Promptly at two Browne appeared, eager-eyed and nervous. He had left behind him at home a miserable young woman with red eyes and choking breath who bemoaned the cruel conviction that she stood between him and fortune.
"But hang it all, dearest, I wouldn"t marry that girl if I had the chance. I"d marry you all over again to-day if I could," he had cried out to her, but she wondered all afternoon if he really meant it. It never entered her head to wonder if Lady Deppingham was old or young, pretty or ugly, bright or dull. She had been Mrs. Browne for three months and she could not quite understand how she had been so happy up to this sickening hour.
Judge Garrett had a copy of the will in his hand. He looked dubious, even dismayed.
"It"s as sound as the rock of Gibraltar," he announced dolefully.
"You don"t mean it!" gasped poor Bobby, mopping his fine Harvard brow, his six feet of manhood shrinking perceptibly as he looked about for a chair in which to collapse. "C--can"t it be smashed?"
"It might be an easy matter to prove either of these old gentlemen to have been insane, but the two of them together make it out of the question----"
"Darned unreasonable."
"What do you mean, sir?" indignantly.
"I mean--oh, you know what I mean. The conditions and all that. Why, the old chumps must have been trying to prove their grandchildren insane when they made that will. n.o.body but imbeciles would marry people they"d never seen. I----"
"But the will provides for a six months" courtship, Dr. Browne, I"m sorry to say. You might learn to love a person in less time and still retain your mental balance, you know, especially if she were pretty and an heiress to half your own fortune. I daresay that is what they were thinking about."
"Thinking? They weren"t thinking of anything at all. They weren"t capable. Why didn"t they consider the possibility that things might turn out just as they have?"
"Possibly they did consider it, my boy. It looks to me as if they did not care a rap whether it went to their blood relatives or to the islanders. I fancy of the two they loved the islanders more. At any rate, they left a beautiful opening for the very complications which now conspire to give the natives their own, after all. There may be some sort of method in their badness. More than likely they concluded to let luck decide the matter."
"Well, I guess it has, all right."
"Don"t lose heart. It"s worth fighting for even if you lose. I"d hate to see those islanders get all of it, even if you two can"t marry each other. I"ve thought it over pretty thoroughly and I"ve reached a conclusion. It"s necessary for both of you to be on the ground according to schedule. You must go to the island, wife or no wife, and there"s not much time to be lost. Lady Deppingham won"t let the gra.s.s grow under her feet if I know anything about the needs of English n.o.bility, and I"ll bet my hat she"s packing her trunks now for a long stay in j.a.pat. You have farther to go than she, but you _must_ get over there inside of sixty days. I daresay your practice can take care of itself,"
ironically. Browne nodded cheerfully. "You can"t tell what may happen in the next six months."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it"s possible that you may become a widower and she a wid--"
"Good heaven, Judge Garrett! Impossible!" gasped Bobby Browne, clutching the arms of his chair.
"Nothing is impossible, my boy--"
"Well, if that"s what you"re counting on you can count me out, I won"t speculate on my wife"s death."
"But, man, suppose that it _did_ happen!" roared the judge irascibly.
"You should be prepared for the best--I mean the worst. Don"t look like a sick dog. We"ve got to watch every corner, that"s all, and be Johnny-on-the-spot when the time comes. You go to the island at once.
Take your wife along if you like. You"ll find her ladyship there, and she"ll need a woman to tell her troubles to. I"ll have the papers ready for you to sign in three days, and I don"t think we"ll have any trouble getting the British heirs to join in the suit to overthrow the will. The only point is this: the islanders must not have the advantage that your absence from j.a.pat will give to them. Now, I"ll----"
"But, good Lord, Judge Garrett, I can"t go to that confounded island,"
wailed Browne. "Take my wife over among those heathenish----"
"Do you expect me to handle this case for you, sir?"
"Sure."
"Then let me handle it. Don"t interfere. When you start in to get somebody else"s money you have to do a good many things you don"t like, no matter whether you are a lawyer or a client."
"But I don"t like the suggestion that my wife will be obliged to die in order----"
"Please leave all the details to me, Mr. Browne. It may not be necessary for her to die. There are other alternatives in law. Give the lawyers a chance. We"ll see what we can do. Besides, it would be unreasonable to expect his lordship to die also. All you have to do is to plant yourself on that island and stay there until we tell you to get off."
"Or the islanders push me off," lugubriously.
"Now, listen intently and I"ll tell you just what you are to do."
Young Mr. Browne went away at dusk, half reeling under the responsibility of existence, and eventually reached the side of the anxious young woman uptown. He bared the facts and awaited the wail of dismay.
"I think it will be perfectly jolly," she cried, instead, and kissed him rapturously.
Over on the opposite side of the Atlantic the excitement in certain circles was even more intense than that produced in Boston. Lord Deppingham needed the money, but he was a whole day in grasping the fact that his wife could not have it and him at the same time. The beautiful and fashionable Lady Deppingham, once little Agnes Ruthven, came as near to having hysteria as Englishwomen ever do, but she called in a lawyer instead of a doctor. For three days she neglected her social duties (and they were many), ignored her gallant admirers (and they were many), and hurried back and forth between home and chambers so vigorously that his lordship was seldom closer than a day behind in anything she did.
There was a great rattling of trunks, a jangling of keys, a thousand good-byes, a cast-off season, and the Deppinghams were racing away for the island of j.a.pat somewhere in the far South Seas.
