The American Claimant

  CHAPTER IX.

  The earl and Washington started on the sorrowful errand, talking as theywalked.

  "And as usual!"

  "What, Colonel?"

  "Seven of them in that hotel. Actresses. And all burnt out, of course."

  "Any of them burnt up?"

  "Oh, no they escaped; they always do; but there's never a one of themthat knows enough to fetch out her jewelry with her."

  "That's strange."

  "Strange--it's the most unaccountable thing in the world. Experienceteaches them nothing; they can't seem to learn anything except out ofa book. In some cases there's manifestly a fatality about it. Forinstance, take What's-her-name, that plays those sensational thunder andlightning parts. She's got a perfectly immense reputation--draws like adog-fight--and it all came from getting burnt out in hotels."

  "Why, how could that give her a reputation as an actress?"

  "It didn't--it only made her name familiar. People want to see her playbecause her name is familiar, but they don't know what made it familiar,because they don't remember. First, she was at the bottom of the ladder,and absolutely obscure--wages thirteen dollars a week and find her ownpads."

  "Pads?"

  "Yes--things to fat up her spindles with so as to be plump andattractive. Well, she got burnt out in a hotel and lost $30,000 worth ofdiamonds."

  "She? Where'd she get them?"

  "Goodness knows--given to her, no doubt, by spoony young flats and sappyold bald-heads in the front row. All the papers were full of it. Shestruck for higher pay and got it. Well, she got burnt out again and lostall her diamonds, and it gave her such a lift that she went starring."

  "Well, if hotel fires are all she's got to depend on to keep up hername, it's a pretty precarious kind of a reputation I should think."

  "Not with her. No, anything but that. Because she's so lucky; bornlucky, I reckon. Every time there's a hotel fire she's in it. She'salways there--and if she can't be there herself, her diamonds are. Nowyou can't make anything out of that but just sheer luck."

  "I never heard of such a thing. She must have lost quarts of diamonds."

  "Quarts, she's lost bushels of them. It's got so that the hotels aresuperstitious about her. They won't let her in. They think there will bea fire; and besides, if she's there it cancels the insurance. She's beenwaning a little lately, but this fire will set her up. She lost $60,000worth last night."

  "I think she's a fool. If I had $60,000 worth of diamonds I wouldn'ttrust them in a hotel."

  "I wouldn't either; but you can't teach an actress that. This one'sbeen burnt out thirty-five times. And yet if there's a hotel fire in SanFrancisco to-night she's got to bleed again, you mark my words. Perfectass; they say she's got diamonds in every hotel in the country."

  When they arrived at the scene of the fire the poor old earl took oneglimpse at the melancholy morgue and turned away his face overcome bythe spectacle. He said:

  "It is too true, Hawkins--recognition is impossible, not one of the fivecould be identified by its nearest friend. You make the selection, Ican't bear it."

  "Which one had I better--"

  "Oh, take any of them. Pick out the best one."

  However, the officers assured the earl--for they knew him, everybody inWashington knew him--that the position in which these bodies were foundmade it impossible that any one of them could be that of his noble youngkinsman. They pointed out the spot where, if the newspaper account wascorrect, he must have sunk down to destruction; and at a wide distancefrom this spot they showed him where the young man must have gone downin case he was suffocated in his room; and they showed still a thirdplace, quite remote, where he might possibly have found his death ifperchance he tried to escape by the side exit toward the rear. The oldColonel brushed away a tear and said to Hawkins:

  "As it turns out there was something prophetic in my fears. Yes, it'sa matter of ashes. Will you kindly step to a grocery and fetch a couplemore baskets?"

  Reverently they got a basket of ashes from each of those now hallowedspots, and carried them home to consult as to the best manner offorwarding them to England, and also to give them an opportunity to"lie in state,"--a mark of respect which the colonel deemed obligatory,considering the high rank of the deceased.

  They set the baskets on the table in what was formerly the library,drawing-room and workshop--now the Hall of Audience--and went up stairsto the lumber room to see if they could find a British flag to use asa part of the outfit proper to the lying in state. A moment later, LadyRossmore came in from the street and caught sight of the baskets just asold Jinny crossed her field of vision. She quite lost her patience andsaid:

  "Well, what will you do next? What in the world possessed you to clutterup the parlor table with these baskets of ashes?"

  "Ashes?" And she came to look. She put up her hands in patheticastonishment. "Well, I never see de like!"

  "Didn't you do it?"

  "Who, me? Clah to goodness it's de fust time I've sot eyes on 'em, MissPolly. Dat's Dan'l. Dat ole moke is losin' his mine."

  But it wasn't Dan'l, for he was called, and denied it.

  "Dey ain't no way to 'splain dat. Wen hit's one er dese-yer common'currences, a body kin reckon maybe de cat--"

  "Oh!" and a shudder shook Lady Rossmore to her foundations. "I see itall. Keep away from them--they're his."

  "His, m' lady?"

  "Yes--your young Marse Sellers from England that's burnt up."

  She was alone with the ashes--alone before she could take half a breath.Then she went after Mulberry Sellers, purposing to make short workof his program, whatever it might be; "for," said she, "when hissentimentals are up, he's a numskull, and there's no knowing whatextravagance he'll contrive, if you let him alone." She found him. Hehad found the flag and was bringing it. When she heard that his ideawas to have the remains "lie in state, and invite the government and thepublic," she broke it up. She said:

  "Your intentions are all right--they always are--you want to do honourto the remains, and surely nobody can find any fault with that, for hewas your kin; but you are going the wrong way about it, and you willsee it yourself if you stop and think. You can't file around a basketof ashes trying to look sorry for it and make a sight that is reallysolemn, because the solemner it is, the more it isn't--anybody can seethat. It would be so with one basket; it would be three times so withthree. Well, it stands to reason that if it wouldn't be solemn withone mourner, it wouldn't be with a procession--and there would befive thousand people here. I don't know but it would be pretty nearridiculous; I think it would. No, Mulberry, they can't lie in state--itwould be a mistake. Give that up and think of something else."

