Prudence Palfrey
XVII.
HOW MR. DILLINGHAM LOOKED OUT OF A WINDOW.
IT was a blustery, frosty morning; the sensitive twigs of trees snapped with the cold; the brass knockers on oldfashioned doors here and there had a sullen, vindictive look, daring you to take hold of them; the sky was slatecolor. There was no snow on the ground, but the wind, sweeping up the street, now and then blew the white dust into blinding clouds, which, bursting in the air and sifting lazily downward, seemed to Mr. Dillingham, as he leaned against the casement of a window in the Old Bell Tavern, quite like falling snow.
The window at which the young minister stood was directly over the front door, and commanded a prospect of the entire length of the street that ran at right angles with the main thoroughfare and terminated at the steps of the hotel. At the other end of this street was the long bridge — hidden from time to time that morning by the swirls of dust — leading to Willowbrook.
Mr. Dillingham had his eyes fixed upon a distant object approaching from that direction, It was a mere speck when he first descried it on the bridge, tossed and blown hither and thither by the gale; but as it struggled onward, he was not slow to detect in this atom the person of Mr. Dent’s coachman, Wingate. Not an especially interesting atom, Wingate, as a general thing, to the rest of the human family; but he interested Mr. Dillingham very deeply this morning.
As the coachman drew nearer, the young minister saw that he held something white clutched in his hand, which the marauding winds, now and then swooping down on him from around the corners, attempted to wrest from his grasp. That it was a note from Miss Palfrey, that it was for him, Mr. Dillingham, and that it contained the deathwarrant of his hopes, were the conclusions at which he arrived before Wingate gained the stone-crossing opposite the hotel.
As Wingate reached this point, and was backing up against the wind which just then swept furiously around the paint-shop on the corner, a hack stopped suddenly on the crossway. A man leaned from the window and called to Wingate, who stared at him stupidly for a moment, then rushed to the side of the carriage and grasped the hand of the occupant; then the two entered into an animated dialogue, if one might judge by the energetic pantomime that ensued.
Mr. Dillingham watched this encounter— evidently unexpected by both parties— with a feverish restlessness not characteristic of him. His breath came and went quickly, and his impatience seemed to take shape and become crystallized in eccentric zigzag lines on the pane of glass nearest his lips. It was rapidly growing bitter cold without, and the frost was stretching its silvery antennæ over all the windows.
Finally the carriage drove off, and Wingate, as if possessed to prolong the tantalizing suspense of the young clergyman, stood motionless on the curbstone several minutes, looking after the retreating vehicle. Then it appeared to occur to Wingate that he was freezing to death, and he crossed over briskly to the Old Bell Tavern.
Mr. Dillingham hurried into the hall and snatched the note from the benumbed fingers of the astonished coachman, who was accustomed to much suavity and frequent fifty-cent pieces from the parson.
“All right, Wingate; thank you!” and the door was closed unceremoniously upon the messenger.
Mr. Dillingham broke the seal of the envelope, and read the note at a glance, for it was very brief. Directly after reading it he tore the paper into minute fragments, which he threw into the grate. The gesture with which he accompanied the action, rather than his face, betrayed strong emotion; for his face was composed now, and something almost like a smile played about his lips.
He stood for a few seconds irresolute in the middle of the apartment; then he went into the adjoining room, his sleeping-chamber, and took down his overcoat from a shelf in the black-walnut wardrobe.
This was the morning after Prue’s musical failure. She had dispatched the note to Mr. Dillingham as soon as breakfast was over, but it had been written long before. She had written it in the early gray of the morning, — sitting in a ghostly way at her desk, wrapped in a white cashmere shawl, with her feet thrust into a pair of satin slippers of the Cinderella family, while the house slept. It was one of four letters. The first was six pages, this was sixteen lines, — a lesson for scribblers.
While Wingate was on his way to town with the missive, Prudence was in her room summoning up the resolution to tell Mr. Dent what she had done. It was not a cheerful task to contemplate, remembering how unreasonable and angry he had been when she opposed his wishes before. She had an unclouded perception of the disappointment she was going to give him this time. It was pretty clear to her that he had set his heart on the marriage.
Mr. Dent was trying to read the morning paper, when the library door opened gently; he did not look up at, once, supposing it was Bodge, the house-boy, bringing in the coals, or Prudence coming to tell him what he dreaded to know positively.
When he did look up he saw John Dent standing on the threshold and smiling upon him apologetically.
“Good God, Jack! is that you?” cried Mr. Dent, letting the paper slip in a heap to his knees.
“ Yes, I — I have come back.”
Mr. Dent was not a superstitious person, but he felt for maybe ten seconds that that was an apparition standing over there in the doorway. And there was much in John Dent’s aspect calculated to strengthen the impression.
