Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1874 — A SERIOUS BLUNDER. [ARTICLE]

A SERIOUS BLUNDER.

BY EDGAR FAWCETT.

Being within a single day of my own wedding lam filled with that dreamy sort of beatitude which, while it renders me very unfit for any practical occupation, argues well for my connubial future. Unfortunately for myself I am under such strong hereditary obligations to a defunct grandfather as to be completely without a legitimate# occupation of any sort. Of late it has been my devotional custom to drop in upon Honoria during mornihgs, but on this, the ante-nuptial day, I am interdicted from paying any matutinal respects whatever. Suddenly I recollect, with a certain feeling of odd relief, that I yesterday Eromised Honoria I would go and see >r. B about my rheumatism. And so I stroll toward Dr. B ’s. A broad six-footer ot a fellow is Dr. B , with a vast, weird-looking shag of iron-gray hair, under which, pale, square and massive, gleams a clean-cut, powerful, meditative face. He takes my hand in his own and holds it with firm but not close pressure. “Pah!” he suddenly begins, “ you are not sick. What do you come here and take up my precious time for? Be off with you!” I laugh. “ I only came, doctor, to satisfy somebody else.” And then I tell him, with half-successful effort at offhandedness, who the somebody is. “You had best give me a few drops, or something, just so that I can show them to her to-night." The doctor dashes off a prescription, and, while handing it to me, his face looks right stern. “ Alfred, I wish vou to live a different life." I laugh. “Pshaw! your marriage does not concern the matter. Turn Mohammedan, if you please, as regards matrimony, but at the same time marry your mind and your time to something. You ought to have been a poor man.” “ What shall I do, doctor?” I query, with a dim smile. “ Write a book, or turn stock-broker?” “ I want to see you again—after the wedding and all that, you know. We must find some way to occupy you. • Meanwhile, I have a good mind to make you take a long walk. Do you ever walk?” ~ He draws out a sealed envelope and hands it to me, remarking: “ There is a nice walk for you. Leave that letter at its address." I make agrimace while I silently read: “ ‘John Fordyce, Esq., No. —, Fifty street.’ A good distance, doctor. Still, if you think the exercise will agree with me, I shall look upon the obliging favor to yourself as simply another prescription. And to-morrow 1 will report how both have agreed with me.” “ Td-morrow?” “Of course. At the wedding, you know." “/* it to-morrow? Of all things, I should like to see your wedding, Alfred. I had not forgotten the invitation—oh, no! I must, however, with all my rush of business, have mistaken the day.” “ And this merely means, doctor, that you are glad to have me remind you of your mistake ?” “ More than that, my boy. It means that I start for Philadelphia in about one hour on business which I might have postponed, but now it is quite impossible to do so! And now, good-by, and God “Bless you. Don’t forget that letter of mine, by the by.” As I drew near the number indicated on Dr. B ’s letter I find it to" be a private-looking house . of ' considerable size, standing quite isolated among vacant lots, at almost the extreme eastern part of the town., "My summons at the door-bell is answered very promptly by a small, tidy-

looking boy. I hand him the letter without an accompanying word save “ Fordyce’’ —the name written in its superscription. He immediately replied, “ Yes, sir.” I turn and descend the stoop. I have reached to about its middle step, however, when I pause and take a view of my surroundings. While I am leaning restfully against the railing of the stoop I hear the front door behind me reopened with considerable suddenness Of course, it is only natural for me to turn about on the instant. Hut the person who now stands in the vestibule has had time to perceive my presence before he sees my face. He is a tall man, slender, with a slight stoop, and short hair that, stands straight up from his forehead. In one hand he holds the letter I have just left, in an opened state. “ Beg pardon,” he begins, “ but are you acquainted personally with Dr. B——?” “ I know him very well,” I respond, something surprised. The broad smile broadens. ‘ ‘ Will you have the kindness to step inside for a moment?” I show the gentleman by a slight gesture and bow that I am wholly at his service. We pass into the doctor’s office, and I seat myself on invitation of my host. “I am going to be very/frank with you,” he commences. a t feel sure, Mr. Derbrow, that in the end frankness will be the better plan. So now prepare yourself for a surprise.’’ “ You should have said as much, sir, before calling me Mr. Derbrow. That is not my name.” —— —“ No?” Then, while placing Dr. B’s letter in a side-pocket: “ I have been misinformed, it seems. However, it will not be a point of any special consequence just now. As I was saying ” “ How, sir,” I break in, flushing a trifle, “is it not a point of .special consequence? To you not, perhaps, but tome the difference between being called Derbrow and called by my own name is certainly an important one.” “ And pray,” he questions, with much gentleness, “what is your name?” “My name is Durand—Alfred Durand.” “Alfred Durand, eh? Not Allan Derbrow? You are sure not Allen Derbrow?” I speak quickly: “ There is some mistake here. If you imagine my name to be mentioned in that letter, you are quite wrong. Evidently you confuse me with some one else. Dr. B asked me to take a letter up town for him, and I agreed to do so, although quite ignorant of its contents.” “Very well,” he softly returns; “no matter for that. As I said before, I will be frank with you; deception will only postpone your—annoyance. Mr. Derbrow —excuse me, Durand —your friends, believing you to be rather out of health just now, have decided that a little rest and quiet in this house, under my charge, will be of great benefit.” I rise here, smiling. “ I see now, sir, that there is-without doubt some absurd mistake.” “ There is no mistake,” he states, dryly. “Your persistence becomes impertinence. My name is Alfred Durand, I repeat to you. I know nothing of any Mr. Allan Derbrow; I am not in ill health, and neither rest nor quiet has been prescribed for me.” “ I hope you are not going to make useless trouble,” is the singular response which I now meet with. “Useless trouble!” I exclaim. “You fuzzle me to understand you, sir.” Here moved toward the door. “ Do not try to leave the house,” he instructs me, with great quietude of tone. “It will be quite impossible.” “ What on earth do you mean?” I cry, hurrying toward him, with clenched fists and furious eyes. An instant later, there is a stronglooking man at each of my elbows. Strangely, the truth now for the first time flashes through my head. And, as it does so, the transition from anger to amusement is rapid and immense. I burst into almost a roar of laughter. “Good heavens!” I shout, much more mirthfully than indignantly, “it cannot be that you have taken me for a lunatic?” He points toward the motionless men at either side of me, and, in the same' placid tones, he speaks again: “ These persons will show you to your room, sir. You will find it quite large and comfortable. Pray, make no difficulty about going.” * “ This would be an excellent joke,” I at length state, “ were it not in slight seeming danger of becoming rather serious.” “ Will you not go quietly up-stairs?" is the serenely imperious answer. Human patience has its limits. “ Let me leave this house in peace,” I cry, “ and credit what I tell you, or you may pay very dearly for your obstinacy!” Still the same impregnable amiability: “ Are you determined not to go up-stairs quietly?” Even now I feel a slight diffidence about narrating that I am carried upstairs, after this, as though I were a child, utterly powerless in the grip of those two brawny monsters. The force that- exerts itself upon me is tempered with an excellent skill that avoids all injury. lam without a bruise when placed in “my room.” The moment that I am deposited in an easy chair by this pair of Goliahs, I spring up, exclaiming with (under the circumstances) considerable coolness of tone: “ Look here, my good men, this is all a humbug —the most ridiculous of mistakes, I assure you. Observe me well. Do I seem like a crazy person?” “Yes,” suddenly noises a voice which seems to issue from somewhere in the adjoining hall; “ you are as mad as a hatter, my dear sir.” One of the mep looks amazedly at Hie other while these singular words are feeing spoken; then he quickly leaves the room, and very soon afterward there is heard, at some distance off, the sound of a sharply-closed door. To the man who is now alone with me in the chamber I speak very quietly indeed. “ I want you to have a note taken down town for me,” are my opening words. “If you do so quietly, without saying a word to anybody else in the

house except one whom you can trust, I will make it to your advantage;” And here I nod most meaningly. The man’s coarse face takes rather an amiable look. “All right,” he returns; “ you write what yer want, an’ I’ll see about it. There’s a desk.” “For God’s sake,” I burst forth, “ treat me as though I were a sane being! You must admit, surely, that such a thing as a mistake could happen. Or, if you will think me mad, do so, only swear that you will deliver a note if ” Here my companion leaves the room, while the door swings shut behind him. I advance and examine it with trembling fingers. There is nothing but a knob on my own side. This I try to turn; impossible, I am a prisoner! The room is large, and plainly, though neatly, furnished. In front or each of its two windows there rises a strong iron net-work, which makes it impossible even to touch the glass. I shudder as I see this horrid reminder of my position, and throw myself despairingly into an easychair. Just here the thought makes me leap to my feet. He was to start for Philadelphia in an hour. I drag out my watch. Iris now more than an hour and