“And they do not?”
“Never, sir; haven’t you heard? They never either of them set foot beyond the garden gate. Miss Emma enjoys the flower-beds and spends most of her time working at them or walking up and down between the poplars, but Miss Hermione keeps to the house and grows white and thin, studying and reading, and making herself wise—for what? No one comes to see them—that is, not often, sir, and when they do, they are stiff and formal, as if the air of the house was chilly with something nobody understood. It isn’t right, and it’s going against God’s laws, for they are both well and able to go about the world as others do. Why, then, don’t they do it? That is what I want to know.”
“And that is what everybody wants to know,” returned Frank, smiling; “but as long as the young ladies do not care to explain themselves I do not see how you or any one else can criticise their conduct. They must have good reasons for their seclusion or they would never deny themselves all the pleasures natural to youth.”
“Reasons? What reasons can they have for actions so extraordinary? I don’t know of any reason on God’s earth which would keep me tied to the house, if my feet were able to travel and my eyes to see.”
“Do you live with them?”
“Yes; or how could they get the necessaries of life? I do their marketing, go for the doctor when they are sick, pay their bills, and buy their dresses. That’s why their frocks are no prettier,” she explained.
Frank felt his wonder increase.
“It is certainly a great mystery,” he acknowledged. “I have heard of elderly women showing their eccentricity in this way, but young girls!”
“And such beautiful girls! Do you not think them beautiful?” she asked.
He started and looked at the woman more closely. There was a tone in her voice when she put this question that for the first time made him think that she was less simple than her manner would seem to indicate.
“What is your name?” he asked her abruptly.
“Doris, sir.”
“And what is it you want of me?”
“Oh, sir, I thought I told you; to talk to the young ladies and show them how wicked it is to slight the good gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon them. They may listen to you, sir; seeing that you are from out of town and have the ways of the big city about you.”
She was very humble now and had dropped her eyes in some confusion at his altered manner, so that she did not see how keenly his glance rested upon her nervous nostril, weak mouth, and obstinate chin. But she evidently felt his sudden distrust, for her hands clutched each other in embarrassment and she no longer spoke with the assurance with which she had commenced the conversation.
“I like the young ladies,” she now explained, “and it is for their own good I want them to do differently.”
“Have they never been talked to on the subject? Have not their friends or relatives tried to make them break their seclusion?”
“Oh, sir, the times the minister has been to that house! And the doctor telling them they would lose their health if they kept on in the way they were going! But it was all waste breath; they only said they had their reasons, and left people to draw what conclusions they would.”
Frank Etheridge, who had a gentleman’s instincts, and yet who was too much of a lawyer not to avail himself of the garrulity of another on a question he had so much at heart, stopped, and weighed the matter a moment with himself before he put the one or two questions which her revelations suggested. Should he dismiss the woman with a rebuke for her forwardness, or should he humor her love for talk and learn the few things further which he was in reality burning to hear. His love and interest naturally gained the victory over his pride, and he allowed himself to ask:
“How long have they kept themselves shut up? Is it a year, do you think?”
“Oh, a full year, sir; six months at least before their father died. We did not notice it at first, because they never said anything about it, but at last it became very evident, and then we calculated and found they had not stepped out of the house since the day of the great ball at Hartford.”
“The great ball!”
“Yes, sir, a grand party that every one went to. But they did not go, though they had talked about it, and Miss Hermione had her dress ready. And they never went out again, not even to their father’s funeral. Think of that, sir, not even to their father’s funeral.”
“It is very strange,” said he, determined at whatever cost to ask Edgar about that ball, and if he went to it.
“And that is not all,” continued his now thoroughly reassured companion. “They were never the same girls again after that time. Before then Miss Hermione was the admiration and pride of the whole town, notwithstanding that dreadful scar, while Miss Emma was the life of the house and of every gathering she went into. But afterwards—well, you can see for yourself what they are now; and it was just so before their father died.”
Frank longed to ask some questions about this father, but reason bade him desist. He was already humiliating himself enough in thus discussing the daughters with the servant who waited upon them; others must tell him about the old gentleman.
“The house is just like a haunted house,” Doris now remarked. Then as she saw him cast her a quick look of renewed interest, she glanced nervously down the street and asked eagerly: “Would you mind turning off into this lane, sir, where there are not so many persons to pry and peer at us? It is still early enough for people to see, and as everybody knows me and everybody by this time must know you, they may wonder to see us talking together, and I do so long to ease my whole conscience now I am about it.”
For reply, he took the road she had pointed out. When they were comfortably out of sight from the main street, he stopped again and said:
“What do you mean by haunted?”
“Oh, sir,” she began, “not by ghosts; I don’t believe in any such nonsense as ghosts; but by memories sir, memories of something which has happened within those four walls and which are now locked up in the hearts of those two girls, making them live like spectres. I am not a fanciful person myself, nor given to imaginings, but that house, especially on nights when the wind blows, seems to be full of something not in nature; and though I do not hear anything or see anything, I feel strange terrors and almost expect the walls to speak or the floors to give up their secrets, but they never do; and that is why I quake in my bed and lie awake so many nights.”
