Complete weird tales of.., p.1272
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1272
“They are playing a waiting game,” he said, sagely. “This man Munn has bought the land from O’Hara’s daughter for a song, and he means to bleed us. I’ll write to Sprowl; he’ll fix things.”
Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay, arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn’s object was to squeeze the club by threats.
The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, Master of Fox-hounds, Shadowbrook, appeared with his wife, the celebrated beauty, Agatha Sprowl, née Van Guilder.
Sprowl, now immensely large and fat, had few cares in life beyond an anxious apprehension concerning the durability of his own digestion. However, he was still able to make a midnight mouthful of a Welsh rarebit on a hot mince-pie, and wash it down with a quart of champagne, and so the world went very well with him, even if it wabbled a trifle for his handsome wife.
“She’s lovely enough,” said Colonel Hyssop, gallantly, “to set every star in heaven wabbling.” To which the bull-necked Major assented with an ever-hopeless attempt to bend at the waistband.
Meanwhile the Rev. Amasa Munn and his flock, the Shining Band, arrived at Foxville in six farm wagons, singing “Roll, Jordan!”
Of their arrival Sprowl was totally unconscious, the Colonel having forgotten to inform him of the threatened invasion.
II
The members of the Sagamore Club heard the news next morning at a late breakfast. Major Brent, who had been fishing early up-stream, bore the news, and delivered it in an incoherent bellow.
“What d’ye mean by that?” demanded Colonel Hyssop, setting down his cocktail with unsteady fingers.
“Mean?” roared the Major; “I mean that Munn and a lot o’ women are sitting on the river-bank and singing ‘Home Again’!”
The news jarred everybody, but the effect of it upon the president, Peyster Sprowl, appeared to be out of all proportion to its gravity. That gentleman’s face was white as death; and the Major noticed it.
“You’ll have to rid us of this mob,” said the Major, slowly.
Sprowl lifted his heavy, overfed face from his plate. “I’ll attend to it,” he said, hoarsely, and swallowed a pint of claret.
“I think it is amusing,” said Agatha Sprowl, looking across the table at Coursay.
“Amusing, madam!” burst out the Major. “They’ll be doing their laundry in our river next!”
“Soapsuds in my favorite pools!” bawled the Colonel. “Damme if I’ll permit it!”
“Sprowl ought to settle them,” said Lansing, good-naturedly. “It may cost us a few thousands, but Sprowl will do the work this time as he did it before.”
Sprowl choked in his claret, turned a vivid beef-color, and wiped his chin. His appetite was ruined. He hoped the ruin would stop there.
“What harm will they do?” asked Coursay, seriously— “beyond the soapsuds?”
“They’ll fish, they’ll throw tin cans in the water, they’ll keep us awake with their fanatical powwows — confound it, haven’t I seen that sort of thing?” said the Major, passionately. “Yes, I have, at nigger camp-meetings! And these people beat the niggers at that sort of thing!”
“Leave ’em to me,” repeated Peyster Sprowl, thickly, and began on another chop from force of habit.
“About fifteen years ago,” said the Colonel, “there was some talk about our title. You fixed that, didn’t you, Sprowl?”
“Yes,” said Sprowl, with parched lips.
“Of course,” muttered the Major; “it cost us a cool hundred thousand to perfect our title. Thank God it’s settled.”
Sprowl’s immense body turned perfectly cold; he buried his face in his glass and drained it. Then the shrimp-color returned to his neck and ears, and deepened to scarlet. When the earth ceased reeling before his apoplectic eyes, he looked around, furtively. Again the scene in O’Hara’s death-chamber came to him; the threat of Munn, who had got wind of the true situation, and the bribing of Munn to silence.
But the club had given Sprowl one hundred thousand dollars to perfect its title; and Sprowl had reported the title perfect, all proceedings ended, and the payment of one hundred thousand dollars to Amasa Munn, as guardian of the child of O’Hara, in full payment for the O’Hara claims to the club property.
Sprowl’s coolness began to return. If five thousand dollars had stopped Munn’s mouth once, it might stop it again. Besides, how could Munn know that Sprowl had kept for his own uses ninety-five thousand dollars of his club’s money, and had founded upon it the House of Sprowl of many millions? He was quite cool now — a trifle anxious to know what Munn meant to ask for, but confident that his millions were a buckler and a shield to the honored name of Sprowl.
