Part 55 (1/2)

Wickersham filled his gla.s.s and tossed off a drink. ”I am not going down there any more, anyhow.”

”I suppose not. But I don't believe you would be safe even up here.

There is that devil, Dennison: he hates you worse than poison.”

”Oh--up here--they aren't going to trouble me up here.”

”I don't know--if he ever got a show at you--Why don't you let me perform the ceremony?” he began persuasively. ”She knows I've been a preacher. That will satisfy her scruples, and then, if you ever had to make it known--? But no one would know then.”

Wickersham declined this with a show of virtue. He did not mention that he had suggested this to the girl but she had positively refused it. She would be married by a regular preacher or she would go home.

”There must be some one in this big town,” suggested Plume, ”who will do such a job privately and keep it quiet? Where is that preacher you were talking about once that took flyers with you on the quiet? You can seal his mouth. And if the worst comes to the worst, there is Montana; you can always get out of it in six weeks with an order of publication. _I_ did it,” said Mr. Plume, quietly, ”and never had any trouble about it.”

”You did! Well, that's one part of your rascality I didn't know about.”

”I guess there are a good many of us have little bits of history that we don't talk about much,” observed Mr. Plume, calmly. ”I wouldn't have told you now, but I wanted to help you out of the fix that--”

”That you have helped me get into,” said Wickersham, with a sneer.

”There is no trouble about it,” Plume went on. ”You don't want to marry anybody else--now, and meantime it will give you the chance you want of controlling old Rawson's interest down there. The old fellow can't live long, and Phrony is his only heir. You will have it all your own way.

You can keep it quiet if you wish, and if you don't, you can acknowledge it and bounce your friend Keith. If I had your hand I bet I'd know how to play it.”

”Well, by ----! I wish you had it,” said Wickersham, angrily.

Wickersham had been thinking hard during Plume's statement of the case, and what with his argument and an occasional application to the decanter of whiskey, he was beginning to yield. Just then a sealed note was handed him by a waiter. He tore it open and read:

”I am going home; my heart is broken. Good-by.”

”PHRONY.”

With an oath under his breath, he wrote in pencil on a card: ”Wait; I will be with you directly.”

”Take that to the lady,” he said. Scribbling a few lines more on another card, he gave Plume some hasty directions and left him.

When, five minutes afterwards, Mr. Plume finished the decanter, and left the hotel, his face had a crafty look on it. ”This should be worth a good deal to you, J. Quincy,” he said.

An hour later the Rev. Mr. Rimmon performed in his private office a little ceremony, at which, besides himself, were present only the bride and groom and a witness who had come to him a half-hour before with a scribbled line in pencil requesting his services. If Mr. Rimmon was startled when he first read the request, the surprise had pa.s.sed away.

The groom, it is true, was, when he appeared, decidedly under the influence of liquor, and his insistence that the ceremony was to be kept entirely secret had somewhat disturbed Mr. Rimmon for a moment. But he remembered Mr. Plume's a.s.surance that the bride was a great heiress in the South, and knowing that Ferdy Wickersham was a man who rarely lost his head,--a circ.u.mstance which the latter testified by handing him a roll of greenbacks amounting to exactly one hundred dollars,--and the bride being very pretty and shy, and manifestly most eager to be married, he gave his word to keep the matter a secret until they should authorize him to divulge it.

When the ceremony was over, the bride requested Mr. Rimmon to give her her ”marriage lines.” This Mr. Rimmon promised to do; but as he would have to fill out the blanks, which would take a little time, the bride and groom, having signed the paper, took their departure without waiting for the certificate, leaving Mr. Plume to bring it.

A day or two later a steams.h.i.+p of one of the less popular companies sailing to a Continental port had among its pa.s.sengers a gentleman and a lady who, having secured their accommodations at the last moment, did not appear on the pa.s.senger list.

It happened that they were unknown to any of the other pa.s.sengers, and as they were very exclusive, they made no acquaintances during the voyage. If Mrs. Wagram, the name by which the lady was known on board, had one regret, it was that Mr. Plume had failed to send her her marriage certificate, as he had promised to do. Her husband, however, made so light of it that it rea.s.sured her, and she was too much taken up with her wedding-ring and new diamonds to think that anything else was necessary.

CHAPTER XX

MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD

The first two years of her widowhood Alice Lancaster spent in retirement. Even the busy tongue of Mrs. Nailor could find little to criticise in the young widow. To be sure, that accomplished critic made the most of this little, and disseminated her opinion that Alice's grief for Mr. Lancaster could only be remorse for her indifference to him during his life. Every one knew, she said, how she had neglected him.