The Daughter of Anderson Crow
difficulty by offering to act as pathfinder.
At first Mrs. Banks tried to dissuade her daughter from undertaking the
long trip, but the girl was obstinate. Her mother then flatly refused to
accompany her, complaining of her head and heart. In the end the elder
lady decided to accept Mrs. Crow's invitation to remain at the house
until Elsie's return.
"I shall bring Rosalie back with me, mother," said Elsie as she prepared
to drive away. Mrs. Banks, frail and wan, bowed her head listlessly and
turned to follow her hostess indoors. With Roscoe in the seat with the
driver, the carriage started briskly off down the shady street, headed
for the ferry road and Bonner Place.
To return to Anderson Crow and his precipitancy. Just as the lodge
keeper had said, the marshal, afoot and dusty, descended upon Mr. Barnes
without ceremony. The great lawyer was strolling about the grounds when
his old enemy arrived. He recognised the odd figure as it approached
among the trees.
"Hello, Mr. Crow!" he called cheerily. "Are you going to arrest me
again?" He advanced to shake hands.
"Yes, sir; you are my prisoner," said Anderson, panting, but stern. "I
know you, Mr. Barnes. It won't do you any good to deny it."
"Come in and sit down. You look tired," said Barnes genially, regarding
his words as a jest; but Anderson proudly stood his ground.
"You can't come any game with me. It won't do you no good to be perlite,
my man. This time you don't git away."
"You don't mean to say you are in earnest?" cried Barnes.
"I never joke when on duty. Come along with me. You c'n talk afterward.
Your hirelin' is in jail an' he c'n identify you; so don't resist."
"Wait a moment, sir. What is the charge?"
"I don't know yet. You know better'n I do what it is."
"Look here, Mr. Crow. You arrested me the first time I ever saw you, and
now you yank me up again, after all these years. Haven't you anything
else to do but arrest me by mistake? Is that your only occupation?"
Anderson sputtered indignantly. Driven to it, he informed John Barnes
that he was charged with kidnaping, attempted murder, polygamy, child
desertion, and nearly everything else under the sun. Barnes, at first
indignant, finally broke into a hearty laugh. He magnanimously agreed to
accompany his captor to Tinkletown. Not only that, but he provided the
means of transportation. To the intense dismay of the servants, he
merrily departed with Mr. Crow, a prisoner operating his own patrol
wagon. The two were smoking the captive's best cigars.
"It's mighty nice of you, Mr. Barnes, to let us use your autermobile,"
said Anderson, benignly puffing away as they bowled off through the
dust. "It would 'a' been a long walk. I'll speak a good word fer you fer
this."
"Don't mention it, old chap. I rather enjoy it. It's been uncommonly
dull up here. I did not get away as soon as I expected, you see. So I am
charged with being Rosalie's father, eh? And deserting her? And
kidnaping her? By jove, I ought to be hung for all this!"
"'Tain't nothin' to laugh at, my friend. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself. I was onto you the day you stopped me in the road an' ast
about her. What a fool you was. Reg'lar dead give-away."
"See here, Mr. Crow, I don't like to upset your hopes and calculations,"
said Barnes soberly. "I did that once before, you remember. That was
years ago. You were wrong then, and you are wrong now. Shall I tell you
why I am interested in this pretty waif of yours?"
"It ain't necessary," protested the marshal.
"I'll tell you just the same. My son met her in New York while he was at
school. He heard her story from mutual friends and repeated it to me. I
was naturally interested, and questioned you. He said she was very
pretty. That is the whole story, my dear sir."
"That's all very purty, but how about the B in your hat?"
"I don't understand. Oh, you mean the political bee?"
"Politics, your granny! I mean the 'nitial that Briggs saw. No; hold on!
Don't answer. Don't say anything that'll incriminate yourself."
"I never had an initial in my hat, and I don't know Briggs. Mr. Crow,
you are as crazy as a loon." He prepared to bring the machine to a
standstill. "I'm going home. You can ride back with me or get out and
walk on, just as you please."
"Hold on! Don't do that! I'll see that you're paid fer the use of the
machine. Besides, consarn ye, you're my prisoner." This was too much for
Barnes. He laughed long and loud, and he did not turn back.
Just beyond the ferry they turned aside to permit a carriage to pass. A
boy on the box with the driver shouted frantically after them, and
Anderson tried to stop the machine himself.
"Stop her!" he cried; "that's Roscoe, my boy. Hold on! Who's that with
him? Why, by cracky, it's Miss Banks! Gee whiz, has she come back here
to teach again? Whoa! Turn her around, Mr. Barnes. They are motionin'
fer us to come back. 'Pears to be important, too."
Barnes obligingly turned around and ran back to where the carriage was
standing. An hour later the automobile rolled into the driveway at
Bonner Place, and Anderson Crow, a glorious triumph in his face, handed
Miss Banks from the tonneau and into the arms of Rosalie Gray, who at
first had mistaken the automobile for another. Pompous to the point of
explosion, Anderson waved his hand to the party assembled on the
veranda, strolled around to Mr. Barnes's seat and acquired a light for
his cigar with a nonchalance that almost overcame his one-time prisoner,
and then said, apparently to the whole world, for he addressed no one in
particular:
"I knowed I could solve the blamed thing if they'd jest give me time."
