BOOK III. THE HEART OF MAN

XXIII. DORIS

“A young girl named Doris Scott?”

The station-master looked somewhat sharply at the man he was addressing,

and decided to give the direction asked.

“There is but one young girl in town of that name,” he declared, “and

she lives in that little house you see just beyond the works. But let me

tell you, stranger,” he went on with some precipitation--

But here he was called off, and Sweetwater lost the conclusion of

his warning, if warning it was meant to be. This did not trouble the

detective. He stood a moment, taking in the prospect; decided that the

Works and the Works alone made the town, and started for the house which

had been pointed out to him. His way lay through the chief business

street, and greatly preoccupied by his errand, he gave but a passing

glance to the rows on rows of workmen’s dwellings stretching away to the

left in seemingly endless perspective. Yet in that glance he certainly

took in the fact that the sidewalks were blocked with people and

wondered if it were a holiday. If so, it must be an enforced one, for

the faces showed little joy. Possibly a strike was on. The anxiety he

everywhere saw pictured on young faces and old, argued some trouble; but

if the trouble was that, why were all heads turned indifferently from

the Works, and why were the Works themselves in full blast?

These questions he may have asked himself and he may not. His attention

was entirely centred on the house he saw before him and on the possible

developments awaiting him there. Nothing else mattered. Briskly he

stepped out along the sandy road, and after a turn or two which led him

quite away from the Works and its surrounding buildings, he came out

upon the highway and this house.

It was a low and unpretentious one, and had but one distinguishing

feature. The porch which hung well over the doorstep was unique in shape

and gave an air of picturesqueness to an otherwise simple exterior; a

picturesqueness which was much enhanced in its effect by the background

of illimitable forest, which united the foreground of this pleasing

picture with the great chain of hills which held the Works and town in

its ample basin.

As he approached the doorstep, his mind involuntarily formed an

anticipatory image of the child whose first stitches in embroidery were

like a fairy’s weaving to the strong man who worked in ore and possibly

figured out bridges. That she would prove to be of the anemic type,

common among working girls gifted with an imagination they have but

scant opportunity to exercise, he had little doubt.

He was therefore greatly taken aback, when at his first step upon the

porch, the door before him flew open and he beheld in the dark recess

beyond a young woman of such bright and blooming beauty that he hardly

noticed her expression of extreme anxiety, till she lifted her hand and

laid an admonitory finger softly on her lip:

“Hush!” she whispered, with an earnestness which roused him from his

absorption and restored him to the full meaning of this encounter.

“There is sickness in the house and we are very anxious. Is your errand

an important one? If not--” The faltering break in the fresh, young

voice, the look she cast behind her into the darkened interior, were

eloquent with the hope that he would recognise her impatience and pass

on.

And so he might have done,--so he would have done under all ordinary

circumstances. But if this was Doris--and he did not doubt the fact

after the first moment of startled surprise--how dare he forego this

opportunity of settling the question which had brought him here.

With a slight stammer but otherwise giving no evidence of the effect

made upon him by the passionate intensity with which she had urged this

plea, he assured her that his errand was important, but one so quickly

told that it would delay her but a moment. “But first,” said he, with

very natural caution, “let me make sure that it is to Miss Doris Scott I

am speaking. My errand is to her and her only.”

Without showing any surprise, perhaps too engrossed in her own thoughts

to feel any, she answered with simple directness, “Yes, I am Doris

Scott.” Whereupon he became his most persuasive self, and pulling out

a folded paper from his pocket, opened it and held it before her, with

these words:

“Then will you be so good as to glance at this letter and tell me if the

person whose initials you will find at the bottom happens to be in town

at the present moment?”

In some astonishment now, she glanced down at the sheet thus boldly

thrust before her, and recognising the O and the B of a well-known

signature, she flashed a look back at Sweetwater in which he read a

confusion of emotions for which he was hardly prepared.

“Ah,” thought he, “it’s coming. In another moment I shall hear what will

repay me for the trials and disappointments of all these months.”

But the moment passed and he had heard nothing. Instead, she dropped

her hands from the door-jamb and gave such unmistakable evidences of

intended flight, that but one alternative remained to him; he became

abrupt.

Thrusting the paper still nearer, he said, with an emphasis which could

not fail of making an impression, “Read it. Read the whole letter. You

will find your name there. This communication was addressed to Miss

Challoner, but--”

Oh, now she found words! With a low cry, she put out her hand in quick

entreaty, begging him to desist and not speak that name on any pretext

or for any purpose. “He may rouse and hear,” she explained, with another

quick look behind her. “The doctor says that this is the critical day.

He may become conscious any minute. If he should and were to hear that

name, it might kill him.”

“He!” Sweetwater perked up his ears. “Who do you mean by he?”

“Mr. Brotherson, my patient, he whose letter--” But here her impatience

rose above every other consideration. Without attempting to finish her

sentence, or yielding in the least to her curiosity or interest in this

man’s errand, she cried out with smothered intensity, “Go! go! I cannot

stay another moment from his bedside.”

But a thunderbolt could not have moved Sweetwater after the hearing of

that name. “Mr. Brotherson!” he echoed. “Brotherson! Not Orlando?”

“No, no; his name is Oswald. He’s the manager of these Works. He’s sick

with typhoid. We are caring for him. If you belonged here you would know

that much. There! that’s his voice you hear. Go, if you have any mercy.”

And she began to push to the door.

But Sweetwater was impervious to all hint. With eager eyes straining

into the shadowy depths just visible over her shoulder, he listened

eagerly for the disjointed words now plainly to be heard in some near-by

but unseen chamber.

“The second O. B.!” he inwardly declared. “And he’s a Brotherson also,

and--sick! Miss Scott,” he whisperingly entreated as her hand fell in

manifest despair from the door, “don’t send me away yet. I’ve a question

of the greatest importance to put you, and one minute more cannot make

any difference to him. Listen! those cries are the cries of delirium; he

cannot miss you; he’s not even conscious.”

“He’s calling out in his sleep. He’s calling her, just as he has called

for the last two weeks. But he will wake conscious--or he will not wake

at all.”

The anguish trembling in that latter phrase would have attracted

Sweetwater’s earnest, if not pitiful, attention at any other time,

but now he had ears only for the cry which at that moment came ringing

shrilly from within--

“Edith! Edith!”

The living shouting for the dead! A heart still warm sending forth its

longing to the pierced and pulseless one, hidden in a far-off tomb!

To Sweetwater, who had seen Miss Challoner buried, this summons of

distracted love came with weird force.

Then the present regained its sway. He heard her name again, and this

time it sounded less like a call and more like the welcoming cry of

meeting spirits. Was death to end this separation? Had he found the

true O. B., only to behold another and final seal fall upon this closely

folded mystery? In his fear of this possibility, he caught at Doris’

hand as she was about to bound away, and eagerly asked:

“When was Mr. Brotherson taken ill? Tell me, I entreat you; the exact

day and, if you can, the exact hour. More depends upon this than you can

readily realise.”

She wrenched her hand from his, panting with impatience and a vague

alarm. But she answered him distinctly:

“On the Twenty-fifth of last month, just an hour after he was made

manager. He fell in a faint at the Works.”

The day--the very day of Miss Challoner’s death!

“Had he heard--did you tell him then or afterwards what happened in New

York on that very date?”

“No, no, we have not told him. It would have killed him--and may yet.”

“Edith! Edith!” came again through the hush, a hush so deep that

Sweetwater received the impression that the house was empty save for

patient and nurse.

This discovery had its effects upon him. Why should he subject this

young and loving girl to further pain? He had already learned more than

he had expected to. The rest would come with time. But at the first

intimation he gave of leaving, she lost her abstracted air and turned

with absolute eagerness towards him.

“One moment,” said she. “You are a stranger and I do not know your name

or your purpose here. But I cannot let you go without begging you not to

mention to any one in this town that Mr. Brotherson has any interest in

the lady whose name we must not speak. Do not repeat that delirious cry

you have heard or betray in any way our intense and fearful interest

in this young lady’s strange death. You have shown me a letter. Do not

speak of that letter, I entreat you. Help us to retain our secret

a little longer. Only the doctor and myself know what awaits Mr.

Brotherson if he lives. I had to tell the doctor, but a doctor reveals

nothing. Promise that you will not either, at least till this crisis is

passed. It will help my father and it will help me; and we need all the

help we can get.”

Sweetwater allowed himself one minute of thought, then he earnestly

replied:

“I will keep your secret for to-day, and longer, if possible.”

“Thank you,” she cried; “thank you. I thought I saw kindness in your

face.” And she again prepared to close the door.

But Sweetwater had one more question to ask. “Pardon me,” said he, as he

stepped down on the walk, “you say that this is a critical day with your

patient. Is that why every one whom I have seen so far wears such a look

of anxiety?”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, giving him one other glimpse of her lovely,

agitated face. “There’s but one feeling in town to-day, but one hope,

and, as I believe, but one prayer. That the man whom every one loves and

every one trusts may live to run these Works.”

“Edith! Edith!” rose in ceaseless reiteration from within.

But it rang but faintly now in the ears of our detective. The door had

fallen to, and Sweetwater’s share in the anxieties of that household was

over.

Slowly he moved away. He was in a confused yet elated condition of mind.

Here was food for a thousand new thoughts and conjectures. An Orlando

Brotherson and an Oswald Brotherson--relatives possibly, strangers

possibly; but whether relatives or strangers, both given to signing

their letters with their initials simply; and both the acknowledged

admirers of the deceased Miss Challoner. But she had loved only one, and

that one, Oswald. It not difficult to recognise the object of this

high hearted woman’s affections in this man whose struggle with the

master-destroyer had awakened the solicitude of a whole town.

XXIV. SUSPENSE

Ten minutes after Sweetwater’s arrival in the village streets, he was at

home with the people he found there. His conversation with Doris in the

doorway of her home had been observed by the curious and far-sighted,

and the questions asked and answered had made him friends at once. Of

course, he could tell them nothing, but that did not matter, he had seen

and talked with Doris and their idolised young manager was no worse and

might possibly soon be better.

Of his own affairs--of his business with Doris and the manager, they

asked nothing. All ordinary interests were lost in the stress of their

great suspense.

It was the same in the bar-room of the one hotel. Without resorting to

more than a question or two, he readily learned all that was generally

known of Oswald Brotherson. Every one was talking about him, and each

had some story to tell illustrative of his kindness, his courage and

his quick mind. The Works had never produced a man of such varied

capabilities and all round sympathies. To have him for manager meant the

greatest good which could befall this little community.

