The Spread Eagle and Other Stories

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"That seems to leave me out," said Brett.

"Well," said Mr. Callender, with snapping eyes, "can you play well
enough to be an interesting opponent, or can't you?"

"No, I can't," said Brett. "And anyway, I'm going out in the launch to
talk things over with Merriman." He shrugged his shoulders in a superior
way, and they laughed; but when they had left him for the card-room he
walked out on the veranda and stood looking through the darkness at the
_Sappho's_ distant lights, and he might have been heard muttering, as if
from the depths of very deep thought:

"Why not?"

II

At first Brett did not head the launch straight for the _Sappho_. He was
not sure in his own mind whether he intended to visit her, or just to
have a near-by look at her and then return to the club. He had ordered
the launch on an impulse which he could not explain to himself. If she
had been got ready for him promptly he might not have cared at the last
minute to go out in her at all. But there had been a long delay in
finding the engineer, and this had provoked him and made him very sure
that he wanted to use the launch very much. And it hadn't smoothed his
temper to learn that the engineer had been found in the kitchen eating a
Virginia ham in company with the kitchen maid.

But the warmth and salt freshness that came into his face, and the
softness and great number of the stars soon pacified him. If she were
only with him, he thought, if her father were only not on the brink of
ruin, how pleasant the world would be. He pretended that she was with
him, just at his shoulder, where he could not see her, but there just
the same, and that he was steering the launch straight for the ends of
the world. He pretended that for such a voyage the launch would not need
an engineer. He wondered if under the circumstances it would be safe to
steer with only one hand.

But the launch ran suddenly into an oyster stake that went rasping aft
along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort
Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having
half blinded him wheeled heavenward, a narrow cornucopia of light that
petered out just short of the stars. He watched the searchlight. He
wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of
Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the
country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would
rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and
night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent
so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom
with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there.
Even the birds were in bed, and the Wright brothers were known to be
at Pau.

Once more the searchlight smote him full in the face and then, as if
making a pointed gesture, swept from him, and for a long second
illuminated the black hull and the yellow spars of the _Sappho_. Then,
as if its earthly business were over, the shaft of light, lengthening
and lengthening as it rose above intervening obstacles, the bay, the
Stepping Stone light, the Long Island shore, turned slowly upward until
it pointed at the zenith. Then it went out.

"That," thought Brett, "was almost a hint. First it stirred me up; then
it pointed at the _Sappho_; then it indicated that there is One above,
and then it went out."

He headed the launch straight for the _Sappho_, and began to wonder what
one had to do to get aboard of a magnate's yacht at night. He turned to
the engineer.

"Gryce," he said, "what do you know about yachts?"

"What about 'em?" Gryce answered sulkily. He was still thinking of the
kitchen-maid and the unfinished ham, or else of the ham and the
unfinished kitchen maid, I am not sure which.

"What about 'em?" Brett echoed. "Do they take up their gangways at
night?"

"Unless some one's expected," said Gryce.

"Do they have a watchman?"

"One forward and one aft on big yachts."

"Making two," said Brett. "But aren't there usually two gangways--one
for the crew and one for the owner's guests?"

"Crew's gangway is to starboard," Gryce vouchsafed.

Brett wondered if there was anything else that he ought to know. Then,
in picturing himself as running the launch alongside the _Sappho_, and
hoping that he would not bump her, a question presented itself.

"If I were going to visit the _Sappho_," he asked, "would I approach the
gangway from the stern or from the bow?"

"I don't know," said Gryce.

"Do you mean," said Brett, "that you don't know which is the correct
thing to do, or that you think I can't steer?"

"I mean," said Gryce, "that I know it's one or the other, but I don't
know which."

"In that case," said Brett, "we will approach from the rear. That is
always the better part of valor. But if the gangway has been taken up
for the night I don't know what I shall do."

"The gangway was down when the light was on her," said Gryce. "I seen
it."

