Chapter IX (1)

Alice Montgomery’s health steadily drooped as the weeks went by and brought no sign from her husband in reply to her loving message, and when at length she received the letter written by her husband on leaving the monastery its utter hopelessness served only to add to her misery and to further undermine her health.

“We must take our poor darling south for the winter,” said the old grandmother to her husband, “or we shall lose her,” and her sad-eyed partner sighed acquiescence.

For Alice, the spring of her life seemed broken, and look which way she would, the horizon seemed dark and hopeless.

Her brother’s malady showed no signs of improvement; he went about pursued by a thousand phantasmal monetary cares--a craze of his brain for which no remedy could be provided, and which was only kept within bounds by his habit of spending long hours daily in signing imaginary checks in payment of inextinguishable loans.

In the late autumn an incident happened to him which accomplished what his medical advisers had considered to be well-nigh impossible in the ordinary course of nature.

While hanging a picture for his sister one day, the step-ladder on which he stood gave way, and precipitated him through a large pane of thick plate-glass. The sharp edges of the glass cut his face and neck severely and the result was a most terrible and alarming hemorrhage, which was only stopped after such a loss of blood as imperiled for a time the sufferer’s life.

This loss, however, served to ease and finally to entirely remove the pressure upon his brain resulting from his bullet wound, and when he came back to consciousness from the long fainting spells which succeeded the loss of blood, he inquired feebly of his sister, where he was, and whether she knew who the man was who had shot him.

His life, from the moment George Montgomery’s bullet had struck him until now, was a complete blank.

When Alice Montgomery learned from her brother’s lips what had taken place between him and her husband on the night of the quarrel, she, gentle soul, had no blame for the latter, although she loaded herself with bitter reproaches.

“My poor husband; what _must_ he have thought to see me meeting and kissing another man surreptitiously, when he believed I had no male relative living excepting the one in this house!”

Her husband’s letter had prepared her for her brother’s confession, but the details, as furnished by the latter, showed that the crime had been the result of but a momentary frenzy of jealousy which, as a woman, she could readily forgive.

When she took her first walk out of doors with her invalid brother, the last shock of autumn had stripped the trees and covered the sward with a dense matting of leaves which the colored gardener was leisurely removing with a large rake.

For a while the two stopped to speak to the old servitor, and then the latter resumed his work.

Suddenly Alice sprang with a cry from her brother’s side and seized the gardener’s rake.

“Stop! I saw something flash in the light just where your rake is.”

Softly she turned over the crumpled mass and there, at last, lying on a withered chestnut leaf, and round and clear as the first day it was made, lay the wedding-ring lost on that fateful morning, so many weary months ago.

Hidden in the dense green of the turf during the summer season, it had become exposed by the withering of the grass, only to be presently covered by the falling leaves.

First glancing at the initials and date cut on the inside of the hoop to see that there was no chance of a mistake, Alice pressed the ring again and again to her lips, cooing and murmuring glad words of love to herself the while.

“This is my wedding-ring,” she exclaimed to her greatly astonished brother, “which I lost on the day of your--your first accident, and all my trouble, I am sure, resulted from that loss. Now its recovery seems like an omen of good luck. Oh, I wonder where on the face of the world my dear husband is! I want to send him a message to tell him that all will be right if he will only come back.” And then as the apparent hopelessness of his return came back to her mind, the bright light died out of her eyes, and she resumed the walk with her brother in silence.

At the same hour George Montgomery learned for the first time from his dying comrade’s lips about the message which his wife had sent him by cable: “Come back; all is well.”

He had no words of reproach for the man who had atoned for the harm which he had done by sacrificing his life for him, but even in the midst of his great and new-found happiness, he groaned to think what dire complications the want of a reply to that message might have entailed.

The Indian had towed the boat to the shores of the beautiful Lake Rosalie, in whose wonderful hammocks that branch of the Seminole tribe which still clung to the Grand Mico, Tallahassee, had long built their wigwams.

The Indians bore the wounded man gently up the bluff on a deer-skin litter, and laid him on a soft couch of prepared Spanish moss, or old man’s beard, as it is sometimes called.

Over the sick man’s couch a great live oak flung its protecting shade, high above and impermeable to either sun or rain. On all sides the same gigantic trees with their dense evergreen foliage, towered to the skies, their vast limbs festooned with the long draperies of the flowing Spanish moss. A wide open space lay within a vast forest of these trees. The space was large enough for the encampment of an army, and as the mighty span of the live oak branches enabled them to overlap far overhead, the whole looked like some vast cathedral ornamented with delicate fretwork and bathed in a soft and appropriate religious gloom.

To the left of the wounded man lay beautiful Lake Rosalie, across whose broad bosom a refreshing breeze swept which fanned his fevered brow.

To his right, and far within the natural retreat, stood a cluster of wigwams, in whose entrances could be seen groups of squaws of all ages curiously regarding the new arrivals.

After a proper interval had elapsed, the aged Chief Tallahassee, came forward from his tent to greet George Montgomery. The chief was a man of commanding and exceedingly dignified appearance. He was evidently in nowise forgetful of the glories of the tribe of which he was head, even although that tribe should have dwindled down to a mere handful.

