small engraving, which she brought me. "For nearly a month before his
death he had this picture stuck up over the other with pins. You can
see the pin-holes now, if you look; they went right through the canvas.
I thought it a very sensible thing to do, myself; but when I spoke of
it to him one day, remarking that I had always thought the picture
unfit for any one to see, he gave me such a look that I thought then he
must be crazy. But no one else saw any thing amiss in him, and, as I
did not want to lose a good lodger, I let him stay on, though my mind
did sometimes misgive me."
The engraving she had handed me was almost as suggestive as the
painting it had been used to conceal; but at this remarkable statement
front Mrs. Simpson's lips I laid it quickly down.
"You think he was crazy?" I asked.
"I think he committed suicide," she affirmed.
I turned to the engraving again, and took it up. What a change had come
over me that a statement against which I had once so honestly rebelled
for Ada's sake should now arouse something like a sensation of joy in
my breast!
Mrs. Simpson, too much interested in her theme to notice me, went
confidently on.
"You see, folks that live in the same house with a person, learn to
know them as other folks can't. Not that Mr. Barrows ever talked to me;
he was a deal too much absorbed in his studies for that; but he ate at
my table, and went in and out of my front door, and if a woman cannot
learn something about a man under those circumstances, then she is no
good, that is all I have got to say about her."
I was amused and slightly smiled, but she needed no encouragement to
proceed.
"The way he would drop into a brown study over his meat and potatoes
was a caution to my mind. A minister that don't eat is--an anomaly,"
she burst out. "I have boarded them before, and I know they like the
good things of life as well as anybody. But Mr. Barrows, latterly at
least, never seemed to see what was on the table before him, but ate
because his plate of food was there, and had to be disposed of in some
way. One day, I remember in particular, I had baked dumplings, for he
used to be very fond of them, and would eat two without any urging; but
this day he either did not put enough sauce on them, or else his whole
appetite had changed; for he suddenly looked down at his plate and
shuddered, almost as if he were in a chill, and, getting up, was going
away, when I summoned up courage to ask if the dumplings were not as
good as usual. He turned at the door--I can see him now,--and
mechanically shaking his head, seemed to be trying to utter some
apology. But he presently stopped in that attempt, and, pointing
quickly at the table, said, in his accustomed tones: 'You need not make
me any more desserts, Mrs. Simpson, I shall not indulge in them in the
future'; and went out, without saying whether he was sick or what. And
that was the end of the dumplings, and of many a good thing besides."
"And is that all--" I began; but she broke in before the words were
half out of my mouth.
"But the strangest thing I ever see in him was this: I have not said
much about it, for the people that went to his church are a high and
mighty lot, and wouldn't bear a word said against his sanity, even by
one as had more opportunities than they of knowing him. But you are a
stranger in town, and can't have no such foolish touchiness about a
person that is nothing to you, so I will just tell you all about it.
You see, when he had visitors--and off and on a good many came--I used
to seat them in the parlor below, till I was sure he was ready to
receive them. This had happened one evening, and I had gone up to his
door to notify him that a stranger was down-stairs, when I heard such a
peculiar noise issuing from his room, that I just stood stock-still on
the door-mat to listen. It was a swishing sound, followed by a--Miss
Sterling," she suddenly broke in, in a half awe-struck, half-frightened
tone, "did you ever _hear_ any one whipped? If you have, you will know
why I stood shuddering at that door full two minutes before I dared
lift my hand and knock. Not that I could believe Mr. Barrows was
whipping any body, but the sound was so like it, and I was so certain
besides that I had heard something like a smothered cry follow it, that
nothing short of the most imperative necessity would have given me the
courage to call him; my imagination filling the room with all sorts of
frightful images; images that did not fade away in a hurry," she went
on, with a look of shrinking terror about her which I am not sure was
not reflected in my own face, "when, after the longest waiting I ever
had at his door, he slowly came across the room and opened it, showing
me a face as white as a sheet, and a hand that trembled so that he
dropped the card I gave him and had to pick it up. Had there been a
child there----"
"But there wasn't!" I interrupted, shocked and forced to defend him in
spite of myself.
