Hewson

“ John lamented.
“But if she were here in New York, I couldn’t allow it,” he continued. “It was in confidence between us.”
“She doesn’t seem to have thought so,” said St. John, with sarcasm which Hewson could not resent.
“There’s only one thing for me to do,” said Hewson, who had been thinking the point over, and saw no other way out for him as a gentleman, or even merely as a just man. He was not rich, and in the face of the mounting accumulations of other men he had grown comparatively poor, without actually losing money, since he had begun to lead the life which had long been his ideal. ”

“ She’s an original.”
“I noticed her at breakfast,” Hewson answered, now first aware of having been struck with the strange beauty and strange behavior of the slim girl, who drooped in her chair, with her little head fallen forward, and played with her bread, ignoring her food otherwise, while she listened with a bored air to the talk which made Hewson its prey. She had an effect of being both shy and indifferent, in this retrospect; and when St. John put up the window, and led the way out to the women in the garden, and presented Hewson, she had still this effect. ”

“ Hewson hurried out to Colorado, where he found Hernshaw a stout, silent, impersonal man, whose notion of the paternal office seemed to be a ready acquiescence in a daughter’s choice of a husband; he appeared to think this could be best expressed to Hewson in a good cigar He perceptibly enjoyed the business details of the affair, but he enjoyed despatching them in the least possible time and the fewest words, and then he settled down to the pleasure of a superficial passivity. ”

“ He leaned back in his chair impatiently. "Might I suggest that time is money to some of us, and that I'm rather busy this morning? I'd be obliged if you'd get to the point."
"Certainly," said Hewson, quietly. "I have a nice little bunch of two thousand five hundred Rio Lopez which I shall be delighted to sell you, on behalf of Mr. Crossley—at two pounds a share."
For a moment or two Mr. Ferguson seemed to have difficulty in breathing.
"Buy Rio Lopez at two!" he gasped. "Are you insane?"
"Not at all," murmured Hewson, lighting a cigarette. "That is my offer." ”

“ The sight of a half-dozen frightened faces in the hall restored my self-possession. The servants had come up from below and stood crowding and jostling each other just as they had done three weeks before. At the sight of Hewson's cowering figure they began to moan and cry.
"Be quiet there!" exhorted Sweetwater, advancing upon them with the courage born of his triumphant success. "The old man whom you have doubtless thought the best-hearted and most reliable of you all has just confessed to the crime which has desolated this house and all but ruined the three young gentlemen, your masters. ”

“ Hewson maintained a dignified silence; and upon seeing his friends guarded from the hall where they were now assembled into a large barn, he desired to be placed along with them.
“No,” said Moore; “if you are a rebel ten times over, you are a gentleman; you must not herd with them; and besides, Mr Hewson, with great respect to you, we shall place you in a much safer place. In the highest room in a house unusually high, we shall lodge you, out of which if you escape, we will say you are an innocent man. Frank Finnegan, show him and those two soldiers up to the observatory ”

“ If I choose to act myself, and show out my real thoughts and feelings, how is it any worse than if I acted somebody else!”
“I should think it was very much better,” said Hewson, inwardly warned to keep his face straight.
VI.
They had time for no more talk between the drawing-room and the dinner table, and when Miss Hernshaw’s chair had been pushed in behind her, and she sat down, she turned instantly to the man on her right and began speaking to him, and left Hewson to make conversation with any one he liked or could. ”

“ The discovery froze Granice with horror—he seemed to see the mad-house gaping for him.
“Isn't there a man a good deal like him—a detective named J. B. Hewson?”
But he knew in advance what McCarren's answer would be. “Hewson? J. B. Hewson? Never heard of him. But that was J. B. Stell fast enough—I guess he can be trusted to know himself, and you saw he answered to his name.” ”

“ Hewson answered. “I had thought of going to Europe. But, yes, I think I shall go to St. Johnswort, first, at any rate. One can’t simply turn one’s back on a piece of real estate in that way,” he said, recognizing a fact that would doubtless have presented itself in due order for his consideration. “My one notion was to forget it as quickly as possible.” ”

