Charles Venner

“ An instinct taught me that Sir Charles Venner entertained but small respect for women. I saw that he wanted the jewels very badly, and I fancied that if I could make him believe the story I had so readily invented, I might still live for many days. His natural course would be at once to demand from Marion the packet which I declared that I had given her. As I had given her nothing, she would truthfully repudiate his claim. But Sir Charles Venner's want of respect for women would immediately induce him to doubt the honesty of Marion's denial. ”

“ My master's life no longer stood in any danger, and his health and strength slowly but steadily improved. Sir Charles Venner still paid him daily visits, but they were more to satisfy the claims of friendship than of need. The great surgeon had always a smile and kindly word for me. It seemed that his suspicions had long ago been utterly eradicated, and that a liking had usurped their place. Sometimes I wondered if his penetrating insight had remarked my love for Marion. ”

“ Sir Charles Venner is a consumptive, with at most a year of life before him. Men cling to life most dearly when their days are numbered. Moreover, well he knows, this surgeon, that if he kills me he must hang! ”

“ My first act was to disguise myself as a professional and somewhat portly gentleman. For a model I took the physician who had recently attended me, and as I had closely and frequently remarked his ways, I was able to reproduce him with nice enough fidelity. Having armed myself with a revolver, I employed a cab and drove straightway to Sir Charles Venner's residence in Harley Street, fiercely determined to settle my account with him at once, for good and all. ”

“ All day long she and the humble relative of Elsie's mother, who had appeared as poor relations are wont to in the great prises of life, were busy in arranging the disordered house, and looking over the various objects which Elsie's singular tastes had brought together, to dispose of them as her father might direct. They all met together at the usual hour for tea. One of the servants came in, looking very blank, and said to the poor relation,
"The well is gone dry; we have nothing but rainwater."
Dudley Venner's countenance changed ”

“ At a period of life when many have been living on the capital of their acquired knowledge and their youthful stock of sensibilities until their intellects are really shallower and their hearts emptier than they were at twenty, Dudley Venner was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul than in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half his present years. ”

“ She took a half-sheet of note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a country “merchant's clerk” adds up two and threepence (New-England nomenclature) and twelve and a half cents, figure by figure, and fraction by fraction, before he can be sure they will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody. After much consideration the list reduced itself to the following names: Mr. Richard Venner and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, the lady at whose house she had met him,—mansion-house breed,—but will come,—soft on Dick; Dudley Venner,—take care of him herself ”

“ I never saw a woman with a more thoroughbred air. She is looking this way."
Just for a moment the girl turned her head, and Venner caught a full sight of her face. It was only for an instant; then the fair head was turned again, and the girl appeared to resume her dinner. Venner jumped from his chair and took three strides across the room. He paused there as if struggling to regain possession of himself; then he dropped into his chair again, shielding his face from the light with his hands. Gurdon could see that his companion's face had turned to a ghastly grey. ”

“ Gurdon clutched his companion by the arm.
"Don't you think it is just possible that we have made a mistake?" he whispered. "Isn't it quite on the cards that this is a genuine affair, and that we are intruding in an unwarrantable manner upon some respectable private citizen? I am bound to say that that beautiful voice does not suggest crime to me."
"We must go on now," Venner said, impatiently. "It won't do to judge by appearances. Let us go up the stairs and see what is going on for ourselves. If we are intruding, we will get away as speedily as possible." ”

“ In return, he had much to tell of his father, now dead,—the only one of the Venners, beside themselves, in whose fate his uncle was interested. With Elsie, he was subdued and almost tender in his manner; with the few visitors whom they saw, shy and silent,—perhaps a little watchful, if any young man happened to be among them.
Young fellows placed on their good behavior are apt to get restless and nervous, all ready to fly off into some mischief or other. Dick Venner had his half-tamed horse with him to work off his suppressed life with. ”

“ Elsie was to his fancy. She had a strange attraction for him, quite unlike anything he had ever known in other women. There was something, too, in early associations: when those who parted as children meet as man and woman, there is always a renewal of that early experience which followed the taste of the forbidden fruit,--a natural blush of consciousness, not without its charm.
Nothing could be more becoming than the behavior of "Richard Venner, Esquire, the guest of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his noble mansion," as he was announced in the Court column of the "Rockland Weekly Universe." ”

“ Her father—for Dudley Venner was her father—looked like a man of culture and breeding, but melancholy and with a distracted air, as one whose life had met some fatal cross or blight. He saluted hardly anybody except his entertainers and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl's which brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse.
It was hard to say what could have brought Elsie Venner to the party. ”

“ Dudley Veneer was between herself and the poor tired-looking schoolmistress with her faded colors. Blanche Creamer, a lax, tumble-to-pieces, Greuze-ish looking blonde, whom the Widow hated because the men took to her, was purgatoried between the two old Doctors, and could see all the looks that passed between Dick Venner and his cousin. The young schoolmaster could talk to Miss Letty: it was his business to know how to talk to schoolgirls. Dick would amuse himself with his cousin Elsie. The old Doctors only wanted to be well fed and they would do well enough. ”