He was worn and pale, as if he had just recovered from a long illness, or died of it; his cheeks were sunken, his eyes brilliant, and his unkempt black hair was blacker than midnight against his pallor. A shabby overcoat was thrown across one shoulder, concealing the left arm, which he carried stiffly at his side. There was a squalor and a misery about him, heightened bv his smile, that would have touched the compassion of a stranger. Mr. Dent was in a depressed mood that morning, and this woeful figure of his nephew, standing there and smiling upon him like a thing out of the church-yard, nearly brought the tears to his eyes.
“ Why, Jack, boy, how ill you are! ” “I am only tired,” said John Dent, dropping into a chair; “ that and the slight hurt I ’ve got.”
“ Yes, I heard about that.”
“ You heard about it? ”
“ To be sure I did.”
“ How could you have heard of it? ”
“ Colonel Todhunter brought the news. Gad! I’ve done the colonel something of an injustice.”
“ Colonel Todhunter? ”
“I didn’t believe a word he said; but then, he declared you were dead.”
“ Colonel Todhunter did? ”
“ Yes.”
“I do not want to contradict Colonel Todhunter, for that would n’t be polite,” said John Dent, with one of his old smiles, “but I regret to state that I am not dead. Who is Colonel Todhunter, any way? ”
Mr. Dent stared at him.
“What! you don't know the colonel? the colonel knows you very well. He told us all about it — the skirmish, you know, in which you were wounded ‘ and taken prisoner, and ” — Here Mr. Dent paused, seeing by the vacuous expression of his nephew’s face that the words were meaningless to him. “ Dear me,” he thought, “how very much broken up he is; his memory is wholly gone! ”
“Uncle Ralph,” said John Dent, “I never heard of Colonel Todhunter until this moment; I have not been in the army; I have not been in any skirmish; and I have not been taken prisoner.”
This was too calm and categorical a statement not to shake Mr. Dent a little in his suspicion that the speaker was laboring under some mental derangement.
“ I have been wounded, to be sure,” continued John Dent. “ I was shot in Western Virginia, in the woods, on my way to join the army, — shot by George Nevins,” he added between his teeth. “ I imagine he got tired of me at last, and concluded to kill me. He failed this time; but he will do it, if that is his purpose.”
In reading John Dent’s letter to Joseph Twombly, Mr. Dent had smiled at what he considered Jack’s hallucination touching the watch which he supposed Nevins was keeping over him night and day; but this attempt on Jack’s life, if there had really been one, at a spot so remote, from the scene of the robbery three years before, gave a hue of probability to the idea.
Mr. Dent looked out of the corner of his eye at his nephew. Perhaps Jack was insane. Mr. Dent ’s faith in the general correctness of the colonel’s statements was coming back to him. Sitting with his arms hanging at his side anti his head resting on his chest broodingly, Jack seemed like a person not quite right in his mind.
“ Where is this Colonel Todhunter?” he exclaimed, starting to his feet.
“ Good heavens! don’t be so violent! ”
“ Where is he, I say? ”
“ How can I tell? The man ’s gone.”
“ How long since ? ’ ’
“ A fortnight ago.”
“ Was he here, —in this house? ”
“ He came here one afternoon, representing himself as your friend; he stayed in the town four or five days after that, I believe.”
“ It is three weeks since I was shot,” said John Dent, reflecting. “ Did Twombly see him ? ”
“ I really can’t say whether the deacon saw him or not.”
“ I don’t mean the deacon; I mean Joe.”
“ Joseph was in Chicago; been there these six months.”
“ Uncle, what kind of person was this Colonel Todhunter? Describe him to me.”
“ He was something of a character, I should say; a cool customer; he made himself very much at home — with my sherry.”
“ Very gentlemanly, and rather pale ? ”
“Well, the sherry was pale,” returned Mr. Dent, laughing, “but the colonel was rather florid and not at all gentlemanly; that is to say, lie carried it with a high hand in the town, though he behaved decently enough when he called on me,”
“ What was he like? ”
“ A tall man, taller than you, for instance; strongly built, with blue eyes and sandy beard,”
“ GEORGE NEVIN'S!”
“ Nonsense!” said Mr. Dent.
“It was George Nevins, I tell you! ” “Pooh! you’re mad. What would bring him here, of all the places in the world ? ”
“ I don’t know; there are many things I cannot fathom; but this I do know, you have stood face to face with the most daring and accomplished scoundrel that lives. There is n’t his match in California or Nevada.”
“Good heavens!” ejaculated Mr. Dent, uneasily, with a sensation of having two or three bullet-holes in the small of his back. “ You don’t really believe that that man was the fellow Nevins ? ”
“ I do, assuredly. He thought he had disposed of me, and he came here prospecting. It was like his impudence.
He told you I was dead ? Well, he had good reason to suppose so.”