a half since I saw him. The two next hours are passed in a condition of mind whose feverish disquiet may be readily understood. I pace the floor; I seat myself; I peer out through the prison-like grille of the windows. Finally my door is opened. It is one of the keepers, with plates, a table-cloth, etc. He does not seem to observe me, but I see that his eyes are all the while sharply vigilant of me at their corners. Presently the other keeper enters with a meal —doubtless dinner. I sit quietly " watching them, feeling that they are mere machines, whose motive power is wholly from without. Still, they can at least carry a message. “What is the name of the person whom I saw down-stairs?” I quietly question. “Dr. Fordyce,” answers one of my keepers. “Will you tell him that I particularly wish to speak with him for a few moments?” “Yes, sir,” is the civil reply. I wait and wait. No Dr. Fordyce comes. At length one of the keepers enters to remove my untasted meal. I make a great effort and so compel myself calmly to ask him whether he took my message or not. s’ “Dr- Fordyce is out, sir.” Then I rush wildly up to the man and utter wildly supplicating words. Presently I become momentarily insane enough to try and strike him. He catches my hands, holds them as I would hold a baby’s, and calls “ Jim!” several times, not -very loudly. Jim soon appears. I sink into the nearest chair and burst into tears. They hastily clear away the meal and go out. I look at my watch again. It is five o’clock: “ How much longer,” I ask myself, “is this miserable duress to last?” As for Dr. B , I feel capable of killing him here and now. Whatever the blunder it has been inexcusable. When I think of to-morrow and the wedding I catch my breath in positive fright. Suppose—but no! my captivity must have ended by that time. And yet the probabilities now seem immense that Dr. B has gone to Philadelphia. Allowing that this is true, there may possibly be no one else in the city who knows of my whereabouts, and no one else capable of finding them out. When my keeper enters the room a third time it is about seven o’clock. I inquire whether Dr. Fordyce is home yet. “ We expect him back very soon.” There is a bhance. I have already reflected that, provided he be really gone out, he has made inquiries concerning my case, and so learned of his atrocious mistake. But just then I hear a voice in the outer hall calling “ Jim!” in distinct tones— __ “That is Dr. Fordyce’s voice!” I cry. “ I recognize it.” A look of smiling admiration touches the keeper’s face. “ Oh, you’re a sharp one, anyhow, sir. They was right about yer when they said so.” “They? Wlio?” “ Them that knows yer. Yer family, sir. There’s some good tea. Drink it down, now; it’ll make yer feel better, pr’aps." After the fellow goes I sit for some time-in a state of absolute hopefulness, buoyed up by a hope that Dr. Fordyce will come, and feeling confident that if he does come I can use most effective pleading in my own behalf. I drink some tea and eat some of the food provided. The physical effect of this nourishment is stimulating enough to make me regardjny position for a little while from that humorous side which it undoubtedly possesses. I imagine the mirth of certain relations and friends when the case shall be laid bare to them. But a very state of annoyance enters with the thought of how wretchedly worried Hohoria will be if I am absent and unaccounted for the whole evening From this time thenceforward my captivity becomes an acute agony. Once or twice, thinking of the utter dead wall of indifference against which I have thus far flung myself, I grow clamorously emotional, and stand beside the crack of my solid door shouting forth wild threats and hot imprecations. Now and then voices answer me, smothered and far off. Not long afterward there are sounds of steps and voices in the hall. I listen eagerly. „ “No, no,” advises a whisper, “don’t go in. Don’t run useless risks just now, doctor; he seems very bad.” Another-voice: “ I was wrong to have taken a dangerous patient Dr. B admitted him to be sly, tricky, everything that was hard to get along with, and yet he thought I could manage him. Manage him! I was a fool to let the doctor flatter me. This is not a mad house, as you very well know.” * * * The voices grow fainter; the speakers are receding! , “ What after all,’* I tell myself, “if I have really been mad for weeks? What

