Laura Brayton

Front matter

(Sffap. — Gnpgrigfjt Ifo,

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

£ 2 -

Chapter I. Enoch Sharp

“Why do you want me to marry the girl? she has no liking for me, nor I for her, or any other of her sex. Women aren’t in my line of business. Why should I marry her?”

“ Because it is my will— the will of Enoch Sharp, and you, Jake Bartram, dare not disobey it!”

The first speaker was a tall, stoutly-built man, with a rough, unprepossessing face, a man not yet thirty years of age, but with a hardened, crimeworn look.

The second was rather under-sized, lame, and with one of those keen, malicious faces, which indicate £ character naturally devilish, if one may use the term.

The first was standing, the second sat by a table

LAURA BRAYTON.

covered with law books, bundles of papers, and blank legal forms. Dusty bookcases around the room were filled with large law volumes, and the furniture of the room, old and worn, was such as you generally see in old law offices. And this was the office of Enoch Sharp, attorney and counselor, as a sign on the half-closed window shutter gave token.

“Dare not? Mr. Sharp, you are about the only man on earth that would say that much to me without getting a broken head for his trouble.”

“Bah, Jake Bartram, bah! I know you, and you know me. Ten words from me would put a rope around your neck!”

“Yes! And knowing your power over me, you’ll use it till I die !”

“ To be sure I will ! What is the use of power to one who will not use it. Where I will that you should go, there will you be found ; what I will that you should do, that will be done. If you hesitate, or refuse, you swing! Is that a comfortable thought?”

The little snake-like eyes of the lawyer glittered like the sparkling orbs in the head of a vicious snake as he uttered these words in a sneering tone.

“No, it is not comfortable, and I don’t want it thrust upon me too often. I often feel, Enoch „ Sharp, as if I ought to choke you to death. It would be one good deed to stand against a hundred bad ones. If I am ever to hang for what I’ve done,

LAURA BBAYTON.

I hope I'll have a chance at you before my hands are tied.”

“You do — you do? Yet you daren’t raise your smallest finger to harm me. Big as you are, with power enough to crush me with one blow from your great fist, you tremble while I laugh at you and your weak threats.”

“I know it. I know it!” said Bartram, in a low, sullen tone. “But enough of that. You say I must marry this girl. Who is she — what is she?”

“I seldom reply to impertinent questions. In this case I will. She thinks that she is an orphan, and that I am her legal guardian. She is not the first, nor am I the other.”

“Yet she lives in your house, is, in truth, but a menial, laboring without wages. I pity the poor girl.”

“Do you? You’re getting on famously. Pity is akin to love. You may. love her by the time the marriage knot is tied, after all. She is pretty, isn’t she?”

“I hardly remember. I’ve never seen her but once or twice since

“ Hush, you should be the last to even hint at the first time you saw her. But you shall see how she looks now.”

The lame lawyer arose, and with a step which showed one leg to be shorter than the other, hopped, rather than walked across the room, and pulled a bell-cord.

LAURA BRATTON.

A few moments after the door of the room opened, and a very pale, yet strangely beautiful face, with great, wild, black eyes, looked in, and in a voice low and sweet as the soft tones of a flute, said:

“What do you wish for, sir?”

“Come in here, Laura, I want to speak to you.”

Timidly, with a strange, startled look at the man whom Sharp had called Jake Bartram, the owner of the singularly handsome face entered the room, exhibiting a form which was a model of grace, though rather thin in contour, and clad in very plain, almost common, garments. She seemed to be young — not over seventeen or eighteen, yet her face looked already care-worn. In expression it was a thoughtful, intellectual face, with a tinge of touching sadness on it which would have interested any person of a sympathetic nature.

“You have seen this gentleman before, Laura?” said the lawyer.

“Yes, sir, I have not forgotten it,” said the young girl, glancing with a cold, distrustful look at Bartram.

“You will see him frequently hereafter. It is my desire that you receive him kindly as my friend.”

“Is that all you wish of me, sir?”

“Yes, for the present. You will know more anon.”

