Part 9

We went away a little mystified by this behavior on the part of Muggs.

We were leaving next day for the south, and Mrs. Mullet came to say good-by to us. “How is your patient?” I asked.

“He was delirious all night, and dictated letters to me as if I had been his stenographer. I took them down with a pencil. I have brought two of them for you to read. I do not understand them; perhaps you will know what they mean.”

The first was addressed to a man in Mexico, and it said:

_Dear Mack,--At last my ship has come in, and I am doing what I have longed to do for many years, and what I have dreamed of doing a thousand times. I inclose a check for all that I owe you, with interest. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing. I expected to return it within a week, but I lost it all. I want you to tell every one that knows me that I am an honest man._

The second letter was to the Honorable Whitfield Norris, and it said:

_Dear Sir,--At last I am able to do what I have wanted to do for years. I inclose a check for all the money you have given me, with interest to date. Please send me a receipt for the same. I always intended to make good and live honest, and I want you to think well of me, for I think that you are the greatest man I ever met._

All this puzzled me at first, and I went at once with Mrs. Mullet to Muggs's room. The sick man's fever had abated, and his head was clear.

“You have been dictating a letter to Norris,” I said.

“What letter?” he asked.

“Didn't you dictate a letter to Norris last night?”

“No,” he answered, sadly.

“Have you any money?” I asked.

“I have made a little money out of an old investment in a copper-mine,” he answered, in a faint voice. “It has begun to pay, and they have sent me eighteen hundred dollars. There's eleven hundred left. It's in the Banca d'Italia. In my book you'll find a check for that two hundred dollars. It's on the bureau there.”

“You gave me that,” I said.

“Did I?” he whispered, and was sound asleep in a few seconds.

I returned to Mrs. Mullet, full of sober thought.

“Those letters are the voice of his soul,” I said. “It really wants to pay up and be honest.”

She saw my meaning and wept, and said, as soon as she could speak:

“Perhaps, in the sight of God, he has already paid his debts.”

“An honorable delirium isn't quite enough,” I said, “but it does show that his soul is acquiring good habits.”

“I'm so happy that you think so,” she answered.

“Yes, I'd rather have him now with all his past than any count I have seen in Italy. There are all kinds of pasts, but Muggs is ashamed of his--that's something! Of course it isn't safe to jump at conclusions, but it looks as if the love of a decent woman had done a good deal for him.”

I left her with a happy smile on her face, and way down in me I could hear my soul laughing at the wise old country lawyer who had got Muggs so securely placed in his rogue's gallery. He had been reading law in a better book than any on his shelves. I had once smiled when I had read in one of Mr. Chesterton's essays that “Christianity looks for the honest man inside the thief.” I said to myself that I had never seen the honest man aforementioned. But here he was at last. I described him to Betsey.

“The love of that woman has done it,” said she.

“The love of a good woman is a big thing,” I answered, as I put my arm around her. “Kind o' like the finger o' Jesus touching the eyes o' the blind--that's the way it looks to me.”

Next day we drove to Naples. Good-by, Rome, city of lovely shapes and jeweled walls and golden ceilings, graveyard of races and empires, paradise of saints and industrious marryers! How's that for a valedictory? Well, you see, I bought a guitar, and it's time I began to practise.

Naples is different. It's a kind of theater. There the very poor play the part of the starving mendicant as soon as they are able to walk; the cheap tradesman plays the self-sacrificing saint; the fairly well-to-do man plays the part of a millionaire with his trap and horses on the Via Roma, and every driver plays the tyrant. The song of the lash, which had its part in the ancient music of Persia, fills the air of the old city.

It worried us, and we went to Sicily and spent a month at Taormina--a place of which I do not dare to speak for fear of dropping into poetry, and when I drop into poetry I make a good deal of a splash, as you may have observed, and it takes me a week to get dry. Norris fell in love with it, and so did the ladies. I wondered how I was going to get them to move, but not for long.

Gwendolyn and I, sitting alone in the old Greek theater one lovely afternoon, had the talk for which I had been watching my chance.