The braves who stood by his side were men of gigantic stature, and the Czar of all the Russias owns not warrior more true, or courtiers more obedient or of superior address.

The turbaned heads, clear aquiline features, and long wavy hair served to distinguish this race from all others on the continent of America. Beside their intellectual faces and stalwart frames, the cunning and ferocious Apache, with his meaner physique, shifty eye and animal profile, looked as the hyena looks beside the royal-looking lion.

George Montgomery despatched a letter to his wife, availing himself of the services of an Indian to reach the nearest postal point.

Allowing an interval of ten days to elapse, the same Indian returned by his direction for a reply.

None, however, came either that week or the next, and after the third week the Indian went back no more, and the gloom returned to George Montgomery’s brow.

He would fain have sped northward himself to investigate the cause of this silence, but his dying friend still lingered, and as his end drew near he seemed more eagerly to crave the other’s society.

“George--it will not be long--wait and close my eyes, and say a Christian prayer over my grave.”

And George, in sore trouble, waited.

At length it was clear that the end was at hand and poor De Leon begged his friend not to leave his side that day. As George sat by the other’s couch his ear caught now and then the utterances of delirium of his dying comrade.

“George! they are coming, and will soon be here. If they come before the sun sinks behind Lake Rosalie, I shall die happy.”

Then he slumbered, and George’s head sank on his breast in sad and heavy meditation.

“See! they are coming!” suddenly cried De Leon, rousing from his stupor and startling the various members of the tribe within sound.

George glanced anxiously at his friend, who was now struggling to a sitting position, and pointing across the lake.

“Look! look!” continued the dying man, “they have come in time.”

As Montgomery’s eyes followed the other’s hand, he saw, far in the distance, a small steam-boat crossing the lake. He leaped to his feet and then sat down, bitterly adding aloud, “Why should I excite myself, it is probably a party of surveyors.”

An hour later, George Montgomery and Alice, his wife, stood hand in hand by the death-bed of De Leon, and the latter’s dying eyes seemed only to have waited for this, for when they saw the happy reunion, they smiled a last benediction and then closed forever.

The meeting between husband and wife, inexpressible as it was in words, was a profound surprise to both. Mrs. Montgomery had gone South at her grandmother’s request, and George’s first letter was still following her. During their stay in Florida the old lady heard that Chief Tallahassee was camped near Lake Rosalie, and she conceived the brilliant idea of visiting her former friend, and, at the same time, lending some additional interest to her grand-daughter’s life.

With some difficulty she had secured the use of a small steam-yacht, with what result the reader already knows.

Tallahassee and two of his braves were absent when the boat arrived.

When the former silently entered the camp, rifle in hand, he found himself suddenly face to face with Mrs. Montgomery and the elder lady.

As he saw Alice, a wonderful light leapt to his eyes, and in the soft Seminole tongue he murmured: “It is the Water-Lily come back,” and he stooped and kissed the fair young hand which hung by her side.

“Ah, no, Tallahassee,” exclaimed the elder lady, with a rising mist in her eyes and a quiver in her voice which showed that she forgave the present neglect for the sake of the old and faithful memory, “Water-lilies fade as even great warriors fade. I am the friend whose husband you saved at Homosassa, and this new Water-Lily is my grand-daughter.”

Tallahassee recognized his error, and his eyes had a soft and tender light in them, as he scanned the aged though still beautiful lineaments of the woman he had known and loved so many years ago. Then he gently took her hand and raised it to his lips, saying tenderly as he did so, “The Water-Lily blooms afresh every spring, but Tallahassee, the Seminole, fades and dies.”

* * * * *

That night, as the full-orbed moon shone on the waters of Lake Rosalie, Alice explained fully what had only been whispered when they met. Her brother, she told her husband, had recovered, and no one save themselves knew who had wounded him. He, on his part, explained that some one else had received the message she had sent to Madrid begging him to return; but the name of the man who had received it, he did not divulge, so that in mingling her tears with those of her husband over De Leon’s lonely grave by Lake Rosalie, there was no bitterness from the thought of wrong done by the dead.

* * * * *

As George replaced on his wife’s hand the ring which had been lost, their eyes met in a long eloquent glance, misty with happy tears. “I will take good care not to take it off again, darling,--that is what you mean, is it not?--for I am sure that whatever others may say, _we_ will always believe that it is very unlucky either to take off or lose one’s wedding-ring.”

THE LEGEND OF THE RED MOSS RAPIDS.

“Is this the spot where the knight of the old legend was killed, Rowell?”

“Yes, dear, he died on these sharp, spear-pointed rocks, and the old folks living around here who remember the particulars as they were handed down through long generations, say that the rocks assumed that shape and the moss for the first time put on that peculiar blood tint after the murder. Imagination, no doubt; still the combination is certainly a very weird one.”

“Suppose you tell me the legend, dear, while we sit on this sloping bank; but, first of all, let me ask, was not the knight who was killed an ancestor of yours?”

“Our family is descended from his brother, Sir Gawain Erfert, whose likeness you saw in the picture gallery.”

“What! that strange, stern-looking knight in mail with his hand resting on the cross handle of his sword?”

“Yes, dear, he was the real founder of our family.”

