CHAPTER XXII.

MAURICE Brennett confided little to chance. He had found it a doubtful auxiliary. One lowering afternoon, however, it came to his aid in an unexpected emergency. It had moved him to decline an invitation from Horace Percy to drive to Chattalla, and an hour or so after his friend’s departure it led him into the library.

The day was sultry; no wind stirred; the woods were still. A heavy cloud overshadowed the landscape like an impending curse; now and then it was cleft by a lurid flash of lightning, but as yet there was no thunder. The storm was in abeyance.

The grating of wheels on the gravelled drive struck sharply upon the silence. With an idle man’s languid interest in small details, he put aside the curtain and looked out. His heart stood still.

It might seem that there was nothing in the sight which met his eyes to elicit vivid emotion--only a well-dressed man, with a handsome face and a seigniorial manner, alighting from a carriage. But if a great painter had staked his life, his soul upon the grouping in his masterpiece, and the figures should become animated with a malicious free-agency, leaving their places on the canvas and involving all in ruin, his despair might be commensurate with what Brennett felt when John Fortescue, quitting his prescribed sphere, appeared suddenly on this new scene, dragging chaotic complications after him.

There was hardly a moment for reflection. There was hardly need for that moment. His best course--his only course flashed through Brennett’s mind instantly. He caught up his hat, walked hastily out into the hall, and the two men met at the open front-door as Fortescue laid his hand on the bell-knob.

He drew back slightly. The gesture, almost imperceptible though it was, restored Brennett’s self-confidence. There was no trace of discomposure now in his manner.

“You’ve come to see me, I suppose,” he said coolly. “May I ask why?”

His agitation seemed to have subtly transferred itself to Fortescue, whose face changed.

“Hang it!” he said with husky uncertainty. “Shall I talk it out now and here?”

“If you like,” Brennett replied, laughing a little, and eying him contemptuously.

Fortescue had known Brennett long and well. No one could know him well enough to divine how he quaked with the prosaic fear that some servant might see the carriage and come to usher in the guest--how cautiously he was pushing his advantage--how anxious he was lest he push it too far--how he deprecated what he invited, for a hasty word might ruin them both. Still it was imperative to cow Fortescue--to keep him down was the first consideration.

“Isn’t there some place about here where we can talk without interruption, Brennett,” said Fortescue, calling his name for the first time. “I don’t want to meet people--I must see you alone. I must talk affairs over with you. I won’t go on with the”--

He broke off suddenly. “I tell you now,” he resumed, with a gathering frown, “I’ve come expressly to have it out with you.”

“You can imagine what facilities there are here for the interview you propose,” said Brennett, still harassing him. “There is the library, with the dining-room adjoining; there are the parlors, opening into a conservatory; there is my room, connected with Percy’s by sliding doors.”

“Oh, come out, come out!” said Fortescue impatiently. “We can find some quiet place about the grounds, or we can get into the carriage and drive away somewhere.”

Brennett silently assented. As they walked down the steps he took out his cigar-case and offered it. Fortescue shook his head, hardly raising his absorbed eyes from the ground, and mechanically keeping by the side of his friend, who led the way through the shrubbery. Brennett was selecting a cigar for himself when they reached their objective point; they had emerged from among the evergreens into an open, grassy space, with only a great oak-tree in the centre; beneath its wide-spreading branches was an iron bench. Here a figure approaching in any direction could be observed at the distance of fifty yards, and their voices, even if raised in emphasis or anger, would be inaudible to any loiterer among the shrubbery beyond.

Brennett threw himself on the bench, and, with his cigar between his teeth, he glanced up at his visitor, who paused, leaning moodily against the bole of the tree.

“Now, see here,” said Brennett, in a pleasant, deliberate voice.

Fortescue lifted his head with a hungry expectancy of look, almost pitiable in its intensity.

“Give me a match, can’t you?” continued Brennett.

A cruel disappointment was sharply cut into Fortescue’s face. There was something positively simple-hearted in his unsuspecting ignorance of the astute intention that had dealt this insidious thrust. It seemed to him that only his eagerness had led him into sanguine anticipation, and in his curt response, “Haven’t one,” there was no infusion of bitterness.