“I’ll see this fellow, Munn, after breakfast,” he said, lighting an expensive cigar.
“I’ll go with you,” volunteered Lansing, casually, strolling out towards the veranda.
“No, no!” called out Sprowl; “you’ll only hamper me.” But Lansing did not hear him outside in the sunshine.
Agatha Sprowl laid one fair, heavily ringed hand on the table and pushed her chair back. The Major gallantly waddled to withdraw her chair; she rose with a gesture of thanks, and a glance which shot the Major through and through — a wound he never could accustom himself to receive with stoicism.
Mrs. Sprowl turned carelessly away, followed by her two Great Danes — a superb trio, woman and dogs beautifully built and groomed, and expensive enough to please even such an amateur as Peyster Sprowl, M.F.H.
“Gad, Sprowl!” sputtered the Major, “your wife grows handsomer every minute — and you grow fatter.”
Sprowl, midway in a glass of claret, said: “This simple backwoods régime is what she and I need.”
Agatha Sprowl was certainly handsome, but the Major’s eyesight was none of the best. She had not been growing younger; there were lines; also a discreet employment of tints on a very silky skin, which was not quite as fresh as it had once been.
Dr. Lansing, strolling on the veranda with his pipe, met her and her big dogs turning the corner in full sunlight. Coursay was with her, his eager, flushed face close to hers; but he fell back when he saw his kinsman Lansing, and presently retired to the lawn to unreel and dry out a couple of wet silk lines.
Agatha Sprowl sat down on the veranda railing, exchanging a gay smile across the lawn with Coursay; then her dark eyes met Lansing’s steel-gray ones.
“Good-morning, once more,” she said, mockingly.
He returned her greeting, and began to change his mist leader for a white one.
“Will you kindly let Jack Coursay alone?” she said, in a low voice.
“No,” he replied, in the same tone.
“Are you serious?” she asked, as though the idea amused her.
“Of course,” he replied, pleasantly.
“Is it true that you came here because he came?” she inquired, with faint sarcasm in her eyes.
“Yes,” he answered, with perfect good-nature. “You see he’s my own kin; you see I’m the old-fashioned sort — a perfect fool, Mrs. Sprowl.”
There was a silence; he unwound the glistening leader; she flicked at shadows with her dog-whip; the Great Danes yawned and laid their heavy heads against her knees.
“Then you are a fool,” she concluded, serenely.
He was young enough to redden.
Three years ago she had thought it time to marry somebody, if she ever intended to marry at all; so she threw over half a dozen young fellows like Coursay, and married Sprowl. For two years her beauty, audacity, and imprudence kept a metropolis and two capitals in food for scandal. And now for a year gossip was coupling her name with Coursay’s.
“I warned you at Palm Beach that I’d stop this,” said Lansing, looking directly into her eyes. “You see, I know his mother.”
“Stop what?” she asked, coolly.
He went on: “Jack is a curiously decent boy; he views his danger without panic, but with considerable surprise. But nobody can tell what he may do. As for me, I’m indifferent, liberal, and reasonable in my views of … other people’s conduct. But Jack is not one of those ‘other people,’ you see.”
“And I am?” she suggested, serenely.
“Exactly; I’m not your keeper.”
“So you confine your attention to Jack and the Decalogue?”
“As for the Commandments,” observed Lansing, “any ass can shatter them with his hind heels, so why should he? If he must be an ass, let him be an original ass — not a cur.”
“A cur,” repeated Agatha Sprowl, unsteadily.
“An affaire de cœur with a married woman is an affair do cur,” said Lansing, calmly— “Gallicize it as you wish, make it smart and fashionable as you can. I told you I was old-fashioned.… And I mean it, madam.”
The leader had eluded him; he uncoiled it again; she mechanically took it between her delicate fingers and held it steady while he measured and shortened it by six inches.
“Do you think,” she said, between her teeth, “that it is your mission to padlock me to that — in there?”
Lansing turned, following her eyes. She was looking at her husband.