“And now for the legend, dear,” said the fair Hilda, a beautiful girl of nineteen with large, dark, sympathetic eyes, and a smile whose brightness lit up all the shaded landscape.

Still, Rowell hesitated, and his naturally serious, almost sombre, air, took on more than a touch of gloom.

The two were betrothed lovers, and their wedding was fixed for the following June. Their engagement had suffered from none of the vicissitudes which are supposed to imperil the course of true love. This was largely owing to the depth of their mutual attachment, but it was also due in no small degree to the perfect compatibility of their natures. She was all sweetness and gentleness; he all calmness and strength, with apparently none of the usual masculine waywardness which is more prone to cloud than to illuminate the lover’s horizon.

“I am waiting, sir,” expostulated the gentle Hilda, nestling much closer to his side than was necessary to a successful hearing.

“Do you really want to hear that unhappy legend, dear?” replied Rowell. “It is a miserable story, and the consequences of what took place here so long ago have left a poison in our family tree which has showed itself in every generation since, in some painful way. Ever since that time, when the Knight Templar died on these rocks, five hundred years ago, some wretched blunder, like an echo of the old one, has occurred time and again to cloud each generation with misery and self-reproach; and caused the family to be known throughout the whole North Country as the “Gloomy Erferts.” When I tell you the story, which is shown by the old chronicles to be a dismally true one in every detail, and in that respect different from many other Border Legends, you may, perhaps, not care to become a member of such an ill-starred house. The risk, dear, seems to me to be quite considerable,” and the smile with which Rowell looked into the eyes of his _fiancée_ had infinitely more of wistfulness and pathos in it than was good to see in one so young.

“Oh, Rowell, do you think me a child! Our marriage is now so near that I consider myself one of the family already; and you would not hide my own family’s secrets from me would you?”

To Rowell, the warm pressure of the locked hands, the arch, lovelit glance, and the magnetism of the beautiful girl-woman at his side were irresistible; and taking the dainty head between his hands he kissed the upturned face again and again--eyes, hair, lips--in a burst of passion which left the fair Hilda’s cheeks all aglow, and her eyes eloquent with a struggle between rebellion and rapture.

“Now, to business, sir, if you have got over your outbreak of lunacy,” resumed the still blushing Hilda, as she regained possession of herself, and moved, with much pretence of distance, a foot away.

Rowell, seeing there was no escape, took up the recital of the legend, but there was a protest in his tones, which roused a look of remonstrance in his listener.

“When the second Crusade failed,” began Rowell, “among the surviving English knights who drifted slowly back to their homes, across Europe, enfeebled by wounds and the pestilential climate in which they had endured such untold hardships in their efforts to rescue the Holy City from the Infidel, there was a Knight Templar who for special valor in rescuing the person of the Preceptor as well as the sacred standard of his Order after their capture by the Saracens, was, at his request, absolved from his vows of celibacy by the Grand Master.

“This meant a retirement from the sacred Order, and as the latter’s rules recognized no form of withdrawal, or absolution from its vows save by death, the elaborate ceremonial customary on the death of a great knight was observed and the Knight Templar obtained his freedom only after the due performance of his funeral obsequies. The fame and position of these knights and of their spiritual order was so great that it is difficult to imagine any knight craving release.

“The explanation of the strange request, however, was to be found in the fact that this knight, after taking his vows, had met and had fallen hopelessly in love with a beautiful woman, the Lady Erminie Athelrade, and the love was fully reciprocated.

“A mutual confession of attachment had taken place, and the knight left with the apparently hopeless task before him of earning absolution from his vows by some unparalleled service to the Order. Failing success--and fulfilment of their desires had seemed beyond earthly possibilities--their only hope lay in some future reward for their constancy, beyond the grave, for the knight was of stainless character and would rather have suffered death a thousand times at the hands of the Paynim hosts than have betrayed his vows. So the knight had left England for the Holy Land, breathing the sentiment which found voice hundreds of years later: ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.’

“You will now understand with what feelings the knight--now no longer a Templar, but simply Sir Julian Erfert--found himself, wounded and war-beaten, it is true, but still alive, back in his native country; in the same little island as the woman he worshipped, whose image, glowing in his heart like a holy flame, had inspired him to deeds which had thrilled Christendom and beggared all knightly possibilities.

“Sir Julian, I ought to say, had one confidant of his passion, his elder brother, Sir Rowell.

“When Sir Julian arrived in England, no one would have recognized in the battered knight, innocent of followers, the former princely Templar, whose splendor of apparel and of retinue had elicited so much applause when he left to join the Crusaders five years before.

“It was late one summer afternoon, in early June, when Sir Julian rode up to the Castle of Barronby, where he had left the Lady Erminie in the care of her guardian, the Earl of Wolston, a man, the knight now recollected with a chill of apprehension, notorious for his grasping and ambitious nature.

“Sir Julian had had no tidings of the lady since he had left, and he had sent her no love message, ever mindful of the fact that it would be death to the fair reputation of any dame to have her name breathed by a Templar, or to have it known that she was interested in his welfare. He had sent her word of the accomplishment of his release, but whether or not his message had perished by the way in those perilous times he could not tell. He had forwarded a letter to his brother, too, and so there he was at last under the shadow of Castle Barronby’s walls, with his heart throbbing as it had never beat even when a dozen Saracen blades were at his throat and the gleam of his Red Cross banner was lost among the tossing crescents of the Infidel host.

