One Of Them

“And you suspect that he is off, Alfred?”

“It is not so very unlikely.”

“Let us down to the cottage, then, and learn this at once,” said Quackinboss; “I ‘d be sore riled if he was to slip his cable while we thought him hard aground.”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “We need not necessarily go and ask for him; Winthrop can just drop in to say a ‘good-evening,’ while we wait outside.”

“I wish you had chosen a craftier messenger,” said Winthrop, laughing. And now, taking their hats, they set out for the Gebhardts-Berg.

Alfred contrived to slip his arm within that of Quackinboss, and while the others went on in front, he sauntered slowly after with the Colonel. He had been anxiously waiting for a moment when they could talk together, and for some days back it had not been possible. If the others were entirely absorbed in the pursuit of those who had planned this scheme of fraud, Alfred had but one thought, – and that was Clara. It was not as the great heiress he regarded her, not as the owner of a vast property, all at her own disposal; he thought of the sad story that awaited her, – the terrible revelation of her father’s death, and the scarcely less harrowing history of her who had supplied the place of mother to her. “She will have to learn all this,” thought he, “and at the moment that she hears herself called rich and independent, she will have to hear of the open shame and punishment of one who, whatever the relations between them, had called her her child, and assumed to treat her as her own.”

To make known all these to Quackinboss, and to induce him, if he could, to regard them in the same light that they appeared to himself, was young Layton’s object. Withoat any preface he told all his fears and anxieties. He pictured the condition of a young girl entering life alone, heralded by a scandal that would soon spread over all Europe. Would not any poverty with obscurity be better than fortune on such conditions? Of what avail could wealth be, when every employment of it would bring up an odious history? and lastly, how reconcile Clara herself to the enjoyment of her good fortune, if it came associated with the bitter memory of others in suffering and in durance? If he knew anything of Clara’s heart, he thought that the sorrow would far outweigh the joy the tidings of her changed condition would bring her; at least, he hoped that he had so read her nature aright, and it was thus that he had construed it.

If Quackinboss had none of that refined appreciation of sentiment which in a certain measure is the conventionality of a class, he had what is infinitely and immeasurably superior, a true-hearted sympathy with everything human. He was sorely sorry for “that widow-woman.” He had forgotten none of the charms she threw around their evenings at Marlia long ago, and he was slow to think that these fascinations should always be exercised as snares and deceptions, and, last of all, as he said, “We have never heard her story yet, – we know nothing of how she has been tried.”

“What is it, then, that you propose to do?” asked the Colonel, at the end of a somewhat rambling and confused exposition by young Layton.

“Simply this: abandon all pursuit of these people; spare them and spare ourselves the pain and misery of a public shame. Their plot has failed; they will never attempt to renew it in any shape; and, above all, let not Clara begin the bright path before her by having to pass through a shadow of suffering and sorrow.”

“Ay, there is much in what you say; and now that we have run the game to earth, I have my misgivings that we were not yielding ourselves more to the ardor of the pursuit than stimulated by any love of justice.”

While they were thus talking, the others had passed the little wicket and entered the garden of the cottage. Struck by the quietness and the unlighted windows, they knocked hastily at the door. A question and answer revealed all, and the doctor called out aloud, “They are off! They are away!”

Young Layton pressed Quackinboss’s hand, and whispered, “Thank Heaven for it!”

If Winthrop laughed heartily at an escape that struck him as so cleverly effected, the doctor, far more eager in pursuit than the others, passed into the house to interrogate the people, – learn when and how and in what direction they had fled, and trace, if so it might be, the cause of this sudden departure.

“See,” cried he, as the others entered the drawing-room, – “see what a sudden retreat it has been! They were at their coffee; here is her shawl, too, just as she may have thrown it off; and here a heap of papers and letters, half burned, on the hearth.”

“One thing is clear enough,” said Alfred; “they discovered that they had lost the battle, and they have abandoned the field.”

“What do I see here?” cried the doctor, as he picked up a half-burned sheet of paper from the mass. “This is my own writing – my application to the Patent Office, when I was prosecuting my discovery of corrugated steel! When and how could it have come here?”

“Who can ‘My dear father’ be?” asked Quackinboss, examining a letter which he had lifted from the floor. “Oh, here’s his name: ‘Captain Nicholas Holmes’ – ”

“Nick Holmes!” exclaimed the doctor; “the fellow who stole my invention, and threw me into a madhouse! What of him? Who writes to him as ‘dear father’?”