“Ah, I believe I have one myself.” Brennett produced it and lighted his cigar; then, as he began to smoke, he carelessly eyed his despondent companion, still leaning against the tree,--more despondent, perhaps, for that sudden kindling of hope, as suddenly quenched,--more anxious, more nervous. Fortescue made an effort to rally.

“Now, Brennett, what have you to say to me?”

“To say to you?” echoed Brennett in surprised accents. “My dear fellow, not one word.”

“Come, there’s enough of that,” retorted Fortescue fiercely.

“Did you journey all the way from the mountains merely to ask what I have to say?”

“I won’t be badgered in this manner, Brennett. You had better draw off. I came here for money. You know that.”

“You won’t get it.”

“Then I’ll expose the whole affair.”

“And incidentally give yourself up?”

Fortescue looked hard into his coadjutor’s face. It was grave, but the brilliant eyes were lighted by some inward, sardonic laughter.

“And give myself up,” he said slowly, “and, incidentally, you.”

“You mistake your metal, my dear Fortescue. You have been a soldier, as we all know, but you are not the stuff of which martyrs are made.”

“I don’t see why I should be a martyr. I don’t see why, in exposing you, I should necessarily give myself up.” Fortescue paused, as if in doubt whether he should go further. Brennett’s satiric face and gleaming eyes seemed to exert an unnerving effect upon him.

“I intend to cut the whole thing,” he cried suddenly. “I have been shabbily treated from the first, because you fancy that I am completely at your mercy. I am not in your power. I have the ability to ruin you by a course which insures me immunity. I did _not_ come all the way from the mountains merely to ask what you have to say, but to see Miss St. Pierre,--unless you find it prudent to come to terms.”

Brennett pulled away comfortably at his cigar. The unconstrained calmness of his manner had not a suggestion of _bravade_; his attitude denoted a certain degree of easy attention; his bright eyes were fixed in listless quietude upon the line of shrubbery. But was his face paler than its wont, or did it catch the pallid reflection of a lurid gleam from the heavy clouds?

“See Miss St. Pierre,” he exclaimed presently, looking up. “Of course you must. She is worth seeing, I assure you.”

“Damn it!” cried the other furiously, “you know what I mean. I shall see Miss St. Pierre, and, by disclosing the whole scheme, secure her promise not to prosecute,--as far as I am concerned. I went into the affair reluctantly. I never half liked it, but I was so devilish hard up for the money you bribed me with. I never knew how serious it was. It seemed a sort of theatrical lark. I was exhilarated with the idea of personating that fellow and humbugging a town full of people. I knew I could do it. But I really did not appreciate what a swindle it was, for I was only half posted about the facts before I had committed myself. _You_ were the originator of the plot; you alone will have to answer for it. I shall tell her the whole story, and throw myself on her clemency.”

“Her clemency!” Brennett repeated the words mockingly. “The man who trusts to _her_ clemency will find himself in the county jail, convicted of a conspiracy to fraudulently obtain property.”

From this ignoble allusion Fortescue flinched. And certainly there was a barbed malice in its incongruity with all those fastidious intimations which hung about his presence--his attire, somewhat too elegant and elaborate, his impressive bearing, even his delicately white but strong and sinewy hand clenching itself upon the kid glove which he had drawn off. Hardly more incongruous, however, than the man was with himself, with those sordid appeals for money, with his coarse threats. He seemed so nobly endowed by nature. His superb physique in itself should have rendered mere existence pleasure. His strength, his stature, his animal spirits might have made life a long triumphal progress for some ambitious soul, niggardly equipped. All the sharply chiselled lines of his features, and those fine eyes that were so vicious and so handsome, bespoke a rare intelligence which could only be an added reproach to him and his failings. His special talents, and his voice, with its infinite susceptibility of inflection, would have given fortune and fame to another man, and a histrionic artist to the world. He was an example of perverted powers. He had all--yet lacked all in lacking that consecrating element, an abiding sense of honor.