“As he gathered rein for an instant in an open glade, a foot soldier, unarmed and with his head-casque gone, tottered into the opening and fell with a moan into the heavy grass. On seeing this strange sight, the knight dismounted and stooped over the soldier, who was evidently badly wounded.

“After he had unlaced the fainting man’s jerkin the soldier opened his eyes, and seeing Sir Julian, strove to rise, while his hollow voice struggled for utterance.

“‘Sir Knight, go tell the Earl, the Lady Athelrade has been carried off and her guard killed.’

“‘How many, and which way did they go?’ briefly inquired the knight.

“‘Full half a score spearmen and a knight whose crest I could not see. They went by Swivel’s Moss, on the Umber Road,’ and he said no more but fell back dead.

“The knight gave no glance to the castle, but he looked to his saddle girths, untied the mace at his saddle-bow, loosened the heavy sword in its sheath, and swung into the saddle humming softly a quaint eastern air which made his gallant charger crane back his ears to hear, and took all the fatigue out of his weary limbs. ‘This is like the old times, Salado,’ said the knight softly to his Arab, and the horse leapt at the words.

“The knight looked young again. ‘This is as my soul desired to win her, at the sword’s point. Heaven is good. And here is Swivel’s Moss, and there lies the Umber Road. Now, Salado!’

“Half an hour more and the Mivern Rapids could be heard. A few minutes later and the glint of helmets came to the rider through the trees. ‘We shall catch them at the ford, Salado,’ and the words gave new life to the willing Arab, who came of a fighting race, and to whom fighting was the very breath of life. ‘Ten to one, Salado, dare we venture?’ and the knight laughed softly to himself, and the flying steed shook his sides as if he too chuckled at the thought.

“A minute more, and the knight found himself face to face with the abductors, who, hearing pursuit, had gathered themselves into line on the edge of the ford.

“Yes, there they were, fully half a score and a knight with visor down, and without a crest, in command, and on the further side a female figure on horseback being hurried on in advance, on either side of her a well-armed soldier.

“‘Surrender the lady,’ shouted the knight through the bars of his visor.

“‘To whom?’ came back the haughty inquiry.

“‘To her friend and Earl Wolston.’

“The strange knight laughed.

“‘Tell the Earl,’ he said, ‘the lady is a willing fugitive, and will not return.’

“Sir Julian made no response, but Salado felt the touch--no more--of a gilded spur and shot forward like an arrow from a bow. The men-at-arms were stout and willing, but three of them fell from their seats like dummies before the whirl of that demoniac mace; and the gallant Arab fought no less willingly and mangled the opposing steeds. The odds were terrible, but such odds were familiar, and the solitary warrior was not without his chances. He had almost cleared a path, and even in the frenzy of fight his brain was troubled to know why the lady made no sign. Another horseman overthrown, and he stood face to face with the leader, exchanged with him ringing blows, which could be heard far above the roar of the rapids, on whose edge they fought. Once more the spur touched Salado, and the mace beat down the leader’s guard. Victory was in sight, almost, when, alas! the gallant Arab’s foot sank in the ooze of the river, and his suddenly arrested movement threw horse and rider into the shallow torrent. Sir Julian struggled to extricate himself and to rise to his feet, but half a dozen spears hemmed him in and drank his blood through the rifts in his armor made by the pointed rocks. The struggle of his horse carried him beneath the current, the surging flood filled his closed casque, and a long and last good-night fell, in his native land, on the knight who had survived all the dangers of the terrible Crusade. No, at least not yet, the leader knight, now unhelmeted, directed his spearmen to raise the dying knight and carry him to shore. But a javelin of rock between his shoulder-plates held him fast while he was bleeding to death from spear thrusts.

“When his helmet was unbarred he regained the consciousness temporarily lost, and his dying eyes wandered from the faces of the men around him to that of their leader. The sight of the latter seemed to trouble him, and he strove feebly to clear his eyes from the spray of the water and the mist of approaching death. ‘My brother, can it be?’ he murmured hoarsely.

“But why prolong the dismal story. It was his brother, Sir Rowell, who had carried out the abduction of the lady. He had heard that the Earl was about to wed the Lady Erminie to his nephew for the sake of her lands, and having received his brother’s message from the Holy Land and communicated its contents to the lady, an abduction was arranged as the only possible means of preventing a forced marriage. He had intended that his wife, the Lady Rowell, should give safe sanctuary to Erminie until Julian returned, when the two long-parted lovers should be united.

“The knight died in the arms of the lady he loved. Her lips consoled him--dying--for life’s disappointment. ‘Wait for me,’ were the last words he heard on earth, and his waiting was short, for as his eyes closed in death she drew the dagger from his belt and with it liberated her own soul, so that it could--not follow--but accompany him. They were buried together, and they left behind them the saddest man in all the world, my ancestor, Sir Rowell, whose terrible share in that fatal mistake--innocent enough in all conscience--has left all his descendants a heritage of penance, showing that Nature, like man, never forgets or forgives a blunder, or rather that she fails to discriminate between a crime and a blunder, and punishes or rewards only according to results.

