CAPTAIN BILDER’S VISITOR.
While the young ladies of the Dorcas Club were sleeping soundly in their rooms at the hotel at Fort Point, and the crews of the Ocean-Born and the yachts were sleeping soundly on board the several craft at anchor, the steamer from Boston made her stop at the wharf in Belfast. Among the passengers who landed there was a well-dressed lady, not a stylish person, but one who would have passed for the wife of a well-to-do farmer, whose ideas were rather above the homespun order. She might have been forty-five, or she might have been older; but this is a delicate question to settle. She called a carriage, and was driven to the principal hotel. She took a room, and after breakfast she seated herself in the parlor, and sent for the clerk.
“Is there a young man by the name of McGusher at this house?” asked the lady.
“No, madam; he is not here at present,” replied the clerk.
“Not here!” exclaimed the guest.
“Not now; he was here for a day or so, but he left a week ago.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“I think he has gone up the river with a party which left yesterday morning.”
“Then he has not been staying at this hotel?” added the lady, apparently somewhat surprised.
“He was here a day, or part of a day; I don’t remember how long,” answered the clerk.
“Do you know where he went when he left the hotel?”
“To a private house.”
“Whose house?”
“He said he was invited to the residence of Captain Bilder to stay a week or two; and I suppose he went there.”
“Captain Bilder’s!” exclaimed the lady.
“Yes, ma’am; and I heard of his being with the boat clubs on some of their excursions; but I don’t know anything more about him,” added the clerk, moving towards the door, as if he had already practised too much condescension in answering so many questions.
The lady was musing over the information she had obtained, and she said nothing more for a few moments. The clerk left the parlor, but he returned immediately.
“I beg your pardon, madam, but I believe you did not register your name,” said he.
“You can enter my name upon the register,” replied the guest in an absent manner.
“I will, if you will be kind enough to tell me what it is.”
“Mrs. Banford, New York,” she replied.
“Mrs. Banford, New York,” added the clerk, bowing and retreating.
“Stop a moment, if you please,” interposed the guest. “Does Captain Bilder live where he did a dozen years ago?”
“I believe so, Mrs. Banford, though I really don’t know where he lived a dozen years ago. I can tell you where he lives now, though I heard he was going to move out of his house.”
“Going to move? Does he intend to leave Belfast?” asked the lady.
“I’m sure I don’t know where he is going. Do you know the captain?”
“I used to know him years ago; but I haven’t seen him for at least ten years.”
“Then perhaps you haven’t heard that things have been going wrong with him,” added the clerk, who was astonishingly garrulous for a hotel clerk dealing with a stranger.
“Indeed! What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Banford, with deep interest.
“I don’t know about it, but it is all over the city that he has lost his property, speculating in New York.”
“Lost his property!” gasped the lady, greatly startled at this information.
“That’s what they say; and what everybody says must be true. He isn’t worth a dollar now, and must move out of his fine house, sell his horses and carriages, and go to work again. It’s a hard case; but it’s just what happens to the best of men.”
“Not worth a dollar?” repeated Mrs. Banford, to whom this seemed to be disastrous intelligence.
“I don’t know anything about it myself; I only tell you what is town talk,” replied the clerk, apparently unwilling to bear any of the responsibility of the captain’s financial disaster.
Mrs. Banford dropped into a rocking-chair, and, whether from sympathy or other motives, she seemed to labor under some great anxiety, evidently caused by Captain Bilder’s misfortune. As she said nothing more, the clerk retired, and wrote her name on the register at the office.
“Lost all his property! Not worth a dollar!” muttered Mrs. Banford to herself, as, much excited, she tilted back and forth in the rocking-chair.
She sat there half an hour, curvetting, like a race horse, in the chair. The news she had received doubtless deranged some plan she had formed, and which had occasioned her visit to Belfast. Then she got up, and nervously walked the room.
“Not worth a dollar! Why didn’t the fool tell me this in his letter?” she muttered, impatiently.
