THE MAN WITH THE DOG.
-------
II.
HADLEY’S CAVE.
ON the first day of June, 1892, there could be seen on the highway near
the small village of Hamilton, a dusty wanderer with a long beard and
rough, unkempt hair. From the silver streaks in the latter, and from his
general appearance and feeble walk, he had already passed the virile
point of life and had entered upon, or was about to enter upon, the
stage of decrepitude. And yet the eyes which burned beneath the gray and
shaggy brows were strangely bright, and had an alertness of expression
which contradicted the weary bend of the head and the slow dragging of
the rough-shod feet.
His dress was that of a farm laborer, and from the smallness of the
bundle which he carried on a stick over his shoulder, he had evidently
been out of work for some time and was as poor as he was old and
helpless.
At the junction of the two roads leading to Leadington and Wells, he
stopped and drew a long breath. Then he sat down on a huge stone in the
cross of the roads and, drooping his head, gazed long and earnestly at
the length of dusty road which separated him from the cluster of
steeples and house roofs before him. Was he dreaming or planning, or was
he merely weary? A sound at his side startled him. Turning his head, he
saw a dog. It was a very lean one, and its attitude as it stood gazing
into his face with wistful eyes, was one of entreaty.
“Come!” it seemed to say, and ran off a few steps. The tramp, for we can
call him nothing else, though there was a dash of something like
refinement in his look and manner, stared for a moment after the animal,
then he slowly rose. But he did not follow the dog. The disappointment
of the latter was evident. Coming back to the man, he sniffed and pulled
at his clothes, and cast such beseeching looks upward out of his all but
human eyes that the man though naturally surly was touched at last and
turned in the direction indicated by the dog.
“After all, why not?” he murmured, and strolled on after his now
delighted guide, up one of the roads to a meadow terminating in an
abrupt and rocky steep.
“Why am I such a fool?” he asked himself when half way across this
stubbly field. But at the short bark of the dog and the irresistible
wagging of the animal’s tail, he stumbled on, influenced no doubt by
some superstitious feeling which bade him regard the summons of this
unusually sagacious beast as an omen he dared not disregard. At the foot
of the rocks he, however, paused. Why should he climb them at the
bidding of a dog? But his guide was imperative, and pulled at his
trousers so energetically that he finally mounted a short distance, when
to his surprise he came upon a cave into the entrance of which the dog
plunged with a short sharp cry of pleasure and satisfaction.
Hesitating to follow, the man stood for a moment gazing back upon the
town and the stretch of lovely landscape before him. It was an outlook
of great charm, but I doubt if he noticed its beauties. Some thought of
an unpleasant and perplexing nature furrowed his brow, and it was with a
start that he turned, when the dog, reissuing from the cave, renewed his
blandishments, and by dint of bark and whine attempted to draw him into
the opening before which he stood.
What was in hiding there? Curiosity bade him look, but a certain not
unreasonable apprehension deterred him. He finally, however, overcame
his fear, if fear it was, and followed the dog, that no sooner saw him
start toward the entrance than he gave a leap of delight and bounded
into the cave before him. In another moment the man had entered also and
was looking around for the helpless or wounded human being whom he
evidently expected to find.
But no such sight met his eyes. On the contrary, he saw nothing but an
empty cave with here and there a sign of the place having been used as a
domicile at a recent date. In one corner was a litter of boughs from
which the covering had manifestly been roughly torn, and in the ledges
overhead were to be seen spikes of wood, upon which utensils had
doubtless been hung, for amid the _débris_ of broken rock beneath lay an
old tin pan with the handle broken off.
As there was nothing in this to interest the man he turned and kicked at
the inoffensive beast who had lured him out of his path on such a
fruitless errand. But the latter instead of resenting this harshness
only renewed his previous antics, and finally succeeding by them in
re-attracting the man’s attention, led the way to a remote corner of the
cave, where the shadows were thickest. Here he stood with his paws
raised against the rocky sides, looking up over his head and then back
at the man in a way which left no doubt as to his meaning.
He wanted the man to climb, and when the man approaching saw the few
rocky steps that had been hewn out of the wall, his curiosity was
renewed and he lent himself to the effort, old as he was and tired with
many a long hour of tramping in the summer sun.
