"No," said Varney, without anger. "I am telling you the truth and you know it."

"Well--there are other papers,--other towns," cried Hammerton pa.s.sionately. "What I've got on you will sell anywhere. Why, d.a.m.n you, _d.a.m.n you, d.a.m.n you_--don't you know you'll have to kill me to hush this up?"

"No," said Varney, "I'm going to do better than that. I'm going to make a friend of you. I'm going to make you editor of the _Gazette_ in Smith's place with double your present salary and an interest in the paper."

There was black silence, more thrilling than any speech.

"Will you take it?" asked Varney.

Then the boy's overstrained self-command snapped like a bow-string and his breast shook with sudden hysteria. "Will I take it?" he cried with a gasping laugh that was rather more like a sob. "Will I take the Court of St. James? Will I take money from home? Oh, my G.o.d, will I take it!"

"Hooray!" rang Peter's great voice out of the gloom. "Hip, hip, hooray for Editor Hammerton!"

Peter's tribute, in reality, was not so much for Hammerton's acceptance as for the astonishing neatness with which Varney had disposed of the editorship of _his_ paper. But to Varney, rising limply from Hammerton's chest at the edge of the dark road, that cheer meant only that he had kicked the last obstacle out of his path and that he and Mary were going to New York to-morrow.

CHAPTER XVII

A LITTLE LUNCHEON PARTY ON THE YACHT "CYPRIANI"

The expectation appeared thoroughly conservative: not a cloud so large as a man's hand any longer darkened the horizon. At two o'clock next day Mr. Carstairs's _Cypriani_ rode gayly at her old anchorage. At the rail stood Varney and Maginnis, hosts of pleasant and guileless mien, their eyes upon the trim gig which came dancing over the water toward them. In the gig sat J. Pinkney Hare and his sister, Mrs. Marne, blithely coming to lunch aboard with their two new friends.

The yacht's return to Hunston had been in all ways different from her going. She had slipped away like the hunted thing she was, running to cover with a hold full of fears, shying at every craft that pa.s.sed, and yelled after from the sh.o.r.e by a stoutish young man with inimical opinions in his eye. She had steamed back, early this morning, not merely without fear, but proudly, her whistle screaming for the lime-light, her fore-truck flying, so to say, the burgee of vindication; and the stoutish and inimical young man had come aboard for breakfast with his new employer at nine o'clock sharp. Such was the measure of the whitewashing work accomplished by three columns in Mr. Maginnis's _Gazette_ that morning.

Of the "news value" of those astonishing columns, "the author's double"

(as the _Gazette's_ converted reporters felicitously dubbed him) had had abundant evidence in the many glances that followed him upon the streets of Hunston that morning. Varney's errand in town had had to do with Tommy Orrick. Some search was needed to find the transient tenant of Kerrigan's loft; but when he was finally located the matter of homes in New York was discussed and settled in the most satisfactory way in the world. It was decided that Tommy should remove his Penates to the city that very evening, where he was to be met at Forty-second Street by a Mr. Horace O'Hara, an interesting personage who had once been a burglar but was now in the fish and vegetable way at Fulton Market. Together they would make their way to the Home. Future plans had to do with an educative course at the graded schools and other matters so strange and exalted that one could not hear them mentioned without experiencing the most benumbing abashment.

The two good friends parted with a handshake, enforced by the young man--a unique ceremonial which filled the small breast of Thomas with a conflict of strange emotions; and Varney, having dispatched a telegram to Mr. O'Hara, and another to Mrs. Marie Duval, who had the home with no boys in it on 117th Street, had at once turned his face back to the yacht. He chose the woodland path for his walk, which struck straight down from the handsome residence street and skirted the river at a point near the _Cypriani's_ anchorage; and here an incident of interest befell him. As he sauntered down the path, conscious of a sudden curious loss of spirits, his attention was caught by the blurred sound of voices from the street, some fifty yards behind him; and presently the vague rumble crystallized into something like this:

"... Infernal absence of livery ... Far ... station-master fellow say it was, Henry?"

The voice was masculine, carefully modulated, decidedly elegant. A different sort of voice gave answer:

"'E said, sir ... mile, but knowing the hodd way they count distances away from the cities, sir, I'm 'ardly 'oping to see it under two mile--hif that."

Varney idly turned. The woods were thick just ahead of him, cutting off all view of the street; but further on, to the north, there was a break in the leafy wall, revealing a small slit of patent cement sidewalk.

Soon, as he watched, two pedestrians stepped into view within this frame of foliage: a tall immaculate-looking man swinging a trim cane, and behind him a stocky, middle-sized, black-garbed fellow struggling along under two suit-cases and a roll of umbrellas. In three steps they had pa.s.sed across the little open s.p.a.ce and were again lost behind the trees, their voices running once more into an indistinguishable rumble.

Varney, halting in the path, had little doubt who the tall man was. It was Ferris Stanhope, returning to the home of his boyhood and sublimely unaware of the nature of the reception which awaited him.