His rise had been rapid. He had come from the east three years before,

new to the work. Now, he was the one man there. Of his relationships

east, family or otherwise, nothing was said. For them his life began and

ended in Derby, and Sweetwater could see, though no actual expression

was given to the feeling, that there was but one expectation in regard

to him and Doris, to whose uncommon beauty and sweetness they all seemed

fully alive. And Sweetwater wondered, as many of us have wondered, at

the gulf frequently existing between fancy and fact.

Later there came a small excitement. The doctor was seen riding by

on his way to the sick man. From the window where he sat, Sweetwater

watched him pass up the street and take the road he had himself so

lately traversed. It was so straight a one and led so directly northward

that he could follow with his eye the doctor’s whole course, and even

get a glimpse of his figure as he stepped from the buggy and proceeded

to tie up the horse. There was an energy about him pleasing to

Sweetwater. He might have much to do with this doctor. If

Oswald Brotherson died--but he was not willing to consider this

possibility--yet. His personal sympathies, to say nothing of his

professional interest in the mystery to which this man--and this man

only--possibly held the key, alike forbade. He would hope, as these

others were hoping, and if he did not count the minutes, he at least

saw every move of the old horse waiting with drooping head and the

resignation of long custom for the re-appearance of his master with his

news of life or death.

And so an hour--two hours passed. Others were watching the old horse

now. The street showed many an eager figure with head turned northward.

From the open door-ways women stepped, looked in the direction of their

anxiety and retreated to their work again. Suspense was everywhere;

the moments dragged like hours; it became so keen at last that some

impatient hearts could no longer stand it. A woman put her baby into

another woman’s arms and hurried up the road; another followed, then

another; then an old man, bowed with years and of tottering steps, began

to go that way, halting a dozen times before he reached the group now

collected in the dusty highway, near but not too near that house. As

Sweetwater’s own enthusiasm swelled at this sight, he thought of the

other Brotherson with his theories and active advocacy for reform, and

wondered if men and women would forego their meals and stand for hours

in the keen spring wind just to be the first to hear if he were to live

or die. He knew that he himself would not. But he had suffered much both

in his pride and his purse at the hands of the Brooklyn inventor;

and such despoliation is not a reliable basis for sympathy. He was

questioning his own judgment in this matter and losing himself in the

mazes of past doubts and conjectures when a sudden change took place in

the aspect of the street; he saw people running, and in another moment

saw why. The doctor had shown himself on the porch which all were

watching. Was he coming out? No, he stands quite still, runs his eye

over the people waiting quietly in the road, and beckons to one of the

smaller boys. The child, with upturned face, stands listening to what he

has to say, then starts on a run for the village. He is stopped, pulled

about, questioned, and allowed to run on. Many rush forth to meet him.

He is panting, but gleeful. Mr. Brotherson has waked up conscious, and

the doctor says, HE WILL LIVE.

XXV. THE OVAL HUT

That night Dr. Fenton had a visitor. We know that visitor and we almost

know what his questions were, if not the answers of the good doctor.

Nevertheless, it may be better to listen to a part at least of their

conversation. Sweetwater, who knew when to be frank and open, as well as

when to be reserved and ambiguous, made no effort to disguise the nature

of his business or his chief cause of interest in Oswald Brotherson. The

eye which met his was too penetrating not to detect the smallest attempt

at subterfuge; besides, Sweetwater had no need to hide his errand;

it was one of peace, and it threatened nobody--“the more’s the pity,”

thought he in uneasy comment to himself, as he realised the hopelessness

of the whole situation.

His first word, therefore, was a plain announcement.

“Dr. Fenton, my name is Sweetwater. I am from New York, and represent

for the nonce, Mr. Challoner, whose name I have simply to mention, for

you to understand that my business is with Mr. Brotherson whom I am

sorry to find seriously, if not dangerously, ill. Will you tell me how

long you think it will be before I can have a talk with him on a subject

which I will not disguise from you may prove a very exciting one?”

“Weeks, weeks,” returned the doctor. “Mr. Brotherson has been a very

sick man and the only hope I have of his recovery is the fact that he

is ignorant of his trouble or that he has any cause for doubt or dread.

Were this happy condition of things to be disturbed,--were the faintest

rumour of sorrow or disaster to reach him in his present weakened state,

I should fear a relapse, with all its attendant dangers. What then, if

any intimation should be given him of the horrible tragedy suggested

by the name you have mentioned? The man would die before your eyes. Mr.

Challoner’s business will have to wait.”

“That I see; but if I knew when I might speak--”

“I can give you no date. Typhoid is a treacherous complaint; he has the

best of nurses and the chances are in favour of a quick recovery; but

we never can be sure. You had better return to New York. Later, you can

write me if you wish, or Mr. Challoner can. You may have confidence in

my reply; it will not mislead you.”

Sweetwater muttered his thanks and rose. Then he slowly sat down again.

“Dr. Fenton,” he began, “you are a man to be trusted. I’m in a devil of

a fix, and there is just a possibility that you may be able to help me

out. It is the general opinion in New York, as you may know, that Miss

Challoner committed suicide. But the circumstances do not fully bear out

this theory, nor can Mr. Challoner be made to accept it. Indeed, he is

so convinced of its falsehood, that he stands ready to do anything, pay

anything, suffer anything, to have this distressing blight removed from

his daughter’s good name. Mr. Brotherson was her dearest friend, and as

such may have the clew to this mystery, but Mr. Brotherson may not be

in a condition to speak for several weeks. Meanwhile, Mr. Challoner must

suffer from great suspense unless--” a pause during which he

searched the doctor’s face with a perfectly frank and inquiring

expression--“unless some one else can help us out. Dr. Fenton, can you?”

The doctor did not need to speak; his expression conveyed his answer.

“No more than another,” said he. “Except for what Doris felt compelled

to tell me, I know as little as yourself. Mr. Brotherson’s delirium took

the form of calling continually upon one name. I did not know this name,

but Doris did, also the danger lurking in the fact that he had yet to

hear of the tragedy which had robbed him of this woman to whom he was

so deeply attached. So she told me just this much. That the Edith

whose name rung so continuously in our ears was no other than the Miss

Challoner of New York of whose death and its tragic circumstances the

papers have been full; that their engagement was a secret one unshared

so far as she knew by any one but herself. That she begged me to

preserve this secret and to give her all the help I could when the time

came for him to ask questions. Especially did she entreat me to be with

her at the crisis. I was, but his waking was quite natural. He did not

ask for Miss Challoner; he only inquired how long he had been ill

and whether Doris had received a letter during that time. She had not

received one, a fact which seemed to disappoint him; but she carried it

off so gaily (she is a wonderful girl, Mr. Sweetwater--the darling of

all our hearts), saying that he must not be so egotistical as to

think that the news of his illness had gone beyond Derby, that he soon

recovered his spirits and became a very promising convalescent. That

is all I know about the matter; little more, I take it, than you know

yourself.”

Sweetwater nodded; he had expected nothing from the doctor, and was not

disappointed at his failure. There were two strings to his bow, and the

one proving valueless, he proceeded to test the other.

“You have mentioned Miss Scott, as the confidante--and only confidante

of this unhappy pair,” said he. “Would it be possible--can you make it

possible for me to see her?”

It was a daring proposition; he understood this at once from the

doctor’s expression; and, fearing a hasty rebuff, he proceeded to

supplement his request with a few added arguments, urged with such

unexpected address and show of reason that Dr. Fenton’s aspect visibly

softened and in the end he found himself ready to promise that he would

do what he could to secure his visitor the interview he desired if he

would come to the house the next day at the time of his own morning

visit.

This was as much as the young detective could expect, and having

expressed his thanks, he took his leave in anything but a discontented

frame of mind. With so powerful an advocate as the doctor, he felt

confident that he should soon be able to conquer this young girl’s

reticence and learn all that was to be learned from any one but Mr.

Brotherson himself. In the time which must elapse between that happy

hour and the present, he would circulate and learn what he could about

the prospective manager. But he soon found that he could not enter the

Works without a permit, and this he was hardly in a position to demand;

so he strolled about the village instead, and later wandered away into

the forest.

Struck by the inviting aspect of a narrow and little used road opening

from the highway shortly above the house where his interests were just

then centred, he strolled into the heart of the spring woods till he

came to a depression where a surprise awaited him, in the shape of a

peculiar structure rising from its midst where it just fitted, or so

nearly fitted that one could hardly walk about it without brushing the

surrounding tree trunks. Of an oval shape, with its door facing the

approach, it nestled there, a wonder to the eye and the occasion of

considerable speculation to his inquiring mind. It had not been

long built, as was shown very plainly by the fresh appearance of the

unpainted boards of which it was constructed; and while it boasted of a

door, as I’ve already said, there were no evidences visible of any other

break in the smooth, neatly finished walls. A wooden ellipse with a roof

but no windows; such it appeared and such it proved to be. A mystery to

Sweetwater’s eyes, and like all mysteries, interesting. For what purpose

had it been built and why this isolation? It was too flimsy for a

reservoir and too expensive for the wild freak of a crank.

A nearer view increased his curiosity. In the projection of the roof

over the curving sides he found fresh food for inquiry. As he examined

it in the walk he made around the whole structure, he came to a place

where something like a hinge became visible and further on another. The

roof was not simply a roof; it was also a lid capable of being raised

for the air and light which the lack of windows necessitated. This was

an odd discovery indeed, giving to the uncanny structure the appearance

of a huge box, the cover of which could be raised or lowered at

pleasure. And again he asked himself for what it could be intended? What

enterprise, even of the great Works, could demand a secrecy so absolute

that such pains as these should be taken to shut out all possibility of

a prying eye. Nothing in his experience supplied him with an answer.

He was still looking up at these hinges, with a glance which took in at

the same time the nearness and extreme height of the trees by which

this sylvan mystery was surrounded, when a sound from the road on the

opposite side of the hollow brought his conjectures to a standstill and

sent him hurrying on to the nearest point from which that road became

visible.

A team was approaching. He could hear the heavy tread of horses working

their laborious way through trees whose obstructing branches swished

before and behind them. They were bringing in a load for this shed,

whose uses he would consequently soon understand. Grateful for his good

luck--for his was a curiosity which could not stand defeat--he took

a few steps into the wood, and from the vantage point of a concealing

cluster of bushes, fixed his eyes upon the spot where the road opened

into the hollow.

Something blue moved there, and in another moment, to his great

amazement, there stepped into view the spirited form of Doris Scott,

who if he had given the matter a thought he would have supposed to be

sitting just then by the bedside of her patient, a half mile back on the

road.

She was dressed for the woods in a blue skirt and jacket and moved like

a leader in front of a heavily laden wagon now coming to a standstill

before the closely shut shed--if such we may call it.