“ I can’t believe it. Gad, I don’t believe it! If it had been he, I think I should have turned desperado instinctively, and brought him down with the old shot-gun.” And Mr. Dent was making a motion to that nearly harmless weapon, which had hung for years unloaded over the library mantel-piece, when Prudence walked into the room.
“Drop Colonel Todhunter,” whispered Mr. Dent hastily.
In romances and on the stage, the meeting between two people who, happily or unhappily, have been long separated, is made the occasion of much sensational business; but I have observed that people in real life, who have loved or hated each other, are not apt, when they meet after a lapse of years, either to swoon or scowl or do anything strikingly dramatic.
Prudence neither started nor fainted when she found John Dent with her uncle; she had seen John Dent descend from the hack at the gate ten or fifteen minutes previously,—perhaps it gave her a turn at the instant, — and she had now come to welcome him home. Nothing could have been more simple or natural than the meeting between them. If Prudence’s hand was a trifle cold, her hands were habitually cold; if John Dent ’s hand was hot, he had a gunshotwound, and was feverish.
“ I am glad to see you, Cousin John,” said Prudence simply, as if she had parted with him yesterday, and had not eaten three thousand two hundred and eighty-five meals since that day when he failed to come back to dinner.
This is shockingly commonplace and realistic, I know, and will cost me a great many sentimental readers; but I must stand or fall by the facts.
Prudence was unaffectedly glad to see John Dent; and the sincere friendliness of her greeting placed him at his ease. He had much to tell of his wanderings, and much to be told of Rivermouth affairs; and very soon the conversation flowed on between these three with only the slightest under-current of constraint. Indeed, it seemed to Prudence like that first day, long ago, when John Dent came to Rivermouth and surprised her by being a frank, light-hearted young fellow, instead of the mousing Dryasdust she expected. As in that time also, he had come to remain only a brief period; there were dragons still at large and giants yet unslain. As soon as his arm was well, he would bid good-by again to Rivermouth. The gold he was going in quest of now was that small quantity of bullion which is to be found in a lieutenant’s shoulder-straps.
The parallel between his two visits occurred to John Dent himself, as he sat there chatting; and so far as his impecuniosity went, the parallel was too close to be agreeable. Before, he had had only a slender outfit and a few hundred dollars; and now he was the possessor of a navy revolver, and a suit of clothes which his uncle eyed thoughtfully from time to time, and resolved to have buried in the back-garden at no remote period.
But in spite of this, a blissful serenity, born of the home-like atmosphere he was breathing, took possession of John Dent. His misfortunes were visions and chimeras; he was as a man who, awaking from a nightmare, finds himself in a comfortable warm room with the daylight pouring through the windows, and strives in vain to recollect the dream that a moment ago appalled him.
He looked so shabby, and uncaredfor, and happy, that Prudence was touched. In speaking of Parson Wibird, she was obliged to exert all her self-control not to tell John Dent of the legacy. Whatever he did, he should not go away until he was informed of that. She lingered on the subject of the parson’s death, and came back to it at intervals, with the hope that her guardian would be tempted to break through the now slightly binding condition of the will. But the old parson recalled to Mr. Dent’s mind the new parson, and he broke out, with that fine tact which characterized him, “ By the way, Jack, you must know Dillingham; he’s a capital fellow.”
John Dent had learned from Wingate, in their hurried conference at the street corner, that Prudence was still unmarried; and for the moment he had forgotten everything save the delicious fact that he and Prue were sitting and talking together as of old. But now his countenance fell.
“ I shall be glad to know him,” he contrived to say, with more or less enthusiasm.
With this, Mr. Dillingham passed out of the conversation, and did not drift into it again. No other unfortunate word or allusion ruffled the tranquillity of that morning, which made way with itself so quickly that Fanny caused a sensation when she announced dinner.
The afternoon showed a similar suicidal tendency; and shortly after tea, John Dent, who began to feel the reaction of the excitement he had undergone, went to bed in the same room where he had slept three years before. Apparently, not a piece of the ancient mahogany furniture, which resolved itself, wherever it was practicable, into carven claws grasping tarnished gilt balls, had been moved since he was last there. It struck him, while undressing, that it would be only the proper thing for him to go around the chamber and shake hands with all the friendly, old-fashioned paws,—they stretched themselves out from tables and chairs and wardrobes with such a faithful, brute-like air of welcome.
The castellated four-post bedstead, with its snowy dimity battlements, seemed an incredible thing to John Dent as he stood and looked at it in the weird winter moonlight. It was many a month since he had lain in such a sumptuous affair.
A sensuous calm stole over his limbs when he stretched himself on the pliant springs of the mattress; then the impossible blue canaries, pecking at the green roses on the wall-paper, lulled him to sleep, and would have hopped down from the twigs and covered him with leaves, as the robins covered the babes in the wood, if he had not been amply protected by a great silk patch-quilt, deftly done into variegated squares and triangles by Prue’s own fingers.
