Chapter IX (2)

When Mr. Felix Johnstone reached the Hall, in response to the invitation, he found that the bulk of the other visitors had already arrived, and to a great extent “sorted” themselves, as he termed it; that is to say, that the males and females had, for the most part, settled upon their friendships for the period of their stay at Ormsby Hall.

This arrangement left the late arrival somewhat out in the cold. It is true that his friend Dick did his best to make him feel at home, but, as the old Squire, Colonel Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, was somewhat gouty, most of his duties as host devolved upon his son, who had in consequence but little time to devote to any particular guest.

“Jarvis,” said Mr. Johnstone to his valet the morning after his arrival, “you’ll have to keep me posted in things. You know that’s what you’re here for. Captain Fitzwaring recommended you as being the best man he knew, and Dick--I mean the Captain--knows a good man, if anybody does.”

“Yes, sir,” responded Jarvis with more of embarrassment than his usually immovable face was wont to show.

“What shall you wear this morning, sir?” inquired the valet, as if anxious to turn the conversation.

“Well, I thought a frock coat and that pair of lavender trousers, which Poole sent in before I left London, and a white waistcoat, would about suit this kind of weather and the style of society hereabouts--these and--of course patent leather shoes.”

It could hardly have happened in so well-trained a servant, and yet surely it was the ghost of a smile which his master saw flitting across Jarvis’ face.

“Eh! What is it, Jarvis?” inquired Mr. Johnstone sharply, “wont these do?”

“Well, sir,” replied the valet with much deference, “most gentlemen wear knickerbockers and lacing boots in the morning when they are going shooting. I thought, perhaps, this velvet jacket and these corduroy trousers, and woollen stockings or gaiters--”

“What, these great coarse things? Why, I was better dressed than that in the ‘Bush!’--still,” noticing a certain relentlessness of aspect creeping over the well-trained servant’s face, “if I must, I must; only it seems to me that there’s a great fondness here for showing one’s legs. I’m sure the way these flunkies aired their white silk stockings and great calves last night before the ladies was hardly decent. By the way, Jarvis, do you know any of the gentlemen staying here? If you do, just fire away and tell me all about them while I’m dressing myself like a--like a navvy!”

“Well, sir, there’s Mr. Granby just walking across the lawn. He is a celebrated barrister, made his reputation as a junior counsel in the Tichborne case; he is likely to get a judgeship out in Bombay soon, they say. The gentleman with him is Mr. Softleigh, editor of the Morning Whisper, a very fashionable paper. That dark-browed swarthy man with the piercing eyes, just lighting his cigar, is Hugo Swinton, the African traveler who had the terrible fight with the great gorilla now in the Zoo. The man waiting for him is Captain Bottomly, of the Guards, who reformed the British square when the Soudanese broke it at--somewhere in Egypt. They say he has six spear wounds in his body.”

“But, I say, Lord! Who is that pompous individual dressed in black--the one with the clean shaven face and port-winey complexion?”

“That, sir, is the Bishop of Oldchester,” replied Jarvis, with a touch of remonstrance in his tone.

“Well; and even he puts his chubby old calves on exhibition. Is he going shooting too?”

“No, sir,” replied Jarvis, with quite an air, as if there were limits to this kind of thing. “All the Bishops wear black tight fitting cloth gaiters; it is their Episcopal dress.”

“O, I see; well now, who is that very elegant young gentleman with the cane, bowing to the ladies in the pony carriage?”

“That is a Mr. Elphinstone Howard. I have never seen him before, but they tell me he belongs to one of the County families in the North somewhere. He is not very well acquainted with the gentry around here yet, as he has been brought up abroad where his father was retrenching. He saved Colonel Fitzwaring’s life in Florence by stopping a run-away horse, and with that introduction the family took him up and introduced him to English society.”

“Well, Jarvis, all of these men seem to be celebrated for something excepting myself. Can you tell me how such a common-place person as I am comes to be here?”

Jarvis did not like to tell Mr. Johnstone that his great wealth was his recommendation, so he evaded the question by inquiring which of his guns he would use that day.

“Oh, bother the guns,” was the response, “I don’t want to kill anything this beautiful morning. Here, Jarvis, quick!” he called suddenly from the window, “who is that lady driving the ponies?”

“That, sir, is the Lady Evelyn Beeton, daughter of the late Earl of Kingswood.”

“Is she very poor, Jarvis?” inquired Mr. Johnstone, after a substantial sigh indicative of dampened hopes at hearing the lady’s title.

“No, sir, she is reported to be quite wealthy, as she succeeded to the old Earl’s property, excepting the estates which, being entailed in the male line, passed to his nephew.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, Jarvis, deuced sorry, for that is the only woman I could ever have loved. Funny thing to tell you, isn’t it, but then you are in a way my confidential adviser in this strange, God-forsaken country, and I know you would never split on me, for if you did, Jarvis, I would break your blessed neck to a certainty.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the complaisant Jarvis, by way of acknowledging the other’s kind intentions.

