Paxton

“ Make Edward Paxton keep his word. You are the only one who knows about it. Tell Virginia if necessary. But no one else. Everything depends on nobody’s knowing I’m not at Palm Beach. Tell Edward I’ll be back, and he must represent me in every way until I come, as he promised. You understand, don’t you? Every way. You won’t lose faith in me, Billie, will you? ”

“ Paxton looked over his shoulder and beckoned to us to come nearer to him, and began speaking in a low voice: we listened most intently, of course, and compared notes afterwards, and I wrote down our version, so I am confident I have what he told us almost word for word. He said: ‘It began when I was first prospecting, and put me off again and again. There was always somebody—a man—standing by one of the firs. This was in daylight, you know. He was never in front of me. ”

“ There seemed to be no reasonable room for doubt that the man was acting as his shadow. No one likes to feel that he is under espionage. And Mr. Paxton in particular felt that just recently he had endured enough of that kind of thing to last--if his own tastes were to be consulted--for the remainder of his life. He decided to put a stop there and then to, at any rate, this man's persecution. Suddenly standing still, wheeling sharply round, Mr. Paxton found himself face to face with the individual with his hat on the side of his head. ”

“ Paxton did not stop to see who it was. Exercising what seemed to be a giant's strength, he succeeded in again freeing himself from the grasp of his two opponents. Leaping to his feet, he made a mad dash at Lawrence. That gentleman, springing nimbly aside, eluded the threatening blow from the clubbed revolver, delivered neatly enough a blow with his clenched fist full in Mr. Paxton's face. The blow was a telling one. Mr. Paxton staggered; then, just as he seemed about to fall, recovered himself, and struck again at Mr. Lawrence. ”

“ A hundred thousand pounds! Such figures warm one's blood. One will almost begin to wonder, Mr. Paxton, if you can have come by them honestly."
The words were uttered lightly. Mr. Paxton chose to take them as if they had been meant in earnest. His cheeks flushed. His eyes flamed fire. He stood up, so beside himself with rage that it was a second or two before he could regain sufficient self-control to enable him to speak.
"Miss Wentworth, how dare you say such a thing! I have endured more from you than any man ought to endure from any woman. ”

“ Paxton wished within himself that he would not.
"You're a sporting man, Mr. Paxton. I wouldn't mind making a bet that they're not far off! There's a chance for you!"
"Oh!" It was not at all a sort of bet which Mr. Paxton was disposed to take, nor a kind of chance he relished. "Thanks; but it's a thing about which you're likely to know more than I do; I'm not betting. Are you on the job?"
"Half the Yard is on the job already."
Silence once more; then again Mr. Ireland. ”

“ Pretentious fool, thought Gregory. How romantic he thinks himself! The laughing philosopher, what? Drunk because the world isn't good enough for him. Quite the little Faust.
'And Polypheme too,' Paxton soliloquised on, 'funny little Polypheme!' He laughed again. 'The heir to all the ages. Christ!'
With dignity, Gregory poured himself out some whisky and filled up the glass from the siphon—with dignity, with conscious grace and precision, as though he were acting the part of a man who helps himself to whisky and soda, on the stage. ”

“ Back in our room, we did our very best to make Paxton take a cheerful view. There’s the crown safe back,’ we said; ‘very likely you’d have done better not to touch it’ (and he heavily assented to that) , ‘but no real harm has been done, and we shall never give this away to anyone who would be so mad as to go near it. Besides, don’t you feel better yourself? ”

“ Paxton, then back at the lady.
"Good news? One always does associate good news with Mr. Paxton. The premonition becomes a kind of habit."
The gentleman thus alluded to winced. Miss Strong did not appear to altogether relish the lady's words. She burst out with the news of which she spoke, as if with the intention of preventing a retort coming from Mr. Paxton.
"We are going to be married."
Miss Wentworth displayed a possibly intentional mental opacity.
"Who is going to be married?"
"Charlie! How aggravating you are! Cyril and I, of course." ”

