The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack

by Anna Katharine Green

  “But Hermione, Hermione—”

  “You think you know what has set a seal on my lips, the gloom on my brow, the death in my heart; but you do not, Emma. You know much, but not the fatal grief, the irrepressible misery. But you shall know, and know soon. I have promised to write out the whole history of my life for Mr. Etheridge, and when he has read it you shall read it too. Perhaps when you learn what the real horror of this house has been, you may appreciate the force of will-power which it has taken for me to remain in it.”

  Emma, who had never suspected anything in the past beyond what she herself knew, grew white with fresh dismay. But Hermione, seeing it, kissed her, and, speaking more lightly, said: “You kept back one vital secret from me in consideration of what you thought the limit of my endurance. I have done the same for you under the same consideration. Now we will equalize matters, and perhaps—who knows?—happier days may come, if Mr. Etheridge is not too much startled by the revelations I have to make him, and if Dr. Sellick—do not shrink, Emma—learns some magnanimity from his friend and will accept the explanations I shall think it my duty to offer him.”

  But at this suggestion, so unlike any that had ever come from Hermione’s lips before, the younger sister first stared, and then flung her arms around the speaker, with cries of soft deprecation and shame.

  “You shall not,” she murmured. “Not if I lose him shall he ever know why that cruel letter was written. It is enough—it shall be enough—that he was dismissed then. If he loves me he will try his fate again. But I do not think he does love me, and it would be better for him that he did not. Would he ever marry a woman who, not even at his entreaty, could be induced to cross the limits of her home?”

  “Mr. Etheridge should not do it either; but he is so generous—perhaps so hopeful! He may not be as much so when he has read what I have to write.”

  “I think he will,” said Emma, and then paused, remembering that she did not know all that her sister had to relate.

  “He would be a man in a thousand then,” whispered the once haughty Hermione. “A man to worship, to sacrifice all and everything to, that it was in one’s power to sacrifice.”

  “He will do what is right,” quoth Emma.

  Hermione sighed. Was she afraid of the right?

  Meantime, in the poplar-walk below, another talk was being held, which, if these young girls could have heard it, might have made them feel even more bitterly than before, what heavy clouds lay upon any prospect of joy which they might secretly cherish. Doris, who was a woman of many thoughts, and who just now found full scope for all her ideas in the unhappy position of her two dear young ladies, had gone into the open air to pick currants and commune with herself as to what more could be done to bring them into a proper recognition of their folly in clinging to a habit or determination which seemed likely to plunge them into such difficulties.

  The currant bushes were at the farther end of the garden near the termination of the poplar-walk, and when, in one of the pauses of her picking, she chanced to look up, she saw advancing towards her down that walk the thin, wiry figure of the old man who had taken luncheon with the young ladies, and whom they called, in very peculiar tones, she thought, Mr. Huckins. He was looking from right to left as he came, and his air was one of contemplation or that of a person who was taking in the beauties of a scene new to him and not wholly unpleasant.

  When he reached the spot where Doris stood eying him with some curiosity and not a little distrust, he paused, looked about him, and perceiving her, affected some surprise, and stepped briskly to where she was.

  “Picking currants?” he observed. “Let me help you. I used to do such things when a boy.”

  Astonished, and not a little gratified at what she chose to consider his condescension, Doris smiled. It was a rare thing now for a man to be seen in this lonesome old place, and such companionship was not altogether disagreeable to Mistress Doris.

  Huckins rubbed his hands together in satisfaction at this smile, and sidled up to the simpering spinster with a very propitiatory air.

  “How nice this all is,” he remarked. “So rural, so peaceful, and so pleasant. I come from a place where there is no fruit, nor flowers, nor young ladies. You must be happy here.” And he gave her a look which she thought very insinuating.

  “Oh, I am happy enough,” she conceded, “because I am bound to be happy wherever the young ladies are. But I could wish that things were different too.” And she thought herself very discreet that she had not spoken more clearly.

  “Things?” he repeated softly.

  “Yes, my young ladies have odd ideas; I thought you knew.”

  He drew nearer to her side, very much nearer, and dropped the currants he had plucked gently into her pail.

  “I know they have a fixed antipathy to going out, but they will get over that.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked eagerly.

  “Don’t you?” he queried, with an innocent look of surprise. He was improving in his dissimulation, or else he succeeded better with those of whom he had no fear.

  “I don’t know what to think. Are you an old friend of theirs?” she inquired. “You must be, to lunch with them.”

  “I never saw them before today,” he returned, “yet I am an old friend. Reason that out,” he leered.

  “You like to puzzle folks,” she observed, picking very busily but smiling all the while. “Do you give answers with your puzzles?”

  “Not to such sharp wits as yours. But how beautiful Miss Cavanagh is. Has she always had that scar?”

  “Ever since I knew her.”

  “Pity she should have such a blemish. You like her, don’t you, very much?”

  “I love her.”

  “And her sister—such a sweet girl!”

  “I love them both.”

  “That is right. I should be sorry to have any one about them who did not love them. I love them, or soon shall, very much.”

