Here her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Hermione. The latter had not been able to walk off her excitement, and so had come downstairs to bear the moments of suspense with her sister.
“I hope he will not stop,” she cried. “I do not feel as if I could see him till—”
“You will have to,” murmured Emma, “for here he comes.” And the next moment the ardent, anxious face of the young lawyer appeared at the gate, making the whole outside world seem brighter to one pair of eyes which watched him.
“He wants to talk about our visitor,” declared Hermione. “I cannot talk about anything so trivial today; so do you see him, and when he rises to go, say that Doris will bring a certain packet to his door tonight. I will not meet his eyes till that ordeal is passed.” And with a gasp that showed what this moment was to her, she flew from the room, just as Doris’ step was heard in the hall on her way to the front door.
“Where is your sister?” were the first words uttered by Frank, as he came into the room.
“Upstairs,” answered Emma. “She does not feel as if she can see you again till everything is clear between you. The letter she promised is written, and you shall have it tonight. Then if you wish to come again—” her smile completed the sentence.
He took heart at this smile.
“I do not doubt,” said he, “that I shall be here very early in the morning.” And then he glanced all around him.
“Does Huckins still bother you?” he asked.
“Oh,” she cried, with some constraint, “we allow him to come here. ‘Tis the least we can do for one—”
She paused, and seemed to bite off her words.
“Do not let us talk of trivialities,” she completed, “till the great question of all is settled. Tomorrow, if you come, we will speak of this visitor of whom you so little approve.”
“Very well,” he rejoined, with some wistfulness, and turned with his usual impetuosity towards the door. “I will go to Dr. Sellick’s, then, at once, that I may receive your sister’s communication the sooner. Tell her every moment will be an hour till it is in my hands.”
“Doris will carry it to you as soon as it is dark. Had we known you were going to stop here, she might have had it ready now. As it is, look for it as I have said, and may it bring you no deeper pain than the mystery of our seclusion has already done. Hermione has noble qualities, and if her temper had never been injured by the accident which befell her in her infancy, there might have been no call for Doris’ errand tonight.”
“I will remember that,” said he, and left the house with the confident smile of a man who feels it impossible to doubt the woman towards whom his heart has gone out in the fullest love.
When the door was shut behind him, Hermione came stealing again downstairs.
“Does he—is he—prepared to receive the letter?” she asked.
Emma nodded. “I promised that it should go as soon as it is dusk.”
“Then send Doris to me in half an hour; and do not try to see me again tonight. I must bear its long and tedious hours alone.” And for a second time Hermione disappeared from the room.
In half an hour Doris was sent upstairs. She found Hermione standing in the centre of her room with a thick packet in her hand. She was very pale and her eyes blazed strangely. As Doris advanced she held out the packet with a hand that shook notwithstanding all her efforts to render it firm.
“Take this,” she said; “carry it to where Mr. Etheridge stays when here, and place it in his hands yourself, just as you did a former note I entrusted to you.”
Doris, with a flush, seized the letter, her face one question, but her lips awed from speaking by the expression of her mistress’ face.
“You will do what I say?” asked Hermione.
The woman nodded.
“Go then, and do not wait for an answer; there will be none tonight.”
Her gesture of dismissal was imperative and Doris turned to go.
But Hermione had one word more to say. “When you come back,” she added, “come to my door and tap on it three times. By that I shall know you have delivered the letter; but you need not come in.”
“Very well, Miss,” answered the woman, speaking for the first time. And as Hermione turned her back, she gave her young mistress one burning, inquisitive look and then slid out of the room with her eyes on the packet which she almost seemed to devour with her eyes.
As she passed the laboratory door she detected the thin weasel-like face of Huckins looking out.
“What is that?” he whispered, pointing eagerly at the packet.
“Be in the highway at Dobbins’ corner, and I’ll tell you,” she slyly returned, going softly on her way.
And he, with a chuckle which ought to have sounded through that house like a premonition of evil, closed the laboratory door with a careful hand, and descending the twisted staircase which led to the hall below, prepared to follow out her injunction in his own smooth and sneaking way.
“I think I’ll spend the evening at the prayer-meeting,” he declared, looking in at Emma, as he passed the sitting-room door. “I feel the need of such comfort now and then. Is there anything I can do for either of you up street?”
Emma shook her head; she was glad to be rid of his company for this one evening; and he went out of the front door with a quiet, benevolent air which may not have imposed on her, but which certainly did on Doris, who was watching from the garden to see him go.
They met, as she had suggested, at Dobbins’ corner. As it was not quite dark, they walked into a shaded and narrow lane where they supposed themselves to be free from all observation.
“Now tell me,” said he, “what your errand is. That it is important I know from the way you look. What is it, good, kind Doris; anything that will help us in our plans?”
“Perhaps,” said she. “It is a letter for Mr. Etheridge; see how big and thick it is. It ought to tell a deal, this letter; it ought to explain why she never leaves the house.”