CHAPTER III
INTRODUCING HOLLINGSWORTH CHASE
While all this was being threshed out by the persons most vitally interested in the affairs of Taswell Skaggs and John Wyckholme, events of a most unusual character were happening to one who not only had no interest in the aforesaid heritage, but no knowledge whatever of its existence. The excitement attending the Skaggs-Wyckholme revelations had not yet spread to the Grand Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg, apparently lost as it was in the cl.u.s.ter of small units which went to make up a certain empire: one of the world powers. The Grand Duke Michael disdained the world at large; he had but little in common with anything that moved beyond the confines of his narrow domain. His court was sleepy, lackadaisical, unemotional, impregnable to the taunts of progression; his people were thrifty, stolid and absolutely stationary in their loyalty to the ancient traditions of the duchy; his army was a mere matter of taxation and not a thing of pomp or necessity. Four times a year he inspected the troops, and just as many times in the year were the troops obliged to devote themselves to rigorous display. The rest of the time was spent in social intrigue and whistling for the war-clouds that never came.
The precise location of the Grand Duchy in the map of the world has little or nothing to do with this narrative; indeed, were it not for the fact that the Grand Duke possessed a charming and most desirable daughter, the Thorberg dynasty would not be mentioned at all. For that matter, it is brought to light briefly for the sole purpose of identifying the young lady in question, and the still more urgent desire to connect her past with her future--for which we have, perhaps intemperately, an especial consideration. It is only necessary, therefore, for us to step into and out of the Grand Duchy without the procrastination usual in a sojourner, stopping long enough only to see how tiresome it would be to stay, and to wonder why any one remained who could get away. Not that the Grand Duchy was an utterly undesirable place, but that too much time already had been wasted there by the populace itself.
It has been said that events of a most unusual character were happening; any event that roused the people from their daily stolidity was sufficiently unusual to suggest the superlative. The Grand Duke"s peace of mind had been severely disturbed--so severely, in fact, that he was transferring his troubles to the Emperor, who, in turn, felt obliged to communicate with the United States Amba.s.sador, and who, in his turn, had no other alternative than to take summary action in respect to the indiscretions of a fellow-countryman.
In the beginning, it was not altogether the fault of the young man who had come from America to serve his country. Whatever may have been the turmoil in the Grand Duke"s palace at Thorberg, Chase"s conscience was even and serene. He had no excuses to offer--for that matter none would have been entertained--and he was resigning his post with the confidence that he had performed his obligations as an American gentleman should, even though the performance had created an extraordinary commotion.
Chase was new to the Old World and its customs, especially those rigorous ones which surrounded royalty and denied it the right to venture into the commonplace. The amba.s.sador at the capital of the Empire at first sought to excuse him on the ground of ignorance; but the Grand Duke insisted that even an American could not be such a fool as Chase had been; so, it must have been a wilful offence that led up to the controversy.
Chase had been the representative of the American Government at Thorberg for six months. He never fully understood why the government should have a representative there; but that was a matter quite entirely for the President to consider. The American flag floated above his doorway in the Friedrich Stra.s.se, but in all his six months of occupation not ten Americans had crossed the threshold. As a matter of fact, he had seen fewer than twenty Americans in all that time. He was a vigorous, healthy young man, and it may well be presumed that the situation bored him.
Small wonder, then, that he kept out of mischief for half a year.
Diplomatic service is one thing and the lack of opportunity is quite another. Chase did his best to find occupation for his diplomacy, but what chance had he with nothing ahead of him but regular reports to the department in which he could only announce that he was in good health and that no one had "called."
Chase belonged to the diplomatic cla.s.s which owes its elevation to the influence of Congress--not to Congress as a body but to one of its atoms. He was not a politician; no more was he an office seeker. He was a real soldier of fortune, in search of affairs--in peace or in war, on land or at sea. Possessed of a small income, sufficiently adequate to sustain life if he managed to advance it to the purple age (but wholly incapable of supporting him as a thriftless diplomat), he was compelled to make the best of his talents, no matter to what test they were put.
He left college at twenty-two, possessed of the praiseworthy design to earn his own way without recourse to the $4,500 income from a certain trust fund. His plan also incorporated the hope to save every penny of that income for the possible "rainy day." He was now thirty; in each of several New York banks he had something like $4,000 drawing three per cent. interest while he picked his blithe way through the world on $2,500 a year, more or less, as chance ordained.
"When I"m forty," Chase was wont to remark to envious spendthrifts who couldn"t understand his philosophy, "I"ll have over a hundred thousand there, and if I live to be ninety, just think what I"ll have! And it will be like finding the money, don"t you see? Of course, I won"t live to be ninety. Moreover, I may get married and have to maintain a poor wife with rich relatives, which is a terrible strain, you know. You have to live up to your wife"s relatives, if you don"t do anything else."
He did not refer to the chance that he was quite sure to come in for a large legacy at the death of his maternal grandfather, a millionaire ranch owner in the Far West. Chase never counted on probabilities; he took what came and was satisfied.
After leaving college, he drifted pretty much over the world, taking pot luck with fortune and clasping the hand of circ.u.mstance, to be led into the highways and byways, through good times and ill times, in love and out, always coming safely into port with a smiling wind behind. There had been hard roads to travel as well as easy ones, but he never complained; he swung on through life with the heart of a soldier and the confidence of a Pagan. He loathed business and he abhorred trade.
"That little old trust fund is making more money for me by lying idle than I could acc.u.mulate in a century by hard work as a grocer or an undertaker," he was p.r.o.ne to philosophise when his uncles, who were merchants, urged him to settle down and "do something." Not that there were grocers or undertakers among them; it was his way of impressing his sense of freedom upon them.