Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
means, but for nothing in the world would he have curtailed it.
Matters were in this way until he awoke one day to find his account
overdrawn on his bankers. Then it was that he began to remember his
operation in Greenwich street, and he seems to have thought that if he
succeeded in New York, surely nothing could stand in his way in some
sleepy town in Europe.
He went to Brussels prospecting, and soon pitched upon an establishment
which he thought likely to reward his industry. But the result showed
that to walk into a bank when the way was left open, with the
authorities anxious to see him there, and to force his way in when the
entrance was jealously barred with the guardians determined he should
stay out, were two very different things. He made the attempt, was
arrested and sentenced to sixteen years' imprisonment. His German
friends heard of his mishap, and his glory faded like the early dew.
Naturally, every one thought that the count's career had closed, that
the star of his fate had declined, that the bars of his prison house
were about him forever. They were greatly mistaken. After some twelve or
thirteen years he succeeded in getting a pardon and managed to make his
way to America. His first visit was to the agents in whose hands he had
left the management of his park lots. He went into their office, not
knowing whether or not he was a pauper. He came out knowing himself to
be nearly a millionaire.
During the almost twenty years of his absence his lots had increased
enormously in value. Once more he was a rich man, once more he might
emerge from his eclipse and become a power of a certain kind in the
class of society he could get access to, but his experience had taught
him something. His advancing years had left him but little desire for
display. He came back to a world which knew him not: and few of those
who notice a benevolent-looking old gentleman, who often passes an
afternoon in upper Broadway, suspect that under an assumed name he hides
the identity of Max Shinburne, the bank burglar.
When Hurley awoke from his drunken fit in London and recognized that his
partner had both robbed and deserted him, he felt that his mission was
over, and that nothing remained but to return at once to America. Loud
and long and wrathful were the complaints over Shinburne's treachery.
Whatever he did to others, all felt that his dealings with them ought to
have been "on the square," but there was no help for it. He had
disappeared, and faint, indeed, was the chance that they would ever see
him again. The success of the crime, so far as they were concerned, had,
after all, been a failure. Vanished hopes and cheated visions were
their share, instead of the wealth they had anticipated, and in their
devouring rage they tried to console themselves with the thought of what
they would do to him if they ever met Shinburne.
The only man who had any real success from the scheme was the president.
Exposure had become impossible. He had taken good care not to leave too
much in the safes for his accomplices, and he was henceforth a wealthy
man. The bank, desperately shaken by the robbery, fell so greatly in the
esteem of the public that not long after it failed. The president gave
up banking, and began to speculate in real estate. He increased in
riches and prospered in the world. He called his lands after his own
name. He thought his house would continue forever, and men praised him,
because he did well to himself. He settled his children comfortably in
life, and when he died, not so very long ago, all felt that the world
was better because he had lived in it, and that, although their loss
when he was taken was heavy, it was, nevertheless, his great gain.
CHAPTER VII.
GILDED SIRS WHO ARE NOT WISE.
After a pleasant voyage the Russia arrived, and one May morning I walked
into the Northwestern Railway station in Liverpool to take the train for
London. The bonds were in a little handbag, and I was free to look
around. Everything was novel and strange, and all things told me I was
in a foreign land. I had, like most young people, a particularly good
opinion of myself and something of an idea as to my own importance.
We arrived in London amid a drizzling rain, and I was much impressed
with the mighty roar of the traffic in the streets. We drove to Langham
place, where I had a regular English tea, and liked it immensely, too.
The next night I left Victoria Station for Dover, and crossing the
Channel to Ostend, went through to Brussels and stopped there, having
wanted, ever since boyhood, to visit the field of Waterloo. I looked
through the city that day, visiting the famous City Hall and one of the
art galleries. Retiring early I arose early and drove out to the plain
immortalized by the giant struggle of those valiant hosts, but did not
purchase any of the relics which were freely offered. These have been
sold by shiploads to two generations of visitors. Returning to Brussels,
I paid my bill at the Hotel de Paris, and was amused over the
inventiveness of the proprietor in making charges--towels, candles,
soap, attendance, paper, envelopes, being among them.
Going to the station I bought my ticket for Frankfort--that old town I
was destined to see so much of during the next few years. On my journey
I would pass through Cologne, and from there the railway skirts the bank
of the Rhine. This being my first visit to Europe, I was intensely
curious to see everything, especially the Cathedral at Cologne, and was
eager to linger a few days along the banks of the Rhine. But I was more
eager to complete the bond negotiations, and wisely resolved to go
direct to Frankfort, sell the bonds, then, with the money in my pocket
and all anxiety over, I would be in a state of mind to enjoy a short
holiday.
