Sprowl entered the room; Munn looked up, then coolly continued to rummage.
Sprowl first addressed himself to the child, in a heavy, patronizing voice:
“It’s too dark to read there in that corner, young one. Take your book out into the hall.”
“I can see better to read in the dark,” said the child, lifting her great, dark-blue eyes.
“Go out into the hall,” said Sprowl, sharply.
The child shrank back, and went, taking her little jacket in one hand, her battered travelling-satchel in the other.
If the two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to her own profit.
“Munn,” said Sprowl, lighting a cigar, “what is there in this business?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m done,” observed Munn, coolly.
Sprowl sat down on the bed where O’Hara had died, cocked the cigar up in his mouth, and blew smoke, musingly, at the ceiling.
Munn found nothing — not a scrap of paper, not a line. This staggered him, but he did not intend that Sprowl should know it.
“Found what you want?” asked Sprowl, comfortably.
“Yes,” replied Munn.
“Belong to the kid?”
“Yes; I’m her guardian.”
The men measured each other in silence for a minute.
“What will you take to keep quiet?” asked Sprowl. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”
“I want five thousand,” said Munn, firmly.
“I’ll double it for the papers,” said Sprowl.
Munn waited. “There’s not a paper left,” he said; “O’Hara made me burn ‘em.”
“Twenty thousand for the papers,” said Sprowl, calmly.
“My God, Mr. Sprowl!” growled Munn, white and sweating with anguish. “I’d give them to you for half that if I had them. Can’t you believe me? I saw O’Hara burn them.”
“What were you rummaging for, then?” demanded Sprowl.
“For anything — to get a hold on you,” said Munn, sullenly.
“Blackmail?”
Munn was silent.
“Oh,” said Sprowl, lazily. “I think I’ll be going, then—”
Munn barred his exit, choking with anger.
“You give me five thousand dollars, or I’ll stir ’em up to look into your titles!” he snarled.
Sprowl regarded him with contempt; then another idea struck him, an idea that turned his fat face first to ashes, then to fire.
A month later Sprowl returned to the Sagamore Club, triumphant, good-humored, and exceedingly contented. But he had, he explained, only succeeded in saving the club at the cost of the entire emergency fund — one hundred thousand dollars — which, after all, was a drop in the bucket to the remaining fourteen members.
The victory would have been complete if Sprowl had also been able to purchase the square mile of land lately occupied by O’Hara. But this belonged to O’Hara’s daughter, and the child flatly refused to part with it.
“You’ll have to wait for the little slut to change her mind,” observed Munn to Sprowl. And, as there was nothing else to do, Sprowl and the club waited.
Trouble appeared to be over for the Sagamore Club. Munn disappeared; the daughter was not to be found; the long-coveted land remained tenantless.
Of course, the Sagamore Club encountered the petty difficulties and annoyances to which similar clubs are sooner or later subjected; disputes with neighboring land-owners were gradually adjusted; troubles arising from poachers, dishonest keepers, and night guards had been, and continued to be, settled without harshness or rancor; minks, otters, herons, kingfishers, and other undesirable intruders were kept within limits by the guns of the watchers, although by no means exterminated; and the wealthy club was steadily but unostentatiously making vast additions to its splendid tracts of forest, hill, and river land.
After a decent interval the Sagamore Club made cautious inquiries concerning the property of the late O’Hara, only to learn that the land had been claimed by Munn, and that taxes were paid on it by that individual.
For fifteen years the O’Hara house remained tenantless; anglers from the club fished freely through the mile of river; the name of Munn had been forgotten save by the club’s treasurer, secretary, and president, Peyster Sprowl.
However, the members of the club never forgot that in the centre of their magnificent domain lay a square mile which did not belong to them; and they longed to possess it as better people than they have coveted treasures not laid up on earth.
The relations existing between the members of the Sagamore Club continued harmonious in as far as their social intercourse and the general acquisitive policy of the club was concerned.