We sat looking out between the time-worn columns at Ætna and the sea.

“I'm tired of ancient history!” said she, closing her guide-book.

“Let's try modern history,” I suggested. “If you will let me be your Baedeker for a minute I should like to point out to you a noble structure in America which is 'clothed in majestic simplicity.'”

“What is it?” she asked, eagerly.

“The character of Richard Forbes,” I answered. “There's one fact in his history of supreme importance to you and me.”

“Only one!” she exclaimed.

“At least one,” I answered. “It is this: for years he has known every unpleasant fact in the story of your father's life.”

“Uncle Soc,” she interrupted, with a look of joy in her face, “is it--is it really true, or are you just saying it to please me?”

“It's really true,” I said. “When I can't help it I tell the truth. I'm never reckless or immoderate in the use of it, for there's no sense in giving it out in chunks so big that they excite suspicion. I'm kind o' careful with the truth when I tell ye that Richard Forbes is better than all the statues and paintings and domes and golden ceilings in Italy.”

“Uncle Soc, do you think that you could get rooms for us on the next steamer,” she asked.

“Oh, what's your hurry?” I demanded.

She rose and said, with a proud, imperious gesture:

“Me for the United States!”

“I've already engaged the rooms, for I knew what would happen after we had had our talk,” I said.

We were waiting to take our steamer in Naples. The day after we reached there Mrs. Fraley called to see us. She had read in a Roman newspaper that we were at Bertolini's, and she had come over to talk with me “about a dreadful occurrence.” She had raised the spondoolix, and Miss Muriel had achieved the count. They had lived in paradise for three weeks and four days when the count got mad at Muriel and actually beat her over the shoulders with his riding-whip. It was all because the dear child had turkey-trotted with a young Englishman at a ball. She had meant no harm--poor thing!--all the girls were learning these new-fangled dances. Mrs. Fraley had naturally objected to the count's use of the whip, whereupon he had shown her the door and bade her leave his apartments. So she with the beautiful feet had been compelled to walk out of the place which her bounty had provided and go back to the dear old boarding-house. Muriel had followed her. They knew not what to do. Would I please advise her?

“You've done the right thing,” I said. “Keep away from him. He'll be using his cane next. The whip is a good thing, but not if it comes too late in life.”

“But how about my money?” she asked. “I can't afford to lose that.”

“My dear madame, you have already lost it. You may as well charge that to the educational fund. To some people knowledge comes high. I had a good reason for advising you against this marriage. In our land every home is a little republic that plays its part in the larger republics of the town and the county, and the affairs of each home and the welfare of its inhabitants are the concern of all. Here every home is a little independent kingdom. Its master is its king. His will is mostly its law. When he gets mad his whip or his cane may fall upon the transgressor. It's the old feudal spirit--the ancient habit of thought and hand. Of course in most countries wife-beating is forbidden, but generally the woman knows better than to complain, for she finds that it doesn't pay. So she cringes and obeys and holds her tongue. In America that sort of thing doesn't go. If a man tries it, the republic of the town gets hold of him right away. Really, I'd about as soon have the rights of a goat as the rights of a woman in Europe. In spite of that she's often well treated.”

I was interrupted by the porter's clerk, who came with a telegram. It was from Muriel, and it said:

_Please tell my aunt to return immediately._

_We have made up, and are very, very happy, and we shall both be delighted to see her._

I read it aloud, and she rose and said:

“I'm so glad. Please pardon me for troubling you again.”

I pardoned her, and she went away, and so another American girl had begun to toughen her skin and adjust her spirit to the feudal plan.

The day we sailed a curious thing came to pass in a letter to Norris from Muggs in the handwriting of Mrs. Mullet. It said:

_I hope you will be glad to learn that good luck has come to me. I thank God that I am able to return the last sum of money you gave me, with interest to date. My check for it is inclosed herewith. An old investment of mine, long supposed to be worthless, has turned out well. I have sold a part of my stock in it, and with the rest I hope to square accounts with you before long. My health is better, and within a week or so I expect to be married to the noblest woman in the world._

The man's dream had come to pass. His check was in the letter, and there was good money behind it.

