It was certainly a queer house. Even through the blinding storm they could
distinguish its eccentric outlines as they alighted from the stage.
Dorothy laughed happily, heedless of the fact that her husband's umbrella
was dripping down her neck. "It's a dear old place," she cried; "I love it
already!"
For an instant a flash of lightning turned the peculiar windows into
sheets of flame, then all was dark again. Harlan's answer was drowned by a
crash of thunder and the turning of the heavy wheels on the gravelled
road.
"Don't stop," shouted the driver; "I'll come up to-morrer for the money.
Good luck to you--an' the Jack-o'-Lantern!"
"What did he mean?" asked Dorothy, shaking out her wet skirts, when they
were safely inside the door. "Who's got a Jack-o'-Lantern?"
"You can search me," answered Harlan, concisely, fumbling for a match. "I
suppose we've got it. Anyhow, we'll have a look at this sepulchral mansion
presently."
His deep voice echoed and re-echoed through the empty rooms, and Dorothy
laughed; a little hysterically this time. Match after match sputtered and
failed. "Couldn't have got much wetter if I'd been in swimming," he
grumbled. "Here goes the last one."
By the uncertain light they found a candle and Harlan drew a long breath
of relief. "It would have been pleasant, wouldn't it?" he went on. "We
could have sat on the stairs until morning, or broken our admirable necks
in falling over strange furniture. The next thing is a fire. Wonder where
my distinguished relative kept his wood?"
Lighting another candle, he went off on a tour of investigation, leaving
Dorothy alone.
She could not repress a shiver as she glanced around the gloomy room. The
bare loneliness of the place was accentuated by the depressing furniture,
which belonged to the black walnut and haircloth period. On the
marble-topped table, in the exact centre of the room, was a red plush
album, flanked on one side by a hideous china vase, and on the other by a
basket of wax flowers under a glass shade.
Her home-coming! How often she had dreamed of it, never for a moment
guessing that it might be like this! She had fancied a little house in a
suburb, or a cosy apartment in the city, and a lump came into her throat
as her air castle dissolved into utter ruin. She was one of those rare,
unhappy women whose natures are so finely attuned to beauty that ugliness
hurts like physical pain.
She sat down on one of the slippery haircloth chairs, facing the mantel
where the single candle threw its tiny light afar. Little by little the
room crept into shadowy relief--the melodeon in the corner, the what-not,
with its burden of incongruous ornaments, and even the easel bearing the
crayon portrait of the former mistress of the house, becoming faintly
visible.
Presently, from above the mantel, appeared eyes. Dorothy felt them first,
then looked up affrighted. From the darkness they gleamed upon her in a
way that made her heart stand still. Human undoubtedly, but not in the
least friendly, they were the eyes of one who bitterly resented the
presence of an intruder. The light flickered, then flamed up once more and
brought into view the features that belonged with the eyes.
Dorothy would have screamed, had it not been for the lump in her throat. A
step came nearer and nearer, from some distant part of the house,
accompanied by a cheery, familiar whistle. Still the stern, malicious face
held her spellbound, and even when Harlan came in with his load of wood,
she could not turn away.
"Now," he said, "we'll start a fire and hang ourselves up to dry."
"What is it?" asked Dorothy, her lips scarcely moving.
His eyes followed hers. "Uncle Ebeneezer's portrait," he answered. "Why,
Dorothy Carr! I believe you're scared!"
"I was scared," she admitted, reluctantly, after a brief silence, smiling
a little at her own foolishness. "It's so dark and gloomy in here, and you
were gone so long----"
Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur, but she still shuddered
in spite of herself.
"Funny old place," commented Harlan, kneeling on the hearth and laying
kindlings, log-cabin fashion, in the fireplace. "If an architect planned
it, he must have gone crazy the week before he did it."
"Or at the time. Don't, dear--wait a minute. Let's light our first fire
together."
He smiled as she slipped to her knees beside him, and his hand held hers
while the blazing splinter set the pine kindling aflame. Quickly the whole
room was aglow with light and warmth, in cheerful contrast to the stormy
tumult outside.
"Somebody said once," observed Harlan, as they drew their chairs close to
the hearth, "that four feet on a fender are sufficient for happiness."