And that it was still down Brett could presently see for himself. He
doubted his ability to make a neat landing, but they seemed to be
expecting him, for a sailor ran down to the gangway landing armed with
a long boat-hook, and made the matter easy for him. When he had reached
the _Sappho's_ deck an officer came forward in the darkness, and said:

"This way, sir, if you please."

"There's magic about," thought Brett, and he accompanied the officer
aft.

"Mr. Merriman," said the latter, "told us to expect you half an hour ago
in a motor-boat. Did you have a breakdown?"

"No," said Brett, and he added mentally, "but I'm liable to."

They descended a companionway; the officer opened a sliding door of some
rich wood, and Brett stepped into the highly lighted main saloon of
the _Sappho_.

In one corner of the room, with his back turned, the famous Mr. Merriman
sat at an upright piano, lugubriously drumming. Brett had often heard of
the great man's secret vice, and now the sight of him hard at it made
him, in spite of the very real trepidation under which he was laboring,
feel good-natured all over--the Colossus of finance was so earnest at
his music, so painstaking and interested in placing his thick, clumsy
fingers, and so frankly delighted with the effect of his performance
upon his own ear. It seemed to Brett homely and pleasant, the thought
that one of the most important people of eighty millions should find
his pleasure in an art for which he had neither gift nor training.

Mr. Merriman finished his piece with a badly fumbled chord, and turned
from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a
man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not
start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very heart of his
privacy was also in keeping with his reputed character. It was also like
him to look steadily at the young man for quite a long while before
speaking. But finally to be addressed in courteous and pleasant tones
was not what Brett expected. For this he had his own good looks to
thank, as Mr. Merriman hated, with the exception of his own music,
everything that was ugly.

"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Merriman. "But I can't for the life of me
think what you are doing on my yacht. I was expecting a man, but
not you."

"You couldn't guess," said Brett, "why I have been so impertinent as to
call upon you without an invitation."

"Then," said Mr. Merriman, "perhaps you had better tell me. I think I
have seen you before."

"My name is Brett," said Brett. "You may have seen me trying to play
tennis at Newport. I have often seen you there, looking on."

"You didn't come to accuse me of being a looker-on?" Mr. Merriman asked.

"No, sir," said Brett, "but I do wish that could have been the reason.
I've come, sir, as a matter of fact, because you are, on the contrary,
so very, very active in the game."

"I don't understand," said Merriman rather coldly,

"Oh," said Brett, "everybody I care for in the world is being ruined,
including myself, and I said, 'Mr. Merriman could save us all if he only
would.' So I came to ask you if you couldn't see your way to letting up
on us all."

"'Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman, "you may have heard, since gossip
occasionally concerns herself with me, that in my youth I was a priest."

Brett nodded.

"Well," continued Mr. Merriman, "I have never before listened to so
naive a confession as yours."

Brett blushed to his eyes.

"I knew when I came," he said, "that I shouldn't know how to go about
what I've come for."

"But I think I have a better opinion of you," smiled Mr. Merriman, and
his smile was very engaging. "You have been frank without being fresh,
you have been bashful without showing fear. You meet the eye in a manly
way, and you seem a clean and worthy young man. As opposed to these
things, what you might have thought out to say to me would
hardly matter."

"Oh," cried Brett impulsively, "if you would only let up!"

"I suppose, Mr. Brett," the banker smiled, even more engagingly, "that
you mean you would like me to come to the personal rescue of all those
persons who have recently shown bad judgment in the conduct of their
affairs. But let me tell you that I have precisely your own objections
to seeing people go to smash. But they _will_ do it. They don't even
come to me for advice."

"You wouldn't give it to them if they did," said Brett.

"No," said Mr. Merriman, "I couldn't. But I should like to, and a piece
of my mind to boot. Now, sir, you have suggested something for me to do.
Will you go further and tell me how I am to do it?"

"Why," said Brett, diffidently but unabashed, "you could start in early
to-morrow morning, couldn't you, and bull the market?"

"Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman forcefully, "I have for the last month
been straining my resources to hold the market. But it is too heavy,
sir, for one pair of shoulders."

A look of doubt must have crossed Brett's face, for the banker smote his
right fist into the palm of his left hand with considerable violence,
and rose to his feet, almost menacingly.

