The Phantom of Bogue Holauba | Page 8

Rigdon resumed: "I mustered the hardihood on one occasion to row up to the bank of Bogue Holauba for a closer survey. The thing vanished on my approach. There was a snag hard by, fast anchored in the bottom of the Bogue. It played slackly to and fro with the current, but I could not see any way by which it or its shadow could have produced the illusion."
"Is this what you had to tell me?" demanded Geraldine pertinently. "I knew all that already."
"No, no," replied the Doctor reluctantly. "Will you tell it, Mr. Gordon, or shall I?"
"You, by all means, if you will," said Gordon gloomily. "God knows I should be glad never to speak of it."
"Well," Rigdon began slowly, "Mr. Gordon was made by his cousin Jasper Keene not only the executor of his will, but the repository of a certain confession, which he may destroy or make public as he sees proper. It seems that in Mr. Keene's gay young days, running wild in his vacation from college on a secluded plantation, he often lacked congenial companionship, and he fell in with an uncouth fellow of a lower social grade, who led him into much detrimental adventure. Among other incidents of very poor fun, the two were notable in hectoring and guying the old Polish trader, who, when drunk on mean whisky as he often was, grew violent and antagonistic. He went very far in his denunciations one fatal night, and by way of playing him a trick in return, they set his boat adrift by cutting the rope that tied the craft to a tree on the bank. The confession states that they supposed the owner was then aboard and would suffer no greater hardship than having to use the sweeps with considerable energy to row her in to a landing again. They were genuinely horrified when he came running down the bank, both arms out-stretched, crying out that his all, his all was floating away on that tumultutius, merciless tide. Before any skiff could be launched, before any effort could be made to reach the trading-boat, she suddenly disappeared. The Mississippi was at flood height, and it was thought that the boat struck some drifting obstruction, swamped, and went down in deep water. The agents in this disaster were never suspected, but as soon as Jasper Keene had come of age, and had command of any means of his own, his first act was to have an exhaustive search made for the old fellow, with a view of financial restitution. But the owner of the trading-boat had died, spending his last years in the futile effort to obtain the insurance money. As the little he had left was never claimed, no representative could profit by the restitution that Jasper Keene had planned, and he found what satisfaction he could in giving it secretly to an old man's charity. Then the phantom began to take his revenge. He appeared on the banks of Bogue Holauba, and straightway the only child of the mansion sickened and died. Mr. Keene's first wife died after the second apparition. Either it was the fancy of an ailing man, or perhaps the general report, but he notes that the spectre was bewailing its woes along the banks of Bogue Holauba when Jasper Keene himself was stricken by an illness which from the first he felt was fatal."
"I remember--I remember it was said at the time," Geraldine barely whispered.
"And now to the question: he leaves it to Mr. Gordon as his kinsman, solicitous of the family repute, to judge whether this confession should be made public or destroyed."
"Does he state any reasons for making it public?" demanded Geraldine, taking the document and glancing through its pages.
"Yes; as an expiation of his early misdeeds toward this man and, if any such thing there be, to placate the spirit of his old enemy; and lastly better to secure his peace with his Maker."
"And which do you say!" Geraldine turned an eager, spirited face toward Gordon, his dejected attitude and countenance distinctly seen in the light from the lamp within the parlor, on a table close to the window.
"I frankly admit that the publication of that confession would humiliate me to the ground, but I fear that it ought to be given to the public, as he obviously desires!"
"And which do you say!" Geraldine was standing now, and swiftly whirled around toward Dr. Bigdon.
"I agree with Mr. Gordon--much against my will--but an honest confession is good for the soul!" he, replied ruefully.
"You infidels!" she exclaimed tumultuously. "You have not one atom of Christian faith between you! To imagine that you can strike a bargain with the good God by letting a sick theory of expiation of a dying, fever-distraught creature besmirch his repute as a