“‘Mrs. Wakeham had some of the cunning of her brother,’ I observed. ‘She knew when to play dumb and when to speak. She talked very well when released from the influence of your presence.’
“Overwhelmed, he cast one glance at the two witnesses, who by this time had stepped to my side, and reading confirmation in the severity of their looks, he fell slowly back against the table where he stood leaning heavily, with his head fallen on his breast.
“‘Who has she given the house to?’ he asked at last faintly, almost humbly.
“‘That I have no right to tell you,’ I answered. ‘When the will is offered for probate you will know; that is all the comfort I can give you.’
“‘She has left nothing to me, that much I see,’ he bitterly exclaimed; and his head, lifted with momentary passion, fell again. ‘Ten years gone to the dogs,’ he murmured; ‘ten years, and not a cent in reward! It is enough to make a man mad.’ Suddenly he started forward in irrepressible passion. ‘You talk about influence,’ he cried, ‘my influence; what influence did you have upon her? Some, or she would never have dared to contradict her dying words in that way. But I’ll have it out with you in the courts. I’ll never submit to being robbed in this way.’
“‘You do not know that you are robbed,’ said I, ‘wait till you hear the will.’
“‘The will? This is her will!’ he shrieked, waving before him the paper that he held; ‘I will not believe in any other; I will not acknowledge any other.’
“‘You may have to,’ now spoke up Mr. Dickey in strong and hearty tones; ‘and if I might advise you as a neighbor, I would say that the stiller you keep now the better it probably will be for you in the future. You have not earned a good enough reputation among us for disinterestedness to bluster in this way about your rights.’
“‘I don’t want any talk from you,’ was Huckins’ quick reply, but these words from one who had the ears of the community in which he lived had nevertheless produced their effect; for his manner changed and it was with quite a softened air that he finally put up the paper in his pocket and said: ‘I beg pardon if I have talked too loud and passionately. But the property was given to me and it shall not be taken away if any fight on my part can keep it. So let me see you all go, for I presume you do not intend to take up your abode in this house just yet.’
“‘No,’ I retorted with some significance, ‘though it might be worth our while. It may contain more keepsakes; I presume there are one or two boards yet that have not been ripped up from the floors.’ Then ashamed of what was perhaps an unnecessary taunt, I hastened to add: ‘My reason for telling you of the existence of a second will is that you might no longer make the one you hold an excuse for rifling these premises and abstracting their contents. Nothing here is yours—yet; and till you inherit, if ever you do inherit, any attempt to hide or carry away one article which is not manifestly your own, will be regarded by the law as a theft and will be punished as such. But,’ I went on, seeking to still further mitigate language calculated to arouse any man’s rage, whether he was a villain or not, ‘you have too much sense, and doubtless too much honesty to carry out such intentions now you know that you have lost whatever rights you considered yourself to possess, so I will say no more about it but at once make my proposition, which is that we give this box into the charge of Mr. Dickey, who will stand surety for it till your sister can be found. If you agree to this—’
“‘But I won’t agree,’ broke in Huckins, furiously. ‘Do you think I am a fool? The box is mine, I say, and—’
“‘Or perhaps,’ I calmly interrupted, ‘you would prefer the constable to come and take both it and the house in charge. This would better please me. Shall I send for the constable?’
“‘No, no—you! Do you want to make a prison-bird of me at once?’
“‘I do not want to,’ said I, ‘but the circumstances force me to it. A house which has given up one treasure may give up another, and for this other I am accountable. Now as I cannot stay here myself to watch over the place, it necessarily follows that I must provide someone who can. And as an honest man you ought to desire this also. If you felt as I would under the circumstances, you would ask for the company of some disinterested person till our rival claims as executors had been duly settled and the right heir determined upon.’
“‘But the constable? I don’t want any constable.’
“‘And you don’t want Mr. Dickey?’
“‘He’s better than the constable.’