“Yet you are not fanciful, nor given to imaginings,” smiled Frank.
“No, for there is ground for my secret fears. I see it in the girls’ pale looks, I hear it in the girls’ restless tread as they pace hour after hour through those lonesome rooms.”
“They walk for exercise; they do not use the streets, so they make a promenade of their own floors.”
“Do people walk for exercise at night?”
“At night?”
“Late at night; at one, two, sometimes three, in the morning? Oh, sir, it is uncanny, I tell you.”
“They are not well; lack of change affects their nerves and they cannot sleep, so they walk.”
“Very likely, but they do not walk together. Sometimes it’s one, and sometimes it’s the other. I know their different steps, and I never hear them both at the same time.”
Frank felt a cold shiver thrill his blood.
“I have been in the house,” she resumed, after a minute’s pause, “for five years; ever since Mrs. Cavanagh died, and I cannot tell you what its secret is. But it has one, I am certain, and I often go about the halls and into the different rooms and ask low to myself, ‘Was it here that it happened, or was it there?’ There is a little staircase on the second floor which takes a quick turn towards a big empty room where nobody ever sleeps, and though I have no reason for shuddering at that place, I always do, perhaps because it is in that big room the young ladies walk so much. Can you understand my feeling this way, and I no more than a servant to them?”
A month ago he would have ut
tered a loud disclaimer, but he had changed much in some regards, so he answered: “Yes, if you really care for them.”
The look she gave him proved that she did, beyond all doubt.
“If I did not care for them do you think I would stay in such a gloomy house? I love them both better than anything else in the whole world, and I would not leave them, not for all the money any one could offer me.”
She was evidently sincere, and Frank felt a vague relief.
“I am glad,” said he, “that they have so good a friend in their own house; as for your fears you will have to bear them, for I doubt if the young ladies will ever take any one into their confidence.”
“Not—not their lawyer?”
“No,” said he, “not even their lawyer.”
She looked disappointed and suddenly very ill at ease.
“I thought you might be masterful,” she murmured, “and find out. Perhaps you will some day, and then everything will be different. Miss Emma is the most amiable,” said she, “and would not long remain a prisoner if Miss Hermione would consent to leave the house.”
“Miss Emma is the younger?”
“Yes, yes, in everything.”
“And the sadder!”
“I am not so sure about that, but she shows her feelings plainer, perhaps because her spirits used to be so high.”
Frank now felt they had talked long enough, interesting as was the topic on which they were engaged. So turning his face towards the town, he remarked:
“I am going back to New York tonight, but I shall probably be in Marston again soon. Watch well over the young ladies, but do not think of repeating this interview unless something of great importance should occur. It would not please them if they knew you were in the habit of talking them over to me, and it is your duty to act just as they would wish you to.”
“I know it, sir, but when it is for their good—”
“I understand; but let us not repeat it, Doris.” And he bade her a kind but significant good-by.
It was now quite dusk, and as he walked towards Dr. Sellick’s office, he remembered with some satisfaction that Edgar was usually at home during the early evening. He wanted to talk to him about Hermione’s father, and his mood was too impatient for a long delay. He found him as he expected, seated before his desk, and with his wonted precipitancy dashed at once into his subject.
“Edgar, you told me once that you were acquainted with Miss Cavanagh’s father; that you were accustomed to visit him. What kind of a man was he? A hard one?”
Edgar, taken somewhat by surprise, faltered for a moment, but only for a moment.
“I never have attempted to criticise him,” said he; “but let me see; he was a straightforward man and a persistent one, never let go when he once entered upon a thing. He could be severe, but I should never have called him hard. He was like—well he was like Raynor, that professor of ours, who understood everything about beetles and butterflies and such small fry, and knew very little about men or their ways and tastes when they did not coincide with his own. Mr. Cavanagh’s hobby was not in the line of natural history, but of chemistry, and that is why I visited him so much; we used to experiment together.”
“Was it his pastime or his profession? The house does not look as if it had been the abode of a rich man.”
“He was not rich, but he was well enough off to indulge his whims. I think he inherited the few thousands, upon the income of which he supported himself and family.”
“And he could be severe?”
“Very, if he were interrupted in his work; at other times he was simply amiable and absent-minded. He only seemed to live when he had a retort before him.”
“Of what did he die?”
“Apoplexy, I think; I was not here, so do not know the particulars.”
“Was he—” Frank turned and looked squarely at his friend, as he always did when he had a venturesome question to put—“was he fond of his daughters?”
Edgar had probably been expecting some such turn in the conversation as this, yet he frowned and answered quite hastily, though with evident conscientiousness:
“I could not make out; I do not know as I ever tried to; the matter did not interest me.”
But Frank was bound to have a definite reply.