“Our widow, no less,” said the Colonel. “It is a few lines to say she is just setting out for Florence, and will be with him within the week.”

“And this scoundrel was her father!” muttered the old doctor. “Only think of all the scores that we should have had to settle if we had had the luck to be here an hour ago! I thrashed him once in the public streets, it’s true, but we are far from being quits yet. Come, let’s lose no time, but after them at once.”

Alfred made no reply, but turned a look on Quackinboss, as thongh to bespeak his interference.

“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, slowly, “so long as the pursuit involved a something to find out, no man was hotter arter it than I was; but now that we know all, that we have baffled our adversaries and beaten ‘em, I ain’t a-goin’ to distress myself for a mere vengeance.”

“Which means that these people are to go at large, free to practise their knaveries on others, and carry into other families the misery we have seen them inflict here. Is that your meaning?” asked the doctor, angrily.

“I can’t tell what they are a-goin’ to do hereafter, nor, maybe, can you either, sir. It may be, that with changed hearts they ‘ll try another way of livin’; it may be that they ‘ll see roguery ain’t the best thing; it may be – who’s to say how? – that all they have gone through of trouble and care and anxiety has made them long since sick of such a wearisome existence, and that, though not very strong in virtue, they are right glad to be out of the pains of vice, whatever and wherever they may be. At all events, Shaver Quackinboss has done with ‘em, and if it was only a-goin’ the length of the garden to take them this minute, I ‘d jest say, ‘No, tell ‘em to slope off, and leave me alone.’”

“Let me tell you, sir, these are not your home maxims, and, for my part, I like Lynch law better than lax justice,” said the doctor, angrily.

“Lynch law has its good and its bad side,” said Quackinboss, “and, mayhap, if you come to consider the thing coolly, you ‘ll see that if I was rejecting rigid legality here, it was but to take the benefit of Judge Lynch, only this time for mercy, and not for punishment.”

“Ah, there is something in that!” cried the doctor. “You have made a stronger case for yourself than I looked for; still, I owed that fellow a vengeance!”

“It’s the only debt a man is dishonored in the payin’, sir. You know far more of life than I do, but did you ever meet the man yet that was sorry for having forgiven an injury? I’m not sayin’ that he mightn’t have felt disappointed or discouraged by the result, – his enemy, as he’d call him, mightn’t have turned out what he ought; but that ain’t the question: did you ever see one man who could say, after the lapse of years, ‘I wish I had borne more malice, – I’m sorry I was n’t more cruel’?”

“Let them go, and let us forget them,” said the old man, as he turned and left the room.

Young Layton grasped the Colonel’s hand, and shook it warmly, as he said, “This victory is all your own.”

CHAPTER IX. WORDS OF GOOD CHEER

When the key-note of some long-sought mystery has sounded, there is a strange fascination in going over and over the theme, now wondering why we had not been more struck by this or that fact, how we could have overlooked the importance of this incident or that coincidence. Trivial events come up to memory as missing links in the chain of proof, and small circumstances and chance words are brought up to fill the measure of complete conviction.

It was thus that this party of four sat almost till daybreak talking over the past. Each had some era to speak of as especially his own. Winthrop could tell of Godfrey Hawke when he came a young man to the States, and married his niece, the belle and the heiress of her native city. He remembered all the praises bestowed upon the young Englishman’s manners and accomplishments, together with the graver forebodings of others, who had remarked his inordinate love of play and his indifference as to the company in which he indulged it. Next came the doctor, with his recollections of the man broken down by dissipation and excess, and at last dying of poison. There was but little, indeed, to recall the handsome Godfrey Hawke in the attenuated figure and distorted countenance of that miserable debauchee; but there were chance traits of manner that brought up the man to Winthrop’s mind. There were also on the scene his beautiful wife, at that time in the fulness of her beauty. What a charm of gentleness, too, did she possess! – how meekly and patiently did she bear herself under provocations that seemed too great for human endurance! The doctor had to own that she actually forfeited some of his sympathy by the impression she gave him of being one deficient in a nice sense of self-esteem, and wanting in that element of resistance without which there is no real dignity of nature. “She seemed to me,” said he, “too craven, too abject by half, – one of those who are born to be the subject of a tyranny, and who, in their very submission, appear to court the wanton cruelty of an ‘oppressor’. How rightly I read her!” cried he; “how truly I deciphered the inscription on her heart! and yet, I’ll be sworn, no man living could have detected under that mask of gentleness this woman of long-pondering craft, this deeply designing plotter!”