“No, sir,” resumed Mr. Felix Johnstone with a burst of enthusiasm, “I’m not one of these men who have all their life long been trailing their hearts through the streets and highways for every thoughtless miss to trample on; my heart is a virgin field to be harvested only by one woman in this world, and if she won’t have it so, then, Jarvis, the grain has got to rot on the ground, that’s all. Now, Jarvis, there is something about the lady’s voice and look which stirs me like a trumpet. I sat opposite her at dinner last night, and the mistakes I made in consequence are something awful to contemplate. You see, Jarvis, she is not too young. She is, I imagine, about thirty----”

“She is thirty-two, sir,” respectfully corrected Jarvis, closing a Burke’s Peerage at which he had been glancing.

“Well, now, it strikes me, my friend,” retorted his master, with a flush on his brow, “that you are infernally precise about the Lady Evelyn Beeton’s age. May I take the liberty of inquiring, sir, how you came to know it exactly--just to a hair, as it were?”

There was fire in the master’s eye, but the well-trained valet answered with stoical calm. “Her ladyship’s age is in the Peerage; sir, I thought it might interest you to know.”

The answer was mollifying, but the little outburst called for a lull in the conversation, and Mr. Johnstone, now fully dressed, stood in silence looking out at the window, while the valet busied himself about his master’s effects with unruffled brow.

“She has such a high-bred and refined air, and such a soft and musical voice, and her eyes, what wonderful color and expression! And then the figure, so graceful, and yet so rounded. She ought to be a queen, and there I’m only a common Australian squatter and digger.”

Such was the murmuring monotone which rolled musically from the massive throat of Felix Johnstone by the window.

“Well--I’m--consumed,” he suddenly shouted, “if that jackanapes Howard hasn’t got into the pony chaise beside her! My hat, Jarvis, quick!”

But soon he reined his fury’s pace. “After all, it is no business of mine,” he resumed, “besides, what could an uncultivated clod like me have in common with a noble refined lady like that! Now if she were only poor or in need of a friend, and,” warming to his work, “in danger of her life, there would be some show for me, but as it is, my case is simply hopeless,” with which moody reflections Mr. Johnstone slowly wended his way downstairs to a late breakfast.

He found Miss Maud, the daughter of the house, presiding at the breakfast table, with that radiant look and well groomed air peculiar to English country girls, and by and by, when they were left alone, he managed to turn the conversation to the object of his adoration.

“We think all the world of her,” remarked his companion. “She is one of nature’s true noble-women. She gave up the best years of her life to her invalid father, and now I suppose she will never marry.”

“Why it seems to me,” quickly replied Johnstone, “that young fellow Howard is paying her marked attention. And he is quite young and very good-looking.”

This sentence bore so dismal a tone that Miss Maud looked up, and after regarding the speaker with a demure glance, she arose from the table simultaneously with her _vis-à-vis_, and thereby terminated the morning meal.

As she saw Mr. Johnstone standing on the steps a few minutes later, in a listless attitude uncommon in so stalwart and well-knit a figure, she remarked to herself, “and so you are caught, my handsome but unsophisticated Antipodian.”

That evening at dinner an accident occurred which, for a time, assumed the dimensions of a calamity. Colonel Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, it must be stated, was lord lieutenant of the county in which he lived, and although he bore no title he occupied a position and lived in a style unsurpassed by any titled magnate within a hundred miles. Dinners at the Hall under his _régime_ assumed the importance of State festivals, and the order of procedence was as carefully observed as at any court ceremony.

At eight o’clock, when the dining-room’s stately doors were thrown wide open, it was accordingly a brilliant procession which Colonel Fitzwaring--albeit still somewhat shaky from the gout--headed with the worthy Bishop’s lady on his arm. Mrs. Penelope Broadbent was proud of her revered husband, and she was, subject to no deductions, proud, also, of herself. She was a lady of magnificent quantities, and if none of her numerous admirers used the word “stately” in describing her, it was probably because her wealth of proportion was other than perpendicular. If a great and artistic photographer had had to choose as to the best means of getting a really accurate and comprehensive likeness of Mrs. Penelope Broadbent, it is probable that he would have decided on a bird’s-eye view as having many points of advantage.

The lady, although of somewhat ardent complexion, affected the most delicate conceivable shades of dress, probably by the way of contrast. The latter was certainly sufficiently startling. On this particular evening the dress which sheltered and adorned, without qualifying, the tropical super-abundance of the bishop’s greater half, was a delicate primrose satin, and it shimmered and billowed in the softened light like waves of embodied chastity, while above it rose and fell a tossing wave of glittering jewels, the Broadbent historic gems, the envy, it was said, of Royalty itself.

The Bishop’s lady, as became her rank, sat at the right hand of the host, while her benign and dignified lord sat next to the hostess at the bottom of the table.

How it came about will probably never be known with absolute accuracy, but just as a staid and dignified footman was about to hand a plate of turtle soup to Mrs. Broadbent, the gentleman on her right--our friend Mr. Felix Johnstone--was observed to be searching wildly for his handkerchief. Alas! unfamiliarity with the geography of pockets in dress clothes, and a hazy recollection that a table napkin should never be placed to the nose, and the result was that Mr. Johnstone’s sneeze--a thing known and dreaded along a hundred miles of Australian coast--burst upon the dinner-table like the crack of doom. So weird, so awful, so unspeakable, and ear-splitting a sneeze had surely never been heard since the world began!