"No, nor anybody else. For when he went down-stairs, I looked in and
there was no one there, and nothing uncommon about the room, except
that I thought his bookcase looked as if it had been moved. And it had;
for next day when I swept this room--it did not need sweeping, but one
can't wait for ever to satisfy their curiosity--I just looked behind
that case, and what do you think I found? A strap--a regular leather
strap--just such as----"
"Good God!" I interrupted; "you do not think he had been using it when
you went to the door?"
"I do," she said. "I think he had a fit of something like insanity upon
him, and had been swinging that strap----Well, I will not say against
what, for I do not know, but might it not have been against the fiends
and goblins with which crazy people sometimes imagine they are
surrounded?"
"Possibly," I acquiesced, though my tone could not have been one of any
strong conviction.
"Insane persons sometimes do strange things," she continued; "and that
he did not show himself violent before folks is no sign he did not let
himself out sometimes when he was alone. The very fact that he
restrained himself when he went into the pulpit and visited among his
friends, may have made him wilder when he got all by himself. I am sure
I remember having heard of a case where a man lived for ten years in a
town without a single neighbor suspecting him of insanity; yet his wife
suffered constantly from his freaks, and finally fell a victim to his
violence."
"But Mr. Barrows was such a brilliant man," I objected. "His sermons up
to the last were models of eloquence."
"Oh, he could preach," she assented.
Seeing that she was not to be moved in her convictions, I ventured upon
a few questions.
"Have you ever thought," I asked, "what it was that created such a
change in him? You say you noticed it for a month before his death;
could any thing have happened to disturb him at that time?"
"Not that I know of," she answered, with great readiness. "I was away
for a week in August, and it was when I first came back that I observed
how different he was from what he had been before. I thought at first
it was the hot weather, but heat don't make one restless and unfit to
sit quiet in one's chair. Nor does it drive a man to work as if the
very evil one was in him, keeping the light burning sometimes till two
in the morning, while he wrote and walked, and walked and wrote, till I
thought my head would burst with sympathy for him."
"He was finishing a book, was he not? I think I have heard he left a
completed manuscript behind him?"
"Yes; and don't you think it very singular that the last word should
have been written, and the whole parcel done up and sent away to his
publisher, two days before his death, if he did not know what was going
to happen to him?"
"And was it?" I inquired.
"Yes, it was; for I was in the room when he signed his name to it, and
heard his sigh of relief, and saw him, too, when, a little while
afterwards, he took the bundle out to the post-office. I remember
thinking, 'Well, now for some rest nights!' little imagining what rest
was in store for him, poor soul!"
"Did you know that Mr. Barrows was engaged?" I suddenly asked, unable
to restrain my impatience any longer.
"No, I did not," she rather sharply replied, as if her lack of
knowledge on that subject had been rather a sore point with her. "I may
have suspected there was some one he was interested in, but I am sure
nobody ever imagined her as being the one. Poor girl, she must have
thought a heap of him to die in that way."
She looked at me as she said this, anticipating, perhaps, a return of
the confidences she had made me. But I could not talk of Ada to her,
and after a moment of silent waiting she went eagerly on.
"Perhaps a lover's quarrel lay at the bottom of the whole matter," she
suggested. "Miss Reynolds was a sweet girl and loved him very
devotedly, of course; but they might have had a tiff for all that, and
in a nature as sensitive as his, the least thing will sometimes unhinge
the mind."
But I could only shake my head at this; the supposition was at once too
painful and absurd.
"Well, well," the garrulous woman went on, in no wise abashed, "there
are some things that come easy and some things that come hard. Why Mr.
Barrows went the way he did is one of the hard things to understand,
but that he did go, and that of his own frenzied will, I am as sure as
that two and two make four, and four from four leaves nothing."
I thought of all the others who secretly or openly expressed the same
opinion, and felt my heart grow lighter. Then I thought of Rhoda
Colwell, and then----
"Just what time was it," I asked, "when you were away in August? Was it
before the seventeenth, or after? I inquire, because----"
But evidently she did not care why I inquired.