But she did not indicate who the “fool” was; and after she had taken a day’s wear out of the parlor carpet, she went to the office, and asked for a carriage. It was at the door, and getting in, she told the driver to take her to Captain Bilder’s house. In five minutes she reached her destination; but her excitement and nervousness seemed to increase all the time. The driver rang the bell; and having ascertained that the ship-master was at home, Mrs. Banford entered the house.
“I suppose you don’t know me now, Captain Bilder,” said the lady, as the captain presented himself before her.
“Mrs. Banford!” exclaimed the ship-master, promptly recognizing her as soon as she spoke. “Is it possible!”
“I didn’t think you would know me,” replied Mrs. Banford, taking the captain’s offered hand. “It’s almost ten years since I left Belfast.”
“All of that. Where have you been all these years? I believe you were going to Oregon when you left.”
“I did go there; but I didn’t stay long. I have been living with--with a friend of mine, in the State of New York, for several years. But how is Miss Kate?”
“Very well, indeed, I thank you. She has grown up into a great girl, and you wouldn’t know her.”
“I suppose not,” she added, rather coldly.
“She is very strong and healthy; and more than these, she is as good a girl as ever lived,” added the captain, warmly.
“She always was a good girl when I took care of her.”
“She is just as good as she ever was. She has gone on an excursion up to Bangor with the boat club. You don’t seem to have grown much older since you left Belfast. I suppose everything has gone well with you.”
“Yes, very well, indeed.”
“I’m happy to hear it. I am very glad, indeed, to see you again. I was thinking the other day, that I wished to see you very much indeed.”
“Well, I’m sure I’m just as glad to see you,” added Mrs. Banford; but even Captain Bilder could observe that there was not much heart in her words. “I hope everything has gone well with you sir.”
“No; I’m sorry to say, things have gone all wrong with me of late. In a word, I’ve lost all my property, and I’m not worth a single dollar that I can call my own.”
“I’m sorry to hear that;” and there could be no doubt that she was sorry, if not from sympathy, then for some other motive.
Captain Bilder recited his misfortunes at some length; but he was by this time reconciled to his hard lot, and did not bewail it.
“I’m sure I’m sorry for you,” said Mrs. Banford, when the story was finished. “Did anything ever come of that letter you received just before I went away?”
She asked this question with an assumed indifference, and her eyes wandered about the room as she did so. “I suppose you remember that letter. It had a piece of card in it.”
“O, yes; I remember all about it,” replied Captain Bilder, who, however, did not seem to be very communicative on the subject.
The ship-master had given a great deal of thought to that letter, and to the one which had been delivered to him by Mr. Arthur McGusher. Whatever the object of the one or the other of the writers of these letters, it was evident to him that each of them was quite familiar with his past history, and with his business affairs. He had endeavored to connect them with some one he had known in former years. Mrs. Banford had been in his mind more than once, as almost the only person who had knowledge enough of the incidents of his career to write those letters; or, rather, the last one; for the first had come while she was still his housekeeper. But then he had believed for years that she was in Oregon, where it would have been hardly possible for her to manage such an enterprise as that in which Mr. McGusher was engaged. Now it appeared that Mrs. Banford had been in Oregon only a short time, and for several years had resided in the State of New York. He was disposed to ask if she lived in Goshen, or to suggest that she did; but he was a prudent man, and did not care to commit himself.
“I suppose no one ever brought the other pieces of the card,” added Mrs. Banford. “It looked like a ridiculous piece of business, in the first place, to me.”
“Well, it didn’t to me,” replied Captain Bilder. “I’ll tell you why. If my boy was really stolen from the steamer on the Mississippi, and not drowned as I believe he was, the person that did it might have intended to restore him to me some time or other.”
“Why didn’t he do it, then?” demanded Mrs. Banford, “and not fool with those bits of card?”
“There may have been good reasons why the person did not restore the boy. In the first place, it is a penal offence to kidnap a child; and he may have been afraid of the consequences.”
“That may be,” added the late housekeeper, as if partially convinced.