The footman, on Mr. Johnstone’s left, utterly demoralized, dropped his plate of soup where he stood, by the chair of the Bishop’s wife, and the contents, rich, dark, tenacious, fell on the ripe, warm shoulders of the shrieking, half-scalded victim, and rolled in an oily river down the palpitating, outraged bosom, and all athwart the delicate, primrose tinted garment.

The scene now beggared description. Mr. Felix Johnstone, also bespattered by the waiter’s munificence, for which he was devoutly grateful, as it gave him an excuse for leaving the table, walked to the door as if he expected to be hanged outside. As he bowed himself out with a calm born of the supremest desperation, three glances were daguerreotyped on his brain--the flaming visage of the Bishop burning with a look of very unapostolic rage; the amused and cynical smile of Mr. Elphinstone Howard (“I’ve seen you before, where?” flashed the thought and inquiry through the unhappy one’s brain), and last, a look of distress and commiseration directed toward him by Lady Evelyn. That last glance was one of resuscitation in its effects, and was painful, as such always are.

“O the pity of it!” the unhappy man murmured. “But for this awful occurrence she might have grown to care for me, but no woman ever forgave a man for making himself so ridiculous.”

“Jarvis,” he shouted as he entered his rooms, “bring me Bradshaw’s Railway Guide.”

“Yes, sir, I see you have had an accident, won’t you change your clothes, sir, before you return to the dining-room?”

“Jarvis, you are an idiot, do I look like a man who is about to return to a dining-room? I want you to find me the earliest train that starts for the North Pole, and if you don’t catch it, you’ll catch something else; that, I can promise you.”

Jarvis was a discreet servant of vast experience, and the train which he did look up, found its terminus in Euston Square, London.

“There is no train to-night, sir,” was all he said, as he closed his Bradshaw.

An hour later Dick, the son and heir of the family, entered his friend’s room, and after carefully closing the door and seeing Jarvis out of the way, he sat down opposite his friend and gave himself up to great and unrestrained laughter--laughing until the tears ran down his cheeks and until he rolled off his chair through weakness.

“The sight of that old girl!” he exclaimed irreverently between his paroxysms, “will last me till I die. She was clothed with soup as with a garment, and had more on than I ever saw her wear before at table. By Jove, Johnstone, you have rendered yourself immortal.”

“That’s right, old man, laugh your fill; but all the same, the thing has done for me. I shall leave here in the morning.”

“Now look here,” returned Dick with an approach to gravity in his manner; “that is precisely the very thing you must not do. My brain is small, but what there is of it is clear, and I know just what is going to happen. By to-morrow morning every one concerned in the accident, and most of all the Bishop and his wife, will be anxious to have the whole thing forgotten, and everything placed on its old footing. That is their only chance of escaping being made the laughing-stock of every county meeting within a hundred miles. Fancy it’s getting wind that you had run away because you had been the means of having the Bishop’s wife smothered with turtle soup while in a very _décolléte_ condition! Why, people would say it was judgment on the exuberant old dame. No, old chap, stay where you are and I’ll guarantee you absolution both from Bishop and dame.”

The other sat in silence for a while, and presently Dick continued, “By the way, if it is not too delicate a question, was there any special cause for that unique sneeze, and is that about your usual figure?”

The other winced for a moment, and then slowly answered, “That sneeze is my infirmity, but it does not spring from a cold. Ever since my earliest recollection the smell of musk has caused me to sneeze in just that way, and I noticed the scent of that perfume at table just before the attack came on. I was told in Australia that a very slight operation on the nostril, if skillfully performed, would cure the tendency to sneeze, and I thought I would try some specialist in London, but it is so long since I had one of the spasms that I imagined I was outgrowing them.”

Mr. Johnstone’s reception the following day bore out his friend’s prophecy. The Bishop and his wife were cordial in the extreme and by common consent the unwelcome subject was tabooed. Indeed the affair was overshadowed by an occurrence of a much more serious character.

Mrs. Broadbent’s jewels, to which reference has already been made, were discovered to have been stolen during the night. The shock which followed the announcement was intensified by the discovery that other jewels were missing. The stolen gems had been locked in a despatch box which was kept in the dressing-room adjoining the Bishop’s bedroom, and in the morning the box was found open and rifled of its contents. As the diamonds taken were of immense value it was deemed advisable to send to Scotland Yard for a London detective, and a telegram had been received promising the arrival of the detective the following morning.

In the closer companionship which crime always induces among the innocent within its orbit, Mr. Felix Johnstone found opportunities of conversation with the Lady Evelyn Beeton, and it is a pleasure to note that the lady found many solid attractions in the Colonist. He was different from the men of her acquaintance--more natural, more manly, less frivolous--in a word altogether more acceptable as a companion than her more polished friends.

In the result our hero sought his couch that night with very different feelings from those with which he had encountered it the previous night.

“About the North Pole, sir?” Jarvis had inquired, and his master’s reply was, “Jarvis, if you mention that vegetable or mineral again, you’ll lose your place. You leave that pole alone!”

And presently he slept the sleep of the just.

