack went the whip, and the two bright bays, with Rosie in the lead, pranced down the hill, with pink and white streamers from their bridles; while, conscious of the red-letter day, with a pink and white ribbon around his neck, a handsome tawny St. Bernard with a tail like a flag ran with its tongue lolling out showing them the way, or washing the splash off the ribbon at every roadside pond. He had been provided as a companion in the stable to Moss Rose, while Rosie had to be content with the cat. Entering the coal-mining town they were hailed with salutes and cheers, and driving past the land-and-life-marking canary-pine, they heard the peals of wedding bells in the church of All Saints. They alighted on the footpath, thronged with spectators and guests. Straight to the church doors gambolled the frolicsome St. Bernard and barked his joyous, hilarious way to the altar to take up his proper position at Eugene's heels. Filled to overflowing the chapel, in the all-pervading silence of the building stood Eugene and his brother before the high altar of All Saints awaiting the coming of Marvel.
Gold-mounted harness was bound around her white carriage-horses, and the shimmering blue of the peacock fluttered on the breeze from every coign of vantage. Conspicuous amongst the gorgeous pageantry, the richest landau in the country had been obtained by her father, when, as the proudly rearing steeds halted at the gates of All Saints, the coachman sat on his hammercloth, while a footman alighted to open the door for the glorious bride.
The church was beautifully decorated: an arch of white flowers spanning the chancel between the choir stalls, large palms being placed at the sides; while the pulpit, reading-desk and font were also adorned with lilies of the valley, white lilac and other spring blossoms. To the singing by the choir and congregation of "The voice that breathed o'er Eden," through the spell-bound throng of spectators the white-robed bird of the sun walked with aerial steps upon the white gravelled shells of the flower-strewn path, and adown the bright crimson carpeted aisle, enveloped in a long, white, misty, cylindrical tulle veil, and wearing a dress of rich white satin, trimmed with chiffon and Maltese lace, which was arranged around the shoulders and fell in cascades down each side of the front to the hem, a narrow wreath of orange blossoms nestling like a crown in the rich clusters of her ebony hair. Her ornaments were a diamond and turquoise necklace, a diamond and sapphire bracelet, a diamond and cornelian heart-brooch and a diamond arrow, and her shower bouquet was composed of orchids, roses and orange blossoms. Her train was carried by two tiny pages in white satin, with white buckles on their white satin shoes and at the knees. Then came six bridesmaids in white silk, with chiffon fichus, with silver waist-belts, and straw hats trimmed with lilac and blue ostrich tips. As the bride waited in perfect silence and suspense, the rich tones of anthems resounded, echoing through those hallowed halls, and the exalted bird of heaven stood on the left hand of her betrothed in the crisis of her life to fill her longed-for part in the office of holy matrimony.
Oh! joy supernal! as princess-like she stood, for her father had spared no expense with her costumiére, and few brides ever looked more ethereal and dazzling than Marvel. The adamantine chain of consecrated marriage was welded and fitted around those concomitant lives before their eyes, and amidst two thousand witnesses to its making. "Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honour and keep him in sickness and in health, and forsaking all other, keep thou only unto him so long as ye both shall live?" and Marvel said "I will," in firm and unmistakable tones in the presence of the Almighty Father, the best maker of all marriages, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient Architect of the Universe.
The extolled, exultant bird of Paradise, the bird of Heaven, the bird of the sun and the air, was yoked together with Eugene as Eugene's wife for evermore. Made so beneath the throne of her Creator and her Redeemer; made so by one of His consecrated workers at the foot of His divine altar, and in His holy house; made one with Eugene—one in body, one in spirit, no matter who should say Nay; one in joy and sorrow, one in health and vigor, and one in sickness and mortality; one for better fortune, one for worse fortune: to stand by Eugene, to cling to him alone, and to forsake all other, till death claimed one or other, parted the links of God's chain and dissolved His own handiwork; in holy harmony to live with Eugene and to leave her father and her mother, come weal or come woe.
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost I join this man and this woman in the holy bonds of matrimony. Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder," intoned the servant, the minister of the divine Saviour Himself, and none seemed to be more impressed with the beauty and grandeur of that God-sent ceremony to man than did Marvel, the newly-made wife herself, who seemed to have solemnly pledged her troth to live with Eugene as faithfully as did Rebecca with Isaac of old.
The great and mighty speculator, who boasted that for forty years he had not seen the inside of that church or any other church or chapel, quailed before that throne of God as his infidel hands transferred his daughter to the minister. Away from the altar slowly down the long aisle they walked together, the church organ bursting forth its ecstasies in the wedding march of Mendelssohn, and Marvel en rapport with Eugene.
The wedding breakfast had been catered for by the French concierge of the town. His hotel was close to the church, and he had procured a French chéf from the city; so it was no surprise to the wedding party to find a gorgeously-decorated dancing hall turned into the welding breakfast room, and adorned with flowering festoons, wreaths, garlands and banners of all the colours of the rainbow around a well-spread board, decorated in alternate chains and baskets, carried out in gold orchids, the baskets being filled with mauve flowers, and lyre decorations of scarlet anthuriums with white foliage; the features of the menu being sole au gratin, rognons sautés aux champignons, perdrix roti au cresson, crème à la menagere, entrecote à la Paràdise, vol au vent à la financière, petites timbales de gibier, chapons en demi-deuil, and other works of art.
Some of the doctor's cavalry regiment attended in uniform, adding variety and charm to the gathering; while all the medical men of the district and several scientists from the city formed quite a large cotérie and a semi-scientific congress of their own.
The member of the State Legislature for the district, a suave and plausible bloat-cheeked man with a pointed imperial black beard, discoursed on the subject of the bifurcated skirt and the changing woman then doffing crinolines; while the parson undertook, if one of them came to the town, to heave half a brick at her himself.
One ugly Quilp-like dwarf—a real dwarf and smaller than Augustus—an old object who was also an old identity of the town, perched himself on the back of the chair, with his ear in his hand, sheltering it from all other disturbing sounds, and pulling the wing of it out close to the mouth whence flowed the wisdom of the oracle. Augustus was four feet one, but this was a much better dwarf—he was three feet nothing. He was a tobacco-planter, and anticipated some revelations about ad valorem taxation, which indeed the loquacious member at one time threatened to touch upon: the salient feature, however, in his declamation being the dangerous political woman. He soared into the giddy heights of a peroration on the sublimity of the fair sex in general, and the bird of Paradise, Heaven, the sun and the air, in particular, while the dowdy, glum, coffee-pot shaped Mrs. Gould frowned savagely at everybody or twirled her thumbs under the tablecloth, sitting demure as quakeress.
The bridegroom arose in state to thank the company for their good wishes towards himself and his wife, interpolating his gratitude with a few points about the training and running of racehorses in general, and Moss Rose in particular, and reciprocating the good wishes of everybody outside and inside the hall. He was cheered to the echo; when the great and mighty rock-boring, belt-driving, air-compressing speculator rose to deliver himself of a speech, which the garrulous member of the State Legislature had written out for him, but which he had entirely forgotten. Stumbling over a few disconnected sentences, he seemed to be, metaphorically speaking, coming out of the same hole as he went in through, and actually rose three times to return thanks for the great honour which they were doing him by sucking down his champagne and gourmandising his entrecote à la Paradise and his chapons en demi-deuil.
The flowery and balmy Ambrose, en fête for the festival, with an American twang, which he had not stayed long enough in Chicago to closely imitate, gave the circumspect gathering an approximate idea as to how he had seen barmaid wedding-luncheons conducted in Chicago; how he had performed the miracles, he might say himself alone, and had entertained five hundred and ninety-nine of his fellow tooth-merchants at one sitting, when Michigan cock-tails were considered the real "muck-high," although all the time he was looking very wistfully at the popping bottles of champagne.
The Christy minstrel midshipman rendered without music what he called Offenbach's "Good on yer Mary Ann." The effect was electrical. The party broke up. Eugene led his wife outside the luncheon hall. Turning around to get his hat, he noticed she was drawn into the passage, and on looking to ascertain the cause of the wire-pulling performance, he found it was not a wire-pulling performance, but an osculatory performance, because he found a lob-lolly of a boy saluting the bird of the sun with a prolonged and slobbering juicy kiss. He had never had the pleasure of meeting the young Adonis before, and at the moment imagined him to be some long-lost brother, cousin, or other relative; but subsequently finding he had no more than an Adam and Eve relationship with the paradisal bride, and fancying the episode was an apologue of former love-passages between them, the steady thermometer of his love experienced a temporary fall.
While the merry-making and festivities of that wedding luncheon-hall continued in hilarious clamour at the hotel, at the foot of her beloved son's grave in St. Martin's knelt Miriam, her hands clasped in prayer and with her eyes uplifted to Heaven, breathing as of old the orison—"Teach us to love one another in Thee and for Thee, and in the world to come unite us at Thy feet, where peace and love are perfect and everlasting." None knew his mother better than Eugene, and he least of all expected that she would desert that grave for a wedding-feast. Wrapt in prayer, and happy in the chanting of litanies, she had spent most of the day under the shadow of the tomb, for her sweetest thoughts were those that told of saddest hours.