Above him he perceived a dark hole, and into this he presently thrust
his head, but the darkness which he encountered was so impenetrable that
he would have instantly retreated had he not remembered the box of
matches which kept guard with an old pipe in a certain pocket of his red
flannel shirt. Taking out this box, he struck a match and, as soon as
the first dazzling flash was over, perceived that he was in a small but
well furnished room, stocked with provisions and containing many
articles of domestic use. This so surprised him that he withdrew in some
haste, though he would dearly have liked to have made some investigation
into the old chest of drawers he saw there, and had one peep at least
into the odd, long box which took up so much of the darkened space into
which he had intruded.
The dog was waiting for him below and at his reappearance leaped and
bounded with delight, and then lay down on the floor of the cave with
such an inviting wriggle of the tail that the man understood him at
last. It was a lodging that the dog offered him, a lodging which had
been occupied by a former master, and which the faithful creature still
watched over and hungered in, as his appearance amply showed. The man,
to whom a human being might have appealed in vain, was grimly touched by
this benevolent action on the part of a dog, and stooping quickly, he
gave him a short caress, after which he rose and stood hesitating for a
moment, casting short glances behind him.
But the temptation, if it was such, to remain, did not hold him long,
for presently he motioned to the dog to follow him, and issuing from the
cave, began his weary tramp toward the town. The dog, with fallen tail
and drooping head, trotted slowly after him. And this was the first
adventure which met this man in the little town of Hamilton.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III.
THE YOUNG HEIRESS.
THAT night five men sat on the porch of the one tavern in Hamilton. Of
these, one was the landlord, a spare, caustic New Englander who
understood his business and left it to his wife to do the agreeable. Of
the remaining four, two were the inevitable loungers to be found around
all such places at nightfall, and the other two, wayfarers who had taken
up lodgings for the night. The dog lying contentedly at the feet of one
of these latter tells us who he was.
The talk was on local subjects and included more or less gossip. Who had
started it? No one knew; but the least interested person in the group
was apparently the man with the dog. He sat and smoked, because it was
the hour for sitting and smoking, but he neither talked nor
listened,—that is, to all appearance—and when he laughed, as he
occasionally did, it was more at some unexpected antic on the part of
the dog than at anything which was said in his hearing. But he was old
and nobody wondered.
The last subject under discussion was the engagement of a certain young
lady to a New York medical student. “Which means, I take it, that Dr.
Izard will not continue to have full swing here,” observed one of the
stragglers. “Folks say as how her people won’t hear of her leaving home.
So he’ll have to come to Hamilton.”
“I sha’n’t lend him my old body to experiment on, if he does,” spoke up
the surly landlord. “Dr. Izard is good enough for me.”
“And for me. But the women folks want a change, they say. The doctor is
so everlasting queer; and then he’s away so much.”
“That’s because he is so skilful that even the big bugs in Boston and
New York too, I hear, want his opinion on their cases. He’s not to blame
for that. Great honor, I say, not only to him but to all the town.”
“Great honor, no doubt, but mighty inconvenient. Why, when my wife’s
sister was took the other night I run all the way from my house to the
doctor’s only to find the door closed and that everlasting placard up at
the side: ‘Gone out of town.’ I say it’s a shame, I do, and no other
doctor to be found within five miles.”
“You ought to live in Boston. There they have doctors enough.”
“Yet they send for ours.”
“Do you know,” another voice spoke up, “that I had rather go sick till
morning, or have one of my folk’s sick, than take that road up by the
churchyard after ten o’clock at night. I think it’s the gloomiest, most
God-forsaken spot I ever struck in all my life. To think of a doctor
living next door to a graveyard. It’s a trifle too suggestive, I say.”
“I wouldn’t care about that if he wasn’t so like a graveyard himself. I
declare his look is like a hollow vault. If he wasn’t so smart I’d ’a’
sent for the Wells doctor long ago. I hate long white faces, myself, no
matter how handsome they are, and when he touches me with that slender
cold hand of his, the shivers go all over me so that he thinks I am
struck with a chill. And so I am, but not with a natural one, I vow. If
we lived in the olden times and such a man dared come around the
death-beds of honest people such as live in this town, he’d have been
burnt as a wizard.”