  So he gave it up; and not reluctantly, when he had thought it over andrealized how right her instinct was. He concluded to merely sit upwith the remains just himself and Hawkins. Even this seemed a doubtfulattention, to his wife, but she offered no objection, for it was plainthat he had a quite honest and simple-hearted desire to do the friendlyand honourable thing by these forlorn poor relics which could commandno hospitality in this far off land of strangers but his. He draped theflag about the baskets, put some crape on the door-knob, and said withsatisfaction:

  "There--he is as comfortable, now, as we can make him in thecircumstances. Except--yes, we must strain a point there--one must do asone would wish to be done by--he must have it."

  "Have what, dear?"

  "Hatchment."

  The wife felt that the house-front was standing about all it could wellstand, in that way; the prospect of another stunning decoration of thatnature distressed her, and she wished the thing had not occurred to him.She said, hesitatingly:

  "But I thought such an honour as that wasn't allowed to any but veryvery near relations, who--"

  "Right, you are quite right, my lady, perfectly right; but there aren'tany nearer relatives than relatives by usurpation. We cannot avoid it;we are slaves of aristocratic custom and must submit."

  The hatchments were unnecessa
rily generous, each being as large as ablanket, and they were unnecessarily volcanic, too, as to variety andviolence of color, but they pleased the earl's barbaric eye, and theysatisfied his taste for symmetry and completeness, too, for they left nowaste room to speak of on the house-front.

  Lady Rossmore and her daughter assisted at the sitting-up till nearmidnight, and helped the gentlemen to consider what ought to be donenext with the remains. Rossmore thought they ought to be sent home witha committee and resolutions,--at once. But the wife was doubtful. Shesaid:

  "Would you send all of the baskets?"

  "Oh, yes, all."

  "All at once?"

  "To his father? Oh, no--by no means. Think of the shock. No--one at atime; break it to him by degrees."

  "Would that have that effect, father?"

  "Yes, my daughter. Remember, you are young and elastic, but he is old.To send him the whole at once might well be more than he could bear.But mitigated--one basket at a time, with restful intervals between, hewould be used to it by the time he got all of him. And sending him inthree ships is safer anyway. On account of wrecks and storms."

  "I don't like the idea, father. If I were his father it would bedreadful to have him coming in that--in that--"

  "On the installment plan," suggested Hawkins, gravely, and proud ofbeing able to help.

  "Yes--dreadful to have him coming in that incoherent way. There wouldbe the strain of suspense upon me all the time. To have so depressing athing as a funeral impending, delayed, waiting, unaccomplished--"

  "Oh, no, my child," said the earl reassuringly, "there would be nothingof that kind; so old a gentleman could not endure a long-drawn suspenselike that. There will be three funerals."

  Lady Rossmore looked up surprised, and said:

  "How is that going to make it easier for him? It's a total mistake, tomy mind. He ought to be buried all at once; I'm sure of it."

  "I should think so, too," said Hawkins.

  "And certainly I should," said the daughter.

  "You are all wrong," said the earl. "You will see it yourselves, if youthink. Only one of these baskets has got him in it."

  "Very well, then," said Lady Rossmore, "the thing is perfectlysimple--bury that one."

  "Certainly," said Lady Gwendolen.

  "But it is not simple," said the earl, "because we do not know whichbasket he is in. We know he is in one of them, but that is all we doknow. You see now, I reckon, that I was right; it takes three funerals,there is no other way."

  "And three graves and three monuments and three inscriptions?" asked thedaughter.

  "Well--yes--to do it right. That is what I should do."

  "It could not be done so, father. Each of the inscriptions would givethe same name and the same facts and say he was under each and all ofthese monuments, and that would not answer at all."

  The earl nestled uncomfortably in his chair.

  "No," he said, "that is an objection. That is a serious objection. I seeno way out."

  There was a general silence for a while. Then Hawkins said:

  "It seems to me that if we mixed the three ramifications together--"

  The earl grasped him by the hand and shook it gratefully.

  "It solves the whole problem," he said. "One ship, one funeral, onegrave, one monument--it is admirably conceived. It does you honor,Major Hawkins, it has relieved me of a most painful embarrassment anddistress, and it will save that poor stricken old father much suffering.Yes, he shall go over in one basket."

  "When?" asked the wife.

  "To-morrow-immediately, of course."

  "I would wait, Mulberry."

  "Wait? Why?"

  "You don't want to break that childless old man's heart."

  "God knows I don't!"

  "Then wait till he sends for his son's remains. If you do that, you willnever have to give him the last and sharpest pain a parent can know--Imean, the certainty that his son is dead. For he will never send."

  "Why won't he?"

  "Because to send--and find out the truth--would rob him of the oneprecious thing left him, the uncertainty, the dim hope that maybe, afterall, his boy escaped, and he will see him again some day."

  "Why Polly, he'll know by the papers that he was burnt up."

  "He won't let himself believe the papers; he'll argue against anythingand everything that proves his son is dead; and he will keep that up andlive on it, and on nothing else till he dies. But if the remains shouldactually come, and be put before that poor old dim-hoping soul--"

  "Oh, my God, they never shall! Polly, you've saved me from a crime, andI'll bless you for it always. Now we know what to do. We'll place themreverently away, and he shall never know."