After a short adjournment to the old home of the bride, where she exchanged her dress for a golden brown cashmere, a brown velvet cape with biscuit-coloured silk, a rough, brown straw hat with blue ostrich feathers, roses and wall-flowers, the newly-married couple partook of a parting glass of wine, and noticed that the little table was literally covered with the dead marine bottles of gold-topped Moët and Chandon, giving an off-hand guess that fully one hundred and fifty were on view, all of which Mrs. Gould intended to stick bottom-up in the garden for borders.
Into the carriage in which he had come from Augusta, with his mare Rosie in the lead, he showed his young and excited wife, and soon they were on the high road across the sunlit plains to Augusta, where they caught the train to the city on their honeymoon trip by land and sea.
Where the bee sucks in the flowery dell: where the tempest-tossed fisherman moors his cockle-shell craft by the crisping, curling, plashing wave, and along the silvery milk-white shore, there lurked the Bird of Paradise side by side with her husband, soaring on the pinions of her love for him.
Happy princess following him she seemed to be. What cloud could cross that azure sky? What rift could break the lute-music of her sunny life? What storm could burst over that cloudless dome? What blemish could mar the empyreal architecture of her bright horizon? He studied her ways, her fancies and caprices. He pandered to her whims, and Marvel was the whimsical of the whimsical. He drew out plans for her gaiety and amusement, and, like Alexis, he piloted the bird of Heaven through the vistas of his devotion, and among the nooks and crannies of her paradisal realm.
Three weeks had they spent on their honeymoon holidays; all was peace and bliss and a continuous glow of mirth and pleasure. He introduced his wife to the great magnates of the city, the most eminent surgeons, and led her back again to the library, the quadrangle, the museum and the halls of the college, where his old master had invited them to a musical evening. They reclined on the seats by the orange and pomegranate trees and lolled on the green knolls in the gardens, while the lovelight glowed, flashed and scintillated from the lustrous eyes of his paradisal bride.
"Is there anything more I can do before we go home to please you Marvel?" he asked.
"No," she replied; "I am walking over paths of roses ever since we were married, and I'm as happy as the day is long."
"I only had a month's leave from the hospital." he said, "and I must go back this week; but before going back I would like to see my poor mother, as she did not come to the wedding, so if you like to come she will be delighted to see us, and the day after we will leave for home."
"Wherever you go I will go with you," she replied and they both embarked in the steamer for Galveston. From the quarter-deck of the Hyacinth, abreast on the swing of the rolling main, he pointed out to his spouse the scene of the cockspur of the blue and glamorous Colorado ranges, and as they entered the bight the somnolent city of Galveston—the marble shrines of monuments from afar gleaming white over the sunny sea—and the tomb where his brother lay and his mother had watched every evening through all the fallen years.
The first to meet and greet them as the steamer glided into her berth at the pier was the erstwhile midshipman—the faithful and magnanimous Dolly—and, judging by his appearance, a Christy minstrel play had just concluded or had for some time been on the tapis. Holding out his grimy arms, as she stepped from the accommodation-ladder he saluted the bride with overwhelming cordiality. "Halloa! there Marvel! how are you getting on? I got a chap to take my place wiping for an hour, to come down and meet you at the wharf; excuse my rig-out, as we get no time to wash in this company's service. What'll you do Eugene—get a cab, eh?" The sunny dreams of the bird of Paradise changed all at once after the electrical outburst into a hideous nightmare, and the rose-strewn paths became a slushy coal-pit as the effusive welcome of the big-hearted Dolly was shot into the delicately-toned ears of the musical Marvel.
"Oh! Never mind getting a cab; I think I would enjoy the walk, if it's not far," she said softly, yet significantly.
Thereupon with his brawny arms he encircled her portmanteaux, and hoisting them aloft on his shoulders, he trudged on by her paradisal side. Had he not been so well-known in the town it would not have been so bad, but there wasn't a boy in the neighbourhood that hadn't been to school with him, and at every corner they holloáed out—"Halloa Marlin' Spike, where did you shake the girl from?" "Whose mother is she?" "Good old Mary Ann!" "Shiver her timbers," "Cock-a-doodle-do!" and such like bantering salutations. Those funny boys got it hot—red hot—next day.
After about three minutes' walk, as their destination lay on the strand of the bay, they reached Lily Cottage, and entered the old home of Eugene's boyhood, where oft the breaking day had peeped in through the lattice of the window upon the labouring Eugene and his school-books, and where, suspended over the mantelpiece, conspicuous on the wall hung an oil painting of poor Gordon, and a large enameled photograph of the grave.
The head of the household made the bride welcome with an elaborately gushing osculation. He received the gorgeous bird with open arms literally, and marshaled in the mournful Miriam from the kitchen, where she was preparing a great feast of eggs and bacon for the occasion. At first she seemed to be a trifle jealous of the denouément of the bird, looking as if she wanted to know what right it had marrying one of her boys; but by nature overcome with anxiety to please all and sundry, from the pauper at the door to the cadging parson in the parlour, she bustled about the house, with one eye on the frying-pan and the other on the bird of the sun.
The disgust of Brosie at the unseemly haste took a musical turn. After numerous 'fairy tales,' told with a graphic touch in order lo give reality to the narratives, his select vocabulary of Chicago idioms and mannerisms running short, he exhumed from a pile of old music a thumb-soiled piece which he had learnt from a sedate old maid before he left for Lake Michigan, and placing it on the music-frame of the tin-kettling piano he played moderato "The exercise for three fingers of the left hand." This overture being achieved with uncommon accuracy, he grew emboldened because Marvel said "Thank you, Dr. Ambrose," and hauled out another sample from the ragged stack in the corner. It happened to be an anthem about goats at the pool of Siloam and in the valley of Sidon, and yet another of Macfarren's oratorio, "This is my beloved son" and "Repent ye:" yet another—"How pants the hart for the cooling streams;" so carefully explaining that he did not suppose she liked sacred music and would not inflict it upon her, he pitched it back on the rubbish heap, and displayed the volume and pitch of his voice, without the assistance of the music, single-handed and single-throated. He had papillomata or crops of tiny elevations growing upon the vocal chords of his larynx and interfering greatly with the timbre, the vibration of the true chords and the consequent resonance of his voice. Nevertheless he gave her a song like "Bally-hooley" and the bird said "thank you" again; whereas Dally opened the door of the kitchen, and amidst the crackling and hissing of the bacon and eggs on the fire he sang out with (he force of a pile-driver—"Shut up, you blairing ass: she can knock spots off that, you bet. Tie it up and give her a breeze."
Marvel, however, took everything in good part, and Eugene, who never forgot the old house at home, was pleased to see her assimilate with his relations: and indeed he thought that if it came to a matter of invidious comparison they were quite as good and in many ways better than her own. Amidst all the gratification, however, there was a fly in the ointment for Marvel.
Amongst other visitors who called at Lily Cottage to view and criticise the bride came one Jonathan Scatter, the next door neighbour and owner of Lily Cottage, bringing his prudish, methodical wife. They came in the back way. There were very few in the town who knew that his name was Jonathan Scatter. He was rarely called by his own name, but by a name which he had acquired by a peculiar habit which alt his life he had cultivated—the habit of annexing anything lying about the place which might at any time prove to be handy or useful, or that might save him the trouble of buying it—such as a chisel with the handle beaten away, a few screws, the head of an old hammer, a broken foot-rule, an old blacking brush, a new flower or a fancy flower-pot, a picture, a book—any sort of book—a few sheets of foolscap, a door-mat. Everything was a fish in his net. The first two words he learned to write at school were "have" and "take." His pockets were as capacious as those of a mandarin, and his jew-like propensities in general, as he seldom bought anything and invariably bartered something for it, obtained for him the sobriquet of "glue-pat Ike." In due course of time by inflexibly sticking to the guiding maxim of annexing anything that came in his way, never parting with money if he could avoid doing so, but invariably swopping something which he had pilfered for something out of his reach, apart altogether from the question of its being something needful, he succeeded in hoarding together, under cover of an old shed, a more curious collection than could be found in any pawnshop in London. He had among a congeries of oddities a row of thirty-three glue-pots, each glue-pot stamped on the bottom with the brand of timber-yard where he was employed, and where he had ample scope for his peculations. No man ever got the best of him in a bargain; but with wonderful finesse and great judgment in making a deal, he took them all in and he took them all down, without one solitary exception. He was a real hard case, and a bête noir to Brosie in the dog days and the troublous years to come.
No sooner had "glue-pot Ike" appeared in the precincts of Lily Cottage at any time than whoever espied him first would announce the visit to the others, when, as if a sparrow-hawk had alighted and stood coolly perching himself on the fence of a fowl-yard while he counted the number of chickens, took stock of their comparative sizes, and reconnoitred the collection for any formidable game-cock, the company in Lily Cottage would scatter each fowl to a position where he could have a bird's-eye-view of the hawk, and so defend his own belongings from his depredations. His wife, a prim, genteel, slender goody-goody, with an enormous black fringe, had in her prenuptial days been a dress-maker. She knew as much about quills, tucks, pleats and frills, the language of flowers and the various brands of a bottle of scent as any milliner in the kingdom. To all her airy frills the Bird of Paradise seemed to turn a deaf ear, and treated her with less courtesy than the others, probably opining that her husband's own blood relations were enough, and most of her forbearance was devoted to them. The good supercilious lady had brought a bouquet of flannel flowers, orchids and boronia, but piqued at the coldness of the bird of the sun at glue-pot Ike's suggestion she resolved to take it home again, for which little manœuvre she was ever after treated by Marvel with sovereign contempt, recognised by the some-time milliner with an acid smile on her nether lip whenever they happened to be in the same street. Her airy frills, too, annoyed Marvel, for it was a crime to emulate the ostentatious bird.