"It was during that week," she broke in. "I remember because it was on
the sixteenth that Mr. Pollard died, and I was not here to attend the
funeral. I came back----"
But it was no matter to me now when she came back. She had not been at
home the night when Mr. Barrows was beguiled into his first visit to
the mill, and she had mentioned a name I had long been eager to have
introduced into the conversation.
"You knew Mr. Pollard?" I therefore interposed without ceremony. "He
was a very rich man, was he not?"
"Yes," she assented. "I suppose the children will have the whole
property, now that the old lady is gone. I hope Mr. Harrington will be
satisfied. He just married that girl for her money. That, I am sure,
you will hear everybody say."
"Yet she is exceedingly pretty," I suggested.
"Oh, yes, too pretty; she makes one think of a wax doll. But these
English lords don't care for beauty without there is a deal of hard
cash to back it, and if Agnes Pollard had been as poor as--what other
beauty have we in town?"
"There is a girl called Rhoda Colwell," I ventured.
"Rhoda Colwell! Do you call her a beauty? I know some folks think she
is--well, then, let us say as Rhoda Colwell, he would have made her any
proposal sooner than that of his hand."
"And is Mr. Harrington a lord?" I asked, feeling that I was lighting
upon some very strange truths.
"He is the next heir to one. A nephew I believe, or else a cousin. I
cannot keep track of all those fine distinctions in people I never saw."
"They were married privately and right after Mr. Pollard's death, I
have heard."
"Yes, and for no other earthly reason that one ever heard of than to
have it settled and done; for Mr. Harrington did not take away his wife
from the country; nor does he intend to as far as I can learn.
Everybody thought it a very strange proceeding, and none too respectful
to Mr. Pollard's memory either."
I thought of all I had heard and seen in that house, and wondered.
"Mr. Pollard was such a nice man, too," she pursued, in a musing tone.
"Not a commanding person, like his wife, but so good and kind and
attentive to poor folks like me. I never liked a man more than I did
Mr. Pollard, and I have always thought that if he had had a different
kind of mother for his children--but what is the use of criticising the
poor woman now. She is dead and so is he, and the children will do very
well now with all that money to back them in any caprice they may have."
"You seem to know them well," I remarked, fearful she would observe the
emotion I could not quite keep out of my face.
"No," she returned, with an assumption of grimness, which was evidently
meant for sarcasm, "not well. Every one knows the Pollards, but I never
heard any one say they knew them well."
"Didn't Mr. Barrows?" I tremblingly inquired, anxious for her reply,
yet fearful of connecting those two names.
"Not that I ever saw," she returned, showing no special interest in the
question, or in the fact that it was seemingly of some importance to me.
"Didn't they use to come here to see him?" I proceeded, emboldened by
her evident lack of perspicuity. "None of them?" I added, seeing her
about to shake her head.
"Oh, Dwight or Guy would come here if they had any business with him,"
she allowed. "But that isn't intimacy; the Pollards are intimate with
nobody."
She seemed to be rather proud of it, and as I did not see my way just
then to acquire any further information, I sank with a weary air into a
chair, turning the conversation as I did so upon other and totally
irrelevant topics. But no topic was of much interest to her, that did
not in some way involve Mr. Barrows; and after a few minutes of
desultory chat, she pleaded the excuse of business and hurriedly left
the room.
XVI.
THE GREEN ENVELOPE.
Sir, you shall understand what hath befall'n,
Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a letter.
--OTHELLO.
Her departure was a relief to me. First, because I had heard so much, I
wanted an opportunity of digesting it; and, secondly, because of my
interest in the engraving she had shown me, and the impatience I felt
to study it more closely. I took it up the moment she closed the door.
It was the picture of a martyr, and had evidently been cut from some
good-sized book. It represented a man clothed in a long white garment,
standing with his back to the stake, and his hand held out to the
flames, which were slowly consuming it. As a work of art, it was
ordinary; as the illustration of some mighty fact, it was full of
suggestion. I gazed at it for a long time, and then turned to the
bookcase. Was the book from which it had been taken there? I eagerly
hoped so. For, ignorant as I may seem to you, I did not know the
picture or the incident it represented; and I was anxious to know both.
