Sally Dows

PART II

“It doesn’t seem as if Uncle Sylvester was any the more comfortable for having his own private bedding with him,” said Kitty Lane, entering Marie’s room early the next morning. “Bridget found him curled up in his furs like a cat asleep on the drawing-room sofa this morning.”

Marie started; she remembered her last night’s vision. But some instinct—she knew not what—kept her from revealing it at this moment. She only said a little ironically:—

“Perhaps he missed the wild freedom of his barbaric life in a small bedroom.”

“No. Bridget says he said something about being smoked out of his room by a ridiculous wood fire. The idea! As if a man brought up in the woods couldn’t stand a little smoke. No—that’s his excuse! Marie!—do you know what I firmly believe?”

“No,” said Marie quickly.

“I firmly believe that poor man is ashamed of his past rough life, and does everything he can to forget it. That’s why he affects those ultra-civilized and effeminate ways, and goes to the other extreme, as people always do.”

“Then you think he’s really reformed, and isn’t likely to take an impulse to rob and murder anybody again?”

“Why, Marie, what nonsense!”

Nevertheless, Uncle Sylvester appeared quite fresh and cheerful at breakfast. It seemed that he had lit the fire before undressing, but the green logs were piled so far into the room that the smoke nearly suffocated him. Fearful of alarming the house by letting the smoke escape through the door, he opened the window, and when it had partly dispersed, sought refuge himself from the arctic air of his bedroom in the drawing-room. So far the act did not seem inconsistent with his sanity, or even intelligence and consideration for others. But Marie fixed upon him a pair of black, audacious eyes.

“Did you ever walk in your sleep, Mr. Lane?”

“No; but”—thoughtfully breaking an egg—“I have ridden, I think.”

“In your sleep? Oh, do tell us all about it!” said Cousins Jane and Emma in chorus.

Uncle Sylvester cast a resigned glance out of the window. “Oh, yes—certainly; it isn’t much. You see at one time I was in the habit of making long monotonous journeys, and they were often exhausting, and,” he added, becoming wearied as if at the recollection, “always dreadfully tiresome. As the trail was sometimes very uncertain and dangerous, I rode a very surefooted mule that could go anywhere where there was space big enough to set her small hoofs upon. One night I was coming down the slope of a mountain towards a narrow valley and river that were crossed by an old, abandoned flume, of which nothing was now left but the upright trestle-work and long horizontal string-piece. As the trail was very difficult and the mule’s pace was slow, I found myself dozing at times, and at last I must have fallen asleep. I think I must have been awakened by a singular regularity in the movement of the mule—or else it was the monotony of step that had put me to sleep and the cessation of it awakened me. You see, at first I was not certain that I wasn’t really dreaming. For the trail seemed to have disappeared; the wall of rock on one side had vanished also, and there appeared to be nothing ahead of me but the opposite hillside.”

Uncle Sylvester stopped to look out of the window at a passing carriage. Then he went on. “The moon came out, and I saw what had happened. The mule, either of her own free will, or obeying some movement I had given the reins in my sleep, had swerved from the trail, got on top of the flume, and was actually walking across the valley on the narrow string-piece, a foot wide, half a mile long, and sixty feet from the ground. I knew,” he continued, examining his napkin thoughtfully, “that she was perfectly surefooted, and that if I kept quiet she could make the passage, but I suddenly remembered that midway there was a break and gap of twenty feet in the continuous line, and that the string-piece was too narrow to allow her to turn round and retrace her steps.”

“Good heavens!” said Cousin Jane.

“I beg your pardon?” said Uncle Sylvester politely.

“I only said, ‘Good heavens!’ Well?” she added impatiently.

“Well?” repeated Uncle Sylvester vaguely. “Oh, that’s all. I only wanted to explain what I meant by saying I had ridden in my sleep.”

“But,” said Cousin Jane, leaning across the table with grim deliberation and emphasizing each word with the handle of her knife, “how—did—you—and—that—mule get down?”

“Oh, with slings and ropes, you know—so,” demonstrating by placing his napkin-ring in a sling made of his napkin.

“And I suppose you carried the slings and ropes with you in your five trunks!” gasped Cousin Jane.

“No. Fellows on the river brought ‘em in the morning. Mighty spry chaps, those river miners.”

“Very!” said Cousin Jane.