While the substantial repast was in a sort of transition state on the table, the hawk showed his presence among the pigeons in the dove-cote, and the usual flight from the room was made upon the sudden alarm, so that the bird of the sun was left with her husband, the hawk and the hawk's mate, wondering what could be the cause of the mustering pigeons and the clattering plates, the hurried stampede from the dining-room and the quick forming in the ranks of the sentry-guards. Rummaging about the room for a while, and seeing nothing he had not fossicked about before, the hawk withdrew to the back and appeared to be looking around quite unconcerned. All the time, however, he was prospecting for something he thought wanted "weeding out." Out came the terrified pigeons from their hiding places, and deputed one of their number to watch closely his movements; but not seeing anything which he could comfortably slip into his pocket, and in a manner afraid of the censure of his straight-laced puritanical wife, the hawk prepared to leave, whereupon the rising Chicago dentist offered to accompany him to the hymn of "Shall I go home empty-handed." The signification was well understood, for, as he leaned against the jamb of the door and watched Brosie over his shoulder, the hawk retorted that Brosie had as much sense as a sucking calf. With his mate and the bouquet he took his departure, while the outposted Dolly returned by the back way, and upheaving the sigh of one whose toils on earth were over—a most elaborate, prolonged and deep suspiration—announced that there was nothing sticking to Ike, insomuch he had watched him safely off the premises through the side gate. Thereupon the flutter in the dove-cote subsided.
Odds and ends of various pastimes and pleasantries passed away the evening, and Eugene with Marvel left Lily Cottage for the hotel, as there was a scarcity of house-room at the time. They journeyed home to Augusta by the morning train.
Arrived in the bridal home, be found his poor old Hemlock had migrated back to the hospital building, and her place usurped by the chronic broncho-asthmatical auntie, together with a new servant, as ugly and repulsive a creature as he ever saw in his employ. Mrs. Gould had also taken up her quarters in the residence, and had assisted the afflicted auntie in the redisposition of the furniture and the general turning of the house upside down. The ormulu marble clock was relegated to the kitchen, and the spurred-leggings thrown out into the shed. Looking in through the stable door with Mrs. Gould, his very nice mother-in-law caught sight of an innocent little swallow's nest, and saying that "they things were jist as bad as sparrers," she volunteered to climb up, if he liked, "screw their necks and putch them oot on the dung-hill."
Chapter XVI.
A Flood from the Alleghany Mountains.
The first few days after Marvel's arrival in her new home were busy days for the much-honoured bride. Theatrical snow-storms of cards drifted into the drawing-room, and carriages huddled together as if the wedding ceremonies were to be gone through again, while the mother bustled about the house and attended to the door as lady-in-waiting announcing the visitors. The little piebald pony with the water-melon leg was there and had brought Mrs. Downward, the mother of Carrie—an old friend of the doctor's, and a lady greatly respected in Augusta. The mother-in-law filled up the waiting-room with visitors, while the bride entertained Mrs. Downward in the drawing-room. Her demeanour was as strict and stern as if she were the archangel of the fiery-sworded cherubim guarding the battlements of the inhibited walls of Paradise. She appeared to think that her daughter was examining them and prescribing for them, as she only let in one at a time. The others had to wait their turn for admission into Paradise, but growing disgusted at being kept waiting so long they withdrew en masse, leaving their cards on the hall table, while the mother-in-law scowled them out, and ordered them to be sure and call some other time. It never occurred to her to let them all into the reception-room together.
Shortly after her arrival, Marvel hauled down the blue colours of the peacock, and startled some of the fin de siécle circles of Augusta, and especially the socially-experienced Madame, who, on referring to her work on etiquette after-the-wedding, found it was diametrically opposed to the rules for the bride to be seen in the streets seven days after her return home swathed in a large and loose cerise-coloured carriage cloak.
The wedding excursion of Eugene and his bride had, as far as the clemency of the weather was contributory to its enjoyment, ended just in time. During the journey home the clouds changed from mysterious indefinite billows of mist into defined purple bars, through which at evening shone the depths of golden radiance from behind, and the moon paled from a pearly lamp illuminating the dark into a silvery cresent sailing over a silvery sea. The day after their arrival there was not a glimpse to be seen of the sun in the leaden sky. Daylight was dimmed by the heavy veil of threatening darkness, and a far-reaching bank of lowering surcharged thunder-clouds loomed in the thickening extremes of the horizon.
"It's going to rain to-day, Marvel," said Eugene as he rose early in the morning at the call of the groom, "and I wanted to see the horse do his gallop this morning; we can't take him out very safely this sort of weather, so I think I'll just go down to the stable and tell Paddy to leave him where he is for the day." Paddy was already preparing to send Moss Rose out, when, as the doctor accosted him, a few big drops fell on the horse's neck and decided the question of his staying in the loose-box during the inclemency of the weather.
During breakfast three sharp loud claps of thunder and flashes of sheet lightning, illuminating the room, heralded the approaching storm, and he went down to the hospital in his great-coat to relieve the locum tenens who had been in charge during his absence and to visit the patients in the wards. Nothing unusual had occurred during his absence, and all the working of the famous institution seemed to be nice and smooth.
Since relinquishing the practice of the late Dr. Downward, which for eighteen months he had carried on for the benefit of the impoverished widow and orphan children, monthly reckonings of moneys received in connection with the abandoned practice for the foregoing months by Whitworth himself were made in the presence of a broken-down, old accountant by the name of Twigg. Twigg was an exceedingly corpulent man, familiarly known as "old Swing-belly." who had at one time been a bank manager, but through the downfall of the Bank of Louisiana he had been cashiered and obliged to retire, with a wife and a family of thirteen children to support by any little odds and ends of employment which he could procure from the tradespeople and others; such as keeping books, writing letters, making out and delivering accounts, collecting debts at one per cent. commission, and acting as sexton in the little chapel of the likewise adipose but reverend Father O'Hara. The white waistcoats of the venerable man were an admirable fit for old "Swing-belly," and he had an irrepressible habit of displaying them and indicating to people that they were gifts from the church, as a quiet hint that they might be the fore-runners of gifts from others whose Sunday mornings were spent in the divine service of the public-houses. His biggest contract on hand at the time of the ill-omened storm was to make out the accounts of the widow's flickering business, because the doctor himself was otherwise engaged, and to arrange about the drafting of an advertisement threatening all the pains and penalties of a summons to be issued against every defaulter—and their name was legion—at the end of the current month. The place of meeting for the three was the widow's house, a low-lying, damp, large, weatherboard tenement, where for nearly two years she had struggled with penury in the support of herself and twelve children and the liquidation of the legacy of debts bequeathed to her by her departing protector, so that now she was at her wit's end to keep the wolf from the door.
For three days without any positive or prospective intermission the rain fell in torrents for the whole of the seventy-two hours—not in light showers by any means, but ever since the peals of the thunder and the flashes of sheet lightning had occurred it settled down to and maintained a vehement and unmitigating downpour of water from a sky as black as ink. It swept the streets and flushed the channels at the sides of the thoroughfares, while the channel waters overflowed their banks and rushed over the pavements and the floors of the shops. From the amphitheatre of hills impromptu cascades and rushing tributaries poured into the river. The Alabama roared with the swelling tide, and its highest banks were already dipping underneath the impetuous flood as the doctor ventured to leave the hospital to meet the book-keeper and the widow in the evening.
Encased in a large waterproof, he arrived at the rendezvous, looking as if he had just escaped death by drowning. Pulling it off with the assistance of the widow and the accountant, he sat down with them in the dining-room to pay in the score of twenty dollars received since he had been there a month before. In dire distress at the paltry return, the widow was encouraged by Twigg to advertise the aforesaid notice of legal proceedings in the next issue of the local paper other than the "Evening Star," which indeed would have served the purpose ever so much better. Then proceeding to read the minutes of the previous meeting, to confirm them, and pass accounts for payment with no money to pay them, the portly man blowed like an eighty-barrel whale for about an hour compiling a list of the defaulters, to be arraigned in the court of weekly sessions, while the doctor sat most of the time smoking a cigar at the end of the table, now and then helping old "Swing-belly" to some whisky supplied by the disconsolate widow.
Suddenly, as if an armed cruiser had rammed the front door, in it was stove by a huge volume of water, which in the twinkling of an eye rushed down the passage and swashed into the rooms at the side to make estuaries.
"There's a flood!" cried Twigg: "get out as quick as you can or be drowned." The words were barely out of his mouth when in mad turmoil the unpropitious flood lifted the massive mahogany table off its feet, and floated it round about the room, tossing it like a leaf on a whirlpool. Wading through water up to the middle of his waistcoat, Twigg struggled desperately out through the door, and stemming the impetus of the fast-flowing tide he reached a higher level on the road. There he was comparatively safe.
Non-plussed, horrified, maddened, with a ghastly white pallor on her face, she clambered upon the top of the raft-like table and screamed in terror—"My God, my God, what will I do?"