The woman’s curious excitement, which was made up of curiosity and a real desire to know the secret of what affected her two young mistresses so closely, was quickly communicated to the scheming, eager old man. Taking the packet from her hand, he felt of it with trembling and inquisitive fingers, during which operation it would have been hard to determine upon which face the desire to break the seal was most marked.
“It may contain papers—law papers,” he suggested, his thumb and forefinger twitching as they passed over the fastening.
But Doris shook her head.
“No,” she declared vivaciously, “there are no law-papers in that envelope. She has been writing and writing for a week. It is her secret, I tell you—the secret of all their queer doings, and why they stay in the house so persistently.”
“Then let us surprise that secret,” said he. “If we want to help them and make them do like other reasonable folks, we must know with what we have to contend.”
“I am sure we would be justified,” she rejoined. “But I am afraid Miss Hermione will find us out. Mr. Etheridge will tell her somebody meddled with the fastening.”
“Let me take the letter to the hotel, and I will make that all right. It is not the first—” But here he discreetly paused, remembering that Doris was not yet quite ready to receive the full details of his history.
“But the time? It will take an hour to open and read all there is written here, and Miss Hermione is waiting for me to tell her that I have delivered it to Mr. Etheridge.”
“Tell her you had other errands. Go to the stores—the neighbors. She need never know you delivered this last.”
“But if you take it I won’t know what is in it, and I want to read it myself.”
“I will tell you everything she writes. My memory is good, and you shall not miss a word.”
“But—but—”
“It is your only chance,” he insinuated; “the young ladies will never tell you themselves.”
“I know it
; yet it seems a mean thing to do. Can you close the letter so that neither he nor they will ever know it has been opened?”
“Trust me,” he leered.
“Hurry then; I will be in front of Dr. Sellick’s in an hour. Give me the letter as you go by, and when I have delivered it, meet me on my way back and tell me what she says.”
He promised, and hastened with his treasure to the room he still kept at the hotel. She watched him as long as he was in sight and then went about her own improvised errands. Did she realize that she had just put in jeopardy not only her young mistresses’ fortunes, but even their lives?
XIX
A DISCOVERY
Frank Etheridge waited a long time that night for the promised communication. Darkness came, but no letter; eight o’clock struck, and still there was no sign of the dilatory Doris. Naturally impatient, he soon found this lengthy waiting intolerable. Edgar was busy in his office, or he would have talked to him. The evening paper which he had brought from New York had been read long ago, and as for his cigar, it lacked flavor and all power to soothe him. In his exasperation he went to the book-shelves, and began looking over the numberless volumes ranged in neat rows before him. He took out one, glanced at it, and put it back; he took out another, without even seeing what its title was, looked at it a moment, sighed, and put that back; he took out a third, which opened in his hand at the title-page, saw that it was one of those old-fashioned volumes, designated The Keepsake, and was about to close and replace it as he had done the others, when his attention was suddenly and forcibly attracted by a name written in fine and delicate characters on the margin at the top. It was no other than this:
Harriet Smith
Gift of her husband
October 3rd 1848
Harriet Smith! Astounded, almost aghast, he ran to Edgar’s office with the volume.
“Edgar! Edgar!” he cried; “look here! See that name! And the book was in your library too. What does it mean? Who was, who is Harriet Smith, that you should have her book?”
Dr. Sellick, taken by surprise, stared at the book a minute, then jumped to his feet in almost as much excitement as Frank himself.
“I got that book from Hermione Cavanagh years ago; there was a poem in it she wanted me to read. I did not know I had the book now. I have never even thought of it from that day to this. Harriet Smith! Yes, that is the name you want, and they must be able to tell you to whom it belongs.”
“I believe it; I know it; I remember now that they have always shown an interest in the matter. Hermione wanted to read the will, and—Edgar, Edgar, can they be the heirs for whom we are searching, and is that why Huckins haunts the house and is received by them in plain defiance of my entreaties?”
“If they are the heirs they would have been likely to have told you. Penniless young girls are not usually backward in claiming property which is their due.”
“That is certainly true, but this property has been left under a condition. I recollect now how disappointed Hermione looked when she read the will. Give me the book; I must see her sister or herself at once about it.” And without heeding the demurs of his more cautious friend, Frank plunged from the house and made his way immediately to the Cavanagh mansion.
His hasty knock brought Emma to the door. As he encountered her look and beheld the sudden and strong agitation under which she labored, he realized for the first time that he was returning to the house before reading the letter upon which so much depended.
But he was so filled with his new discovery that he gave that idea but a thought.
“Miss Cavanagh—Emma,” he entreated, “grant me a moment’s conversation. I have just found this book in Dr. Sellick’s library—a book which he declares was once given him by your sister—and in it—”
They had entered the parlor by this time and were standing by a table upon which burned a lamp—“is a name.”
She started, and was bending to look at the words upon which his finger rested, when the door opened. Hermione, alarmed and not knowing what to think of this unexpected return of her lover so soon, as she supposed, after the receipt of her letter, had come down from her room in that mood of extreme tension which is induced by an almost unendurable suspense.