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Story is Told
Elsie Banks had a small and select audience in Mrs. Bonner's room
upstairs. She had come from New York--or from California, strictly
speaking--to furnish the narrative which was to set Rosalie Gray's mind
at rest forever-more. It was not a pleasant task; it was not an easy
sacrifice for this spirited girl who had known luxury all her life. Her
spellbound hearers were Mrs. Bonner and Edith, Wicker Bonner, Anderson
Crow, Rosalie, and John E. Barnes, who, far from being a captive of the
law, was now Miss Gray's attorney, retained some hours before by his
former captor.
"I discharge you, sir," Anderson had said, after hearing Miss Bank's
statement in the roadway. "You are no longer a prisoner. Have you
anything to say, sir?"
"Nothing, Mr. Crow, except to offer my legal services to you and your
ward in this extraordinary matter. Put the matter in my hands, sir, and
she shall soon come into her own, thanks to this young lady. I may add
that, as I am not in the habit of soliciting clients, it is not my
intention in this instance to exact a fee from your ward. My services
are quite free, given in return, Mr. Crow, for the magnanimous way in
which you have taken me into your confidence ever since I have known
you. It is an honour to have been arrested by you; truthfully it is no
disgrace."
In the privacy of Mrs. Bonner's sitting-room, Elsie Banks, dry-eyed and
bitter, told the story of her life. I cannot tell it as she did, for she
was able to bring tears to the eyes of her listeners. It is only for me
to relate the bare facts, putting them into her words as closely as
possible. Rosalie Gray, faint with astonishment and incredulity, a lump
in her throat that would not go down, and tears in her eyes, leaned back
in an easy-chair and watched her unhappy friend.
"I shall provide Mr. Barnes with proof of everything I say," said Miss
Banks. "There can be no difficulty, Rosalie dear, in confirming all that
I have to tell. If you will permit me to relate the story without
interruption and afterward let me go my way without either pity or
contempt, I shall be, oh, so grateful to you all--especially to you,
dear Rosalie. Believe me I love you with my whole soul.
"I have come to you voluntarily, and my mother, who is in Tinkletown, in
resigning herself to the calls of conscience, is now happier than she
has ever been before. A more powerful influence than her own will or her
own honour, an influence that was evil to the core, inspired her to
countenance this awful wrong. It also checkmated every good impulse she
may have had to undo it in after years. That influence came from Oswald
Banks, a base monster to whom my mother was married when I was a year
old. My mother was the daughter of Lord Abbott Brace, but married my own
father, George Stuart, who was a brilliant but radical newspaper writer
in London, against her father's wish. For this he cast her off and
disinherited her. Grandfather hated him and his views, and he could not
forgive my mother even after my father died, which was two years after
their marriage.
"Lord Richard Brace, my mother's only brother, married the daughter of
the Duchess of B----. You, Rosalie, are Lady Rosalie Brace of Brace
Hall, W--shire, England, the true granddaughter of General Lord Abbott
Brace, one of the noblest and richest men of his day. Please let me go
on; I cannot endure the interruptions. The absolute, unalterable proof
of what I say shall be established through the confession of my own
mother, in whose possession lies every document necessary to give back
to you that which she would have given to me.
"Your mother died a few weeks after you were born, and Sir Richard, who
loved my mother in the face of his father's displeasure, placed you in
her care, while he rushed off, heart-broken, to find solace in Egypt. It
is said that he hated you because you were the cause of her death. On
the day after your birth, old Lord Brace changed his will and bequeathed
a vast amount of unentailed property to you, to be held in trust by your
father until you were twenty-one years of age. I was almost two years
old at the time, and the old man, unexpectedly compassionate, inserted a
provision which, in the event that you were to die before that time,
gave all this money to me on my twenty-first birthday. The interest on
this money, amounting to five thousand pounds annually, was to go to
you regularly, in one case, or to me, in the other. Oswald Banks was an
American, whom my mother had met in London several years prior to her
first marriage. He was the London representative of a big Pennsylvania
manufacturing concern. He was ambitious, unscrupulous and clever beyond
conception. He still is all of these and more, for he is now a coward.
"Well, it was he who concocted the diabolical scheme to one day get
possession of your inheritance. He coerced my poor mother into
acquiescense, and she became his wretched tool instead of an honoured
wife and helpmate. One night, when you were three weeks old, the house
in which we lived was burned to the ground, the inmates narrowly
escaping. So narrow was the escape, in fact, that you were said to have
been left behind in the confusion, and the world was told, the next day,
that the granddaughter of Lord Brace had been destroyed by the flames.
"The truth, however, was not told. My stepfather did not dare to go so
far as to kill you. It was he who caused the fire, but he had you
removed to a small hotel in another part of the city some hours earlier,
secretly, of course, but in charge of a trusted maid. My mother was
responsible for this. She would not listen to his awful plan to leave
you in the house. But you might just as well have died. No one was the
wiser and you were given up as lost. A week later, my mother and Mr.
Banks started for America. You and I were with them, but you went as the
daughter of a maid-servant--Ellen Hayes.
"This is the story as my mother has told it to me after all these years.
My stepfather's plan, of course, was to place you where you could never