I traveled through Belgium and some parts of Germany by daylight, and
was, as most Americans are who travel on the Continent, shocked to see
the employment of women. Soon after leaving Brussels I saw the, to me,
novel sight of a number of women shoveling coal, handling the shovel
like men. In other places I saw them laboring in the brick yards,
digging and wheeling clay, and everywhere they were to be seen working
at men's work in the fields.
A traveler in my compartment proved a most entertaining companion. He
described himself to me as one who "went about pottering over a lot of
antiquities and fooling around generally."
But my friend, the pottering old antiquary, gave me something of a
surprise. At Chalours all of our fellow travelers in the compartment
left us. Two of them were voluble French women, and they kept it up with
amazing energy for the six hours from Brussels to Chalours. At every
unusual swaying of the car there would be a volley of "Mon Dieus!" and
ear-piercing exclamations, and it was certainly a relief when they left.
Bringing out a box of cigars, and my companion producing a flask of
wine, we soon became confidential. Presently, to my great amusement, my
Old Antiquary, warmed by the wine, confided to me that he was a
detective police officer and chief of the secret service at Antwerp,
that he was then working on a famous case, and had been shadowing one of
the ladies who had journeyed with us from Brussels. Before leaving
Brussels, he had discovered his quarry was to quit the train, and as he
had to go on to Mayence, he had turned the business over to a
confederate.
I was young, and no doubt he thought me innocent; certainly he did not
withhold his confidence. This is the case he was investigating:
There was a wealthy gentleman by the name of Van Tromp living in
Antwerp, a widower, 70 years of age, the father of a grown-up family,
and many times a grandfather. It had been his custom to go to
Baden-Baden every Summer, spending money freely both in pleasure and in
the famous gambling resorts there. The last time he had met a woman, the
Countess Winzerode, one of the many adventuresses to be found there, and
speedily became infatuated. This Van Tromp was a descendant of old
Admiral Van Tromp, who, in the mighty life-and-death struggle between
Holland and Spain, and in the two wars with England, the first when
Cromwell ruled, the second when the Second Charles was on the throne,
held up the fame and glory of Holland. In one case he swept the proud
navies of Spain from the seas and carried the Dutch flag around the
world. In the other, he was only vanquished after stubborn sea-fights
lasting for days, and only ended then because the stout admiral lay on
his deck with an English bullet in his heart. This Van Tromp was the
heir of the fame and the wealth of all the Van Tromps, and both had gone
on accumulating for 300 years.
The self-styled Countess knew all this, and, as the sequel shows, knew
her man. She was 40, had been beautiful, was still comely, with good
figure, fair-haired, but with steel-blue eyes. She spoke many languages
and had dwelt in every land from Petersburg to Paris. It is needless to
tell how they first met or of the intimacy that sprang up between them,
but I will merely say in passing that within five days of their first
meeting he had given her a magnificent diamond bracelet, which had been
in his family more than a century. This alarmed his two daughters, who
were terrified at the mere suspicion that their father was in earnest,
and might possibly present them with a stepmother, above all, a
comparatively young stepmother, and, so far as physique went, a
magnificent animal, with promise of a long life--so long that her rights
of dower would make a cut in the Van Tromp estates and treasures, which
might well cause the old Admiral to rouse himself from his three-century
sleep in Dordrecht Church and once more walk these glimpses of the moon
in protest of the sacrilege. Then the scandal of a Countess-adventuress
becoming a Van Tromp--head of that family, too! They knew of his
penchant for the Countess, and cared nothing for it, until, with a
feeling akin to horror they observed at the dress ball one night the
Countess airing the historic bracelet. It would require a volume to
relate the scenes that followed in the Van Tromp domicile on this
paralyzing discovery; but prayers, tears and histrionic touches were all
met by the stolid reply of Van Tromp: "I please myself."
As a last resort the daughters appealed to the Countess, offering all
their ready cash and a pension if she would only disappear. But visions
of the Van Tromp diamonds and of the Van Tromp bank account were in her
head and she was deaf to every appeal. In fact, she despised these
heavy, matter-of-fact Dutch ladies, and rather gloried to think that she
would soon be the female head of the Van Tromp house and stepmother to
these two highly respectable dames, who would perforce have to live in
her shadow. But then, of course, the Countess was a woman, and it is to
be feared that even good women love to triumph over others. She, of
course, could have no love for this portly old gentleman of seventy.
But it is pitiful to think he was madly infatuated. The poor old man, in
spite of his unromantic appearance, had warm blood in his veins and
plenty of romance in his heart. At last, in spite of gossip and
opposition, they were married, and then, instead of settling down, as
the happy groom had hoped, to a life of wedded bliss in one of his
country houses at Dordrecht, Lady Van Tromp insisted on spending her
honeymoon in Paris. There they went, and the very day of their arrival
the bride resumed a liaison with a beggarly count, who, not being an
actual criminal, yet was written black enough in the books of the Paris
police, and for whom the Countess had as warm an admiration as one of