“Hannah gossips unmercifully,” was my cautious and somewhat peevish reply. “If I chose to dream that I was locked into my room by some erratic spectre, I cannot see why she should take the confession of my folly out of my mouth. I was going to relate the fact myself, with all the accompaniments of rushing steps and wild and unearthly cries which are expected by the listeners to a veritable ghost story. But now I have simply to defend myself from a charge of credulity. It’s too bad, Miss Knollys, much too bad. I did not come to a haunted house for this.”
My manner, rather than my words, seemed to completely deceive them. Perhaps it deceived myself, for I began to feel a loss of the depression which had weighed upon me ever since that scream rang in my ears at midnight. It disappeared still further when Lucetta said:
“If your ramblings through the old rooms on this floor were the occasion of this nightmare, you must be prepared for a recurrence of the same tonight, for I am going to take you through the upper rooms myself this morning. Isn’t that the programme, Loreen? Or have you changed your mind and planned a drive for Miss Butterworth?”
“She shall do both,” Loreen answered. “When she is tired of tramping through dusty chambers and examining the decayed remnants of old furniture which encumber them, William stands ready to drive her over the hills, where she will find views well worth her attention.”
“Thank you,” said I. “It is a pleasant prospect.” But inwardly I uttered anything but thanks; rather asked myself if I had not played the part of a fool in ascribing so much importance to the events of the past night, and decided almost without an argument that I had.
However, beliefs die hard in a mind like mine, and though I was ready to consider that an inflamed imagination may often carry us beyond the bounds of fact and even into the realm of fancy and misconception, I yet was not ready to give up my suspicions altogether, or to acknowledge that I had no foundation for the fear that something uncanny if not awful had taken place under this roof the night before. The very naturalness I observed in this hitherto restrained trio might be the result of the removal of some great strain, and if that was the case—Ah, well, alertness is the motto of the truly wise. It is when vigilance sleeps that the enemy gains the victory. I would not let myself be deceived even at the cost of a little ridicule. Amelia Butterworth was still awake, even under a semblance of well-laid suspicion.
My footsteps were not dogged after this as they had hitherto been in my movements about the house. I was allowed to go and come and even to stray into the second long corridor, without any other let than my own discretion and good breeding. Lucetta joined me, to be sure, after a while, but only as guide and companion. She took me into rooms I forgot the next minute, and into others I remember to this day as quaint memorials of a past ever and always interesting to me. We ransacked the house, yet after all was over and I sat down to rest in my own room, two formidable questions rose in my mind for which I found no satisfactory answer. Why, with so many more or less attractive bedchambers at their command, had they chosen to put me into a hole, where the very flooring was unsafe, and the outlook the most dismal that could be imagined? and why, in all our peregrinations in and out of rooms, had we always passed one door without entering? She had said that it was William’s—a sufficient explanation, if true, and I have no doubt it was—but the change of countenance with which she passed it and the sudden lightening of her tread (so instinctive that she was totally unconscious of it) marked that door as one it would be my duty to enter if fate should yet give me the opportunity. That it was the one in communication with the Flower Parlor I felt satisfied, but in order to make assurance doubly sure I resolved upon a tour through the shrubbery outside, that I might compare the location of the window having the chipped blind with that of this room, which was, as well as I could calculate, the third from the rear on the left-hand side.
When, therefore, William called up to know if I was ready for my drive, I answered back that I found myself very tired and would be glad to exchange the pleasure he offered, for a visit to the stables.
This, as I expected, caused considerable comment and some disturbance. They wanted me to repeat my experience of the day before and spend two if not more hours of the morning out of the house. But I did not mean to gratify them. Indeed I felt that my duty held me to the house, and was so persistent in my wishes, or rather in my declaration of them, that all opposition had to give way, even in the stubborn William.
“I thought you had a dread of dogs,” was the final remark with which he endeavored to turn me aside from my purpose. “I have three in the barn and two in the stable, and they make a great fuss when I come around, I assure you.”
