Chapter IV

Twenty-five years later I paid Mary and Braddish a pleasant Saturday-to-Monday visit in what foreign country it is not necessary to state. The tiny Skinnertown house of their earlier ambition, with its little yard, had now been succeeded by a great, roomy, rambling habitation, surrounded by thousands of acres sprinkled with flocks of fat, grazing sheep. It was a grand, rolling upland of a country that they had fled to; cool, summer weather all the year round, and no mosquitoes. Hospitable smoke curled from a dozen chimneys; shepherds galloped up on wiry horses and away again; scarlet passion-vines poured over roofs and verandas like cataracts of glory; and there was incessant laughter and chatter of children at play.

Of their final flight from the Boole Dogge Farm in my father's boat, across the bay to Long Island in the teeth of the northeaster, I now first heard the details; and of their subsequent hiding among swamps and woods; and how, when it had seemed that they must be captured and Braddish go to jail forever and ever, Mary thought that she could face the separation more cheerfully if she was his wife. And so one rainy night they knocked upon the door of a clergyman, and told him their story. They were starving, it seems, and it was necessary to look about for mercy. And, as luck would have it, the clergyman, an old man, had officiated at the wedding of Mary's parents; and he had had some trouble in his day with the law about a boundary fence, and was down on the law. And he fed them and married them, and said that he would square matters with his conscience--if he could. And he kept them in his attic for two days, which was their honeymoon--and then--a night of dogs and lanterns and shouting--he smuggled them off to the swamps again, and presided over their hiding until an opportunity came to get them aboard a tramp ship--and that was all there was to it, except that they had prospered and been happy ever since.

I asked Mary about my father's part in it. But she gave him a clean bill.

"He put two and two together," she said, "and he dropped a hint or two--and he paid me all my back wages in American money, and he made me a handsome present in English gold, but he never talked things over, never mentioned Will's name even."

"It was the toe of my boot," said Will, "sticking out of the tree that made him guess where I was. You see, I'd climbed up in the hollow to hide, and to keep there without moving I had to stick my foot out through a knothole. I was up there all the day they tried to get the bloodhounds after me, with my boot sticking out. And they were beating around that tree for hours, but nobody looked up."

"I've always wondered," said I, "why, they didn't send a man up inside the tree."

"I've always thought," said Will, "that nobody liked to propose it for fear he'd be elected to do it himself. But maybe it didn't enter anybody's head. Anyhow, all's well that ends well."

"Mary," I said, "do you remember how my father told Ellen and me to go back in a year and a day, and look in the boot?"

She nodded.

"Well," I said, "we went--hand in hand--and there was still a boot sticking out. And I climbed up, after several failures, and got it. It wasn't full of gold, but it did have two gold pieces in it. One each."

"What a memory your father had," said Mary: "he never forgot anything."

Later I was talking with Will alone, and I asked him why he had run away in the first place.

"Why," he said, "I had no chance with the law. The only outsiders who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And somehow--somehow--I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one that knew me then--except Hagan's friends, and whatever they believed they'd have sworn the opposite. Do you think your father thought I was a bloody murderer? Look here," he said, "I don't know just how to put it--it was twenty-five years ago, all that--Mary'll tell you, if you ask her, that she's been absolutely happy every minute of all that time--even when we were hiding in swamps and starving. Now that side of it wouldn't have entered the law's head, would it?" He smiled very peacefully. "Out here, of course," he said, "it's very different. Almost everybody here has gotten away from something or other. And mostly we've done well, and are happy and self-respecting. It's a big world," he looked out affectionately over his rolling, upland acres, "and a funny world. Did Mary tell you that I've just been re-elected sheriff?"

THE DESPOILER

Forrest paused when his explorations had brought him to the edge of the beechwood, all dappled with golden lights and umber shadows, and stood for a time brooding upon those intimate lawns and flowery gardens that seemed, as it were, but roofless extensions of the wide, open house.