There existed, of course, that tacit mutual derision based upon individual sporting methods, individual preferences, obstinate theories concerning the choice of rods, reels, lines, and the killing properties of favorite trout-flies.
Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop continued to nag and sneer at each other all day long, yet they remained as mutually dependent upon each other as David and Jonathan. For thirty years the old gentlemen had angled in company, and gathered inspiration out of the same books, the same surroundings, the same flask.
They were the only guests at the club-house that wet May in 1900, although Peyster Sprowl was expected in June, and young Dr. Lansing had wired that he might arrive any day.
An evening rain-storm was drenching the leaded panes in the smoking-room; Colonel Hyssop drummed accompaniment on the windows and smoked sulkily, looking across the river towards the O’Hara house, just visible through the pelting downpour.
“Irritates me every time I see it,” he said.
“Some day,” observed Major Brent, comfortably, “I’m going to astonish you all.”
“How?” demanded the Colonel, tersely.
The Major examined the end of his cigarette with a cunning smile.
“It isn’t for sale, is it?” asked the Colonel. “Don’t try to be mysterious; it irritates me.”
Major Brent savored his cigarette leisurely.
“Can you keep a secret?” he inquired.
The Colonel intimated profanely that he could.
“Well, then,” said the Major, in calm triumph, “there’s a tax sale on to-morrow at Foxville.”
“Not the O’Hara place?” asked the Colonel, excited.
The Major winked. “I’ll fix it,” he said, with a patronizing squint at his empty glass.
But he did not “fix it” exactly as he intended; the taxes on the O’Hara place were being paid at that very moment.
He found it out next day, when he drove over to Foxville; he also learned that the Rev. Amasa Munn, Prophet of the Shining Band Community, had paid the taxes and was preparing to quit Maine and re-establish his colony of fanatics on the O’Hara land, in the very centre and heart of the wealthiest and most rigidly exclusive country club in America.
That night the frightened Major telegraphed to Munnville, Maine, an offer to buy the O’Hara place at double its real value. The business-like message ended: “Wire reply at my expense.”
The next morning an incoherent reply came by wire, at the Major’s expense, refusing to sell, and quoting several passages of Scripture at Western Union rates per word.
The operator at the station counted the words carefully, and collected eight dollars and fourteen cents from the Major, whose fury deprived him of speech.
Colonel Hyssop awaited his comrade at the club-house, nervously pacing the long veranda, gnawing his cigar. “Hello!” he called out, as Major Brent waddled up. “Have you bought the O’Hara place for us?”
The Major made no attempt to reply; he panted violently at the Colonel, then began to run about, taking little, short, distracted steps.
“Made a mess of it?” inquired the Colonel, with a badly concealed sneer.
He eyed the
Major in deepening displeasure. “If you get any redder in the face you’ll blow up,” he said, coldly; “and I don’t propose to have you spatter me.”
“He — he’s an impudent swindler!” hissed the Major, convulsively.
The Colonel sniffed: “I expected it. What of it? After all, there’s nobody on the farm to annoy us, is there?”
“Wait!” groaned the Major— “wait!” and he toddled into the hall and fell on a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands.
When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatened calamity, he utterly refused to credit it.
“Rubbish!” he said, calmly— “rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn is holding out for more money, d’ye see? Rubbish! rubbish! It’s blackmail, d’ye see?”
“Do you think so?” faltered the Major, hopefully. “It isn’t possible that they mean to come, is it? Fancy all those fanatics shouting about under our windows—”
“Rubbish!” said the Colonel, calmly. “I’ll write to the fellow myself.”
All through that rainy month of May the two old cronies had the club-house to themselves; they slopped about together, fishing cheek by jowl as they had fished for thirty years; at night they sat late over their toddy, and disputed and bickered and wagged their fingers at each other, and went to bed with the perfect gravity of gentlemen who could hold their own with any toddy ever brewed.
No reply came to the Colonel, but that did not discourage him.
“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.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1121