“Come, I won’t hear such talk about a neighbor, let alone a man who has
more than once saved the lives of all of us. He’s queer; but who isn’t
queer? He lives alone, and cooks and sleeps and doctors all in one room,
like the miser he undoubtedly is, and won’t have anything to do with
chick or child or man or woman who is not sick, unless you except the
village’s _protégée_, Polly Earle, whom everybody notices and does for.
But all this does not make him wicked or dangerous or uncanny even. That
is, to those who used to know him when he was young.”
“And did you?”
“Wa’al, I guess I did, and a handsomer man never walked Boston streets,
let alone the lanes of this poor village. They used to say in those days
that he thought of marrying, but he changed his mind for some reason,
and afterward grew into the kind of man you see. Good cause, I’ve no
doubt, for it. Men like him don’t shut themselves up in a cage for
nothing.”
“But——”
“Don’t let us talk any more about the doctor,” cried the lodger who did
not have a dog. “You spoke of a little girl whom everybody does for. Why
is that? The topic ought to be interesting.”
The landlord, who had talked more than his wont, frowned and filled his
pipe, which had gone out. “Ask them fellers,” he growled; “or get my
wife into a corner and ask her. She likes to spin long stories; I
don’t.”
“Oh, I don’t care about asking anybody,” mumbled the stranger, who was a
sallow-faced drummer with a weak eye and a sensual mouth. “I only
thought——”
“She isn’t for any such as you, if that’s what you mean,” volunteered
the straggler, taking up the burden of the talk. “She has been looked
after by the village because her case was a hard one. She was an only
child, and when she was but four her mother died, after a long and
curious illness which no one understood, and three days after, her
father—” The dog yelped. As no one was near him but his master, he must
have been hurt by that master, but how, it was impossible to understand,
for neither had appeared to move.
“Well, well,” cried the sallow young man, “her father——”
“Disappeared. He was last seen at his wife’s funeral; the next day he
was not to be found anywhere. That was fourteen years ago, and we know
no more now than then what became of him.”
“And the child?”
“Was left without a soul to look after it. But the whole village has
taken her in charge and she has never suffered. She has even been
educated,—some say by Dr. Izard, but for this I won’t vouch, for he is a
perfect miser in his way of living, and I don’t think he would trouble
himself to help anybody, even a poor motherless child.”
“Well, if he has spent a penny for her in the past, I don’t think he
will be called upon to spend any in the future. I heard yesterday that
she has come into a pretty property, and that, too, in a very suspicious
way.”
“What’s that? You have? Why didn’t you tell us so before? When a man has
news, I say he ought to impart it, and that without any ifs and ands.”
“Well, I thought it would keep,” drawled the speaker, drawing back with
an air of importance as all the _habitués_ of the place pressed upon
him, and even Mrs. Husted, the landlady, stepped out of her sitting-room
to listen.
“Wa’al, it won’t,” snarled the landlord. “News, like baked potatoes,
must be eaten hot. Where did you hear this about Polly Earle, and what
do you mean by suspicious?”
“I mean that this money, and they do say it’s a pretty sum, came to her
by will, and that the man who left it was a perfect stranger to her,
someone she never heard of before, of that I’ll be bound. He said in his
will that he left all this money in payment of an old debt to her
father, but that’s all bosh. Ephraim Earle got all the money that was
owing to him two weeks before he vanished out of this town, and I say——”
“No matter what you say,” broke in the crabbed landlord. “She’s had
money left her, and now she’ll get a good husband, and make a show in
the village. I’m glad on it, for one. She’s sung and danced and made
merry on nothing long enough. Let her try a little responsibility now,
and return some of the favors she has received.”
“Did you hear how much money it was?” timidly asked an old man who had
just joined the group.
“It was just the same amount as was paid Ephraim Earle for his invention
a few days before we saw the last of him.”
“Lord-a-mercy!”
“And which——”
“Now this is too interesting for anything,” exclaimed a female voice
from a window overhead. “Twenty thousand dollars, really? What a
romance. I must run and see Polly this minute.”
“Stop her!” came in guttural command from the landlord to his wife.
