The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 25 January 1917, Page 3

The Storyteller

By Anna T. Sadlier.

PHILEAS FOX, ATTORNEY

[By Arrangement with the Ave Maria.] (Continued.) XV. ~ Phileas made up his mind that he would lose no time in following up the clue which should lead him next to the Hub of the Universe. It was quite an excitement, this amateur detective work,—mild flavored indeed, and not at all like the wonderful feats performed by gentlemen of leisure in the novels. Before the lawyer’s mind, the end of the chase seemed like some golden ball whose luminous threads he was pursuing, He could not foresee what might result, even should he discover John Vorst; and these speculations as to how that gentleman might act, or whether he would refuse to enter into negotiations, or permit himself to be influenced by the change of circumstances,^ all were involved in a delightful uncertainty. Phileas ( decided that it would be necessary, before his departure, to pay another visit to Mrs. Wilson, so as to acquaint her with all that he had so far discovered, to ask her advice, and perhaps to obtain sundry valuable suggestions. He strove hard to persuade himself that his motives in desiring to present himself at the mansion in Monroe street were purely professional. But there was a light in his blue eyes, an eagerness in his face, and an air of pleasant expectancy about him, suggesting that other reason which lay deep down in his heart, and was scarcely recognised by himself. He advanced to the telephone and rang up the now familiar number. After a pause, a voice which he did not recognise, and which sounded faint and muffled reached his ears. He exclaimed : * ‘Halloa! Is that Cadwallader ?’ He distinctly heard, on that occasion, a perfectly audible titter. ‘ No, sir,’ came the prompt reply, in a feminine voice. ‘ Is it Miss Ventnor?’ inquired Phileas. ‘ No, sir; but if you wait a moment I’ll get her.’ It was only the maid, then and Phileas waited with an agreeable expectancy for the coming of that other whom he had learned to regard as so attractive. Presently a voice — the voice— : ‘ Halloa !’ ‘ Yes.’ 1 Mr. Wilson’s attorney is speaking.’ For the young man sensitively avoided pronouncing unnecessarily that name upon which Isabel had early set the seal of ridicule. ‘ O, Mr. Fox, how do you do?’ cried Isabel; and then the girl began to laugh, a delightful sound breaking upon the Babel of noise, confused and indistinct, but quite perceptible, — the concentrated roar and rush of a city buzzing through the instrument. But he wondered why she laughed, as the maid had done before. Evidently mirth was just then the order of the day in that decorous household. ‘ Why are you laughing?’ he asked. ‘ For the same reason,’ Isabel answered, ‘ that sent Ellen the housemaid into a paroxysm. It was because you inquired if that was Cadwallader at the phone. The dear old soul would no more touch the telephone than he would approach a mad dog. He has a particular horror of it, and mutters and talks to himself concerning it. I believe he suspects a hoodoo or something of that sort. He was quite disturbed when Ellen told him that she had heard his name called through the telephone.’ . v - Phileas laughed too and then he asked in a tone which he strove to make strictly professional :

••••. May I come up this afternoon?.-;>! mean. will Mis. .Wilson find "it convenient to receive me , • , v pt ; I .think it is - very likely,’ replied the girl. ‘ But - perhaps I had better find out positively. Will you , wait?’ . . 4 V' J • The young man stood with the receiver in his hand, pending the return of Mrs. - Wilson’s' charming companion— for such he considered her, — and. feeling , that even a little chat over the telephone was an agrees able interlude to the day’s dull routine. V Isabel returned almost immediately. ‘Yes, she will be glad to see you this afternoon,’ : she announced. ‘ She drives at three, and will be here ;by four o’clock. Will that be convenient?’ <■ '•*]s' It will suit me perfectly.’ t .Phileas could not ask her if she would be at home. His business with the house and its inmates : was strictly professional. But Isabel added, quite naturally .and simply : / ‘ When you come I shall show you some snapshots I that'll took down at Staten Island, after you left that afternoon. Wasn’t it a perfect day there, and didn’t . you love it?’ ‘ I never enjoyed anything so' much,’ Phileas answered fervently, his spirits rising to the highest pitch at the thought that he was to see her that afternoon, and in a pleasant and informal fashion. For some- :■ times she had not been present at his 'interviews with ;■ Mrs. “Wilson ; or, if she had, the conversation was chiefly f off documents and other professional details, which, though establishing an unusual intimacy between them, ' had been somehow unsatisfactory. He had not begun to question himself very closely | as .to . his sentiments toward this girl, with whom his | acquaintance had been so brief, and who, nevertheless, interested him in some subtle and inexplicable manner. In the few leisure moments that occurred that after- , noon (for the office chairs were almost continually occupied now), he began to indulge in some very sage reflections as to the impossibility of a struggling attorney’s entertaining sentiments of any serious nature toward a young girl similarly situated with regard to fortune. And the upshot of these fine soliloquies was that' he. congratulated himself warmly upon the fact that Miss Ventnor presumably was penniless, and that her position as a companion placed her upon an equality with himself, which could not possibly have existed had she been a daughter of the house. From that naturally “followed some roseate visions as to the way that he should carve out for himself, and the self-made position that he should one day have to offer to some one, whether it should be that delightful Isabel or another. Almost immediately after Isabel had hung up the receiver and her melodious voice had ceased to 'penetrate his ear, the lawyer had to give his attention to the representative of some big corporation who was offering him a lucrative case, and one which, perhaps, • promised him the long-sought opportunity to display in court his natural eloquence, and so rise a rung or two ; higher upon that ladder he was so surely, if slowly, ascending. 5. As he conferred with this magnate of affairs, the young man’s face was so' keen, his suggestions so farreaching and practical, that none would have imagined him the same young gentleman who had been so lately £ enshrouded by rosy visions, and inhabiting a morning land filled by a gracious, feminine personality. He was very punctual at Mrs. Wilson’s; and this i time he was ushered, not into the library, but into the 'drawing-room, a long and portentously stately apartment, where Mrs. Wilson* sat enthroned, as it were, in a hug© armchair. Some influence besides the trees y nodding .in .at the window had been at work to transy form the end of the room, where the lady of the house jjVwas seated, into a cheerful and homelike spot. Some •bpalms.were grouped about some flowers stood upon a table, where was also a sprinkling of books. A £ cheerful water-color or two upon the walls enlivened the ' austerity of the room, and relieved the almost oppres--sive grandeur in the appointments. * ; Isabel sat there, in a gown- of the filmiest and

