A TOAST TO THE PAST

The middle of June found the Deppinghams leaving London once more, but this time not on a voyage into the mysterious South Seas. They no longer were interested in the island of j.a.pat, except as a reminiscence, nor were they concerned in the vagaries of Taswell Skaggs's will.

The estate was settled--closed!

Mr. Saunders was mentioned nowadays only in narrative form, and but rarely in that way. True, they had promised to visit the little place in Hammersmith if they happened to be pa.s.sing by, and they had graciously admitted that it would give them much pleasure to meet his good mother.

Two months have pa.s.sed since the Deppinghams departed from j.a.pat, "for good and all." Many events have come to pa.s.s since that memorable day, not the least of which was the exchanging of 500,000 sterling, less attorneys' and executors' fees. To be perfectly explicit and as brief as possible, Lady Deppingham and Robert Browne divided that amount of money and pa.s.sed into legal history as the "late claimants to the Estate of Taswell Skaggs."

It was Sir John Brodney's enterprise. He saw the way out of the difficulty and he acted as pathfinder to the other and less perceiving counsellors, all of whom had looked forward to an endless controversy.

The business of the j.a.pat Company and all that it entailed was transferred by agreement to a syndicate of Jews!

Never before was there such a stupendous deal in futures.

Soon after the arrival in England of the two claimants, it became known that the syndicate was casting longing eyes upon the far-away garden of rubies and sapphires. There was no hope of escape from a long, bitter contest in the courts. Sir John perhaps saw that there was a possible chance to break the will of the testator; he was an old man and he would hardly live long enough to fight the case to the end. In the interregnum, his clients, the industrious islanders, would be slaving themselves into a hale old age and a subsequently unhallowed grave, none the wiser and none the richer than when the contest began, except for the proportionately insignificant share that was theirs by right of original possession. Sir John took it upon himself to settle the matter while his clients were still in a condition to appreciate the results.

He proposed a compromise.

It was not so much a question of jurisprudence, he argued, as it was a matter of self-protection for all sides to the controversy--more particularly that side which a.s.sembled the inhabitants of j.a.pat.

And so it came to pa.s.s that the Jews, after modifying some twenty or thirty propositions of their own, ultimately a.s.sumed the credit of evolving the plan that had originated in the resourceful head of Sir John Brodney, and affairs were soon brought to a close.

The grandchildren of the testators were ready to accept the best settlement that could be obtained. Theirs was a rather forlorn hope, to begin with. When it was proposed that Agnes Deppingham and Robert Browne should accept 250,000 apiece in lieu of all claims, moral or legal, against the estate, they leaped at the chance.

They had seen but little of each other since landing in England, except as they were thrown together at the conferences. There was no pretence of intimacy on either side; the shadow of the past was still there to remind them that a skeleton lurked behind and grinned spitefully in its obscurity. Lady Agnes went in for every diversion imaginable; for a wonder, she dragged Deppingham with her on all occasions. It was a most unexpected transformation; their friends were puzzled. The rumour went about town that she was in love with her husband.

As for Bobby Browne, he was devotion itself to Drusilla. They sailed for New York within three days after the settlement was effected, ignoring the enticements of a London season--which could not have mattered much to them, however, as Drusilla emphatically refused to wear the sort of gowns that Englishwomen wear when they sit in the stalls. Besides, she preferred the Boston dressmakers. The Brownes were rich. He could now become a fashionable specialist. They were worth nearly a million and a quarter in American dollars. Moreover, they, as well as the Deppinghams, were the possessors of rubies and sapphires that had been thrust upon them by supplicating adversaries in the hour of departure--gems that might have bought a dozen wives in the capitals of Persia; perhaps a score in the mountains where the Kurds are cheaper. The Brownes naturally were eager to get back to Boston. They now had nothing in common with Taswell Skaggs; Skaggs is not a pretty name.

Mr. Britt afterward spent three weeks of incessant travel on the continent and an additional seven days at sea. In Baden-Baden he happened upon Lord and Lady Deppingham. It will be recalled that in j.a.pat they had always professed an unholy aversion for Mr. Britt. Is it cause for wonder then that they declined his invitation to dine in Baden-Baden? He even proposed to invite their entire party, which included a few dukes and d.u.c.h.esses who were leisurely on their way to attend the long-talked-of nuptials in Thorberg at the end of June.

The Syndicate, after buying off the hereditary forces, a.s.sumed a half interest in the j.a.pat Company's business; the islanders controlled the remaining half. The mines were to be operated under the management of the Jews and eight hours were to const.i.tute a day's work. The personal estate pa.s.sed into the hands of the islanders, from whom Skaggs had appropriated it in conjunction with John Wyckholme. All in all, it seemed a fair settlement of the difficulty. The Jews paid something like 2,000,000 sterling to the islanders in consideration of a twenty years'

grant. Their experts had examined the property before the death of Mr.

Skaggs; they were not investing blindly in the great undertaking.