He slept the sleep of the just that night; he was a failure, but he slept the sleep of success; and his uncle, in the next room, dropped off with the soothing reflection that events had proved his wisdom in not telling Prue anything about Colonel Peyton Todhunter; but Prudence scarcely slept at all.
John Dent’s wound was of the slightest, and the stiffness had nearly gone out of his shoulder when he awoke the next morning. He awoke in the same state of beatitude in which he had fallen asleep.
“I know I don’t amount to much when I 'm added up,” he said, smiling at himself in the glass as if he enjoyed representing a very small vulgar fraction in the sum of human happiness; “but I am not going to trouble myself about it any more. I ’ll go down to Virginia, and come back presently with one leg and a pension, and spend the rest of my days telling stories to Prue’s little ones.” And John Dent sighed cheerfully as he pictured himself a gray-haired, dilapidated captain, or maybe colonel, with two or three small Dillinghams clinging to his coat-skirts.
It was a singular coincidence that both uncle and nephew should have reached that philosophical stage when they could look calmly on the prospect of playing grandfather and godfather respectively to Prue’s children.
John Dent descended, and found Prudence and his uncle in the library, making a pretty domestic picture, with the wood-fire blazing cheerily on the hearth, lighting up the red damask curtains, and the snow outside dashing itself silently in great feathery flakes against the windows. It was like an interior by Boughton, with that glimpse of bleak winter at the casements.
“ Good morning,” said John Dent, enveloping the pair in one voluminous smile.
“ Good morning, Jack,” returned Mr. Dent, and “ Good morning, Cousin John,” said Prudence, who hurried off to see to breakfast, for the Prodigal was to have a plate of those sublimated waffles of which only Prudence knew the secret. The art of their composition was guarded at Willowbrook as the monks in the Old-World convents guard the distillation of their famous cordials.
The young man saw that he had interrupted a conversation between his uncle and Prudence, and experienced that uncomfortable glow about the ears which comes over one when the dialogue stops instantly at one’s appearance.
However, as Prudence departed to superintend the serving up of the fatted waffle, John Dent drew a chair towards the fire-place and was about to seat himself, when his eyes fell upon a small cabinet photograph which rested against a vase at one end of the mantel-piece.
The back of the chair slipped from John Dent’s fingers, and he stood transfixed for a moment, looking at the picture; then he approached the mantelshelf and took the photograph in his hand.
“Who is this?” he asked quickly; and he pointed a quivering finger at the face.
“That? why, that’s my friend Dillingham, a cap— ”
“Dillingham be —!” cried John
Dent. “ That is George Kevins! ”
Mr. Dent leaned back in his chair and suppressed himself.
“ Quiet yourself,” he said soothingly. “ You have n’t slept well, you ” — °
“ Do you suppose I don’t know that face! ”
“ That is just precisely what I suppose,” cried Mr. Dent, giving way to his irritation, “and I could n’t have expressed it better.”
“ Not know it! Have n’t I thought of it every day for two years, fallen asleep thinking of it every night, dreamed of it a thousand times? He has cut his mustache and beard,” said John Dent slowly and to himself, “ and wears no collar to his coat. What — what is this doing here?” he cried, with sudden fury.
“ Why, Jack, my boy, I tell you that that is the Rev. James Dillingham, the pastor of the Old Brick Church, Prue’s friend and mine.”
“ You can’t mean it! ”
“ Don’t be an idiot. If you discover any resemblance to Colonel Todhunter in that picture, you ’ve a fine eye for resemblance.”
“ Todhunter was not the man,” cried John Dent. “ This is the man! ”
It was patent now to Mr. Dent that his nephew was a monomaniac on the subject of George Nevins. First it had been Colonel Todhunter, now it was Dillingham, and by and by it would be somebody else, Prue or himself possibly. Mr. Dent coughed, and restrained the impatient words that rose to his lips. The boy’s mind was turned by his misfortunes, and yet he seemed rational enough on other topics.
“ You think I am crazy?” said the young man, reading his uncle’s open countenance as if it were a book.
“ Well, I am not. I am as sane as you are, and as clear in the head as a bell. How long has jour friend Mr. Dillingham been settled over the Brick Church? ” And John Dent seated himself, crossing his legs comfortably, with the aspect of a man who is going to take things philosophically and not fret himself about trifles.
“ Since last June,” returned Mr. Dent, relieved to see his nephew calm again. “ Dillingham came here in the latter part of May, and it is now December. Consequently he has been here a little over six months.”
“ While I was at Shasta,” muttered the young man. “ But who fired on me in Virginia, if it was n’t Nevins? ” Then in a negligent way to his uncle,
“ Where does your friend Dillingham live? ”
“ In Rivermouth, of course.”