It is probable that his brooding had in it an estimate of the cost of these things. It was thus that he had looked upon the blooded horses in the river-fields and the belted cattle in the meadows. It was thus that his grave eyes passed beyond the gardens and moved from corner to corner of the house, from sill to cornice, relating the porticos and interminable row of French windows to dollars and cents. He had, of course, been of one mind, and now he was of two; but that octagonal slug of California minting, by which he resolved his doubts, fell heads, and he stepped with an acquiescent reluctance from the dappled shadows into the full sunlight of the gardens and moved slowly, with a kind of awkward and cadaverous grandeur, toward the house. He paused by the sundial to break a yellow rose from the vine out of which its fluted supporting column emerged. So standing, and regarding the rose slowly twirled in his fingers, he made a dark contrast to the brightly-colored gardens. His black cape hung in unbroken lines from his gaunt shoulders to his knees, and his face had the modeling and the gentle gloom of Dante's.

The rose fell from his hand, and he moved onward through the garden and entered the house as nonchalantly as if it had been his own. He found himself in a cool dining-room, with a great chimney-piece and beaded white paneling. The table was laid for seven, and Forrest's intuitive good taste caused his eyes to rest with more than passing interest upon the stately loving-cup, full of roses, that served for a centre-piece. But from its rosy garlands caught up in the mouths of demon-heads he turned suddenly to the portrait over the chimney-piece. It was darker and more sedate than the pictures to which Forrest was accustomed, but in effect no darker or more sedate than himself. The gentleman of the portrait, a somewhat pouchy-cheeked, hook-nosed Revolutionary, in whose wooden and chalky hand was a rolled document, seemed to return Forrest's glance with a kind of bored courtesy.

"That is probably the Signer," thought Forrest, and he went closer. "A great buck in your time," he approved.

The butler entered the dining-room from the pantry, and, though a man accustomed to emergencies, was considerably nonplussed at the sight of the stranger. That the stranger was a bona fide stranger, James, who had served the Ballins for thirty years, knew; but what manner of stranger, and whether a rogue or a man upon legitimate business, James could not so much as guess.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "were you looking for some one?"

"Yes," said Forrest, perfectly at his ease, "and no."

"Shall I tell Mr. Ballin that you are here, sir?"

"I shall find him for myself, thank you," said Forrest, and he moved toward an open door that seemed to lead into the hall.

"By the way," he said, "there will be an extra at luncheon."

Very stately in his long, black cape, and with his pensive Dantesque face, Forrest continued on his slow progress to the open door and went out of the dining-room. He crossed the hall with half an eye to its quiet tones and bowls of roses, and entered a room of bright chintz with a pattern of cornflowers, and full of sunlight. It was a very spacious room, and lively--a proper link between the gardens and the house; and here were many photographs in silver frames of smart men and women; and the Sunday papers with their colored supplements were strewn in disorder upon the floor. And it seemed to Forrest, so comfortable and intimate did it look, as if that room had been a part of his own life. Upon the blotter of a writing-table sprawled a check-book bound in yellow leather. And when Forrest saw that, he smiled. It came as a surprise that the teeth in that careworn face should be white and even. And in those rare and charming moments of his smiling he looked like a young man who has made many engagements with life which he proposes to fulfil, instead of like a man for whom the curious years reserve but one sensation more.

But Forrest did not remain any appreciable time in the cheerful living-room. A desire to explain and have it all over with was upon him; and he passed, rapidly now, from room to room, until in a far corner of the house he entered a writing-room furnished in severe simplicity with dark and dully-shining rosewood. This room was of an older fashion than any he had yet entered, and he guessed that it had been the Signer's workshop and had been preserved by his descendants without change. A pair of flintlock pistols, glinting silver, lay upon the desk; quill pens stood in a silver cup full of shot; a cramped map, drawn and colored by hand and yellow with age, hung above the mantel and purported, in bold printing with flourishes, to be The Proposed Route for the Erie Canal. Portraits of General Greene and Thomas Jefferson, by Stuart, also hung upon the walls. And there stood upon an octagonal table a bowl of roses.

There was a gentleman in the embrasure of a window, smoking a cigar and looking out. But at the sound of Forrest's step he turned an alert, close-cropped, gray head and stepped out of the embrasure.

"Mr. Ballin?" said Forrest.

"I am Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed and deftness, without seeming to do so.

"It was the toss of a coin that decided me to come," said Forrest. "I have asked your butler to lay a place for me at luncheon."

So much assumption on the part of a stranger has a cheeky look in the printing. Yet Forrest's tone and manner far more resembled those of old friendship and intimacy than impertinence.

