The Story of Duciehurst: A Tale of the Mississippi

by Charles Egbert Craddock

From this moment circumstances seemed contorted and difficult of adjustment. He had not noticed in his absorption that the cut inflicted upon him from his own knife was bleeding profusely, and beginning to sting and smart violently. He must have unwittingly scattered drops of blood all along the deck and stairs as he came. It was a marvel, he reflected, still optimistic in instinctive self-defense, that none had fallen on his suit of white flannel. He held the wounded hand in the water, hoping to stanch the flow, but the red drops welled forth with an impetuous gush, as of a burst of tears. The cut was not deep, but it was clear and clean, for the blade had been as sharp as a razor. With a little time it would dry in the cicatrix and close the wound. His back toward the Aglaia, he felt sufficiently free of espionage to tear his linen handkerchief to shreds, using his teeth to start the rent, for with that hand dripping not only with blood, but with bloodguiltiness, he dared not search his pockets for his knife. He bound up the wound, carefully, his plans forming in his mind with all minute detail as he adjusted the bandages. He would loiter about the river, he said to himself, till the bleeding ceased, which must be in half an hour’s time, and the hand would then not be liable to notice. With his splendid physical condition any wound would be swift in healing. It would be close on nightfall, he meditated, and this was all the better, for he would board the yacht under cover of the darkness and give orders to drop down the river to the Gulf, thence to the open sea—his ultimate destination being some port beyond the reach of extradition, for he had lately tested his hold on public favor, and was resolved to risk nothing on its uncertain tenure. He could perfect his plans when in mid-ocean. Meantime, the present claimed all his faculties.

With the fast plying oars and the strong sweep of the current the skiff shot along with a speed that suggested a winning shell in a ‘varsity race. When he approached within ear-shot of the Aglaia he hailed the skipper, who promptly responded from the deck, and still at a considerable distance, well in mid-channel, Floyd-Rosney shouted out his intentions to proceed in the skiff a few miles further, as he wished to investigate the old Duciehurst mansion, and ordered the Aglaia to drop down at six o’clock and pick him up there.

As his excitement and the fever of his fury began to subside, the flow of blood slackened perceptibly. He noticed that the saturated portion of the bandage was growing stiff and dry; that the blood no longer continued to spread on the fabric. He would throw it away presently and wash his hands clear of the traces in the river.

He looked up at the massive walls of Duciehurst with a deep rancor as he approached the old mansion. The braided currents, making diagonally across the river, were carrying him toward it as if he were borne thither by no will of his own, and indeed this was in some sort true.

He loathed to see it again. He wished he had never seen it. Yet in the same instant he upbraided his attitude of mind as folly. What man of business instincts, he argued, would revolt against a great and substantial accession to his fortune, coming to him in regular course of law, because it was coveted by its former owners, ousted forty years before. He felt hard hit by untoward fate. All had been against him, from the beginning of this accursed imbroglio. He had done what he had thought right and proper,—what any sane and just man would endorse—and he had lost wife, child, and heavily in estate, and was possibly destined to exile for life,—if—if that ghastly witness on the stranded steamer should take up its testimony against him. But no! it was silenced forever! It could not even protect the man whom Ducie had expected to meet should that unlucky wight persist in keeping his appointment, finding more than he bargained for, Floyd-Rosney said grimly.

The boat was running cleverly in to his destination. The landing was under water already, and the skiff glided over its location with never a sign suggesting its submergence. The old levee was indicated in barely a long ripple, washing continually above its summit, and this, too, the skiff skimmed, undulating merely to the tossing of the waters about the obstruction. The relative height of the ground on which the deserted mansion stood alone protected it from inundation, although as yet the disaster of overflow had nowhere fallen upon the land. But evidently the water would soon be within the fine old rooms, and Floyd-Rosney, looking with the eye of a wealthy as well as thrifty proprietor upon the scene, not only willing but able to protect, felt with a surly sigh of frustration that but for the impending lawsuit he would have built a stanch levee to reclaim the old ruin, even though there was a serviceable embankment protecting the lands in the rear.

The large arrogance of the massive cornice of the main building, the wide spread of the wings on either side, appealed to his taste of a justified magnificence. This structure was erected in the days of princelings who had the opulence to sustain its pretensions, and of his acquaintance he knew no man but himself who could afford the waste of money on its restoration. There was something appealing to an esthetic sense in the forwardness of the neglected vegetation about the glassless goggle-eyed ruin. In the magnolias on either side of the wings he caught sight of the white glint of blooms, so early though it was! the pink wands of the almond blossoms waved here and there in the breeze. The grass of the terraces was freshly springing. Vines draped the broken pedestals that had once upheld stone vases, and on the façade of the tall structure the sun crept up and up as suavely benign, as loath to leave as in the days when its splendors dominated the Mississippi, the “show place” of all the river.

Floyd-Rosney walked slowly along the broad pavement and up the long flight of steps to the wide doorless portal. Within shadows lurked, and memories—how bitter! He hesitated to go in—the influence of the place was like the thrall of a fate. He wished again he had never seen it. But he could hear, so definitely the water transmitted the sound, the engines of the Aglaia getting up steam, and he was conscious of the scrutiny of the skipper’s powerful lenses.

Through all the vacant vastness swept the fresh breath of the river, so close at hand. The light from the sinking sun, broadly aslant, fell through the gaping windows and lay athwart the rooms in immaterial bands of burnished gold. The illusion of motion was continuous on the grand staircase where the motes danced in ethereal, hazy illumination. The contrasting dun-gray shadows imparted a depth and richness to the flare of ruddy gold, reddening dreamily as the day slowly tended to its close. All was silence, absolute silence. As he wandered aimlessly from room to room, his step loud in the quietude, the delicate scent of a white jessamine, early abloom, bringing its vernal tribute of incense to the forlorn old ruin year after year, despite half a century of neglect, thrilled his senses and smote some chord of softer feeling. A sentiment of self-justification rose in his breast. How was it that all had gone with him so strangely awry! Wherein had he erred? He had but exerted his prerogative to order the affairs of his family according to his best judgment in its interest, as any man might and should do, and—behold, this tumult of tortures was unloosed upon him. His wife had utilized the opportunity as a pretext to flee to Randal Ducie, and but for this day’s work the deserted and divorced would have been fleeced by the courts to finance the new matrimonial venture. He had done right, he said, thrusting his white cap back from his heated brow. He had done well.

It had not been his intention to kill an unarmed man; the fatality of the blow had been an accident, but it was irrevocable, and it behooved him to look to the future. No one but the skipper of the Aglaia could have known of his entrance upon the derelict, and if he had chanced to observe it, a word in his employee’s ear, that he had discovered the body there—murdered probably—and did not wish to be called as witness would be sufficient for the present; the skipper would have forgotten the whole incident before he had entered the first day’s run at sea in the log of the Aglaia. There was no reason to connect him with the tragedy except that the two were on the river the same day. He had retracted, and exonerated, and handsomely eaten all manner of humble pie, and it was to be supposed that relations had been established as friendly as could exist between rival claimants of an estate now to be adjudicated by the courts.