"Depends altogether on the feet," rejoined Dorothy, quickly. "I wouldn't
want Uncle Ebeneezer sitting here beside me--no disrespect intended to
your relation, as such."
"Poor old duck," said Harlan, kindly. "Life was never very good to him,
and Death took away the only thing he ever loved.
"Aunt Rebecca," he continued, feeling her unspoken question. "She died
suddenly, when they had been married only three or four weeks."
"Like us," whispered Dorothy, for the first time conscious of a tenderness
toward the departed Mr. Judson, of Judson Centre.
"It was four weeks ago to-day, wasn't it?" he mused, instinctively seeking
her hand.
"I thought you'd forgotten," she smiled back at him. "I feel like an old
married woman, already."
"You don't look it," he returned, gently. Few would have called her
beautiful, but love brings beauty with it, and Harlan saw an exquisite
loveliness in the deep, dark eyes, the brown hair that rippled and shone
in the firelight, the smooth, creamy skin, and the sensitive mouth that
betrayed every passing mood.
"None the less, I am," she went on. "I've grown so used to seeing 'Mrs.
James Harlan Carr' on my visiting cards that I've forgotten there ever was
such a person as 'Miss Dorothy Locke,' who used to get letters, and go
calling when she wasn't too busy, and have things sent to her when she had
the money to buy them."
"I hope--" Harlan stumbled awkwardly over the words--"I hope you'll never
be sorry."
"I haven't been yet," she laughed, "and it's four whole weeks. Come, let's
go on an exploring expedition. I'm dry both inside and out, and most
terribly hungry."
Each took a candle and Harlan led the way, in and out of unexpected doors,
queer, winding passages, and lonely, untenanted rooms. Originally, the
house had been simple enough in structure, but wing after wing had been
added until the first design, if it could be dignified by that name, had
been wholly obscured. From each room branched a series of apartments--a
sitting-room, surrounded by bedrooms, each of which contained two or
sometimes three beds. A combined kitchen and dining-room was in every
separate wing, with an outside door.
"I wonder," cried Dorothy, "if we've come to an orphan asylum!"
"Heaven knows what we've come to," muttered Harlan. "You know I never was
here before."
"Did Uncle Ebeneezer have a large family?"
"Only Aunt Rebecca, who died very soon, as I told you. Mother was his only
sister, and I her only child, so it wasn't on our side."
"Perhaps," observed Dorothy, "Aunt Rebecca had relations."
"One, two, three, four, five," counted Harlan. "There are five sets of
apartments on this side, and three on the other. Let's go upstairs."
From the low front door a series of low windows extended across the house
on each side, abundantly lighting the two front rooms, which were
separated by the wide hall. A high, narrow window in the lower hall,
seemingly with no purpose whatever, began far above the low door and ended
abruptly at the ceiling. In the upper hall, a similar window began at the
floor and extended upward no higher than Harlan's knees. As Dorothy said,
"one would have to lie down to look out of it," but it lighted the hall,
which, after all, was the main thing.
In each of the two front rooms, upstairs, was a single round window, too
high for one to look out of without standing on a chair, though in both
rooms there was plenty of side light. One wing on each side of the house
had been carried up to the second story, and the arrangement of rooms was
the same as below, outside stairways leading from the kitchens to the
ground.
"I never saw so many beds in my life," cried Dorothy.
"Seems to be a perfect Bedlam," rejoined Harlan, making a poor attempt at
a joke and laughing mirthlessly. In his heart he began to doubt the wisdom
of marrying on six hundred dollars, an unexplored heirloom in Judson
Centre, and an overweening desire to write books.
For the first time, his temerity appeared to him in its proper colours. He
had been a space writer and Dorothy the private secretary of a Personage,
when they met, in the dreary basement dining-room of a New York
boarding-house, and speedily fell in love. Shortly afterward, when Harlan
received a letter which contained a key, and announced that Mr. Judson's
house, fully furnished, had been bequeathed to his nephew, they had
light-heartedly embarked upon matrimony with no fears for the future.
Two hundred dollars had been spent upon a very modest honeymoon, and the
three hundred and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents remaining,
as Harlan had accurately calculated, seemed pitifully small. Perplexity,
doubt, and foreboding were plainly written on his face, when Dorothy
turned to him.