- • - - ~ : r~ : -■ ■ • ' ■ . .. ■■ . ■ ■ ■ ■..■■■■ ■- . . softest of organdies, with a ribbon belt, a fall of ’lace* from sleeves and shoulders, and a touch of black velvet >■' that accentuated the daintiness of the costume. That was- another of her charms, Phileas thought,—perfection of costume. v - ■ Before, you . and Mr. Fox . proceed to business,’ said Isabel, ‘ I want to show the snapshots I took at Staten Island.’ / t k ' , ‘Yes, yes!’ assented Mrs. Wilson. They are really very good, I think, for an amateur.’ Mrs. Wilson has a true early Victorian disregard for amateur efforts in all directions,’ laughed Isabel, producing a bunch of photographs and. offering them one by ,one to the lawyer who had taken a seat beside - her; and once more the latter could not help admiring the slender brown fingers, that yet looked so capable. ‘I was sorry you had gone,’ observed the girl, ‘or I might also have taken some of you, my fellow-pilgrim in that lovely region.’ * ‘ ° I only wish I had known,, and I would willingly ■ have waited for the next boat,’ Phileas responded. * You escaped something, I am sure,’ laughed tyjrs. Wilson ; for you would have run the risk at least of ' being caricatured.’ ‘My appearance might lend itself to. that style of art,’ said Phileas. But Mrs. Wilson disagreed with him mentally. The hair, the face, she reflected, were certainly not prepossessing in the point of mere beauty; but ther,e was about the young man in general a look of mental as well as physical strength, and a frankness and geniality of expression, that were far from displeasing. What Isabel thought could not be so easily predicted. She was, for one thing, a less experienced observer. ‘ You are quite too modest,’ the elder woman said graciously but that modesty has the attraction of rarity.’ Isabel made no remark, but continued to show the various snapshots she had taken. They reproduced the house where she had been visiting, and glimpses of the bay, and the green and shaded road by which the two had walked. Isabel herself had been photographed by her hostess in more than one attitude. But, as it had been, of course, impossible to catch the shimmering light, with the alternations of shadow, the waving of the branches, the glow upon the water, all of which had made up that enchanting landscape, just so Phileas thought it had been impossible to convey by cold print the attractiveness of his companion, the peculiar quality of humor and of sympathy that she possessed, and her absolutely natural and unaffected manner. He glanced quickly at the face" which Isabel was bending over her snapshots, and caught that smile ■ about the lips and in the eyes that provoked an answering one. At the end of a pleasant half hour Isabel rose, saying: ‘ But I am not going to keep you and Mrs. Wilson ■from your business conversation.’ There is no great hurry, my dear said the old woman graciously. The lawyer, by an involuntary look, seconded the remonstrance ; even though he had to catch the evening boat, and had therefore but little time to spare, since he had a few preparations to make, and a hasty meal to snatch in the interval. A™ Isabel was not to be moved by the one appeal nor the other, though she had equally understood both. ‘ The time of your learned counsel' is too precious to be wasted,’ she said lightly. 1 Rather these moments are too precious to be lost,’ Phileas ventured, in a slightly lowered tone, which, nevertheless, caught Mrs. Wilson’s phenomenally acute hearing, and amused her. The boy is already beginning to make pretty speeches,’ she thought. * Evidently Isabel^and he are quite en rapport. It will amuse her, she has such a dull existence here. And as for our little lawyer— ’ The thought remained unfinished; and Isabel, with a bright parting smile at Phileas, which he carried away with him to Boston, slipped out of a door near