For Mr. Barrows was not the man to disfigure a work of art by covering
it with a coarse print like this unless he had a motive; and how could
even a suspicion of that motive be mine, without a full knowledge of
just what this picture implied?
But though I looked from end to end of the various shelves before me, I
did not succeed in finding the volume from which this engraving had
been taken. Large books were there in plenty, but none of the exact
size of the print I held in my hand. I own I was disappointed, and
turned away from the bookcase at last with a feeling of having been
baffled on the verge of some very interesting discovery.
The theory advanced with so much assurance by Mrs. Simpson had not met
with much credence on my part. I believed her facts, but not the
conclusions she drew from them. Nothing she had related to me convinced
me that Mr. Barrows was in any way insane; nor could I imagine for a
moment that he could be so without the knowledge of Ada, if not of his
associates and friends.
At the same time I was becoming more and more assured in my own mind
that his death was the result of his own act, and, had it not been for
the difficulty of imagining a reason for it, could have retired to rest
that night with a feeling of real security in the justness of a
conclusion that so exonerated the man I loved. As it was, that secret
doubt still remained like a cloud over my hopes, a doubt which I had
promised myself should be entirely removed before I allowed my
partiality for Mr. Pollard to take upon itself the character of
partisanship. I therefore continued my explorations through the room.
Mr. Barrows' desk presented to me the greatest attraction of any thing
there; one that was entirely of the imagination, of course, since
nothing could have induced me to open it, notwithstanding every key
stood in its lock, and one of the drawers was pulled a little way out.
Only the law had a right to violate his papers; and hard as it was to
deny myself a search into what was possibly the truest exponent of his
character, I resolutely did so, consoling myself with the thought that
if any open explanation of his secret had been in these drawers, it
would have been produced at the inquest.
As for his books, I felt no such scruples. But then, what could his
books tell me? Nothing, save that he was a wide student and loved the
delicate and imaginative in literature. Besides, I had glanced at many
of the volumes, in my search after the one which had held the
engraving. Yet I did pause a minute and run my eye along the shelves,
vaguely conscious, perhaps, that often in the most out-of-the-way
corners lurks the secret object for which we are so carefully seeking.
But I saw nothing to detain me, and after one brief glance at a strong
and spirited statuette that adorned the top shelf, I hurried on to a
small table upon which I thought I saw a photographic album.
I was not mistaken; and it was with considerable interest I took it up
and began to run over its pages in search for that picture of Ada which
I felt ought to be there. And which was there; but which I scarcely
looked at twice, so much was my attention attracted by an envelope that
fell out from between the leaves as I turned them eagerly over. That
envelope, with its simple direction, "Miss Ada Reynolds, Monroe Street,
S----," made an era in my history. For I no sooner perceived it than I
felt confident of having seen it or its like before; and presently,
with almost the force of an electric shock, I recollected the letter
which I had brought Ada the afternoon of the day she died, and which,
as my startled conscience now told me, had not only never been given
her, but had not been so much as seen by me since, though all her
belongings had passed into my hands, and the table where I had flung it
had been emptied of its contents more than once. That letter and this
empty envelope were, in style, handwriting, and direction,
_facsimiles_. It had, therefore, come from Mr. Barrows; a most
significant fact, and one which I had no sooner realized than I was
seized by the most intense excitement, and might have done some wild
and foolish thing, had not the lateness of the hour restrained me, and
kept my passionate hopes and fears within their proper bounds. As it
was, I found myself obliged to take several turns up and down the room,
and even to open the window for a breath of fresh air, before I could
face the subject with any calmness, or ask myself what had become of
this letter, with any hope of receiving a rational reply.
That in the startling and tragic events of that day it had been
overlooked and forgotten, I did not wonder. But that it should have
escaped my notice afterwards, or if mine, that of the landlady who took
charge of the room in my absence, was what I could not understand. As
far as I could remember, I left the letter lying in plain view on the
table. Why, then, had not some one seen and produced it? Could it be
that some one more interested than I knew had stolen it? Or was the
landlady of my former home alone to blame for its being lost or mislaid?