“And why should I stop her?” asked that good woman, with a jolly roll of
her head. “Instead of stopping her, I think I will go with her. But do
let us hear more about it first. What was the name of the man who left
her this splendid fortune?”
“Abram Hazlitt. Somebody who lived out west.”
From the looks that flew from one to the other and from the doubtful
shakes of the head visible on every side, this was, as the speaker had
declared, an utterly unknown name. The interest became intense.
“I always thought there was something wrong about Ephraim’s
disappearance. No man as good as he would have left a child like that of
his own free will.”
“What! do you think this man Hazlitt had anything to do——”
“Hush, hush.”
The monition came from more than one pair of lips; and even the man with
the dog looked up. A young lady was coming down the street.
“There she is now.”
“She’s coming here.”
“No; more likely she’s on her way to tell the doctor of her good luck.”
“Look, she has the same old smile.”
“And the same dress.”
“Wa’al she’s pretty, anyhow.”
“And such a sunbeam!”
Yelp! went the dog again. His master had trod on his tail for the second
time. Meanwhile the cause of all this excitement had reached the walk in
front of the house. Though she was tripping along in a merry fashion
which was all her own, she stopped as she met Mrs. Husted’s eye, and,
calling her down, whispered something in her ear. Then with a backward
nod the young girl passed on, and everyone drew a long breath. There was
something so satisfactory to them all in her ingenuous manner and simple
expression of youthful delight.
She was a slight girl, and to those who had seen her every day for the
last dozen years she was simply prettier than usual, but to the two or
three strangers observing her she was a vision of madcap beauty that for
the moment made every other woman previously seen forgotten. Her face,
which was heart-shaped and fresh as a newly-opened rose, was flushed
with laughter, and the dimples which came and went with every breath so
distracted the eye that it was not till she had turned her lovely
countenance aside that one remembered the violet hues in her
heavily-lashed eyes and the hints of feeling which emanated from them.
That, with all the dignities of her new-born heirship upon her, she
swung a white sunbonnet on her delicate forefinger was characteristic of
the girl. The hair thus revealed to sight was of a glistening chestnut,
whose somewhat rumpled curls were deliciously in keeping with the saucy
poise of the unquiet head. Altogether a decided gleam of sunshine, made
all the more conspicuously bright from the hints just given of the
tragic history of her parents and the shadows surrounding the very gift
which had called up all this pleasure into her face.
“What did she say?” whispered more than one voice as the landlady came
slowly back.
“She invited me to visit her, and hinted that she had something to tell
me,” was the somewhat important reply.
“And when are you going?” asked one more eager than the rest.
“I may go back with her when she returns from Dr. Izard’s,” was the cool
and consequential response. Evidently the landlady had been raised in
her own estimation by the notice given her by this former little waif.
“I wonder,” someone now ventured, “if she is going to buy the big house
over the doctor’s office. I noticed that the windows were open to-day.”
“Pshaw, and her father’s house lying idle?”
“Her father’s house! Good gracious, would you have the child go there?”
“You make the chills run over me.”
“Nobody would go into that house with her. It hasn’t been opened in
fourteen years.”
“The more shame,” growled the landlord.
“She’ll never have anything to do with that. I’ve seen her run by it
myself, as if the very shadow it cast was terrifying to her.”
“Yet folks thought it was a cozy home when Ephraim took his young wife
there. I remember, myself, the brass andirons in the parlor and the long
row of books in the big hall upstairs. To think that those books have
never been opened these fourteen years, nor the floors trod on, nor the
curtains drawn back! I declare, it’s the most creepy thing of the whole
affair.”
“And how do you know that the floor hasn’t been walked on, nor the
curtains drawn, since we took the child out from her desolate corner in
the old bed-room upstairs?” suggested another voice in an odd,
mysterious tone.
“Because the doors were locked and the keys put where no one in the town
could get at ’em. We thought it best; there was death on the walls
everywhere, and the child had no money to be brought up in any such a
grand way as that.”
“Folks as I mean don’t need keys,” murmured the other under his breath.
But the suggestion, if it were such, was immediately laughed down.
“You’re a fool, Jacob; we’re in the nineteenth century now, the era of
electric lights and trolley cars.”