“I have a key,” so she called out to the driver who had paused for

orders. “When I swing the doors wide, drive straight in.”

Sweetwater took a look at the wagon. It was piled high with large wooden

boxes on more than one of which he could see scrawled the words: O.

Brotherson, Derby, Pa.

This explained her presence, but the boxes told nothing. They were of

all sizes and shapes, and some of them so large that the assistance of

another man was needed to handle them. Sweetwater was about to offer his

services when a second man appeared from somewhere in the rear, and the

detective’s attention being thus released from the load out of which he

could make nothing, he allowed it to concentrate upon the young girl

who had it in charge and who, for many reasons, was the one person of

supreme importance to him.

She had swung open the two wide doors, and now stood waiting for horse

and wagon to enter. With locks flying free--she wore no bonnet--she

presented a picture of ever increasing interest to Sweetwater. Truly

she was a very beautiful girl, buoyant, healthy and sweet; as unlike

as possible his preconceived notions of Miss Challoner’s humble little

protegee. Her brown hair of a rich chestnut hue, was in itself a wonder.

On no head, even in the great city he had just left, had he seen such

abundance, held in such modest restraint. Nature had been partial to

this little working girl and given her the chevelure of a queen.

But this was nothing. No one saw this aureole when once the eye had

rested on her features and caught the full nobility of their expression

and the lurking sweetness underlying her every look. She herself made

the charm and whether placed high or placed low, must ever attract the

eye and afterwards lure the heart, by an individuality which hardly

needed perfect features in which to express itself.

Young yet, but gifted, as girls of her class often are, with the nicest

instincts and purest aspirations, she showed the elevation of her

thoughts both in her glance and the poise with which she awaited

events. Sweetwater watched her with admiration as she superintended

the unloading of the wagon and the disposal of the various boxes on the

floor within; but as nothing she said during the process was calculated

to afford the least enlightenment in regard to their contents, he

presently wearied of his inaction and turned back towards the highway,

comforting himself with the reflection that in a few short hours he

would have her to himself when nothing but a blunder on his part should

hinder him from sounding her young mind and getting such answers to his

questions as the affair in which he was so deeply interested, demanded.

XXVI. SWEETWATER RETURNS

“You see me again, Miss Scott. I hope that yesterday’s intrusion has not

prejudiced you against me.”

“I have no prejudices,” was her simple but firm reply. “I am only

hurried and very anxious. The doctor is with Mr. Brotherson just now;

but he has several other equally sick patients to visit and I dare not

keep him here too long.”

“Then you will welcome my abruptness. Miss Scott, here is a letter from

Mr. Challoner. It will explain my position. As you will see, his

only desire is to establish the fact that his daughter did not commit

suicide. She was all he had in the world, and the thought that she

could, for any reason, take her own life is unbearable to him. Indeed,

he will not believe she did so, evidence or no evidence. May I ask if

you agree with him? You have seen Miss Challoner, I believe. Do you

think she was the woman to plunge a dagger in her heart in a place as

public as a hotel reception room?”

“No, Mr. Sweetwater. I’m a poor working girl, with very little education

and almost no knowledge of the world and such ladies as she. But

something tells me for all that, that she was too nice to do this. I

saw her once and it made me want to be quiet and kind and beautiful

like her. I never shall think she did anything so horrible. Nor will Mr.

Brotherson ever believe it. He could not and live. You see, I am talking

to you as if you knew him,--the kind of man he is and just how he feels

towards Miss Challoner. He is--” Her voice trailed off and a look,

uncommon and almost elevated, illumined her face. “I will not tell you

what he is; you will know, if you ever see him.”

“If the favourable opinion of a whole town makes a good fellow, he ought

to be of the best,” returned Sweetwater, with his most honest smile. “I

hear but one story of him wherever I turn.”

“There is but one story to tell,” she smiled, and her head drooped

softly, but with no air of self-consciousness.

Sweetwater watched her for a moment, and then remarked: “I’m going to

take one thing for granted; that you are as anxious as we are to clear

Miss Challoner’s memory.”

“O yes, O yes.”

“More than that, that you are ready and eager to help us. Your very

looks show that.”

“You are right; I would do anything to help you. But what can a girl

like me do? Nothing; nothing. I know too little. Mr. Challoner must see

that when you tell him I’m only the daughter of a foreman.”

“And a friend of Mr. Brotherson,” supplemented Sweetwater.

“Yes,” she smiled, “he would want me to say so. But that’s his goodness.

I don’t deserve the honour.”

“His friend and therefore his confidante,” Sweetwater continued. “He has

talked to you about Miss Challoner?”

“He had to. There was nobody else to whom he could talk; and then, I had

seen her and could understand.”

“Where did you see her?”

“In New York. I was there once with father, who took me to see her.

I think she had asked Mr. Brotherson to send his little friend to her

hotel if ever we came to New York.”

“That was some time ago?”

“We were there in June.”

“And you have corresponded ever since with Miss Challoner?”

“She has been good enough to write, and I have ventured at times to

answer her.”

The suspicion which might have come to some men found no harbour in

Sweetwater’s mind. This young girl was beautiful, there was no denying

that, beautiful in a somewhat startling and quite unusual way; but

there was nothing in her bearing, nothing in Miss Challoner’s letters to

indicate that she had been a cause for jealousy in the New York lady’s

mind. He, therefore, ignored this possibility, pursuing his inquiry

along the direct lines he had already laid out for himself. Smiling

a little, but in a very earnest fashion, he pointed to the letter she

still held and quietly said:

“Remember that I’m not speaking for myself, Miss Scott, when I seem a

little too persistent and inquiring. You have corresponded with Miss

Challoner; you have been told the fact of her secret engagement to Mr.

Brotherson and you have been witness to his conduct and manner for the

whole time he has been separated from her. Do you, when you think of

it carefully, recall anything in the whole story of this romance which

would throw light upon the cruel tragedy which has so unexpectedly ended

it? Anything, Miss Scott? Straws show which way the stream flows.”

She was vehement, instantly vehement, in her disclaimer.

“I can answer at once,” said she, “because I have thought of nothing

else for all these weeks. Here all was well. Mr. Brotherson was hopeful

and happy and believed in her happiness and willingness to wait for his

success. And this success was coming so fast! Oh, how can we ever tell

him! How can we ever answer his questions even, or keep him satisfied

and calm until he is strong enough to hear the truth. I’ve had to

acknowledge already that I have had no letter from her for weeks. She

never wrote to him directly, you know, and she never sent him messages,

but he knew that a letter to me, was also a letter to him and I can see

that he is troubled by this long silence, though he says I was right not

to let her know of his illness and that I must continue to keep her

in ignorance of it till he is quite well again and can write to her

himself. It is hard to hear him talk like this and not look sad or

frightened.”

Sweetwater remembered Miss Challoner’s last letter, and wished he had it

here to give her. In default of this, he said:

“Perhaps this not hearing may act in the way of a preparation for the

shock which must come to him sooner or later. Let us hope so, Miss

Scott.”

Her eyes filled.

“Nothing can prepare him,” said she. Then added, with a yearning accent,

“I wish I were older or had more experience. I should not feel so

helpless. But the gratitude I owe him will give me strength when I need

it most. Only I wish the suffering might be mine rather than his.”

Unconscious of any self-betrayal, she lifted her eyes, startling

Sweetwater by the beauty of her look. “I don’t think I’m so sorry for

Oswald Brotherson,” he murmured to himself as he left her. “He’s a more

fortunate man than he knows, however deeply he may feel the loss of his

first sweetheart.”

That evening the disappointed Sweetwater took the train for New York. He

had failed to advance the case in hand one whit, yet the countenance he

showed Mr. Gryce at their first interview was not a wholly gloomy one.

“Fifty dollars to the bad!” was his first laconic greeting. “All I have

learned is comprised in these two statements. The second O. B. is a fine

fellow; and not intentionally the cause of our tragedy. He does not even

know about it. He’s down with the fever at present and they haven’t told

him. When he’s better we may hear something; but I doubt even that.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sweetwater complied; and such is the unconsciousness with which we often

encounter the pivotal circumstance upon which our future or the future

of our most cherished undertaking hangs, he omitted from his story, the

sole discovery which was of any real importance in the unravelling of

the mystery in which they were so deeply concerned. He said nothing of

his walk in the woods or of what he saw there.

“A meagre haul,” he remarked at the close.

“But that’s as it should be, if you and I are right in our impressions

and the clew to this mystery lies here in the character and daring of

Orlando Brotherson. That’s why I’m not down in the mouth. Which goes to

show what a grip my prejudices have on me.”

“As prejudiced as a bulldog.”

“Exactly. By the way, what news of the gentleman I’ve just mentioned? Is

he as serene in my absence as when under my eye?”

“More so; he looks like a man on the verge of triumph. But I fear the

triumph he anticipates has nothing to do with our affairs. All his time

and thought is taken up with his invention.”

“You discourage me, sir. And now to see Mr. Challoner. Small comfort can

I carry him.”

XXVII. THE IMAGE OF DREAD

In the comfortable little sitting-room of the Scott cottage Doris stood,

looking eagerly from the window which gave upon the road. Behind her on

the other side of the room, could be seen through a partly opened door,

a neatly spread bed, with a hand lying quietly on the patched coverlet.

It was a strong looking hand which, even when quiescent, conveyed the

idea of purpose and vitality. As Doris said, the fingers never curled

up languidly, but always with the hint of a clench. Several weeks

had passed since the departure of Sweetwater and the invalid was fast

gaining strength. To-morrow, he would be up.

Was Doris thinking of him? Undoubtedly, for her eyes often flashed his

way; but her main attention was fixed upon the road, though no one was

in sight at the moment. Some one had passed for whose return she looked;

some one whom, if she had been asked to describe, she would have called

a tall, fine-looking man of middle age, of a cultivated appearance

seldom seen in this small manufacturing town; seldom seen, possibly, in

any town. He had glanced up at the window as he went by, in a manner too

marked not to excite her curiosity. Would he look up again when he came

back? She was waiting there to see. Why, she did not know. She was not

used to indulging in petty suppositions of this kind; her life was

too busy, her anxieties too keen. The great dread looming ever before

her,--the dread of that hour when she must speak,--left her very little

heart for anything dissociated with this coming event. For a girl of

seventeen she was unusually thoughtful. Life had been hard in this

little cottage since her mother died, or rather she had felt its

responsibilities keenly.