“Then if anybody stole the child, it must have been in order to make some money out of me; and the person may be waiting for a good chance to open negotiations with me.”
“Do you think any one would wait ten or a dozen years?”
“It may be; I don’t know.”
“That’s all nonsense, Captain Bilder,” protested Mrs. Banford. “If the one that stole the child intended to make any money by the job, he would have commenced operations long before this time.”
“I think you are right.”
“If anybody stole the child, he is sorry for it, and wants to restore him to you.”
“I have hoped this might be the case.”
“Then you have had no letter since that first one?” said Mrs. Banford, rather sharply.
“I did not say so,” replied Captain Bilder, with a smile. “But speaking of letters reminds me that we have one for you.”
“A letter for me?”
“A letter for you; and the strange part of it is, that this letter came about ten years ago--a short time after you left, I think.”
“That is very strange. Whom is it from?” asked Mrs. Banford.
“Of course I don’t know: I didn’t open it. I kept hoping that we should hear from you. You went to Oregon from here, and I had not your address. It was stuck into the looking-glass frame in one of the spare chambers. Kate wanted to send it to the dead letter office in Washington, that it might be opened, and returned to the person who wrote it; but I told her to let it remain where it was, so that it might not be forgotten. I expected to hear from you some time. Of course I shouldn’t have kept it if I had supposed it would be ten years before I heard from you. If you will excuse me for a moment, I will get the letter.”
She was very willing to excuse the captain, for she evidently knew what the letter contained, or what it ought to contain, whether Mr. McGusher knew or not when he opened it. In a moment the captain returned with the letter, and gave it to Mrs. Banford. She read the address; then she turned it over and looked at the back. The envelope was a white one; or, rather, it had been white in its day, but was now musty and discolored with age. She could not help seeing that the flap of the envelope was daubed and dirty where it was sealed; that it had been vigorously pressed, rubbed, and marked with finger nails. With a nervous hand, she tore the letter open. She was satisfied that the seal had been tampered with; the daubs and dirt had already convinced her on this point. She took the sheet of paper from the envelope, and unfolded it. Before she thought of reading it, she opened the sheet, turned it over and over, and then looked in her lap and on the floor, to ascertain whether anything had dropped from it. Finding nothing, she looked into the envelope, but it was entirely empty.
“What are you looking for, Mrs. Banford?” asked Captain Bilder, who thought the actions of his former housekeeper were rather extraordinary.
“I was looking to see if there was anything in the letter,” replied Mrs. Banford, fixing her eye-glasses on her nose, and proceeding to read the letter.
It was very short, as we have had occasion to remark before, and was quickly read. Mrs. Banford opened the sheet again, turned it over, and looked into the envelope once more. She seemed to be very much disturbed, and even more nervous and excitable than before. Finally, she fixed her gaze upon the back of the envelope, soiled by the dirty, perspiring fingers of Mr. McGusher.
“Captain Bilder,” said Mrs. Banford, with her lips pursed up, and with an expression of the utmost severity, which rather amused the captain, who, of course, had no idea of the difficulty under which his visitor was laboring.
“You were about to say something, Mrs. Banford,” replied the ship-master, after he had waited a moment for her to proceed.
“I was, Captain Bilder!” answered she, with added sternness. “This letter has been opened!”
299.]
“I see it has; in fact, it is open now.”
“But it had been opened before you gave it to me!” snapped the lady.
“If it had been, I was not aware of the fact,” replied the captain, who did not seem to be much alarmed at the implied charge.
“It has been opened in this house!”
“How do you know?”
“It came here by mail, and it must have been opened here.”
“I think not. I am confident it could not have been opened here, Mrs. Banford. Certainly I did not open it; and I am just as sure that Kate did not.”
“I don’t know who opened it; but it has been opened,” persisted the visitor.
“Impossible, I should say. I was looking at the letter a few weeks ago, when I happened to be in the room where it was. I am sure it had not been opened then; and I have not seen it since.”
“Captain Bilder!”
“Well, Mrs. Banford?”
