there is no question but that mrs. trimwell could rise to an emergency when it presented itself before her. in fifteen, perhaps no more than ten, minutes from their entry, she had the drenched couple into dry garments; the injured ankle was bound in soft bandages, tea was in preparation.
but why, marvelled john, should her beneficent services have been dispensed with a face as sour as a crab-apple? why should her whole mien have been as stiff, unbending, and unyielding as the proverbial poker? the disapproval of her attitude was so marked as to be impossible to ignore. john, in the position of host, felt some sort of an apology necessary. mrs. trimwell departed, he stumbled one forth, wondering, as he endeavoured at lightness, whether he were not, after all, a bit of a fool for his pains; whether, by remarking on her [pg 129]taciturn grimness, he were not emphasizing it more crudely.
“she doesn’t mean to be abrupt,” he concluded, holding his cigarette case towards the stranger.
the man took a cigarette, and glanced at john.
“oh, yes, i guess she does,” he remarked drily.
john looked at him. obtuseness still had him in her clutch.
“she knows who i am,” said the man coolly, “and—well, i fancy most folk round here are not predisposed in my favour. my name, by the way, is david delancey.”
john gasped, frankly gasped. he was amazed, dumbfounded. running through the amazement was, i fancy, something like annoyance; though superseding it was a sense of the ludicrous, a realization of the absurdity of the situation. and this brought him to something perilously near a titter.
the man looked at him.
“look here,” he said deliberately, though with a gleam of amusement in his own eyes, “if you feel the same way about things, i’ll move on now. [pg 130]i’ll make shift to hobble to the inn if you’ll lend me a couple of sticks.”
john experienced a sudden sensation of shame. perhaps it was by reason of the quick interpretation of his unspoken thoughts, perhaps it was something in the other’s steady grey eyes.
“you’ll do nothing of the kind,” he said quickly. and then he laughed.
“what’s funny?” demanded david.
“oh, the whole blessed kaboodle,” returned john, still laughing softly. “here was i half an hour agone inveighing against you for all i was worth, and now—well, the rôle of good samaritan strikes me as a bit humorous, that’s all.”
he held a lighted match towards his guest. david took it. after a moment he spoke.
“then you know them up at the castle?”
“i do,” said john.
david glanced at him, then turned to a contemplation of his cigarette.
“i had a note from the old lady today,” he said ruminatively. “she has asked me to dine on thursday. now, i call that sporting of her. i guess i’d be more like sticking a knife into me than asking me to share her salt. it’s the way [pg 131]she’s worded the note, too, that i’m stuck on. i’d give a good many dollars to get my tongue and pen around words in that fashion. i reckon i shall shake hands with her cordially.”
john eyed him curiously. his preconceived notions of hostility were undergoing an extraordinary change, a change at once rapid, and, to him, amazing, incomprehensible. i fancy he tried to rein them back, to bring them to a standstill, while he took a calmer survey of the situation, but, for all his endeavours, he found they had suddenly got beyond his control.
“i wonder,” hazarded he, “if you’d mind my asking you something. what gave you the first clue—the idea of starting out on this quest of yours?”
“the clue?” david laughed. “it’s a bit of a yarn, i can tell you. you want it? sure?”
john nodded.
“well,” quoth david, “you can call it luck, chance if you like. we’ve always known we hailed as a family originally from england. that knowledge has been handed down to us as a bit of tradition. i was born in philadelphia, and riz there, as they say in the states, till i was going [pg 132]ten. then my father made for africa. there’s no need to enter into the details of that move; they’re beside the mark. he took a small farm in the hex river valley. he had a few old things that belonged to his father and grandfather before him. they were stored away in a chest. i used to look inside it when i was a youngster, and see coats, and waistcoats, and neck stocks, and a fusty old book or two lying in it. i never smell camphor without thinking of that chest.
“as i grew older, i left it alone, didn’t think about it. i guess my father hadn’t bothered about it much more than i did. he died when i was fifteen, and my mother ran the farm. she was a capable woman. i helped her all i could, and there were men to do the work. but she was boss till i was one and twenty. then she turned it over to me to run,—root, stock, and barrel. she was cute, though, the way she’d talk things over with me, telling me all the time what was best to do, and making me think that i had figured out the plans. later on she left it really to me, not just in the name of it. that was when i’d got the right hang of things.