The young girl made no reply, but glided out of the room as if a longer stay there were repugnant to her feelings.

“ I can’t see why you should wish me to marry her. She shuddered while she looked at me,” said Bartram.

“ The why is nothing to you. That it is my wish is enough,” said Sharp, sternly. “My plans and my secrets are my own. When you marry her you will have twenty thousand dollars to risk and lose at the gambling-table, where you sacrifice all you ever can raise.”

“ Whose money? She is poor, you say.”

“ That depends on me. She might be as rich as the wealthiest in the land, or she might be as I have told you, poor.”

“You wish me to marry her— you might at least tell me who and what she is. I am not much, I know, but I have some pride left.”

“Yes, enough and more than enough for its slender foundation,” said Sharp, sneeringly.

“Mr. Walter Withers is cornin’ up the street, headin’ this way, sir,” cried a tall, lean, shockhaired man, dressed in a suit of seedy-looking black, with a dirty-looking cravat bundled about his long, slender neck, coming in unbidden, as if he belonged there.

“Very well, go down to your copying-room, Nathan, and take Bartram— this man here— with you, I have more to say to him when Mr. Withers has gone.”

LAURA BRATTON.

The man turned, and followed by Bartram, left the room.

As soon as he was alone the lawyer drew some paper before him, and at once commenced writing as if he were in great haste. A minute or two afterward there was a knock at the door.

“Enter!” said Sharp, and he kept on writing, without raising his eyes, although the steps of a person approaching his table were plainly heard. “Nathan,” said the lawyer, not raising his head yet, “ I wish you would see to that order of Panama stock to-day; it is on the rise, and we must purchase at once or Why, Mr. Withers, I beg your

pardon ; I thought it was that lazy clerk of mine, Nathan Sloth, that came in. Take a seat, sir — take a seat.”

And with his usual hopping step the misshapen lawyer sprang to place a chair for his visitor.

The latter was quite an elderly man, a gentleman, evidently, by his dress and appearance. His face was very grave in its expression, bordering on melancholy.

“What can I do for you to-day, Mr. Withers?” asked the lawyer, in an obsequious tone, remaining on his feet and moving about restlessly after his visitor was seated.

“I’ve come to have my will written, Sharp,” said the gentleman, nervously. “You’ve done the law business of our family for so many years that it would hardly seem right to employ any other.”

LAUBA BBAYTON.

“ A will? Why, Mr. Withers, you’ve a long lease of life before you yet, I’m sure. I never saw you looking better.”

And the lawyer moved nervously around to a front view of his visitor.

“I don’t know. I’m not superstitious, Sharp, but I’ve had a warning that my time is not to be long on this earth,” said the old gentleman, in a serious tone.

“A warning, sir? Something supernatural, sir?” and the lawyer shifted to another position, yet fronting his visitor.

“Yes, I had a fearful dream last night. I thought I saw my brother, and he told me that I must join him in the spirit-land. He was alone there, he said.”

“Alone? Where were his wife and child, who, undoubtedly, perished before he did, if, indeed, he is dead !”

“ Of that, or rather of them, nothing came in my dream. But my vision of him was so perfect that it seems even yet as if he stood before me.”

“I have never* believed in dreams,” said Sharp, slightly nervous. “ But if you wish your will drawn up, I would rather my man, Nathan Sloth, would do it. He is correct in figures, and writes a fair hand for a young man.”

“Young? Why, he looks to be forty, or more.”

“Yet he is not thirty. He is one of those precocious ones with old heads on young shoulders, who

LAURA BRAYTON.

never knew boyhood. Nathan is an anomaly, Mr. Withers— a different make-up from anything else human that travels.”

“Yet I would rather that you alone drew up my will, Mr. Sharp. You have always been a repository for our family secrets.”

“Some of them, Mr. Withers — some of them.”

“And my poor brother, in his youth, thought a great deal of you.”

“Yes, yes, enough to take away the only gleam of sunshine that ever fell across the path of a crooked, deformed, miserable man like me,” cried Sharp, with an instantaneous flash of anger in look and tone. “ Enough to step, with his splendid form and winning face, his smooth tongue and princely fortune, between me and the only being on earth that I ever loved !”