“I know; I know; but I’ve seen more than once on a dark night the
shifting of a light behind those drawn curtains, and once——”
But the laughter was against him and he desisted, and another man spoke
up—the lodger with the sallow face: “Why didn’t they sell the old place
if the child was left as poor as you say?”
“Why, man, its owner might be living. Ephraim Earle only disappeared,
you know, and might have returned any day. Leastwise that is what we
thought then. Now, we no longer expect it. I wonder who’ll act as her
guardian.”
“She’s of age; she don’t need no guardian.”
“Well, it’s a precious mystery, the whole thing. I wonder if the police
won’t see something in it?”
“Bah, police! They had the chance at the thing fourteen years ago. And
what did they do with it? Nothing.”
“But now there’s a clue. This man Hazlitt knew what became of Ephraim
Earle, or why did he leave that very same amount to his daughter?”
“Lor’ knows. She’s a taking minx and perhaps——”
“Well, perhaps——”
“Hazlitt wasn’t his name, don’t you see?”
This new theory started fresh talk and much excited reasoning, but as it
was of the most ignorant sort, it is scarcely worth our while to record
it. Meanwhile the twilight gave way to darkness and Polly Earle failed
to reappear. When it was quite dark, the stragglers separated, and then
it was seen that the man with the dog had fallen asleep in his chair.
Someone strove to wake him.
“Come, come, friend,” said he; “you’ll be getting the rheumatiz if you
don’t look out. This isn’t the right kind of air to sleep in.”
The old wayfarer yawned, opened his strange, uneasy eyes, and hobbling
to his feet looked lazily up and down the street.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Nine o’clock,” shouted someone.
“Give me a drink, then, and I and my dog will take a walk.” And he drew
out a worn wallet, from which he drew a dime, which he handed in through
the open window to the now busy landlord.
“Hot,” he croaked, “I’ve got chilly sitting out here in the dew.”
The glass was handed him, and he drank it off with the ease of an
accustomed hand.
“I’ll be back before you lock up,” said he, and stepped down into the
street, followed by the dog.
“Seems to me I’ve seen that dog before,” remarked someone.
“Why, don’t you know him? That’s old Piper, the dead hermit’s dog. I
wonder how this fellow got hold of him.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV.
DR. IZARD.
THE tramp, who was, as you have seen, not without some small means to
make himself respected, paused for a moment in front of the tavern
before deciding what direction he would take. Then he went east, or, to
make matters clearer to my reader, followed the direction young Polly
Earle had taken an hour or so before.
Being bent and old he walked slowly, but as the tavern from which he had
emerged was near the end of the street, it was not long before he came
upon the big church at the corner, beyond which was the open country and
circling highroad.
“They spoke of a graveyard,” murmured he, pausing and gazing about him
with eyes which seemed to have lost none of their penetration, however
bent his figure or aged his face. “Ah! I think I see it!” And he rambled
on in the darkness till he came to a picket fence. But this fence
enclosed a dwelling-house, whose large and imposing bulk rose in deepest
shadow beyond him, and he had to walk several rods farther before he
came to the spot of glimmering headstones and drooping willows. A faint
moon lent a ghostly light to the place, and as he stopped and bent his
head over the intervening wall, weird glimpses were given him of snowy
shafts and rounded hillocks, which may have accounted for the length of
time he clung there without movement or sound.
But finally the dog whining at his heels, or the gleam of a light
shining in the distance, recalled him to himself, and he moved, taking
the direction of that light, though it led him over the cemetery wall
and across such of the graves as lay along the border of the yard
adjoining the large house of which I have previously spoken. The dog,
who had not left him a moment since he joined him at the cave, shrank as
he climbed the wall, and the old man took his course alone, treading as
softly as he could, but yet making some noise as a broken twig snapped
under his foot or he pressed down some tiny aspiring bush in his rude
advance.