“ I have told this part quite shortly on purpose, for it really does represent the haste with which we settled our plan and took action. ‘The shortest way is up the hill and through the churchyard,’ Paxton said, as we stood a moment before, the hotel looking up and down the front. There was nobody about—nobody at all. Seaburgh out of the season is an early, quiet place. ‘We can’t go along the dyke by the cottage, because of the dog,’ Paxton also said, when I pointed to what I thought a shorter way along the front and across two fields. ”

“ They all know English, nowadays.'
'Oh,' said Gregory coldly.
'It’s a capital profession,' Paxton confided. 'It permits you to do whatever you like—any damned thing that comes into your head. Throw your arms round any woman you fancy, tell her the most gross and fantastic impertinences, insult the men, laugh in people’s faces—everything’s permitted to the poor drunkard, particularly if he’s only a poor colonial and doesn’t know any better. Verb sap. Take the hint from me, old boy. Drop the monocle. It’s no damned good. Be a boozer; you'll have much more fun. ”

“ Paxton, it's very kind of you to say such pretty things, but I am afraid you estimate my capacity a thought too highly." Miss Wentworth turned in her seat, so as to have the gentleman within her range of vision. "You understand, Mr. Paxton, very well how it is. Daisy is a lonely child. She belongs to the order of women who were in fashion before the commercial instinct became ingrained in the feminine constitution. She wants looking after. There are only Mr. Franklyn and myself to look after her. ”

“ Paxton smiled. "A little secret I borrowed from the Greeks!" he replied, with condonable vanity. "Polyclitus and his contemporaries excelled at the work."
"That jewelled girdle looks detachable," I said.
"It is firmly fastened to the waist of the figure," answered the sculptor. "I defy any one to detach it inside an hour."
"From a modern point of view the thing is an innovation," remarked one of the others, thoughtfully. ”

“ Paxton did not remember to have previously noticed.
"Blast him!--what do I care where he is? He ain't no affair of mine! There's the Toff, and a crowd of 'em down there--you come and lend a hand!"
"Not me! I ain't a-taking any! I ain't going to get myself choked, not for no Toff, nor yet for any one else. I feel more like cutting my lucky--only I don't know my way across these ---- hills."
"You ain't got no more pluck than a chicken. ”

“ Paxton's tone was bitter. "What is likely to be the matter with the man who, after having had the luck which I have been having lately, to crown it all finds the woman he loves philandering with a stranger--the acquaintance of a shower of rain--on Brighton pier." ”

“ Again Miss Wentworth's tone was significantly dry. "Mr. Paxton has never seemed to me to be a man whose confidence was easily gained, especially by a stranger. Mr. Lawrence must have progressed more rapidly with him even than with you. And, pray, what else was Mr. Lawrence pleased to say of Mr. Paxton?" ”

“ He told us the old fellow at the supper table was a notorious Rebel. As Paxton wished to get in the house as soon as possible, to attend to his Rebel guest, thus keeping down suspicion, he told us where and how to find the house of Robert Childs, who lived eleven miles from there. Childs, he said, was a good Union man, and his wife was a true Union woman, who would be glad to help us on our way. On getting over the mountain, and reaching a point about seven miles from Paxton's, we were to turn to our right, and go north four miles to another road, on which Childs lived. ”

“ If these horrid consequences had come on this poor man, might there not really be something in the original idea of the crown having some curious power bound up with it, to guard the coast? At least, that was my feeling, and I think it was Long’s too. Our offer was very welcome to Paxton, anyhow. When could we do it? It was nearing half-past ten. Could we contrive to make a late walk plausible to the hotel people that very night? We looked out of the window: there was a brilliant full moon—the Paschal moon. Long undertook to tackle the boots and propitiate him. ”

“ Paxton has a guilty knowledge of the Datchet diamonds?"
"A guilty knowledge--that's it; you keep on hitting it, and you've hit it again. I'm ready to lay an even hundred pounds--we may as well have something on worth having--that when we do get Mr. Paxton it's proved that he has, as you put it, a guilty knowledge of the whereabouts of the Datchet diamonds." ”

