Anna Katharine Green

A Matter of Millions

Warsaw 2020

Contents

Chapter 1. The Letter

Chapter 2. A Remarkable Adventure

Chapter 3. The End of a Great Ambition

Chapter 4. The Story of a Strange Girlhood

Chapter 5. An Importunate Suitor

Chapter 6. A Surprise

Chapter 7. Great Day at Police Headquarters

Chapter 8. The Jenny Rogers Mystery

Chapter 9. Horace Byrd

Chapter 10. Miss Rogers of Detroit

Chapter 11. Miss Rogers of New York

Chapter 12. Madame’s Little Door

Chapter 13. A Charge

Chapter 14. Master of the Situation

Chapter 15. Friends

Chapter 16. A Startling Introduction

Chapter 17. The First Step Taken

Chapter 18. Face to Face

Chapter 19. Something More than Croquet

Chapter 20. Forward and Back

Chapter 21. Threats and Entreaties

Chapter 22. Farther into the Maze

Chapter 23. Welcome and Unwelcome Intruders

Chapter 24. A Fortune and a Death-Bed

Chapter 25. The Surprises of an Hour

Chapter 26. The Quest

Chapter 27. Secret Protectors

Chapter 28. La Sonnambula

Chapter 29. The Valet

Chapter 30. A Great Heiress

Chapter 31. Final Words

Chapter 32. The Seed is Sown

Chapter 33. Unexpected Conditions

Chapter 34. New Fears

Chapter 35. Before the Reception

Chapter 36. At the Reception

Chapter 37. A Turn of the Wheel

Chapter 38. Jeannette and Virginia

Chapter 39. Another Turn of the Wheel

Chapter 40. The Wheel Becomes a Rack

Chapter 41. Secret Enemies

Chapter 42. The Last Hope

Chapter 43. Fate Triumphant

Chapter 44. Jenny’s Marriage

Chapter 45. What He Read

Chapter 46. Too Late

Chapter 47. Loose Threads

Chapter 1. The Letter

An old crone stood on the top floor of one of New York’s studio buildings. In her hand was a letter. Looking at it, she studied the superscription carefully, and then, with the same intentness, read the name on one of the doors before her. Hamilton Degraw was on the one, Hamilton Degraw was on the other. Satisfied, she gave a quick glance around her, thrust the letter under the door, and quickly fled.

Within, the young artist answering to this name sat alone, gazing at a nearly completed picture on his easel. He was not painting, only musing, and at the sound of the departing step, which had been too hurried to be noiseless, he looked around and saw the letter. Rising, he picked it up, gave it a quick glance, and opened it. The contents were astonishing.

“Will Mr. Degraw,” so it read, “please accept the inclosed, and in repayment, bring paper and pencil to 391 East street this evening at eight o’clock? A simple sketch is all that is required of him at this time. Afterward, a finished picture may be ordered. When he sees the subject of the sketch, he will realize why so peculiar an hour has been chosen, and why we request promptness and exactitude.

“If Mr. Degraw cannot come, will he send an immediate message to that effect?”

The inclosed was a bank-note of no mean value, and the name signed to the note was, as clearly as he could make out, “Andrea Montelli.”

“Curious!” came from the young man’s lips as he finished the epistle and unfolded the bank-note. “Somewhat peremptory in its demand, but interesting, perhaps, for that very reason. Shall I pursue the adventure? The amount of this money surely makes it worth my while, and then–”

He did not finish the sentence aloud, but his look showed that he was in one of those moods when the prospect of a new or unusual experience possessed a special attraction.

“Eight o’clock!” he repeated after a few minutes, “I wish the note had said six.” And sighing lightly, he went back to the picture on the easel. As he stands surveying it, let us survey him. Though a dissatisfied expression rests upon his countenance (he evidently is not pleased with his day’s work), there is that in his face which irresistibly attracts the eye, and if you look long enough, the heart, so fine are his traits and so full of sympathy his glance and smile. Handsome without doubt, as a man and artist should be, he has that deeper charm which not only awakens the interest but sways the emotions, and which, when added to such perfection of features as distinguishes his face, makes a man a marked figure for good or evil according as the heart behind that charm is actuated by love of self or a generous consideration for others.

