The Daughter of Anderson Crow

by George Barr McCutcheon

"Well, it was he who concocted the diabolical scheme to one day get possession of your inheritance. He coerced my poor mother into acquiescense, and she became his wretched tool instead of an honoured wife and helpmate. One night, when you were three weeks old, the house in which we lived was burned to the ground, the inmates narrowly escaping. So narrow was the escape, in fact, that you were said to have been left behind in the confusion, and the world was told, the next day, that the granddaughter of Lord Brace had been destroyed by the flames.

"The truth, however, was not told. My stepfather did not dare to go so far as to kill you. It was he who caused the fire, but he had you removed to a small hotel in another part of the city some hours earlier, secretly, of course, but in charge of a trusted maid. My mother was responsible for this. She would not listen to his awful plan to leave you in the house. But you might just as well have died. No one was the wiser and you were given up as lost. A week later, my mother and Mr. Banks started for America. You and I were with them, but you went as the daughter of a maid-servant—Ellen Hayes.

"This is the story as my mother has told it to me after all these years. My stepfather's plan, of course, was to place you where you could never be found, and then to see to it that our grandfather did not succeed in changing his will. Moreover, he was bound and determined that he himself should be named as trustee—when the fortune came over at Lord Brace's death. That part of it turned out precisely as he had calculated. Let me go on a few months in advance of my story. Lord Brace died, and the will was properly probated and the provisions carried out. Brace Hall and the estates went to your father and the bequest came to me, for you were considered dead. My stepfather was made trustee. He gave bond in England and America, I believe. In any event, the fortune was to be mine when I reached the age of twenty-one, but each year the income, nearly twenty-five thousand dollars, was to be paid to my stepfather as trustee, to be safely invested by him. My mother's name was not mentioned in the document, except once, to identify me as the beneficiary. I can only add to this phase of the hateful conspiracy, that for nineteen years my stepfather received this income, and that he used it to establish his own fortune. By investing what was supposed to be my money, he has won his own way to wealth.

"Mr. Banks decided that the operations were safest from this side of the Atlantic. He and my mother took up their residence in New York, and it has been their home ever since. He spent the first half year after your suspected death in London, solely for the purpose of establishing himself in Lord Brace's favour. Within a year after the death of Lord Brace your father was killed by a poacher on the estate. He had but lately returned from Egypt, and was in full control of the lands and property attached to Brace Hall. If my stepfather had designs upon Brace Hall, they failed, for the lands and the title went at once to your father's cousin, Sir Harry Brace, the present lord.

"So much for the conditions in England then and now. I now return to that part of the story which most interests and concerns you. My poor mother was compelled, within a fortnight after we landed in New York, to give up the dangerous infant who was always to hang like a cloud between fortune and honour. The maid-servant was paid well for her silence. By the way, she died mysteriously soon after coming to America, but not before giving to my mother a signed paper setting forth clearly every detail in so far as it bore upon her connection with the hateful transaction. Conscience was forever at work in my mother's heart; honour was constantly struggling to the surface, only to be held back by fear of and loyalty to the man she loved.

"It was decided that the most humane way to put you out of existence was to leave you on the doorstep of some kindly disposed person, far from New York. My stepfather and my mother deliberately set forth on this so-called mission of mercy. They came north, and by chance, fell in with a resident of Boggs City while in the station at Albany. They were debating which way to turn for the next step. My mother was firm in the resolve that you should be left in the care of honest, reliable, tender-hearted people, who would not abuse the trust she was to impose. The Boggs City man said he had been in Albany to see about a bill in the legislature, which was to provide for the erection of a monument in Tinkletown—where a Revolutionary battle had been fought. It was he who spoke of Anderson Crow, and it was his stories of your goodness and generosity, Mr. Crow, that caused them to select you as the man who was to have Rosalie, and, with her, the sum of one thousand dollars a year for your trouble and her needs.

"My mother's description of that stormy night in February, more than twenty-one years ago, is the most pitiful thing I have ever listened to. Together they made their way to Tinkletown, hiring a vehicle in Boggs City for the purpose. Mr. Banks left the basket on your porch while mother stood far down the street and waited for him, half frozen and heartsick. Then they hurried out of town and were soon safely on their way to New York. It was while my stepfather was in London, later on, that mother came up to see Rosalie and make that memorable first payment to Mr. Crow. How it went on for years, you all know. It was my stepfather's cleverness that made it so impossible to learn the source from which the mysterious money came.

"We travelled constantly, always finding new places of interest in which my mother's conscience could be eased by contact with beauty and excitement. Gradually she became hardened to the conditions, for, after all, was it not her own child who was to be enriched by the theft and the deception? Mr. Banks constantly forced that fact in upon her mother-love and her vanity. Through it all, however, you were never neglected nor forgotten. My mother had your welfare always in mind. It was she who saw that you and I were placed at the same school in New York, and it was she who saw that your training in a way was as good as it could possibly be without exciting risk.

"Of course, I knew nothing of all this. I was rolling in wealth and luxury, but not in happiness. Instinctively I loathed my stepfather. He was hard, cruel, unreasonable. It was because of him that I left school and afterward sought to earn my own living. You know, Rosalie, how Tom Reddon came into my life. He was the son of William Reddon, my stepfather's business partner, who had charge of the Western branch of the concern in Chicago. We lived in Chicago for several years, establishing the business. Mr. Banks was until recently president of the Banks & Reddon Iron Works. Last year, you doubtless know, the plant was sold to the great combine and the old company passed out of existence. This act was the result of a demand from England that the trust under which he served be closed and struck from the records. It was his plan to settle the matter, turn the inheritance over to me according to law, and then impose upon my inexperience for all time to come. The money, while mine literally, was to be his in point of possession.

"But he had reckoned without the son of his partner. Tom Reddon in some way learned the secret, and he was compelled to admit the young man into all of his plans. This came about some three years ago, while I was in school. I had known Tom Reddon in Chicago. He won my love. I cannot deny it, although I despise him to-day more deeply than I ever expect to hate again. He was even more despicable than my stepfather. Without the faintest touch of pity, he set about to obliterate every chance Rosalie could have had for restitution. Time began to prove to me that he was not the man I thought him to be. His nature revealed itself; and I found I could not marry him. Besides, my mother was beginning to repent. She awoke from her stupor of indifference and strove in every way to circumvent the plot of the two conspirators, so far as I was concerned. The strain told on her at last, and we went to California soon after my ridiculous flight from Tinkletown last winter. It was not until after that adventure that I began to see deep into the wretched soul of Tom Reddon.