“The tragedy of the rapids has been repeated in our family time and again down through the intervening centuries, not as tragedies perhaps, but as unhappy blunders--echo-like repetition of the first--such as have worked untold miseries to all the race.

“Now, darling, that I have told you the true legend of the Red Moss Rapids, do you still wish to marry into so dismal a family?”

“Yes, yes, more than ever; before it was simply a pleasure, now it is also a duty.”

“In what way, dearest?”

“Ah, that is my secret, sir, only to be revealed on our wedding day; but, tell me, was there no sequel to that terrible tragedy?”

“Well, my ancestor, who was the innocent cause of the slaying of Sir Julian, said on his death-bed that in the far distance he foresaw a time when the shadow consequent on his fatal error would be lifted from our house, but it would only happen when some descendant of the Athelrade family, who should be ignorant of all the circumstances, had of her own free will revived the traditions of the celebrated Order of the Templars.

“It was thought that grief had to some extent crazed the old knight’s brain, and that in the long trances which he was subject to prior to his death his burning desire to right the wrong he had inadvertently done--which had grown to be a perfect monomania with him--had put strange fancies into his head, and that as he imagined the misfortune which fell on our house had come through the slight done to the Order of the Templars by his brother’s retirement from it, even under proper dispensation, he grew in time to believe that peace could only come to the house again through some member of the Athelrade family (Lady Athelrade being the person who, so to speak, tempted Sir Julian) doing what I have stated.”

“Dear me,” remarked the fair Hilda, “how those fine old knights used to worry about things; just fancy any soldier of the present day distressing himself on his death-bed about an unlucky accident for which he was in no way to blame, and torturing his last moments with the forecast of what was going to happen three hundred years later.”

“Yes, it does seem strange,” returned her companion, “that these knights who seemed in many respects so much more cruel and bloodthirsty than men of the present day, should yet have had worries and anxieties which even the most delicate and nervous lady of the nineteenth century would despise. They were a strange medley, those knights of old, steeping Europe in blood for a mere idea, and dying cheerfully themselves if in their final departure they could but kiss a lock of some fair creature some thousands of miles away, whom they adored. Oh, enthusiasm is a great, an immeasurably great force. Tallyrand says: ‘_Point de zèle--point de zèle_,’ but his clarion-trumpeted cry of ‘No zeal, no zeal,’ is a vast mistake I think.

“His maxim may be all right for statesmen and diplomatists, but when the zealot dies from off the earth, one of Nature’s grandest forces will disappear.”

* * * * *

“Thank you, dear, that was quite an interesting little homily,” archly ventured Hilda, as she wooed her lover back to present and more attractive pursuits by placing her lovely arms round his neck. “Now, suppose you tell me, my hero, what you will give me if I can erase all that dark inky stain from your family escutcheon, in addition to providing you with a brand-new bride?”

“Well, _cara-mia_, I am afraid it is not to be done; what you term the ink stain has been there too long. My little sweetheart, who cannot find acidity enough for her daily life, and is imposed upon all the time on that account, certainly cannot evolve any acid strong enough to clear away a stain which has grown deeper with the centuries. No, dearest, if you insist upon marrying me after my recent disclosure, I am afraid you will find that the ill-fate will follow us, and that our union will be indeed for woe as well for weal.”

“Fie upon you, sir, for such gloomy thoughts; they are unworthy of my future husband, and I protest against them. Yes, sir,--in this way,” and her rosy lips stole upwards to his after a fashion that effectually erased everything but Paradise from his mind.

* * * * *

The wedding-day must have been Hymen’s own selection. The morning broke bright and clear with that dewy freshness in the air only to be found in Merrie England.

“Happy the bride the sun shines on,” a hundred pair of loving lips murmured in joyous congratulation to the dainty white-robed figure crowned with orange blossoms.

Surely never since time began did wedding-bells sound so merrily and so sweetly on the palpitating air as on that morning when the proud and happy Rowell led the fair Hilda from the altar. Forgotten were all ill-fated ancestry and gloomy legends. The past rolled itself up hastily and convulsively, as a roll of long-kept musty vellum bounds back into its old-time shape, and only the happy, glorious, untranslateable present remained. Words of gracious congratulation fell in showers on the ears of the blissful pair as sweet June flowers fell beneath their feet; but they scarcely heard or saw, so much greater was the joyous tumult in their happy blissful hearts.

* * * * *

“Hilda, my darling,” inquired the happy husband when his breath had come back to him, and they were seated behind a pair of high-stepping horses on their way to the railway station, with suspicious traces of rice still visible on their travelling attire, “I noticed you signed your name in the marriage register as Hilda Athelrade Erfert of Temple Newsam!”

“Yes, dearest, and you want to know how I come to use the name of Athelrade? Well, dear, I am a descendant of the Athelrade family. And O, my darling, I must confess something else now--_my secret_. I am also the owner of Temple Newsam--the innocent restorer of the tombs of the Knight Templars, foretold by your ancestor, and O, sweetheart, last and best of all, the destroyer of your family curse, as well as, I hope, the founder of your own particular and individual happiness.”

TWO NINETY-DAY OPTIONS.

“It is a most wretched business, and I wish I were well out of it.”