“ Charles Hewson looked at her gravely. "Are you always so charming, Mrs. Crossley, to the stranger within your gates? Especially when he's a dirty-looking tramp like me." Then he smiled quickly; it was a trick of his, that sudden, fleeting smile. "I can think of nothing I'd like more than a bath, if I might so far trespass on your hospitality."
II
Lunch confirmed his diagnosis of the Crossley household. The girl's father fitted in exactly with his mental picture; an utterly lovable, white-haired man of about sixty, and as unsophisticated as a child. ”

“ If Miss Hernshaw had wished to meet him again, he could not doubt that she would have asked him, or at the least had him asked to come and see her, and not have left it to the social fortutities to bring them together. Towards the end of the term which rumor had fixed to her stay abroad Hewson’s folly was embittered to him in a way that he had never expected in his deepest shame and darkest forboding. But evil, like good, does not cease till it has fulfilled itself in every possible consequence. It seeing even more active and persistent. ”

“ I wouldn’t try to make it out a fraud myself.”
“I’m afraid that’s what I’ve really done,” said Hewson. “But before people I’ve put up a bluff of despising it.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said Hernshaw. “A man thinks that if he can have an experience like that he must be something out of the common, and if he can despise it--”
“You’ve hit my case exactly,” said Hewson, and the two men laughed. ”

“ They anchored at Gravesend, and the captain told Stephen to land and take a post-chaise up to London, and report to Mr. Hewson that the Tiger would come up on the tide next morning. It was eight o’clock in the evening when Stephen arrived at his employer’s. Mr. Hewson received him with great kindness.
[pg 117] “I am always very glad when I hear that one of my ships is safe in port,” he said; “for however great my confidence, there are times when human skill and strength are of no avail. ”

“ Guard his door, men, for you shall be held responsible for his appearance in the morning.”
The men, in obedience to these orders, escorted him to the door, outside of which was their station for the night. When Frank and he entered the observatory, the former gently shut the door, and, turning to his foster-brother, exclaimed in accents of deep distress, but lowering his voice, “There is not a moment to be lost; you must escape.”
“That is impossible,” replied Hewson, “unless I had wings and could use them.” ”

“ I can’t bear to have people undervalue it. I want to hit them. But go on!”
Hewson went on as gravely as he could in view of her potential violence: he pictured Miss Hernshaw beating down the inadequate witnesses of “Ghosts” with her fan, which lay in her lap, with her cobwebby handkerchief, drawn through its ring, and her long limp gloves looking curiously like her pretty young arms in their slenderness. ”

“ John,” Hewson began, but St. John cut him off.
“Oh, no, you can’t. Look here!” He showed a handful of letters. “All from people who had promised to stay with me, taking it back, since that infernal interview of yours, or from people who hadn’t answered before, saying they can’t come. Of course they make all sorts of civil excuses. I shouldn’t know what to do with these people if any of them came. There isn’t a servant left on the place, except the gardener who lives in his own house, and the groom who sleeps in the stable. ”

“ Miss Hernshaw demanded, whirling her face round, and fixing him with eyes of beautiful fierceness. “Tragedy is tragedy, whether you have lived it or not, isn’t it? And sometimes it’s all the more tragical if you have it still to live: you’ve got it before you! I don’t see how any one can look at that girl’s face and laugh at her. I should never forgive any one who did.”
“Then I’m glad I didn’t do any of the laughing,” said Hewson, willing to relieve himself from the strain of this high mood, and yet anxious not to fall too far below it. ”

“ In 1770 he married Miss Mary Stevenson, a young lady whose intellectual culture had been much influenced by the interest taken in her by Benjamin Franklin, the American philosopher having lodged in her mother's house since he came to London in 1757. On his marriage Hewson removed to a house of his own in Craven Street, and this was made by William Hunter a ground for giving notice of breaking off their partnership. This was a blow to Hewson, especially as the building and anatomical museum necessary for carrying on the lectures were exclusively Hunter's property. ”

