No. 13 Washington Square Part 28

Again Mr. Pyecroft's eyes flashed shrewdly, and again were clerically rounded.

"My dear sir, that is, indeed, surprising. I have seen no public notice of your marriage. And I watch the marriage announcements quite closely--which is rather natural, for, if I may be permitted to mention it, I myself am frequently called upon to perform the holy rites." His face clouded with what seemed a painful suspicion. "I trust, sir, that you are really married?"

"Why, d.a.m.n you--"

"Sir, you must not thus address the cloth!" sternly interposed Mr.

Pyecroft. "It is our duty to speak frankly, and to make due inquiry into the propriety of such relations. However, since you say so, I am sure the affair is strictly correct." His voice softened, became n.o.bly apologetic. "No harm has been meant, and if any offense has been felt, I a.s.sure you of my deepest regrets."

"See here, who the devil are you?" demanded Jack.

Mr. Pyecroft turned to Matilda.

"Matilda, my dear, will you kindly tell young Mr. De Peyster who I am."

Matilda seemed about to choke. "He's--he's my--my brother."

"Your brother!" exclaimed Jack, "I didn't know you had a brother. You never spoke of one."

"Which was entirely natural," said Mr. Pyecroft, with an air of pious remorse. "Matilda has been ashamed to speak of me. To be utterly frank--and it is meet that one who has been what I have been should be humble and ready to confess--for many years I was the black sheep of the family, my name unmentioned. But sometime since I was s.n.a.t.c.hed a brand from the burning; I have remained silent about myself until I could give to my family, which had properly disowned me, a long record to prove my reformation. I am now striving by my devotion to make some amends for my previous shortcomings."

Jack stared incomprehensibly at this unexpected clerical brother of Matilda's, with his unquenchable volubility. Mr. Pyecroft gazed back with appropriate humility, yet with a lofty self-respect.

Jack turned away with a shrug, and pointed at the dark figure of Mrs.

De Peyster.

"And who is that, Matilda?"

"That, sir," put in Mr. Pyecroft quickly, easily, to forestall any blunder by the hapless Matilda--and deftly interposing himself between Jack and Mrs. De Peyster, "that is our sister."

"The one who lives in Syracuse?"

"Yes; and she is indisposed," said Mr. Pyecroft. "Our sister Angelica Simpson Jones," he elaborated. "Matilda is the eldest, I am the youngest; there are just us three children."

"And might I ask, Matilda, without intending discourtesy," said Jack, eyeing Mr. Pyecroft with disfavor, "how long your brother and sister intend to remain?"

"Matilda invited us for the summer," said Mr. Pyecroft apologetically.

"For the summer!" repeated Jack in dismay. Then he spoke to Matilda, caustically: "I suppose it's all right, Matilda, but has it been your fixed custom, when we've been away for the summer, to fill the house with your family?"

"Please, Mr. Jack, please," imploringly began Matilda, and could utter nothing further.

"Great G.o.d!" Jack burst out in exasperation. "Not that I'd object ordinarily to your relatives being here, Matilda. But running this place just now as a hotel, who knows but it may let out the fact that we're here!"

Mr. Pyecroft's eyebrows went up--ever so little.

"Ah, I understand. You wish your presence in the house to be a secret."

"Of course! Hasn't Matilda told you?"

"I only just arrived. She hasn't had time. But of course she would have done so. You are--ah"--his tone was delicate--"evading the police?"

"The police! We don't care a hang about the police, though, of course, we don't want them to know. It's the infernal reporters we care about."

"The reporters?" softly pursued Mr. Pyecroft.

"Yes, but one reporter in particular--a beast by the name of Mayfair, I've had a tip that he suspects something; already he's tried to get into the house as a gas-meter inspector."

At the mention of that indomitable, remorseless, undeceivable newsgatherer, Mayfair, and the possibility of his gaining entrance into the house, Mrs. De Peyster experienced a new shudder.

"What would be the harm if Mr. Mayfair did get in?" Imperceptibly prodded Mr. Pyecroft. "He would merely write a piece about you for his paper."

"And his confounded piece, or the main facts in it, would be cabled to Europe!"

"Ah, I think I see," said Mr. Pyecroft. "Mrs. De Peyster would read about your marriage in the Paris 'Herald' or some other European paper. You do not wish your mother to know of your marriage--yet."

"I supposed Matilda had already told you that," said Jack.

"Ah, so that is why you are here in hiding," said Mr. Pyecroft, very softly, chiefly to himself; and his eyes had another momentary flash, only brighter than any heretofore, and his mouth twitched upward, and he pleasantly rubbed his hands.

At that moment, from the stairway, came the sound of descending steps.

Jack and Mary appeared undisturbed. Mr. Pyecroft became taut, though no one could have observed a change, Mrs. De Peyster quivered with yet deeper apprehension. Would the trials and tribulations and Pharaonic plagues never cease descending on her!

Matilda gazed wildly at Jack. "Who's that?" she quavered.

"Only Uncle Bob," Jack answered carelessly.

Only Uncle Bob! Mrs. De Peyster, in her dim corner, tried to shrivel up into yet darker obscurity. Breathlessly she felt herself upon the precipitous edge of ultimate horror. For Judge Harvey--Judge Harvey of all persons--to be the one to discover her amid her humiliating circ.u.mstances!

Dimly she heard Jack talk on, explaining in casual tone: "You know, Matilda, Uncle Bob has always had the general oversight of the house when it's been closed during summers; and he's always made it his business to drop in occasionally to see that everything's all right.

I got him word we were here, and he dropped in this evening to call on us--and along came this awful rain and we coaxed him to stay the night. Uncle Bob and you are lucky, Matilda, you can both come and go without arousing any suspicion."

Only the Judge!... Yet, for all her horror, a new phase of the general predicament filtered into such consciousness as she now possessed.

Judge Harvey, irate purchaser of autograph letters, and Mr. Pyecroft, _alias_ Thomas Preston, profuse producer of the same, were under the same roof and were about to meet. What would happen when they came face to face?--for she remembered now that a bad likeness of Thomas Preston had several times appeared in the papers. She turned her head toward the doorway and peered through her veil, waiting.

When Judge Harvey entered, Mr. Pyecroft started. Upon the instant he had recognized Judge Harvey. But the next moment Mr. Pyecroft was himself. Jack gave the necessary introductions, the one to Angelica Simpson Jones at long distance, and gave a brief explanation of the presence of the two guests. During this while Judge Harvey repeatedly glanced at Mr. Pyecroft, a puzzled look on his countenance.

"Excuse me, Mr. Simpson," he remarked presently, "but your face seems elusively familiar to me. I seem to know it, yet I cannot place it.

Haven't I met you somewhere?"

"Perhaps you were a lay delegate to the recent Episcopal Convention in New York?" politely suggested Mr. Pyecroft.

"No. I did not even attend any of the sessions."

"Then, of course, it could not have been there that you saw me," said Mr. Pyecroft.

"Perhaps it will come to me," said Judge Harvey.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Pyecroft.