Certain lines about his perfectly moulded lips might once have suggested an ingenuous sensitiveness--now they expressed an accomplished sensuality. There was a momentary lapse, however, into the old habit of their muscles as they trembled almost imperceptibly. Then they were resolutely stilled, and with the coarseness of these days he faced his coadjutor’s suggestion and persisted.

“She will be under a certain degree of obligation to me for exposing the conspiracy and withdrawing from it before her interests are injured. She will have promised.”

“This is the nineteenth century,” said Brennett, “and yet here is a man willing to stake his liberty on a woman’s promise. The world moves slowly.”

There was a muttering of thunder on the still air. A vivid flash shot swiftly through the heavens from zenith to horizon and quivered in ghastly vibrations over all the landscape below. Fortescue lifted his eyes toward the black clouds as he spoke. “I left Bandusia with the resolve of seeing her at once. Even after I reached that little town yesterday I had no intention of ever appealing to you again. This afternoon I started out to that man’s place--General Vayne’s place--determined to have an interview with her and explain the whole affair.”

He was still looking at the clouds. He did not note the effect of his words, or he might have seen that Maurice Brennett winced at the imminence of this danger of which he had had no premonition. His bright eyes were distended and brighter still. He lounged upon the iron bench in a relaxed attitude; one hand was on his hip; it might have occurred to a man more timid or more observant than his companion, that it was in significant proximity to his pistol pocket. He was an unscrupulous villain and he had been threatened with discovery and ruin. His quick, prophetic mind had sketched the outline of the possible scenes to come--a jet of red light projected into the somnolent atmosphere of this gray afternoon; a sharp report; a result that should be called a dreadful accident; frantic regret for the careless handling of a pistol supposed to be unloaded; always the most cordial relations existing between the parties. Thus the curtain should fall upon the “theatrical lark.”

There was no change in his voice when he spoke. He asked a question as if the answer could in no degree concern him.

“And why didn’t you go?”

Fortescue once more searchingly scanned the face before him. There was nothing in it to suggest how he had best modify the facts. He gave them unvarnished. “I discovered she was not there. Before I left the turnpike I met a carriage with two young ladies driving toward the town. I questioned the tollgate-keeper, who said that one was General Vayne’s daughter and the other Miss St. Pierre. So I postponed the project, turned back, and concluded to try you once more before I throw up my hand.”

“Throw it up, my friend. You can see her easily enough in the morning.”

“I’ll try it, at any rate,” said Fortescue doggedly, his breath coming hard between his clenched teeth. “I’m likely to get nothing from you--perhaps she will pay for the information I can give.”

“You don’t know her!” exclaimed Brennett, laughing. “If you did I should admire your enterprise.”

“I shall not ask her for money,” cried Fortescue impetuously, veering instantly from his determination. “I shall only tell her the whole story and throw myself on her clemency. My testimony against you will give her all the revenge she wants.”

“My dear Fortescue,” said Brennett, still laughing, “you don’t know your cousin.”

“She is not my cousin. Stop that humbug. Don’t call me ‘Fortescue.’”

“Don’t you call yourself ‘Fortescue?’ Tell me, what shall I call you?”

“What’s the use of all that rot when we are alone?”

“Habit, my dear fellow--for the sake of habit. You wouldn’t like it if I should accidentally blurt out among our acquaintances in New Orleans that you are my valued friend Edward Keevor--merely masquerading for mingled considerations of pleasure and profit as John Fortescue.”

“And you needn’t shout it now”--with an anxious glance toward the shrubbery.

“Why not? To-morrow you will fling yourself penitent before Miss St. Pierre, and meekly petition for immunity and mercy. The game is up.”