“Really, Mr. Sharp, I had no idea of bringing up an unpleasant memory ; indeed I had forgotten that you ever looked up to Anna Lonsdale with an eye of affection.”

“Enough, Mr. Withers— enough ! I have not forgotten that she looked down on me who worshiped her more than miser ever worshiped gold, than Christian ever worshiped God ! Forget? I am not one of the forgetting kind.”

“Yet you were forgiving. For I remember well seeing you with a smile on your face at old Trinity when they were married.”

“Yes, I smiled then, and I smiled afterward, Mr.

LAURA BRAYTON.

Withers. I smiled when he came to my office and told me a child, a sweet baby girl, was born to him and her. I smiled when he told me her health was declining, and her physician said she must go to Cuba for her health. I smiled when he told me what ship she was going in, for I knew the captain well — well, Mr. Withers. I smiled when he told me that he could not leave his business to go with her, and would follow two months later. I smiled when I shook hands with her and kissed the baby on board the ship, and I smiled when I told Ben Hawk to take good care of them, for they were precious — in the eyes of your brother. And three weeks after I smiled — yes, Mr. Withers, I smiled — when I carried the news to your brother that the ship had gone to pieces on Carysfort Reef below Cape Florida, and only the captain and one of the crew had been saved. You were in Europe then. Ha ! ha! When he saw the Savannah paper that contained the account, Mr. Withers, he dropped as if he had been shot through the heart.”

The voice of the lawyer had risen tone by tone almost into a shriek as he continued, and his look was now almost fiendish.

“It did break his heart. It sent him out a wanderer over the face of the earth, to perish in some far-off land, or he never has returned to his home or me, and he must be dead!” said Mr. Withers, mournfully. “But, Mr. Sharp, I never knew that you found pleasure in his misery, you who were so

LAURA BRAYTON.

careful of his property and mine, so just in every account.”

“ I was just in my business. But should I grieve that sorrow came to him who had filled my life with an everlasting wretchedness?”

“Why did not I know of this before? Mr. Sharp, I have always trusted in your friendship, in your devotion to me and my interests!”

“Well, did I ever deceive you?”

“No, I cannot say that. But I have always thought that you loved my poor brother. You have striven to increase our mutual fortunes, you have told me how rich we would be if he ever came back, what an immense fortune mine would be if united to his.”

“ That is true. I never envied him his fortune. He won away my heart’s idol. Ought I to have loved him for that?”

And the small, sharp eyes of the deformed lawyer gleamed like fiery jewels in their deep-set sockets, as he looked, even more than he spoke, the hate which had so long burned like embers in ashes, within his heart.

“No, I suppose it would not be human nature to do that! But, Mr. Sharp, we should forgive the dead!”

“Yes, when we know them to be dead.”

“Then you believe that my brother is yet alive?”

“I did not say so. They say the Jew yet lives who mocked the Saviour on his way to Calvary, but

LAURA BRATTON.

I do not know it, though I have seen many a wandering Jew in my lif e-time.”

“No, no, my brother is not alive. If he were he would return to the home where once we were both so happy together. I know I saw his spirit in my dreams. I felt in it a warning that I should soon meet him in the better land. I wanted to do what I have not done while I hoped he might return — make my will. I came for that purpose to you, but now I will defer it. You do not speak like the friend, to us, that I always supposed you to be !”

“Bah! Nonsense. I get wild sometimes, when I think of the past, Mr. Withers, and feel, I scarcely know how, when it is over. That I have been your friend, and his too, the care which I have taken of your mutual interests is proof. But if you wish to desert me now — go ahead ! It is but the way of the world. Gratitude for faithful services is not a fact, it is only an idle name !”

“You are wrong, Mr. Sharp, you are wrong. I will come again when we both feel calmer and pleasanter than we do just now. Good-day.”

And the stately old gentleman bowed courteously, and went away.