"Have the courtesy not to doubt my statements, young sir," he said
sharply. "I have made light of your intrusion; see that you do not make
light of the courtesy and consideration thus shown you."

"Of course, I believe you," said Brett, and he did.

"You are one of those," said Mr. Merriman, "who listen to what the run
of people say, and make capital of it."

"Of course, I can't help hearing what people say," said Brett.

"Or believing it!" Mr. Merriman laughed savagely, "What are they saying
of me these days?" he asked.

Brett hesitated.

"Come, come," said the great man, in a mocking voice. "You are here
without an invitation. Entertain me! Entertain me! Make good!"

Brett was nettled.

"Well," said he, "they say that Mr. Waters was tremendously extended for
a rise in stocks, and that you found it out, and that you hate him, and
that you went for him to give him a lesson, and that you pulled all the
props out of the market, and smashed it all to pieces, just for a
private spite. That's what they say!"

The banker was silent for quite a long time.

"If there wasn't something awful about that," he said at last, "it would
be very funny."

The officer who had ushered Brett into the saloon appeared at the door.

"Well?" said Merriman curtly.

"There's a gentleman," said the officer, "who wants to come aboard. He
says you are expecting him. But as you only mentioned one gentleman--"

"Yes, yes," said Merriman, "I'm expecting this other gentleman, too."

He turned to Brett.

"I am going to ask you to remain," he said, "to assist at a conference
on the present state of the market between yourself, and myself, and my
_arch-enemy_--Mr. Waters."

III

Even if Brett should live to be a distinguished financier himself--which
is not likely--he will never forget that midnight conference on board
the _Sappho_. He had supposed that famous men--unless they were dead
statesmen--thought only of themselves, and how they might best and most
easily increase their own power and wealth. He had believed with the
rest of the smaller Wall Street interests that the present difficulties
were the result of a private feud. Instead of this he now saw that the
supposed quarrellers had forgotten their differences, and were in the
closest kind of an alliance to save the situation. He discovered that
until prices had fallen fifty points neither of them had been in the
market to any significant extent; and that, to avert the appalling
calamities which seemed imminent, both were ready if necessary to
impoverish themselves or to take unusual risks of so doing. He learned
the real causes of the panic, so far as these were not hidden from
Merriman and Waters themselves, and when at last the two men decided
what should be attempted, to what strategic points they should send
re-enforcements, and just what assistance they should ask the Secretary
of the Treasury to furnish, Brett felt that he had seen history in
the making.

Waters left the _Sappho_ at one in the morning, and Brett was for going,
too, but Merriman laid a hand on the young man's shoulder and asked him
to remain for a few moments.

"Now, my son," he said, "you see how the panic has affected some of the
so-called big interests. It may be that Waters and I can't do very much.
But it will be good for you to remember that we tried; it will make you
perhaps see others in a more tolerant light. But for purposes of
conversation you will, of course, forget that you have been here. Now,
as to your own affairs--"

Mr. Merriman looked old and tired, but very indulgent and kind.

"Knowing what I know now," said Brett, "I would rather take my chances
with the other little fools who have made so much trouble for you and
Mr. Waters. If your schemes work out I'll be saved in spite of myself;
and if they don't--well, I hope I've learned not to be so great a
fool again."

"In every honest young man," said Merriman, "there is something of the
early Christian--he is very noble and very silly. Write your name and
telephone number on that sheet of paper. At least, you won't refuse
orders from me in the morning. Waters and I will have to use many
brokers to-morrow, of whom I hope you will consent to be one."

Brett hung his head in pleasure and shame. Then he looked Mr. Merriman
in the face with a bright smile.

"If you've got to help some private individual, Mr. Merriman, I'd rather
you didn't make it me; I'd rather you made it old man Callender. If he
goes under now he'll never get to the top again."

"Not Samuel B. Callender?" said Merriman, with a note of surprise and
very real interest in his voice. "Is he in trouble? I didn't know. Why,
that will never do--a fine old fighting character like that--and
besides ... why, wouldn't you have thought that he would have come to
me himself or that at least he would have confided in my son Jim?"

