CHAPTER III.

HIS image, however, remained importunately present with the man whom he had characterized as a “hawk.” In the days that ensued, it intruded between Maurice Brennett and many an abstruse commercial calculation, with which it was devoid of analogy in any particular. He became conscious, with a sharp surprise, of the dereliction of his trained and tutored attention. Even then he admitted to himself that this was strange, although he argued plausibly that it was but the lingering impression of a startlingly unexpected episode and a notable face.

Long afterward, in the light of subsequent events, he remembered this. And then he called it a presentiment--this man of facts and figures!

One night while it still harassed him, he chanced to come in late from the deserted streets. The rotunda of the hotel was deserted too, and so quiet that he could hear in the distance the carriage, which he had left, rolling away with a dull monotonous whir over the Nicholson pavement. A solitary night-clerk languished behind the counter. The water was motionless in the basin of the fountain. A single gas-jet served to accent the darkness and dreariness of the scene, bereft of its wonted animation. The shadows clung thick about the great pillars, and as he walked slowly and listlessly among them, he wore a grave, pondering, baffled aspect. His hat was pulled far over his brow, and his hands were sunk deep, with a certain surliness of gesture, in his trousers’ pockets. His overcoat hung loosely on his shoulders, giving glimpses of his dress-suit beneath it, and of a half crushed flower in his button-hole. These exponents of recent participation in some genial festivity, were at this moment curiously at variance with his face, in which there was so marked an expression of keen intensity, and so strong, though subtle, a suggestion of latent rapacity, that it fully justified Captain Estwicke’s descriptive phrase, “a hawk’s face.” His peculiarly brilliant eyes--so bright even in the checkered glooms--were downcast. They held an intimation of a deep dejection of spirit.

So he, too, had his hopes deferred--his far off Canaan! He, too, had some vital part that could be called a heart, where at least wounds might rankle, and disappointments chill. But once admit that idea of a latent rapacity, and he seemed an unpleasant transformation of a man into a creature of prey.

He paused when he reached the counter, and as he glanced over the register, his eyes suddenly dilated with eager intentness. His hand was poised, quivering over a certain scrawling autograph.

“When did Mr. Travis arrive?” he asked sharply of the clerk.

“Ten minutes ago,” replied the impassive functionary.

Brennett hastily noted the number of the room, turned from the counter, and took his way swiftly up the stairs and through the dim twilight of the long halls. Above the row of doors on either hand, only one transom was still alight. He knocked with loud impatience, and he trembled with suspense, while the key was turned within.

“_Hello!_ unexpected pleasure!” exclaimed the occupant of the room, opening the door and seeking to suppress a mighty yawn. “You _are_ quick on the trigger. How did you find out that I was in town?”

Brennett made no reply. He was even more excited when they were shut in together. He tossed aside his overcoat and hat as if he were stifling, threw himself into a chair, and in hastily drawing off his light kid gloves, he wantonly tore them bit from bit with gestures that were most unpleasantly like his cousin, the feathered hawk, whom he so closely resembled. Though the meeting was fraught with a deep significance, there were no indications of the fact in Travis’s unruffled demeanor, except that he now and then looked uneasily at his friend, as if in deprecation of this intensity of impatience and eagerness. His eyes were blue, finely set, and contemplative; his hair was of an equivocal shade, called golden by his feminine acquaintance, and sandy by his men friends; a very recent railway journey was suggested by the cinders on his beard. He was half undressed; his throat was bare; he had taken off his coat and vest, and they hung on the back of the chair where he sat thrusting his feet into a pair of slippers. He was tall, handsomely proportioned, and was popularly supposed to run on his looks. By virtue of his prepossessing exterior, aided by a singularly quiet and gentlemanly manner, he retained his hold on well-regulated society, and fostered a prevalent scepticism as to stories of extravagant dissipation told about him. Although far from being intellectual, he had a habit of putting plain sensible ideas into unpretentious language, which gave casual observers the impression that he was a shrewd practical fellow with solid views. He presented the anomaly of a man credited with acumen by his general acquaintance, and pronounced a fool by his intimates.

“You received my telegram?” he drawled, as he rose to his feet and stood leaning against the mantel-piece.