“Then they will have enough to do without noticing me,” said I, with a brazen assumption of courage sufficiently surprising if I had had any real intention of invading a place so guarded. But I had not. I no more meant to enter the stables than to jump off the housetop, but it was necessary that I should start for them and make the start from the left wing of the house.
How I managed the intractable William and led him as I did from bush to bush and shrub to shrub, up and down the length of that interminable façade of the left wing, would make an interesting story in itself. The curiosity I showed in plants, even such plants as had survived the neglect that had made a wilderness of this old-time garden; the indifference which, contrary to all my habits, I persisted in manifesting to every inconvenience I encountered in the way of straightforward walking to any object I set my fancy upon examining; the knowledge I exhibited, and the interest which I took it for granted he felt in all I discovered and all I imparted to him, would form the basis of a farce of no ordinary merit had it not had its birth in interests and intents bordering on the tragic.
A row of bushes of various species ran along the wall and covered in some instances the lower ledges of the first row of windows. As I made for a certain shrub which I had observed growing near what I supposed to be the casement from whose blind I had chipped a small sliver, I allowed my enthusiasm to bubble over, in my evident desire to display my erudition.
“This,” said I, “is, without any doubt at all, a stunted but undoubted specimen of that rare tree found seldom north of the thirtieth degree, the Magnolia grandiflora. I have never seen it but once before, and that was in the botanical gardens in Washington. Note its leaves. You have noted its flowers, smaller undoubtedly than they should be—but then you must acknowledge it has been in a measure neglected—are they not fine?”
Here I pulled a branch down which interfered with my view of the window. There was no chip visible in the blinds thus discovered. Seeing this, I let the branch go. “But the oddest feature of this tree and one with which you are perhaps not acquainted” (I wonder if anybody is?) “is that it will not grow within twenty feet of any plant which scatters pollen. See for yourself. This next shrub bears no flower” (I was moving along the wall), “nor this.” I drew down a branch as I spoke, caught sight of the mark I was looking for, and let the bough spring back. I had found the window I wanted.
His grunts and groans during all this formed a running accompaniment which would have afforded me great secret amusement had my purpose been less serious. As it was, I could pay but little attention to him, especially after I had stepped back far enough to take a glance at the window over the one I had just located as that of the Flower Parlor. It was, as I expected, the third one from the rear corner; but it was not this fact which gave me a thrill of feeling so strong that I have never had harder work to preserve my equanimity. It was the knot of black crêpe with which the shutters were tied together.
CHAPTER XX
Questions
I kept the promise I had made to myself and did not go to the stables. Had I intended to go there, I could not have done so after the discovery I have just mentioned. It awakened too many thoughts and contradictory surmises. If this knot was a signal, for whom was this signal meant? If it was a mere
acknowledgment of death, how reconcile the sentimentality which prompted such an acknowledgment with the monstrous and diseased passions lying at the base of the whole dreadful occurrence? Lastly, if it was the result of pure carelessness, a bit of crêpe having been caught up and used for a purpose for which any ordinary string would have answered, what a wonderful coincidence between it and my thoughts—a coincidence, indeed, amounting almost to miracle!
Marvelling at the whole affair and deciding nothing, I allowed myself to stroll down alone to the gate, William having left me at my peremptory refusal to drag my skirts any longer through the briers. The day being bright and the sunshine warm, the road looked less gloomy than usual, especially in the direction of the village and Deacon Spear’s cottage. The fact is, that anything seemed better than the grim and lowering walls of the house behind me. If my home was there, so was my dread, and I welcomed the sight of Mother Jane’s heavy figure bent over her herbs at the door of her hut, a few paces to my left, where the road turned.