“‘Very well; Mr. Dickey, will you stay?’
“‘Yes, I’ll stay; that’s right, isn’t it, Susan?’
“Miss Thompson who had been looking somewhat uneasy, brightened up as he spoke and answered cheerfully:
“‘Yes, that’s right. But who will see me home?’
“‘Can you ask?’ I inquired.
“She smiled and the matter was settled.
“In the hall I had the chance to whisper to Mr. Dickey:
“‘Keep a sharp lookout on the fellow. I do not trust him, and he may be up to tricks. I will notify the constable of the situation and if you want help throw up a window and whistle. The man may make another attempt to rob the premises.’
“‘That is so,’ was the whispered reply. ‘But he will have to play sharp to get ahead of me.’”
V.
DIFFICULTIES.
“During the short walk that ensued we talked much of the dead widow and her sinister brother.
“‘They belong to an old family,’ observed Miss Thompson, ‘and I have heard my mother tell how she has danced in their house at many a ball in the olden times. But ever since my day the place has borne evidences of decay, though it is only in the last five years it has looked as if it would fall to pieces. Which of them do you think was the real miser, he or she? Neither of them have had anything to do with their neighbors for ten years at least.’
“‘Do not you know?’ I asked.
“‘No,’ said she, ‘and yet I have always lived in full view of their house. You see there were years in which no one lived there. Mr. Wakeham, who married this woman about the time father married mother, was a great invalid, and it was not till his death that the widow came back here to live. The father, who was a stern old man, I have heard mother tell, gave his property to her because she was the only one of his children who had not displeased him, but when she was a widow this brother came back to live with her, or on her, we have never been able to determine which. I think from what I have seen tonight it must have been on her, but she was very close too, or why did she live like a hermit when she could have had the friendship of the best?’
“‘Perhaps because her brother overruled her; he has evidently had an eye on this property for a long time.’
“‘Yes, but they have not even had the comforts. For three years at least no one has seen a butcher’s cart stop at their door. How they have lived none of us know; yet there was no lack of money or their neighbors would have felt it their duty to look after them. Mrs. Wakeham has owned very valuable stocks, and as for her dividends, we know by what the postmaster says that they came regularly.’
“‘This is very interesting,’ said I. ‘I thought that fellow’s eyes showed a great deal of greed for the little he was likely to inherit. Is there no one who is fully acquainted with their affairs, or have they lived so long out of the pale of society that they possess no friends?’
“‘I do not know of any one who has ever been honored with their confidence,’ quoth the young lady. ‘They have shown so plainly that they did not desire attention that gradually we have all ceased to go to their doors.’
“‘And did not sickness make any difference? Did no one go near them when it was learned how ill this poor woman was?’
“‘We did not know she was ill till this morning. We had missed her face at the window, but no doctor had been called, and no medicine bought, so we never thought her to be in any danger. When we did find it out we were afraid to invade premises which
had been so long shut against us; at least I was; others did go, but they were received so coldly they did not remain; it is hard to stand up against the sullen displeasure of a man like Mr. Huckins.’
“‘And do you mean to say that this man and his sister have lived there alone and unvisited for years?’
“‘They wished it, Mr. Etheridge. They courted loneliness and rejected friendship. Only one person, Mr. H——, the minister, has persisted in keeping up his old habit of calling once a year, but I have heard him say that he always dreaded the visit, first, because they made him see so plainly that they resented the intrusion, and, secondly, because each year showed him barer floors and greater evidences of poverty or determined avarice. What he will say now, when he hears about the two wills and the brother trying to run away with his sister’s savings, before her body was cold, I do not know. There will be some indignation felt in town you may be sure, and considerable excitement. I hope you will come back tomorrow to help me answer questions.’
“‘I shall come back as soon as I have been to Marston.’
“‘So you are going to hunt up the heirs? I pray you may be successful.’
“‘Do you know them? Have you ever heard anything about them?’ I asked.