It was probably 2 A.M. when the door of Mr. Felix Johnstone’s bedroom opened softly and a male figure stole in on tiptoe. The light burned low in a night lamp, but that did not embarrass the intruder, who carried a dark lantern of his own. The sleeper’s face was turned from the door, and his breathing was deep and regular. Poising himself on his tiptoes, as if ready either to advance or fly, the intruder paused for a moment and regarded the sleeper attentively. Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory, for the burglar now advanced noiselessly in his list slippers to a stout portmanteau, and as he laid his hand on the lock he murmured, “I know him of old; he always carries heaps of money with him.” The better to facilitate his operations he laid a jewelry case, which he was carrying in his hand, on the dressing-table, while he took a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket. With the keys a cambric handkerchief was drawn out, and instantly the room was filled with a pungent odor of musk. The subdued jingle of the keys, or some other influence, troubled the sleeper, who moved uneasily. Warily the burglar stooped over him with the aromatic handkerchief, which he had just picked up, in his hand. Instantly the closed eyes opened wide, and ere the burglar could even move his hand there burst on the silence of the night that stupendous and unearthly sneeze. It had seemed terrible beyond measure in the crowded noisy room; but here, in the midnight silence, its intensity and immensity baffled all description.

Instantly Johnstone, now fully awake, bounded to his feet, and being nearer to the door than the burglar, he shut and locked it, and turned to confront the intruder, who in his affright and surprise had turned the light of his dark lantern on the room and on himself. “Whew!” exclaimed the astonished Australian, who recognized in the man before him not only the elegant Howard Elphinstone whose face had puzzled him long, but also Red Winthrop, a notorious Melbourne burglar, whom he had once been the means of “sending up” for a term of years.

“Don’t you think you have tempted your luck once too often, Red Winthrop?” inquired Johnstone grimly, as he faced the other with the bed between them.

The other’s eyes gave a dangerous gleam, but he said nothing. He only shook his wrist sharply, and a long bowie-knife lay in his palm. But for an instant, however. The next moment it flew with unerring aim at the other’s throat. Perhaps Johnstone should have been more on his guard, still his quick eye noted the danger, although not in time altogether to avert it. The willing blade hewed a deep rut along the side of the jaw, missing the jugular vein by a hair’s breadth, and passing on went straight through a pier glass and stuck quivering in the wood at the back of the glass. As the latter shivered, Johnstone, unmindful of his wound, called out “Seven years’ bad luck for you, Winthrop,” and vaulting across the bed he closed with the ex-convict, whom, after a short but sharp struggle, he succeeded in tying, hands and feet.

Meanwhile the whole household, aroused by the unearthly noise, was pounding at the door. When the latter was opened, a combined scream burst from the assembled guests. Johnstone was standing over the ex-convict in a pool of his own blood, which stained the white bed-clothes and even the walls of the room.

Little more will suffice. The casket left on Mr. Johnstone’s table contained the Lady Evelyn’s diamonds stolen that night. In the prisoner’s rooms were found Mrs. Broadbent’s jewels intact, and also those stolen from the other visitors.

Mr. Johnstone was in danger for some time from the excessive loss of blood, and when finally he managed to leave his room he did so, not only to find himself a general hero to all the folks at the Hall, but a very especial and particular kind of a hero to a certain Lady Evelyn Beeton.

When in process of time the mutual admiration between these two was crystallized in a happy union, the worthy Bishop tied the knot with an unction as ripe and gracious as ever the church sanctioned, while madame beamed on the alliance with a radiant effulgence which eclipsed and dwarfed all the surrounding objects.

Shortly after the recovery of our Australian friend he testified against Red Winthrop, and as that talented gentleman received his sentence of seven years’ transportation, Mr. Johnstone dryly remarked, “You shouldn’t break looking-glasses, Winthrop; I told you it meant seven years’ bad luck.”

It is only right to add that although our friend the Australian had sneezed himself back into favor after sneezing himself out of it, he rightly felt that so fateful a blast was a dangerous and uncertain possession, and, after a time, he took competent advice on the subject with the result that he now no longer dreads the musk odor which used to be his _bête noir_.

TWO CHRISTMAS EVES.

The swirling, eddying wind drove with a silent, ghostly fury up the deserted High Street of Upper Medlock one winter’s evening in 1884, carrying with it into every crevice and corner, in its wild pirouette, great waves of heavy inch-square snowflakes.

“Oh, what lovely weather for Christmas time,” exclaimed Mrs. Cargill as she stood by her husband’s side looking out of the deep, broad, comfortable bow-window of their house on the rioting tempest in white outside.

“Do you know,” she continued, nestling so close to her husband’s side that he had to put his arm round her dainty little waist to maintain his equilibrium, “do you know, that a storm like this makes me think our new home doubly comfortable and beautiful. You see it is the first real home that I was ever able to call my very own or yours, dear, which is quite the same thing, is it not?” and she looked up into her husband’s face with bright, happy eyes.

By way of reply her husband imprinted a warm kiss on the tempting lips so near to his own, and his arm tightened lovingly round the slender form.

“For shame, sir, kissing me at the window, I’m sure Mr. Strangely over the way at the banks saw you; it is too public even in a snow-storm.”

But the husband dropped the arm which imprisoned her waist, and turned from the window with a sigh which only a strong effort kept from changing into a groan of despair.

“Ben!” exclaimed the anxious voice of his wife as she heard the sigh, “there is something wrong with you, tell me what it is, darling.”