Life itself could not be hard where Oswald Brotherson lived; neither to

man, nor woman. The cheer of some natures possesses a divine faculty. If

it can help no other way, it does so by the aid of its own light. Such

was the character of this man’s temperament. The cottage was a happy

place; only--she never fathomed the depths of that only. If in these

days she essayed at times to do so, she gave full credit to the Dread

which rose ever before her--rose like a ghost! She, Doris, led by

inscrutable Fate, was waiting to hurt him who hurt nobody; whose mere

presence was a blessing.

But her interest had been caught to-day, caught by this stranger, and

when during her eager watch the small messenger from the Works came

to the door with the usual daily supply of books and magazines for the

patient, she stepped out on the porch to speak to him and to point out

the gentleman who was now rapidly returning from his stroll up the road.

“Who is that, Johnny?” she asked. “You know everybody who comes to town.

What is the name of the gentleman you see coming?”

The boy looked, searched his memory, not without some show of misgiving.

“A queer name,” he admitted at last. “I never heard the likes of it here

before. Shally something. Shally--Shally--”

“Challoner?”

“Yes, that’s it. How could you guess? He’s from New York. Nobody knows

why he’s here. Don’t seem to have no business.”

“Well, never mind. Run on, Johnny. And don’t forget to come earlier

to-morrow; Mr. Brotherson gets tired waiting.”

“Does he? I’ll come quick then; quick as I can run.” And he sped off at

a pace which promised well for the morrow.

Challoner! There was but one Challoner in the world for Doris

Scott,--Edith’s father. Was this he? It must be, or why this haunting

sense of something half remembered as she caught a glimpse of his face.

Edith’s father! and he was approaching, approaching rapidly, on his way

back to town. Would he stop this time? As the possibility struck her,

she trembled and drew back, entering the house, but pausing in the hall

with her ear turned to the road. She had not closed the door; something

within--a hope or a dread--had prevented that. Would he take it as an

invitation to come in? No, no; she was not ready for such an encounter

yet. He might speak Edith’s name; Oswald might hear and--with a gasp

she recognised the closeness of his step; heard it lag, almost halt just

where the path to the house ran into the roadside. But it passed on. He

was not going to force an interview yet. She could hear him retreating

further and further away. The event was not for this day, thank God! She

would have one night at least in which to prepare herself.

With a sense of relief so great that she realised, for one shocked

moment, the full extent of her fears, she hastened back into the

sitting-room, with her collection of books and pamphlets. A low voice

greeted her. It came from the adjoining room.

“Doris, come here, sweet child. I want you.”

How she would have bounded joyously at the summons, had not that Dread

raised its bony finger in every call from that dearly loved voice. As it

was, her feet moved slowly, lingering at the sound. But they carried her

to his side at last, and once there, she smiled.

“See what an armful,” she cried in joyous greeting, as she held out the

bundle she had brought. “You will be amused all day. Only, do not tire

yourself.”

“I do not want the papers, Doris; not yet. There’s something else which

must come first. Doris, I have decided to let you write to her. I’m so

much better now, she will not feel alarmed. I must--must get a word from

her. I’m starving for it. I lie here and can think of nothing else. A

message--one little message of six short words would set me on my feet

again. So get your paper and pen, dear child, and write her one of your

prettiest letters.”

Had he loved her, he would have perceived the chill which shook her

whole body, as he spoke. But his first thought, his penetrating thought,

was not for her and he saw only the answering glance, the patient smile.

She had not expected him to see more. She knew that she was quite safe

from the divining look; otherwise, he would have known her secret long

ago.

“I’m ready,” said she. But she did not lay down her bundle. She was not

ready for her task, poor child. She quailed before it. She quailed so

much that she feared to stir lest he should see that she had no command

over her movements.

The man who watched without seeing wondered that she stood so still and

spoke so briefly. But only for a moment. He thought he understood her

hesitation, and a look of great earnestness replaced his former one of

grave decision.

“I know that in doing this I am going beyond my sacred compact with Miss

Challoner,” he said. “I never thought of illness,--at least, of illness

on my part. I never dreamt that I, always so well, always so full of

life, could know such feebleness as this, feebleness which is all of

the body, Doris, leaving the mind free to dream and long. Talk of her,

child. Tell me all over again just how she looked and spoke that day you

saw her in New York.”

“Would it not be better for me to write my letter first? Papa will be

coming soon and Truda can never cook your bird as you like it.”

Surprised now by something not quite natural in her manner, he caught at

her hand and held her as she was moving away.

“You are tired,” said he. “I’ve wearied you with my commission and

complaints. Forgive me, dear child, and--”

“You are mistaken,” she interrupted softly. “I am not tired; I only

wished to do the important thing first. Shall I get my desk? Do you

really wish me to write?”

“Yes,” said he, softly dropping her hand. “I wish you to write. It will

ensure me good sleep, and sleep will make me strong. A few words, Doris;

just a few words.”

She nodded; turning quickly away to hide her tears. His smile had gone

to her very soul. It was always a beautiful one, his chief personal

attraction, but at this moment it seemed to concentrate within it the

unspoken fervours and the boundless expectations of a great love, and

she who was the aim and cause of all this sweetness lay in unresponsive

silence in a distant tomb!

But Doris’ own smile was not lacking in encouragement and beauty when

she came back a few minutes later and sat down by his side to write.

His melted before it, leaving his eyes very earnest as he watched her

bending figure and the hard-worked little hand at its unaccustomed task.

“I must give her daily exercises,” he decided within himself. “That look

of pain shows how difficult this work is for her. It must be made easy

at any cost to my time. Such beauty calls for accomplishment. I must not

neglect so plain a duty.”

Meantime, she was struggling to find words in face of that great Dread.

She had written Dear Miss Challoner and was staring in horror at the

soulless words. Only her sense of duty upheld her. Gladly would she have

torn the sheet in two and rushed away. How could she add sentences to

this hollow phrase, the mere employment of which seemed a sacrilege.

Dear Miss Challoner. Oh, she was dear, but--

Unconsciously the young head drooped, and the pen slid from her hand.

“I cannot,” she murmured, “I cannot think what to say.”

“Shall I help you?” came softly from the bed. “I’ll try and not forget

that it is Doris writing.”

“If you will be so good,” she answered, with renewed courage. “I can put

the words down if you will only find them for me.”

“Write then. ‘Dear Miss Challoner!”

“I have already written that.”

“Why do you shudder?”

“I’m cold. I’ve been cold all day. But never mind that, Mr. Brotherson.

Tell me how to begin my letter.”

“This way. ‘I’ve not been able to answer your kind letter, because I

have had to play nurse for some three or four weeks to a very fretful

and exacting patient.’ Have you written that?”

“No,” said Doris, bending over her desk till her curls fell in a tangle

over her white cheeks. “I do not like to,” she protested at last, with

an attempt at naivete which seemed real enough to him.

“Well, leave out the fretful if you must, but keep in the exacting. I

have been exacting, you know.”

Silence, broken only by the scratching of the stubborn, illy-directed

pen.

“It’s down,” she whispered. She said, afterward, that it was like

writing with a ghost looking over one’s shoulder.

“Then add, ‘Mr. Brotherson has had a slight attack of fever, but he is

getting well fast, and will soon--, Do I run on too quickly?”

“No, no, I can follow.”

“But not without losing breath; eh, Doris?”

As he laughed, she smiled. There was a heroism in that smile, Oswald

Brotherson, of which you knew nothing.

“You might speak a little more slowly,” she admitted.

Quietly he repeated the last phrase. “‘But he is getting well fast and

will soon be ready to take up the management of the Works which was

given him just before he was taken ill.’ That will show her that I am

working up,” he brightly remarked as Doris carefully penned the last

word. “Of myself you need say nothing more, unless--” he paused and his

face took on a wistful look which Doris dared not meet; “unless--but no,

no, she must think it has been only a passing indisposition. If she knew

I had been really ill, she would suffer, and perhaps act imprudently or

suffer and not dare to act at all, which might be sadder for her still.

Leave it where it is and begin about yourself. Write a good deal about

yourself, so that she will see that you are not worried and that all is

well with us here. Cannot you do that without assistance? Surely you can

tell her about that last piece of embroidery you showed me. She will be

glad to hear--why, Doris!”

“Oh, Mr. Brotherson,” the poor child burst out, “you must let me cry!

I’m so glad to see you better and interested in all sorts of things.

These are not tears of grief. I--I--but I’m forgetting what the doctor

told me. You are growing excited, and I was to see that you were calm,

always calm. I will take my desk away. I will write the rest in the

other room, while you look at the magazines.”

“But bring your letter back for me to seal. I want to see it in its

envelope. Oh, Doris, you are a good little girl!”

She shook her head, and hastened to hide herself from him in the other

room; and it was a long time before she came back with the letter folded

and in its envelope. When she did, her face was composed and her manner

natural. She had quite made up her mind what her duty was and how she

was going to perform it.

“Here is the letter,” said she, laying it in his outstretched hand. Then

she turned her back. She knew, with a woman’s unerring instinct why he

wished to handle it before it went. She felt that kiss he folded away in

it, in every fibre of her aroused and sympathetic heart, but the hardest

part of the ordeal was over and her eyes beamed softly when she turned

again to take it from his hand and affix the stamp.

“You will mail it yourself?” he asked. “I should like to have you put it

into the box with your own hand.”

“I will put it in to-night, after supper,” she promised him.

His smile of contentment assured her that this trial of her courage

and self-control was not without one blessed result. He would rest for

several days in the pleasure of what he had done or thought he had done.

She need not cringe before that image of Dread for two, three days at

least. Meanwhile, he would grow strong in body, and she, perhaps, in

spirit. Only one precaution she must take. No hint of Mr. Challoner’s

presence in town must reach him. He must be guarded from a knowledge of

that fact as certainly as from the more serious one which lay behind it.

XXVIII. I HOPE NEVER TO SEE THAT MAN

That this would be a difficult thing to do, Doris was soon to realise.

Mr. Challoner continued to pass the house twice a day and the time

finally came when he ventured up the walk.

Doris was in the window and saw him coming. She slipped softly out and

intercepted him before he had stepped upon the porch. She had caught up

her hat as she passed through the hall, and was fitting it to her head

as he looked up and saw her.

“Miss Scott?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Challoner.”

“You know me?” he went on, one foot on the step and one still on the

walk.

Before replying she closed the door behind her. Then as she noted his

surprise she carefully explained:

“Mr. Brotherson, our boarder, is just recovering from typhoid. He is

still weak and acutely susceptible to the least noise. I was afraid that

our voices might disturb him. Do you mind walking a little way up the

road? That is, if your visit was intended for me.”

Her flush, the beauty which must have struck even him, but more than all

else her youth, seemed to reconcile him to this unconventional request.