"Come out." called Eugene: "it will be safer outside, and better on the roof than to be drowned like a rat in a sewer."
Deafened with the shock of the concussion and flood, she stared and cried out to God, and screamed as if she had suddenly gone stark staring mad. Appealing to her was wasting precious time; so fastening his arms around her he lifted her bodily off the table and carried her through the rising waters safely out through the door. Round the corner of the house, he lifted her to the side, where, meeting a ladder leaning against the chimney wall, he climbed it with the woman in his arm and placed her on the top of the corrugated iron roof. Following her there, they stood watching the engulfing, overwhelming flood covering the country flats for miles. It was then about eleven o'clock, and, saving the light on the hill-supported house of the hospital, not a glimmer could be found in the all-pervading darkness.
Raising her face and clasped hands heavenward, she cried out—"Thank God my children are not at home." There had been a children's party at Madame's house, and they had all left about eight o'clock in cabs, in charge of their step-sister Caroline.
All through the night in the all-embracing black mantle of the dark, and in the burnt of the torrential rain on the roof they stood, watching for possible rescue and wondering if ever they would be saved. The débris of wrecked houses, drowning cattle, sheep, pigs and cats were buoyed along by the swelling flood, and at the mid-day dawn they saw something like a human body floating in the distance upon a raft, and near at hand, in the direction of the river, a light cockle-shell boat that belonged to the architect named Cosgrove, who had of late been rather amorously disposed towards Carrie. It appeared to have carried away from its moorings, and slowly floated in the direction of the house. It was only about two hundred yards away when Eugene noticed it first, and as it floated on at a somewhat oblique angle, he determined to try and intercept it. As a boy ha had been a strong swimmer.
"If you stand here I'll get that boat," he said suddenly to the terrified woman, who was now more composed and collected.
"Oh no! for God's sake no! don't attempt that; for God's sake don't drown yourself," she frantically cried.
Leading her over to the chimney, he placed her in shelter behind it, and pulling off his boots and coat, he re-descended the ladder to the surface of the water. Plunging into it he swam the smooth waters, away in the direction of the boat adrift on the immense water-plain. She anxiously watched his strenuous efforts, as with lungs and every muscle taxed to its utmost tension, he forged his way through the waste of waters, and she prayed fervently for him, till he heard her frantic yell as he caught at the gunwale. It heeled over to one side and forced him to board her astern. The Providence that had watched over the lives of her children had also been not unmindful of herself, for the paddles had not been carried away, though the bottom-boards of the boat were under the water. He placed them in the row-locks, and with the skill of a practised oar, which he had acquired at the university, he sculled her back whence he swam, and tied her painter to an iron stanchion in the wall. Re-descending the ladder, he lifted the thankful woman into the centre of the cockle-shell, and pushing the boat off with one of the paddles from the wall he paddled her home to the hospital. Shivering and faint with the all-night exposure to the storm, she was carried up the green bank of the hospital by the nurses and placed in a small ward to herself.
Mooring the plish-plashing boat to the garden gate, he followed them into the hospital, relating the experiences of the night, and drawing a stethoscope from the inside pocket of his coat he listened to the front and sides of her chest, and wrote for the dispenser a prescription. She had shown signs of the development of croupous pneumonia, a rapid and fiery inflammation of the lungs that was able to cut down the strongest man in the world in twenty-four hours. Placing among the blankets long cans of hot water, the nurses poured brandy into a feeding-cup and thence between her lips, while they sat beside her, alarmed at the rapidly-increasing hurry of her shallowing respiration, and at intervals taking her temperature with a clinical thermometer.
After seeing that his horses were safe, he walked up to the house on the higher hill, and upon relating the case to his new-fangled relations, they one and all seemed inclined to disbelieve him, treating the escapade in the coolest manner possible, while his mother-in-law went so far as to say that it would have served her right if she had been drowned. The long-suffering auntie expressed her opinion that it would have been much nicer and would have looked much better if he had come home early that night, instead of staying out till morning; while the bird of the sun affected to treat the matter as of no great consequence, tossing her head and telling her husband, as she performed a short pirouette on the carpet, that it did not signify that (with a snap of her finger) to her. Rather annoyed at the cold-blooded manner in which the serious case of his old friend was discussed, he returned to the hospital, and had his breakfast that morning with Hemlock, whose "Ha-Ha-Ha" expressed her gratitude at his providential escape, passed her opinion on the serious condition of the lady, upbraided the treacherous attributes of those who had stolen him away, and cordially welcomed him back to her fostering care.
For three days and three nights the life of Mrs. Downward was poised in the precarious balance of an appalling disease of the lungs; it wavered in agonising suspense on a frail and brittle thread. With fomentations of steaming hot spongio-piline, a medicated steaming apparatus to regulate and warm the temperature of the ward, supporting delicacies, frequent changes of medicaments, and close attendance by night and by day, not a stone was left unturned in their efforts to save her life. Messages came from Madame every few hours to the hospital, but not one of them was answered by the resident surgeon himself. He had heard of the traversations and aspersions cast by her on his wife's character, and he deliberately spurned her inquiries, forbidding her personal visits to the ward and the visits of Carrie and the children. Hypodermic injections of morphia were given every night to induce sleep, and the surgeon, as was usual in such cases, spent most of his time in the ward, and slept at night in the little spare bedroom of the hospital.
A week had passed when the patient showed signs of recovery. The temperature had fallen to its normal altitude; the respiration and pulse had become reduced to their relative frequency; all pain in the side and chest disappeared, and the prognosis was that she would be convalescent within a week. So she was. During the first week of her illness, nearly all his time had been spent in the ward of the hospital, and he had never once slept at home. On the last day of the week, when the first signs of her recovery set in, he was making preparations for returning to sleep at the house, when his frowning scowling mother-in-law accorded him a visit in the little breakfast room, near the ward where the sick lady lay.
"I'm taking Birdie home the day," began the irate mother-in-law; "when ye make up yer mine to stay ben yer ane hoose, and give over trying to break her heyart, she can come back; but a few days holyday whiles will do her nae harm."
"If I neglected this case," returned the doctor, "and she died, I would have a hornet's nest about my ears, and might as well leave the house and the hospital myself. Let Marvel alone; let her stay where she is; she will soon learn to put up with my being away here, and I candidly tell you that it is my opinion that she would he better off if she was left alone by a pair——"
Here Lilliecrap entered the little room and asked for the report for the month to hand over to the committee, and the seditious mother-in-law steamed checkmated but stormily away. Unknown to Eugene they had telegraphed for their own buggy to Maconville, and it was waiting at the door at the time Mrs. Gould entered the hospital. They drove the old auntie to Sunnyside, and without returning to the hospital hied them away to "the auld house at hame."
When he walked up to his residence in the evening, the bird of Heaven had floated away to higher regions, and the sole occupant of the house was the ugly slip-shod servant, who sheepishly gave him notice that she wished to leave.
"I give Mrs. Whitworth notice," she said, "five days ago. Me and that old dawg couldn't live in the same house another week, or else I would have been glad to stay. I know a lady when I see one, but that is the most cantankerous old bounce I ever met. Her daughter is not much better, and I told her so this morning. If you can manage without me, I would like to leave to-night, and I'll take two dollars ten cents instead of three."
Eugene replied that he was sorry she intended to go so soon, and gave her the week's wages. She seized upon her belongings and took her indignant departure, carrying her duds and her ugliness away. For the first time the barque of his matrimonial life was deserted, and he stood alone at the helm, for the waves had swept his paradisal mate away.
Chapter XVII.
Sukey as a Private Detective.
Under the benignant influence of the day-god, the flood waters subsided and entirely passed away, after carrying away bridges and portion of the railway line, dismantling culverts and reservoirs, and filling the shafts of the coal-mines. The fortunate patient left the institution for good after a fortnight's illness.
The training of the race-horse Moss Rose was proceeding apace to the complete satisfaction of his owner and trainer, and the mettlesome little mustang was developing signs of a steadily-progressive improvement day after day. Not so the sufferance of the house committee of the hospital. Most of the committee were culled from the different trades of the town, and the majority consisted of a motley collection of illiterate men, some of whom could scarcely sign their names and were obliged to hold the tip of the pen between their thumbs and forefingers while Lilliecrap signed for them their names in the visiting-book. The more insignificant the member the more he displayed his overweening conceit. Two friends alone on that committee ever showed any kindness to the doctor. One of these was the architect, whose boat he had risked his life to procure for the rescue of the perishing Mrs. Downward on the roof. Through the architect he heard the secrets of a conspiracy amongst the others directed against the resident surgeon for keeping and running a race-horse. The groom Paddy, he told Eugene, was looked upon as an impostor on the funds of the hospital, and in the opinion of some of the committee it was an imposition for the resident surgeon to keep him there at the expense of the institution.
"He was there when I took the appointment," said Eugene as they rode out together one Sunday morning a few miles out of the town, "and if he should be discharged now, he should have been discharged before I took charge." Riding along, with the tawny St. Bernard as a precursor, together with two greyhounds, they came upon a little creek called the Broken Creek, and as the horses were fording it the architect went on advising Eugene to give up horse-racing and dismiss Paddy next day.