Had she not been deaf, I believed I would have called her. As it was, I contented myself with watching the awkward swayings of her body as she pottered to and fro among her turnips and carrots. My eyes were still on her when I suddenly heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the highway. Looking up, I encountered the trim figure of Mr. Trohm, bending to me from a fine sorrel.
“Good morning, Miss Butterworth. It’s a great relief to me to see you in such good health and spirits this morning,” were the pleasant words with which he endeavored, perhaps, to explain his presence in a spot more or less under a ban.
It was certainly a surprise. What right had I to look for such attentions from a man whose acquaintance I had made only the day before? It touched me, little as I am in the habit of allowing myself to be ruled by trivial sentimentalities, and though I was discreet enough to avoid any further recognition of his kindness than was his due from a lady of great self-respect, he was evidently sufficiently gratified by my response to draw rein and pause for a moment’s conversation under the pine trees. This for the moment seemed so natural that I forgot that more than one pair of eyes might be watching me from the windows behind us—eyes which might wonder at a meeting which to the foolish understandings of the young might have the look of premeditation. But, pshaw! I am talking as if I were twenty instead of—Well, I will leave you to consult our family record on that point. There are certain secrets which even the wisest among us cannot be blamed for preserving.
“How did you pass the night?” was Mr. Trohm’s first question. “I hope in all due peace and quiet.”
“Thank you,” I returned, not seeing why I should increase his anxiety in my regard. “I have nothing to complain of. I had a dream; but dreams are to be expected where one has to pass a half-dozen empty rooms to one’s apartment.”
He could not restrain his curiosity.
“A dream!” he repeated. “I do not believe in sleep that is broken by dreams, unless they are of the most cheerful sort possible. And I judge from what you say that yours were not cheerful.”
I wanted to confide in him. I felt that in a way he had a right to know what had happened to me, or what I thought had happened to me, under this roof. And yet I did not speak. What I could tell would sound so puerile in the broad sunshine that enveloped us. I merely remarked that cheerfulness was not to be expected in a domicile so given over to the ravages of time, and then with that lightness and versatility which characterize me under certain exigencies, I introduced a topic we could discuss without any embarrassment to himself or me.
“Do you see Mother Jane over there?” I asked. “I had some talk with her yesterday. She seems like a harmless imbecile.”
“Very harmless,” he acquiesced; “her only fault is greed; that is insatiable. Yet it is not strong enough to take her a quarter of a mile from this place. Nothing could do that, I think. She believes that her daughter Lizzie is still alive and will come back to the hut some day. It’s very sad when you think that the girl’s dead, and has been dead nearly forty years.”
“Why does she harp on numbers?” I asked. “I heard her mutter certain ones over and over.”
“That is a mystery none of us have ever been able to solve,” said he. “Possibly she has no reason for it. The vagaries of the witless are often quite unaccountable.”
He remained looking at me long after he had finished speaking, not, I felt sure, from any connection he found between what he had just said and anything to be observed in me, but from—Well, I was glad that I had been carefully trained in my youth to pay the greatest attention to my morning toilets. Any woman can look well at night and many women in the flush of a bright afternoon, but the woman who looks well in the morning needs not always to be young to attract the appreciative gaze of a man of real penetration. Mr. Trohm was such a man, and I did not begrudge him the pleasure he showed in my neat gray silk and carefully adjusted collar. But he said nothing, and a short silence ensued, which was perhaps more of a compliment than otherwise. Then he uttered a short sigh and lifted the reins.
“If only I were not debarred from entering,” he smiled, with a short gesture toward the house.
I did not answer. Even I understand that on occasion the tongue plays but a sorry part in interviews of this nature.
