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living of name and honors for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the defenceless deadā€”why it is more than crime, it degrades crime!ā€

ā€œOh, listen to meā€”just a wordā€”donā€™t turn away like that. Donā€™t goā€” donā€™t leave me, soā€”stay one moment. On my honorā€”ā€

ā€œOh, on your honor!ā€

ā€œOn my honor I am what I say! And I will prove it, and you will believe, I know you will. I will bring you a messageā€”a cablegramā€”ā€

ā€œWhen?ā€

ā€œTo-morrowā€”next dayā€”ā€

ā€œSigned ā€˜Rossmoreā€™?ā€

ā€œYesā€”signed Rossmore.ā€

ā€œWhat will that prove?ā€

ā€œWhat will it prove? What should it prove?ā€

ā€œIf you force me to say itā€”possibly the presence of a confederate somewhere.ā€

This was a hard blow, and staggered him. He said, dejectedly:

ā€œIt is true. I did not think of it. Oh, my God, I do not know any way to do; I do everything wrong. You are going?ā€”and you wonā€™t say even goodnightā€”or goodbye? Ah, we have not parted like this before.ā€

ā€œOh, I want to run andā€”no, go, now.ā€ A pauseā€”then she said, ā€œYou may bring the message when it comes.ā€

ā€œOh, may I? God bless you.ā€

He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and now she broke down. Through her sobbings her words broke from time to time.

ā€œOh, he is gone. I have lost him, I shall never see him any more. And he didnā€™t kiss me goodbye; never even offered to force a kiss from me, and he knowing it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would, and never dreaming he would treat me so after all we have been to each other. Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! He is a dear, poor, miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but oh, I do love him soā€”!ā€ After a little she broke into speech again. ā€œHow dear he is! and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so! Why wonā€™t he ever think to forge a message and fetch it?ā€”but no, he never will, he never thinks of anything; heā€™s so honest and simple it wouldnā€™t ever occur to him. Oh, what did possess him to think he could succeed as a fraudā€”and he hasnā€™t the first requisite except duplicity that I can see. Oh, dear, Iā€™ll go to bed and give it all up. Oh, I wish I had told him to come and tell me whenever he didnā€™t get any telegramā€”and now itā€™s all my own fault if I never see him again. How my eyes must look!ā€

 

CHAPTER XXIV.

Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didnā€™t come. This was an immense disaster; for Tracy couldnā€™t go into the presence without that ticket, although it wasnā€™t going to possess any value as evidence. But if the failure of the cablegram on that first day may be called an immense disaster, where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase sizeable enough to describe the tenth dayā€™s failure? Of course every day that the cablegram didnā€™t come made Tracy all of twenty-four hoursā€™ more ashamed of himself than he was the day before, and made Sally fully twenty-four hours more certain than ever that he not only hadnā€™t any father anywhere, but hadnā€™t even a confederateā€”and so it followed that he was a double-dyed humbug and couldnā€™t be otherwise.

These were hard days for Barrow and the art firm. All these had their hands full, trying to comfort Tracy. Barrowā€™s task was particularly hard, because he was made a confidant in full, and therefore had to humor Tracyā€™s delusion that he had a father, and that the father was an earl, and that he was going to send a cablegram. Barrow early gave up the idea of trying to convince Tracy that he hadnā€™t any father, because this had such a bad effect on the patient, and worked up his temper to such an alarming degree. He had tried, as an experiment, letting Tracy think he had a father; the result was so good that he went further, with proper caution, and tried letting him think his father was an earl; this wrought so well, that he grew bold, and tried letting him think he had two fathers, if he wanted to, but he didnā€™t want to, so Barrow withdrew one of them and substituted letting him think he was going to get a cablegramā€”which Barrow judged he wouldnā€™t, and was right; but Barrow worked the cablegram daily for all it was worth, and it was the one thing that kept Tracy alive; that was Barrowā€™s opinion.

