Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay, arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn’s object was to squeeze the club by threats.
The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, Master of Fox-hounds, Shadowbrook, appeared with his wife, the celebrated beauty, Agatha Sprowl, née Van Guilder.
Sprowl, now immensely large and fat, had few cares in life beyond an anxious apprehension concerning the durability of his own digestion. However, he was still able to make a midnight mouthful of a Welsh rarebit on a hot mince-pie, and wash it down with a quart of champagne, and so the world went very well with him, even if it wabbled a trifle for his handsome wife.
“She’s lovely enough,” said Colonel Hyssop, gallantly, “to set every star in heaven wabbling.” To which the bull-necked Major assented with an ever-hopeless attempt to bend at the waistband.
Meanwhile the Rev. Amasa Munn and his flock, the Shining Band, arrived at Foxville in six farm wagons, singing “Roll, Jordan!”
Of their arrival Sprowl was totally unconscious, the Colonel having forgotten to inform him of the threatened invasion.
II
The members of the Sagamore Club heard the news next morning at a late breakfast. Major Brent, who had been fishing early up-stream, bore the news, and delivered it in an incoherent bellow.
“What d’ye mean by that?” demanded Colonel Hyssop, setting down his cocktail with unsteady fingers.
“Mean?” roared the Major; “I mean that Munn and a lot o’ women are sitting on the river-bank and singing ‘Home Again’!”
The news jarred everybody, but the effect of it upon the president, Peyster Sprowl, appeared to be out of all proportion to its gravity. That gentleman’s face was white as death; and the Major noticed it.
“You’ll have to rid us of this mob,” said the Major, slowly.
Sprowl lifted his heavy, overfed face from his plate. “I’ll attend to it,” he said, hoarsely, and swallowed a pint of claret.
“I think it is amusing,” said Agatha Sprowl, looking across the table at Coursay.
“Amusing, madam!” burst out the Major. “They’ll be doing their laundry in our river next!”
“Soapsuds in my favorite pools!” bawled the Colonel. “Damme if I’ll permit it!”
“Sprowl ought to settle them,” said Lansing, good-naturedly. “It may cost us a few thousands, but Sprowl will do the work this time as he did it before.”
Sprowl choked in his claret, turned a vivid beef-color, and wiped his chin. His appetite was ruined. He hoped the ruin would stop there.
“What harm will they do?” asked Coursay, seriously – “beyond the soapsuds?”
“They’ll fish, they’ll throw tin cans in the water, they’ll keep us awake with their fanatical powwows – confound it, haven’t I seen that sort of thing?” said the Major, passionately. “Yes, I have, at nigger camp-meetings! And these people beat the niggers at that sort of thing!”
“Leave ’em to me,” repeated Peyster Sprowl, thickly, and began on another chop from force of habit.
“About fifteen years ago,” said the Colonel, “there was some talk about our title. You fixed that, didn’t you, Sprowl?”
“Yes,” said Sprowl, with parched lips.
“Of course,” muttered the Major; “it cost us a cool hundred thousand to perfect our title. Thank God it’s settled.”
Sprowl’s immense body turned perfectly cold; he buried his face in his glass and drained it. Then the shrimp-color returned to his neck and ears, and deepened to scarlet. When the earth ceased reeling before his apoplectic eyes, he looked around, furtively. Again the scene in O’Hara’s death-chamber came to him; the threat of Munn, who had got wind of the true situation, and the bribing of Munn to silence.
But the club had given Sprowl one hundred thousand dollars to perfect its title; and Sprowl had reported the title perfect, all proceedings ended, and the payment of one hundred thousand dollars to Amasa Munn, as guardian of the child of O’Hara, in full payment for the O’Hara claims to the club property.
Sprowl’s coolness began to return. If five thousand dollars had stopped Munn’s mouth once, it might stop it again. Besides, how could Munn know that Sprowl had kept for his own uses ninety-five thousand dollars of his club’s money, and had founded upon it the House of Sprowl of many millions? He was quite cool now – a trifle anxious to know what Munn meant to ask for, but confident that his millions were a buckler and a shield to the honored name of Sprowl.
“I’ll see this fellow, Munn, after breakfast,” he said, lighting an expensive cigar.
“I’ll go with you,” volunteered Lansing, casually, strolling out towards the veranda.
“No, no!” called out Sprowl; “you’ll only hamper me.” But Lansing did not hear him outside in the sunshine.
Agatha Sprowl laid one fair, heavily ringed hand on the table and pushed her chair back. The Major gallantly waddled to withdraw her chair; she rose with a gesture of thanks, and a glance which shot the Major through and through – a wound he never could accustom himself to receive with stoicism.
Mrs. Sprowl turned carelessly away, followed by her two Great Danes – a superb trio, woman and dogs beautifully built and groomed, and expensive enough to please even such an amateur as Peyster Sprowl, M.F.H.
“Gad, Sprowl!” sputtered the Major, “your wife grows handsomer every minute – and you grow fatter.”
Sprowl, midway in a glass of claret, said: “This simple backwoods régime is what she and I need.”
Agatha Sprowl was certainly handsome, but the Major’s eyesight was none of the best. She had not been growing younger; there were lines; also a discreet employment of tints on a very silky skin, which was not quite as fresh as it had once been.
Dr. Lansing, strolling on the veranda with his pipe, met her and her big dogs turning the corner in full sunlight. Coursay was with her, his eager, flushed face close to hers; but he fell back when he saw his kinsman Lansing, and presently retired to the lawn to unreel and dry out a couple of wet silk lines.
Agatha Sprowl sat down on the veranda railing, exchanging a gay smile across the lawn with Coursay; then her dark eyes met Lansing’s steel-gray ones.
“Good-morning, once more,” she said, mockingly.
He returned her greeting, and began to change his mist leader for a white one.
“Will you kindly let Jack Coursay alone?” she said, in a low voice.
“No,” he replied, in the same tone.
“Are you serious?” she asked, as though the idea amused her.
“Of course,” he replied, pleasantly.
“Is it true that you came here because he came?” she inquired, with faint sarcasm in her eyes.
“Yes,” he answered, with perfect good-nature. “You see he’s my own kin; you see I’m the old-fashioned sort – a perfect fool, Mrs. Sprowl.”
There was a silence; he unwound the glistening leader; she flicked at shadows with her dog-whip; the Great Danes yawned and laid their heavy heads against her knees.
“Then you are a fool,” she concluded, serenely.
He was young enough to redden.
Three years ago she had thought it time to marry somebody, if she ever intended to marry at all; so she threw over half a dozen young fellows like Coursay, and married Sprowl. For two years her beauty, audacity, and imprudence kept a metropolis and two capitals in food for scandal. And now for a year gossip was coupling her name with Coursay’s.
“I warned you at Palm