“ She shall have a chance to try, at any rate!”
Such was the self-sacrificing disposition with which Richard Venner, Esq., a passenger by the Condor from Valparaiso, set foot upon his native shore, and turned his face in the direction of Rockland, The Mountain, and the mansion-house. He had heard something, from time to time, of his New-England relatives, and knew that they were living together as he left them. ”

“ He raised his pistol and fired,--not at the rider, but at the horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound and fell lifeless, shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his saddle, and his last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth, where he lay motionless, as if stunned.
In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse, was trying to extricate himself,--one of his legs being held fast under the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth. ”

“ Did he know that Sir Alfred Venner's woods were out of bounds? Did he know that, in consequence of complaints from Sir Alfred Venner, Sir Alfred Venner's woods were more out of bounds than any other out of bounds woods in the entire county that did not belong to Sir Alfred Venner? He did? Ah! No, the word for his guidance in this emergency, he felt instinctively, was 'mum'. Time might provide him with a solution. He might, for instance, abstract the cups secretly from their resting-place, place them in the middle of the football field, and find them there dramatically after morning school. ”

“ It was, perhaps, only the same consciousness that some one was looking at him which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently, in one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had not distinctly recognized, though he had dimly felt its presence, and saw that Elsie Venner was looking at him as if she saw nothing else but him. He was not a nervous person, like the poor lady-teacher, yet the glitter of the diamond eyes affected him strangely. ”

“ Never, since he had galloped in the chase over the Pampas, had Dick Venner felt such a sense of life and power as when he struck the long spurs into his wild horse's flanks, and dashed along the road with the lasso lying like a coiled snake at the saddle-bow. In skilful hands, the silent, bloodless noose, flying like an arrow, but not like that leaving a wound behind it,--sudden as a pistol-shot, but without the telltale explosion,--is one of the most fearful and mysterious weapons that arm the hand of man. ”

“ It was on the third day that Venner began to see daylight. One of the evening papers had come out with a startling letter which seemed to point to a clue, though it conveyed nothing to the police. Venner came round to Gurdon's rooms with a copy of the evening paper in his hand. He laid it before his friend and asked him to read the letter, which, though it contained but a few lines, was of absorbing interest to both of them.
"You see what this man says?" Venner remarked. "He appears to be a workingman who got himself into trouble over a drinking bout. ”

“ There were not wanting people who accused Dudley VENNER of weakness and bad judgment in his treatment of his daughter. Some were of opinion that the great mistake was in not "breaking her will" when she was a little child. There was nothing the matter with her, they said, but that she had been spoiled by indulgence. If they had had the charge of her, they'd have brought her down. She'd got the upperhand of her father now; but if he'd only taken hold of her in season! There are people who think that everything may be done, if the doer, be he educator or physician, be only called "in season." ”

“ Not more than ten minutes had elapsed when, thanks to the use of the telephone, Gurdon had reached the Grand Empire Hotel. In a few hurried words, Venner gave him a brief outline of what had happened. There was no time to lose.
"Of course, it is a risk," Venner said, "and I am not altogether sure that I am justified in taking advantage of this little slip on the part of my wife. What do you think?" ”

“ There were different versions of the expressions he had used at the onset of his complaint,--some of the reported exclamations involving a breach of propriety, to say the least,--but it was agreed that a man in an attack of neuralgy wasn't to be judged of by the rules that applied to other folks.
The company soon after this retired from the supper-room. The mansion-house gentry took their leave, and the two-story people soon followed. Mr. Bernard had stayed an hour or two, and left soon after he found that Elsie Venner and her father had disappeared. ”

“ Bernard went to Helen, who stood silent, with downcast eyes, and took her hand warmly, hoping she might find all the happiness she deserved. Then he turned to Dudley Venner, and said, "She is a queen, but has never found it out. The world has nothing nobler than this dear woman, whom you have discovered in the disguise of a teacher. ”

“ Venner said grimly. "Anything but that. Why, three years ago that man was as poor and desperate as the most wretched outcast who walks the streets of London to-night. And one thing you may be certain of—wherever you dine from now to your dying day, you will be under the roof of no more diabolical scoundrel than the creature who calls himself Mark Fenwick."
There was a deep note in Venner's voice that did not fail to stimulate Gurdon's curiosity. He glanced again at the millionaire, who appeared to be talking in some foreign tongue with his companion. ”

“ I 'll resk him, j'int in or out."
"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in quick enough."
"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;--"do what you like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,--I can walk, and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but myself. Damn the shoulder!--let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"
Mr. Bernard came forward.
"My friends," he said, "I am not injured,--seriously, at least. Nobody need complain against this man, if I don't. ”

“ A new convert from the reformed to the ancient faith may be very strong in the arms, but he will always have weak legs and shaky knees. He may use his hands well, and hit hard with his fists, but he will never stand on his legs in the way the man does who inherits his belief.
The services were over at last, and Dudley Venner and his daughter walked home together in silence. He always respected her moods, and saw clearly enough that some inward trouble was weighing upon her. There was nothing to be said in such cases, for Elsie could never talk of her griefs. ”

“ Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless, thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr. Richard Venner, would be done for.
“Let me up! let me up!” he cried, in a low, hurried voice,—“I 'll give you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,—don't you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. ”