The adventurer said nothing. He was thinking that if it were desirable to see Miss St. Pierre he should have done so without talking the matter over with Brennett. He was conscious of being unduly swayed by his coadjutor’s influence when they were together, and yet he could not shake it off. His project, which he had believed so safe, so easy, began to present unexpected difficulties. Pitfalls were before him--he must tread warily. There was no prophesying how she would receive his disclosure. The story once told--he was absolutely at her mercy. As he reflected on his fast-fading resolve it seemed the maddest temerity to have contemplated risking himself upon the doubtful whim that might possess a woman whom he had never seen, and of whom he had heard nothing save what would augur the most disastrous results of his confidence.

He could not understand Brennett’s indifference. It was simply inexplicable in a man fatally menaced, with every consideration at stake. It never occurred to him--who could feign so well--that another might play a part too. And he did not think Brennett in any special sense a courageous man--he did not credit him with the nerve to stolidly face an emergency like this. He believed himself possessed of far more force and pluck; he had relied on these endowments to shake his adversary’s equilibrium, and now he himself was wavering. As far as he could judge he had made no impression. A new conviction was sending deep roots into his mind--his coadjutor had an alternative in contemplation. Perhaps there had been some change in the position of affairs of which he had not been notified. He quaked as he thought of his precipitancy, and the dangers into which he might have plunged. He felt enmeshed in hidden toils; his manner was changing from threatening sternness to despondent appeal. He stood for an instant longer beneath the tree, then he walked slowly to the iron bench and sat down beside his companion.

“Brennett,” he said, “you have not treated me fairly in this matter. You have deceived me in more ways than one.”

“If so, you have your redress. I don’t say a word to dissuade you. Do whatever you think your interest requires.”

“You kept me in ignorance of the extent of this swindle until I was fully committed. You knew I wouldn’t take hold if I had understood. I never before did anything villanous--never half so bad, I mean. Ah, well--when a man once starts on the down grade of crime there’s not much chance of putting on the brakes. The gambling-house and the gates of hell--they are the _termini_, I suppose.”

“This is edifying,” said Brennett, with a curling lip.

“You are trying to exasperate me. You are trying to provoke me to an outbreak. You want me to become discouraged and to relinquish the whole matter, and go quietly back to France. You have succeeded in effecting a compromise, and now you are trying to evade paying me the five thousand dollars which you promised.”

Brennett laughed. “What a fool!” he said contemptuously. “How could I effect a compromise without John Fortescue’s signature?”

This was evidently a false scent.

“Then you have some alternative in view. What is the prospect for a compromise?”

“Better than ever.”

“You have told me that before.”

“It was true then--it is true now. The chances have steadily improved. Before long they will be merged in a certainty.”

“I must have money, Brennett--in the meantime I must have some money.”

“You won’t get it from me.”

“Then I’ll split.”

“Split then--and be damned to you!”

There was a pause.

“It is hard--hard! You promised at first that it should last for only two or three weeks, and I agreed to play the part for that length of time. It has lasted four months. It is a terrible strain.”

“Nonsense. I don’t believe you. I’ve seen you ape first one fellow and then another, and hardly make a gesture or speak a word in your own manner for days together. It’s a natural gift with you. There’s no art nor cultivation about it, and it can’t be painful to exercise it. You are doing for money what I have seen you do a thousand times for pure tomfoolery. I have filled my contract with you to the letter. I told you that the time could not be positively limited. I paid you five thousand dollars--to undertake a little deception, as easy to you as lying--and I promised you five thousand more contingent upon effecting a compromise with Miss Antoinette St. Pierre. You want more money in the interval--which our agreement does not call for. I won’t pay a cent.”

“I run a frightful risk. Every day that this thing continues makes it more imminent. I am always oppressed with a sense of my danger.”

“You run a frightful risk when you are drunk.”

“But I haven’t been drinking lately. I have sworn to be moderate. I thought at first that I could carry the affair off easily enough for a short time, but this long, long imposition has broken me down. And since that locket--you remember I wrote to you--since it has come from the grave to upbraid me I have been fearfully harassed; my nerves are disordered; I am beset with an idea that discovery is upon me. I am actually becoming superstitious,” he continued, more wildly. “Brennett,”--he paused impressively as he rose to his feet, while the thunder crashed from the clouds and the lightning rent the sky--“I am almost afraid to put it into words, but I have a curious sense of companionship. Often that man, John Fortescue, is with me.”