"Have I," said Ballin, smiling a little doubtfully, "ever had the pleasure of meeting you before? I have a poor memory for faces. But it seems to me that I should not have forgotten yours."

"You never saw me but the one time," said Forrest. "That was many years ago, and you would not remember. You were a--little wild that night. You sat against me at a game of faro. But even if you had been yourself--I have changed very much. I was at that time, as you were, little more than a boy."

"Good Lord!" said Ballin, "were you a part of that hectic flush that to myself I only refer to as 'Sacramento'?"

"You do not look as if it had turned you into a drinking man," said Forrest.

"It didn't," said Ballin, and without seeing any reason for confiding in the stranger he proceeded to do so. "It was nip and tuck for a time," he said, "and then money came to me, and this old place and responsibilities, and I became, more from force of circumstances than from any inner impulse, a decentish citizen."

"The money made everything smooth, did it?" said Forrest. "I wonder."

"You wonder--what?" said Ballin.

"If it could--money alone. I have had it at times--not as you have had it--but in large, ready sums. Yet I think it made very little difference."

"What have you been doing since--Sacramento?" asked Ballin.

"Up to a month ago," said Forrest, "I kept on dealing--in different parts of the world--in San Francisco, in London--Cairo--Calcutta. And then the matter which brings me here was brought to my attention."

"Yes?" said Ballin, a little more coolly.

"When you were in Sacramento," Forrest went on quietly and evenly as if stating an acknowledged fact, "you did not expect to come into all this. Then your cousin, Ranger Ballin, and his son went down in the City of Pittsburgh; and all this"--he made a sudden, sweeping gesture with one of his long, well-kept hands--"came to you."

"Yes?" Ballin's voice still interrogated coolly.

Forrest broke into that naive, boyish smile of his.

"My dear sir," said he, "I saw a play last winter in which the question is asked, 'Do you believe in Fairies?' I ask you, 'Do you believe in Gypsies?'"

"In what way?" Ballin asked, and he, too, smiled.

"Ranger Ballin," said Forrest, "had another son who was spirited away in childhood by the gypsies. That will explain this visit, which on the face of it is an impertinence. It will explain why I have entered this house without knocking, and have invited myself to luncheon. You see, sir, all this"--and again he made the sudden, sweeping gesture--"is mine."

It speaks for Forrest's effect that, although reason told Ballin to doubt this cataclysmic statement, instinct convinced him that it was true. Yet what its truth might mean to him did not so convincingly appear. That he might be ousted from all that he looked on as his own did not yet occur to him, even vaguely.

"Then we are cousins," he said simply, and held out his hand. But Forrest did not take it at once.

"Do you understand what cousinship with me means to you?" he said.

"Why," said Ballin, "if you _are_ my cousin"--he tried to imply the doubt that he by no means felt--"there is surely enough for us both."

"Enough to make up for the years when there has been nothing?" Forrest smiled.

"It is a matter for lawyers to discuss, then," said Ballin quietly. "Personally, I do not doubt that you believe yourself to be my cousin's son. But there is room, surely, in others for many doubts."

"Not in others," said Forrest, "who have been taught to know that two and two are four."

"Have you documentary proof of this astonishing statement?" said Ballin.

"Surely," said Forrest. And he drew from an inner pocket a bundle of documents bound with a tape. Ballin ran a perturbed but deft eye through them, while Forrest stood motionless, more like a shadow than a man. Then, presently, Ballin looked up with a stanch, honorable look.

"I pick no flaws here cousin," he said. "I--I congratulate you."

"Cousin," said Forrest, "it has been my business in life to see others take their medicine. But I have never seen so great a pill swallowed so calmly. Will you offer me your hand now?"

Ballin offered his hand grimly.

Then he tied the documents back into their tape and offered the bundle to Forrest.

"I am a careless man," said Forrest; "I might lose them. May I ask you to look after them for me?"

"Would you leave me alone with them?" asked Ballin.

"Of course," said Forrest.

Ballin opened an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon the despoiling documents. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of the despoiler.

"And now what?" he said.

"And now," said Forrest, "remember for a little while only that I am, let us say, an old friend of your youth. Forget for the present, if you can, who else I am, and what my recrudescence must mean to you. It is not a happiness"--he faltered with his winning smile--"to give pain."