As these words fell from the speaker’s lips his strong right hand smote the portals in front of him, and Delmonico’s heavy glass doors swung violently back in response to the vigor of his touch.

Carried away by the force of his feelings, he swung into the restaurant with the full vigor of his mountain stride, and more as if he were a detective in expectation of surprising a gang of coiners than an innocent visitor in quest of congenial society and wholesome fare.

To speak the truth, Douglas Gaskell, a native of Scotland, and mining expert by profession, thought himself in very hard luck indeed this bright summer evening. Not even the hum of cheerful life around him could overcome his despondency or soften the bitter reflections which gnawed at his heart.

And as he reviewed the situation later on under the soothing influences of his cigar and coffee, he still reassured himself that he had most excellent grounds for repining, if not indeed for despairing altogether.

Glancing backward a few months he saw himself returning to his native land after many long years of self-denial and hardship in the mining districts of India and South Africa, with enfeebled health, a few hundred pounds, a good reputation for honesty in a business of some temptations, and a ripe experience in mining matters.

Then, in his retrospect, amid the hum of cheerful humanity around him, he saw the fairest face in Scotland smiling on him; he saw an obdurate old Scottish laird, who utterly refused to let his daughter be engaged to a “penniless mining fellow;” and after a long siege by soft, persistent womanhood’s irresistible arms, he saw the grim old borderer yield so far as to say that if he, Gaskell, could satisfy him, before he started for Norway in July, that he had means to maintain his daughter suitably, he would then be willing to consider the propriety of an engagement, on the clear, mutual understanding, however, that Gaskell must sheer off for good if he were unable to satisfy the old man within the three months which he allowed him.

This had been a most despairing decision to the mining expert, who termed it the offer of “A ninety-day option on the woman I love, with impossible conditions, and the wreck of two lives as a forfeit.” But Madge, the lady of his heart’s affections, had declared everything was possible of achievement to true love within three months; and how his stern face softened as he recalled the bright, hopeful loyal look with which she had dispatched him to London to take counsel with her uncle, her dead mother’s favorite brother.

He remembered how the uncle had obtained him a commission to examine an American gold mine, as a step towards finding, on his own account, while in the mining districts of the United States, some good property suitable for the British market.

“If you find such a mine,” he had said, “I will do my best to place it for you, and you can honestly add $100,000 to its price as discoverer, if it is large enough, and provided the terms on which you obtain the control will justify it. That is the only way that occurs to me in which you can honestly comply with the old curmudgeon’s absurd conditions within the time.”

The face of the silent and absorbed man grew dark as he recalled how, in the execution of his commission, he had arrived in New York only to learn that the property he came to examine had been withdrawn from the market.

The fact was that the gentleman who had offered the property in London, and who had accompanied him across the ocean to introduce him to the proprietors, had taken his measure accurately during the voyage, and had reported to his colleagues and joint owners that he was quite satisfied that Gaskell could not be tampered with, but would insist upon making a thorough examination, such as must inevitably disclose the worthlessness of the property. The owners were simply a gang of unscrupulous adventurers, who had thought to avail themselves of the existing craze for American mining properties.

It was the announcement of the withdrawal of the property which had plunged Douglas Gaskell into the depths of despondency in which this narrative finds him.

As his retrospection ended he sat lost in thought, and barely conscious of the ebb and flow of the city’s gilded youth, and the men of affairs who throng Delmonico’s in ever-increasing numbers.

He was all unconsciously being very closely observed by three gentlemen seated at a distant table. Mr. Oswald, who had accompanied him across from England; Hector Marble and Hamilton Gilbey, all “speculators” in other people’s money. They were, in fact, the owners of the withdrawn mine. Mr. Gilbey broke the silence at their table. “It is just as easy to make a large haul as a small one,” he said. “We must manage to fix something up for this Scotch expert who is sitting over there looking so glum. He is disappointed at our withdrawal of this mine, and is, I imagine, ready for a fresh suggestion. Now I have been casting about for something to suit him, and I think I have discovered it at last.”

The three drew their chairs closer together than strictly honest men found it necessary to do in Delmonico’s, and the champagne in their glasses grew flat, and their cigars went out, while the one expounded and the two received and approved one of the choicest plans which villainy has ever concocted in connection with international syndicate or corporate business.

The proposition laid by Mr. Gilbey before his colleagues with much graphic force and a wealth of luminous illustration began with the preamble, They must have money. The Scotchman sitting near by suggested a means of getting it; he was only useful in connection with mines; he could not be fooled as to the quality of a mine, therefore he must be fooled in some other way, as they could not promptly get the control of any honest mine on terms which would be acceptable to the syndicate and profitable to them. That was the argument, and it was considered as being to the point. The proposition was as follows: Gilbey knew of a mine called “The Gold Queen” in California, which had at one time embraced a great number of claims and covered quite an extent of territory. This mine became quite a valuable property, and a dispute having arisen as to the ownership of one-half of it, the property was finally divided between the two litigants by decision of the Court of Appeals. Both properties retained the title of “Gold Queen,” and openings had been made in both about 700 yards apart. The workings in one mine had proved enormously successful, and that mine could not be purchased. The other had resulted in failure, and very little, if any, labor was now being expended on it.

