charities monger run him down; his millions could be traced in no investment; no broker represented him on 'Change. He relinquished (if he ever had it) his ambition for State affairs; he ignored society, and left the world with its mouth open. Nobody could account for it.
Physically, of course, he still existed; glimpses were occasionally caught of him on Fifth avenue, Piccadilly, at Paris, Cairo, Simla, Rome, Yokohama, San Francisco, Valparaiso; he was said to have a suite of rooms at a hotel here, bachelor apartments there, a villa somewhere else; in short, though he was no longer in the world, he was on the earth. But you never saw mention of his name in the newspapers; he was guest at no public banquet or other social function; he never raced horses or joined the yacht club. With the enormous leverage of that fortune in his hand he vanished, and his place knew him no more.
Naturally, he was forgotten before long. It was surmised that the amount of his fortune had been exaggerated; that he was victim to consumption, cancer, hypochondria, leprosy, insanity; again, it was asserted that he was secretly the most accomplished sybarite living. But at length he ceased to be mentioned at all; and for my own part, though I used to be as near him as anyone, if I have bestowed a thought on him these ten years past it was as upon a dead man. Yet here I am at his country place up the Hudson in the lap of luxury. Cattermole has offered no explanation of his long self-exile, but resumes our intercourse as if it had never been interrupted. Possibly, like fabulous sea monsters, after showing above the surface for a few weeks or months, he will sink again to the depths for another generation. But he excites my curiosity, and I hope to find him out. What game is afoot, I wonder?
II
A marvelous man, Cattermole; not easily understood, easily misjudged. That mighty brain is fed by as mighty a heart; but he is shy and secret as a girl.
One might call him a modern Haroun Al Raschid, traveling in disguise, studying man not in cold curiosity, but to do him good. He is a mortal providence or almoner of God, endowed with wisdom, goodness and power; a man who has put aside a career that would have made him immortal in men's mouths, for the sake of blessing humble lives which could not proclaim because they knew not their benefactor. Did ever wealth find such a steward?
Cattermole is incapable of blowing his own trumpet, but from our long talk yesterday I divine much. He is, after all, as transparent as he is deep; and perhaps a sympathetic vein in me helps him disclose himself so naïvely. In our youth, I remember, I was his confidant. Twenty years' silent devotion to poor people—what a record! He does not suspect how much I have gathered from his unguarded talk—his prattle, I might call it. If he distrusted me, he would shield himself with adamant; the mystery with which he has clothed himself all these years proves that. But our former friendship—I had forgotten how close it was—disarmed him, and he spoke without disguise. I did not show him how I was affected, lest he should be stricken silent. In fact, I don't know why I was affected so much; I am not sentimental, as a rule. Perhaps his voice and eyes had something to do with it.
In spite of his long separation from the persons and things of his former life, he remembers them. He mentioned Mabel Lyell, for instance. She jilted him a month before he got Jim Mahone's legacy. Tom Chantrey seemed a great catch in comparison with the poor young lawyer; but I fancy the event that happened four weeks after she and Chantrey were married must have cast a cloud over their honeymoon; for Mabel, even at that early period, cared more for the world than for romance. And what a figure she would have made with