“So much for Walter Withers! He knows now that Enoch Sharp has suffered, but he does not know that he has lived for, and is living for, revenge. Oh, if he knew all that I know-all — all!”

And the lawyer laughed ; a hollow, wild, fiendish

LAURA BRATTON.

laugh it was, as he touched an office bell on his table.

It was answered by Nathan Sloth, his gray eyes inquiring, rather than his lips, what was wanted.

“Did old Withers look into the copying-room as he came in?” asked Sharp.

“No, I stood by the door and told him, when he asked, that you were in the office.”

“Then he did not see Bartram?”

“No. The door was closed.”

“Nor did Bartram see him?”

“No, I had a bottle of brandy on the table. He never could see anything else when it was before

him.”

“Very well, send him back to me now. I have not done with him yet.”

Nathan turned and vanished, closing the door behind him as he went.

LAURA BRATTON.

Chapter II. Nathan Sloth

The copying-room, as Enoch Sharp called the little anteroom off the hall which led to the main office, was the room where his clerk and man of all work, Nathan Sloth, worked and slept, as a large writingtable, covered with paper, ink-stand, pens, etc., indicated, as also a cot-bed in one corner, and a wash-stand with a tin wash-basin on it, and a brown-stone jug for water beneath it.

That he did something here besides writing was also evident, for a black bottle and two dirty tumblers in front of a well-used pack of cards, told as much, as they occupied one corner of the table.

The man Bartram sat before the cards, carelessly tumbling them about, when Nathan Sloth came back from the office of his master.

“Well, can we finish our game now?” said Bartram, impatiently, as the other came back. “I’m two to your three, remember.”

“No more game just now. Old Sharp wants you, and hi£ mad is up, since Mr. Withers went in. Don’t wait a second when he is in his tantrums. Perhaps you may, for you’re big and strong, and have got grit, maybe. But he’d fling the poker,

LAURA BRAYTON.

shovel, tongs, and all at my head if I didn’t jump when he calls. You’d better hurry.”

“Nary time till I’ve had another nip,” said Bartram, and he poured out a tumblerful of brandy and drank it .

“I don’t blame you, old chap,” said Nathan. “You’ll need it all afore you get done with him to-day. I never saw him look uglier.”

“Well, I’ll go and see if I can’t tame him down a bit,” said Bartram, with an ugly scowl on his dark face. “And remember, old ’un, our game isn’t finished. I’m two to your three, and it’s my deal.”

“Old ’un ! I’d like to know where he finds young ’uns?” said Nathan, parenthetically, as Bartram left the room. “ I wonder what raised Beelzebub in the old man this morning? He was as pleasant as a basket of chips when I saw him first. He even tried his old saws — ‘Nathan,’ said he, ‘some think a rose would smell just as sweet if ’twas called an onion, but I don’t. Names should be synonymous with character. In some cases “made and provided,” as the statoots say they are. I’m Sharp by name and sharp by nature. You’re slow by nature and Sloth by name — excepting, for exceptions are always useful, and good, too, if they’re sustainedexcepting when there’s play for your knife and fork, or you’re to have a holiday when you’ve got so much work done. Then you forget your name and general habits, too.’ Well, the old covey was right. I can be fast or I can be slow. But that

LAURA BRAYTON.

chap called me ‘old ’un,’ and here I am not fiveancT-twenty yet. I’m not old, but I’m dryin’ up. I feel tliafc. I wonder if Miss Laura thinks so? I’d like to make up to her ; she is too proud for the likes of me, much as he tries to keep her down and break her spirit. There’s more in her character than even he knows, sharp as he is. I've heard her say, more than once, that she’d rise to a higher and better sphere in spite of him. She will, poor girl, but not till she dies. That’s my opinion, and no charge for it neither. I wonder if I’ll ever rise to a p’int where I can charge for an opinion. I will if I can, for everything is on the rise that can rise — bread, bubbles, baubles, and why not a poor devil of a lawyer’s clerk. There goes his bell. I wonder what he wants now !”

LAURA BRAYTON.