[pg 133]
“then she dropped suddenly out of all the man way of thinking, and just sat knitting and smiling in the chimney corner, or letting me drive her around in the buggy, with never a talk of business unless i began the subject. it’s seven years ago that she died.” he stopped.
john was silent.
“i missed her,” went on david presently, “i missed her badly. the place wasn’t the same. i went roving around trying to think she wasn’t gone—but i’ll get maudlin if i go on with that. it wasn’t the bit i set out to tell you, anyway. one afternoon i was in the lumber room feeling lonesomer than ever. i don’t know what took me there if it wasn’t just fate. then i looked at that chest again. i opened it, and the smell of camphor rushed out at me, making me think more than ever of my mother. she was mad after camphor, putting it among everything to keep away the moth.
“to get away from my thoughts i began pulling out the things in the box, stuffy books, coats, waistcoats, and all. there was one coat, a snuff-coloured one, that might have been worn in the time of the georges, i calculated. i sat looking [pg 134]at it, and wondering which of my grandparents had worn it, and what kind of a man he was, and all the things a fellow does think when he’s got his grandsire’s stuff before him. after a bit i began going through the pockets. i found a tiny horn snuff-box in one, and that set me off searching closer. i’d come to the last pocket, when i found what gave me that clue you were asking about. i found a letter.”
john looked up quickly.
“it was torn, and not over-easy to read,” went on david. “i’ve got it here. you can read it if you like.”
he felt in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out his pocket-book. from it he took a letter.
john took the yellow paper with its faded ink lines. as he touched it he thought of the queer twists fate gives to the wheel of our life. less than a fortnight ago he had set eyes but momentarily upon one of the delancey family, and now here he was, thrown into their midst, made participator even in their extraordinary history. it was, so mused john, a bit of a marvel.
here is the letter he read.
[pg 135]
“my dear son richard:
“i am about to set forth on the journey of which you know the purpose. if i am successful you will claim your birthright. though i sold mine, after the manner of esau, for a mess of red pottage, being forced thereto by harshness, yet i forfeited it for myself alone.
“your mother and brother do not know of the purpose of my journey to england. i think it well that it should remain known to us two alone till my return.
“your affectionate father,
“henry delancey.”
john slowly deciphered the faint lines. silently he tendered the letter again.
“it set me thinking,” said david reminiscently. “i was in that lumber room for more than two hours reading that letter again and again. it was clear that there was something belonging to us that we hadn’t got; something that, as far as i could see, we had the right to have, though i didn’t just know what it was. it struck me as queer that the richard who had had the letter hadn’t had a try for it. i know now that he died [pg 136]of some kind of fever after his father had been gone six weeks. his father didn’t return.” david’s voice was grim.
“i know,” said john.
“you’ve heard the story?” demanded david.
“that part of it. but go on.”
“well,” continued david, “whether no one else knew of the letter, or whether they thought that trying for their rights was a fool game, i don’t know. there were times when i was after it that i thought it a fool game myself. but i’d set out on it, and somehow i never find it easy to turn back on any job i’ve set out on. if the others didn’t think our birthright worth a bit of a fight i did. it took me five years to trace up the family, but i got on the track, back to the certificate of henry delancey’s marriage to marie courtoise, daughter of a brussels lace merchant. it was their grandson who first settled in the states. with that i came to england, and followed up the clue here. then i understood exactly what i was after. they can’t deny that henry was the eldest son, and though they say he signed away the property from himself and his heirs they haven’t got that document. this letter, too,” he tapped it gently, [pg 137]“shows that though he may have signed it away from himself, he did not touch the birthright of his heirs. see?”
“yes, i see,” returned john a trifle drily.
oh, he saw fast enough. also, he saw pretty plainly that henry delancey had been no fool in the game of swindling.
david looked at him.
“you’re on the side of the occupants of the castle,” he said. it was statement rather than query.
“i am,” said john coolly. his eyes held something of a challenge.
“hum,” remarked david.
and then mrs. trimwell entered with the tea, and an aspect of rigid disapproval.