“ Where? ”
“ At the Old Bell Tavern.”
John Dent went out of the room like a flash.
After an instant of panic, Mr. Dent dashed after him. The hall door was locked and bolted; there was a complicated bolt with a chain, and the young man was tugging at the chain when his uncle seized him by the arm.
“ What are you trying to do? ”
“ I must see this man Dillingham, Uncle Ralph.”
“ Certainly, so you shall see Dillingham. Ten to one he will ride out here before the morning is over, in spite of the storm; and then you will discover how absurd you are.”
“ Granting I am wrong,” said John Dent as composedly as he could, “ I cannot wait to have proof of it. If he is the man I think he is, he knows where I am by this time, and will not show his face here. I must go to him.”
“ Before breakfast? ”
“ This instant! ”
Mr. Dent reflected that perhaps the only cure for his nephew’s delusion was to bring him face to face with the young minister, whom, by the way, Mr. Dent himself was anxious to see; he was still ignorant of what had passed in the drawing-room two nights previously, for Prudence had found no fitting moment since John Dent’s arrival to inform lier guardian of her decision and the letter she had written to Mr. Dillingham.
So one of the carriage horses was ordered to be harnessed to the buggy and driven around to the side door. Meanwhile John Dent paced the hall, chafing; and Prudence, with her eyebrows raised into interrogation-points, stood behind the coffee-urn in the breakfast-room, wondering what it all meant.
When the buggy was ready, Mr. Dent proposed to go to town alone and bring the young minister back with him; but John Dent would not listen to the suggestion, and the two drove off together in the storm.
The snow beat so persistently in their faces all the way, that there was no chance for conversation, if either had been disposed to talk. Mr. Dent stole a glance now and then at the young man, whose eyes glowed wickedly over a huge white mustache which he had got riding in the teeth of the wind. “ I’ve half a mind to tip the pair of us over the next bank,” muttered Mr. Dent; " he ’s as crazy as a loon! ”
On driving up to tbe door of the Old Bell Tavern, Mr. Dent begged his nephew to control himself and do nothing rash. John Dent promised this, but with set teeth and in a manner not reassuring.
“ You are making a dreadful mistake; and if you involve me in any absurdity I ’ll never forgive you. Dillingham is my friend, and one of the noblest fellows in the world. It is rather early for a call; I ’ll go up first, Jack.”
“ And I’ll go with you,” said John Dent with disgusting promptness.
Mr. Dillingham’s suite of rooms was on the second floor, and the door of his parlor or study gave upon the main staircase. Mr. Dent, inwardly consigning his nephew to the shades below, knocked two or three times without awakening the well-known voice which always said " Come in ” to his recognized knock; then he turned the handle of the door, which was not fastened.
“ He’s in bed at this hour, of course,” be remarked. The town clock was striking eight. “We’ll step into his parlor and wait for him.”
The room was in the greatest disorder; the drawers of a large escritoire between the windows were standing wide open, the grate was full of dead ashes, and over the carpet everywhere were scattered half-torn letters and papers. John Dent cast one glance around the apartment, and then rushed into the small bed-chamber adjoining. The bed was unrumpled.
“ Gone!” moaned John Dent, dropping into a chair.
“ Gone? nonsense! Gone to breakfast,” said Mr. Dent.
“It’s no use,” said the young man, settling himself gloomily in the chair; “he is hundreds of miles away by this time. While we were sitting in the chimney-corner over yonder, fire and steam and all infernal powers were whisking him off beyond my reach.”
Mr. Dent pulled at the bell-cord as if he had suddenly had a bite, and jerked in Larkin the waiter. Where was Mr. Dillingham? Larkin did not know where Mr. Dillingham was. He would inquire at the office.
He returned shortly with the information that Mr. Dillingham had gone out quite early the day before, and had not been in since. The young minister was in the habit of absenting himself for several days together without notifying the office-clerk, who supposed in this instance, as in the others, that Mr. Dillingham was visiting his friend Mr. Dent at Willowbrook.
“ That ’ll do, Larkin,” said Mr. Dent. “ Nothing particular. We ’ll look in again.”
Exit Larkin, lined with profanity.
Mr. Dent, with a feeble smile on his lips, stood looking at his nephew.
“It is too late,” said the young man, “ but I would like to send a telegram to Boston and one to New York.”
“To whom?”
“ To the chief of police.”
Mr. Dent started. “ Don’t you do it! I know you are wrong, though I acknowledge that the thing has a strange look. You would feel rather flat if, after you had sent off a couple of libelous messages, Dillingham should turn up and explain it all in a dozen words, as I am positive he will. I could never look him in the face again.”