“No,” replied Lansing, serenely; “but I shall see that you don’t transfer the padlock to … that, out there” — glancing at Coursay on the lawn.
“Try it,” she breathed, and let go of the leader, which flew up in silvery crinkles, the cast of brightly colored flies dancing in the sunshine.
“Oh, let him alone,” said Lansing, wearily; “all the men in Manhattan are drivelling about you. Let him go; he’s a sorry trophy — and there’s no natural treachery in him; … it’s not in our blood; … it’s too cheap for us, and we can’t help saying so when we’re in our right minds.”
There was a little color left in her face when she stood up, her hands resting on the spiked collars of her dogs. “The trouble with you,” she said, smiling adorably, “is your innate delicacy.”
“I know I am brutal,” he said, grimly; “let him alone.”
She gave him a pretty salutation, crossed the lawn, passed her husband, who had just ridden up on a powerful sorrel, and called brightly to Coursay: “Take me fishing, Jack, or I’ll yawn my head off my shoulders.”
Before Lansing could recover his wits the audacious beauty had stepped into the canoe at the edge of the lawn, and young Coursay, eager and radiant, gave a flourish to his paddle, and drove it into the glittering water.
If Sprowl found anything disturbing to his peace of mind in the proceeding, he did not betray it. He sat hunched up on his big sorrel, eyes fixed on the distant clearing, where the white gable-end of O’Hara’s house rose among the trees.
Suddenly he wheeled his mount and galloped off up the river road; the sun glowed on his broad back, and struck fire on his spurs, then horse and rider were gone into the green shadows of the woods.
To play spy was not included in Lansing’s duties as he understood them. He gave one disgusted glance after the canoe, shrugged, set fire to the tobacco in his pipe, and started slowly along the river towards O’Hara’s with a vague idea of lending counsel, aid, and countenance to his president during the expected interview with Munn.
At the turn of the road he met Major Brent and old Peter, the head-keeper. The latter stood polishing the barrels of his shot-gun with a red bandanna; the Major was fuming and wagging his head.
“Doctor!” he called out, when Lansing appeared; “Peter says they raised the devil down at O’Hara’s last night! This can’t go on, d’ye see! No, by Heaven!”
“What were they doing, Peter?” asked Lansing, coming up to where the old man stood.
“Them Shinin’ Banders? Waal, sir, they was kinder rigged out in white night-gounds — robes o’ Jordan they call ’em — an’ they had rubbed some kind o’ shiny stuff — like matches — all over these there night-gounds, an’ then they sang a spell, an’ then they all sot down on the edge o’ the river.”
“Is that all?” asked Lansing, laughing.
“Wait!” growled the Major.
“Waal,” continued old Peter, “the shinin’ stuff on them night-gounds was that bright that I seen the fishes swimmin’ round kinder dazed like. ‘Gosh!’ sez I to m’self, it’s like a Jack a-drawnin’ them trout — yaas’r. So I hollers out, ‘Here! You Shinin’ Band folk, you air a-drawin’ the trout. Quit it!’ sez I, ha’sh an’ pert-like. Then that there Munn, the Prophet, he up an’ hollers, ‘Hark how the heathen rage!’ he hollers. An’ with that, blamed if he didn’t sling a big net into the river, an’ all them Shinin’ Banders ketched holt an’ they drawed it clean up-stream. ‘Quit that!’ I hollers, ‘it’s agin the game laws!’ But the Prophet he hollers back, ‘Hark how the heathen rage!’ Then they drawed that there net out, an’ it were full o’ trout, big an’ little—”
“Great Heaven!” roared the Major, black in the face.
“I think,” said Lansing, quietly, “that I’ll walk down to O’Hara’s and reason with our friend Munn. Sprowl may want a man to help him in this matter.”
III
When Sprowl galloped his sorrel mare across the bridge and up to the O’Hara house, he saw a man and a young girl seated on the grass of the river-bank, under the shade of an enormous elm.
Sprowl dismounted heavily, and led his horse towards the couple under the elm. He recognized Munn in the thin, long-haired, full-bearded man who rose to face him; and he dropped the bridle from his hand, freeing the sorrel mare.