Brennett glanced up with a satiric smile.

“You will not believe me,” the other went on, in a broken voice and with a white, set face. “Why I should tell _you_ I don’t know--I saw him shot from his horse on that battle-field--I saw him hours afterward lying on the ground, dead--and--by the Lord in heaven--I met him on the streets of Marston yesterday.”

He struck the iron bench in emphasis; the blow forced out the blood from his hand. He did not notice it in his excitement. He held it up, dripping and quivering, as he spoke.

“Like he was when I first knew him. Like he was twenty years ago. Brennett--Brennett, I thought I had lost my mind! I thought that it was only a diseased and morbid fancy. I purposely reeled up against it, like a drunken man, to try if the--the Thing was palpable--if it could speak!”

His face was illumined suddenly with the baleful glitter of the lightning; then it sank as suddenly into the moody shadow of the stormy clouds. And still he held up his hand, dripping with blood, and quivering with a pain of which he was unconscious. Brennett was looking at him with some speculation in his cool, critical eyes as to how he might turn these fantastic mental gyrations to his own use. “And it did speak?” he said.

“It did speak--and it spoke with his voice, but I could not catch the words. He threw me off with a gesture as characteristic as his tones. Then he walked on down the street with exactly the air and manner which I had been imitating as I had walked on up the street. It seemed to me so patent that I stared about to see if people had noticed it, but no one was looking at us.”

After a moment the impostor once more broke forth wildly,--

“When I fell asleep I dreamed of him; I shall dream of him to-night. Some day I shall see him again. I know it. I feel it. I shall see him again.”

Brennett laughed harshly. “You are a marvellously unreasoning creature. Does it never occur to you that the man was uppermost in your thoughts, and this fact invested some stranger with a fancied resemblance. I’ll stake my immortal soul, too, that you had been drinking.”

“I expected you to say that,” his friend declared, with a heavy sigh. “I don’t understand why I should tell these things to you, except perhaps because I can tell them to no one else. I don’t look to you for sympathy. I am a fool, God knows, but I have never been given over to such abject idiocy as that.”

Again he paused, white and haggard. He was in a strong tremor. He might have fallen but for the tree behind him.

“Brennett,” he cried suddenly, “I am dead! I have lost my identity. I am a dead man! And this,” he continued, striking his breast, “this is John Fortescue. _I_ go about so lonely--so lonely among these crowds of living men. When my head aches, and my heart is bursting, and my conscience has fallen upon me with a fang, John Fortescue is hilarious and loud. He has a handful of winning cards--the bottled sunshine of champagne has kindled a riotous summer in his veins. His friends are fond of him for all his faults. They call him Jack, and swear he is the best fellow in the world! His father’s old cronies come to him and beg him to reform. They take him home to dinner, and he meets saintly old ladies, who talk to him about his mother. And _I_, I don’t know where _I_ am! _I_ look on at all of it from some outer darkness. My soul has given me the slip; God has forgotten it--it was so little, you know, it slid away, and was lost, just vaguely _lost_ somewhere. For _this_, this is John Fortescue. They talk to him about his mother. And he listens. I don’t, you know, for I never saw her. And I would rather face death than the recollection of my own mother. But he, he feels differently. It is very natural that he should.”

Once more Brennett’s sardonic laughter jarred the air.

“Don’t think to work upon me, Ned, by your histrionic display. I have already the highest opinion of your ability in that line. I have given you substantial proof how I value your talents. You cannot extort further admiration, and, incidentally, another _honorarium_ by this unexpected _coup de théâtre_.”

His words were like a douche of cold water to the adventurer. They chilled while they stung, and yet they brought up his blood with a rush, and steadied his nerves. He again walked to the bench and seated himself.