And these were bitter hard days for poor Sally, and mainly delivered up to private crying. She kept her furniture pretty damp, and so caught cold, and the dampness and the cold and the sorrow together undermined her appetite, and she was a pitiful enough object, poor thing. Her state was bad enough, as per statement of it above quoted; but all the forces of nature and circumstance seemed conspiring to make it worseā€”and succeeding. For instance, the morning after her dismissal of Tracy, Hawkins and Sellers read in the associated press dispatches that a toy puzzle called Pigs in the Clover, had come into sudden favor within the past few weeks, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the populations of all the States had knocked off work to play with it, and that the business of the country had now come to a standstill by consequence; that judges, lawyers, burglars, parsons, thieves, merchants, mechanics, murderers, women, children, babiesā€”everybody, indeed, could be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and purpose, and only oneā€”to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of mental decay and incipient madness; that factories were at work night and day in eight cities, and yet to supply the demand for the puzzle was thus far impossible. Hawkins was wild with joy, but Sellers was calm. Small matters could not disturb his serenity. He saidā€”

ā€œThatā€™s just the way things go. A man invents a thing which could revolutionize the arts, produce mountains of money, and bless the earth, and who will bother with it or show any interest in it?ā€”and so you are just as poor as you were before. But you invent some worthless thing to amuse yourself with, and would throw it away if let alone, and all of a sudden the whole world makes a snatch for it and out crops a fortune. Hunt up that Yankee and collect, Hawkinsā€”half is yours, you know. Leave me to potter at my lecture.ā€

This was a temperance lecture. Sellers was head chief in the Temperance camp, and had lectured, now and then in that interest, but had been dissatisfied with his efforts; wherefore he was now about to try a new plan. After much thought he had concluded that a main reason why his lectures lacked fire or something, was, that they were too transparently amateurish; that is to say, it was probably too plainly perceptible that the lecturer was trying to tell people about the horrid effects of liquor when he didnā€™t really know anything about those effects except from hearsay, since he had hardly ever tasted an intoxicant in his life. His scheme, now, was to prepare himself to speak from bitter experience. Hawkins was to stand by with the bottle, calculate the doses, watch the effects, make notes of results, and otherwise assist in the preparation. Time was short, for the ladies would be along about noonā€”that is to say, the temperance organization called the Daughters of Siloamā€”and Sellers must be ready to head the procession.

The time kept slipping alongā€”Hawkins did not returnā€”Sellers could not venture to wait longer; so he attacked the bottle himself, and proceeded to note the effects. Hawkins got back at last; took one comprehensive glance at the lecturer, and went down and headed off the procession. The ladies were grieved to hear that the champion had been taken suddenly ill and violently so, but glad to hear that it was hoped he would be out again in a few days.

As it turned out, the old gentleman didnā€™t turn over or show any signs of life worth speaking of for twenty-four hours. Then he asked after the procession, and learned what had happened about it. He was sorry; said he had been ā€œfixedā€ for it. He remained abed several days, and his wife and daughter took turns in sitting with him and ministering to his wants. Often he patted Sallyā€™s head and tried to comfort her.

ā€œDonā€™t cry, my child, donā€™t cry so; you know your old father did it by mistake and didnā€™t mean a bit of harm; you know he wouldnā€™t intentionally do anything to make you ashamed for the world; you know he was trying to do good and only made the mistake through ignorance, not knowing the right doses and Washington not there to help. Donā€™t cry so, dear, it breaks my old heart to see you, and think Iā€™ve brought this humiliation on you and you so dear to me and so good. I wonā€™t ever do it again, indeed I wonā€™t; now be comforted, honey, thatā€™s a good child.ā€

But when she wasnā€™t on duty at the bedside the crying went on just the same; then the mother would try to comfort her, and say:

ā€œDonā€™t cry, dear, he never meant any harm; it was all one of those happens that you canā€™t guard against when you are trying experiments, that way. You see I donā€™t cry. Itā€™s because I know him so well. I could never look anybody in the face again if he had got into such an amazing condition as that a-purpose; but bless you his intention was pure and high, and that makes the act pure, though it was higher than was necessary. Weā€™re not humiliated, dear, he did it under a noble impulse and we donā€™t need to be ashamed. There, donā€™t cry any more, honey.ā€

Thus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an explanation of her tearfulness. She felt thankful to him for the shelter he was affording her, but often said to herself, ā€œItā€™s a shame to let him see in my cryings a reproachā€”as if he could ever do anything that could make me reproach him! But I canā€™t confess; Iā€™ve got to go on using him for a pretext, heā€™s the only one Iā€™ve got in the world, and I do need one so much.ā€

As soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, ā€œNow weā€™ll soon see whoā€™s the Claimant and whoā€™s the Authentic. Iā€™ll just go over there and warm up that House of Lords.ā€ During the next few days he and his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her. Then the old pair left for New Yorkā€”and England.

Sally had also had a chance to do another thing. That was, to make up her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms. If she must give up her impostor and die; doubtless she must submit; but might she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and see if there wasnā€™t perhaps some saving way out of the matter? She turned this idea over in her mind a good deal. In her first visit with Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell

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