"What are those dogs tearing at?" said Eugene, stopping the trend of the conversation, as the greyhounds howled and tore up the yellow silt from the sandy bed of the formerly flooded creek, and the St. Bernard tugged at something which he held in his mouth. Making a detour, they came up to the dogs. "It's a foot!" said Eugene in astonishment, as he got down from the saddle and scraped the silt away from the side, to discover a human leg and the naked remains of the body of a girl about twelve years old.
"It can't be that girl who was drowned at the time of the flood in Augusta, for she had her boots and clothes on at the time," remarked the architect.
"That is who it will be." replied Eugene. "When a body is drowned the currents and undertow of the water in time will take the clothes off it, and boots as well. We had better get back and apprise the police."
Calling off the frantic dogs and re-mounting, he rode back again to Augusta with the architect. The following day a coronial enquiry was held and the body identified by a milkwoman as that of her daughter, who had been carried away by the sweeping flood when milking, and drowned after a protracted struggle for her life.
On leaving the architect at his lodgings, they touched again upon the subject of the hospital conspiracy. "I don't like to discharge a good and faithful servant," said Eugene; "but I shall send the horse away to proper training-stables near the city, and get Paddy taken on there as a groom if I can."
"Don't breathe a word of what I have told you," said Cosgrove, "or I shall have Littlejohn getting up a conspiracy against me for divulging hospital committee secrets;" when the doctor, with an avowal of his good faith, walked his mare Rosie home. Upon entering the stable and dismounting, he informed Paddy that it was his intention to despatch Moss Rose to the training stables near the city and put him in charge of a professional trainer. He was too good for those small country meetings, he said, and the horse should distinguish himself in his own class about town.
"Well, it's for yerself to say, sir," began the ardent lover of the little black horse, lifting the green cap and scratching his head; "but by the holy Mary mother o' God, nobody can do anything with that harse but meself."
"Oh, that will be all right, Paddy," said the doctor. "You can take him down as soon as we get a horse-box from New Orleans, and I think I can make arrangements with the trainer to give you a job as groom there. Old Billy Fox has had forty years experience in horse-training, and was for years an owner himself. He has several other horses there, and I know he will be glad to have Moss Rose, as he seamed to take a liking to him after he won the cup, and I promised to let him have the horse if ever he left me. He ought to have something for you to do Paddy, and I know he will give it to you if be has."
"With respecks to yer honour, sir," said Paddy wiping a furtive tear from the side of his nose, "if that harse laves it will be the death of Patrick Flynn, so it will—the death of Patrick Flynn—the darling'!"
Upon entering on the Monday morning the deserted residence on the hill and passing the door of the dining-room, as he walked down the passage he heard voices in the drawing-room. Thinking a small crowd of female patients had come to consult him, he entered and saw seated around the table on every available chair the whole of the ostensible representatives of the houses of Gould, and one from the house of Whitworth.
There they were as large as life, just as if the Montagues and the Capulets had taken up their abode under the same roof to sit in solemn conclave and discuss the pleasure of Juliet. The great and mighty air-compressor, stirring himself to address the assembled houses, asked how much money the doctor expected he would have to pay over to the young widow (she was fifty-four). He had never seen the young woman himself, he admitted; but, from his experience he thought that one woman was quite enough for any man, and if money would tide over the present difficulty he could find it somewhere or other with that object in view. He then sat down upon a timid and tender Italian greyhound, called "Tottie," which had been worried by a bull-dog and sorely cut and bruised. The doctor had trimmed the wounds, bandaged them, and made Tottie a little bed on the sofa. It screamed with agony when the whole tonnage of the hydraulic rammer and great air-compressor fell upon the wounds in the sore little limbs; whereupon the mother-in-law was only prevented by the doctor from flinging it out of the window, or taking it down to the dunghill.
The doctor, making light of the reference to Mrs. Downward, stated that he did not owe the lady any money, and that he had no difficulty which money could tide over, as he did not patronise the bookmakers very much; besides, he had just made up his mind to send the race-horse away to a trainer near the city on the understanding that he was to get all the stakes and pay a reduced fee for the training.
The head of the house of Whitworth straightway came to the rescue and threw a flood of light upon the congress—particularly upon the doctor himself. He had been greatly surprised, he might say amazed, at receiving a telegram from his newly-made daughter-in-law the day before commanding him to come at once to Maconville. Dreading the worst, he had been travelling in a collier and nearly all night in the sluggish goods train, arriving at six a.m. that morning. If he had the money to pay away, it would not be necessary to ask for it twice—it would be quickly forthcoming; but unfortunately most of his means were exhausted in an expensive luxury at Chicago. He had some doubts in his mind about the correctness of the story which he had heard from Mrs. Gould at Maconville, but all he could say was that, if it were true, a woman of such a character would be enough to poison—yes, poison—the atmosphere around her wherever she breathed.
"Poison the devil!" ejaculated the doctor, and he gave the true particulars of the whole affair, smiling at the half-cynical bird of Paradise, who frowned at him in return, while it was as much as his sardonically-grinning mother-in-law could do to keep her finger-nails from tearing his face as she furiously fulminated at him for pandering to the worst of passions, and crushing the heart of her dear little Birdie under the wheels of a domestic Juggernaut.
The great and mighty man displaying an anxiety to catch the next train to the city, saying he wanted to see about some new Dick's driving belts, talked business again, and finished by asking the doctor point-blank how much he owed the widow again, with an air of vapid flippancy.
"Go and ask her yourself," retorted Eugene; "there's nothing owing to anybody by me," and taking up his hat, he left the meeting of the clans to discuss the question amongst themselves, while he loitered smoking cigars about the more congenial Moss Rose's box.
The two scions of the noteworthy houses shortly afterwards interviewed the lady in question, and in the most delicate manner possible they elicited from her the information that there was about two hundred dollars owing to her, which she was despairing of ever recovering. During the course of the delicately-worded inquiry, the great coal-king was informed that she would esteem his son-in-law as long as she lived, whereupon the great man winked at old Christopher Whitworth, as much as to say, "You see Birdie is right, there's something wrong here: there's none of the fool about Birdie."
After she had further declared that among all her friends none had done for her what he had done for her and her children, the deputation retired to discuss ways and means at the Seven Stars Hotel. Upon receiving the following morning by post a voucher for the sum of two hundred dollars, paid into her credit at the local bank, she was at her wit's end to know from whom it could have come, and for a long while imagined it had come from the doctor. One fool makes many.
The flood had swept the advertisement away. The defaulters were left unmolested, and Mrs. Downward decided upon leaving Augusta and purchasing a small millinery business in the city; while old Christopher assuming that his mission in the affair—which he looked upon as a great joke—had ended, confided to the doctor the idea that if the other old buffer was so generous he might have split the cheque and given him half for his trouble in mediating with the old woman and Birdie. Now that the tea-pot storm was over, he took his departure home by the afternoon train and steam-boat, deploring the length of time he had stayed away from Lily Cottage, as he might say for nothing at all.
In the wide wide world there is no such passion as jealousy! What other can tear the idol of a life from its pedestal, and shatter it in ruins to the dust without an apparent cause? What other can eat its way into the core of a loving and faithful heart, like a cankerous worm, and corrode the well-springs of affection in such a guise? What other can, like a juggler, extract evil out of good, make white appear black, and the noblest instincts of man selfish treason and rebellion? It is the glittering prize of the Tempter and Destroyer, and the flashing sword of the monarch of hell.
Thou green-eyed monster! what faithful hearts hast thou maliciously betrayed! what happy homes hast thou turned into a hell upon earth! How stalkest thou in thy painted robes into the minds of the innocent and the noble, to wreak thy mischief upon the good and the pure!
"Truly, the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths of corruption
Rise like an exhalation the misty phantoms of passion.
Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions of Satan."
In the beloved bosom of Eugene's wife had been sown the seeds of that Mephistophelian passion, to flourish and rankle within it until they could grow no more. For a month she had been away, and he little thought it was on account of his friend. As far as he knew, his father might have dropped into the house that morning from the clouds, and for the first time in his life he discovered that he had to deal with an irritable, captious and absurdly jealous wife. He for the first time seriously reflected over the warning of Guinevere, whose Platonic love and passions belonged to the sovereign elements, and spiritualised themselves into dreams of haunting music. Her uncouth mother and her shadowing aunt had fanned the flames of her foundationless suspicions. Instead of extinguishing them, they had made them spread and had led her to the threshold of self-torment for years.
Passing the matter over as lightly as he could, the house was at last left to themselves. Another servant was engaged, and Marvel seemed to be content and happy in her new home. While she had been away scores of visiting cards had been left, and now that the racehorse was gone he occupied the afternoons in driving her out to return the different calls. Fully a month had passed, and they were not half-way through the list, when a telegram came from the trainer saying that if the doctor could get away the following week he would like to meet him in the city. It thus became necessary to bustle through the week's work of repaying visits, and to urge Marvel to cut them as short as she possibly and decently could. She seemed to firmly believe that it was business in connection with the racehorse that was to take her husband away to town—as she had surreptitiously taken the telegram from his pocket, and had seen the trainer's name. Nevertheless her fantastic jealousy sponged out all reason and logic from her mind, and whispered to her that it seemed to be a strange coincidence that Mrs. Downward had left for the city a little while after the horse left. Swayed this way and that way by conflicting emotions, she was on the horns of a dilemma as to whether it was the horse or whether it was the woman that was taking him to the city. Her father had known the trainer, and she had heard him call the trainer an old rascal. This was quite enough. Marvel made up her mind that it was not the horse at all—it was the woman.