“Rather enigmatical it was--I did not understand it.”

Brennett’s tone was acrid, and Travis replied as to a reproach.

“I don’t see how I could have made it more explicit, considering the circumstances. I said, ‘It has all gone wrong.’”

“How has it gone wrong?”

“You know she died in London more than a month ago, and I started soon afterward for New York. Her will--you remember I gave you a copy of it--well, when I reached New York, I found there was a codicil of which I had before known nothing. It changed the former disposition of her property. She left everything available for our purposes away from me. I telegraphed you as soon as I discovered it.”

Brennett fixed his eyes, sullen and lowering, though never losing that quality of searching brilliancy, upon his friend, and replied not a word.

The silence shook Travis’s equilibrium.

“Say something, Brennett,” he cried angrily. “There’s no use in jay-hawking me. You seem to hold me responsible for your disappointment, while I--why this thing is my ruin! I have sunk in that mine every cent I could rake and scrape for years. Give over the luxury of stamping on me, and stir your wits to see if anything can help us now--or”--with anxious doubt--“do you throw up your hand?”

Brennett still said nothing, and Travis with an impatient gesture shifted his position, leaning more heavily on the mantel-piece, and struck a match for his cigar.

By a dexterous use of the system known as “freezing out,” the two had become exclusive owners of a certain silver mine in Colorado. But after a time it had seemed that the biters were bitten. The yield grew meagre, the expenses continued, their perseverance had only brought them largely into debt, and now their liabilities had swollen like a gigantic boa-constrictor. Ruin was close upon them, when suddenly brighter prospects opened. If they could retain the mine now they thought it would be worth millions to them, but their necessities were immediate. A large sum must be raised within the next few months or the property, with all its inchoate wealth, would be sacrificed, possibly for the merest fraction of its value,--possibly only for the amount of the debts.

Travis had looked for extrication to the estate of his widowed and childless sister, who had been in a dying condition for months, and the result seemed only to demonstrate the long-conceded futility of waiting for the shoes of the dead.

“I tell you, Brennett,” he said presently, sheltering with his hand the feeble flicker of the match from some draught that stole shivering in, “this thing came upon me like a thunder-clap. She had intimated so often--she had virtually promised me those houses. They are equivalent to cash, as you know--could be converted at a moment.”

“And what do you get?” asked Brennett, with a voracious look.

“The Arkansas plantations--a drug on the market.”

“You are to blame,” Brennett interjected sharply.

“You can always prove that--to your own satisfaction,” said Travis, with a sneer, which might have pointed a more pungent sarcasm. He threw himself back in his chair with an air of bracing himself for endurance.

“We should have taken some account of Mrs. Perrier’s stand-point--we ought to have managed so as to give her a different view. I suppose,” Brennett pursued, impelled rather by an incisive mental habit of stripping facts bare, than by a definite purpose, “I suppose her idea was that the plantations would give you a comfortable income always, and would be likely to stay by you--as nobody will buy them now-a-days, nor lend money on them. She intended to protect you against your own imprudence in speculation, perhaps--or your gambling proclivities.”

Travis eyed his cigar sourly, while he flipped off the ash with his delicate fourth finger.

“How obvious!” cried Brennett. “And I never thought of it before! Yet I knew she had strong objections to your habits.”

“Laura was religious, you know.” Travis suggested this as if it were a disease, which had impaired her judgment, and was therefore a plea in extenuation of her weakness. “She was really very fond of me. She cared for nobody else, and I have no doubt the provisions of this codicil surprised Antoinette beyond measure.”

“_Antoinette!_ What the devil are you talking about?” demanded Brennett, impatiently, rousing himself from his absorption.

“I am talking,” said Travis, with an elaborate show of placidity, “about my step-sister, Antoinette St. Pierre, to whom Laura left the property which I expected to receive.”

“I never before heard of her,” said Brennett, sternly. “Why did you not tell me that there was some one likely to share with you Mrs. Perrier’s estate?”

“My dear fellow,” said Travis, with a debonair wave of the hand, “my friends urge against me that I am indolent, but I have never been given over to such an abandonment of idleness as to have nothing better to do than to talk about Antoinette St. Pierre.”

Brennett, goaded though he was, made some concession to the displeasure which expressed itself in this frivolous affectation.