“Brennett,” he said, laying his hand upon his friend’s knee and speaking slowly as he looked into those bright eyes, “you are a man of acumen and excellent judgment--singularly quick in the vivisection of character, and adroit to a superhuman degree in exposing secret motives. And yet you think it possible that a man would try to profit by working upon your feelings; that I credit you with a heart--a heart! whose generous heat might mislead your cooler reason. I have long known that you have an ability to scheme which you call your mind; an all-consuming avarice, that you dignify by the name of ambition. You have a system of veins and valves and arteries through which flows a sluggish fluid that is not blood, for it was never warm--it can pulsate to no interest save your own. I could only reach your feelings by striking you. And I have a mind to strike you dead on the spot.”

“There would be a prompt decadence of the drama if all mild, admiring spectators were subjected to dangers like this,” sneered Brennett. He made no move toward his pistol-pocket now--the threat was empty of intention. He recognized the fact.

“I did not hope that I could by argument reach that hypothetical essence, your conscience,--by showing you how manifestly unfair it is that I should be forced to continue this personation through four months instead of the three weeks to which I agreed, and without any payment for the extra time and risk. I did not trouble you so long as I could live by the tables, but at that sequestered place in the mountains, where on account only of your insistence I remained, there is literally nothing going on, and I am sometimes at my wits’ end for five dollars. But I did not intend to appeal to your conscience. If you have a conscience nobody would suspect it. If you have a soul--imagination cannot conceive the idea! If you ever had a spark of honor or honesty it was extinguished long before I first knew you--long before I first fell under your blighting influence. How it should attach men to virtue--the companions they meet in vice!”

“You’re a rhetorician, Ned; doubtless able to write tragedies as well as play the high-minded though lugubrious penitent. Give over these handsomely rounded periods and tell me what you did expect to reach?”

“Your fears.”

“I am mistaken, Ned; comedy is your forte. This is funny.”

“And so I thought I would warn you that I intend to tell Miss St. Pierre.”

“You won’t do it,” said Brennett coolly. “You have everything to risk; you have nothing to gain; and you will certainly lose the chance of five thousand dollars.”

Still once more the adventurer scanned that impassive face. There was no mistaking its expression--it was an absolute indifference. He threw himself back with a hunted look; he hardly knew which way to turn. It was a great relief to give for a moment his attention to a trivial subject.

“How did I get that cut?” he said, looking in surprise at his hand, and sensible for the first time of the stinging bruise.

“In your excitement you struck your hand on that sharp edge,” said Brennett. “I tell you now--for your own good, mind you--such agitation is dangerous. You ought to struggle against those fantastic illusions about Fortescue, or you’ll pass the rest of your days in a strait-jacket.”

The other did not reply. He was spent with the intensity of his emotions. His spirits were at their lowest ebb. He raised his heavily-lidded eyes and gazed despondently at the encompassing wall of shrubbery. Suddenly he became aware that a carriage was rapidly passing behind it, and he heard a hasty voice of recognition calling from the window.

He turned in languid inquiry to Brennett.

“That’s Percy,” said Brennett in answer to the look. “He has seen you. We shall have to go to the house, I suppose. If you intend to continue with the affair, you ought to try to rally and support the character.”

“I intend to go on with it for the present,” the impostor rejoined.

Certainly it was no mean order of ability which could conjure into that jaded, sordid face all those strong, yet subtle suggestions of vitality, and buoyancy, and a fine candor, and a generous ardor; that could put on, as a vestment, a demeanor in which high breeding and pride were blended with patent recklessness and a fantastic _bravade_ of convention. One would have said that it was an inimitable manner as he walked with his friend toward the house. He was drawing his glove over his cut and bruised hand, and Brennett, watching him furtively, yet narrowly, felt a great weight lifted in the vanishing doubt as to how he would meet Percy.

He met Percy lightly enough, parrying with clever lies and excuses the young man’s invitations which were insistent almost to the verge of rudeness. For the storm was breaking at last; the peals of thunder and flashes of lightning were instantaneous and nearly unintermittent; far away about the horizon the sombre masses of clouds were torn into fringes as the heavy rain began to fall. With feigned regrets the visitor sprang into the carriage, and it rolled away between the darkening earth and the flaring sky.