Bowing, he took his foot from the step, saying, as she joined him:

“Yes, you are the one I wanted to see; that is, to-day. Later, I hope to

have the privilege of a conversation with Mr. Brotherson.”

She gave him one quick look, trembling so that he offered her his arm

with a fatherly air.

“I see that you understand my errand here,” he proceeded, with a grave

smile, meant as she knew for her encouragement. “I am glad, because we

can go at once to the point. Miss Scott,” he continued in a voice from

which he no longer strove to keep back the evidences of deep feeling,

“I have the strongest interest in your patient that one man can have in

another, where there is no personal acquaintanceship. You who have every

reason to understand my reasons for this, will accept the statement, I

hope, as frankly as it is made.”

She nodded. Her eyes were full of tears, but she did not hesitate to

raise them. She had the greatest desire to see the face of the man

who could speak like this to-day, and yet of whose pride and sense of

superiority his daughter had stood in such awe, that she had laid a seal

upon the impulses of her heart, and imposed such tasks and weary waiting

upon her lover. Doris forgot, in meeting his softened glance and tender,

almost wistful, expression, the changes which can be made by a great

grief, and only wondered why her sweet benefactress had not taken him

into her confidence and thus, possibly, averted the doom which Doris

felt had in some way grown out of this secrecy.

“Why should she have feared the disapproval of this man?” she inwardly

queried, as she cast him a confiding look which pleased him greatly, as

his tone now showed.

“When I lost my daughter, I lost everything,” he declared, as they

walked slowly up the road. “Nothing excites my interest, save that which

once excited hers. I am told that the deepest interest of her life lay

here. I am also told that it was an interest quite worthy of her. I

expect to find it so. I hope with all my heart to find it so, and that

is why I have come to this town and expect to linger till Mr. Brotherson

has recovered sufficiently to see me. I hope that this will be agreeable

to him. I hope that I am not presuming too much in cherishing these

expectations.”

Doris turned her candid eyes upon him.

“I cannot tell; I do not know,” said she. “Nobody knows, not even the

doctor, what effect the news we so dread to give him will have upon Mr.

Brotherson. You will have to wait--we all shall have to wait the results

of that revelation. It cannot be kept from him much longer. When I

return, I shall shrink from his first look, in the fear of seeing it

betray this dreadful knowledge. Yet I have a faithful woman there to

keep every one out of his room.”

“You have had much to carry for one so young,” was Mr. Challoner’s

sympathetic remark. “You must let me help you when that awful moment

comes. I am at the hotel and shall stay there till Mr. Brotherson is

pronounced quite well. I have no other duty now in life but to sustain

him through his trouble and then, with what aid he can give, search

out and find the cause of my daughter’s death which I will never admit

without the fullest proof, to have been one of suicide.”

Doris trembled.

“It was not suicide,” she declared, vehemently. “I have always felt sure

that it was not; but to-day I KNOW.”

Her hand fell clenched on her breast and her eyes gleamed strangely. Mr.

Challoner was himself greatly startled. What had happened--what could

have happened since yesterday that she should emphasise that now?

“I’ve not told any one,” she went on, as he stopped short in the road,

in his anxiety to understand her. “But I will tell you. Only, not here,

not with all these people driving past; most of whom know me. Come to

the house later--this evening, after Mr. Brotherson’s room is closed for

the night. I have a little sitting-room on the other side of the hall

where we can talk without being heard. Would you object to doing that?

Am I asking too much of you?”

“No, not at all,” he assured her. “Expect me at eight. Will that be too

early?”

“No, no. Oh, how those people stared! Let us hasten back or they may

connect your name with what we want kept secret.”

He smiled at her fears, but gave in to her humour; he would see her soon

again and possibly learn something which would amply repay him, both for

his trouble and his patience.

But when evening came and she turned to face him in that little

sitting-room where he had quietly followed her, he was conscious of a

change in her manner which forbade these high hopes. The gleam was gone

from her eyes; the tremulous eagerness from her mobile and sensitive

mouth. She had been thinking in the hours which had passed, and had

lost the confidence of that one impetuous moment. Her greeting betrayed

embarrassment and she hesitated painfully before she spoke.

“I don’t know what you will think of me,” she ventured at last,

motioning to a chair but not sitting herself. “You have had time to

think over what I said and probably expect something real,--something

you could tell people. But it isn’t like that. It’s a feeling--a belief.

I’m so sure--”

“Sure of what, Miss Scott?”

She gave a glance at the door before stepping up nearer. He had not

taken the chair she preferred.

“Sure that I have seen the face of the man who murdered her. It was in a

dream,” she whisperingly completed, her great eyes misty with awe.

“A dream, Miss Scott?” He tried to hide his disappointment.

“Yes; I knew that it would sound foolish to you; it sounds foolish to

me. But listen, sir. Listen to what I have to tell and then you can

judge. I was very much agitated yesterday. I had to write a letter

at Mr. Brotherson’s dictation--a letter to her. You can understand my

horror and the effort I made to hide my emotion. I was quite unnerved.

I could not sleep till morning, and then--and then--I saw--I hope I can

describe it.”

Grasping at a near-by chair, she leaned on it for support, closing her

eyes to all but that inner vision. A breathless moment followed, then

she murmured in strained monotonous tones:

“I see it again--just as I saw it in the early morning--but even more

plainly, if that is possible. A hall--(I should call it a hall, though I

don’t remember seeing any place like it before), with a little staircase

at the side, up which there comes a man, who stops just at the top and

looks intently my way. There is fierceness in his face--a look which

means no good to anybody--and as his hand goes to his overcoat pocket,

drawing out something which I cannot describe, but which he handles as

if it were a pistol, I feel a horrible fear, and--and--” The child was

staggering, and the hand which was free had sought her heart where it

lay clenched, the knuckles showing white in the dim light.

Mr. Challoner watched her with dilated eyes, the spell under which she

spoke falling in some degree upon him. Had she finished? Was this all?

No; she is speaking again, but very low, almost in a whisper.

“There is music--a crash--but I plainly see his other hand approach the

object he is holding. He takes something from the end--the object is

pointed my way--I am looking into--into--what? I do not know. I cannot

even see him now. The space where he stood is empty. Everything fades,

and I wake with a loud cry in my ears and a sense of death here.” She

had lifted her hand and struck at her heart, opening her eyes as she did

so. “Yet it was not I who had been shot,” she added softly.

Mr. Challoner shuddered. This was like the reopening of his daughter’s

grave. But he had entered upon the scene with a full appreciation of the

ordeal awaiting him and he did not lose his calmness, or the control of

his judgment.

“Be seated, Miss Scott,” he entreated, taking a chair himself. “You have

described the spot and some of the circumstances of my daughter’s death

as accurately as if you had been there. But you have doubtless read

a full account of those details in the papers; possibly seen pictures

which would make the place quite real to you. The mind is a strange

storehouse. We do not always know what lies hidden within it.”

“That’s true,” she admitted. “But the man! I had never seen the man, or

any picture of him, and his face was clearest of all. I should know it

if I saw it anywhere. It is imprinted on my memory as plainly as yours.

Oh, I hope never to see that man!”

Mr. Challoner sighed; he had really anticipated something from the

interview. The disappointment was keen. A moment of expectation; the

thrill which comes to us all under the shadow of the supernatural, and

then--this! a young and imaginative girl’s dream, convincing to herself

but supplying nothing which had not already been supplied both by the

facts and his own imagination! A man had stood at the staircase, and

this man had raised his arm. She said that she had seen something like a

pistol in his hand, but his daughter had not been shot. This he thought

it well to point out to her.

Leaning toward her that he might get her full attention, he waited till

her eyes met his, then quietly asked:

“Have you ever named this man to yourself?”

She started and dropped her eyes.

“I do not dare to,” said she.

“Why?”

“Because I’ve read in the papers that the man who stood there had the

same name as--”

“Tell me, Miss Scott.”

“As Mr. Brotherson’s brother.”

“But you do not think it was his brother?”

“I do not know.”

“You’ve never seen his brother?”

“Never.”

“Nor his picture?”

“No, Mr. Brotherson has none.”

“Aren’t they friends? Does he never mention Orlando?”

“Very, very rarely. But I’ve no reason to think they are not on good

terms. I know they correspond.”

“Miss Scott?”

“Yes, Mr. Challoner.”

“You must not rely too much upon your dream.”

Her eyes flashed to his and then fell again.

“Dreams are not revelations; they are the reproduction of what already

lies hidden in the mind. I can prove that your dream is such.”

“How?” She looked startled.

“You speak of seeing something being leveled at you which made you think

of a pistol.”

“Yes, I was looking directly into it.”

“But my daughter was not shot. She died from a stab.”

Doris’ lovely face, with its tender lines and girlish curves, took on a

strange look of conviction which deepened, rather than melted under his

indulgent, but penetrating gaze.

“I know that you think so;--but my dream says no. I saw this object. It

was pointed directly towards me--above all, I saw his face. It was the

face of one whose finger is on the trigger and who means death; and I

believe my dream.”

Well, it was useless to reason further. Gentle in all else, she was

immovable so far as this idea was concerned and, seeing this, he let the

matter go and prepared to take his leave.

She seemed to be quite ready for this. Anxiety about her patient had

regained its place in her mind and her glance sped constantly toward the

door. Taking her hand in his, he said some kind words, then crossed

to the door and opened it. Instantly her finger flew to her lips and,

obedient to its silent injunction, he took up his hat in silence, and

was proceeding down the hall, when the bell rang, startling them both

and causing him to step quickly back.

“Who is it?” she asked. “Father’s in and visitors seldom come so late.”

“Shall I see?”

She nodded, looking strangely troubled as the door swung open, revealing

the tall, strong figure of a man facing them from the porch.

“A stranger,” formed itself upon her lips, and she was moving forward,

when the man suddenly stepped into the glare of the light, and she

stopped, with a murmur of dismay which pierced Mr. Challoner’s heart and

prepared him for the words which now fell shudderingly from her lips:

“It is he! it is he! I said that I should know him wherever I saw him.”

Then with a quiet turn towards the intruder, “Oh, why, why, did you come

here!”

XXIX. DO YOU KNOW MY BROTHER

Her hands were thrust out to repel, her features were fixed; her beauty

something wonderful. Orlando Brotherson, thus met, stared for a moment

at the vision before him, then slowly and with effort withdrawing his

gaze, he sought the face of Mr. Challoner with the first sign of open

disturbance that gentleman had ever seen in him.

“Ah,” said he, “my welcome is readily understood. I see you far from

home, sir.” And with an ironical bow he turned again to Doris, who had

dropped her hands, but in whose cheeks the pallor still lingered in a

way to check the easy flow of words with which he might have sought to

carry off the situation. “Am I in Oswald Brotherson’s house?” he asked.