“No, dear, there is nothing wrong; I was standing in an awkward position that was all,” and with this love-framed fiction the husband stroked his wife’s glossy brown hair, and looked tenderly into her eyes. But there was a shade of wistfulness in his own which the wife’s keen gaze noted with apprehension, and with womanly persistence she pressed her point.

At last, and not altogether unwillingly, for the load was a heavy one for a single heart to bear, the husband unbosomed his trouble, as, half an hour later, they sat round the bright fire, with the bleak storm barred and curtained out.

“You remember,” he began, “how your rejected admirer, Banker Strangely, returned good for evil, as we thought, by giving me an opportunity of going into the Longfellow mining deal with him, by which he said we both would make an enormous fortune.”

Mrs. Cargill nodded her head by way of reply, but kept silent. Her woman’s wit already saw trouble ahead, but she anticipated it by no word.

“Well,” her husband resumed, “you advised me not to have anything to do with the banker or his scheme; and, dear, you were so positive about it that when Strangely over-persuaded me by explaining that your objection arose only from a dislike to him, I felt averse to confessing what I had done until the money should have been made and I could bring it in my hand to you. You will recollect, dear,” almost pleaded the husband by way of excuse as he looked into the loving, patient eyes before him, “we were not very well off, and,” with a moist tenderness in his eyes, “I wanted so badly to have a pretty cage for the bonny bird I had just caught.”

The hand on his own pressed it gently, and there was a soft mist rising in the corner of the brown eyes, but the mouth was set and firm.

“Tell me, dear.”

The words fell from her lips, and they almost startled the husband, they sounded so unlike her usual soft, flute-like notes.

“Well,” resumed the husband almost desperately, “the sum I was to put in was $10,000, which was just $5,000 more than I could command at the time. I told Strangely that, and he said he would let me have the other $5,000, on my note of hand, which, he said, could be paid out of the profits of the mine, which was then doing remarkably well. I hesitated about giving the note, but Strangely showed me a letter from the owner of the mine, a man named George Williams, of Denver, which stated that the preceding month’s profit had been $1,500 nett, and he thought that figure would be maintained and considerably increased. Well, if that was true--and Strangely vouched for Williams’ honesty--I could easily meet the note which he asked me to give, out of the profits, more especially as the banker said he would agree to let all the profits be put aside for that purpose, and would not himself draw anything until the note I was asked to give was paid.

“That same letter of Williams which I speak of showed me that since Strangely had paid $1,000 down to bind the purchase, he (Williams) had received an offer of $35,000 for the mine, which was $10,000 more than we were going to pay for it.

“So to cut a long and miserable story short, I gave the banker my note six months ago, and the purchase of the mine was completed, I contributing $10,000 and Strangely paying $15,000. Since that time we have had the hardest kind of luck with the mine. First of all the manager left; then the mine was flooded; then some of the wooden supports gave way, and one of the shafts was closed, and the end of it all is that we have not received a single cent from the mine since we took it over, and my note for $5,000 is due to-morrow, and all the money I have or can control is $200. Was there ever such hard luck?”

For a time the two sat in silence hand in hand, he, just a little bit averse to forcing a premature expression, she, with her soft velvety eyes staring unseeingly into the blazing coals, miles deep in thought. Presently she spoke, and her voice was sweet and even, but there was an icy air about it, as if the breath which uttered it partook of the chill of the dismal night outside.

“And Mr. Strangely, won’t he enable you to meet that note or let it stand over, or renew it?” There was a suspicion of contempt in the last words, but not contempt for the person she was addressing.

“No, dear, Strangely has been telling me all the month that he is very short himself and that his directors will insist on the note being paid when due. He says that they have made some losses lately and are in quite a bad mood over them.”

“Well, dear, but if you _cannot_ meet the note, what will they do then?”

“They will protest my note, get a judgment against me, and sell my property.

“What! this house--our home!” almost screamed his wife, as she sprang to her feet, her indignant eyes all ablaze and giving back flame for flame with the leaping sea-coal fire.

“Yes, darling,” murmured the weary, heart-broken man, “everything down even to the baby’s cradle.”

“O, but they _cannot_ do it,” replied the wife, her bright head high in the air, and her eyes full of a lovely defiance. “Ben,” she resumed with a pitiful attempt at a cheery smile, “they cannot sell _you_, can they?”

“No, sweetheart,” replied Ben with a duplicate of the same wintery heartbreaking mirth in his tone.

“Then never mind, my darling, love will find a way out of the difficulty. My poor, poor dear, to think that you have been bearing this burden all alone for these long, miserable months while I was so blindly, so foolishly happy. And, oh me! to think of a note falling due on Christmas eve; that must have been Mr. Strangely’s doing that, to spoil our Christmas, now wasn’t it dear?”

“Well, I tried to put it off till January, but he said he could not make the note for more than six months, although he could renew it. Now, of course, he says he cannot renew it.”