; where she had been sitting, closing it softly after her. : When Mrs. Wilson turned again ' toward her attorney; it iwas the keen, lawyer-like * expression which she * encountered. * . ' , ■ | ‘I . wanted to see you particularly/ the young V faan .explained, ‘because If think of leaving for Boston to-night.’ ■. . ■ h ‘ For Boston Indeed!’ exclaimed the old lady, politely interested. : f ‘ I am going there,’ the lawyer added, 1 in pursuit of what seems to be a clue.’ |l Mrs. Wilson’s face became alight with interest, though Phileas noted that it was looking unwoutedly grey and old that afternoon. \ ‘ A clue,’ she repeated, ‘ to to the discovery we are so anxious to make?’ >-{i Phileas nodded, and went on : | v ‘ And, if you will allow me, I will place before you the reasons for my present course of action.’ In a few brief but graphic sentences he made her acquainted. with all that had most recently occurred, — his interviews with the lodging-house keeper, and his excursion to Westchester. The mention of that lovely though isolated dwelling affected the listener powerfully. A mortal paleness overspread her features. She spoke with effort, controlling what was evidently a painful emotion. if_ Your clue,’ she declared when the lawyer had - finished, Tam almost certain is a valuable one. To just such a place as you describe John Vorst brought me as a bride. I had a singular love for it, and we often retired there for rest from the turmoil of city life. Once, in a fit of perversity, I left him alone there and came into town. He closed the house immediately, and he never asked me to return thither, and I was too proud to express my real preference for the spot.’ Upon another point in his narrative Mrs. Wilson was enabled to throw some light. ‘ That man, that ugly customer, whom you describe as dogging your footsteps,’ she said, ‘ and persecuting Mr. Vorst, may very well be a certain William Gross, who was once in my husband’s employ and dismissed for misconduct of some sort.’ ‘ That was not the name mentioned by the lodginghouse keeper,’ objected the lawyer. But it is true she suggested that he might have been passing under the alias of Jason Trowbridge.’ Mrs. .Wilson, after asking a few details of the miscreant’s appearance, declared her conviction of his identity with the person known as Gross, who had been suspected of theft, and had, moreover, been discovered on various . occasions prying into Mr. Vorst’s private papers. ‘He is a dangerous creature,’ said the old lady emphatically; ‘ and I warn you to have a care of him:^;ri;' v Then she inquired after what manner Phileas proposed to proceed upon arriving in Boston. The young man reminded her that he had obtained the address of the hotel whither the gentleman from Westchester had f presumably gone ; and that he had a further resource in the information, casually obtained by inquiry at the college in Sixteenth street, that the priest who had been on friendly terms with Mrs. O’Rourke’s lodger, and whom Susan had mentioned as Father Driscoll, had gone to the New England metropolis. % Mrs. Wilson agreed with the lawyer in believing that this . might have been an additional reason why Mr. Vorst, supposing him to be identical with the lodger and the mysterious tenant of the Westchester duelling, had chosen Boston as his latest place of refuge. g Phileas finally begged of his client to furnish him as accurate a description as possible of the appear--of her former husband, and with any other circumstances that might lead to his identification. The old woman hesitated painfully, pondering with her head upon her hand. Then she said: | ‘lf you will give me your arm, Mr. Fox, so that I shall not be under the necessity of summoning Cadwallader, I think I shall perpfit ypy. to see what few