“Well--tell me about her now, and how it happened that Mrs. Perrier gave her that valuable property at your expense?”

“Why, she is the same relation to Laura that I am. You see, my father married a second time, and so it came about that Laura is my half-sister. After his death his widow also married again, and Antoinette is the child of that marriage. So Laura is the half-sister of each of us, although Antoinette is no relation whatever to me--merely a step-sister. Make it out?” he asked, knitting his brows, as if he had propounded some dark conundrum.

“Of course--how can I help making it out?”

“Well,” said Travis, lightly, “it is a relationship that gets away with most people.”

Then he pulled calmly at his cigar.

“And you never told me this before!” exclaimed Brennett, desperately. “And this girl had the same claim exactly on Mrs. Perrier that you had.”

“But Mrs. Perrier had promised,” interrupted Travis. “She had written and signed her will.”

“It is hard--hard!” cried Brennett, springing up and walking nervously back and forth,--“that in a matter like this I should have such a coadjutor, who doltishly keeps me in ignorance”--

“I am beholden to you,” drawled Travis, airily, caressing his straw-colored beard, with a gentle gesture, as he watched, with a smiling face and incongruously fierce eyes, his friend’s movements.

In a juncture like this he carried more weight than might be argued from his limited mental capacity. Brennett had found him and his resources convenient in more ways than one, and it was not yet conclusively demonstrated that this usefulness was a thing of the past.

“You must overlook something, Travis,” he said, as a reluctant retraction. “But I ought to have been fully informed.”

Travis readily accepted the amende, for this matter of usefulness was mutual. He was one of those fools who are sub-acutely aware of the fact. Not that he deprecated it; he would have found a ponderous brain merely a dead weight in those giddy and lightsome scenes which made up to him the pleasure and the worth of existence. He preferred to exert judgment and foresight by proxy, and he experienced unfailing satisfaction in the fact that his interests were indissolubly interwoven with those of Maurice Brennett, whose acumen had been attested by success.

“How could I imagine that Antoinette was to come into our plans? What could I have told you--that she is an interesting orphan, twenty-three years of age--and incidentally the color of her hair and eyes?”

“Where is she now?”

“She has just come to Tennessee on a visit to General Vayne’s family, up there in the country somewhere,” with a vague backward nod of the head. “She has a lot of friends in that neighborhood, and sometimes visits among them for months.”

“Where has she been all this time?” asked Brennett.

“She has lived with her father’s mother, in a rented house three miles from New Orleans, until about six months ago, when the old lady died--in the nick of time, too,” added Travis, unfeelingly, “for the mortgages on her Mississippi plantation, which she had been fighting off for the last ten years, had just been foreclosed. So you see she left Antoinette nothing. Old Mrs. St. Pierre’s death was the reason that Laura wanted to return from Europe. She intended to take a house in town this winter and have Antoinette with her. I don’t know why you never heard of Antoinette, unless it is because she is rather an unimportant little body.”

Brennett came back and sat down in front of the fire. Travis watched him vacantly for a few moments. Then he yawned portentously and shifted his position. Certainly he had had time to recover somewhat from the first poignant anguish of disappointment, but few men with interests of magnitude at stake could so readily detach the mind and so trivially catch at trifles. He glanced about the room with its stereotyped hotel furnishing; then he fell to gazing at the uncertain flickering of the gas-jet.

“What the devil do you suppose is the matter with the meter?” he suggested, lazily.

Brennett sat silent and absorbed. Presently Travis yawned again, and broke forth suddenly--

“Oh, I say--its getting on to two o’clock. And, my dear fellow, I am fagged out. I’ve been travelling for two days. I can’t get hold of my faculties for a midnight consultation like this. Let’s adjourn till to-morrow.”

Perhaps Brennett had scant regard for the efficacy of these faculties when got hold of. Still silent and absorbed he made no motion. It had begun to rain, and the wind was rising. Heavy gusts dashed against the window, and in the intervals one might hear the drops trickling drearily down the panes. They beat with a resonant clamor on the tin-covered roof of some portico near at hand. The sound was chilly and cheerless, and after once more observing Brennett’s impassive attitude, Travis rose and re-dressed himself completely, with a resigned deliberation of gesture; then languidly resumed his chair.