Brett winced.

Merriman wrote something upon a card and handed it to Brett.

"Can you see that he gets that?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said Brett.

"Tell him, then, to present it at my office the first thing in the
morning. It will get him straight to me. I can't stand idle and see the
father of the girl my boy is going to marry ruined."

"I didn't know--" said Brett. He was very white, and his lips trembled
in spite of his best efforts to control them. "I congratulate you, sir.
She is very lovely," he added.

Mr. Merriman regarded the miserable young man quizzically.

"But," he said, "Mr. Callender has three daughters."

"Oh, no," said Brett dismally, "there is only the one."

"My boy," said Mr. Merriman, "I am afraid that you are an incorrigible
plunger--at stocks, at romance, and at conclusions. I don't know if I am
going to comfort you or give you pain, but the girl my son is going to
marry is _Mary_ Callender."

The color returned to Brett's cheek and the sparkle to his eyes. He
grasped Mr. Merriman by both hands, and in a confidential voice he said:

"Mr. Merriman, there is no such person."

THE McTAVISH

I

By the look of her she might have been a queen, or a princess, or at the
very least a duchess. But she was no one of these. She was only a
commoner--a plain miss, though very far from plain. Which is
extraordinary when you consider that the blood of the Bruce flowed with
exceeding liveliness in her veins, together with the blood of many
another valiant Scot--Randolph, Douglas, Campbell--who bled with Bruce
or for him.

With the fact that she was not at the very least a duchess, _most_ of
her temporal troubles came to an abrupt end. When she tired of her
castle at Beem-Tay she could hop into her motor-car and fly down the
Great North Road to her castle at Brig O'Dread. This was a fifty-mile
run, and from any part of the road she could see land that belonged to
her--forest, farm, and moor. If the air at Beem-Tay was too formal, or
the keep at Brig O'Dread too gloomy, she could put up at any of her
half-dozen shooting lodges, built in wild, inaccessible, wild-fowly
places, and shake the dust of the world from her feet, and tread, just
under heaven, upon the heather.

But mixed up with all this fine estate was one other temporal trouble.
For, over and above the expenses of keeping the castles on a good
footing, and the shooting lodges clean and attractive, and the motor-car
full of petrol, and the horses full of oats, and the lawns empty of
weeds, and the glass houses full of fruit, she had no money whatsoever.
She could not sell any of her land because it was entailed--that is, it
really belonged to somebody who didn't exist; she couldn't sell her
diamonds, for the same reason; and she could not rent any of her
shootings, because her ancestors had not done so. I honestly believe
that a sixpence of real money looked big to her.

Her first name was the same as that of the Lady of the Lake--Ellen. Her
last name was McTavish--if she had been a man she would have been The
McTavish (and many people did call her that)--and her middle names were
like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a
charge--Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family
tartan--heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses--and
she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking
ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland
loch, her cheeks from the briar rose, some of the notes of her voice
from the upland plover, and some from the lark. And her laugh was like
an echo of the sounds that the River Tay makes when it goes among
the shallows.

One day she was sitting all by herself in the Seventh Drawing Room
(forty feet by twenty-four) of Brig O'Dread Castle, looking from a
fourteen-foot-deep window embrasure, upon the brig itself, the river
rushing under it, and the clean, flowery town upon both banks. From most
of her houses she could see nothing but her own possessions, but from
Brig O'Dread Castle, standing, as it did, in one corner of her estates,
she could see past her entrance gate, with its flowery, embattled lodge,
a little into the outside world. There were tourists whirling by in
automobiles along the Great North Road, or parties of Scotch gypsies,
with their dark faces and ear-rings, with their wagons and folded tents,
passing from one good poaching neighborhood to the next. Sometimes it
amused her to see tourists turned from her gates by the proud porter who
lived in the lodge; and on the present occasion, when an automobile
stopped in front of the gate and the chauffeur hopped out and rang the
bell, she was prepared to be mildly amused once more in the same way.