He was making for the light which shone from the window near the ground
in the huge side of the great and otherwise unilluminated house he had
passed a few minutes before. He had expected to be met by a fence like
the one in front, but to his surprise he soon saw that the graveyard
pressed close up to the house, and that there was a monument not ten
yards from the very window he was approaching. He had paused at this
monument, and was vainly trying to read the inscription which was cut
deeply into the side turned toward the moon, when he heard a sudden
sound, and, looking toward the house, saw that a door had opened in the
blank side of the wall, and that the light had shifted from the window
to this open square, where it was held high above the head of a
remarkable looking man who was looking directly his way.
Convinced that this was Dr. Izard, he held his breath, and slunk as much
into the shadow of the shaft as possible. Meanwhile he stared at the
picture presented to his notice, and noted every outline of the noble
head and small but finely proportioned form, that filled the illuminated
gap before him. The face he could not see, but the attitude was
eloquent, and conveyed so vividly an expression of strained listening
and agitated doubt, that this by no means careless observer felt that
his step had been heard, and that something more than common curiosity
had drawn the doctor to the spot.
A sudden sense of his position among the graves, or the chill imparted
by his close contact with the stone shaft against which he had flung
himself, made the aged wanderer shiver, but his emotion, however
occasioned, did not last long, for with a sigh that could be plainly
heard across the short space, Dr. Izard withdrew his head and closed the
door, leaving nothing to be seen in the dim blackness of the houseside
but the one square of light which had previously attracted the
stranger’s attention.
With careful step and bated breath, the latter left the tomb by which he
had sought refuge, and advanced to this same wall, along which he crept
till he reached this uncurtained window. A glimpse of the interior was
what he wanted, but, as he stopped to listen, he found that he was
likely to obtain more than this, for plainly to be heard in the almost
death-like quiet, came the sound of two voices conversing, and he knew,
perhaps by instinct, perhaps by ready reasoning, that they were the
voices of the doctor and the pretty new heiress, Polly Earle.
To listen might have been a temptation to any man, but to this one it
was almost a necessity. His first desire, however, was to see what was
before him, and so, with more skill than one would expect, he bent a
branch of the vine swaying about him, and, from behind its cover, peered
into the shining panes that opened so invitingly beside him.
The first thing he saw was the room with its shelves upon shelves of
books, piled high to the ceiling. As it answered the triple purpose of
doctor’s office, student’s study, and a misanthrope’s cell, it naturally
presented an anomalous appearance, which was anything but attractive at
first sight. Afterward, certain details stood out, and it became
apparent that those curious dangling things which disfigured the upper
portion of the room belonged entirely to the medical side of the
occupant’s calling, while the mixture of articles on the walls, some
beautiful, but many of them grotesque if not repellant, bespoke the man
of taste whose nature has been warped by solitude. A large door painted
green filled up a considerable space of the wall on the left, but
judging from the two heavy bars padlocked across it, it no longer served
as a means of communication with the other parts of the house. On the
contrary it had been fitted from top to bottom with shelves, upon which
were ranged a doctor’s usual collection of phials, boxes, and surgical
appliances, with here and there a Chinese image or an Indian god. A rude
settle showed where he slept at night, and on the table in the middle of
the room, a most incongruous litter of books, trinkets, medicines,
clothing, sewing materials, and chemical apparatus proclaimed the fact,
well known in the village, that no woman ever set foot in the place,
save such as came for medical advice or on some such errand as had drawn
hither the pretty Polly.
At the table and in full view of the peering intruder sat the genius of
the place, Dr. Izard. His back was to the window and he was looking up
at Polly, who stood near, twirling as usual her sunbonnet round her
dainty forefinger. It was his profile, therefore, which the curious
wayfarer saw, but this profile was so fine and yet so characteristic
that it immediately imprinted itself upon the memory like a silhouette
and the observer felt that he had known it always. Yet it was not till
one had been acquainted with the doctor long that all the traits of his
extraordinary countenance became apparent. Its intelligence, its
sadness, its reserve and the beauty which gave to all these qualities a
strange charm which was rather awe-inspiring than pleasurable, struck
the mind at once, but it was not till after months of intercourse that
one saw that the spell he invariably created about him was not due to
these obvious qualities but to something more subtle and enigmatic,
something which flashed out in his face at odd times or fell from his
voice under the strain of some unusual emotion, which while it neither
satisfied the eye nor the ear, created such a halo of individuality
about the man that dread became terror or admiration became worship
according to the mental bias of the person observant of him.