eyes except my own have looked upon. And,’ she added, ‘ you will understand that Isabel is entirely ignorant of the existence of what I am about to show you. It is, in fact, a portrait of John . Vorst.’ Phileas silently offered his arm, upon which Mrs. Wilson leaned heavily ; and thus the two passed into a small boudoir-like apartment, the door of which was opened by a key. that the old , woman wore on her watch chain. Ihe light therein was'so dim that the young man cold not at first distinguish any object. M rs - Wilson sank into a sofa which; occupied one corner of. this secret recess; and, pointing to a stained-glass window that Phileas could discern as. directly facing the entrance door, she exclaimed : Pull that string which you see hanging there, and the window will open !’ He did so ; and a stream of light, when the window had swung partially open, discovered two portraits hanging side by side. One was that of a young man very modishly attired in the fashion of half a century before, with a strongly marked and exceedingly aristociatic face, and an almost classical purity of contour. Close beside it was the counterfeit presentment of a young girl, slender of figure, with a conspicuous distinction of bearing ; and in- the delicate, cameo-like features (the very qualities that had led to the wreck of two lives) Phileas could recognise, in the first hasty glance, identity with the lineaments that were now obscured by old age and by the lines that life had inscribed upon that youthful visage. ‘ This portrait on the left is what I was ; the other is, of course, John Vorst as he appeared at the time of our marriage.’ Phileas gazed awestruck at thejnetures. ' It was a fearful contrast between the slim, girlish figure, in the full pride of life, of youth, and the shrunken old woman who was so obviously descending into the valley of the shadow. It was a cruel presentment of that truth forever present to the aged, and dimly apprehended at certain seasons by the young. ‘ Of course,’ remarked Mrs. Wilson, in a voice that sounded tremulous with emotion, 1 it is a very long time since that portrait of him was taken; but still I feel sure that it will help in the work of identification. Men wear so much better than do our sex.’ Phileas studied intently every pictured detail, agreeing with Mrs. Wilson that he would probably find material assistance in the work of identification from his recollection of this portrait. His prevailing sentiment toward the woman herself during that singular interview was a poignant pity. The wreck she had made of her own life and that of another must be so agonisingly apparent to her lonely old age, where her pride and folly, coupled with a perverse and reckless wickedness, had borne their fruit. As he glanced from time to time at his client, the -intolerant judgment youth and inexperience mW apt to pass upon the guilty was softened into a feeling of compassion, which is, after all, the safest and most consistent attitude that one mortal can assume toward another. ‘ Here,’ said Mrs. Wilson in a low voice, ‘ I have spent many hours of expiation. Here, a forlorn old woman, I have looked back upon the past,-, and called upon the mountains to crush me. I have eaten out my heart in unavailing penitence and remorse.’ Phileas knew not what to say, and so. remained respectfully silent. She went on : ‘ You are young, Mr. Fox, and I suppose happy ; and you can not guess the depth of suffering and humiliation, the stern and poignant punishment, that was all too swiftly meted out to me. If you could, your judgment, believe me. would not be too severe.’ She looked up, as she spoke, to the young man towering above her in his six feet of honest young manhood, and clothed in that righteousness that made, him seem almost as an avenging deity. He looked down gravely and pityingly, with eyes in which there was a touch of tenderness such as he might have shown to a wounded animal. ' . - - ' ‘Who is there that can judge another?’ he said at last/ 1 And yon have been sorely tried.’ „ •

jJvVii Mrs. Wilson covered her face, for a moment; with her two withered and skeleton-like hands. The touch of sympathy had drawn from her a few reluctant and scalding tears. The young - lawyer often thought of that interview afterward, and of the further discourse he had held with that proud woman, humbled, softened, opening for a brief moment the inmost recesses of her nature in presence of ' that representation of her own youth and of the man who had been her lover. At her -suggestion, they withdrew from that room of haunting memory, to the library, where the lawyer read over to her his notes of the case in so far as he had mastered it,the claim of John Yorst and his heirs, the still missing links-in the chain of evidence. To all this Mrs Wilson listened with eager attention, making but few corrections, and signing her name whenever- it was necessary. Then, with a pitiful eagerness that all should be concluded, she caused him to write out 1 a document expressing her desire for restitution, and confessing that she recognised the justice of John Vorst’s claim and believed in the existence of a prior will. Phileas noticed that she looked very frail when all had been accomplished. The mental exertion through which she had passed, and the emotions which had been excited, had apparently aged and exhausted her. When the young attorney rose to go, she held out her hand and retained that of her adviser in a momentary pressure. ‘ You have been very kind,’ she said, ‘ and I feel that I can trust everything to you. You will hurry the matter through as much as possible; life is so uncertain, and at the best I have but little time. Oh, may a merciful God hear my prayer, and permit me to repair this injustice before I leave this life ! When you come back again, I must remember to tell you about Isabel. But you had better not wait now, lest you might lose your boat. Catch that boat, Mr. Fox, —I beg of you to catch that boat.’ The name of Isabel thrilled Phileas, coming into the solemnity of that hour as a beam of light ; and he would gladly have lingered to hear what it might be that his client had to tell. But he saw that her thoughts had gone before him to the Eastern metropolis, where he hoped to discover the missing defendant ; and he knew, besides, that she was exhausted. He also agreed with her that he might have difficulty even then in catching the evening boat. He therefore took his leave at once. As Mr. Fox hastened out through the park-like enclosure, more beautiful than ever in its greenness, and in its air of mystery and seclusion, which shut it off from its unsavory surroundings, he caught the distant sound of Isabel’s voice, fresh and pure, singing. Tantalisingly the parrot, spurred on by the sound, also raised its discordant tones, with its everlasting cry of 'John Yorst! John Yorst!’ 1 Yes, that is it,’ Phileas reflected. ‘ Nothing else but John Yorst must occupy my thoughts till all this affair is settled.’ _ (To be continued.)