“Well, since you are determined to talk it out now I have only to say that I think we have come to the financial jumping-off place. Can’t you suggest anything except unavailing regrets that you didn’t know about Antoinette?”

“I can suggest a sure way to command that money,” returned Brennett, taking his cigar from his lips, and glancing keenly though furtively at his friend.

“How?” demanded Travis, excitedly.

“A sure way,” reiterated Brennett.

“How?” asked Travis again.

“Marry her,” said Brennett, coolly, replacing his cigar. “Marry her.”

Travis looked at him in silence.

“Well,” said Brennett, impatiently, “what have you to say to it?”

“Got nothing to say to it,” replied Travis, shortly.

And again the man who managed him as one manages a restive horse was fain to concede the point, and give him his head.

“Well, see here,” said Brennett, presently, “the division which Mrs. Perrier made is, except in the matter of convertibility, largely in your favor. Suppose you try to persuade Miss St. Pierre to exchange the houses for your plantations. Represent to her----”

“You can’t _represent_ anything to Antoinette. I tell you she is sharp, sharp as you yourself--and very suspicious. If you knew her you would appreciate that you can’t represent things to _her_.”

“In some respects the exchange would really be to her advantage. The rents of those houses are an inconsiderable per cent upon the value of the property in comparison with the income of the plantations and their market value. She would give her houses to you at the maximum valuation and take your lands at the minimum. She would exchange a small income-bearing property for a large income-bearing property. Don’t you see?”

“Ye-es,” Travis assented, dubiously. “Perhaps. But there are the labor questions, and the unsettled state of the country, and the low price of cotton. And, Brennett,--you don’t know Antoinette!”

“There is another possibility that she might be induced to make this exchange. Her title--Mrs. Perrier’s title to those houses is not indefeasible.”

Travis turned with a stare of blank amazement. He took instant fright. “Then God knows,” he cried fervently, “_I_ don’t want them. _I_ won’t exchange.”

“You were so certain that your sister would leave you that property, that I thought it worth while to have the title looked into, in view of a speedy sale.”

“And what’s the matter with it?” asked Travis anxiously, vaguely aware that his friend had some intention shuffling behind all this, but as yet utterly unable to “spot it.”

“Why, Clarence Clendinning, the man who fraudulently sold to Mrs. Perrier, purporting to convey in fee, was only a tenant _per autre vie_, and at the period of this sale this life estate was just terminated. Thereafter he could be regarded only as a tenant at sufferance. So you see she bought literally nothing, and all this time she has been liable to be ejected at any day by the remainder-man.”

“And who the devil is the remainder-man?”

“His name is John Doane Fortescue.”

“John Doane Fortescue?”

Brennett assented.

“Hm-m,” said Travis, meditatively. “I have never seen him, but I know who he is. Antoinette is related to him. They are cousins--distant--but I should say she is about the nearest relation he has, for he is the last of his family.” He thought it over silently for a moment. “This whole affair seems to me very queer,” he suggested.

“Not so queer, after all,” said Brennett. “The way of it is this,--John Fortescue’s grandfather, who first owned the property, was pressed for a large sum of money--more than he could raise by mortgages--and as he had always intended to will it to his grandson he did not wish to alienate it absolutely. So he granted to Clendinning an estate in it _per autre vie_, remainder to John Fortescue in fee. This estate _per autre vie_ was limited to the life of James Murray, who was then a young man and only died in April, 1857. The same year and month Clendinning--I suppose he had expected his tenancy to last longer, and wanted to make more out of it--sold the property to Mrs. Perrier for a good big price.”

Travis turned upon him a face of smiling triumph. “1857! That lets us out,” he remarked, cheerfully. “The remainder-man’s remedy is barred. I happen to know that here the statute of limitations allows only seven years next, after the right of action first accrues, for the institution of proceedings to recover real estate.”

“I talked to the lawyer about that,” said Brennett. “It seems that in Tennessee an intermission or sort of suspension has been prescribed, in view of the disorganization caused by the war, during which no statute of limitations can be held to have operated. This period extends from the sixth of May, 1861, to the first of January, 1867--something more than five years to be added to the original seven.”