Had it been daylight I should have at once gone down to my former
boarding-place to inquire; but as it was ten o'clock at night, I could
only satisfy my impatience by going carefully over the incidents of
that memorable day, in the hope of rousing some memory which would lead
to an elucidation of this new mystery. First, then, I distinctly
recollected receiving the letter from the postman. I had met him at the
foot of the steps as I came home from my unsuccessful search for
employment, and he had handed me the letter, simply saying: "For Miss
Reynolds." I scarcely looked at it, certainly gave it no thought, for
we had been together but a week, and I had as yet taken no interest in
her concerns. So mechanical, indeed, had been my whole action in the
matter, that I doubt if the sight of Mr. Barrows' writing alone, even
though it had been used in transcribing her name, would have served to
recall the incident to my mind. But the shade of the envelope--it was
of a peculiar greenish tint--gave that unconscious spur to the memory
which was needed to bring back the very look of the writing which had
been on the letter I had so carelessly handled; and I found, as others
have found before me, that there is no real forgetfulness in this
world; that the most superficial glance may serve to imprint images
upon the mind, which only await time and occasion to reappear before us
with startling distinctness.
My entrance into my own room, my finding it empty, and the consequent
flinging of the letter down on the table, all came back to me with the
utmost clearness; even the fact that the letter fell face downwards and
that I did not stop to turn it over. But beyond that all was blank to
me up to the moment when I found myself confronting Ada standing with
her hand on her heart in that sudden spasm of pain which had been the
too sure precursor of her rapidly approaching doom.
But wait! Where was I standing when I first became conscious of her
presence in the room? Why, in the window, of course. I remembered now
just how hot the afternoon sun looked to me as I stared at the white
walls of the cottage over the way. And she--where was she?--between me
and the table? Yes! She had, therefore, passed by the letter, and might
have picked it up, might even have opened it, and read it before the
spell of my revery was broken, and I turned to find her standing there
before my eyes. Her pallor, the evident distress under which she was
laboring, even the sudden pain which had attacked her heart, might thus
be accounted for, and what I had always supposed to be a purely
physical attack prove to be the result of a mental and moral shock.
But, no. Had she opened and read the letter it would have been found
there; or if not there, at least upon her person after death. Besides,
her whole conduct between the moment I faced her and that of the alarm
in the street below precluded the idea that any thing of importance to
her and her love had occurred to break her faith in the future and the
man to whose care she was pledged. Could I not remember the happy smile
which accompanied her offer of assistance and home to me? And was there
any thing but hope and trust in the tone with which she had designated
her lover as being the best and noblest man in town? No; if she had
read his communication and afterwards disposed of it in some way I did
not observe, then it was not of the nature I suspected; but an ordinary
letter, similar in character to others she had received, foretelling
nothing, and only valuable in the elucidation of the mystery before me
from the fact of its offering proof presumptive that he did not
anticipate death, or at all events did not meditate it.
An important enough fact to establish, certainly; but it was not the
fact in which I had come to believe, and so I found it difficult to
give it a place in my mind, or even to entertain the possibility of
Ada's having seen the letter at all. I preferred rather to indulge in
all sorts of wild conjectures, having the landlady, the servant, even
Dr. Farnham, at their base; and it was not till I was visited by some
mad thought of Rhoda Colwell's possible connivance in the disappearance
of this important bit of evidence, that I realized the enormity of my
selfish folly, and endeavored to put an end to its further indulgence
by preparing stoically for bed.
But sleep, which would have been so welcome, did not come; and after a
long and weary night, I arose in any thing but a refreshed state, to
meet the exigencies of what might possibly prove to be a most important
day.
The first thing to be done was undoubtedly to visit my old home and
interview its landlady. If nothing came of that, to hunt up the nurse,
Mrs. Gannon, whom, as you will remember, I had left in charge of my
poor Ada's remains when sudden duty in the shape of Dr. Farnham carried
me away to the bedside of Mrs. Pollard; and if this also came to
naught, to burst the bonds of secrecy which I had maintained, and by
taking this same Dr. Farnham into my confidence obtain at least an
adviser who would relieve me, if only partially, from the weight of
responsibility, which I now felt to be pressing rather too heavily upon
my strength.