“I think you will be able to tell me if you will only give your mind to it for a few moments. A father cannot help but show some gleam of affection for two motherless girls.”
“Oh, he was proud of them,” Edgar hurriedly asserted, “and liked to have them ready to hand him his coffee when his experiments were over; but fond of them in the way you mean, I think not. I imagine they often missed their mother.”
“Did you know her?”
“No, only as a child. She died when I was a youngster.”
“You do not help me much,” sighed Frank.
“Help you?”
“To solve the mystery of those girls’ lives.”
“Oh!” was Edgar’s short exclamation.
“I thought I might get at it by learning about the father, but nothing seems to give me any clue.”
Edgar rose with a restless air.
“Why not do as I do—let the matter alone?”
“Because,” cried Frank, hotly, “my affections are engaged. I love Hermione Cavanagh, and I cannot leave a matter alone that concerns her so nearly.”
“I see,” quoth Edgar, and became very silent.
When Frank returned to New York it was with the resolution to win the heart of Hermione and then ask her to tell him her secret. He was so sure that whatever it was, it was not one which would stand in the way of his happiness.
XI
LOVE
Frank’s next business was to read the packet of letters which had been found in old Mrs. Wakeham’s bed. The box abstracted by Huckins had been examined during his absence and found to contain securities, which, together with the ready money and papers taken from the clock, amounted to so many thousands that it had become quite a serious matter to find the heir. Huckins still clung to the house, but he gave no trouble. He was satisfied, he said, to abide by the second will, being convinced that if he were patient he would yet inherit through it. His sister Harriet was without doubt dead, and he professed great willingness to give any aid possible in verifying the fact. But as he could adduce no proofs nor suggest any clue to the discovery of this sister’s whereabouts if living, or of her grave if dead, his offers were disregarded, and he was allowed to hermitize in the old house undisturbed.
Meantime, false clues came in and false claims were raised by various needy adventurers. To follow up these clues and sift these claims took much of Frank Etheridge’s time, and when he was not engaged upon this active work he employed himself in reading those letters to which I have already alluded.
They were of old date and were from various sources. But they conveyed little that was likely to be of assistance to him. Of the twenty he finally read, only one was signed Harriet, and while that was very interesting to him, as giving some glimpses into the early history of this woman, it did not give him any facts upon which either he or the police could work. I will transcribe the letter here:
“My Dear Cynthia:
“You are the only one of the family to whom I dare write. I have displeased father too much to ever hope for his forgiveness, while mother will never go against his wishes, even if the grief of it should make me die. I am very unhappy, I can tell you that, more unhappy than even they could wish, but they must never know it, never. I have still enough pride to wish to keep my misery to myself, and it would be just the one thing that would make my burden unbearable, to have them know I regretted the marriage on account of which I have been turned away from their hearts and home forever. But I do regret it, Cynthia, from the bottom of my heart. He is not kind, and he is not a gentleman, and I made a terrible mistake, as you can see. But I do not think I was to blame. He seemed so devoted, and used to make me such beautiful speeches that I never thought to
ask if he were a good man; and when father and mother opposed him so bitterly that we had to meet by stealth, he was always so considerate, and yet so determined, that he seemed to me like an angel till we were married, and then it was too late to do anything but accept my fate. I think he expected father to forgive us and take us home, and when he found these expectations false he became both ugly and sullen, and so my life is nothing but a burden to me, and I almost wish I was dead. But I am very strong, and so is he, and so we are likely to live on, pulling away at the chain that binds us, till both are old and gray.
“Pretty talk for a young girl’s reading, is it not? But it relieves me to pour out my heart to someone that loves me, and I know that you do. But I shall never talk like this to you again or ever write you another letter. You are my father’s darling, and I want you to remain so, and if you think too much of me, or spend your time in writing to me, he will find it out, and that will help neither of us. So good-by, little Cynthia, and do not be angry that I put a false address at the top of the page, or refuse to tell you where I live, or where I am going. From this hour Harriet is dead to you, and nothing shall ever induce me to break the silence which should remain between us but my meeting you in another world, where all the follies of this will be forgotten in the love that has survived both life and death.
“Your sorrowing but true sister,
“Harriet.”
The date was forty years back, and the address was New York City—an address which she acknowledged to be false. The letter was without envelope.
The only other allusion to this sister found in the letters was in a short note written by a person called Mary, and it ran thus:
“Do you know whom I have seen? Your sister Harriet. It was in the depot at New Haven. She was getting off the train and I was getting on, but I knew her at once for all the change which ten years make in the most of us, and catching her by the arm, I cried, ‘Harriet, Harriet, where are you living?’ How she blushed and what a start she gave! but as soon as she saw who it was she answered readily enough, ‘In Marston,’ and disappeared in the crowd before I could say another word. Wasn’t it a happy chance, and isn’t it a relief to know she is alive and well. As for her looks, they were quite lively, and she wore nice clothing like one in very good circumstances. So you see her marriage did not turn out as badly as some thought.”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 168
