The two belated passengers had tumbled in astern and now came forward, with carpet-bag in hand, to ascend the staircase to the saloon. As they passed the gangway, still open, the man with the cocked pistol turned, and they met face to face.
They dropped their luggage and stepped toward him. But he was too quick for them. The nervous, trembling fingers clutched at the cocked pistol; there was a report; he staggered back with his hand at his breast and fell through the open gangway. The great wheel smote upon the muddy current and tossed up carelessly in the turbid foam behind a dead man, with forehead mangled by a paddle-stroke—a dead man, going on a voyage of unknown length along the busy river.
Among the people who rushed aft at the cry of horror that arose was the woman registered as the lady of Mr. Saunders. She saw the body come whirling slowly by and lazily drown away. She sank upon a seat, and was there still in stony, speechless dread, when she felt a hand laid not unkindly on her shoulder.
“Betty, we meant to kill him,” said Mr. Budlong; “perhaps it would have been murder. We were spared the final crime. I’m sorry for you, Betty, and forgive you from my heart,” and the poor old gentleman, worn out, heartbroken, his life no longer sustained by the tense vigour of a single purpose—poor old Bud drooped and fell blasted, a paralytic, at the feet of his unfaithful wife.
CHAPTER XXIV
MR. WADDY ACCOMPLISHES HIS RETURN
OPPOSITE Mr. Belden’s house, which, about the time of his departure from Newport, passed into the hands of his creditors, was the old country place of the Janeway family. It was still in the possession of the representative of that family, under a different name.
The late Mr. Janeway, though a proud and, as it finally appeared, a bad man, remembered the inherited debt of his family to the Waddys, and felt some aristocratic vanity in his tutelage of the young Ira, our hero. A close intimacy of childish friendship grew up between Mr. Janeway’s only child and daughter, Mary, and his young protégé. Young Horace Belden, the handsome son of the next neighbour, Mr. Belden, the great merchant, was also a companion of Miss Janeway; in fact, the parents of these two destined them for each other. Adjoining estates, large fortunes, good blood, beauty on both sides—the two fathers thought the match a perfect one and the young people were taught to consider it settled. Something unsettled it. Horace Belden unsettled it by being himself and that self was, from early years, not a noble one. He unsettled it in the mind of Mrs. Janeway, as he grew older, by what he called his flirtation with Sally Bishop, a flaunting girl, daughter of Mr. Janeway’s ex-coachman.
Belden, however, remained very devoted to Miss Janeway. He loved her as much as was in his nature, and his pride was fully engaged in winning her, the great match of the day and his by long convention. As he grew older and no better, he began to consider this pure young lady as his bond to purer life and mentally to throw on her the responsibility of his future intended reformation. She must become his, or he would revenge his disappointment, his wounded pride, and his failure of her help and control in his proposed change of character, upon her, upon society, and upon himself.