Suiting the action to the word, she arranged with her cousin at Sunnyside this time, instructing her not to come to the house but to go to the city the day on which he was supposed to meet the trainer; find out the trainer and inquire if he had seen her husband lately, and if so, when he had seen him last. Constant and devoted was her cousin Sukey—ever at the beck and call of Marvel for any little services of this character. So proficient did she become in performing them that she was afterwards called by Eugene, to her face, by the name of "Sukey Mouchard," which brand adhered to her as long as she lived. She was Marvel's tool and plaything.
Eugene proceeded with Marmaduke to town to keep his appointment with the trainer, who was to meet him opposite the horse-bazaar in the city. There he waited for an hour, but no trainer appeared. Instead, one of his daughters, a woman about forty, who had come into town to do some shopping, came after her business was finished to the spot opposite the horse-bazaar, and explained that her father was laid up in bed with twinges of gout, and could not leave home, but was anxious to see the doctor. Eugene thereupon decided on going out to the training stable, and Miss Fox, saying she had finished her business, walked with the doctor as far as the corner of Railway Street, and travelled with him in the same carriage to the training stables beyond Houston.
Near the horse-bazaar in the city was situated the Old Angel Hotel. Peeping out through an upstairs little casement, had the doctor looked up at the time, he might have noticed the steel-grey, ferrety eyes of his wife's dear cousin, with a white knob on her little inquisitorial nose flattened against the glass. With the details of the important news simmering and seething in her artful brain, she made a sort of extract from the decoction, and picking up her umbrella she hurried away to the telegraph office and wired to Marvel at the Augusta hospital—"Not horse; woman."
During his visit to the training stables he was persuaded to wait till the following morning at the old White Horse Hotel, of which the trainer was the proprietor, so that he might see Moss Rose do his trial first thing in the early morning. This was a most unlucky decision, as it turned out in the end to be in one respect, for although the trial of the horse surpassed all their expectations, when he arrived home at Augusta he found his wife in anguish and tears, hurling at him reproaches for his perfidy in the church, his false and treacherous subterfuges and low deceit, and avowing she would stay with him no longer, she telegraphed to her father again, scratched his face like a wild cat, and shut herself up, sobbing all day in her room. There was no use in attempting to make explanations: they were only another string of lies, to make her think all the less of him, despise him and hate the very sight of him from that day forward for evermore.
Instead of laying himself out for the lulling of any aerial suspicions, her husband made the grievous mistake of laying himself open unconsciously for more. Instead of spending his evenings at home with his wife, he mixed himself up with a horde of gamesters, book-makers, and all the horse-racing faculty of the town. He would stand for hours conversing about pedigrees of different horses, the colour and contour of some celebrated chieftain of the field, and at night, driven as he thought he was by the irritability of his wife from home, he was rapidly acquiring the habit of card-playing at one of the hotels—The Seven Stars.
Marmaduke always with him in the card-room, night after night he would sit with a coterie of three others—the publican, the bank-manager, and a played-out, antiquated doctor of medicine—till the night had been expended, and all the money was gone into the hands of the publican. He would wander home while the cocks were crowing on the hay-ricks, and his own canaries and skylarks were splitting the air with song. Marmaduke had no such cause for these delinquencies as he had. His gentle, forbearing and forgiving wife, instead of proclaiming his faults before the multitude from the house-tops and creating a scene of absurdity amongst her relations, would shield and screen him from every idle word, and sound his praises wherever she visited. Not so the hysterical, passionate, jealous, rabid and irritating Marvel. No peace could the doctor feel in his own house if anything he happened to do ruffled the vindictive and exasperating temper of his wife, with whom he lived on the chronic tip-toe of expectation of an eruptive storm, and in a continuous simmer of splenetic defiance. A jealous woman never forgives, and Marvel never forgot her horror of the toils of the soi-disant Circe.
Instead of placating her, he unconsciously aggravated her by the profound silence which he maintained, and instead of spending his time with her to forestall her perversity and her petulance, he wasted it in the card-room, and sometimes at the bar of the Seven Stars Hotel. The love which he felt for her when he solicited her devotion amidst the radiance of the rising yellow moon, and led her away as his queen from the altar, together with the constancy which he inwardly felt and outwardly showed to be one of his chief characteristics, Marvel herself, by her own premeditated actions, was doing all she could, without ever reflecting over it afterwards, to eradicate, root and branch from his mind. She had no introspectiveness, and she was a victim to mental myopia—an inability to foresee the outcome of her disaffection.
Having had his photo in conjunction with his bride taken during their honeymoon trip, when the package arrived, for some reason unknown to himself it contained only eleven portraits. With a galling sneer she taunted him with sending the missing one on the sly "to that bad woman," and threw the package into the fire. Little unconsidered trifles that not one woman in ten thousand would notice Marvel would magnify a hundred-fold, and in the heat of her temper she would cast them in his teeth as if they were the most atrocious crimes. Eugene without replying would slam the door, join the party at the Seven Stars Hotel, and make that little card-room his home for the rest of the night. Tout voila! He was disenchanted.
Ever since the morning when he had found her family and his own poor father ensconced in the dining-room at the instigation of his wife to present inuendoes of impropriety with a lady of great respect in the town, he perceived the littleness of her little mind, and resented it by withdrawing the former extravagance of his attention.
"This is the cross we must bear: the sin and the swift retribution."
Chapter XVIII.
Brosie on the Pinnacle of Science.
"I do remember an apothecary.
In tattered weeds with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones,
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes."
Shakespeare.
The storming of the Acropolis, the citadel of dental industries and refinement in the city of New Orleans, was commenced in the following year by Dr. Ambrose Vernon Whitworth, Doctor of Dental Surgery of the Chicago Dental College and Oral Institute, Apricot Street, Lake Michigan, United States of America. The brass plates at the top end of Fifth Avenue for a distance of a quarter of a mile on both sides of the street, screwed upon the doors, screwed into plugs in the walls at the fronts and sides, and fastened with cleets and patent fixings on the iron gates, were as thick as the blight on cotton-plantations, upon which thousands of turkeys, whose native home is America, subsisted; or as thick as blackberries around Raspberry Gully in the merry month of June. So fast was the number of brass plates increasing that it was at one time feared it would be necessary to lengthen the street or build new storeys on the roofs of aerial buildings skywards. Upstairs, downstairs, and in the attic on the top, the brass plates indicated the habitudes of physicians, surgeons, oculists, aurists, specialists, dentists in ordinary, surgeon dentists, mechanical dentists, galvanists, electropathists, masseurs, masseuses, palmists, cheiropodists and fortune-tellers. Some of the buildings were seven storeys high. If a galvanic or faradic shock, a set of false teeth, an artificial limb was required, or an eye, ear, nose or throat was to be examined, here were to be found the vendors of the manufacture and the advice of the specialists galore. From all parts of the States, by sea and by train, the halt, the lame, the blind and the toothless flocked every day to the great medical market. It was the fountain-head of medical science. Any medical practitioner or dentist located in the country, no matter how intrinsically superior he might be to the exquisite practising at the medical fair, was looked upon by the gullible public as a nonentity by his side. Medicaments floated in the atmosphere of the fair, magic and charm were ingrained with the lime of the buildings themselves. To the faithful it was a panacea as renowned as the pool of Bethsaida. It was to sit on the highest pinnacle of fame in the medical world to be there, and to throw the electric light into a foul malodorous ulcerated nose, or to stand over a loathsome mouth with a dental hammering engine and inhale their feculent pestiferous perfumes for hours. Several good openings in the country suggested themselves to Dr Ambrose Vernon, but to practise there was, for one of such credentials, to throw pearls before swine. What had he gone to Chicago for? what had he stayed there so many years for? but by incessant application and toil at his noble profession to distinguish himself, not alone at the college from which he had emanated, but in his after life in actual practice and rivalry with the most aspiring in the world; to show them what Chicago dentistry was; what gold filling was; what crown and bridge work was; pivoting, scaling, and artistic manipulation of the jaws. His training had embraced specialties that infringed on the domain of surgery, specially so called. He could easily excise the tongue with an ecraseur invented by himself, compared to which Middledorpf's was a toy: he could operate for necrosis of the jaws and knock out abscess of the antrum of Highmore in one act. Furthermore, surgical diseases of the throat and vocal chords, excepting papillomata, the nerve and blood supply of the face and neck, as far as the shoulders and even the membranes of the brain he had minutely gone into, and practised upon with his own hands time after time with signal success. Was all this recondite science and art to be thrown away on the wilderness? Perish the thought! It should illuminate the very pinnacle itself, and shed its irradiating light over the far desert at the same time.
One Batty Tuke, at the time of the arrival of the Mararona at the Mississippi quay with the sheaves, had for some length of time been casting his net for a suitable partner, and was advertising the fact that he would give a preferment to a dentist with a brand of D.D.S. upon him in an opening as a partner with himself. Hitherto Batty Tuke had been the proprietor of a small establishment, open for the sale of medicines, cigars, newspapers, and cheap jewelry, although he was generally known as an apothecary—
"and about his shelves,
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of pack-thread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show."