“Just so, Ben, dear; do you not remember it was last Christmas eve Mr. Strangely proposed, and I declined his suit? Does not this seem like what you call getting even with us, darling, just a little like that, eh? He is a vindictive, jealous man, and he has tried to ruin you, that is all, love; that mine was a complete fraud, just his way of wrecking _you_. Depend on it, I am right. Did you send anyone to examine the mine? Do you know positively that he put $15,000 into it? No, my own honest, unsuspicious husband, I see you did not. Well, be assured it is as I say, and although he has spoilt our Christmas eve, he will not spoil our lives or our love. A woman always gets a keen insight into the character of the man who loves her; that is, provided she does not love him. When she returns his love, she is blind and can see none of his faults. I saw a good deal of Mr. Strangely, and I always disliked him, even when he was expressing the greatest devotion to myself; he is a bad, unprincipled man. That is probably not just what the commercial agencies say about him, but I know I am nearer the truth than they are.”

At this moment a ring was heard at the outer bell, and Mrs. Cargill rose hastily to her feet exclaiming--“Oh, that must be my brother Wilfred. I forgot to tell you that I had a dispatch from him this afternoon saying that he had arrived in New York from Denver, and would be here by this evening to spend his Christmas with us. I have not seen Wilfred for more than five years, and am so glad he is come. He is awfully cheerful, and will keep us from moping, and he is so lucky to everybody but himself, poor boy. He is quite poor, and yet he has been the means of making many people rich. He always seems to bring me good luck; and have you not seen people, dear, who were, on the contrary, what is called ‘ill-fated,’ who were always trying to do people good, and always harming them quite badly. No!--oh I have, time and again; and don’t you remember, in Bulwer Lytton’s ‘Harold,’ the ill-fated Haco, who is always trying to do the king good with the most disastrous results, and is finally the means of his death? Oh, I am so glad Will has come, and he is such a good hypnotizer too;” and so the dear little wife rattled on inconsequently, as if eager to drive out all miserable thoughts from her husband’s mind. But with all her semblance of cheerfulness there was a certain hardness of outline about the rounded cheek and chin which was not noticeable before, and seemed out of place in one so young.

Presently her brother Wilfred was ushered into the room, and introduced to her husband. When the first hearty welcomes were over and the evening meal had been discussed, Wilfred entertained his host and hostess with a graphic account of his experiences in the far West. These exhausted, his sister inquired of him how he had prospered in his affairs.

“About the same as usual,” was his response. “Still a bachelor and likely so to remain, for I am never more than $500 ahead of the world. I take my pleasure as it comes, and don’t hoard up so that I may have it when I am older and less able to enjoy it.”

The new-comer was a man of the most acute perceptions, and he soon became aware of a heaviness or constraint in the social atmosphere which pained him more almost than words could tell. “Great heavens,” he murmured to himself, “I hope my sister Nell has not made an unhappy match; yet I cannot imagine Ben to be an unkind man. There is more here than meets the eye. I must get it out of him; it won’t do to receive any confidences from her, if I am to make any use of them.” He looked so abstracted in his musings that his sister, brightening up forcibly, said, “Why, Will, you are positively dull; are you busy hypnotizing someone now in the distance?”

“No,” replied the brother with a smile, “the fact is I am a kind of wild, unregenerate creature whose habits get away with him at times, having no wife to regulate them, and I am craving for a cigar with all the force of a weak and vicious nature. If you have a den where I can tame this wild beast within me--for I smoke weeds of the vilest strength--I will come back in an hour clothed and in my right mind.”

This was but a ruse to enable him to be alone with his brother-in-law, so that he might, if possible, induce or force a confession from him as to the cause of the domestic cloud. “Give me an hour with Auld Nick,” growled Wilfred to himself, “and I would wring the inside combination of the doors of Hades out of him.”

When the two men emerged an hour later from the cozy smoking-room, Wilfred knew all the facts of the domestic tribulation, and beyond an appearance of occasional absent-mindedness, bore the confession cheerily.

“What about Dick Strangely, who was formerly teller in the bank over the way, and one of your numerous and most persistent admirers, Nell?” he inquired.

“Why,” hurriedly remarked his brother-in-law, “did I not tell you that he was president of the bank over the way who held my note.”

“No, you certainly did not. Now Nell, your good husband has told me all about his trouble, and I want your opinion about it. You used to be pretty clear-headed; perhaps, however, I ought to have said pretty _and_ clear-headed.”

“And so he occupies the flat over the bank, does he?” was the inquiry which followed his sister’s opinion expressed in womanly fashion, but with a sense and directness which caused the listener to weigh well every word that fell from her lips.

As he made the inquiry, Wilfred rose from his seat, parted the heavy window curtains, and, undoing the wooden shutters, gazed across the street. The storm had abated, and for the time being, at least, the snow had ceased to fall. The bright lamp-light from the street fell full on the massive front of the bank and showed a white face and cruel merciless gaze turned on the house--the house the Cargills were occupying.

“Why that was Strangely himself, was it not?” remarked Will, and the other nodding his reply he added, “Not much of friendship in that glance, brother-in-law mine; what do you say?”

Half an hour later the new arrival begged permission to retire, on the plea of fatigue. He had previously urged his sister to give him a bedroom in the front of the house, if possible. “I want to study the banker,” he explained, “and I cannot think properly of anyone over my shoulder, or through a number of empty rooms.” In kissing his sister he whispered in her ear, “I think things will come all right in time for Christmas eve.” For a moment she brightened up and then with a little doleful sigh she replied, “Ah! you do not know how vindictive that banker is; he is working for revenge, not money.”