“‘Oh, no. It must be forty years since Harriet Huckins ran away from home. To many it will be a revelation that such a person lives.’
“‘And we do not even know that she does,’ said I.
“‘True, true, she may be dead, and then that hateful brother will have the whole. I hope he won’t. I hope she is alive and will come here and make amends for the disgrace which that unsightly building has put upon the street.’
“‘I hope so too,’ said I, feeling my old disgust of Huckins renewed at this mention of him.
“We were now at her gate, so bidding her good-by, I turned away through the midnight streets, determined to find the constable. As I went hurrying along in the direction of his home, Miss Thompson’s question repeated itself in my own mind. Had Mrs. Wakeham been the sufferer and victim which her appearance, yes and her words to me, had betokened? Or was her brother sincere in his passion and true in his complaints that he had been subject to her whims and had led the life of a dog in order to please her. With the remembrance of their two faces before me, I felt inclined to believe her words rather than his, and yet her last cry had contained something in its tone beside anxiety for the rights of an almost unknown heir; there had been anger in it—the anger of one whose secret has been surprised and who feels himself personally robbed of something dearer than life.
“However, at this time I could not stop to weigh these possibilities or decide this question. Whatever was true as regarded the balance of right between these two, there was no doubt as to the fact that this man was not to be trusted under temptation. I therefore made what haste I could, and being fortunate enough to find the constable still up, succeeded in interesting him in the matter and obtaining his promise to have the house put under proper surveillance. This done, I took the car for Fulton Ferry, and was so fortunate as to reach home at or near two o’clock in the morning. This was last night, and today you see me here. You disappoint me by saying that you know no one by the name of Harriet Smith.”
“Yet,” exclaimed Edgar, rousing himself from his attitude of listening, “I know all the old inhabitants. Harriet Smith,” he continued in a musing tone, “Harriet—What is there in the name that stirs up some faint recollection? Did I once know a person by that name after all?”
“Nothing more likely.”
“But there the thing stops. I cannot get any farther,” mused Edgar. “The name is not entirely new to me. I have some vague memory in connection with it, but what memory I cannot tell. Let me see if Jerry can help us.” And going to the door, he called “Jerry! Jerry!”
The response came slowly; heavy bodies do not soon overcome their inertia. But after the lapse of a few minutes a shuffling footstep was heard. Then the sound of heavy breathing, something between a snore and a snort, and the huge form of the good-natured driver came slowly into view, till it paused and stood in the door opening, which it very nearly filled.
“Did you call, sirs?” asked he, with a rude attempt at a bow.
“Yes,” responded Edgar, “I wanted to know if you remembered a woman by the name of Harriet Smith once living about here.”
“Har-ri-et Smith,” was the long-drawn-out reply; “Har-ri-et Smith! I knows lots of Harriets, and as for Smiths, they be as plenty as squirrels in nut time; but Har-ri-et Smith—I wouldn’t like to say I didn’t, and I wouldn’t like to say I did.”
“She is an old woman now, if she is still living,” suggested Frank. “Or she may have moved away.”
“Yes, sir, yes, of course”; and they perceived another slow Harriet begin to form itself upon his lips.
Seeing that he knew nothing of the person mentioned, Edgar motioned him away, but Frank, with a lawyer’s belief in using all means at his command, stopped him as he was heavily turning his back and said:
“I have good news for a woman by that name. If you can find her, and she turns out to be a sister of Cynthia Wakeham, of Flatbush, New York, there will be something good for you too. Do you want to try for it?”
“Do I?” and the grin which appeared on Jerry’s face seemed to light up the room. “I’m not quick,” he hastily acknowledged, as if in fear that Frank would observe this fault and make use of it against him; “that is, I’m not spry on my feet, but that leaves me all the more time for gossip, and gossip is what’ll do this business, isn’t it, Dr. Sellick?” Edgar nodding, Jerry laughed, and Frank, seeing he had got an interested assistant at last, gave him such instructions as he thought he needed, and dismissed him to his work.