Breakfast over, they were not surprised that their sybaritic guest excused himself from an inspection of the town in the frigid morning air, and declined joining a skating party to the lake on the ground that he could keep warmer indoors with half the exertion. An hour later found him standing before the fire in Gabriel Lane’s study, looking languidly down on his elder brother.

“Then, as far as I can see,” he said quietly, “you have made ducks and drakes of your share of the property, and that virtually you are in the hands of this man Gunn and his father.”

“You’re putting it too strongly,” said Gabriel deprecatingly. “In the first place, my investments with Gunn’s firm are by no means failures, and they only hold as security a mortgage on the forest land below the hill. It’s scarcely worth the money. I would have sold it long ago, but it had been a fancy of father’s to keep it wild land for the sake of old times and the healthiness of the town.”

“There used to be a log cabin there, where the old man had a habit of camping out whenever he felt cramped by civilization up here, wasn’t there?” said Uncle Sylvester meditatively.

“Yes,” said Gabriel impatiently; “it’s still there—but to return to Mr. Gunn. He has taken a fancy to Kitty, and even if I could not lift the mortgage, there’s some possibility that the land would still remain in the family.”

“I think I’ll drive over this afternoon and take a look at the old shanty if this infernal weather lets up.”

“Yes; but just now, my dear Sylvester, let us attend to business. I want to show you those investments.”

“Oh, certainly; trot ‘em out,” said his brother, plucking up a simulation of interest as he took a seat at the table.

From a drawer of his desk Gabriel brought out a bundle of prospectuses and laid them before Uncle Sylvester.

A languid smile of recognition lit up the latter’s face. “Ah! yes,” he said, glancing at them. “The old lot: ‘Carmelita,’ ‘Santa Maria,’ and ‘Preciosa!’ Just as I imagined—and yet who’d have thought of seeing them HERE! A good deal rouged and powdered, Miss Carmelita, since I first knew you! Considerably bolstered up by miraculous testimony to your powers, my dear Santa Maria, since the day I found you out, to my cost! And you too, Preciosa!—a precious lot of money I dropped on you in the old days!”

“You are joking,” said Gabriel, with an uneasy smile. “You don’t mean to imply that this stock is old and worthless?”

“There isn’t a capital in America or Europe where for the last five years it hasn’t been floated with a new character each time. My dear Gabriel, that stock isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.”

“But it is impossible that an experienced financier like Gunn could be deceived!”

“I’m sorry to hear THAT.”

“Come, Sylvester! confess you’ve taken a prejudice against Gunn from your sudden dislike of his son! And what have you against him?”

“I couldn’t say exactly,” said Uncle Sylvester reflectively. “It may be his eyes, or only his cravat! But,” rising cheerfully and placing his hand lightly on his brother’s shoulder, “don’t YOU worry yourself about that stock, old man; I’LL see that somebody else has the worry and you the cash. And as to the land and—Kitty—well, you hold on to them both until you find out which the young man is really after.”

“And then?” said Gabriel, with a smile.

“Don’t give him either! But, I say, haven’t we had enough business this morning? Let’s talk of something else. Who’s the French girl?”

“Marie? She’s the daughter of Jules du Page—don’t you remember?—father’s friend. When Jules died, it was always thought that father, who had half adopted her as a child, would leave her some legacy. But you know that father died without making a will, and that—rich as he was—his actual assets were far less than we had reason to expect. Kitty, who felt the disappointment as keenly as her friend, I believe would have divided her own share with her. It’s odd, by the way, that father could have been so deceived in the amount of his capital, or how he got rid of his money in a way that we knew nothing of. Do you know, Sylvester, I’ve sometimes suspected”—

“What?” said Uncle Sylvester suddenly.

The bored languor of his face had abruptly vanished. Every muscle was alert; his gray eyes glittered.

“That he advanced money to Du Page, who lost it, or that they speculated together,” returned Gabriel, who, following Uncle Sylvester’s voice only, had not noticed the change of expression.

“That would seem to be a weakness of the Lane family,” said Uncle Sylvester grimly, with a return of his former carelessness. “But that is not YOUR own opinion—that’s a suggestion of some one else?”

“Well,” said Gabriel, with a laugh and a slight addition of color, “it WAS Gunn’s theory. As a man of the world and a practical financier, you know.”

“And you’ve talked with HIM about it?”

“Yes. It was a matter of general wonder years ago.”