  “Are you,” Doris inquired, with great inquisitiveness, “going to remain in Marston any time?”

  “I cannot say,” sighed the old man; “I should like to. I should be very happy here, but I am afraid the young ladies do not like me well enough.”

  Doris had cherished some such idea herself an hour ago, and had not wondered at it then, but now her feelings seemed changed.

  “Was it to see them you came to Marston?” said she.

  “Merely to see them,” he replied.

  She was puzzled, but more eager than puzzled, so anxious was she to find someone who could control their eccentricities.

  “They will treat you politely,” she assured him. “They are peculiar girls, but they are always polite.”

  “I am afraid I shall not be satisfied with politeness,” he insinuated. “I want them to love me, to confide in me. I want to be their friend in fact as I have so long been in fancy.”

  “You are some relative of theirs,” she now asserted, “or you knew their father well or their mother.”

  “I wouldn’t say no,” he replied—but to which of these three intimations, he evidently did not think it worth while to say.

  “Then,” she declared, “you are the man I want. Mr. Etheridge—that is the lawyer from New York who has lately been coming here—does not seem to have much confidence in himself or me. But you look as if you might do something or suggest something. I mean about getting the young ladies to give up their whims.”

  “Has this Mr.—Mr. Etheridge, did you call him?—been doing their business long?”

  “I never saw him here till a month ago.”

  “Ah! a month ago! And do they like him? Do they seem inclined to take his advice? Does he press it upon them?”

  “I wish I knew. I am only a poor servant, remember, though my bringing up was as good almost as theirs. They are kind to me, but I do not sit down in the parlor; if I did, I might know something of what is going on. I can only judge, you see, by looks.”

  “And the looks? Come, I have a great i
nterest in the young ladies—almost as great as yours. What do their looks say?—I mean since this young man came to visit them? He is a young man, didn’t you say?”

  “Yes, he is young, and so good-looking. I have thought—now don’t spill the currants, just as we have filled the pail—that he was a little sweet on Miss Hermione, and that that was why he came here so often, and not because he had business.”

  “You have?” twitted the old man, almost dancing about her in his sudden excitement. “Well, well, that must be seen to. A wedding, eh, a wedding? That’s what you think is coming?” And Doris could not tell whether it was pleasure or alarm that gave so queer a look to his eyes.

  “I cannot say—I wish I could,” she fervently cried; “then I might hope to see a change here; then we might expect to see these two sweet young ladies doing like other folks and making life pleasant for themselves and every one about them. But Miss Hermione is a girl who would be very capable of saying no to a young man if he stood in the way of any resolve she had taken. I don’t calculate much on her being influenced by love, or I would never have bothered you with my troubles. It is fear that must control her, or—” Doris paused and looked at him knowingly—“or she must be lured out of the house by some cunning device.”

  Huckins, who had been feeling his way up to this point, brightened as he noticed the slyness of the smile with which she emphasized this insinuation, and from this moment felt more assured. But he said nothing as yet to show how he was affected by her words. There was another little matter he wanted settled first.

  “Do you know,” he asked, “why she, and her sister, too, I believe, have taken this peculiar freak? Have they ever told you, or have you ever—” how close his head got to hers, and how he nodded and peered—“surprised their secret?”

  Doris shook her head. “All a mystery,” she whispered, and began picking currants again, that operation having stopped as they got more earnest.

  “But it isn’t a mystery,” he laughed, “why you want to get them out of the house just now. I know your reason for that, and think you will succeed without any device of love or cunning.”

  “I don’t understand you,” she protested, puckering her black brows and growing very energetic. “I don’t want to do it now any more than I have for the last twelve months. Only I am getting desperate. I am not one who can want a thing and be patient. I want Miss Hermione Cavanagh and her sister to laugh and be gay like other girls, and till they give up all this nonsense of self-seclusion they never will; and so I say to myself that any measures are justifiable that lead to that end. Don’t you think I am right?”

  He smiled warily and took her pail of currants from her hand.

  “I think you are the brightest woman and have one of the clearest heads I ever knew. I don’t remember when I have seen a woman who pleased me so well. Shall we be friends? I am only a solitary bachelor, travelling hither and thither because I do not know how else to spend my money; but I am willing to work for your ends if you are willing to work for mine.”

  “And what are they?” she simpered, looking very much delighted. Doris was not without ambition, and from this moment not without her hopes.

  “To make these young ladies trust me so that I may visit them off and on while I remain in this place. I thought it was pleasant here before, but now—” The old fellow finished with a look and a sigh, and Doris’ subjugation was complete.

  Yet she did not let him at this time any further into her plans, possibly because she had not formed any. She only talked on more and more about her love for the young ladies, and her wonder over their conduct, and he, listening for any chance word which might help him in his own perplexity, walked back at her side, till they arrived in sight of the house, when he gave her the pail and slunk back to come on later alone. But a seed was sown at that interview which was destined to bear strange fruit; and it is hard telling which felt the most satisfaction at the understood compact between them—the hard, selfish, and scheming miser, or the weak and obstinate serving-woman, who excused to herself the duplicity of her conduct by the plea, true enough as far as it went, that she was prompted by love for those she served, and a desire to see the two women she admired as bright and happy as their youth and beauty demanded.