“I was directed here. But possibly there may be some mistake.”

“It is here he lives,” said she; moving back automatically till she

stood again by the threshold of the small room in which she had received

Mr. Challoner. “Do you wish to see him to-night? If so, I fear it is

impossible. He has been very ill and is not allowed to receive visits

from strangers.”

“I am not a stranger,” announced the newcomer, with a smile few could

see unmoved, it offered such a contrast to his stern and dominating

figure. “I thought I heard some words of recognition which would prove

your knowledge of that fact.”

She did not answer. Her lips had parted, but her thought or at least the

expression of her thought hung suspended in the terror of this meeting

for which she was not at all prepared. He seemed to note this terror,

whether or not he understood its cause, and smiled again, as he added:

“Mr. Brotherson must have spoken of his brother Orlando. I am he, Miss

Scott. Will you let me come in now?”

Her eyes sought those of Mr. Challoner, who quietly nodded. Immediately

she stepped from before the door which her figure had guarded and,

motioning him to enter, she begged Mr. Challoner, with an imploring

look, to sustain her in the interview she saw before her. He had no

desire for this encounter, especially as Mr. Brotherson’s glance in his

direction had been anything but conciliatory. He was quite convinced

that nothing was to be gained by it, but he could not resist her appeal,

and followed them into the little room whose limited dimensions made

the tall Orlando look bigger and stronger and more lordly in his

self-confidence than ever.

“I am sorry it is so late,” she began, contemplating his intrusive

figure with forced composure. “We have to be very quiet in the evenings

so as not to disturb your brother’s first sleep which is of great

importance to him.”

“Then I’m not to see him to-night?”

“I pray you to wait. He’s--he’s been a very sick man.”

“Dangerously so?”

“Yes.”

Orlando continued to regard her with a peculiar awakening gaze, showing,

Mr. Challoner thought, more interest in her than in his brother, and

when he spoke it was mechanically and as if in sole obedience to the

proprieties of the occasion.

“I did not know he was ill till very lately. His last letter was a

cheerful one, and I supposed that all was right till chance revealed

the truth. I came on at once. I was intending to come anyway. I have

business here, as you probably know, Miss Scott.”

She shook her head. “I know very little about business,” said she.

“My brother has not told you why he expected me?”

“He has not even told me that he expected you.”

“No?” The word was highly expressive; there was surprise in it and a

touch of wonder, but more than all, satisfaction. “Oswald was always

close-mouthed,” he declared. “It’s a good fault; I’m obliged to the

boy.”

These last words were uttered with a lightness which imposed upon his

two highly agitated hearers, causing Mr. Challoner to frown and Doris

to shrink back in indignation at the man who could indulge in a sportive

suggestion in presence of such fears, if not of such memories, as the

situation evoked. But to one who knew the strong and self-contained

man--to Sweetwater possibly, had he been present,--there was in this

very attempt--in his quiet manner and in the strange and fitful flash

of his ordinarily quick eye, that which showed he was labouring--and had

been labouring almost from his first entrance, under an excitement of

thought and feeling which in one of his powerfully organised nature must

end and that soon in an outburst of mysterious passion which would carry

everything before it. But he did not mean that it should happen here. He

was too accustomed to self-command to forget himself in this presence.

He would hold these rampant dogs in leash till the hour of solitude;

then--a glittering smile twisted his lips as he continued to gaze, first

at the girl who had just entered his life, and then at the man he had

every reason to distrust, and with that firm restraint upon himself

still in full force, remarked, with a courteous inclination:

“The hour is late for further conversation. I have a room at the hotel

and will return to it at once. In the morning I hope to see my brother.”

He was going, Doris not knowing what to say, Mr. Challoner not desirous

of detaining him, when there came the sound of a little tinkle from the

other side of the hall, blanching the young girl’s cheeks and causing

Orlando Brotherson’s brows to rise in peculiar satisfaction.

“My brother?” he asked.

“Yes,” came in faltering reply. “He has heard our voices; I must go to

him.”

“Say that Orlando wishes him a good night,” smiled her heart’s enemy,

with a bow of infinite grace.

She shuddered, and was hastening from the room when her glance fell on

Mr. Challoner. He was pale and looked greatly disturbed. The prospect of

being left alone with a man whom she had herself denounced to him as his

daughter’s murderer, might prove a tax to his strength to which she had

no right to subject him. Pausing with an appealing air, she made him a

slight gesture which he at once understood.

“I will accompany you into the hall,” said he. “Then if anything is

wrong, you have but to speak my name.”

But Orlando Brotherson, displeased by this move, took a step which

brought him between the two.

“You can hear her from here if she chooses to speak. There’s a point to

be settled between us before either of us leaves this house, and this

opportunity is as good as another. Go to my brother, Miss Scott; we will

await your return.”

A flash from the proud banker’s eye; but no demur, rather a gesture of

consent. Doris, with a look of deep anxiety, sped away, and the two men

stood face to face.

It was one of those moments which men recognise as memorable. What had

the one to say or the other to hear, worthy of this preamble and the

more than doubtful relation in which they stood each to each? Mr.

Challoner had more time than he expected in which to wonder and gird

himself for whatever suffering or shock awaited him. For, Orlando

Brotherson, unlike his usual self, kept him waiting while he collected

his own wits, which, strange to say, seemed to have vanished with the

girl.

But the question finally came.

“Mr. Challoner, do you know my brother?”

“I have never seen him.”

“Do you know him? Does he know you?”

“Not at all. We are strangers.”

It was said honestly. They did not know each other. Mr. Challoner was

quite correct in his statement.

But the other had his doubts. Why shouldn’t he have? The coincidence

of finding this mourner if not avenger of Edith Challoner, in his

own direct radius again, at a spot so distant, so obscure and so

disconnected with any apparent business reason, was certainly startling

enough unless the tie could be found in his brother’s name and close

relationship to himself.

He, therefore, allowed himself to press the question:

“Men sometimes correspond who do not know each other. You knew that a

Brotherson lived here?”

“Yes.”

“And hoped to learn something about me?”

“No; my interest was solely with your brother.”

“With my brother? With Oswald? What interest can you have in him apart

from me? Oswald is--”

Suddenly a thought came--an unimaginable one; one with power to

blanch even his hardy cheek and shake a soul unassailable by all small

emotions.

“Oswald Brotherson!” he repeated; adding in unintelligible tones to

himself--“O. B. The same initials! They are following up these initials.

Poor Oswald.” Then aloud: “It hardly becomes me, perhaps, to question

your motives in this attempt at making my brother’s acquaintance.

I think I can guess them; but your labour will be wasted. Oswald’s

interests do not extend beyond this town; they hardly extend to me. We

are strangers, almost. You will learn nothing from him on the subject

which naturally engrosses you.”

Mr. Challoner simply bowed. “I do not feel called upon,” said he, “to

explain my reasons for wishing to know your brother. I will simply

satisfy you upon a point which may well rouse your curiosity. You

remember that--that my daughter’s last act was the writing of a letter

to a little protegee of hers. Miss Scott was that protegee. In seeking

her, I came upon him. Do you require me to say more on this subject?

Wait till I have seen Mr. Oswald Brotherson and then perhaps I can do

so.”

Receiving no answer to this, Mr. Challoner turned again to the man who

was the object of his deepest suspicions, to find him still in the

daze of that unimaginable thought, battling with it, scoffing at it,

succumbing to it and all without a word. Mr. Challoner was without clew

to this struggle, but the might of it and the mystery of it, drove him

in extreme agitation from the room. Though proof was lacking, though

proof might never come, nothing could ever alter his belief from this

moment on that Doris was right in her estimate of this man’s guilt,

however unsubstantial her reasoning might appear.

How far he might have been carried by this new conviction; whether

he would have left the house without seeing Doris again or exchanging

another word with the man whose very presence stifled him, he had

no opportunity to show, for before he had taken another step, he

encountered the hurrying figure of Doris, who was returning to her

guests with an air of marked relief.

“He does not know that you are here,” she whispered to Mr. Challoner,

as she passed him. Then, as she again confronted Orlando who hastened

to dismiss his trouble at her approach, she said quite gaily, “Mr.

Brotherson heard your voice, and is glad to know that you’re here. He

bade me give you this key and say that you would have found things in

better shape if he had been in condition to superintend the removal of

the boxes to the place he had prepared for you before he became ill.

I was the one to do that,” she added, controlling her aversion with

manifest effort. “When Mr. Brotherson came to himself he asked if I had

heard about any large boxes having arrived at the station shipped to

his name. I said that several notices of such had come to the house.

At which he requested me to see that they were carried at once to the

strange looking shed he had had put up for him in the woods. I thought

that they were for him, and I saw to the thing myself. Two or three

others have come since and been taken to the same place. I think you

will find nothing broken or disturbed; Mr. Brotherson’s wishes are

usually respected.”

“That is fortunate for me,” was the courteous reply.

But Orlando Brotherson was not himself, not at all himself as he bowed

a formal adieu and withdrew past the drawn-up sentinel-like figure of Mr.

Challoner, without a motion on his part or on the part of that gentleman

to lighten an exit which had something in it of doom and dread presage.

XXX. CHAOS

It is not difficult to understand Mr. Challoner’s feelings or even

those of Doris at the moment of Mr. Brotherson’s departure. But why

this change in Brotherson himself? Why this sense of something new and

terrible rising between him and the suddenly beclouded future? Let us

follow him to his lonely hotel-room and see if we can solve the puzzle.

But first, does he understand his own trouble? He does not seem to.

For when, his hat thrown aside, he stops, erect and frowning under the

flaring gas-jet he had no recollection of lighting, his first act was

to lift his hand to his head in a gesture of surprising helplessness for

him, while snatches of broken sentences fell from his lips among which

could be heard:

“What has come to me? Undone in an hour! Doubly undone! First by a face

and then by this thought which surely the devils have whispered to me.

Mr. Challoner and Oswald! What is the link between them? Great God! what

is the link? Not myself? Who then or what?”

Flinging himself into a chair, he buried his face in his hands. There

were two demons to fight--the first in the guise of an angel. Doris!

Unknown yesterday, unknown an hour ago; but now! Had there ever been a

day--an hour--when she had not been as the very throb of his heart, the

light of his eyes, and the crown of all imaginable blisses?

He was startled at his own emotion as he contemplated her image in

his fancy and listened for the lost echo of the few words she had

spoken--words so full of music when they referred to his brother, so

hard and cold when she simply addressed himself.