By virtue of a ratified act of Parliament, inasmuch as he had pulled a tooth during the tenure of his certificate as an apothecary, although he had no more knowledge of dentistry than a cow has of chemistry, he had full power to advertise himself as a dentist in ordinary of the State of Louisiana. Many were his claims on the attention of the newly-arrived Brosie, branded in Chicago with a big D.D.S. Batty had a very large circle of country friends, who had promised to support him hip and thigh, and he had a brother who advanced the wherewithal for floating the new enterprise.
The gentlemanly demeanour of Doctor Ambrose, as he called with the card which he had printed while he waited at the cheap jack s stamping machine in the street and interviewed the pushing apothecary (who had pulled a tooth) with his black silk bell-topper, gloves, umbrella and surtout, enlisted all the fund of faith which the apothecary possessed. When he displayed a little bit of paper stating that he was entitled to a gold medal for regulating teeth in addition to the diploma of D.D.S. on payment of a few arrears in his college fees, and stated that it was his poverty and not his will that made him consent to a partnership, the shrewd though precipitous Batty clinched the arrangement at once from fear that the prize would be snapped up somewhere else, engendered by Brosie's avowals that he had seas of offers on hand, all pressing for an immediate reply and his assurances that he would not join a partner if it were not for the fact that he was not wallowing in wealth. Together they drew out the plans and specifications of a huge brass plate, proclaiming to all to whom the tidings should come, greeting: Dr. Ambrose Whitworth, D.D.S., and Batty Tuke, R.D.S., registered dental surgeons: Doctor of Dental Surgery, Chic., Ill., U S.A., American dentists. The flash of genius on the jeweller's part deceived any casual observer with the impression that he was a D.D.S. Chic., Ill., U.S.A. as well as Brosie, and although the translation of R.D.S. into "registered dental surgeon" was somewhat redundant, ninety-nine out of every hundred who read the inscription thought it signified something else besides.
Three furnished rooms at a rental of twenty dollars per week were leased for twelve months, in one of the highest flats of the pinnacle, and a boy was engaged, not only to stand outside and make people sick or give them the toothache, but also to sit inside the door, fixed up in a silver-buttoned coat, answer the door, marshal the clients into the waiting-room, and tell lies by the bushel for Brosie.
A Yankee patent operating chair was secured at a cost of ninety-five dollars. It was a most elaborate concern. It was fitted with brackets at the side arms, and a multitude of miniature cabinet walnut drawers for the reception of perforators, files, drills, prickers and excavators of a variety of shapes and sizes. There was a combination head-piece or rest, covered with crimson plush, the side arms and seat being also upholstered in plush. A universal ball-and-socket joint, by pressing a lever at the back of the undercarriage, could place the patient in any position desirable or undesirable; it could even hoist his feet into the air vertically and retain his head in the head-piece next the floor. It was a work of art in itself, and required protecting every night from the dust of the outside world with an elaborate case of dark brown holland large enough to sail a canoe. Near at hand stood a dental engine, fitted with a treadling apparatus, similar, though incomparably superior, to the common treadle which he had treadled so long at the emporium of Foster Wax and Co. A large retort for the production of nitrous oxide or laughing gas, a specially constructed dentist's table, a vast combination of little phials, and a full supply of instruments auxiliary to the art filled up the rest of the operating room. The New York "Police Gazette," "Life," "Puck," and other comic, serio-comic or artistic periodicals lay in heaps upon the waiting-room table; while a leather suite, a cedar show-case, a photograph of Brosie addressing five hundred students at a dinner in Chicago, an ormolu clock and an overmantel equipped it in first-class style. An old lumber-room at the back was transformed into a work-room or laboratory by conducting a water-supply pipe through an embrasure in the wall; while a sink and a bench completed the necessary working plant of the establishment—all at the expense of the adventurous jeweller and apothecary.
When a skeleton outline of the terms of the agreement was drawn up on the counter of his little shop, it was forthwith put into proper legal phraseology by a firm of solicitors well-known to Brosie and very friendly with him. It contained thirty-two clauses, conspicuous among which was one whose purport was that each partner should devote himself, body and soul, to the furtherance of the project, each using his best and most strenuous endeavours to promote the interests of the other by every means that lay in his power. It was a fundamentally altruistic arrangement.
An advertisement was inserted in the daily papers drawing the attention of the public to the registration of the dental partnership, and containing a foot-note to the effect that Dr. Ambrose Whitworth was a candidate far election as president of the Dental Board of the State of Louisiana. The concern was then declared open to the public by a flag stuck out of the window.
The first customer who called to patronise and inaugurate the new business was none other than old Adam Quain. He had come all the way from the Colorado ranges to have a tooth drawn, and could not refrain from passing remarks about the bright well-kept instruments, and the princely equipment of the rooms, probably harking back on the rusty screwdriver with which he had been operated upon in Foster Wax and Co.'s armchair on a former occasion, when Brosie was not yet out of his indentures. He presumed Brosie had brought all the grand furniture from Chicago.
No other patient called for a month. The ennui of attendance from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon with nothing to do began to show its effects upon the over-sanguine Brosie. He dreamed that he might advance the business by judiciously patronising some of the aristocratic hotels, by buttering up and slithering down the young ladies behind the bars, and by prying into their mouths and coaxing them into a new set which he would offer cheap. Hailing the handsomest of the hansom cabs from the rank arrayed opposite his rooms, he would drive in lordly style to the Mississippi Hotel, enter the bar of the hotel and keep the cab waiting outside. Elbowing his way through the bibulous crowd in the bar-room, over the bar he would lean, whistle to the lady in attendance and call for something with, a Chicago slang name, which she didn't understand. During the conversation thus necessitated for the edification of the maiden, he would notice something peculiar about her teeth and draw her attention to the same. Mocking the Western accent every time he saw a chance, after shaking hands he would say—"Open—take your finger away—close: yaas, jest so, I guess your teeth air chock-a-block full of tartar and odontoclasts: your peach-blossom cheeks air fairly spoilt for want of a set of ivory; there's my caird; if you air careful to keep it to yourself I'll make you a set for nothing."
Several of the maidens thuswise drawn to the dental emporium did not forget to call for the set without fee or reward. They further introduced their friends as well, so that, all at once, new customers rapidly increased in number, and made the place so lively outside that people considered the firm of Whitworth and Tuke was one of the roost successful in the city, and talked about the wondrous mushroom growth of the new emporium.
The quid-pro-quo for the ivory was unlimited credit at the bars, so that in due course it became quite, a common thing when he was engaged in these outdoor duties to summon the cabman with much patronage to follow at his heels, and call for refreshments for all the occupants of the room. The quid-pro-quo for the charioteer was, that beyond the drink, although he was kept waiting for half-an-hour at half-a-dozen hotels, he got no quid at all. The jehus often bailed up his brother, the doctor, in the city for payment, mistaking him for the dentist, both being remarkably alike.
The only other contingent who patronised the new firm consisted of the uncles, sisters, cousins, aunts and the ubiquitous mother-in-law of the original partner. These would occupy the rooms the whole day long, just as if they fancied themselves on the staff and were required there to add some tone to the proceedings; but although they were all fitted out with new sets of felspars, they never thought it worth while to put down the dollars for a tooth. On his remonstrating with the quondam jeweller about the importunate demands of his connexions, the jeweller informed him that they hung about the place for the sake of a show.
"We must make a show," he would say, "or the thing will never succeed," whereupon Brosie retorted that they should get a large glass show-case at the quondam jeweller's expense and put them in that, where they would make a holy show.
The pet patients of the doctor of dental surgery himself were always the ones from the bars; he never failed in his ministrations to their wants and in keeping them busy in return before the eyes of their masters in the hotels. Annoyed by the constant visits of the aunts and mother-in-low, and disconcerted by the black looks of the apothecary (who had pulled a tooth) when he examined the cash-book for the day every evening, Brosie began to think it would be much better if instead of staying so much at the rooms he occupied his time, his body and soul, by rousing up the business at the bars. In six weeks there wasn't a bar in the city with a barmaid whose mouth had not opened and closed at his command.
One or two chance patients did call during the hours of his absence the following month, but went away with the hell o' a' diseases swearing across the street. Marvel herself her husband endeavoured to persuade to have the hell removed at the emporium, but the bird of Heaven declared she would die first, and went away haughtily and spitefully before the gaze of the Chicago dentist to get it removed by an opposing firm. The great and mighty coal-king promised to call and submit to the taking of a wax impression of his mouth, in which a fang was hanging here and there, in order to get a new set at a cost of eighty-five dollars. He never, however, carried out his promise, and it was the last straw to break the camel's back.
Just as the abortive business was manifesting unequivocal signs of a stir, the plumber, a man with a scowling and merciless moustache, called for his wages for fitting up the chair, the water-pipe and the sink in the work-room. He was told he had called after banking hours, but that if he would leave it till the following day he would get his money without fail. Several cabmen and publicans also called and waited for some considerable time, giving the emporium quite a busy appearance before the public gaze; but they were one and all dismissed on the same understanding.