“You won’t, any way,” said John Dent. “ However, I don’t want to use the name of Dillingham in the matter. I shall simply give a description of the person of George Nevins. That will not inconvenience any one, I’m afraid. See how he slips through my fingers! I should call the man an eel, if he was n’t a devil.”
Mr. Dent made no further objection; the two descended to the street and drove to the telegraph-office.
In the midst of writing a dispatch, young Dent paused and nibbled the top of the penholder. “ I wonder I didn’t think of that before,” he said to himself; and then in a low voice to his uncle, “ Ask the operator if Dillingham has sent or received anything over the wires lately.”
Mr. Dillingham had sent two telegrams the day before.
“ Will you allow me to look at them a moment? ”
Knowing Mr. Dent to be the intimate friend of the young pastor, the clerk obligingly took the copies of the two dispatches from a clip on his desk, and handed them to the elderly gentleman.
Dropping the date, the telegrams read as follows: —
I.
To Rawlings & Son, Bankers,
Chicago, Illinois:
Place the balance due me on account, and the six U. S. bonds you hold for me, to the credit and subject to the order of Colonel Peyton Todhunter.
JAMES DILLINGHAM.
II.
To Colonel Peyton Todhunter,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin:
Go to Chicago instantly. Draw funds from Rawlings. Will join you at 6666. You have failed. He is here. J. D.
“Are you convinced now?” whispered John Dent, having with breathless interest read these documents over his uncle’s shoulder. “It appears, though I don't understand the last telegram at all, that your friend Colonel Peyton Todhunter is the friend of your worthy friend the Rev. James Dillingham; and a precious pair they are, if I may say so without hurting your feelings. ‘ He is here ’ means me, of course; but what is meant by ‘ You have failed ’ ? ‘ 6666 ’ evidently designates some point of rendezvous.”
“ Jack,” whispered Mr. Dent thickly, “ I can’t believe my eyes! ”
“I wouldn’t,” said Jack. “I’d stand it out. In the mean time I will send off this description, and then we ’ll go back to the hotel. He decamped in haste, and may have left behind him something in the way of letters or papers that will be useful to me.”
The young man seated himself at a desk, and, after a moment’s reflection, wrote the following message, which he handed to his uncle: —
Messrs. Rawlings & Son,
Chicago, Ill. :
Has Colonel Todhunter drawn the funds described in the dispatch of yesterday? If not, stop payment until further advices. J. D.
“That’s a clever idea,” said Mr. Dent, awaking from the stupor that had fallen upon him. “We will have an injunction on them, if it is not too late; but, Jack, is n’t it a sort of forgery to use Dillingham’s name this way? ”
“ I have n’t used his name,” answered Jack, laughing; “I have put my own initials to the document, like a man. Are you working through? ” he asked, turning to the clerk. “Then send this along.”
He resumed his seat at the desk, and fell to work on a personal description of George Nevins. This was a task of some difficulty, requiring a conciseness and clearness of diction which cost him considerable trouble. More than half an hour elapsed before John Dent had completed the portrait to his satisfaction. He was in the midst of his second dispatch, when the operator received from Rawlings & Son a telegram that seemed to puzzle him somewhat.
“ This appears to be an answer to your dispatch, sir, but it is addressed to Mr. Dillingham.”
“ A mistake at the other end,” said Mr. Dent, quickly.
“ What do they say ? ” asked John Dent, reaching forward to take the long narrow strip of paper from the clerk’s hand.
Colonel Todhunter had drawn out the funds in full. The Messrs. Rawlings & Son trusted there was nothing wrong in the matter; they had acted strictly according to instructions.
“Just as I expected,” said Jack, tossing the paper to his uncle, “ luck is dead against me.” Then he went on with his writing: “ Five feet eight or nine inches; blue eyes; light hair, probably cut close; no beard or mustache,” etc., etc.
“ This is simply horrible,” murmured Mr. Dent; and as he walked nervously up and down the office, he recalled the afternoon when he introduced Dillingham to Colonel Todhunter, and how they had saluted each other as strangers, and seemed to dislike each other, being such different men; then he reflected that it was chiefly through his own means that this scandal had been brought upon Rivermouth; then he thought of Prue, and he turned cold and hot, and pale and flushed, by turns; and the rapid scratching of John Dent’s pen over the paper, and the monotonous clicking of the satanic little telegraph instrument behind the wire screen drove him nearly distracted.
“ And now, if you please, we will inspect the sanctum sanctorum of the late incumbent,” said John Dent gayly.
It was only human that he should relish the consternation of his uncle. But as they were passing out into the street, John Dent’s face underwent a change; he halted on the last of the three steps leading to the sidewalk, and, grasping the iron railing, seemed unable to move farther.
“ What is it now? ” asked Mr. Dent, nervously.