Chapter III. Shadowed

When Jake Bartram left the office of Enoch Sharp, walking slowly and thoughtfully along the street, he did not notice that a person who saw him come out, followed him on the opposite side of the street, keeping in view of him all the time, turning the same corners that he did, and after him, entering a low porter-house near the “Basin,” where he seemed to be acquainted, for, nodding to the barkeeper as he passed into a back room used for dominos, cards, etc., he said:

“Jim, make me a brandy-sour, and have it hot.”

This person seemed to be a seafaring man by his dress and the hard-weather look of his mahoganycolored face. Elderly, too, for his long hair was a grizzly gray, his beard, of may be a week’s growth, stood out like white bristles on his face. A singular scar, dividing his upper lip on the right side and extending well up on the cheek, did not add to the attractiveness of his looks. “ Public — that room in there?” asked this man, pointing to the open door of the back room.

“Yes, when folks order anything, and want to study the books of four kings, or handle the dominos.”

LAURA BRAYTOX.

“Make me a hot punch, then, and bring it in— hot and strong, mate; let the foundation be Jamaica, and fill it with Cognac. Take your change out of that. ”

And the stranger carelessly tossed down a bankbill, as if there were more where that came from.

Entering the room he sat down by a table a yard or two distant from that at which Bartram had taken a seat, moodily waiting for the drink that he had ordered.

Soon the barkeeper had placed two steaming mugs before the two men.

Seeing by a glance of his eye that Bartram noticed his presence, the stranger, lifting his mug to his lips, said :

“Here’s a health to ye, mate. I’m not in the habit of drinking alone, but where one knows nobody, and nobody knows one, why it can’t be helped. It is a good while since I dropped anchor in Baltimore waters.”

“Been on a long cruise — more’n one, may be,” said Bartram, trying to look civil, as the other spoke in a friendly tone.

“You may well say that, mate,” said the other. “But I’m goin’ to stay ashore a bit. My locker is pretty well supplied, and I’ve had all I want of roving for awhile. Besides, I’ve some law business to attend to. Am estate has to be settled in which I have a right to some rich pickings.”

“That’s encouraging,” said Bartram, now quite

LAURA BRATTON.

willing to make the acquaintance of this stranger who had “ rich pickings’- in view.

“It would be more so if I knew a good lawyer who would see me get my rights,” said the stranger, moving his seat and his mug up to the table where Bartram was seated.

“I know a lawyer who is just as smart as a shovel-nosed shark in. a bathing party,” said Bartram.

“Is he rich enough to get along without stealing? Can he afford to be honest?” asked the other.

“ He could afford it, but I doubt his knowing how if he tried. Everybody knows Enoch Sharp to be a rascal, rich, ugly and devilish in shape and in name. But he is keen; wins every case he takes.”

“Enoch Sharp! A good name for a lawyer — a keen one, you say? Have another mug of drink, mate — I see yours is out. Here, barkeeper, fill our mugs and bring cigars. D’ye ever handle the ivory?”

And the stranger pointed to the dominos.

“Yes; I play now and then. Have a game?” replied Bartram.

“I don’t care; it'll speed time maybe.”

For an hour or more the two played and drank, and by that time the hinges of Bartram’s talking apparatus were well oiled and he, without knowing that he was being “pumped,” to use an old police phrase, was glibly telling all he knew about Sharp and his wishes that he should marry Laura

LAURA BRAYTON.

Brayton, his reputed ward. He had no thought that what he was telling so willingly had been cunningly led out by queries from the stranger. The latter lost every game, and paid for all the liquor without grumbling ; that was enough to satisfy him, and if the liquor did not capsize him, Bartram was willing to sit there and play and drink all day, and all night, too. But his head was weaker than his will, and after awhile he began to grow drowsy, and at last he fell asleep in his chair, with his head resting on the table among the dominos.

Then the stranger, who had given his name as Engilkee, arose from his chair, and settling up his score, left the house as quietly as he had entered it. With all the information which he had got from Bartram, he was exceedingly careful not to give much information regarding himself.

Chapter IV. “luke Withers Lives And I Am Lost!”

