The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
at all,” Charles answered. “I can keep it dark for the present, till all is arranged for. I need only say I have interests in South Africa.”
So, one morning on deck, as we were approaching the Banks, he broached his scheme gently to the doctor and Mrs. Quackenboss. He remarked that he was connected with one of the biggest financial concerns in the Southern hemisphere; and that he would pay Elihu fifteen hundred a year to represent him at the diggings.
“What, dollars?” the lady said, smiling and accentuating the tip-tilted nose a little more. “Oh, Mr. Porter, it ain’t good enough!”
“No, pounds, my dear madam,” Charles responded. “Pounds sterling, you know. In United States currency, seven thousand five hundred.”
“I guess Elihu would just jump at it,” Mrs. Quackenboss replied, looking at him quizzically.
The doctor laughed. “You make a good bid, sir,” he said, in his slow American way, emphasising all the most unimportant words: “But you overlook one element. I am a man of science, not a speculator. I have trained myself for medical work, at considerable cost, in the best schools of Europe, and I do not propose to fling away the results of much arduous labour by throwing myself out elastically into a new line of work for which my faculties may not perhaps equally adapt me.”
(“How thoroughly American!” I murmured, in the background.)
Charles insisted; all in vain. Mrs. Quackenboss was impressed; but the doctor smiled always a sphinx-like smile, and reiterated his belief in the unfitness of mid-stream as an ideal place for swopping horses. The more he declined, and the better he talked, the more eager Charles became each day to secure him. And, as if on purpose to draw him on, the doctor each day gave more and more surprising proofs of his practical abilities. “I am not a specialist,” he said. “I just ketch the drift, appropriate the kernel, and let the rest slide.”
He could do anything, it really seemed, from shoeing a mule to conducting a camp-meeting; he was a capital chemist, a very sound surgeon, a fair judge of horseflesh, a first class euchre player, and a pleasing baritone. When occasion demanded he could occupy a pulpit. He had invented a cork-screw which brought him in a small revenue; and he was now engaged in the translation of a Polish work on the “Application of Hydrocyanic Acid to the Cure of Leprosy.”
Still, we reached New York without having got any nearer our goal, as regarded Dr. Quackenboss. He came to bid us good-bye at the quay, with that sphinx-like smile still playing upon his features. Charles clutched the dispatch-box with one hand, and Mrs. Quackenboss’s little palm with the other.
“Don’t tell us,” he said, “this is good-bye—for ever!” And his voice quite faltered.
“I guess so, Mr. Porter,” the pretty American replied, with a telling glance. “What hotel do you patronise?”
“The Murray Hill,” Charles responded.
“Oh my, ain’t that odd?” Mrs. Quackenboss echoed. “The Murray Hill! Why, that’s just where we’re going too, Elihu!”
The upshot of which was that Charles persuaded them, before returning to Kentucky, to diverge for a few days with us to Lake George and Lake Champlain, where he hoped to over-persuade the recalcitrant doctor.
To Lake George therefore we went, and stopped at the excellent hotel at the terminus of the railway. We spent a good deal of our time on the light little steamers that ply between that point and the road to Ticonderoga. Somehow, the mountains mirrored in the deep green water reminded me of Lucerne; and Lucerne reminded me of the little curate. For the first time since we left England a vague terror seized me. Could Elihu Quackenboss be Colonel Clay again, still dogging our steps through the opposite continent?
I could not help mentioning my suspicion to Charles—who, strange to say, pooh-poohed it. He had been paying great court to Mrs. Quackenboss that day, and was absurdly elated because the little American had rapped his knuckles with her fan and called him “a real silly.”
Next day, however, an odd thing occurred. We strolled out together, all four of us, along the banks of the lake, among woods just carpeted with strange, triangular flowers—trilliums, Mrs. Quackenboss called them—and lined with delicate ferns in the first green of springtide.
I began to grow poetical. (I wrote verses in my youth before I went to South Africa.) We threw ourselves on the grass, near a small mountain stream that descended among moss-clad boulders from the steep woods above us. The Kentuckian flung himself at full length on the sward, just in front of Charles. He had a strange head of hair, very thick and shaggy. I don’t know why, but, of a sudden, it reminded me of the Mexican Seer, whom we had learned to remember as Colonel Clay’s first embodiment. At the same moment the same thought seemed to run through Charles’s head; for, strange to say, with a quick impulse he leant forward and examined it. I saw Mrs. Quackenboss draw back in wonder. The hair looked too thick and close for nature. It ended abruptly, I now remembered, with a sharp line on the forehead. Could this, too, be a wig? It seemed very probable.
Even as I thought that thought, Charles appeared to form a sudden and resolute determination. With one lightning swoop he seized the doctor’s hair in his powerful hand, and tried to lift it off bodily. He had made a bad guess. Next instant the doctor uttered a loud and terrified howl of pain, while several of his hairs, root and all, came out of his scalp in Charles’s hand, leaving a few drops of blood on the skin of the head in the place they were torn from. There was no doubt at all it was not a wig, but the Kentuckian’s natural hirsute covering.
The scene that ensued I am powerless to describe. My pen is unequal to it. The doctor arose, not so much angry as astonished, white and incredulous. “What did you do that for, any way?” he asked, glaring fiercely at my brother-in-law. Charles was all abject apology. He began by profusely expressing his regret, and offering to make any suitable reparation, monetary or otherwise. Then he revealed his whole hand. He admitted that he was Sir Charles Vandrift, the famous millionaire, and that he had suffered egregiously from the endless machinations of a certain Colonel Clay, a machiavellian rogue, who had hounded him relentlessly round the capitals of Europe. He described in graphic detail how the impostor got himself up with wigs and wax, so as to deceive even those who knew him intimately; and then he threw himself on Dr. Quackenboss’s mercy, as a man who had been cruelly taken in so often that he could not help suspecting the best of men falsely. Mrs. Quackenboss admitted it was natural to have suspicions—“Especially,” she said, with candour, “as you’re not the first to observe the notable way Elihu’s hair seems to originate from his forehead,” and she pulled it up to show us. But Elihu himself sulked on in the dumps: his dignity was offended. “If you wanted to know,” he said, “you might as well have asked me. Assault and battery is not the right way to test whether a citizen’s hair is primitive or acquired.”
“It was an impulse,” Charles pleaded; “an instinctive impulse!”
“Civilised man restrains his impulses,” the doctor answered. “You have lived too long in South Africa, Mr. Porter—I mean, Sir Charles Vandrift, if that’s the right way to address such a gentleman. You appear to have imbibed the habits and manners of the Kaffirs you lived among.”
For the next two days, I will really admit, Charles seemed more wretched than I could have believed it possible for him to be on somebody else’s account. He positively grovelled. The fact was, he saw he had hurt Dr. Quackenboss’s feelings, and—much to my surprise—he seemed truly grieved at it. If the doctor would have accepted a thousand pounds down to shake hands at once and forget the incident—in my opinion Charles would have gladly paid it. Indeed, he said as much in other words to the pretty American—for he could not insult her by offering her money. Mrs. Quackenboss did her best to make it up, for she was a kindly little creature, in spite of her roguishness; but Elihu stood aloof. Charles urged him still to go out to South Africa, increasing his bait to two thousand a year; yet the doctor was immovable. “No, no,” he said; “I had half decided to accept your offer—till that unfortunate impulse; but that settled the question. As an American citizen, I decline to become the representative of a British nobleman who takes such means of