“ Uncle Ralph, was Prue engaged to that man ? — did she love him ? ”
“No!” cried Mr. Dent; “I believe she hated him instinctively, — thank God! ”
“Amen!” said John Dent, drawing a long breath. “ lie has got my money, he has blighted two years of my life, but if he has n’t got at the pure gold of Prue’s heart, I forgive him ! ”
XVIII.
A RIVRMOUTH MYSTERY.
THE two Dents returned in silence to the Old Bell Tavern, and went up directly to the deserted study.
“ First of all,” said John Dent, closing the door and turning the key, “I want to know how he came here, how he managed to step into Parson Hawkins’s shoes, and all the details. Tell me slowly, for I feel I shall not comprehend this thing, unless it is put in the simplest way.”
The story of Mr. Dent’s acquaintance with Dillingham in New York, and the chain of commonplace events that had ended in his coming to Rivermoutli as the pastor of the Old Brick Church, was told in a few words. It was not a strange story, taking it link by link; it was only as a whole that it appeared incredible.
“ He was an artist, that man,” said Mr. Dent, with an involuntary pang of admiration, as he recalled the cleverness with which Dillingham had put Joseph Twombly out of the way. He recollected now that Dillingham had withheld his consent to come to Rivermouth until the very day Twombly started for Chicago. “ Ah, Jack, if good people, as a class, were one half as intelligent and energetic as rogues, what a world this would be! ”
“ Knowing Nevins as I do,” said John Dent when his uncle had finished, “ his adroitness and cunning, I can understand what a tempting thing it was to him to play at this masquerade; but he must have had a deeper motive than a mere whim to keep him here seven months.”
“ He fell in love with Prue, of course,” said Mr. Dent, with a twinge; “and then — I see it all, Jack! you were right. He did have a watch set on you; he meant to marry Prue, and keep you out of the parson’s money, even if he had to kill you to do it! — it was Todhunter who made the attempt, on your life when they saw you were coming East; it was Todhunter who dogged your steps all the time! ”
“The parson’s money?” said John Dent.
The words had escaped Mr. Dent in his excitement, as the whole of the desperate game which Dillingham had probably been playing flashed upon him. It will be remembered that on the morning when Parson Hawkins’s later will was found, Mr. Dent went to Boston to meet Mr. Dillingham and conduct him to Rivermouth. Mr. Dent was full of the matter, and that night, at the Revere House, he had spoken freely to his friend of the old parson’s whimsical testament. Perhaps it was in that same hour Dillingham formed the purpose to possess himself of the money,—admitting, for the moment, that Dillingham was George Nevins.
John Dent stood looking inquiringly at his uncle. It was too late to recall the words; the circumstances seemed to warrant Mr. Dent now in disregarding the restriction of the will, and he told his. nephew of the legacy.
At another moment, this undreamedof fortune would have filled John Dent’s heart with both joy and sadness; but the day, scarcely begun, had been too crowded with other emotions, for him to give way to either now. He walked to the window and, rubbing a clear space on one of the panes, looked out into the snowy street for several minutes; then he turned to Mr. Dent and said quietly, “ Let us look through these things.”
A closer examination of the study and sleeping-room afforded indubitable evidence that the late occupant had abandoned them in desperate haste, but also that he had left behind him no letters or written memoranda giving any clew to his intended movements. A quantity of papers had been burnt in the grate; an undecipherable fragment of the note Prudence had written him lay on the hearth-rug, and near it the back of a delicate pink envelope with which no one would have thought of associating the fair Veronica, if it had not borne her pretty monogram.
Mr. Dillingham had, so to speak, spiked his guns; but a company of embroidered worsted slippers, — as gay as a company of Zouaves, — and a number of highly mounted dressing-gowns sufficient properly to officer this metaphorical detachment, fell into the hands of the enemy.
The younger man, on his side, conducted the investigation with relentless scrutiny; but Mr. Dent only cursorily, for the place in his heart which Dillingham had occupied was yet warm with the late presence.
Two discoveries were made, unimportant in themselves, but one of which interested the nephew, and the other startled the uncle, who, in the progress of the search, appeared to be receiving a series of shocks from an invisible galvanic battery.
“ Here ’s a photograph which was lost some time since with a certain pocketbook containing a small sum of money.” And John Dent held out at arm’s length a faded vignette head of Prudence, gazing at it thoughtfully. “ The finder would have been liberally rewarded if I had got hold of him. Hullo! what’s this? Somebody’s bracelet,” he added, fishing up a piece of jewelry from the depths of the traveling-trunk over which he was stooping.
“ Dear, dear! ” groaned Mr. Dent. It was Veronica Blydenburgh’s bracelet. He knew of its loss; everybody knew of it. You could no more lose a bracelet in Rivermouth without ‘ verybody knowing it than you could lose your head. This affair seemed blacker to Mr. Dent than all the rest, — blacker than the attempt on Jack’s life, inasmuch as petty larceny lacks the dignity of assassination. But I fancy Mr. Dent was a trifle uncharitable here. As a reminiscence of a lovely white wrist, the trinket may have had a value to Mr. Dillingham which Mr. Dent did not suspect.
