Eleven Possible Cases Part 9

By this I'd begun to guess what was pretty near the truth--that I was talking with a mad aunt of the family below, and that the game was in my hands if I played it with decent care. So I brought her to face the important question.

"Look here," I said, "all this shall be done when you are out of their hands. At present I'm running a considerable risk in braving these persecutors of yourn. Dearest madam, the ladder's outside and the carriage waiting. Hadn't we better elope at once?"

She gave a sob, and fell on my shoulders.

"Oh, is it true--is it true? Pinch me, that I may awake if this is but a happy dream!"

"You are ready?"

"This moment."

"There's just one other little matter, ma'am--your jewels. You won't leave them to your enemies, I suppose?"

This was the dangerous moment, and I felt a twitch of the nerves as I watched her face to see how she would take the suggestion. But the poor silly soul turned up her eyes to mine, all full of tears and confidence.

"Dearest, I am old, old. Had you come earlier, my beauty had not wanted jewels to set it off. But now I must wear them to look my best--as your bride."

She hid her face in her hands for a second, then turned to the dressing-table, lifted her jewel-case and put it into my hands.

"I am ready," she repeated: "let us be quick and stealthy as death."

She followed me to the window and looking out, drew back.

"What horrible, black depths!"

"It's as easy," said I, "as pie. You could do it on your head; look here----," I climbed out first and helped her, setting her feet on the rungs.

We went down in silence, I choking with laughter all the way at the sight of Peter below, who was looking with his mouth open and his lips too weak to meet on the curses and wonderment that rose up from the depths of him. When I touched turf and handed him the jewel-case, he took it like a man in a trance.

We put the ladder back into its place and stole over the turf together.

But outside the garden-door Peter could stand no more of it--

"I've a fire-arm in my pocket," whispered he, pulling up, "and I'm going to fire it off to relieve my feelings if you don't explain here and now.

Who, in pity's name, is _she_?"

"You mug--she's the Original Sleeping Beauty. I'm eloping with her, and you've got her jewels."

"Pardon me, Jem," he says in his gentlemanly way, "if I don't quite see.

Are you taking her off to melt her or marry her? For how to get rid of her else----"

The poor old creature had halted, too, three paces ahead of us, and waited while we whispered, with the moonlight, that slanted down into the lane, whitening her bare neck and flashing in her jewels.

"One moment," I said, and stepped forward to her. "You had better take off those ornaments here, my dear, and give them to my servant to take care of. There's a carriage waiting for us at the end of the lane, and when he has stowed them under the seat we can climb in and drive off----"

"To the end of the world--to the very rim of it, my hero."

She pulled the gems from her ears, hair, and bosom, and handed them to Peter, who received them with a bow. Next she searched in her pocket and drew out a tiny key. Peter unlocked the case, and having carefully stowed the diamonds inside, locked it again, handed back the key, touched his hat, and walked off towards the dog-cart.

"My dearest lady," I began, as soon as we were alone between the high walls, "if the devotion of a life----"

Her bare arm crept into mine. "There is but a little time left for us in which to be happy. Year after year I have marked off the almanack: day by day I have watched the dial. I saw my sisters married, and my sisters' daughters; and still I waited. Each had a man to love her and tend her, but none had such a man as I would have chosen. There were none like you, my Prince."

"No, I daresay not."

"Oh, but my heart is not so old! Take my hand--it is firm and strong; touch my lips--they are burning----"

A low whistle sounded at the top of the lane. As I took her hands I pushed her back, and turning, ran for my life. I suppose that, as I ran, I counted forty before her scream came, and then the sound of her feet pattering after me.

She must have run like a demon; for I was less than ten yards ahead when Peter caught my wrist and pulled me up on to the back-seat of the dog-cart. And before George could set the horse going her hand clutched at the flap on which my feet rested. It missed its grasp, and she never got near enough again. But for half a minute I looked into that horrible face following us and working with silent rage; and for half a mile at least I heard the patter of her feet in the darkness behind. Indeed, I can hear it now.

THE MYSTIC KREWE.

BY MAURICE THOMPSON.

CHAPTER I.

About seventy years ago a young man of strong physique and prepossessing appearance arrived at New Orleans. He had come from New York, of which city he was a native, and had brought with him a considerable sum of money, supplemented by a letter of introduction to Judge Favart de Caumartin, who was then at the flood tide of his fame.