By which is the heart of this man moved? We will let his future actions tell, only premising that the bird which sings in one window of his studio and the flower which blows in another, argue that he at least possesses gentle tastes, while the array of swords and guns that gleam on a crimson background above the mantel-piece, betray that the more masculine traits are not absent from his character. Strong, winsome and enthusiastic he appears to us, and such we will take him to be, till events prove us short-sighted, or enlarge mere prepossession in his favor into actual and positive regard. He is tall, and his hair and mustache are black, his eyes gray.

The picture upon which he is gazing is that of a young girl. Though he does not like it, we do, and wonder if his dissatisfaction arises from a failure to express his ideal or from some fault in the subject itself. It cannot be the latter, for never were sweeter features placed upon canvas or a more ideal head presented to the admiration of mankind. Shrined in a golden haze, it smiles upon you with an innocent allurement that ought to repay any artist for no matter how many days of labor or nights of restless dreams. But Hamilton Degraw is not satisfied. Let us see if we can discover the reason for this from the words just hovering on his lips.

“It is beautiful, it is a dream, but where shall I find the face I seek? I would make it a companion piece to this, and I would call the one “Dream’ and the other “Reality,’ and men would muse upon the “Dream,’ but love the “Reality.’ But where is there a reality to equal this dream? I shall never find it.”

At half-past seven (all this occurred in the month of May), Mr. Degraw left his studio and proceeded up-town with his paper and pencils.

Chapter 2. A Remarkable Adventure

The number which had been given him was 391 East–street, and, though he had never been in just the locality indicated by this address, he thought he knew the region and what to expect there. Had he not passed through many of these uptown streets, even to the water’s edge, and found them to vary only in the size and pretention of their long and monotonous rows of similarly fashioned brick or stone houses, unless it were by the intrusion of a brewery or a church?

It was, therefore, an agreeable surprise to discover that the especial block in which he was for the moment interested, was not like other blocks, even in this quarter, but was broken up by a stretch of odd-looking houses, which, if somewhat worn and dilapidated, still preserved an air of picturesqueness sadly lacking in most of our third-rate dwellings.

There were four of them, all of a size, all of a grayish-brown color, all with carved strips overhanging the window-tops, and all with square wooden pillars in front. Though their general appearance suggested past wealth, it also as certainly betokened present indigence, notwithstanding the fact that before one of them there stood at this moment a carriage of style and elegance sufficient to prove it the private equipage of a person of means.

Being in an artistic mood, he was greatly attracted by these old-fashioned structures and felt quite an unreasoning desire to enter them.

Long before he came near enough to be sure of the numbers they bore, he had begun to reckon onward from the one he was passing, to see whether 391 would be found on any of them. He soon came to the conclusion that it would, and presently was quite sure of it, and, as he approached nearer, he was pleased to see that it was upon the house before which the carriage was standing. Why he was pleased at this, he would have found it hard to tell. Perhaps, because the house looked a little somber and oppressive as he came within full sight of its closely shuttered windows; and to one of his gay and careless temperament, any hint of companionship was always welcome.

There was a bell at the entrance, but he did not ring it. For just as he stretched out his hand toward it, the door opened, and he saw before him a young servant-girl of a somewhat vacant countenance, who quickly beckoned him in. As his foot crossed the threshold, the clock from a neighboring church pealed out the stroke of eight. “I am prompt,” he inwardly ejaculated.

The hall into which he stepped was dark and seemingly unfurnished. There was no carpet on the floor, and if there were any doors in sight, they were all closed. Feeling it a somewhat chilly welcome, he looked helplessly at the girl, who immediately made another gesture in the direction of a staircase that rose in a spiral a few feet beyond him.

“Does Signor Montelli live up-stairs?” he inquired.

She gave no indication of hearing him, but continued to point to the staircase. “Is she deaf?” was his mental inquiry. It would seem so. Somewhat dashed in his spirits, he went up the first flight and paused again. Darkness and solitude were before him.

“Well, well,” thought he, “this will not do.” And he was about to turn about in retreat, when he remembered the bank-bill in his pocket. “That was not sent to me for nothing,” he concluded; and, taking a closer look into the silent space before him, he perceived four doors.

Making his way to one, he knocked. There was a hurried sound from within, and presently the door was opened and the face of an old crone looked out. Her features lighted up as she saw him, but she did not speak. Pointing as the girl below had done, she indicated the room he should enter, and then withdrew her face and shut the door.