“I know, I know,” returned her brother with a touch of impatience. “Still you just believe what I say, and go to bed in peace. Leave things to me; I have straightened out worse tangles than this.”

When his sister had left the room he drew a chair in front of the clear wood fire that burned in the low grate, and drawing to his side a small table, he leaned his elbow on it with his outspread fingers supporting his temples. For fully an hour he remained in that position, as immovable as if cast in bronze. At the end of that time he rose from his chair pale and almost ghostly in appearance, but with eyes that shone supernaturally large and bright against the white skin of his face. There was an air of set tension about the man, which a child would have recognized and a thick-hided crocodile of the Ganges have given the right of the road to.

The fire had faded away to smouldering, unnoticeable embers, and the lamp which had been turned down since his sister left the room was now blown out. Moving with a stride of extraordinary expression for the life and vigor the step conveyed, Wilfred stepped to the window, pulled back the curtains, drew up the blind, and swiftly but noiselessly raised the window. The bank across the way lay buried in repose. It was now 11.30, and to all appearances the inmates of the dwelling apartments over it were all in bed, and presumably asleep. The storm had abated, and only the dark unstarred sky above and the snow beneath recalled the storm which had so recently rioted through the street.

Wilfred’s air, as his burning eyes rested on the bank building--or rather pierced it, for that was the impression their fierce intensity conveyed--was one of the most imperious command. It was no lifeless brick and mortar which those compelling orbs transfixed, and which the moving but voiceless lips ordered to perform their behests. His was a face for the deadly breach or the forlorn hope, and it grew paler and paler beyond even the pallor of death; while in spite of the gusts of icy air which swept in through the open window, the dew gathered, beaded and broke on his forehead, and mounted the stiffened hair that rose from his scalp like a frozen crest.

It was evidently no ordinary creature with which this ghostly and fantastic struggle was being waged. After the first stern bout and victory, there was a cessation of action for a few minutes, but soon a new struggle commenced, in which the stern monitor’s visage became that of unbending command and insistence. There was threat, too, in the eye, threat of dangerous and instant action.

At this point the watcher seemed to look for some noticeable event in the house opposite, and surely enough, as if in instant obedience to his wish, the flicker of a lamp could be seen descending the stairs of the bank building.

Presently the light drifted into the bank itself and inside the railing of the president’s office. Then slowly, and as if in a dream, the bearer could be seen to open the great iron safe and take from thence a portfolio, from which he carefully selected a document and then returned it to the safe. At this juncture a night policeman saw the light in the bank and hurried across the street preparatory to sounding an alarm. Recognizing the President, however, by the light of his lamp, he desisted, and stood for a few minutes watching his movements. As he saw him enter his office and commence to write a letter at his desk he resumed his round, merely muttering to himself: “Pretty late for banking business, but I presume he forgot something.”

Returning on his beat half an hour later he saw the banker emerge from his house, walk across the way and drop a long envelope into the letter-box of the house opposite, and then slowly and wearily re-enter his house.

Ten minutes later and the light died out from the banker’s dwelling. Simultaneously a man, spent and exhausted beyond the possibilities of ordinary or even extraordinary fatigue, closed his window, sank into an arm-chair, and lay there with white upturned face, from which the perspiration dropped in big, round, ice-cold beads. Few would have recognized in the pallid face, carved by deeply hewn lines, the gay debonair countenance of Wilfred Wharton, the wit, _bon vivant_ and _bon camarade_ of the plains and city alike.

The following morning Wilfred was up betimes notwithstanding his exhausting labors of the night before. As he descended to the breakfast-room he met his sister, to whose inquiry as to whether he had been able to devise any means of escape from their desperate situation, he nodded encouragingly. “But,” he continued, “you must get me the key of your letter-box at once before your husband comes down. It is necessary for the success of my plans that I control your correspondence for a few hours.”

Within the letter-box he found a long envelope bearing the printed name of the bank. This he promptly opened, and after carefully perusing its contents, nodded in a satisfied way, and placed it in an inner pocket of his coat. Then returning the other letters unnoticed to the box, he carried the key upstairs to his sister.

At breakfast nothing was said of the subject of the note due that day, but as soon as the servant had left the room, Wilfred plunged into the subject.

“Now, Ben,” he began, “you have got to follow me blindly in this matter, or I cannot help you. If you agree to do that, I believe I can get you out of this mess all right. The first request I have to make is that you leave town for the day, without having any communication whatever with the bank. You may return in good time for dinner, and I will promise to report in full to you then. Now, as for you, Nell, if they send across for Mr. Cargill from the bank just say your husband is out of town for the day and will not be back till the evening; and tell them you know nothing about his business. I am going out of town myself and will not be back till five o’clock.”

As the morning wore on there might have been seen a look of vast perplexity and uneasiness on the face of Banker Strangely across the way--that is to say, while in the privacy of his own room. At ten o’clock, on going through his private portfolio, he was unable to find the $5,000 note of hand of his “dear” friend Benjamin Cargill, due that day. He had spent an hour looking for it, and still finding no trace of it he sat down to consider the situation. The day before he recollected destroying some old private papers taken from the same portfolio, and although he had been exceedingly careful, he now came to the conclusion that he must have destroyed the note among those papers. The thought of being baffled of his revenge against Mrs. Cargill for her former slight--for, as the lady rightly surmised, it _was revenge_ and not friendship which inspired the banker--consumed his very soul with rage. Was he to be thus thwarted after tracking his victim down? Not while his brain performed its accustomed office.