Mr. Gilbey’s suggestion was that the “Gold Queen” mine, which had proved a failure, should be optioned to the English syndicate, and that while its survey should be correctly given on the option, steps should be taken to get Mr. Gaskell to examine the good mine, under the belief that he was inspecting the one optioned to his syndicate. “Although you can’t deceive him as to the existence of paying ore in a mine,” continued Gilbey, “you can readily confuse him as to the identity of the property he is examining, more especially if he is simply a mineralogist and not a surveyor as well.”

“I know the manager of the ‘Gold Queen’ now in operation--number one let us call it--and I can guarantee that he will see this business through if we divide with him. Number one is well known to be well worth a large sum of money, and it won’t do for us to offer the other property at less than half a million. The owner of the latter is willing to give me a four months’ option on it at $15,000.”

Their plans being matured, the illustrious pair were presently introduced to Mr. Gaskell as the owners of the mine which had been withdrawn. They had exerted themselves, they said, to find him a property of equal promise, and had at last, after much trouble, succeeded in obtaining for him an option on the “Gold Queen.”

Mr. Gaskell had notified Madge’s uncle of his first disappointment by cable, and two hours after meeting Gilbey’s partners he walked across Madison Square and sent another cablegram intimating that he had heard of another property, and was about to go West to examine it at his own expense.

* * * * *

Two days later Mr. Gaskell left for San Francisco, where, on his arrival, he met the manager of the “Gold Queen” No. 1, who had received a telegram from Mr. Gilbey to go to San Francisco to receive an important letter, which letter he had carefully read and very cordially approved.

The days which followed had many anxious moments for the three speculators in New York.

“I do most devoutly hope this business won’t land us in State’s prison,” murmured the less courageous Marble.

“What nonsense. We have not made any incriminating statement in writing.”

“True, but you forget your letter to the manager of the mine. Won’t that show conspiracy?”

“That is all right,” was Gilbey’s airy rejoinder; “the manager is under my thumb.”

“By the way,” continued the tranquil Gilbey, “did you notice that Gaskell had the ninety days’ option which you gave him made to himself personally, and not as representing the syndicate?”

“Yes,” replied Oswald, “I noticed it. He would not take the responsibility of spending the syndicate’s money in making investigations which the members had not ordered. If he approves the property he will recommend it to his syndicate.”

A soft, sweet, childlike smile crept over the faces of the precious three as they separated.

* * * * *

A fortnight later Mr. Gilbey presented to his delighted associates the following dispatch from Gaskell, dated San Francisco:

“I approve of the mine optioned, subject to some amendment in
price, and start East to-night.

“DOUGLAS GASKELL.”

When Mr. Gaskell returned to New York he said he had made a very careful examination of the mine, and would be willing to accept an option for it if the price were fixed at $250,000 instead of double that sum. The radical curtailment of their figures somewhat dampened the ardor of the three confederates, but finally the price was fixed at $325,000 cash, with many protests on the part of Messrs. Marble and Gilbey. Mr. Oswald had throughout taken only such interest in the matter as a friend might manifest. His name did not occur on any of the papers given Mr. Gaskell, and on this occasion as on the others, he took little part in the arrangements.

In due time the purchase money was paid over, and Messrs. Marble & Gilbey, each with $100,000 to his credit, decided that they would seize the opportunity to satisfy a long-felt ambition to explore Southern America, not in the least--they were careful to assure the cynical Oswald--because they were fearful as to what view the cold judicial eye of the law might take of their action in connection with the mine they had sold.

Mr. Oswald, who, as stated, had purposely kept in the background, and in consequence contented himself with a smaller share of the profits, remained in New York.

* * * * *

Six months later Messrs. Gilbey and Marble were in the city of Mexico, wearied beyond the power of words with the vaunted charms of that country, and anxious only to be once more within sight of New York. Many a time they echoed the sentiment of the city wanderer at which we smile so often, “I would rather be a lamp-post on Broadway than a king anywhere else.”

But respite was at hand. A letter to Mr. Oswald, making apparently casual inquiry as to whether he had heard anything further of the “Gold Queen” sale, elicited the following characteristic reply:

“If you are cooping yourselves up in the city of Mexico because you are afraid to return on account of any troublesome developments in the ‘Gold Queen’ business, you may as well come back at once. The Englishmen have not discovered their blunder, and I do not think they ever will. I have a good story to tell you which is worth your while to come 3,000 miles to hear. Meet me at dinner on the 8th, usual time and place, and I’ll tell you the story. There’s no place like home!”

Within three hours the two speculators were on the way to New York.

When the second bottle of champagne had been opened at Mr. Oswald’s dinner the host lit a cigar, saying he supposed they were dying to hear his story.

The lips of the two twitched a little, and a hardly perceptible pallor indicated a passing nervousness.

“When the Scotchman got to the mine,” Oswald began, “the manager took him to ‘Gold Queen’ No. 1, as you (or as we) arranged. He remained under ground forty-eight hours. The manager was cautioned not to lose sight of him for a moment, but he gave in after thirty-six hours and went home to bed, as the Scot looked like spending a week in the bowels of the earth. When the manager returned, twelve hours later, he found Gaskell just coming to the surface. In reply to his inquiry he said he had completed his investigation and would take some rest. Whether this was merely a blind to put the manager off his guard, or whether he changed his mind, I don’t know, but after he had seen the other descend the mine, and had had some breakfast, he took the map which you gave him out of his valise and proceeded very carefully to compare it--first, with the boundaries of the No. 1 mine, which some loafing miner pointed out to him at his request, and then with the map of the same mine hanging in the company’s office, and which the manager had stupidly omitted to remove.