“ One night we were in the side private box at the theatre in Nashville. Couldock, whom I had known well many years before, was on the stage. The General was keeping himself deeply in the shade to remain unseen. He remarked to Paxton that he wanted a house for his family, who would soon arrive, and could not find one, for they were all occupied. This one remark shows the man. I wonder how long General Butler would have hesitated to move anybody!
Captain Paxton knew everything and everybody. ”

“ Mr. Paxton gazed at his questioner with, on his countenance, an entire absence of any sort of comprehension. He turned to Mr. Lawrence--
"Is this a friend of yours?"
"What was the colour of your Gladstone
bag, eh?" The Datchet Diamonds. Page 82.
The pair looked at Mr. Paxton, then at each other, then back at Mr. Paxton, then again at each other. The German-American waggled his lean forefinger.
"He is very difficult, Mr. Paxton--very difficult indeed, eh? He understand nothing. It is strange. But it is like that sometimes, eh?" ”

“ John R. Paxton, D.D., at the seventy-seventh annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1882. Josiah M. Fiske, the President, occupied the chair. Dr. Paxton responded for "The Clergy."]
Mr. President and Gentlemen:—There is no help for it, alas! now. The Pilgrim or Puritan doth bestride the broad continent like another Colossus and we Dutch, English, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and Irish walk about under his huge legs [laughter] ; "we must bend our bodies when he doth carelessly nod to us." ”

“ Paxton went up the stairs, smiling to himself as he went.
"They are hot on the scent. Mr. Lawrence evidently has no intention of allowing the grass to grow under his feet. He means, if the thing is possible, to have a sight of that Gladstone bag, at any rate by deputy. I may be wrong, but the deputy whom I fancy he has selected is an individual possessed of such a small amount of tact--whatever other virtues he may have--that I hardly think I am. In any case it is probably just as well that that Gladstone bag sleeps downstairs, while I sleep up." ”

“ It is wrong to condemn anybody or anything on mere primâ facie evidence. The architect who designed the Exchange had similar though greater difficulties to contend with, than Paxton in the construction of the Exhibition Building in Hyde Park. Paxton’s great antagonist was Colonel Sibthorp, an honourable and gallant member of the House of Commons, who would not consent to sacrifice the trees which adorned the site of the building. ”

“ Paxton asked, looking searchingly in the other’s face.
“It now appears,” said the Camera Chap, “that instead of being a fugitive and an absconder, Felix may really have been the victim of a daring conspiracy; that instead of being free in some part of Europe at this moment, living in luxury on his loot, the unhappy man is in reality eating out his heart in a South American dungeon—where he has been ever since that fatal night that he is supposed to have skipped from Baracoa in his private yacht. ”

“ Paxton put it to himself. He said nothing--not because he had nothing to say, but because never before in his life had he felt so stupid, with so little control over either his senses or his tongue. He shook his head, walked out of the refreshment-room, got into a cab, and drove off to Makell's hotel.
Directly the cab had started and was out of the station yard he told himself that he had been a fool--doubly, trebly, a fool--a fool all round, from every possible point of view. He ought never to have let the scoundrels out of his sight; he ought to have spoken to the police ”

“ When I see another woman making a dash towards suicide I don't, as a rule, give her a helping push, merely because she happens to be my friend; preferentially, if I can, I hold her back, even though it be against her will. I have yet to learn in what respect Mr. Paxton--who, I gladly admit, is personally a most charming gentleman--is qualified to marry even a kitchen-maid. Permit me to finish. You told me last night that Mr. Paxton was going a bull on Eries; that if they fell one he would be ruined. In the course of the day they have fallen more than one ”

“ Paxton make a passing and, as it seemed to me, a mysterious allusion to that insignificant sum."
"Then he must be acquainted with the movements of the markets." Mr. Franklyn was the speaker. "Though I must tell you candidly, Miss Strong, that at present I am very far from being prepared to advise him to hold until his profits reach what Miss Wentworth, in a truly liberal spirit, calls that insignificant sum. As things stand, he can get out with half of it. If he waits for more, he may get nothing. ”