He sighed again and uttered some short encouragement to his horse, which started that animal up and sent him slowly pacing down the road toward the cheerful clearing whither my own eyes were looking with what I was determined should not be construed even by the most sanguine into a glance of anything like wistfulness. As he went he made a bow I have never seen surpassed in my own parlor in Gramercy Park, and upon my bestowing upon him a return nod, glanced up at the house with an intentness which seemed to increase as some object, invisible to me at that moment, caught his eye. As that eye was directed toward the left wing, and lifted as far as the second row of windows, I could not help asking myself if he had seen the knot of crêpe which had produced upon me so lugubrious an impression. Before I could make sure of this he had passed from sight, and the highway fell again into shadow—why, I hardly knew, for the sun certainly had been shining a few minutes before.
CHAPTER XXI
Mother Jane
“Well, well, what did Trohm want here this morning?” cried a harsh voice from amid the tangled walks behind me. “Seems to me he finds this place pretty interesting all of a sudden.”
I turned upon the intruder with a look that should have daunted him. I had recognized William’s courteous tones and was in no mood to endure a questioning so unbecoming in one of his age to one of mine. But as I met his eye, which had something in it besides anger and suspicion—something that was quizzical if not impertinent—I changed my intention and bestowed upon him a conciliatory smile, which I hope escaped the eye of the good angel who records against man all his small hypocrisies and petty deceits.
“Mr. Trohm rides for his health,” said I. “Seeing me looking up the road at Mother Jane, he stopped to tell me some of the idiosyncrasies of that old woman. A very harmless courtesy, Mr. Knollys.”
“Very,” he echoed, not without a touch of sarcasm. “I only hope that is all,” he muttered, with a sidelong look back at the house. “Lucetta hasn’t a particle of belief in that man’s friendship, or, rather, she believes he never goes anywhere without a particular intention, and I do believe she’s right, or why should he come spying around here just at a time when”—he caught himself up with almost a look of terror—“when—when you are here?” he completed lamely.
“I do not think,” I retorted, more angrily than the occasion perhaps warranted, “that the word spying applies to Mr. Trohm. But if it does, what has he to gain from a pause at the gate and a word to such a new acquaintance as I am?”
“I don’t know,” William persisted suspiciously. “Trohm’s a sharp fellow. If there was anything to see, he would see it without half looking. But there isn�
��t. You don’t know of anything wrong here, do you, which such a man as that, hand in glove with the police as we know him to be, might consider himself interested in?”
Astonished both at this blundering committal of himself and at the certain sort of anxious confidence he showed in me, I hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment, since, if half my suspicions were true, this man must not know that my perspicacity was more to be feared than even Mr. Trohm’s was.
“If Mr. Trohm shows an increased interest in this household during the last two days,” said I, with a heroic defiance of ridicule which I hope Mr. Gryce has duly appreciated, “I beg leave to call your attention to the fact that on yesterday morning he came to deliver a letter addressed to me which had inadvertently been left at his house, and that this morning he called to inquire how I had spent the night, which, in consideration of the ghosts which are said to haunt this house and the strange and uncanny apparitions which only three nights ago made the entrance to this lane hideous to one pair of eyes at least, should not cause a gentleman’s son like yourself any astonishment. It does not seem odd to me, I assure you.”
He laughed. I meant he should, and, losing almost instantly his air of doubt and suspicion, turned toward the gate from which I had just moved away, muttering:
“Well, it’s a small matter to me anyway. It’s only the girls that are afraid of Mr. Trohm. I am not afraid of anything but losing Saracen, who has pined like the deuce at his long confinement in the court. Hear him now; just hear him.”
And I could hear the low and unhappy moaning of the hound distinctly. It was not a pleasant sound, and I was almost tempted to bid William unloose the dog, but thought better of it.
“By the way,” said he, “speaking of Mother Jane, I have a message to her from the girls. You will excuse me if I speak to the poor woman.”
Alarmed by his politeness more than I ever have been by his roughness and inconsiderate sarcasms, I surveyed him inquiringly as he left the gate, and did not know whether to stand my ground or retreat to the house. I decided to stand my ground; a message to this woman seeming to me a matter of some interest.
The Complete Amelia Butterworth Mystery Series Page 40