“Throw in your suspension,” said Travis, liberally. “Can you count, Brennett?--can you count? Seven years and your suspension--eh? We’re in 1871.”

“But,” persisted Brennett, pressing the point, “the statute doesn’t run against some people. There are minors, you know, and married women, persons ‘beyond the seas,’ or _non compos mentis_--all of these have three years next after the disability is removed to bring suit. The remainder-man may set up a disability and recover the property at any time within the next ten, twenty, thirty years.”

“Ah, but Brennett, that is a very remote possibility.”

“It is probable enough,” Brennett declared, with a weighty significance of manner, “to frighten Miss St. Pierre.”

Travis cast upon him a sudden glance of comprehension. “By the Lord, Maurice,” he exclaimed, “what a head you have!”

“You must represent,” continued Brennett, careless of this tribute, “that you are willing to exchange your solid lands for her houses, with their shaky title, because it is imperative for you to have a convertible property, and you are therefore prepared to encounter some risk.”

“And I can say, too,” added Travis, temporizing with a certain pulpy weakness which he called his conscience, “that the remainder-man may never appear. And I’ll say it,” he added with a curious inconsistency, “in such a way as will make her think he is knock, knock, knocking at the door.”

He gave a short, abrupt laugh, impressed with the humor of the situation. The next moment he was himself frightened by the bugbear conjured up for the intimidation of Miss St. Pierre.

“But suppose upon these representations she does exchange--and before I have time to do anything with the property up comes John Fortescue, brisk and smiling, fresh from the Lunatic Asylum, or he may turn out to be a minor, or a married woman, or just returned from circumnavigating, or”--

“All that need not be considered by us,” said Brennett, impatiently. “The man is dead, no doubt, or he would never have let this thing lie. In fact, I think I have heard that he is dead. And I am quite sure, too, he was not married.”

“Never, so far as I know,” rejoined Travis.

“And so, no widow,”--said Brennett, with satisfaction--“and no heirs nearer than Miss St. Pierre, herself.” Presently he added--

“It would be a good plan for you to go to General Vayne’s place, have an interview with her, and propose an exchange of property. We can’t manage it through an agent, because we don’t care to take any one into our confidence.”

Travis’s countenance fell, but he said nothing. There was much conversation between them not expressed in words--hardly in reciprocal glances. Brennett replied to the objection in his face.

“So she doesn’t like you,” he said, slowly.

Travis’s pause was impressive.

“I should think not,” he declared.

Brennett knitted his brows.

“That is a complication. Can’t you propitiate her--_make_ her like you.”

Travis for a moment was dubious, but reflective. Then he glanced up with some hopefulness. “There is one way to please her,” he said. “The very fact that I thought of it would propitiate her.”

Brennett turned toward him with quick interest.

“You see,” Travis explained, discursively, “Laura left her personalty to me, and among her valuables is an old heirloom of the St. Xantaine family. Laura was descended from the St. Xantaines, you know.”

Brennett knew it. Everyone who had ever been within speech of a descendant of the St. Xantaines knew the fact.

“And so is Antoinette,” continued Travis. “So you see it would be peculiarly appropriate for me to give this old trinket to her. She ought to have it, really. It is a very curious old cross--diamonds set in silver, in the shape of the letter X--rather handsome diamonds, but nothing extraordinary. It is not very valuable, intrinsically.”

Brennett looked disappointed.

“I tell you, Brennett, the thing is famous,” persisted Travis, replying to the look as the other had done. “She would value it more than something worth twenty times as much. I know her way. The stones have a history--it may be true, and it may not. I have my doubts. It is said that they were originally set in some ornament given, ages ago, by royalty itself, to some interesting member of the St. Xantaine family--I can’t say how many ages--can’t say what royalty--can’t say what interesting member of the family.” He spoke with the air of a man who had been nagged by these mythical splendors of ancestry which he did not share. “I have heard the story often enough, but the Lord knows I don’t want to burden my mind with it. Antoinette, though, could tell you all about it. She would be immensely pleased to have it, and pleased with me for thinking to bring it to her.”

“That will do,” said Brennett, decisively. “But, Travis, talk about the business first, and bring in the cross as an afterthought.”

And upon this the two parted.