With the art of a cunning old debt dodger, he educated the silvery-buttoned boy, if they called again, to say the doctor was out for the day; the silvery boy told everybody who called that the doctor was out for the day, and thus promoted the business to its flickering end. One or two, more knowing and suspicious than the majority, insisted on waiting till the doctor returned, and for hours together, with bills in their hands, they mounted guard in the waiting-room, while Brosie all the while was sleeping off the products of the bar in a beer-sodden slumber on the sofa, with his boots cocked up on the crimson plush cushion of the operating chair in true Chicago style.
The silvery boy would open the door and poke in his ear to receive the question—"Are the animals gone?" and on being informed that the animals had gone, but were to return in half-an-hour, the worried, long-suffering Brosie would hurriedly assume his hat, despatch the boy for a cab, and begin the round of the town again.
Contemporaneous with another visit to Moss Rose, came the climax of the dental emporium, inasmuch as his brother from Augusta called upon him. He had heard of the failure of the concern, and called with an offer to help all he could. Looking around the operating room, the grand plush operating chair had the appearance of having been vomited over, the plush was stained and matted, the crank of the lever was broken, and the chair itself had a groggy appearance. The coalscuttle placed in the middle of the room was made to do duty as a spittoon. Not an instrument could be seen that was not covered with rust, and around the point of every perforator and excavator was twisted a dirty bit of cotton wool, while the ink was spilt over the account-books, and the cupboards were full of dead marines.
"You're a great pair of dentists, Brosie," he said in roars of laughter; "one knows nothing about it, and the other is never on duty."
Brosie declared that it was entirely the fault of the erstwhile jeweller, and that he had entered in his mind a judgment against Batty and a firm resolve to cut him. Cut him he did—and the silvery boy with him—for he never went back again, and all that remained for the partner to do was to pay the rent in arrears, pay nine hundred dollars for the fittings and materials, and sell them at auction for seventy-five per cent. less then what he had paid for them new. It nearly broke his heart, and compelled him to postpone his contemplated wedding with a fourth wife for a year, while the old mother-in-law stumped the town busy with the declamation of the Chicago dentist. She had never seen sich a man in all her born days.
So ended ingloriously within the short space of six weeks the first act in the burlesque of dentistry, as enactad by Dr. Ambrose Vernon Whitworth; so shown were the results of the six thousand dollars spent on Apricot Street, Chicago, and the ardor with which he had embraced his studies and labours while he was away. It broke the heart of poor old Christopher.
How many have passed through a similar first stage, to shine all the brighter and succeed all the more when from their after acts the dramatist eliminates the barmaid!
Perturbed and anxious, yet loving, Miriam called to offer her consolation when the great undertaking failed; but on being informed he was not in the office, with the assistance of the inamorate Dolly she searched about the city for him all day, and eventually came upon him sitting on the dirty form in the bar of a common tap-room called the "Slopers' Rest." He had left his lodgings, and his only possession was the key of the streets. Day after day the sun had gone down and left the world to darkness and to Brosie. The new silk hat had been exchanged for a dirty little second-hand half-moon-peaked cap; the fashionable surtout discarded for a frayed and moth-eaten serge sac; his gold pin, watch, locket and chain deposited safely under the bane of the golden balls, and all the tickets, which he called tomb-stones, were lost. There he sat in his disreputable plight, as thin as a rake and as yellow as a guinea—a victim of drink and famine-fever—with a gnawing pain at his side, for the way of the transgressor is hard. The sight of him staggered her. The blow of finding him where he was, and the incoherent, independent, babble to which he gave vent, were like arrows in her breast. Gently coaxing him out of the den with the promise to give him three cents for a glass of beer if he came, by slow interrupted stages she succeeded in getting him back to Lily cottage, where he had no option but to stay till he could recover his senses and feet. Brosie drank very small beer there.
Then, in that hitherto quiescent and united home, was initiated a ruffianly system of ameliorating his condition by knocking him about when he was scarcely able to stand and addressing him, if he showed any signs of a relapse, as if he were the dog about the place. The unenviable, narrow, ill-natured, ignoble ideas of the huckstering Jonathan Scatter, who made himself rudely officious in the affairs of Lily cottage, were to lose no opportunity of trying to induce his father to literally kick him out, and when he saw a safe chance he would maltreat him meanly and unmanfully, whereas the flying Dutchman forged grappling-irons to save him from external evil and anchor him in the calm sea of affection at home.
In his mother and his brother Eugene the ill-starred Brosie had the sum-total of his friends. Constantly urging upon old Christopher the parable of the man and the fig-tree, it was the gentle influence of Miriam that showed Brosie he was wrong, but the rough fists that assailed him only hurled him into the profoundest depths of desperation and confusion. For weeks together he would absent himself from Lily cottage, spending his days in barbers' shops and superintending cock-fights, and his nights by intruding himself for a bed upon a destitute old woman who had known his grandmother. Sending messages to Miriam by the milk-boy, he would meet her in the evening at the old favorite spot—the foot of the good Gordon's grave.
The presence of his dead brother added greatly to the power which Miriam held over his mind: for he was of a highly-strung emotional nature, and he experienced the hallucination that his guiltless brother's voice was speaking about his foibles from the tomb. He had fallen into the pit which waylays every man's steps—the pit from which few can clamber out unless some terrible calamity, earthquake-like, destroys the pit and accidentally liberates them; but to rise Brosie was slowly and surely persuaded by the vis vitæ and the still small voice within him, together with the gently-dropping influences, mightiest in the mighty—the influence of the convincing tone of his mother's reasoning force and discrimination, together with that charity extolled by St. Paul as the greatest of all the graces.
The habit of excessive drinking is not so much a vice as it is a misfortune—an incompatibility between the virtues of alcohol and certain qualities and conditions of the brain. The finer the brain the greater the in-compatability; the coarser the brain the more able is the man to disguise the effects of alcohol, and thus escape its handicapping influences in the battle of life, Oh! be merciful my brother whose virtue sits serene only in the absence of temptation. In the days of your prosperity sink the pride of your serene self-satisfaction, and scorn not yonder bedraggled victim whom you pass every morning on your triumphant march to business while you make broad your own phylacteries. In the great battle he is but a prisoner in the camp of a truculent enemy, and the day may come when he may exchange places with you. When we first begin to obey a rule we take to it absolutely, and follow it in its widest sense. Pluck then the mote out of thine own eye, and judge not that ye be not judged.
Chapter XIX.
The Coronation Plate, New Orleans.
Moss Rose and Paddy Flynn had now spent six months in the famous training stables at Houston, presided over by the immortal Billy Fox. Billy Fox was a half-cast negro from Tennessee. Ever since the horse had been put under his care he had shown day alter day a betterment which he persistently maintained, till now he was regarded by those who knew him as one of the most dangerous horses on the turf. Instead of entering him for long distance races, the plan of the veteran trainer was to confine him to a mile, and this was his favorite distance.
The eldest son of the trainer, who had won his spurs at jockeydom, had grown so big and bulky that he could no longer ride even in a steeplechase; but in a steeplechase, when he had his innings, he had shown himself to be one of the cleverest and most successful riders in America. No delusion of gallery finishes about Roland—he rode in butcher-boy style from start to finish. His sole duty now was to wait upon Moss Rose and another horse in the next stable, while Paddy's services found a more suitable employment in the capacity of what the stable boys called "mucking out;" but Paddy was happy and content in the reverie that he lived on the same premises as the little darling racehorse, and if ever anybody was sufficiently audacious to cast a slur on Moss Rose he would stand aghast and enthusiastically declare—"Oh! phwhot a loi! it's meself 'll put a kink in somebody's neck for that." Roland Fox was a born lover, adorer and groom of a good horse. From the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb he was never done polishing the black satin coat of the mustang, or ministering to his manifold requirements in the stable, and Paddy felt quite resigned when Moss Rose was placed in Roland's hands.
Old Billy Fox was as artful and cunning as a New York sneak-thief. He knew more of what was in the horse than ever escaped his lips; he had not watched him in his trials with other standard celebrities, getting up at cock-crow morning after morning, for nothing. In every patient and painstaking way he could he prevented Moss Rose from winning all the races he had run for since he left the hospital stable. His customary plan was to administer a sort of decoction of green gin, which had the effect of making the horse sprawl half-intoxicated about the track when heated in the race, and flounder when nearing the winning-post. Six smaller events he had entered an acceptance for, and in every event he was not even placed. He was, thought the owner, working the horse to make money out of him, and indeed according to the agreement he had a perfect right to make all he legitimately could; but Eugene never suspected that any tricks were being foisted upon him and the handicapper. Time after time whenever he was entered and ran not placed, the dishonest trainer would pretend that he had backed him on behalf of his owner. A demand would be made upon Whitworth for the payment of greater or less amounts of money by an unknown bookmaker, who was also in the swindle with Billy. During the six months this conspiracy had cost Whitworth close on four hundred and fifty dollars, which all went into the bookmaker's bag, to be afterwards, with the deduction of a pre-arranged commission, handed over lo the trainer-king. The bookmaker's emoluments lay in the knowledge that the horse was not at such and such a time intended to win, and Moss Rose being a warm favorite with the public, who looked to the honour of his owner, he laid large sums against him and accommodated his clients with any odds they asked. This thievish trick had been played so long that it was at last suspected by the too-credulous doctor, and accordingly he resolved to attend the races himself in order to carefully watch for any signs of pulling the ribbons, and if detected to take the horse away from the stable altogether.
Glancing over the New York Herald o