CHAPTER IV.
The day wore itself out. After dinner the two friends put in a long andharassing evening trying to decide what to do with the five thousanddollars reward which they were going to get when they should findOne-Armed Pete, and catch him, and prove him to be the right person, andextradite him, and ship him to Tahlequah in the Indian Territory. Butthere were so many dazzling openings for ready cash that they found itimpossible to make up their minds and keep them made up. Finally, Mrs.Sellers grew very weary of it all, and said:
"What is the sense in cooking a rabbit before it's caught?"
Then the matter was dropped, for the time being, and all went to bed.Next morning, being persuaded by Hawkins, the colonel made drawingsand specifications and went down and applied for a patent for his toypuzzle, and Hawkins took the toy itself and started out to see whatchance there might be to do something with it commercially. He didnot have to go far. In a small old wooden shanty which had once beenoccupied as a dwelling by some humble negro family he found a keen-eyedYankee engaged in repairing cheap chairs and other second-handfurniture. This man examined the toy indifferently; attempted to do thepuzzle; found it not so easy as he had expected; grew more interested,and finally emphatically so; achieved a success at last, and asked:
"Is it patented?"
"Patent applied for."
"That will answer. What do you want for it?"
"What will it retail for?"
"Well, twenty-five cents, I should think."
"What will you give for the exclusive right?"
"I couldn't give twenty dollars, if I had to pay cash down; but I'lltell you what I'll do. I'll make it and market it, and pay you fivecents royalty on each one."
Washington sighed. Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing. Sohe said:
"All right, take it at that. Draw me a paper." He went his way with thepaper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to makeroom for further attempts to think out the most promising way to investhis half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory toboth beneficiaries could not be hit upon.
He had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden withgrief and booming with glad excitement--working both these emotionssuccessfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together. He fell onHawkins's neck sobbing, and said:
"Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death hassmitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore--congratulate me!"
He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put hisarms about her and said--"You will bear up, for my sake, my lady--it hadto happen, it was decreed."
She bore up very well, and said:
"It's no great loss. Simon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless thingand no account, and his brother never was worth shucks."
The rightful earl continued:
"I am too much prostrated by these conflicting griefs and joys to beable to concentrate my mind upon affairs; I will ask our good friendhere to break the news by wire or post to the Lady Gwendolen andinstruct her to--"
"What Lady Gwendolen?"
"Our poor daughter, who, alas!--"
"Sally Sellers? Mulberry Sellers, are you losing your mind?"
"There--please do not forget who you are, and who I am; remember yourown dignity, be considerate also of mine. It were best to cease fromusing my family name, now, Lady Rossmore."
"Goodness gracious, well, I never! What am I to call you then?"
"In private, the ordinary terms of endearment will still be admissible,to some degree; but in public it will be more becoming if your ladyshipwill speak to me as my lord, or your lordship, and of me as Rossmore, orthe Earl, or his Lordship, and--"
"Oh, scat! I can't ever do it, Berry."
"But indeed you must, my love--we must live up to our altered positionand submit with what grace we may to its requirements."
"Well, all right, have it your own way; I've never set my wishes againstyour commands yet, Mul--my lord, and it's late to begin now, though tomy mind it's the rottenest foolishness that ever was."
"Spoken like my own true wife! There, kiss and be friends again."
"But--Gwendolen! I don't know how I am ever going to stand that name.Why, a body wouldn't know Sally Sellers in it. It's too large for her;kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it's a most outlandish sort of aname, anyway, to my mind."
"You'll not hear her find fault with it, my lady."
"That's a true word. She takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like shewas born to it. She never got it from me, that's sure. And sending herto that silly college hasn't helped the matter any--just the other way."
"Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and mostaristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country. Under nocircumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich andfashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called Americannobility. Castellated college-buildings--towers and turrets and animitation moat--and everything about the place named out of Sir WalterScott's books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all therichest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses,with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, andtop-boots, and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-threefeet behind them--"
"And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a singleblessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness. Butsend for the Lady Gwendolen--do; for I reckon the peerage regulationsrequire that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion andmourn for those Arkansas blatherskites she's lost."
"My darling! Blatherskites? Remember--noblesse oblige."
"There, there--talk to me in your own tongue, Ross--you don't know anyother, and you only botch it when you try. Oh, don't stare--it was aslip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can't be dropped in a second.Rossmore--there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend toGwendolen. Are you going to write, Washington?--or telegraph?"
"He will telegraph, dear."
"I thought as much," my lady muttered, as she left the room. "Wants itso the address will have to appear on the envelop. It will just make afool of that child. She'll get it, of course, for if there are any otherSellerses there they'll not be able to claim it. And just leave heralone to show it around and make the most of it. Well, maybe she'sforgivable for that. She's so poor and they're so rich, of course she'shad her share of snubs from the livery-flunkey sort, and I reckon it'sonly human to want to get even."
Uncle Dan'l was sent with the telegram; for although a conspicuousobject in a corner of the drawing-room was a telephone hanging on atransmitter, Washington found all attempts to raise the central officevain. The Colonel grumbled something about its being "always out oforder when you've got particular and especial use for it," but he didn'texplain that one of the reasons for this was that the thing was only adummy and hadn't any wire attached to it. And yet the Colonel often usedit--when visitors were present--and seemed to get messages through it.Mourning paper and a seal were ordered, then the friends took a rest.
Next afternoon, while Hawkins, by request, draped Andrew Jackson'sportrait with crape, the rightful earl, wrote off the family bereavementto the usurper in England--a letter which we have already read. He also,by letter to the village authorities at Duffy's Corners, Arkansas, gaveorder that the remains of the late twins be embalmed by some St. Louisexpert and shipped at once to the usurper--with bill. Then he draftedout the Rossmore arms and motto on a great sheet of brown paper, and heand Hawkins took it to Hawkins's Yankee furniture-mender and at the endof an hour came back with a couple of stunning hatchments, which theynailed up on the front of the house--attractions calculated to draw, andthey did; for it was mainly an idle and shiftless negro neighborhood,with plenty of ragged children and indolent dogs to spare for a pointof interest like that, and keep on sparing them for it, days and daystogether.
The new earl found--without surprise--this society item i
n the eveningpaper, and cut it out and scrapbooked it:
By a recent bereavement our esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, Perpetual Member-at-large of the Diplomatic Body, succeeds, as rightful lord, to the great earldom of Rossmore, third by order of precedence in the earldoms of Great Britain, and will take early measures, by suit in the House of Lords, to wrest the title and estates from the present usurping holder of them. Until the season of mourning is past, the usual Thursday evening receptions at Rossmore Towers will be discontinued.
Lady Rossmore's comment--to herself:
"Receptions! People who don't rightly know him may think he iscommonplace, but to my mind he is one of the most unusual men I eversaw. As for suddenness and capacity in imagining things, his beat don'texist, I reckon. As like as not it wouldn't have occurred to anybodyelse to name this poor old rat-trap Rossmore Towers, but it justcomes natural to him. Well, no doubt it's a blessed thing to have animagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you arefixed. Uncle Dave Hopkins used to always say, 'Turn me into John Calvin,and I want to know which place I'm going to; turn me into MulberrySellers and I don't care.'"
The rightful earl's comment--to himself:
"It's a beautiful name, beautiful. Pity I didn't think of it before Iwrote the usurper. But I'll be ready for him when he answers."