Every host has had some experience of the fact that there are guests of whom he takes leave at the drawing-room door, and others who require that he should accompany them to the very frontier of his kingdom, and only part with as they step into their carriage. The characters of a story represent each of these classes. Some make their exit quietly, unobtrusively; they slip away with a little gesture of the hand, or a mere look to say adieu. Others arise with a pretentious dignity from their places, and, in the ruffle of their voluminous plumage, seem to say, “When we spread out our wings for flight, the small birds may flutter away to their nests.” It is needless that we should tell our readers that we have reached that critical moment. The dull roll of carriages to the door, and the clank of the let-down steps tell that the hour of departure has arrived, and that the entertainer will very soon be left all alone, without “One of Them.”
As in the real world, no greater solecism can be committed than to beg the uprising guest to reseat himself, nor is there any measure more certain of disastrous failure; so in fiction, when there is a move in the company, the sooner they all go the better.
While I am painfully impressed with this fact,—while I know and feel that my last words must be very like the leave-takings of that tiresome button-holder who, great-coated and muffled himself, will yet like to detain you in the cold current of a doorway,—I am yet sensible of the deference due to those who have indulgently accompanied me through my story, and would desire to leave no questions unanswered with regard to those who have figured before him.
Mr. Trover, having overheard the dialogue which had such an intimate bearing on his own fortunes, lost no time, as we have seen, in quitting the hotel at Bregenz; and although Winthrop expected to see him at dinner, he was not surprised to hear that he had left a message to say he had gone over to the cottage to dine with Mrs. Hawke. It was with an evident sense of relief that the honest American learned this fact. There was something too repulsive to his nature in the thought of sitting down at the same table in apparent good fellowship with the man whom he knew to be a villain, and whose villany a very few hours would expose to the world; but what was to be done? Quackinboss had insisted on the point; he had made him give a solemn pledge to make no change in his manner towards Trover till such tine as the Laytons had returned with full and incontestable proofs of his guilt.
“We'll spoil everything, sir,” said Quackinboss, “if we harpoon him in deep water. We must go cautiously to work, and drive him up, gradually, towards the shallows, where, if one miss, another can strike him.”
Winthrop was well pleased to hear that the “chase” was at least deferred, and that he was to dine tète-à-tête with his true-hearted countryman.
Hour after hour went over, and in their eager discussion of the complicated intrigue they had unravelled, they lost all recollection of Trover or his absence. It was the character of the woman which absorbed their entire thoughts; and while Winthrop quoted her letters, so full of beautiful sentiments, so elevated, and so refined, Quackinboss related many little traits of her captivating manner and winning address.
“It's all the same in natur', sir,” said he, summing up. “Where will you see prettier berries than on the deadly nightshade? and do you think that they was made to look so temptin' for nothing? Or wasn't it jest for a lesson to us to say, 'Be on your guard, stranger; what's good to look at may be mortal bad to feed on.' There's many a warnin' in things that don't talk with our tongues, but have a language of their own.”
“Very true all that, sir,” resumed the other; “but it was always a puzzle to me why people with such good faculties would make so bad a use of them.”
“Ain't it all clear enough they was meant for examples,—jest that and no more? You see that clever fellow yonder; he can do fifty things you and I could n't; he has got brains for this, that, and t'other. Well, if he's a rogue, he won't be satisfied with workin' them brains God has given him, because he has no right sense of thankfulness in his heart, but he 'll be counterfitin' all sorts of brains that he has n't got at all: these are the devil's gifts, and they do the devil's work.”