And Mr. Pompilard bowed and turned to leave, just as another knock was heard at the door. He opened it, encountering four men, one of whom kicked the unoffending terrier; an indignity which Pompilard resented by switching the aggressor smartly twice round the legs, and then passed on. He had not descended five steps when a bullet from a pistol grazed his whiskers. “Not a bad shot that, my Southern friend!” said the old man, deliberately continuing his descent.
Before losing sight of Pompilard we must explain why he was desirous that his wife should communicate with Mrs. Berwick.
Inheriting a fortune from his mother, Albert Pompilard had managed to squander it in princely expenditures before he was twenty-five years old. The vulgar dissipations of sensualists he despised. He abstained from wine and strong drink at a time when to abstain was to be laughed at. With the costliest viands and liquors on his table for guests, he himself ate sparingly and drank cold water. Had he been as scrupulously moral in the management of his soul as he was of his body, he would have been a saint. But he was a spendthrift and a gambler on a large scale.
Having ruined himself financially, he married. A little money which his wife brought him was staked entire on a stock operation, and won. Thence a new fortune larger than the first. At thirty-five he was worth half a million. He took his wife, two daughters, and a son to Paris, gave entertainments that made even royalty envious, and in ten years returned to New York a bankrupt. His wife died, and Pompilard appeared once more at the stock board. Ill-luck now pursued him with remorseless pertinacity, but never succeeded in disturbing his equanimity. He was frightfully in debt, but the consideration never for a moment marred his digestion nor his slumbers. The complacency of a man contented with himself and the world shed its beams over his features always.
At fifty, a widower, with three children, he carried off and married Miss Aylesford, who at the time was on a visit to New York,—a girl of eighteen, handsome, accomplished, and worth half a million. In vain had her brother tried to open her eyes to Pompilard’s character as an inveterate fortune-hunter and spendthrift. The wilful young lady would have her way. Pompilard took possession, paid his debts with interest, and, with less than one third of his wife’s property left, once more tried his fortune in Wall Street. This time he won. At sixty he was richer than ever. He became the owner of a domain of three hundred acres on the Hudson,—built palatial residences,—one in the country, and one on the favored avenue that leads to Murray Hill,—bought a steamboat to transport his guests to and from the city,—gave a series of fêtes, and kept open houses.
But soon one of those panics in the money-market which take place periodically to baffle the calculations and paralyze the efforts of large holders of stocks, occurred to confound Pompilard. In trying to hold his stocks, he was compelled to make heavy sacrifices, and then, in trying to hedge, he heaped loss on loss. He had to sell his acres on the Hudson,—then his town house,—finally his horses; and at sixty-nine we find him trying to get a mortgage for thirty thousand dollars on five or six poor little houses, the last remnant from the wreck of his wife’s property. In the hope of effecting this he had persuaded his wife to communicate with her niece, Mrs. Berwick.
The brother of Mrs. Pompilard, Robert Aylesford, had inherited a large estate, which he had increased by judicious investments in land on the site of Chicago, some years before that wonderful city had risen like an exhalation in a night from the marsh on which it stands. His wife had died in child-birth, leaving a daughter whom he named after her, Leonora. His own health was subsequently impaired by a malignant fever, caught in humane attendance on a Mr. Carteret, a stranger whom he had accidentally met at Cairo in Southern Illinois.
Deeply chagrined at his sister’s imprudent marriage, and feeling that his own health was failing, Aylesford conceived a somewhat romantic project in regard to his only child, Leonora. During a winter he had passed in Italy he had become acquainted with the Ridgways, a refined and intelligent family from Western Massachusetts. One of the members, a lady, kept a boarding-school of deserved celebrity in the town of Lenbridge.
To this lady Aylesford took his little girl, then only two years old, and said: “I wish you to bring her up under the name of Leonora Lockhart, her mother’s maiden name, and her own, though not all of it. When she is married, let her know that the rest of it is Aylesford. She is so young she will not remember much of her father. Keep both her and the world in ignorance of the fact that she is born to a fortune. My wish is that she shall not be the victim of a fortune-hunter in marriage; and you will take all needful steps to carry out my wish. I leave you the address of my man of business, Mr. Keep, in New York, who will supply you with a thousand dollars a year as your compensation for supporting and educating her. Neither she nor any one else must know that even this allotment is on her account. My physician orders me to pass the winter in Cuba, and I may not return. Should that be my lot, I look to you to be in the place of a parent to my child. Her relations may suppose her dead. I shall not undeceive them. Her nearest relative is her aunt, my sister, Mrs. Pompilard, who, in the event of my death, will be legally satisfied that such a disposition is made of my property that it cannot directly or indirectly fall into the hands of that irreclaimable spendthrift, her husband. As I have lived for the last twenty years at the West, I do not think you will have any difficulty in keeping my secret.”
Subsequently he said: “On the day of Leonora’s marriage, should she have passed her eighteenth year, the trustees of my property will have directions to hand over to her the income. Till that it is done, your lips must be sealed in regard to her prospects. In the event of her remaining single, I have made provisions which Mr. Keep will explain to you. I am resolved that my daughter shall not have to buy a husband.”