“ He often said, if he was in the mood to remember me, 'You may finish that, Hewson,' and though he did not say it to-night, I made so bold as to remember the times he had. You see I have lived for twenty years in the family. I was a young man when Mr. Gillespie took me into his service first, and we had become used to each other's ways. ”

“ Colonel Hewson’s face remained rather blank, and he put his hand on an iron ring suspended from the roof. Alice Joyce the while had stationed herself beside a trapeze bar. Colonel Hewson in a lady’s gymnasium was not the most valiant man in the world, but he now took heart of grace and proposed marriage to Alice Joyce.
The end of the story is perhaps best told in the words of the heroine—
“Of course I said ‘No’ to him. Really men are very tiresome. Fancy a man’s proposing when you’re showing him the gymnasium!” ”

“ On the third morning Flint, stepping softly—as if, confound it! his master were ill—entered the library where Granice sat behind an unread newspaper, and proferred a card on a tray.
Granice read the name—J. B. Hewson—and underneath, in pencil, “From the District Attorney's office.” He started up with a thumping heart, and signed an assent to the servant.
Mr. Hewson was a slight sallow nondescript man of about fifty—the kind of man of whom one is sure to see a specimen in any crowd. “Just the type of the successful detective,” Granice reflected as he shook hands with his visitor. ”

“ One had only to steal into the room in the early hours of the night, and, with careful manipulation of bottle and glass, increase that dose before the time came for the sick man to want it. Hewson was accustomed to noiseless actions; he could even handle glass without a sound, having been trained in quiet ways by the very man who, in such an unexpected manner, was now destined to fall a victim to these very precautions. He therefore did not fear waking Mr. Gillespie; he only feared finding him already awake. ”

“ This would make Hewson think that he was beginning to tell his story too often, and that perhaps the friend who suggested his doing so, was playing upon his forgetfulness. He wondered if he were really something of a bore with it, and whether men were shying off from him at the club on account of it. He fancied that might be the reason why the circle at the five-o’clock cocktails gradually diminished as the winter passed. He continued to join it till the chance offered of squarely refusing to tell Wilkins, or whoever, about the odd thing that had happened to him up country in the summer. ”

“ Ferguson, I believe?".
Hewson entered the office at 20, Plumpton Street, and bowed slightly to the man at the desk. As he had expected, the type was a common one—one, incidentally, with which he had had a good deal to do himself. Mr. Arthur Ferguson could be placed at once in the category of men who consider that in business everything is fair, and that if they can get the better of another man the funeral is his. And as an outlook on life there is nothing much to be said against it, provided the other man is of the same kidney.
"Yes." Ferguson indicated a chair. ”

“ In 1848 the Archbishop of York presented him to the perpetual curacy of Goatland, worth only 53l. a year, with permission to reside at Whitby, as there was no house for the incumbent in the parish. Hewson succeeded in obtaining an increased stipend of 275l. a year. He began to build a house, which was nearly completed at the time of his death. ”

“ Dined—had he?
"Will you come over with me to Barnstaple this afternoon?"
"Good heavens, daddy!" came a voice from outside. "What are you going to Barnstaple for? You know this heat will upset you."
Hewson swung round as the girl came in from the garden. She was wearing a floppy sun-bonnet, and it suddenly struck him that she was one of the loveliest things he had ever seen. No wonder the old chap had tried to get a bit more money with the idea of giving her a good time. ”

“ Gillespie is the greatest favourite with the old family servant, Hewson?"
"No; that is, yes. Why do you ask?"
"Because if it is not Leighton——"
"And it certainly is not."
"Then I advise you to direct your energies towards the one he is known to like best." ”

“ His declaration was sufficient at once with most, who recoiled from his service as if he had himself been a ghost; with one or two sceptics who seemed willing to take the risks (probably in a guilty consciousness of records that would have kept them out of other employ) his confession that he had himself seen the spectre which haunted St. Johnswort, was equally effective. He prevailed at last against the fact and his own testimony with a Japanese, who could not be made to understand the objection to the place, and who willingly went with Hewson as his valet and general house-workman. ”