The proud porter emerged like a conquering hero from the lodge, the
pleated kilt of the McTavish tartan swinging against his great thighs,
his knees bare and glowing in the sun, and the jaunty Highland bonnet
low upon the side of his head. He approached the gate and began to
parley, but not with the chauffeur; a more important person (if
possible) had descended from the car--a person of unguessable age, owing
to automobile goggles, dressed in a London-made shooting suit of tweed,
and a cap to match. The parley ended, the stranger appeared to place
something in the proud porter's hand; and the latter swung upon his heel
and strode up the driveway to the castle. Meanwhile the stranger
remained without the gate.

Presently word came to The McTavish, in the Seventh Drawing Room, that
an American gentleman named McTavish, who had come all the way from
America for the purpose, desired to read the inscriptions upon the
McTavish tombstones in the chapel of Brig O'Dread Castle. The porter,
who brought this word himself, being a privileged character, looked very
wistful when he had delivered it--as much as to say that the frightful
itching of his palm had not been as yet wholly assuaged. The
McTavish smiled.

"Bring the gentleman to the Great Tower door, McDougall," she said,
"and--I will show him about, myself."

The proud porter's face fell. His snow-white _mustachios_ took on a
fuller droop.

"McDougall," said The McTavish--and this time she laughed aloud--"if
the gentleman from America crosses my hand with silver, it shall
be yours."

"More like"--and McDougall became gloomier still--"more like he will
cross it with gold." (Only he said this in a kind of dialect that was
delightful to hear, difficult to understand, and would be insulting to
the reader to reproduce in print.)

"If it's gold," said The McTavish sharply, "I'll not part wi' it,
McDougall, and you may lay to that."

You might have thought that McDougall had been brought up in the Black
Hole of Calcutta--so sad he looked, and so hurt, so softly he left the
room, so loudly he closed the door.

The McTavish burst into laughter, and promised herself, not without some
compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should
materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as
much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at
her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and
whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of
the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet
upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the
corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on
her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed a courtesy.

The stranger McTavish was no more than thirty. He had brown eyes, and
wore upon his face a steady, enigmatic smile.

II

"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of Miss
McTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?"

"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name."

"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman.

"This way, sir," said The McTavish.

She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him
along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and
flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue
of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf.

"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he
dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes
among them."

"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman.

"Those are in the chapel," said The McTavish. "This way." And she swung
into another turf walk, long, wide, springy, and bordered by birches.

"Tell me," said the American, "is it true that Miss McTavish is down on
strangers?"

She looked at him over her shoulder. He still wore his enigmatic smile.

"I don't know what got into her," she said, "to let you in." She halted
in her tracks and, looking cautiously this way and that, like a
conspirator in a play: "She's a hard woman to deal with," she said,
"between you and me."

"I've heard something of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked
the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he
said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting,
stingy, bony female.'"

"He said that, did he?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Nevis, tightening her lips
and jangling her keys.

"But I didn't believe him," said the American; "I wouldn't believe what
he said of any cousin of mine."

"Is The McTavish your cousin?"

"Why, yes," said he; "but just which one I don't know. That's what I
have come to find out. I have an idea--I and my lawyers have--that if
The McTavish died without a direct heir, I should be The McTavish; that
is, that this nice castle, and Red Curries Mound, and all and all, would
be mine. I could come every August for the shooting. It would be
very nice."

"It wouldn't be very nice for The McTavish to die before you," said
Mrs. Nevis. "She's only twenty-two."

"Great heavens!" said the American. "Between you, you made me think she
was a horrid old woman!"

"Horrid," said Mrs. Nevis, "very. But not old."

She led the way abruptly to a turf circle which ended the birch walk and
from which sprang, in turn, a walk of larch, a walk of Lebanon cedars,
and one of mountain ash. At the end of the cedar walk, far off, could be
seen the squat gray tower of the chapel, heavy with ivy. McTavish caught
up with Mrs. Nevis and walked at her side. Their feet made no sound upon
the pleasant, springy turf. Only the bunch of keys sounded occasionally.

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