  XVIII

  SUSPENSE.

  The letter which Frank sent to Edgar described his encounter with Huckins, and expressed a wish that the Doctor would employ some proper person to watch his movements and see that he did not make himself disagreeable to the Misses Cavanagh, whom he had evidently set himself to annoy.

  What, then, was Etheridge’s surprise to receive on the following day a reply from his friend, to the effect that Mr. Huckins had not only called upon the young ladies mentioned by him, but had made himself very much at home with them, having lunched, dined, and report even said breakfasted at their table.

  This was startling news to Frank, especially after the letter he had written to Hermione, but he restrained himself from returning at once to Marston, as he was half tempted to do, and wrote her again, this time beseeching her in plain words to have nothing to do with so suspicious a person as he knew this Huckins to be, and advised her where to appeal for assistance in case this intolerable intruder was not willing to be shaken off. This letter brought the following answer:

  Dear Mr. Etheridge:

  Do not be concerned about us. Mr. Huckins will not trouble us unduly. Knowing his character, we are not likely to be misled by him, and it amuses us in our loneliness to have so queer and surprising a person as our guest.

  Aunt Lovell is very sharp and keeps a keen eye upon him. He does not offend us except by his curiosity, but as that is excusable in an old man introduced into a household like ours, we try to make the best of it. When you come yourself we will dismiss the intruder.

  Ever sincerely yours,

  Hermione Cavanagh.

  This letter was put very near Frank’s heart, but it did not relieve him from his anxiety. On the contrary, it added to his fears, because it added to his mystification. What did Huckins want of the Misses Cavanagh, and what was the real reason for the indulgence they showed him? Was there a secret in their connection which he ought to know? He began to hasten his business and plan to leave the city again, this time for more than a single night.

  Meantime, Dr. Sellick was not without his own secret doubts. Hide it as he would, he still cherished the strongest affection for the once dimpling, dainty, laughing-eyed Emma. Not a day passed but he had to combat a fervent desire to pass her gate, though when he yielded to this temptation he went by like an automaton, and never looked to right or left unless it was dark night. His was a proud soul and an exacting one. His self-esteem had been hurt, and he could not bring himself to make even the shadow of an advance towards one who had been the instrument of his humiliation. And yet he trembled when he thought of misfortune approaching her, and was almost as anxious as Frank about the presence in her house of the hypocritical and unprincipled Huckins. Had he listened only for a moment to the pleading of his better instincts, he would have gone to their door and lent his entreaties to those of Frank for a speedy dismissal of their unreliable guest; but the hour had not yet come for such a self-betrayal, and so he refrained, even while cursing himself for a pride which would not yield even at the impending danger of one so passionately beloved.

  He however kept a man at watch upon the suspected stranger, a precaution which certainly did not amount to much, as the danger, if there was any, was not one which a detective stationed outside of the Misses Cavanagh’s house would be able to avert.

  Meanwhile Huckins, who was in his element, grew more insinuating and fatherly in his manner, day by day. To him this run of a house in which there lurked a mystery worth his penetrating, was a bliss that almost vied with that of feeling himself on the road to wealth. He pottered and poked about in the laboratory, till there was not a spot in the room or an article on the shelves which had not felt the touch of his hand; and Hermione and Em
ma, with what some might have thought a curious disregard of their father’s belongings, let him do this, merely restricting him from approaching their own rooms. Possibly they felt as if some of the gloom of the place was lifted by the presence of even this evil-eyed old man; and possibly the shadows which were growing around them both, as Hermione labored day after day upon the history she was writing for her lover, made this and every other circumstance disconnected with the important theme they were considering, of little moment to them. However that may be, he came and went as he would, and had many sly hours in the long, dim laboratory and in the narrow twisted corridors at the back of the house, and what was worse and perhaps more disastrous still, on the stairs and in the open doorways with Doris, who had learned to toss her head and smile very curiously while busying herself in the kitchen, or taking those brief minutes of respite abroad, which the duties of the place demanded. And so the week passed, and Saturday night came.

  It was seven o’clock, and train-time, and the blinds in the Cavanagh house guarding the front windows were tipped just a little. Behind one of these sat Emma, listening to the restless tread of Hermione pacing the floor in the room above. She knew that the all-important letter was done, but she could not know its contents, or what their effect would be upon the free, light-hearted man whose approach they were expecting. She thought she ought to know all that Hermione had been through in the year which had passed, yet the wild words uttered by her sister in their late memorable interview, had left a doubt in her mind which a week’s meditations had only served to intensify. Yet the fears to which it had given rise were vague, and she kept saying to herself: “There cannot be anything worse than I know. Hermione exaggerated when she intimated that she had a secret bitterer than that we keep together. She has suffered so much she cannot judge. I will hope that all will go right, and that Mr. Etheridge will receive her explanations and so make her his everlasting debtor. If once she is made to feel that she owes him something, she will gradually yield up her resolve and make both him and me happy. She will see that some vows are better broken than kept, and—”