The two men regarded each other in silence; the mare strayed leisurely up-stream, cropping the fresh grass; the young girl turned her head towards Sprowl with a curious movement, as though listening, rather than looking.
“Mr. Munn, I believe,” said Sprowl, in a low voice.
“The Reverend Amasa Munn,” corrected the Prophet, quietly. “You are Peyster Sprowl.”
Sprowl turned and looked full at the girl on the grass. The shadow of her big straw hat fell across her eyes; she faced him intently.
Sprowl glanced at his mare, whistled, and turned squarely on his heel, walking slowly along the river-bank. The sorrel followed like a dog; presently Munn stood up and deliberately stalked off after Sprowl, rejoining that gentleman a few rods down the river-bank.
“Well,” said Sprowl, turning suddenly on Munn, “what are you doing here?”
From his lank height Munn’s eyes were nevertheless scarcely level with the eyes of the burly president.
“I’m here,” said Munn, “to sell the land.”
“I thought so,” said Sprowl, curtly. “How much?”
Munn picked a buttercup and bit off the stem. With the blossom between his teeth he surveyed the sky, the river, the forest, and then the features of Sprowl.
“How much?” asked Sprowl, impatiently.
Munn named a sum that staggered Sprowl, but Munn could perceive no tremor in the fat, blank face before him.
“And if we refuse?” suggested Sprowl.
Munn only looked at him.
Sprowl repeated the question.
“Well,” observed Munn, stroking his beard reflectively, “there’s that matter of the title.”
This time Sprowl went white to his fat ears. Munn merely glanced at him, then looked at the river.
“I will buy the title this time,” said Sprowl, hoarsely.
“You can’t,” said Munn.
A terrible shock struck through Sprowl; he saw through a mist; he laid his hand on a tree-trunk for support, mechanically facing Munn all the while.
“Can’t!” he repeated, with dry lips.
“No, you can’t buy it.”
“Why?”
“O’Hara’s daughter has it.”
“But — she will sell! Won’t she sell? Where is she?” burst out Sprowl.
“She won’t sell,” said Munn, studying the ghastly face of the president.
“You can make her sell,” said Sprowl. “What is your price?”
“I can’t make her sell the title to your club property,” said Munn. “She’ll sell this land here. Take it or leave it.”
“If I take it — will you leave?” asked Sprowl, hoarsely.
Munn smiled, then nodded.
“And will that shut your mouth, you dirty scoundrel?” said Sprowl, gripping his riding-crop till his fat fingernails turned white.
“It will shut my mouth,” said Munn, still with his fixed smile.
“How much extra to keep this matter of the title quiet — as long as I live?”
“As long as you live?” repeated Munn, surprised.
“Yes, I don’t care a damn what they say of me after I’m dead,” snarled Sprowl.
Munn watched him for a moment, plucked another buttercup, pondered, smoothed out his rich, brown, silky beard, and finally mentioned a second sum.
Sprowl drew a check-book from the breast-pocket of his coat, and filled in two checks with a fountain pen. These he held up before Munn’s snapping, yellowish eyes.
“This blackmail,” said Sprowl, thickly, “is paid now for the last time. If you come after me again you come to your death, for I’ll smash your skull in with one blow, and take my chances to prove insanity. And I’ve enough money to prove it.”
Munn waited.
“I’ll buy you this last time,” continued Sprowl, recovering his self-command. “Now, you tell me where O’Hara’s child is, and how you are going to prevent her from ever pressing that suit which he dropped.”
“O’Hara’s daughter is here. I control her,” said Munn, quietly.
“You mean she’s one of your infernal flock?” demanded Sprowl.
“One of the Shining Band,” said Munn, with a trace of a whine in his voice.
“Where are the papers in that proceeding, then? You said O’Hara burned them, you liar!”
“She has them in a box in her bedroom,” replied Munn.
“Does she know what they mean?” asked Sprowl, aghast.
“No — but I do,” replied Munn, with his ominous smile.
“How do you know she does not understand their meaning?”
“Because,” replied Munn, laughing, “she can’t read.”
Sprowl did not believe him, but he was at his mercy. He stood with his heavy head hanging, pondering a moment, then whistled his sorrel. The mare came to him and laid her dusty nose on his shoulder.