“This is an adventure,” was his mental comment, but he had no further notion of retreat.

Following the guidance of her finger, he crossed the hall and pushed open the door toward which she had pointed. An ordinary room of faded aspect met his eyes.

But barely had he entered it, when he was met by the old crone, and led rather than escorted through another door into an apartment so brilliantly lighted, that for a moment he found himself dazzled and unable to perceive more than the graceful figure of an elegant woman dressed in the richest of carriage attire, bending over what seemed to be a heavily draped couch.

But in another instant, his faculties became clear, and he perceived that what he supposed to be a couch, was in reality a bed of death, and that the woman before him was engaged in strewing blossoms of the richest beauty and most delicate fragrance over the body of a young girl whose face as yet he could not see. Some lillies lay on the floor, half on, half off the edge of a snowy drapery of soft wool, which fell from the couch, taking from it the character of a bed, and lending to the whole scene an aspect of poetic beauty, which was in no wise diminished by the rows of wax candles that burned at the head and the feet of the dead.

It was a picture; and for a moment he looked on it as such; but in another, the lady, whose occupation he had interrupted, turned, and, seeing him, stood upright, meeting his gaze with astonishment and a half-vailed delight in her fine violet eyes; then, as he did not speak and hardly remembered to bow, she colored slightly, and with a strange, swift movement, that took him wholly by surprise, glided from the room.

Then, indeed, he started and tried to follow her. But it was too late. Ere he had reached the threshold, he heard the front door shut, and, in an instant after, the carriage drive away. Strange adventure! For though he did not know her name, he knew her face; had seen it once in a large crowd, and charmed by its perfect lineaments, had brooded upon its memory till he had idealized it into the picture which we have already described as the chief ornament of his studio.

“Am I dreaming?” he asked himself; and he cast a sudden look about him for the old crone who had ushered him into the room, in the hopes of learning from her the name of the lady who had just left them, but by this movement bringing himself nearer to the pulseless figure on the couch, he found himself so enthralled by the exquisite loveliness of the marble-like countenance he now, for the first time, had an opportunity of seeing, that he forgot the impulse that had moved him, and stood petrified in astonishment and delight.

For if what he saw before him formed the picture he was expected to paint, how beautiful it was! Never in his fancy, prolific as it was with lovely forms and faces, had he beheld a countenance like this! It was angelic in its purity and yet human in its quiet look of grief and resignation. It had lines as exquisite as those we see in the ideal heads of the most famous masters, and yet one scarcely saw those lines or the delicate curves of cheek and chin, for the expression which steeped the whole in heavenliest sweetness. If dead, then no living woman was fair; for she seemed to hold all beauty within the scope of her perished personality and to compress into the narrow space shone upon by those two rows of candles all the loveliness and the mystery which had hitherto enshrined the world of womankind in his eyes. Her head reposed upon a white silken pillow, across which streamed a mass of midnight hair in a tangle of great lustrous curls. One lay in motionless beauty on her breast, and so unlike death was the whole vision, that he found himself watching this curl in eager anticipation of seeing it move with the rising and falling of her breath.

But it lay quiescent, as did the waxen lids above the closely shut eyes, and at this discovery, which proved of a surety that she was dead, he felt such a pang of despair, that he knew that whereas he had hitherto looked at a woman with his eyes, he was surveying this one with his heart; that a feeling akin to love had awakened in his breast, and that this feeling was for a dead image–a soulless, pulseless morsel of clay.

The consciousness of his folly made him blush, and drawing back, he again looked about him for the old crone. She was not far away. Seated at one end of the apartment, in a low chair, with her figure bent forward and her head buried in her hands, she was rocking slowly to and fro in what seemed like silent anguish. But when he approached her and she looked up, there were no tears in her eyes nor signs of trouble about her sordid and almost sinister mouth.

“Where is Signor Montelli?” asked the artist. “Is he not present? I allude to the gentleman who wrote me a note this morning requesting me to come here and draw him a picture.”

But she made no reply–that is, no intelligible reply. She murmured some words, but they were in a language he did not recognize, and the mystery seemed to be deepened rather than cleared by her presence.

“Can you not speak English?” he inquired.

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