Taking pen in hand he wrote the following letter to his “friend” Mr. Cargill:

“DEAR SIR:--

“I beg to remind you that your note for $5,000 in my favor is due
here to-day. As I explained to you, if the amount is not paid by
three o’clock the note will go to protest. I shall be very sorry
indeed to have to resort to such measures, but for the reasons
already given you, I have no alternative.”

The reply which was brought back was: “Mr. Cargill is out of town for the day; the letter will be handed to him on his return.”

This indicated either a neglect or indifference of the banker’s intentions, which made the latter furious. “I wonder where on earth that note is,” he remarked under his breath feverishly again and again. And as the day passed he grew half crazy with rage. At 2.30 he rang his bell for his signature-book and after opening it at the letter “C,” he carefully studied the specimen signature given there by Mr. Cargill when he opened his account. Then from an inner drawer he took a promissory note blank and slowly filled it in, using for the purpose a bottle of stale black ink. “It is not forgery,” he murmured, as if excusing himself to his conscience, “it is only justice.”

Ten minutes later he rang his bell, and sent the note into the general office with instructions that if it were not taken up by three o’clock, the teller should take it across to Mrs. Cargill and see her about it. Then if still unpaid, he directed that the note should be protested.

The note being unpaid, the teller called on Mrs. Cargill, who politely informed him that she knew nothing about her husband’s affairs. “Did she not seem anxious and perturbed when she saw the note?”

“No, sir, she looked at the handwriting quietly and inquired who signed her husband’s name to it.”

“What!” snarled the banker, “what did you say?”

“She inquired who signed her husband’s name to the note, and I replied of course he signed it himself, and she said, ‘Well, I think I ought to know Mr. Cargill’s signature, and I never saw it as shaky as that before; he must have been put out when he signed that document.’”

When the teller retired, the banker sank into his chair in a heap as one who had received a death wound. “Great Heaven,” he ejaculated, “what am I doing, is that woman going to drive me to perdition? But no, her remarks are only the silly talk of an ignorant woman. No one knows about the note being mislaid.” Saying this he drove his hand down savagely on the gong on his table, and when the clerk appeared in response to his summons, he bade him in imperious tones to have “that note protested.”

* * * * *

At four o’clock a sleigh drove up to Mr. Cargill’s house, from which Wilfred alighted after requesting the driver to wait for further instructions. Learning from Mrs. Cargill of the presentation of the note, Wilfred re-entered the sleigh, giving the driver fresh directions in a tone of command very unusual to him. After a drive of a mile the sleigh stopped at the house of a justice of the peace, for the second time that day.

On issuing from the house of the justice, Wilfred gave directions to be driven to the police station. After announcing his wishes there, he returned to his sister’s house and finding her husband had returned he carried him off to the office of the Notary Public. At the latter place they inquired whether a note for $5,000 had been left there for protest that day. On learning that the note was in the notary’s hands and would remain there until the morning, the Justice of the peace was again visited, and an hour later the notary was served with an injunction not to part with the note of hand.

Once more the sleigh’s sweet bells jangled before the police station and when it sped on its way again its ample robe enfolded the sturdy albeit somewhat bandied legs of the night policeman whose acquaintance we have already made; but who was not now in uniform.

When Mr. Strangely returned to his residence from his own sleigh ride at 5.30 P.M., he was surprised to learn that three gentlemen awaited him in the parlor.

“Who are they?” he inquired of the servant, and when he learned that Mr. Cargill was one of the number he rubbed his hands together gleefully and murmured to himself: “At last, at last, I have got you in the toils, my lady with the dainty, devilish face that refused me so scornfully a year ago.”

The look with which he entered the room where his visitors awaited him had a fine and scornful air of contempt about it, suggestive of unsatiated conquest, and slaves, male and female--especially female--dragging at his victorious chariot’s wheel.

“You are come to take up that note, I presume?” he began, addressing Mr. Cargill and ignoring his companion, “but you are entirely too late. Honorable men do not come sneaking into a bank two hours after it has been closed and after their note has gone to protest. To-morrow the whole town will know that your note has been protested--no not to-morrow, for that is Christmas Day,--but you will be the talk of the town the following day, and no doubt _that_ reflection will sweeten your Christmas dinner--as” he snarled through his shark-like teeth--“as your wife sweetened mine a year ago, through your accursed interference.”

If he had not been carried away by his feelings he would have noticed the peculiar expression on the faces of his visitors, but he did not, and he raved on until, in a stentorian voice, Wilfred bade him be silent. What was it in the look and voice of that man that made the banker pause and wince as he met his gaze? “Who are you, sir, that dare----” he began, but his voice faltered, and his whole frame seemed to shrink as he met the other’s full lambent eye bent upon him, and felt it thrilling him through and through.

“I know you, surely,” he said slowly and almost feebly. “I have seen you before--somewhere,” and then the other’s gaze seemed to freeze him into silence.

“Listen to me, Banker Strangely, and do not dare to open your mouth till I have done.”