“Quackinboss and I saw her under another aspect,” said Alfred. “She was depressed and sad, but only so much so as gave an added charm to the grace of her captivations, and made her every effort to please appear somewhat of a sacrifice of herself for those around her.”

“Well, ain’t it strange, gentlemen,” said Quackinboss, “but it’s a fact, she never deceived me? I remember the day of our visit at Marlia; after that adventure with the dog she fainted, and I took her up in my arms and carried her to the house. I thought, by course, she was insensible. Not a bit of it; she rallied enough to open her eyes, and give me one of the most wonderful looks ever I see in my life. It was just like saying, ‘Shaver, are you quite certain that you have n’t got in your arms one of the loveliest creatures as ever was formed? Are you sure, Shaver Quackinboss, that you are ever to have such another piece of luck as this?’ And so certain was I that I heerd these very words in my ear, that I said aloud, ‘Darn me pale blue if I don’t wish the house was half a mile away!’ And the words wasn’t well out than she burst out a-laughin’, – such a hearty, joyous laugh, too, that I knew in my heart she had neither pain nor ache, and was only a-foxin’. Well, gentlemen, we always had a way of lookin’ at each other arter that was quite peculiar; it was sayin’, ‘Never fear, all’s on honor here.’ That was, at least, how I meant it, and I have a notion that she understood me as well. I have a strong notion that we understand these women critturs better than you Britishers!”

“You must leave me out of the category of the shrewd ones, however,” said Winthrop. “I saw her but once in my life, and yet I never came away from a visit with the same amount of favorable impression. She met me like an old friend, but at the same time there was a delicacy and reserve about her that seemed to say, ‘It is for you to ratify this compact if you like. When you sign the treaty, it is finished.’”

From the discussion of the past they proceeded to the future, upon which all felt that Winthrop could speak with most authority, since he was Clara’s kinsman and guardian.

“What do you mean to do by the gal, sir?” asked the Colonel.

“I intend to see her as soon as I can, give her the good news of her accession to fortune, and leave her to choose whether she will come back with me to the States, or would prefer that I should remain with her in Europe.”

“And ain’t there any other alternative possible in the case, sir?” asked Quackinboss. “Does n’t it strike you as just possible that she might say ‘No’ to each of these proposals, and fix another one for herself?”

“I don’t quite understand you, Colonel,” said the other.

“I ain’t a-goin’ to talk riddles, sir. What I mean is, that the young woman may have other thoughts in her head than either of your plans; and now I ‘ll call upon my honor’ble friend, Mr. Alfred Layton, to address the House.”

Crimson with shame and confusion, young Layton turned an imploring look at Quackinboss; but the Colonel was indifferent to the appeal, and waved his hand as if bespeaking silence.

“It is rather for me to speak here,” said the doctor. “My son has to begin life with a large arrear of his father’s faults to redeem. He has to restore to our name, by conduct and honorable bearing, the fair repute that once attached to it. Honest industry is the safe and sure road to this, and there is no other. He has promised to try and bring back to me in his name the suffrages of that university which I forfeited in mine. If he succeed, he will have made me proud of him.”

“I like that,” broke in Quackinboss. “Square it all first with them critturs in the college, and then think of a wife. Go at it, sir, and work like a nigger; there ain’t nothing will give you such courage as the very fatigue of a hard day’s work. When you lie down at night so dead beat that you could n’t do more, you ‘ll feel that you ‘ve earned your rest, and you ‘ll not lie awake with misgivin’s and fancies, but you ‘ll sleep with a good conscience, and arise refreshed the next mornin’.”

“Alfred and I settled it all between us last night,” said the doctor. “There was but one point we could not arrange to our satisfaction. We are largely indebted to you – ”

“Stop her!” cried the Colonel, as though he were giving the word from the paddle-box of a steamer, – “stop her! I ain’t in a humor to be angry with any one. I feel as how, when the world goes so well as it has done lately with us all, that it would be main ungrateful to show a peevish or discontented spirit, and I don’t believe that there ‘s a way to rile me but one, – jest one, – and you ‘ve a-hit on ‘t. Yes, sir, you have!”

Quackinboss began his speech calmly enough, but before he finished it his voice assumed a hard and harsh tone very rare with him.

“Remember, my dear and true-hearted friend,” broke in Alfred, “that it’s only of one debt we are eager to acquit ourselves. Of all that we owe you in affection and in gratitude, we are satisfied to stand in your books as long as we live.”