“ What a finished rogue he was! It is only when a man adds hypocrisy to his rascality, that he becomes a perfect knave.”
“ Yes,” said John Dent, “that little lamb’s-skiu does aggravate the offense.”
Mr. Dent walked off to the other end of the room and began turning over a lot of books and pamphlets piled in one corner. “Look here, Jack!” he cried presently, “here is where begot his sermons from, — South’s Sermons, Robertson’s Sermons, Hooker’s Sermons, Cumming’s Great Tribulation, Peabody’s Discourses. Gad! he mixed them up, old and young. By heaven! here ’s the very passage Pruo thought so affecting Fast Day. See where he’s ‘ our Gracious Queen ’ into our honored Chief Executive. Jack,” said Mr. Dent, solemnly, “ let ns go home! ”
“ Uncle Ralph, that is almost the only rational suggestion you have made to-day. bam famished.”
“ And I am frozen,” said Mr. Dent with a shiver, picking up his overcoat. He drew on one sleeve, and paused.
“ Well ? ” said his nephew.
“ Jack, this thing must be hushed up for Prue’s sake. The deacons will have to know the truth, and maybe one or two outsiders; but the towns-people must never be allowed to suspect the real character of that man. Some plausible explanation of his flight must be circulated. If be has left any bills, I shall pay them. I cannot eat a mouthful until this is settled. I must see Blydenburgh and Twombly and Wendell without wasting a moment, and I want you to come with me.”
“ For Prue’s sake, and for your sake,”said John Dent, laughing. “ Yes, for my sake, too. Don’t be hard on a fallen brother. You can’t afford to, Jack. If Dillingham deceived me, George Nevins was too many for you.”
“ That’s a fact,” said John Dent.
In the course of an hour the deacons and trustees of the Old Brick Church assembled together mysteriously in Deacon Twombly’s parlor, — five or six honest, elderly, bald-headed gentlemen, who now had the air of dark-browed conspirators on the eve of touching off innumerable barrels of gunpowder. Deacon Zeb Twombly might have been taken for Guy Fawkes himself.
The next day it was known that the Rev. Mr. Dillingham had quitted Riverrnoutli; it was understood in the parish and in the town that family matters, involving the jeopardy of large estates, had called Mr. Dillingham away so suddenly that he had had time to advise only his immediate friends of his departure. It was also understood that his return was problematical. There were dark hints and whispers and rumors and speculations, to be sure; but for once a secret was kept in Rivermouth, —though one woman knew it!
Prudence had to be told, of course, and she nearly died with desire one afternoon, six months afterwards, to tell Veronica Blydenburgh everything, — the afternoon Veronica came to her and said, “ Only think, Prue! papa found my opal bracelet under the flooring of the old summer-house.”
Veronica sat silent for a moment, dreamily weaving the bright coil in and out her slender fingers; then suddenly lifting her head, she cried, “ Prue, will you swear never to breathe it to a living soul if I tell you something ? ’ ’
“ Yes,” said Prudence, with a start.
“ Well, then, the afternoon before he went away so strangely ” —
“ Who went away? ”
“Mr. Dillingham.”
“ Oh! ”
“ The afternoon before he went away, he —he offered himself to me! ”
“What!” cried Prudence, turning white and red. It was beginning to appear that Cupid had had two strings to his bow.
“I say,” repeated Veronica, “that Mr. Dillingham offered himself to me.”
“ And you refused him! ”
“ O Prue! that ’s the bitterness of it! — I accepted him! ”
I have not said — though I have let John Dent say it — that the Rev. James Dillingham was George Nevins. Is it improbable? As I come to the close of my story, I have a feeling that the career of James Dillingham in Rivermouth, supposing him to be identical with George Nevins, will strike the reader as improbable, and it is improbable — as the things that happen every day. But such as it is, the chronicle ends here.
And Prudence Palfrey?
The reader shall become my collaborator at this point and finish the romance to his own liking. It is only fair for me to inform him, however, that one morning last Spring as I was passing, portmanteau in hand, from the station at Rivermouth to the old gambrel-roofed house in a neighboring street where I always find welcome, I saw a little man swinging on a gate.
I had never seen this small personage before, but there was something absurdly familiar in the dark hair and alert black eyes, something absurdly familiar in the lithe, wiry figure (it was as if John Dent had been cut down from five feet eight to three feet four); and when he returned my salutation with that cavalier air which stamps your six-year-old man of the world, there was an intonation in his voice so curiously like Prue’s, that I laughed all to myself!
T. B. Aldrich.