Mr. Sampson speculated thus as he undrew the bolt and opened the glass door. The man who stood before him was no messenger from old Pulsby, but John Treverton, clad in a white mackintosh, from which the water ran in little rills.
“Is it yourself or your ghost?” asked Sampson, falling back to let his client enter.
The question was not without reason. John Treverton’s face was as white as his raiment, and the combined effect of the pale, haggard face and the long white coat was altogether spectral.
“Flesh and blood, my dear Sampson, I assure you,” replied the other coolly, as he divested himself of his mackintosh, and took up his stand in front of the comfortable fire, “flesh and blood frozen to the bone.”
“I thought you were in the south of France.”
“It doesn’t matter what you thought, you see I am here. Yesterday put me in legal possession of my cousin’s estate. I have come to execute the deed of settlement. It’s all ready, of course.”
“It’s ready, yes; but I didn’t think you’d be in such a hurry. I should have thought you would have stopped to finish your honeymoon.”
“My honeymoon is of very little importance compared with my wife’s future welfare. Come, Sampson, look sharp. Who’s to witness my signature?”
“My sister and one of the servants can do that.”
“Call them in, then. I’m ready to sign.”
“Hadn’t you better read the deed first?”
“Well, yes, perhaps. One can’t be too careful. I want my wife’s position to be unassailable as the summit of Mount Everest. You have taken counsel’s opinion, and the deed will hold water?”
“It would hold the Atlantic. Your gift is so entirely simple, that there could be no difficulty in wording the deed. You give your wife everything. I think you a fool, so did the advising counsel; but that makes no difference.”
“Not a whit.”
John Treverton sat down at the office table and read the deed of settlement from the first word to the last. He gave to his dear wife, Laura Treverton, all the property, real and personal, of which he stood possessed, for her sole and separate use. There was a good deal of legal jargon, but the drift of the deed was clear enough.
“I am ready,” said John.
Mr. Sampson rang the bell for the servant, and shouted into the passage for his sister. Eliza came running in, and at sight of John Treverton’s pale, face, screamed, and made as if she would have fainted.
“Gracious, Mr. Treverton,” she gasped, “I thought there were oceans between us. What in mercy’s name has happened?”
“Nothing alarming. I have only come to execute my marriage settlement, which I was not in a position to make till yesterday.”
“How dreadful for poor Mrs. Treverton to be left alone in a foreign land!”
John Treverton did not notice this speech. He dipped his pen in the ink, and signed the paper, while Miss Sampson and Sophia, the housemaid, looked on wonderingly.
“Sophia, run and get a pair of sheets aired, and get the spare room ready,” cried Eliza, when she had affixed her signature as witness. “Of course you are going to stop with us, Mr. Treverton?”
“You are very kind. No, I must get away immediately. I have a trap waiting to take me back to the station. Oh, by-the-way, Sampson, about that money you kindly advanced to me. It must come out of the estate somehow; I suppose you can manage that?”
“Yes, I think I can manage that,” answered Sampson modestly. “Do you want any further advance?”
“No, the estate belongs to my wife, now. I must not tamper with it.”
“And what’s hers is yours of course. Well, I congratulate you with all my heart. You are the luckiest fellow I ever knew, bar none. A handsome wife, and a handsome fortune. What more can a man ask from Fate?”
“Not much, certainly,” said John Treverton, “but I must catch the last up-train. Good night.”
“Going back to the South of France?”
John Treverton did not wait to answer the question. He shook hands hastily with Eliza, and dashed out into the garden. A minute afterwards Mr. Sampson and his sister heard the crack of a whip, and the sound of wheels upon the high road.
“Did you ever see such a volcanic individual?” exclaimed the solicitor, folding up the deed of settlement.
“I am afraid he is not happy,” sighed Eliza.
“I am afraid he is mad,” said Tom.
XIV
“You Have but to Say the Word”
Mr. Smolendo was in his glory. In the words of his friends and followers he was coining money. He was a man to be cultivated and revered. A man for whom champagne suppers or dinners at Richmond were as nothing; a man for whom it was easier to lend a five-pound note than it is for the common ruck of humanity to advance half-a-crown. Flatterers fawned upon him, intimate acquaintances hung fondly upon him, reminding him pathetically that they knew him twenty years ago, when he hadn’t a sixpence, as if that knowledge of bygone adversity were a merit and a claim. A man of smaller mind might have had his mental equilibrium shaken by all this adulation. Mr. Smolendo was a man of granite, and took it for what it was worth. When people were particularly civil, he knew they wanted something from him,
“The lessee of a London theatre is not a man to be easily had,” he said; “he sees human nature on the ugliest side.”
Christmas had come and gone, the New Year was six weeks old, and Mr. Smolendo’s prosperity continued without abatement. The theatre was nightly crowded to suffocation. There were morning performances every Saturday. Stalls and boxes were booked a month in advance.
“La Chicot is a little gold mine,” said Mr. Smolendo’s followers.
Yes, La Chicot had the credit of it all. Mr. Smolendo had produced a grand