“This letter contained a thousand dollars in money!” added she, with all the severity she could crowd into the expression.
“A thousand dollars!” exclaimed the captain. “And it has been in the frame of the looking-glass for ten years. A thousand dollars? That’s rather a large story.”
“There was a thousand dollars in it, Captain Bilder; but now the money is gone! Who opened that letter? It was done in your house,” added Mrs. Banford.
“Do you mean to tell me there was a thousand dollars in that letter, which has lain in my house for the tenth part of a century?” demanded Captain Bilder, with energy. “I can’t believe it. Why, if that had been the case, the--”
“Read the letter then!” said the lady, almost in a fury, as she handed the document to her former employer.
If she had not been excited and angry when she did this, she would doubtless have considered the consequences of what she was doing. Captain Bilder eagerly grasped the letter, and proceeded to read its contents before his visitor could reconsider her action. It was as follows:--
“MRS. BANFORD: Enclosed I send you one thousand dollars in this letter. If you are not still liveing with Captain Bilder, let me know whare you are liveing. Yours, truely.”
This was all the letter contained; but the penmanship immediately attracted the attention of the captain. The spelling also challenged his observation; but both the writing and spelling were the same as in the letter in which the middle piece of the card was enclosed. The writer was a woman; and whoever she was, she persisted in retaining the final _e_ in words ending in _ing_. The writing too, was like that on the pieces of card. He was positive in regard to the penmanship, and he was satisfied that Mrs. Banford was, or had been, in communication with the person who wrote the card and the first letter.
“Are you satisfied, Captain Bilder?” asked the visitor.
“The writer of this letter certainly says she sends you a thousand dollars in it,” replied the captain.
“Well, sir, isn’t that enough?” demanded Mrs. Banford.
“Would anybody send you so large a sum without signing her name to the letter?”
“I suppose she forgot to put her name to it.”
“That may be; but if she received no reply to her letter, she would be likely to inquire into the matter.”
“She did inquire into it.”
“Ah, she did! She informed you that she had sent a letter to you containing a thousand dollars, in my care. If you knew the letter had been sent, nine or ten years ago, why didn’t you write to me about it?”
“I did write to you; but I suppose my letter was lost.”
“By the way, Mrs. Banford, who sent you this letter, with the money in it?” asked Captain Bilder, quietly.
“My sister, in Philadelphia.”
“What is her name?”
“Emily Gilpath.”
“Where does she live in Philadelphia?”
“At No. 1298 North Thirteenth Street.”
“Thank you. I am glad to know where I may find her, for the person who wrote the letter in your hand, enclosing the thousand dollars, is the one who wrote the anonymous letter containing the card.”
Mrs. Banford drew a long breath, and realized that she had made at least one bad blunder in allowing Captain Bilder to read her letter.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she replied, when she had in some measure recovered her self-possession. “I don’t care anything about it, either;” and perhaps she did not, since Captain Bilder had lost all his property. “All I want is my money--the two five-hundred dollar bills that were in that letter. That’s what I came here for; and I must have it.”
“The two five-hundred dollar bills! Then you know what the bills were?” suggested Captain Bilder.
“Of course I do. Didn’t my sister tell me what they were? You must have opened that letter; at any rate, it was done in your house, and you are responsible for the money. Look at that envelope! Don’t you see it has been opened?”
“I am confident now that it has been opened. A young man by the name of Arthur McGusher slept in that room one night.”
“You needn’t lay it to him, or to any of your company.”
“Then you know Mr. McGusher.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Of course I should not charge it upon him simply because he slept in the room. But I happen to know that he changed a five hundred dollar bill in Bangor the other day, though he told me he had not money enough to pay for a week’s board at the hotel. I think the bill can be had, for the cashier of the bank in Bangor, suspecting that all was not right, agreed to keep it.”
Mrs. Banford dropped into her chair, from which she had risen in the excitement of the moment. She was evidently overcome. She said she was sick, and would see the captain again. She left the house, and taking her carriage at the door, returned to the hotel.