“I congratulate you,” I said to Norris when he showed me the letter. “You've really found an honest man inside a thief.”

“Without your help it would have been impossible,” said he. “It's worth ten years of any man's life to have done it. I suppose there's an honest man inside every thief if we could only get at him.”

“And no man is as bad as he seems, and, therefore, if you ever feel like shooting me--don't,” was my answer.

“What luck that she didn't get hold of a count!” Betsey exclaimed. “She was one of the most willing marryers that ever crossed the sea.”

“But she didn't know how to advertise,” I said. “Nobody knew that she had money. One personal in the London _Mail_ or the Paris _Herald_ would have crowded the Excelsior Hotel with impoverished noblemen.”

“And yet I would have supposed that the worst of them would have been better than Muggs.”

“Not I,” was my answer. “Both Muggs and the counts have been mere adventurers--trying to get something for nothing. Muggs knew that he was doing wrong. His offense was so bad that he couldn't doubt its badness. But the consciences of the counts never get any exercise. They don't know that idleness is a crime, that a bought husband is baser than a poodle-dog. They are absolutely convinced of their own respectability. For that reason the average thief has a far better chance of being faced about.”

We sailed. Mrs. Sampf, with a chestful of knockers, and the lumber king, with his bust and portrait, were among our shipmates. The latter had had a stroke of hard luck. Two gamblers at his hotel had won his confidence and taken a hank of his fleece at bridge whist. He had made up his mind that American playmates were more to his liking, that Grant was greater than Alexander, and that universal peace was a dream. This he confided to me one evening as we were lying off Gibraltar in the glare of the searchlights.

Brooms of light were sweeping the waters for fear some sneaking nation would steal in upon them like a thief in the night.

“These Europeans know better than to trust one another,” said I. “Billions for ships an' forts an' armies, an' every dollar of it testifies to the fact that not one of these powers can trust another. 'Yes, you're a good talker,' they seem to say, 'but I know you of old. I'll eat with ye, and drink with ye, and buy with ye, and sell with ye, but dinged if I'll trust ye!”'

“They're a lot of scamps over here,” was the conclusion of Mr. Pike.

“And especially unreliable in bridge whist,” I said.

“But I've made money on the trip,” said the lumber king. “I bought some shares in a copper-mine for fifteen thousand dollars, and they're worth at least ten times that. I happened to know the mine, and he needed the money.”

“If I were you I'd have the details of that transaction engraved on my bust and set it up in my bedroom,” I said, with a laugh.

“Why so?”

“It would give you a chance to get acquainted with yourself.”

“Oh, I was honest with him!” said he. “I told him I'd give him thirty days to redeem the stock.”

“Was it Wilton?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“I know him, and if the stock is as good as you say it will be redeemed.”

And it was, and I began to understand why Pike had been hand in glove with Wilton. He had been trying to get hold of his property.

We wept for joy at the sight of our native land--who doesn't?--and Norris, who looked as strong as ever, said that he longed to get back to his task.

Richard met us at the dock, and the young people fell into each other's arms.

“Gwendolyn!” Mrs. Norris exclaimed. “Look here,” said I. “This pair of marryers is not to be interfered with any more.” Muggs and his new wife sailed on the _Titanic_, and he met his death on the stricken ship like a gentleman; but the bride was saved, and came to see us in Pointview and told us the story of that night.

The ship was a part of the machinery of the great thought trust, which has the world in its grip. The power behind her engines was thinking in terms of dollars and cents--to be gained through the advertisement of a swift voyage--and down she went in a thousand fathoms of icy water.

I said to Norris when we were speaking of this tragedy as we sat by his fireside:

“The greatest of all commandments is this: 'Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.'”

“Neither money nor titles, nor pride nor fear, nor power, nor church nor state,” he added.

“Amen!” was my answer.

Then there fell a long silence, and well down in the depths of it is the end of my story.

THE END