This was no passing admiration of youth for a captivating woman.

This was not even the love he had given to Edith Challoner. This was

something springing full-born out of nothing! a force which, for the

first time in his life, made him complaisant to the natural weaknesses

of man! a dream and yet a reality strong enough to blot out the past,

remake the present, change the aspect of all his hopes, and outline

a new fate. He did not know himself. There was nothing in his whole

history to give him an understanding of such feelings as these.

Can a man be seized as it were by the hair, and swung up on the slopes

of paradise or down the steeps of hell--without a forewarning, without

the chance even to say whether he wished such a cataclysm in his life or

no?

He, Orlando Brotherson, had never thought much of love. Science had

been his mistress; ambition his lode-star. Such feeling as he had

acknowledged to had been for men--struggling men, men who were

down-trodden and gasping in the narrow bounds of poverty and

helplessness. Miss Challoner had roused--well, his pride. He could see

that now. The might of this new emotion made plain many things he had

passed by as useless, puerile, unworthy of a man of mental calibre

and might. He had never loved Edith Challoner at any moment of their

acquaintanceship, though he had been sincere in thinking that he did.

Doris’ beauty, the hour he had just passed with her, had undeceived him.

Did he hail the experience? It was not likely to bring him joy. This

young girl whose image floated in light before his eyes, would never

love him. She loved his brother. He had heard their names mentioned

together before he had been in town an hour. Oswald, the cleverest man,

Doris, the most beautiful girl in Western Pennsylvania.

He had accepted the gossip then; he had not seen her and it all seemed

very natural;--hardly worth a moment’s thought. But now!

And here, the other Demon sprang erect and grappled with him before the

first one had let go his hold. Oswald and Challoner! The secret, unknown

something which had softened that hard man’s eye when his brother’s

name was mentioned! He had noted it and realised the mystery; a mystery

before which sleep and rest must fly; a mystery to which he must now

give his thought, whatever the cost, whatever the loss to those heavenly

dreams the magic of which was so new it seemed to envelope him in the

balm of Paradise. Away, then, image of light! Let the faculties thou

hast dazed, act again. There is more than Fate’s caprice in Challoner’s

interest in a man he never saw. Ghosts of old memories rise and demand

a hearing. Facts, trivial and commonplace enough to have been lost in

oblivion with the day which gave them birth, throng again from the past,

proving that nought dies without a possibility of resurrection. Their

power over this brooding man is shown by the force with which his

fingers crush against his bowed forehead. Oswald and Challoner! Had he

found the connecting link? Had it been--could it have been Edith? The

preposterous is sometimes true; could it be true in this case?

He recalled the letters read to him as hers in that room of his in

Brooklyn. He had hardly noted them then, he was so sure of their being

forgeries, gotten up by the police to mislead him. Could they have been

real, the effusions of her mind, the breathings of her heart, directed

to an actual O. B., and that O. B., his brother? They had not been meant

for him. He had read enough of the mawkish lines to be sure of

that. None of the allusions fitted in with the facts of their mutual

intercourse. But they might with those of another man; they might with

the possible acts and affections of Oswald whose temperament was wholly

different from his and who might have loved her, should it ever be

shown that they had met and known each other. And this was not an

impossibility. Oswald had been east, Oswald had even been in the

Berkshires before himself. Oswald--Why it was Oswald who had suggested

that he should go there--go where she still was. Why this second

coincidence, if there were no tie--if the Challoners and Oswald were as

far apart as they seemed and as conventionalities would naturally

place them. Oswald was a sentimentalist, but very reserved about

his sentimentalities. If these suppositions were true, he had had a

sentimentalist’s motive for what he did. As Orlando realised this, he

rose from his seat, aghast at the possibilities confronting him from

this line of thought. Should he contemplate them? Risk his reason by

dwelling on a supposition which might have no foundation in fact? No.

His brain was too full--his purposes too important for any unnecessary

strain to be put upon his faculties. No thinking! investigation first.

Mr. Challoner should be able to settle this question. He would see him.

Even at this late hour he ought to be able to find him in one of the

rooms below; and, by the force of an irresistible demand, learn in a

moment whether he had to do with a mere chimera of his own overwrought

fancy, or with a fact which would call into play all the resources of an

hitherto unconquered and undaunted nature.

There was a wood-fire burning in the sitting-room that night, and

around it was grouped a number of men with their papers and pipes. Mr.

Brotherson, entering, naturally looked that way for the man he was in

search of, and was disappointed not to find him there; but on casting

his glances elsewhere, he was relieved to see him standing in one of the

windows overlooking the street. His back was to the room and he seemed

to be lost in a fit of abstraction.

As Orlando crossed to him, he had time to observe how much whiter was

this man’s head than in the last interview he had held with him in the

coroner’s office in New York. But this evidence of grief in one with

whom he had little, if anything, in common, neither touched his feelings

nor deterred his step. The awakening of his heart to new and profound

emotions had not softened him towards the sufferings of others if those

others stood without the pale he had previously raised as the legitimate

boundary of a just man’s sympathies.

He was, as I have said, an extraordinary specimen of manly vigour in

body and in mind, and his presence in any company always attracted

attention and roused, if it never satisfied, curiosity. Conversation

accordingly ceased as he strode up to Mr. Challoner’s side, so that his

words were quite audible as he addressed that gentleman with a somewhat

curt:

“You see me again, Mr. Challoner. May I beg of you a few minutes’

further conversation? I will not detain you long.”

The grey head turned, and the many eyes watching showed surprise at the

expression of dislike and repulsion with which this New York gentleman

met the request thus emphatically urged. But his answer was courteous

enough. If Mr. Brotherson knew a place where they would be left

undisturbed, he would listen to him if he would be very brief.

For reply, the other pointed to a small room quite unoccupied which

opened out of the one in which they then stood. Mr. Challoner bowed

and in an other moment the door closed upon them, to the infinite

disappointment of the men about the hearth.

“What do you wish to ask?” was Mr. Challoner’s immediate inquiry.

“This; I make no apologies and expect in answer nothing more than an

unequivocal yes or no. You tell me that you have never met my brother.

Can that be said of the other members of your family--of your deceased

daughter, in fact?”

“No.”

“She was acquainted with Oswald Brotherson?”

“She was.”

“Without your knowledge?”

“Entirely so.”

“Corresponded with him?”

“Not exactly.”

“How, not exactly?”

“He wrote to her--occasionally. She wrote to him frequently--but she

never sent her letters.”

“Ah!”

The exclamation was sharp, short and conveyed little. Yet with its

escape, the whole scaffolding of this man’s hold upon life and his own

fate went down in indistinguishable chaos. Mr. Challoner realised

a sense of havoc, though the eyes bent upon his countenance had not

wavered, nor the stalwart figure moved.

“I have read some of those letters,” the inventor finally acknowledged.

“The police took great pains to place them under my eye, supposing

them to have been meant for me because of the initials written on the

wrapper. But they were meant for Oswald. You believe that now?”

“I know it.”

“And that is why I found you in the same house with him.”

“It is. Providence has robbed me of my daughter; if this brother of

yours should prove to be the man I am led to expect, I shall ask him to

take that place in my heart and life which was once hers.”

A quick recoil, a smothered exclamation on the part of the man he

addressed. A barb had been hidden in this simple statement which had

reached some deeply-hidden but vulnerable spot in Brotherson’s breast,

which had never been pierced before. His eye which alone seemed alive,

still rested piercingly upon that of Mr. Challoner, but its light was

fast fading, and speedily became lost in a dimness in which the other

seemed to see extinguished the last upflaring embers of those inner

fires which feed the aspiring soul. It was a sight no man could see

unmoved. Mr. Challoner turned sharply away, in dread of the abyss which

the next word he uttered might open between them.

But Orlando Brotherson possessed resources of strength of which,

possibly, he was not aware himself. When Mr. Challoner, still more

affected by the silence than by the dread I have mentioned, turned to

confront him again, it was to find his features composed and his glance

clear. He had conquered all outward manifestation of the mysterious

emotion which for an instant had laid his proud spirit low.

“You are considerate of my brother,” were the words with which he

re-opened this painful conversation. “You will not find your confidence

misplaced. Oswald is a straightforward fellow, of few faults.”

“I believe it. No man can be so universally beloved without some very

substantial claims to regard. I am glad to see that your opinion, though

given somewhat coldly, coincides with that of his friends.”

“I am not given to exaggeration,” was the even reply.

The flush which had come into Mr. Challoner’s cheek under the effort he

had made to sustain with unflinching heroism this interview with the man

he looked upon as his mortal enemy, slowly faded out till he looked the

wraith of himself even to the unsympathetic eyes of Orlando Brotherson.

A duty lay before him which would tax to its utmost extent his already

greatly weakened self-control. Nothing which had yet passed showed that

this man realised the fact that Oswald had been kept in ignorance of

Miss Challoner’s death. If these brothers were to meet on the morrow, it

must be with the full understanding that this especial topic was to be

completely avoided. But in what words could he urge such a request upon

this man? None suggested themselves, yet he had promised Miss Scott

that he would ensure his silence in this regard, and it was with this

difficulty and no other he had been struggling when Mr. Brotherson came

upon him in the other room.

“You have still something to say,” suggested the latter, as an

oppressive silence swallowed up that icy sentence I have already

recorded.

“I have,” returned Mr. Challoner, regaining his courage under the

exigencies of the moment. “Miss Scott is very anxious to have your

promise that you will avoid all disagreeable topics with your brother

till the doctor pronounces him strong enough to meet the trouble which

awaits him.”

“You mean--”

“He is not as unhappy as we. He knows nothing of the affliction which

has befallen him. He was taken ill--” The rest was almost inaudible.

But Orlando Brotherson had no difficulty in understanding him, and for

the second time in this extraordinary interview, he gave evidences

of agitation and of a mind shaken from its equipoise. But only for an

instant. He did not shun the other’s gaze or even maintain more than

a momentary silence. Indeed, he found strength to smile, in a curious,

sardonic way, as he said:

“Do you think I should be apt to broach this subject with any one, let

alone with him, whose connection with it I shall need days to realise?

I’m not so given to gossip. Besides, he and I have other topics of

interest. I have an invention ready with which I propose to experiment

in a place he has already prepared for me. We can talk about that.”

The irony, the hardy self-possession with which this was said struck

Mr. Challoner to the heart. Without a word he wheeled about towards the

door. Without a word, Brotherson stood, watching him go till he saw his

hand fall on the knob when he quietly prevented his exit by saying:

“Unhappy truths cannot be long concealed. How soon does the doctor think

my brother can bear these inevitable revelations?”