In age he was nearer fifty than forty, and in color dark rather than
light. But no one ever spoke of him as young or old, light or dark. He
was simply Dr. Izard, the pride and the dread of the village, the
central point of its intellectual life, on whose eccentricities judgment
was suspended because through him fame had come to the village and its
humble name been carried far and wide.
Polly, who feared nobody, but who had for this man, as her rather
unwilling benefactor, a wholesome respect, was looking down when the
stranger first saw her. The smile which was never long absent from her
lips lingered yet in the depths of the dimple that was turned toward the
doctor, but the rest of her face showed emotion and a hint of
seriousness which was by no means unbecoming to her poetic features.
“You are very good,” she was saying. “I have often wondered why you were
so good to such a little flyaway as I am. But I shall surely remember
all you have said and follow your advice as nearly as possible.”
There was unexpected coldness in the doctor’s reply:
“I have advised nothing but what any friend of yours must subscribe to.
The woman with whom you are staying is a good woman, but the home she
can give you is no longer suitable for a girl who has come, as you say
you have, into possession of considerable property. You must find
another; and since the house over our heads is a good one, I have
ventured to offer it to you for a sum which your man of business
certainly will not regard as high, considering its advantages of size
and location.”
“By location do you mean its close proximity to the graveyard?” she
inquired, with a _naïve_ inclination of her coquettish head. “I should
say, myself, though I never fear anything, that its location is against
it.”
His eye, which had wandered from hers, came back with a stern
intentness.
“Since I have lived here for twenty years with no other outlook than the
graves you see, I cannot be said to be a good judge of the matter. To me
the spot has become a necessity, and if you should make the arrangement
I suggest, it must be with the understanding that this room is to be
reserved for my use as long as I live, for I could never draw a free
breath elsewhere.”
“Nor would anyone wish you to,” said she. “This solitary room, with its
dangling skulls and queer old images, its secrecy and darkness, and the
graves pressing up almost to your window, seems a part of Dr. Izard. I
could not imagine you in a trim office with a gig at the door and a man
to drive it. No, it would rob us of half our faith in you, to see you
enjoying life like other folks. You must stay here if only because my
mother, lying over there in her solitary grave, would be lonely were
your face to fail to appear every night and morning in your open
doorway.”
Her hand, which had paused in its restless action, pointed over her
shoulder to the silent yard without. The physician’s eye followed it,
and the words of reproof died upon his tongue.
“You think me frivolous,” she cried. “Well, so I am, at times. But _you_
make me think; and if this sudden accession to fortune fills me with
excitement and delight, the sight of you sitting here, and the nearness
of my mother’s tomb, gives me some sober thoughts too, and—and—Dr.
Izard, will you tell me one thing? Why do people stare when they hear
the exact amount of the money left me? It is not because it is so large;
for some say it is anything but a large fortune. Is it—” she hesitated a
little, probably because it was always hard to talk to Dr. Izard—“for
the reason that it is so near the sum my father was said to have carried
away with him, when he left me so suddenly?”
The wind was fluttering the vines, and the doctor turned his head to
look that way. When he glanced back he answered quietly, but with no
irritation in his voice:
“It is hard to tell what causes the stare of ignorant people. What was
the amount which has been left you? I do not think you have mentioned
the exact figure.”
“Twenty thousand dollars,” she whispered. “Isn’t it splendid,—a lordly
fortune, for such a poor girl as I am?”
“Yes,” he acquiesced, “yes.” But he seemed struck just as others had
been who heard it.
“And was not that just what was paid papa by the French government just
before mamma died?”
“I have heard it so said,” was the short reply.
“And don’t you know?” she asked.
The pout on her lips bespoke the spoiled child, but her little hands
were trembling, and he seemed to see only that.
“Polly,”—he spoke harshly, for he did not like young girls, or women at
all for that matter,—“I knew many things which I have let slip from my
memory. When your father and I were young we were more or less intimate,
being both of us students and ambitious of doing something worth while
in this world. But after his disappearance and the unfortunate surmises
to which it gave rise, I made a business of forgetting any confidential
communications with which he may have entrusted me, and I advise you not
to stir up old griefs by driving me to recall them now.”