"Isn't it perfectly lovely," she asked, "for us to have this nice, quiet
place all to ourselves, where you can write your book?"
Woman-like, she had instantly touched the right chord, and the clouds
vanished.
"Yes," he cried, eagerly. "Oh, Dorothy, do you think I can really write
it?"
"Write it," she repeated; "why, you dear, funny goose, you can write a
better book than anybody has ever written yet, and I know you can! By next
week we'll be settled here and you can get down to work. I'll help you,
too," she added, generously. "If you'll buy me a typewriter, I can copy
the whole book for you."
"Of course I'll buy you a typewriter. We'll send for it to-morrow. How
much does a nice one cost?"
"The kind I like," she explained, "costs a hundred dollars without the
stand. I don't need the stand--we can find a table somewhere that will
do."
"Two hundred and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents," breathed
Harlan, unconsciously.
"No, only a hundred dollars," corrected Dorothy. "I don't care to have it
silver mounted."
"I'd buy you a gold one if you wanted it," stammered Harlan, in some
confusion.
"Not now," she returned, serenely. "Wait till the book is done."
Visions of fame and fortune appeared before his troubled eyes and set his
soul alight with high ambition. The candle in his hand burned unsteadily
and dripped tallow, unheeded. "Come," said Dorothy, gently, "let's go
downstairs again."
An open door revealed a tortuous stairway at the back of the house,
descending mysteriously into cavernous gloom. "Let's go down here," she
continued. "I love curly stairs."
"These are kinky enough to please even your refined fancy," laughed
Harlan. "It reminds me of travelling in the West, where you look out of
the window and see your engine on the track beside you, going the other
way."
"This must be the kitchen," said Dorothy, when the stairs finally ceased.
"Uncle Ebeneezer appears to have had a pronounced fancy for kitchens."
"Here's another wing," added Harlan, opening the back door. "Sitting-room,
bedroom, and--my soul and body! It's another kitchen!"
"Any more beds?" queried Dorothy, peering into the darkness. "We can't
keep house unless we can find more beds."
"Only one more. I guess we've come down to bed rock at last."
"In other words, the cradle," she observed, pulling a little old-fashioned
trundle bed out into the light.
"Oh, what a joke!" cried Harlan. "That's worth three dollars in the office
of any funny paper in New York!"
"Sell it," commanded Dorothy, inspired by the prospect of wealth, "and
I'll give you fifty cents for your commission."
Outside, the storm still raged and the old house shook and creaked in the
blast. The rain swirled furiously against the windows, and a swift rush of
hailstones beat a fierce tattoo on the roof. Built on the summit of a hill
and with only a few trees near it, the Judson mansion was but poorly
protected from the elements.
None the less, there was a sense of warmth and comfort inside. "Let's
build a fire in the kitchen," suggested Dorothy, "and then we'll try to
find something to eat."
"Which kitchen?" asked Harlan.
"Any old kitchen. The one the back stairs end in, I guess. It seems to be
the principal one of the set."
Harlan brought more wood and Dorothy watched him build the fire with a
sense that a god-like being was here put to base uses. Hampered in his
log-cabin design by the limitations of the fire box, he handled the
kindlings awkwardly, got a splinter into his thumb, said something under
his breath which was not meant for his wife to hear, and powdered his
linen with soot from the stove pipe. At length, however, a respectable
fire was started.
"Now," he asked, "what shall I do next?"
"Wind all the clocks. I can't endure a dead clock. While you're doing it,
I'll get out the remnants of our lunch and see what there is in the pantry
that is still edible."
In the lunch basket which the erratic ramifications of the road leading to
Judson Centre had obliged them to carry, there was still, fortunately, a
supply of sandwiches and fruit. A hasty search through the nearest pantry
revealed jelly, marmalade, and pickles, a box of musty crackers and a
canister of tea. When Harlan came back, Dorothy had the kitchen table set
for two, with a lighted candle dispensing odorous good cheer from the
centre of it, and the tea kettle singing merrily over the fire.
"Seems like home, doesn't it?" he asked, pleasantly imbued with the
realisation of the home-making quality in Dorothy. Certain rare women with
this gift take their atmosphere with them wherever they go.
"To-morrow," he went on, "I'll go into the village and buy more things to
eat."
"The ruling passion," she smiled. "It's--what's that!"