The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 10

"I am a careless man," said Forrest; "I might lose them. May I ask you to look after them for me?"

"Would you leave me alone with them?" asked Ballin.

"Of course," said Forrest.

Ballin opened an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon the despoiling doc.u.ments. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of the despoiler.

"And now what?" he said.

"And now," said Forrest, "remember for a little while only that I am, let us say, an old friend of your youth. Forget for the present, if you can, who else I am, and what my recrudescence must mean to you. It is not a happiness"--he faltered with his winning smile--"to give pain."

II

"Your father," said Forrest, "says that I may have his seat at the head of the table. You see, Miss Dorothy, in the world in which I have lived there were no families. And I have the strongest desire to experiment in some of those things which I have missed.... Ballin," he exclaimed, "how lovely your daughters are!"

The young Earl of Moray glanced up mischievously.

"Do you think, sir," he drawled, "that I have made the best selection under the circ.u.mstances? Sometimes I think I ought to have made up to Ellen instead of Dorothy."

"What's the matter with _us_?" said Alice, and she laid her hand upon Evelyn's.

"Oh, you little rotters!" exclaimed the earl, whom they sometimes teased to the point of agony. "No man in his senses would look at _you_."

"Right-O!" said young Stephen Ballin, who made the eighth at table.

"They're like germs," he explained to Forrest--"very troublesome to deal with."

"It's because we're twins," said Evelyn. "Everybody who isn't twins is down on them."

"It's because they are always beautiful and good," said Alice. "Why don't you stand up for us, father?"

It was noticed that Mr. Ballin was not looking well; that the chicken _mousse_ upon his plate was untouched, and that he fooled with his bread, breaking it, crumbling it, and rolling it into pellets. He pulled himself together and smiled upon his beloved twins.

Forrest had turned to the Earl of Moray.

"Was it your ancestor," he said, "who 'was a bra' gallant, and who raid at the gluve'?"

"I am confident of it," said the young Englishman.

"By all accounts," said Forrest, "he would have been a good hand with a derringer. Have you that gift for games?"

"I'm a very good golfer." said the earl, "but I thought a derringer was a kind of dish that babies ate gruel out of." He blushed becomingly.

"As ever," said Alice, "insular and ignorant."

"You p.r.i.c.kly baby!" exclaimed the earl. "What is a derringer, Mr.

Forrest?"

Forrest, having succeeded in drawing the attention of his immediate and prospective family from the ill looks of Mr. Ballin, proposed to keep his advantage.

"I will show you," he said. "Are my hands empty?"

"Quite so," said the earl.

"Keep your eyes on them," said Forrest, "so. Now, we will suppose that you have good reason to believe that I have stolen your horse. Call me a horse thief."

"Sir," said the earl, entering into the spirit of the game, "you are a horse thief!"

There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing. The earl was startled. But he said, "I was mistaken, sir; you are not a horse thief." As mysteriously as it had come, the wicked little derringer disappeared. Forrest's hands remained innocently in plain view of all.

"Oh," said Alice, "if you had only pulled the trigger!"

Evelyn giggled.

"Frankly, Mr. Forrest," said the earl, "aren't the twins loathsome? But tell me, can you shoot that thing as magically as you play tricks with it?"

"It's not a target gun," said Forrest. "It's for instantaneous work at close range. One could probably hit a tossed coin with it, but one must have more weight and inches to the barrel and less explosion for fine practice."

"What would you call fine practice?" asked Stephen.

"Oh," said Forrest, "a given leg of a fly at twenty paces, or to snip a wart from a man's hand at twenty-five."

Mr. Ballin rose.

"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty--of too long leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins were silent.

"He used to sing that song," said Forrest, "so that the cold chills went galloping the length of a man's spine. He was as like you to look at,"

he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, placer-mining--half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever.

The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I was up, thanks to him, he was down--thanks to me. He died of it."

Forrest finished very gravely.

"Good Lord!" said the earl.

"_He_ might ha' been a king," said Forrest. And he swallowed the lump that rose in his throat, and turned away so that his face could not be seen by them.

But, presently, he flashed about with his winning smile.

"What, would all you rich young people do if you hadn't a sou in the world?"

"Good Lord!" said Stephen, "everything I know how to do decently costs money."

"I feel sure," said Alice, her arm about Evelyn's waist, "that our beauty and goodness would see _us_ through."

"I," said Ellen, "would quietly curl up and die."

"I," said Dorothy, "would sell my earl to the highest bidder."