When he was gone, the friends looked for an instant at each other, and then Frank rose.
“I am going out,” said he. “If you have friends to see or business to look after, don’t think you must come with me. I always take a walk before retiring.”
“Very well,” replied Edgar, with unusual cheeriness. “Then if you will excuse me I’ll not accompany you. Going to walk for pleasure? You’d better take the road north; the walk in that direction is the best in town.”
“All right,” returned Frank; “I’ll not be gone more than an hour. See you again in the morning if not tonight.” And with a careless nod he disappeared, leaving Edgar sitting alone in the room.
On the walk in front of the house he paused.
“To the north,” he repeated, looking up and down the street, with a curious shake of the head; “good advice, no doubt, and one that I will follow some time, but not tonight. The attractions in an opposite direction are too great.” And with an odd smile, which was at once full of manly confidence and dreamy anticipation, he turned his face southward and strode away through the warm and perfumed darkness of the summer night.
He took the road by which he had come from the depot, and passing rapidly by the few shops that clustered about the hotel, entered at once upon the street whose picturesque appearance had attracted his attention earlier in the evening.
What is he seeking? Exercise—the exhilaration of motion—the refreshment of change? If so, why does he look behind and before him with an almost guilty air as he advances towards a dimly lighted house, guarded by the dense branches of a double row of poplars? Is it here the attraction lies which has drawn him from the hotel and the companionship of his friend? Yes, for he stops as he reaches it and gazes first along the dim shadowy vista made by those clustered trunks and upright boughs, and then up the side and across the front of the silent house itself, while an expression of strange wistfulness softens the eager brightness of his face, and his smile becomes one of mingled pride and tenderness, for which the peaceful scene, with all its picturesque features, can scarcely account.
Can it be that his imagination has been roused and his affections stirred by the instantaneous vision of an almost unknown woman? that this swelling of the heart and this s
udden turning of his whole nature towards what is sweetest, holiest, and most endearing in life means that his hitherto free spirit has met its mate, and that here in the lonely darkness, before a strange portal and in the midst of new and untried scenes, he has found the fate that comes once to every man, making him a changed being for ever after?
The month is June and the air is full of the scent of roses. He can see their fairy forms shining from amid the vines clambering over the walls and porches before him. They suggest all that is richest and spiciest and most exquisite in nature, as does her face as he remembered it. What if a thorn has rent a petal here and there, in the luxurious flowers before him, are they not roses still? So to him her face is all the lovelier for the blemish which might speak to others of imperfection, but which to him is only a call for profounder tenderness and more ardent devotion. And if in her nature there lies a fault also, is not a man’s first love potent enough to overlook even that? He begins to think so, and allows his glances to roam from window to window of the nearly darkened house, as if half expecting her sweet and melancholy head to look forth in quest of the stars—or him.
The living rooms are mainly on the side that overlooks the garden, and scarcely understanding by what impulse he is swayed, he passes around the wall to a second gate, which he perceives opening at right angles to the poplar walk. Here he pauses a moment, looking up at the window which for some reason he has determined to be hers, and while he stands there, the moonlight shows the figure of another man coming from the highway and making towards the self-same spot. But before this second person reaches Frank he pauses, falters, and finally withdraws. Who is it? The shadow is on his face and we cannot see, but one thing is apparent, Frank Etheridge is not the only man who worships at this especial shrine tonight.
VI
YOUNG MEN’S FANCIES.
The next morning at about nine o’clock Frank burst impetuously into Edgar’s presence. They had not met for a good-night the evening before and they had taken breakfast separately.
“Edgar, what is this I hear about Hermione Cavanagh? Is it true she lives alone in that house with her sister, and that they neither of them ever go out, not even for a half-hour’s stroll in the streets?”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 164