Cordially as Varney loathed the great author, he had no wish to see him taken by surprise and beaten to a pulp by mob-law. Moreover, if anything like that happened, he and Peter would be largely responsible, since the present excitement of feeling had been largely worked up for their benefit. He had half a mind to go straight after the _insouciant_ visitor now, unpleasant as it would be to have to speak to him, and give him the fair warning he was ent.i.tled to. But he dismissed the impulse as plainly overdoing his duty: the man was in no possible danger in broad daylight, and Peter had already promised that he would attend to the warning business himself.

Now, as they stood calmly chatting at the rail under the brilliant sky, he told Peter of the author's arrival, and dutifully reminded him of that promise. Peter renewed it, without enthusiasm. His eyes rested on the approaching gig with a kind of fascination; and Varney followed his gaze.

"Isn't Hare dressy, though! Frock-coat and all that ..."

"Yes ... He'll add a needed touch of elegance to the somber setting of the drama."

"By the way," said Varney presently, "how did Hammerton get away last night? I believe Ferguson's been dodging me all day, but the fact is I've never given it a thought."

Peter laughed.

"He's sharp as a tack, that boy is. He played dead till old Ferguson got first interested, then nervous, and lastly careless. Lay there two hours without moving; breathed as little as he could do with, and at long intervals fluttered one eyelid and took a peep how the land lay. After a while there came a time when the door was left wide open and only one deckhand in sight. Hammerton floored him with a chair from behind, and jumped over the rail. She happened to be moving close insh.o.r.e at the time, and he was in the woods before the fatheads even got a boat down."

Varney echoed his laugh absently. All morning, since his return from Hunston, he had felt himself enfolded by a mysterious despondency, which he had seemed unable either to account for or to shake off. But now, as the final climax of his business drew near to summon him, he felt his spirits inexplicably rising again. A certain excitement possessed him; he was glad that at last his hour had come.

Hardly listening to Peter, he was running over in the most business-like way the little scheme, mapped out and rehea.r.s.ed together that morning, by which the two superfluous guests, the mere "sleepers" in the orchestra, were to be detached at the proper moment. Yes, certainly; it was sound and would hold water. So would everything else. Peter's things had gone ash.o.r.e two hours before, for he was to remain in Hunston.

Everything had been provided for; the last detail systematically arranged. A surer scheme and a clearer coast could not possibly have been contrived or desired.

"At breakfast," continued Peter, "Hammerton suddenly blurted out that, while he wasn't crazed with conscientiousness as a rule, one thing had kept him awake last night. Demanded whether we had the nerve to think that we had simply bought him off with a job. 'Perish the thought, Charlie,' said I, looking kind of hurt at the bare suggestion. 'Thank you, Maginnis,' said he, dignified as the President. 'It's an honest fact that I gave up the chase because I felt all along that you two fellows couldn't possibly be mixed up in anything underhanded.' Aha!

thinks me to myself ... Eh, Laurence?"

"Just exactly."

"Well, cheer up. It's done every day by our best families. And speaking of doing underhanded things," said Peter, "our guests approach rapidly.

Up, guards, and at them!"

He took off his terrible Panama and waved it in a friendly manner.

"How-de-do, Mrs. Marne! Morning, candidate! Welcome aboard."

The sister and brother came up the stair, and were cordially greeted by their hosts.

"Ash.o.r.e again!" ordered Varney over the side. "There is another guest."

"So we have not kept you waiting after all," cried Mrs. Marne, flashing a triumphant eye upon her brother. "Mary is not here yet--the prinker!"

She was dark, vivacious for a chaperon, easily on the correct side of thirty, and arrayed in very light mourning indeed. She had a will: for it was she who had baited J. Pinkney Hare with sociology and politics to abandon the law in New York, at which he was doing rather well, and follow her to Hunston. This was when her husband, a member of Hunston's oldest family--for there was aristocracy in the town--had left her widowed the year of their marriage.

"Three times," Hare elucidated to Varney, "did she tell me, 'I'll be ready in a minute.' And a ten-minute interval elapsed each time, by my grandfather's trusted chronometer."

"Oh, well," said Varney, "who'd put any trust in a woman who was ready when she said she'd be? Let's get into the shade."

"Pinky," said Mrs. Marne, sister-wise, as she turned with Varney, "gets his ideas about women from the comic weeklies."

They sauntered aft, Peter and Hare in the rear.

"Committee meeting at five-thirty?"

"Precisely. And by the bye," began Hare....

The candidate, in his tiny frock coat, with pale gray spats and scarf to match, looked overdressed in the brilliant sunshine. Yet probably Peter, whose purple tie blossomed too gorgeously above a blue silk "fancy vest"

of a cut a good deal affected in the early nineties, looked the more striking of the two.

"He's a fool," declared Peter presently. "The chances are that Ryan has a barrel of votes salted down where we'll have the devil's own time tapping them. You can't smoke out a skunk in a minute, I tell you."