It would not be fair to call our young man ("our hero" would be the good old phrase) an adventurer, without taking pains to qualify the impression that might be produced. Hepworth Coleman had his own way of looking at life. Fifty years later he would have been a tragedian--probably a famous one, but the conditions were not favorable to awakening histrionic ambition at the time when his character, his tastes, his ambition should have been forming. What he saw that was most fascinating to him had no distinct form; it lay along the south-western horizon, a dreamy, mist-covered something not unlike the confines of romance.

Hepworth Coleman was rich, and what was, perhaps, a greater misfortune, he had no living kinsfolk for whom he cared or who cared for him.

Practically speaking, he was alone in the world: moreover, he had an imagination. Scott's novels, Byron's poetry, the French romances, and I know not what else of the sort, had been his chief reading. For physical recreation he had turned to fencing and pistol practice. When I add that he was but twenty-two and unmarried, the rest might be guessed, but Coleman was not a young man of the world in the worst sense--he had not turned to evil sources of dissipation. Healthy, vigorous, full of spirit, he nevertheless had sentimental longings as indefinite as they were persistent.

Youth is the spring time when "Longen folk to gon on pilgrimages," as old Chaucer words it, and it would be hard to find the young man who has not felt the vaguely outlined yet irresistible desire to wander, to go over the horizon into a strange, new world. Hepworth Coleman, when he was taken with this longing, felt no restraint cast around him. He was absolutely free, had all the means necessary--why should he not go where he pleased? If it seems strange that he should have been attracted to New Orleans rather than to the Old World, we must remember what New Orleans was in 1820. No other city, not even Paris, could at that time compare with it as a center of genuine romance, nor was this romance unmixed with lawlessness of the most picturesque kind. Money poured into it from a hundred sources more or less illegitimate, besides the streams of wealth produced by cotton, sugar, and rice industries. Gambling was indeed a fine art, duelling appeared more a pastime than anything else, and what went on in the gilded halls and melody-filled salles may be imagined, I suppose, though, I do not care to cast a glance that way.

Hepworth Coleman had heard much of the gay city, of its warm, odorous atmosphere, its hospitality, its social charm, the smack of reckless romance in all its ways. Somehow the desire to go there got hold of his imagination and he went.

The letter to Judge Favart de Caumartin was given to Coleman by his banker, who in handing it to him said:

"I don't know the Judge personally, never saw him; but he has done a lot of business through us. He is very rich, evidently very influential, and certainly will be of use to you. I feel that I can take the liberty of sending you to him, because--well, he is under many obligations to the bank, and is likely to want many more large favors. I fancy that you'll find him a trifle eccentric, but enthusiastically hospitable. A creole of the creoles I judge him to be, and a representative of the nabobs."

Young Coleman considered himself lucky to carry with him a doc.u.ment that would give him introduction to a person so renowned as Judge Favart de Caumartin, of whom he had been recently reading a good deal owing to a duel fought between the Judge and one Colonel Sam Smith, of the United States army, in which the latter had been killed. The duel had brought out history from which it appeared that Judge Favart de Caumartin had fought before, not once only, but many times, and always to the death of his antagonist. Along with these facts were disclosed numerous picturesque details of the Judge's past life, with more than hints that in his young days he had been a pirate or something of the sort. The account also made the most of his wealth, his almost reckless liberality, his eccentricity, and, most of all, the air of mystery which still hung over his business operations.

All this was rich food for an imagination already thoroughly saturated with the spirit of romantic adventure, and during the voyage from New York to New Orleans Hepworth Coleman found deep satisfaction in antic.i.p.ating what he felt was in store for him. In every fiber of his frame he felt the a.s.surance that he was on the way to new and strange experiences.

His banker had sent a letter to precede his arrival by a few days, asking a friend to secure suitable apartments for Mr. Hepworth Coleman, gentleman, the consequence being that a dark young man, small but well-built and handsome, met him at the landing to conduct him to his suit of elegant rooms on Royal Street.

"Is you Meestu Coleman, sah?" inquired this young stranger in a musical and respectful tone of voice. "I look fo' zat ma' at prayson."