“As nearly as can be computed, it took that fellow just about five minutes to detect the trick. Of course this is mere guess-work, for the man himself was as silent as a clam. The profundity of his silence when he unravelled our tangled plots aroused my admiration.

“After he learned the game, he placidly descended Mine No. 2, the one of which he really held the option. He remained in that mine just sixteen hours, and all that time the manager concluded he was in bed and asleep. I’m sure I don’t know why, except on the assumption that a man must sleep sometime.

“With the assistance of an old Mexican miner, who practically lives down in that mine, in one of the shafts, he thoroughly explored the mine, more especially at that part which is in a straight line with the rich vein of No. 1.

“He had to all appearances some queer theory about that vein, for he and the old Mexican worked for more than twelve hours cutting in its direction. The result of these efforts was (it was ascertained after the purchase) that while the Mexican slept Gaskell struck a continuation of the vein belonging to No. 1. Having satisfied himself that he had struck the true vein and after taking out several specimens of the ore, he carefully covered up his ‘find,’ awoke the old man and returned to the surface.

“You will understand the discovery Gaskell had made when I tell you that from the vein in No. 1 to where it was identified in No. 2 is just 700 yards, of which 550 run through the land of No. 2, so that 11.14 of the great vein belong to the mine that Gaskell bought.

“Well, gentlemen, Gaskell sold that mine to his syndicate--it was his own venture--for $750,000, half cash, half stock, and his syndicate sold it to the public for $1,500,000. The new company has already taken $500,000 out of the mine in four months’ working, with the prospect of taking out twenty times as much in the next two years. The Scotsman’s profit of $325,000 taken in stock is now worth $1,000,000 in the market.”

Marble and his associates gazed at each other fixedly for a minute, and although their eyes spoke volumes, no word was uttered. The situation was altogether too deep for words. With one impulse they rose in grim silence from the table. “I find the air in this room suffocating,” finally ejaculated Gilbey, “let us go.”

As the now silent trio passed into the vestibule in making their exit to Fifth Avenue, Oswald shattered his preternatural calm by ejaculating: “Great Jupiter!” The exclamation was not surprising, for there, coming toward them, was Mr. Gaskell, the man they had done their best to swindle, and his bride, the beautiful and queenly Madge. For a moment a wavering in the ranks of the three was perceptible, and just the suspicion of a desire to stampede, but the expression on the expert’s face reassured them.

“My dear,” he said, addressing his wife, “let me present to you some friends of mine who once rendered me a very great service--somewhat inadvertently it is true”--(a faint shiver shook the three)--“but nevertheless a genuine service. They helped me to win what I wanted most on earth,” and his eyes rested fondly on his wife.

Mrs. Gaskell commented to her husband afterward on the strange, shy modesty which almost prevented the three gentlemen from meeting her gaze, and his smiling reply was, “They couldn’t stand the battery, dear.”

After the three friends had escaped into the street from the (to them) terrible situation, Oswald, probably for the first time in his life, wore a crestfallen air. “Boys,” he said, “he carries too many guns for us all round. Just think of it, he has never even mentioned to her the--to put it mildly--somewhat peculiar part we took in the mining deal.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you can always tell by the expression in a woman’s eyes, when you are presented to her, how her husband has been in the habit of speaking about you to her. I would rather have faced a hair-trigger revolver than those great gray eyes if she had known our game.”

Mr. Gaskell has taken other ninety-day options since his marriage, and some of them have proved very valuable, but he never expects to find one to equal that marvellous pair by which he won both fortune and bride in 1888.

A STRANGE STORY.

MR. JOHNSTONE’S INFIRMITY.

“Felix Johnstone! What a name, mamma! There is a great want of tone about it. Don’t you think so? I’m sure I hope the man is presentable, but you know how careless and unobservant Dick is.”

The speaker, Maud Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, a lovely girl of some twenty summers, sat, pen in hand, and with her pretty brows all a-pucker, in her mamma’s boudoir, scanning the list of names of intended guests of Ormsby Hall during the ensuing shooting season.

“My dear,” replied her stately and abundant mamma in a tone which settled the matter, “he is as rich as Crœsus, and even if he should prove eccentric, why he is an Australian, and you know everything is excused in a ‘Colonial;’ especially,” resumed the dame after a brief pause and with more than her usual drawl--“especially if he is very wealthy.”

Maud was too young for an argument of this kind to have any weight with her, but she only shrugged her well-poised shoulders by way of protest, and presently the letter of invitation for the Twelfth of August, when grouse shooting commenced, was on its way to Mr. Felix Johnstone.

The person whose name set the dainty Maud’s teeth on edge was a stoutly-built, well-preserved gentleman of some forty years, the greater part of whose life had been spent at the Antipodes, where, if he had not acquired much of the polish demanded by polite society, he had, nevertheless, secured a goodly supply of that excellent substitute for it--gold.