if Honoria’s request that I should go to Dr. B ’s were merely the first step in the ruse which brought me here? What if the wedding to-morrow were all a myth, a phantasm of my oifen madness? Do not the manias of monomaniacs always seem as real to them as realities to us?” Morning finds me in a condition of mind that closely approaches real madness. Twelve o’clock is my wedding hour: I feel a very enormity of yearning to reach Honoria in time, combined with a dark certainty that such an event shall not occur. I picture to myself again and again the agony which Honoria will suffer at my absence, knowing so well that only death or something like death can keep me from her at such a time. * . . But, in spite of all my pain, physical exhaustion asserts itself. Men sleep with the scaffold threatening them in a few hours. I sleep, with the thought of a bridegroomless wedding (and that wedding meant to have been my own!) haunting and taunting me. I go to sleep at dawn and awake at ten o’clock. The hour lam still able to ascertain, having remembered to wind my watch on the preceding night. Ten o’clock; and (oh, ghastliness of the future tense!) I am to be married at twelve. Well, two hours yet remain. My sleep has made me calmer-minded, stronger of nerve. Marvels have happened in two hours. Presently I discover that breakfast has been left in the room for me while I was asleep. The coffee is still warm; I drink a cup. Another hour passes. At its end mv keeper enters the room. “ To-day was to have been my wedding day,” I calmly state, looking at the man with steady eyes. “At twelve o’clock to-day I was to have been married, several hundreds of people witnessing the wedding. I swear to you that I speak truth. My name is not what your employer supposes, and I am no more crazy than you are crazy. My name is Alfred Durand. Unfortunately for myself the initials on my under-clothing are the same as Allen Derbrow’s, the person whom your employer asserts me to be.’ As soon as I have finished, a broad, incredulous smile edges his lips, while he turns away, with these words: “You are a cute one and no mistake. Going to be married to-day! I’m blowed if it don’t just beat everything!” I sink back in my chair with a great sigh. What is the use of wasting words like this? I look at my watch. Seven minutes past eleven. Less than an hour before the time! There is no hope. I cover my face with my hands, and a great shudder shakes my frame. Just then steps sound in the outer hall, through the men doorway, heavy, firm and quick. They pause on the threshold of my room. I uncover my face. The next instant, with a glad shout, I have recognized Dr. B ; and sprung to my feet. He is paler than I have at any time seen him, as he seizes my hand. “Alfred, how can you ever forgive me? I don’t expect it, my boy —I don’t ask it!” “ Not a moment must be wasted now!” I affirm, speaking at fleetest speed. “Have you a vehicle outside?” “Yes, my own." I catch his arm. “ Take me out of here, then, as quickly as you can. Remember where lam due at twelve.” “My poor Alfred!” These words he utters as we hurry down stairs, arm in arm. I see nothing of Dr. Fordyce as we leave the house. I afterward learn that overwhelming shame keeps him away. Presently we are in Dr. B ’s carriage, being driven with all speed down town. Thjs is what the doctor finds time to tell me during the journey, short as his good horses make it: “The letter I should have given you was a very harmless one, to be left in an up-town street. How I confused it with the other is only explainable, I suppose, by the rankest negligence. You saw me take it from my pocket and hand it you; but the mistake had been committed before then. The letter which you .brought Dr. Fordyce told him that you were a certain Allan Derbrow, whom he had good reason to know; because of frequent conversations on the subject with me, as a tricky, dangerous, unmanageable sort of monomaniac. “ Last week it was agreed between us that, if possible, I would cause Derbrow (over whom I have considerable influence) to appear at the asylum with a note to Dr- Fordyce. Not only were you mistaken for Derbrow, my dear Alfred, but this man, a most admirable disciplinarian and ruler among harmless patients, was terrified and discouraged by you at the outlet. He attempted no treatment, was nervous about appearing in your presence, and, before you had been in the house two hours, paid a visit to mine, only to find that I had gone to Philadelphia. An hour or so later he concluded to telegraph me that Derbrow had arrived, but that he wished to be rid of him as soon as possible. This telegram, n>y dear boy, has been your salvation. Of course u the instant I read it I was amazed at a seeming impossibility; and then, when I remembered the two letters which I had that morning prepared, the truth flashed across me. The first available train brought me north again. Luckily I am in time.” “I hope so, doctor,” is my excited murmur. “ Nonsense, Alfred ! You feave yet more than half an hour to dress in.” Just then the carriage stops before my door. “ Dash on your wedding clothes, which are doubtless already waiting for you, give that yellow hair and beard of Jours a brush or two and you are ready. [eanwhile, having learned from you the address of the bride, I will drive there instantly and do all the cheering up, encouraging and good news bringing that may be requisite. Depend upon it, a.T shall yet,.(to use a most pertinent quotation) ‘ go merry as a marriage-bell. ’ ” The doctor proves no false prophet. Our bridal party is just fifteen minutes late as it ehters the church; but when were any earthly nuptials exactly punctual?—Appleton's JoutnaL