Frank, who in all his experience of her had never seen her look as she did at this moment, fell back from the place where he stood and hastily shook his head.
“Don’t look like that,” he cried, “or you will make me feel I can never read your letter.”
“And have you not read it?” she demanded, shrinking in her turn till she stood on the threshold by which she had entered. “Why then are you here? What could have brought you back so soon when you knew—”
“This,” he interpolated hastily, holding up the book which he had let fall on the table at her entrance. “See! the name of Harriett Smith is written in it. Tell me, I pray, why you kept from me so persistently the fact that you knew the person to whom the property I hold in trust rightfully belongs.”
The two girls with a quick glance at each other drooped their heads.
“What was the use?” murmured Emma, “since Harriet Smith is dead and her heirs can never claim the property. We are her heirs, Mr. Etheridge; Harriet Smith was our mother, married to father thirty-nine years ago after a widowhood of only three months. It was never known in this place that she had had a former husband or had borne the name of Smith. There was so much scandal and unhappiness connected with her first most miserable marriage, that she suppressed the facts concerning it as much as possible. She was father’s wife and that was all that the people about here knew.”
“I see,” said Frank, wondering greatly at this romance in real life.
“But you might have told me,” he exclaimed. “When you saw what worriment this case was causing me, you might have informed me that I was expending my efforts in vain.”
“I wished to do so,” answered Emma, “but Hermione dreaded the arguments and entreaties which would follow.”
“I could not bear the thought of them,” exclaimed the girl from the doorway where she stood, “any more than I can bear the thought now when a matter of much more importance to me demands your attention.”
“I will go,” cried Frank. But it was to the empty doorway he spoke; Hermione had vanished with these passionate words.
“She is nearly ill,” explained Emma, following him as he made for the door. “You must excuse one who has borne so much.”
“I do not excuse her,” he cried, “I love her.” And the look he cast up the stairs fully verified this declaration. “That is why I go with half on my lips unsaid. Tomorrow we will broach the topic again, meanwhile beware of Huckins. He means you no good by being here. Had I known his connection with you, he should never have entered these doors.”
“He is our uncle; our mother’s brother.”
“He is a scamp who means to have the property which is rightfully your due.”
“And he will have it, I suppose,” she returned. “Hermione has never given me a hope that she means to contend with him in this matter.”
“Hermione has had no counsellor but her own will. Tomorrow she will have to do with me. But shut the door on Huckins; promise me you will not see him again till after you have seen me.”
“I cannot—I know too little what is in that letter.”
“Oh, that letter!” he cried, and was gone from the house.
When he arrived at Dr. Sellick’s again, he found Doris awaiting him, looking very flushed and anxious. She had a shawl drawn around her, and she held some bundles under that shawl.
“I hope,” she said, “that you did not get impatient, waiting for me. I had some errands to do, and while doing them I lost the letter you expected and had to go back and look for it. I found it lying under the counter in Mr. Davis’ store and that is why it is so soiled, but the inside is all right, and I can only beg your pardon for the delay.”
Drawing the packet from under her shawl, she handed it to the frowning law
yer, her heart standing still as she saw him turn it over and over in his hand. But his looks if angry were not suspicious, and with a relieved nod she was turning to go when he observed:
“I have one word to say to you, Doris. You have told me that you have the welfare of the young ladies you serve at heart. Prove this to be so. If Mr. Huckins comes to the door tonight, or in the early morning, say that Miss Cavanagh is not well and that he had better go to the hotel. Do not admit him; do not even open the door, unless Miss Cavanagh or her sister especially command you to do so. He is not a safe friend for them, and I will take the responsibility of whatever you do.”
Doris, with wide-stretched eyes and panting breath, paused to collect her faculties. A week ago she would have received this intimation regarding anybody Mr. Etheridge might choose to mention, with gratitude and a certain sense of increased importance. But ambition and the sense of being on intimate and secret terms with a man and bachelor who boasted of his thousands, had made a change in her weak and cunning heart, and she was disposed to doubt the lawyer’s judgment of what was good for the young ladies and wise for her.
But she did not show her doubt to one whom she had secretly wronged so lately; on the contrary she bowed with seeming acquiescence, and saying, “Leave me alone to take good care of my young ladies,” drew her shawl more closely about her and quietly slid from the house.
A man was standing in the shadow of a great elm on the corner.
As she passed, he whispered: “Don’t stop, and don’t expect to see me tonight. There is someone watching me, I am sure. Tomorrow, if I can I will come.”
She had done a wicked and dangerous thing, and she had not learned the secret.
XX
THE DEVIL’S CAULDRON.
Frank, being left alone, sat down with the letter Doris had given him. These are the words he read:
“Dear Mr. Etheridge:
“I must ask you to walk by my house as early as nine o’clock tomorrow morning. If, having read this letter, you still feel ready to meet fate at my side, you will enter and tell me so. But if the horror that has rested upon my life falls with this reading upon yours, then pass by on the other side, and I will understand your verdict and accept it.
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 175