That same night, the lame lawyer sat in his easy-chair in his office, apparently studying the flickering, changing figures made by the blaze of a Cumberland coal fire in his grate. He seemed to be lost in speculative thought, and a shadow of annoyance darkened his face when the door opened and Nathan Sloth said :

“ ’Ere’s a letter, sir, that was left a minute ago by a sailor-lookin’ chap, who said you’d answer it at your leisure.”

“ Ay, and read it in the same way. It is time you were abed, man, so you can get up some time before noon to-morrow.”

And Sharp took the letter. Nathan retired without any further words, and Sharp was about to toss the letter on the table, when he saw in one corner of it these words :

“For immediate notice.”

“I’ll see who it is from, though I am done with business for this day,” he muttered, and he opened it.

But from the instant that his eye marked the first line, he did not look up or pause until every word was read. And then, trembling from mingled

LAURA hsiAYTON.

anger and excitement, he hurried to the table and rang his office-bell violently.

Nathan came in a minute or less, his bare feet and lack of coat and vest proclaiming that he had been getting ready for bed when he was called.

“Which way did the man go who left the note?” cried Sharp. “ Speak quick ! . Dead or alive, he must be found, and that in a hurry, too!”

“Lord! sir, I don’t know which way he went. He rang the bell, and when I opened the door, popped the note in my hand, said what I told you, and then popped off the steps into the darkness out of sight.”

“Would you know him again?”

“Yes, I saw his face; for he had a long, red scar over his right cheek that left his upper lip wide open. That was all I saw, only he had gray hair, and looked as if he hadn’t been shaved in a week or two.”

“ A red scar almost the whole length of his right cheek?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tall — over six feet high?”

“Yes, sir; he looked rather tall. But he popped off too quick to give me a chance to notice much of him.”

“Then pop on the rest of your clothes, and pop yourself off after him, and don’t let me see your face again till you know where he is to be found.”

“But, Mr. Sharp, it is late, and ”

“And what, you lazy scoundrel? What excuse

LAURA BllAYTQN.

have you for questioning my will, or hesitating an instant to obey my orders?”

None but this. If I've got to hunt all over town after him, I want money to buy a drink with when I go into porter-houses to look for him.”

“There, take that! If you get drunk, I’ll have you in jail for robbing me. Now begone !”

“What shall I do, sir, if I find him?”

“Come and let me know instantly where he is. He must not know that you are on his track.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And keep the matter to yourself, d’ye hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Especially from Laura Brayton.”

“Lord! sir, I never talk to her. She is too uppercrust for the likes of me.”

“Well, well, begone! Do your duty, and I’ll give you ”

“What, sir?” asked Nathan, eagerly, as the lawyer paused before he specified his intentions in full.

“A holiday!” said the lawyer, as he pushed Nathan out and closed the door.

“Can it be possible that Ben Hawk is yet alive? I paid the price of a dozen lives to have him put out of the way. He was reported shot dead in a gambling quarrel at New Orleans, and I have a certificate of his burial in my safe. He is my enemy to the death, if he yet lives. And no one else could write such a letter; and no one else dare

LAURA BRAYTON.

make such threats. Yet another shares his secret, for a female hand is plain in the writing. Tall, with a scar down his right cheek, severing his upper lip — that is his description. I must read that letter again.”

And Enoch Sharp, after this soliloquy, went to the light and re-perused the letter aloud. It was couched in these words :

“Enoch Sharp: — Keen as you are, well-laid as are your plans for revenge and to amass the wealth of others, beware ! An avenger, sure, and yet unseen, is on your own track. Beware ! The wealth you would make your own will yet reach the rightful heir, and all your machinations will result in your own destruction. Those live whom you have deemed dead. The daggeryou sharpened will pierce your own heart. Sleep, if you can! You will awake, when even dreams do not warn you, to hear the clank of chains, and feel the iron on your misshapen form. Harm not her whom you call Laura Bray ton, or the sword will descend which hangs over your bead by only a single thread. Again, beware! — beware of him who was dead, but is alive!”