Mr. Levistein, the president of the combine, after a long talk with Lord Deppingham, expressed the belief that the chateau could be turned into a money-making hotel if properly advertised--outside of the island.

Deppingham admitted, that if he kept the prices up, there was no reason in the world why the better cla.s.s of Jews should not flock there for the winter.

Before the end of June, representatives of the combine, attended by officers of the court, a small army of clerks, a half dozen lawyers and two capable men from the office of Sir John Brodney, set sail for j.a.pat, provided with the power and the means to effect the transfer agreed upon in the compromise.

In Vienna the Deppinghams were joined by the d.u.c.h.ess of N------, the Marchioness of B------ and other fashionables. In a week all of them would be in the Castle at Thorberg, for the ceremony that now occupied the attention of social and royal Europe.

"And to think," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "she might have died happily on that miserable island. I am sure we did all we could to bring it about by steaming away from the place with the plague chasing after us. Dear me, how diabolically those wretches lied to the Marquess. They said that every one in the chateau was dead, Lady Deppingham--and buried, if I am not mistaken."

The party was dining with one of the Prince Lichtensteins in the Hotel Bristol after a drive in the Haupt-Allee.

"My dog, I think, was the only one of us who died, d.u.c.h.ess," said Lady Agnes airily. "And he was buried. They were that near to the truth."

"It would be much better for poor Genevra if she were to be buried instead of married next week," lamented the d.u.c.h.ess.

"My dear, how ridiculous. She isn't dead yet, by any manner of means.

Why bury her? She's got plenty of life left in her, as Karl Brabetz will learn before long." Thus spoke the far-sighted Marchioness, aunt of the bride-to-be. "It's terribly gruesome to speak of burying people before they are actually dead."

"Other women have married princes and got on very well," said Prince Lichtenstein.

"Oh, come now, Prince," put in Lord Deppingham, "you know the sort of chap Brabetz is. There are princes and princes, by Jove."

"He's positively vile!" exclaimed the d.u.c.h.ess, who would not mince words.

"She's entering upon a h.e.l.l of a--I mean a life of h.e.l.l," exploded the Duke, banging the table with his fist. "That fellow Brabetz is the rottenest thing in Europe. He's gone from bad to worse so swiftly that public opinion is still months behind him."

"Nice way to talk of the groom," said the host genially. "I quite agree with you, however. I cannot understand the Grand Duke permitting it to go on--unless, of course, it's too late to interfere."

"Poor dear, she'll never know what it is to be loved and cherished,"

said the Marchioness dolefully.

Lord and Lady Deppingham glanced at each other. They were thinking of the man who stood on the dock at Aratat when the _King's Own_ sailed away.

"The Grand Duke is probably saying the very thing to himself that Brabetz's a.s.sociates are saying in public," ventured a young Austrian count.

"What is that, pray?"

"That the Prince won't live more than six months. He's a physical wreck to-day--and a nervous one, too. Take my word for it, he will be a creeping, imbecile thing inside of half a year. Locomotor ataxia and all that. It's coming, positively, with a sharp crash."

"I've heard he has tried to kill that woman in Paris half a dozen times," remarked one of the women, taking it as a matter of course that every one knew who she meant by "that woman." As no one even so much as looked askance, it is to be presumed that every one knew.

"She was really responsible for the postponement of the wedding in December, I'm told. Of course, I don't know that it is true," said the Marchioness, wisely qualifying her gossip. "My brother, the Grand Duke, does not confide in me."

"Oh, I think that story was an exaggeration," said her husband. "Genevra says that he was very ill--nervous something or other."

"Probably true, too. He's a wreck. She will be the prettiest widow in Europe before Christmas," said the young count. "Unless, of course, any one of the excellent husbands surrounding me should die," he added gallantly.

"Well, my heart bleeds for her," said Deppingham.

"She's going into it with her eyes open," said the Prince. "It isn't as if she hadn't been told. She could see for herself. She knows there's the other woman in Paris and--Oh, well, why should we make a funeral of it? Let's do our best to be revellers, not mourners. She'll live to fall in love with some other man. They always do. Every woman has to love at least once in her life--if she lives long enough. Come, come! Is my entertainment to develop into a premature wake? Let us forget the future of the Princess Genevra and drink to her present!"

"And to her past, if you don't mind, Prince!" amended Lord Deppingham, looking into his wife's sombre eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

THE t.i.tLE CLEAR

Two men and a woman stood in the evening glow, looking out over the tranquil sea that crept up and licked the foot of the cliff. At their back rose the thick, tropical forest; at its edge and on the nape of the cliff stood a bungalow, fresh from the hands of a hundred willing toilsmen. Below, on their right, lay the gaudy village, lolling in the heat of the summer's day. Far off to the north, across the lowlands and beyond the sweep of undulating and ever-lengthening hills, could be seen a great, reddish structure, its gables and towers fusing with the sombre shades of the mountain against which they seemed to lean.