“He said this morning that if his patient were as well to-morrow as his

present condition gives promise of, he might be told in another week.”

Orlando bowed his appreciation of this fact, but added quickly:

“Who is to do the telling?”

“Doris. Nobody else could be trusted with so delicate a task.”

“I wish to be present.”

Mr. Challoner looked up, surprised at the feeling with which this

request was charged.

“As his brother--his only remaining relative, I have that right. Do you

think that Dor--that Miss Scott, can be trusted not to forestall that

moment by any previous hint of what awaits him?”

“If she so promises. But will you exact this from her? It surely cannot

be necessary for me to say that your presence will add infinitely to the

difficulty of her task.”

“Yet it is a duty I cannot shirk. I will consult the doctor about it. I

will make him see that I both understand and shall insist upon my rights

in this matter. But you may tell Miss Doris that I will sit out of

sight, and that I shall not obtrude myself unless my name is brought up

in an undesirable way.”

The hand on the door-knob made a sudden movement.

“Mr. Brotherson, I can bear no more to-night. With your permission, I

will leave this question to be settled by others.” And with a repetition

of his former bow, the bereaved father withdrew.

Orlando watched him till the door closed, then he too dropped his mask.

But it was on again, when in a little while he passed through the

sitting-room on his way upstairs.

No other day in his whole life had been like this to the hardy inventor;

for in it both his heart and his conscience had been awakened, and up to

this hour he had not really known that he possessed either.

XXXI. WHAT IS HE MAKING

Other boxes addressed to O. Brotherson had been received at the station,

and carried to the mysterious shed in the woods; and now, with locked

door and lifted top, the elder brother contemplated his stores and

prepared himself for work.

He had been allowed a short interview with Oswald, and he had indulged

himself in a few words with Doris. But he had left those memories behind

with other and more serious matters. Nothing that could unnerve his hand

or weaken his insight should enter this spot sacred to his great hope.

Here genius reigned. Here he was himself wholly and without flaw;--a

Titan with his grasp on a mechanical idea by means of which he would

soon rule the world.

Not so happy were the other characters in this drama. Oswald’s thoughts,

disturbed for a short time by the somewhat constrained interview he

had held with his brother, had flown eastward again, in silent love and

longing; while Doris, with a double dread now in her heart, went about

her daily tasks, praying for strength to endure the horrors of this

week, without betraying the anxieties secretly devouring her. And she

was only seventeen and quite alone in her trouble. She must bear it all

unassisted and smile, which she did with heavenly sweetness, when the

magic threshold was passed and she stood in her invalid’s presence,

overshadowed though it ever was by the great Dread.

And Mr. Challoner? Let those endless walks of his through the woods

and over the hills tell his story if they can; or his rapidly whitening

hair, and lagging step. He had been a strong man before his trouble, and

had the stroke which laid him low been limited to one quick, sharp blow

he might have risen above it after a while and been ready to encounter

life again. But this long drawn out misery was proving too much for him.

The sight of Brotherson, though they never really met, acted like acid

upon a wound, and it was not till six days had passed and the dreaded

Sunday was at hand, that he slept with any sense of rest or went his way

about the town without that halting at the corners which betrayed his

perpetual apprehension of a most undesirable encounter.

The reason for this change will be apparent in the short conversation

he held with a man he had come upon one evening in the small park just

beyond the workmen’s dwellings.

“You see I am here,” was the stranger’s low greeting.

“Thank God,” was Mr. Challoner’s reply. “I could not have faced

to-morrow alone and I doubt if Miss Scott could have found the requisite

courage. Does she know that you are here?”

“I stopped at her door.”

“Was that safe?”

“I think so. Mr. Brotherson--the Brooklyn one,--is up in his shed. He

sleeps there now, I am told, and soundly too I’ve no doubt.”

“What is he making?”

“What half the inventors on both sides of the water are engaged upon

just now. A monoplane, or a biplane, or some machine for carrying men

through the air. I know, for I helped him with it. But you’ll find that

if he succeeds in this undertaking, and I believe he will, nothing short

of fame awaits him. His invention has startling points. But I’m not

going to give them away. I’ll be true enough to him for that. As an

inventor he has my sympathy; but--Well, we will see what we shall

see, to-morrow. You say that he is bound to be present when Miss Scott

relates her tragic story. He won’t be the only unseen listener. I’ve

made my own arrangements with Miss Scott. If he feels the need of

watching her and his brother Oswald, I feel the need of watching him.”

“You take a burden of intolerable weight from my shoulders. Now I shall

feel easier about that interview. But I should like to ask you this: Do

you feel justified in this continued surveillance of a man who has so

frequently, and with such evident sincerity, declared his innocence?”

“I do that. If he’s as guiltless as he says he is, my watchfulness won’t

hurt him. If he’s not, then, Mr. Challoner, I’ve but one duty; to match

his strength with my patience. That man is the one great mystery of

the day, and mysteries call for solution. At least, that’s the way a

detective looks at it.”

“May Heaven help your efforts!”

“I shall need its assistance,” was the dry rejoinder. Sweetwater was by

no means blind to the difficulties awaiting him.

XXXII. TELL ME, TELL IT ALL

The day was a grey one, the first of the kind in weeks. As Doris stepped

into the room where Oswald sat, she felt how much a ray of sunshine

would have encouraged her and yet how truly these leaden skies and this

dismal atmosphere expressed the gloom which soon must fall upon this

hopeful, smiling man.

He smiled because any man must smile at the entrance of so lovely a

woman, but it was an abstracted smile, and Doris, seeing it, felt her

courage falter for a moment, though her steps did not, nor her steady

compassionate gaze. Advancing slowly, and not answering because she did

not hear some casual remark of his, she took her stand by his side and

then slowly and with her eyes on his face, sank down upon her knees,

still without speaking, almost without breathing.

His astonishment was evident, for her air was strange and full of

presage,--as, indeed, she had meant it to be. But he remained as silent

as she, only reached out his emaciated hand and, laying it on her head,

smiled again but this time far from abstractedly. Then, as he saw her

cheeks pale in terror of the task before her, he ventured to ask gently:

“What is the matter, child? So weary, eh? Nothing worse than that, I

hope.”

“Are you quite strong this morning? Strong enough to listen to my

troubles; strong enough to bear your own if God sees fit to send them?”

came hesitatingly from her lips as she watched the effect of each word,

in breathless anxiety.

“Troubles? There can be but one trouble for me,” was his unexpected

reply. “That I do not fear--will not fear in my hour of happy recovery.

So long as Edith is well--Doris! Doris! You alarm me. Edith is not

ill;--not ill?”

The poor child could not answer save with her sympathetic look and

halting, tremulous breath; and these signs, he would not, could not

read, his own words had made such an echo in his ears.

“Ill! I cannot imagine Edith ill. I always see her in my thoughts, as I

saw her on that day of our first meeting; a perfect, animated woman with

the joyous look of a glad, harmonious nature. Nothing has ever clouded

that vision. If she were ill I would have known it. We are so truly one

that--Doris, Doris, you do not speak. You know the depth of my love, the

terror of my thoughts. Is Edith ill?”

The eyes gazing wildly into his, slowly left his face and raised

themselves aloft, with a sublime look. Would he understand? Yes, he

understood, and the cry which rang from his lips stopped for a moment

the beating of more than one heart in that little cottage.

“Dead!” he shrieked out, and fell back fainting in his chair, his lips

still murmuring in semi-unconsciousness, “Dead! dead!”

Doris sprang to her feet, thinking of nothing but his wavering, slipping

life till she saw his breath return, his eyes refill with light. Then

the horror of what was yet to come--the answer which must be given to

the how she saw trembling on his lips, caused her to sink again upon her

knees in an unconscious appeal for strength. If that one sad revelation

had been all!

But the rest must be told; his brother exacted it and so did the

situation. Further waiting, further hiding of the truth would be

insupportable after this. But oh, the bitterness of it! No wonder that

she turned away from those frenzied, wildly-demanding eyes.

“Doris?”

She trembled and looked behind her. She had not recognised his voice.

Had another entered? Had his brother dared--No, they were alone;

seemingly so, that is. She knew,--no one better--that they were not

really alone, that witnesses were within hearing, if not within sight.

“Doris,” he urged again, and this time she turned in his direction and

gazed, aghast. If the voice were strange, what of the face which now

confronted her. The ravages of sickness had been marked, but they

were nothing to those made in an instant by a blasting grief. She was

startled, although expecting much, and could only press his hands while

she waited for the question he was gathering strength to utter. It was

simple when it came; just two words:

“How long?”

She answered them as simply.

“Just as long as you have been ill,” said she; then, with no attempt to

break the inevitable shock, she went on: “Miss Challoner was struck dead

and you were taken down with typhoid on the self-same day.”

“Struck dead! Why do you use that word, struck? Struck dead! she, a

young woman. Oh, Doris, an accident! My darling has been killed in an

accident!”

“They do not call it accident. They call it what it never was. What it

never was,” she insisted, pressing him back with frightened hands, as he

strove to rise. “Miss Challoner was--” How nearly the word shot had

left her lips. How fiercely above all else, in that harrowing moment had

risen the desire to fling the accusation of that word into the ears of

him who listened from his secret hiding-place. But she refrained out of

compassion for the man she loved, and declared instead, “Miss Challoner

died from a wound; how given, why given, no one knows. I had rather have

died myself than have to tell you this. Oh, Mr. Brotherson, speak, sob,

do anything but--”

She started back, dropping his hands as she did so. With quick intuition

she saw that he must be left to himself if he were to meet this blow

without succumbing. The body must have freedom if the spirit would not

go mad. Conscious, or perhaps not conscious, of his release from her

restraining hand, albeit profiting by it, he staggered to his feet,

murmuring that word of doom: “Wound! wound! my darling died of a wound!

What kind of a wound?” he suddenly thundered out. “I cannot understand

what you mean by wound. Make it clear to me. Make it clear to me at

once. If I must bear this grief, let me know its whole depth. Leave

nothing to my imagination or I cannot answer for myself. Tell it all,

Doris.”

And Doris told him:

“She was on the mezzanine floor of the hotel where she lives. She was

seemingly happy and had been writing a letter--a letter to me which

they never forwarded. There was no one else by but some strangers--good

people whom one must believe. She was crossing the floor when suddenly

she threw up her hands and fell. A thin, narrow paper-cutter was in her

grasp; and it flew into the lobby. Some say she struck herself with that

cutter; for when they picked her up they found a wound in her breast

which that cutter might have made.”

“Edith? never!”

The words were chokingly said; he was swaying, almost falling, but he

steadied himself.

“Who says that?” he asked.

“It was the coroner’s verdict.”