“But you were my mother’s physician and saw my father just before he
went away.”
“Yes.”
“And did he have twenty thousand dollars in money? They say so, but it
seems incredible to me, who only remember my father as looking worried
and poor.”
“Twenty thousand dollars was paid him two weeks before your mother
died.”
“And he carried all that away with him and never left a dollar to his
little motherless child? Oh, I know that some people say he was foully
dealt with and that it was not of his own free will that he left me to
the mercies of the town. But I never believed that. I have always
thought of him as alive, and many is the night I have waked up
crying—Oh, I can cry at night and in the darkness, if I do laugh all day
when the sun shines—because I dreamt he was enjoying himself in foreign
lands while I—” she stopped, looking inquiringly at Dr. Izard, and he,
startled, looked inquiringly at her, then for the second time he rose
up, and taking the light, went out to search up and down the ghostly
waste before him, for what he rather felt than knew was near.
“Oh, how late it is getting!” cried the little maiden, peering over his
shoulder. “Did you think you heard someone sigh? I thought I did, but
who would come creeping up to this spot? Do you know,” she exclaimed,
drawing him in just as he was about to turn his attention to the side of
the house against which they stood, “that I believe it’s that horrid
green door which gives people the shivers when they come here. Why is it
there and what is on the other side of it that you bar it up like that?”
The doctor, lifting his abstracted gaze, stared at the door for a
moment, then turned moodily away. “It was the old way of going
upstairs,” he remarked. “Why shouldn’t I bar it, since I have no further
use for the rest of the house?”
“But its color,” she persisted; “why do you not paint it white?”
“When I fit up my den for a bride, then I will,” he retorted, and the
audacious little thing became dumb on this subject, though she showed no
inclination for dropping the other.
“Dear Dr. Izard,” she pursued, “I know I ought to be going home, but I
have something more to ask, and it isn’t always that you allow me to
speak to you. Our house—you know what I mean, my father’s and mother’s
house,—is it really haunted, and is that why it is shut up, even from
me?”
“Do you want to go into it, Polly?”
“No—and yet I have sometimes thought I should like to. It must be full
of relics of my parents, and if it has not been disturbed since my
father went away, why, I might almost see the prints of his feet on the
floors, and the pressure of his form in the old lounges and chairs.”
“You are too imaginative!” cried the doctor. “They will have to marry
you to some practical man.”
She flushed, drew back and seemed on the point of uttering some violent
protest or indignant reproach, but instead of that she returned to the
original topic.
“I should like to hear from your lips, which never exaggerate or add the
least bit of romance to anything you say, just the story of my father’s
departure and that sudden shutting up of the house. I think I ought to
know now that I am a grown woman and have money of my own.”
“Will you go, after I have told you all that there is to know?” he
asked, with just a touch of impatience in his naturally severe tone.
“Yes,” she laughed, irresistibly moved by his appearance of ill-nature.
“I won’t stay one minute longer than you wish me to. Only,” she added,
with the sobriety more in accordance with the theme they were
discussing, “do make the whole thing clear to me. I have heard so many
stories and all of them so queer.”
He frowned, and his face underwent an indescribable change.
“You are a silly slip of a girl and I have a mind to turn you out of the
house at once. But,” and his eyes wandered away to his books, “your
curiosity is legitimate and shall be satisfied. Only not here,” he
suddenly cried, “I will tell you as we walk toward your home.”
“Or in the graveyard outside,” she murmured. “I am not afraid of the
place with you near me. Indeed, I think I should like to hear my
mother’s story, standing by her tomb.”
“_You would!_” The doctor, astonished, agitated almost, by this untoward
sentiment uttered by lips he had only seen parted in laughter, rose, and
leaning on the table looked over it at her, with eyes whose effect only
was visible to the straining pair without. “Well, you shall have your
wish. I will tell you her story, that is, as much as I know of it,
standing by her grave without.” And with a grim smile, he took up his
hat and stepped quickly before her toward the door. She followed him,
with an eager gesture, and in a minute their two shadows could be dimly
seen in the moonlight falling over the face of that very shaft behind
which the stranger had taken refuge an hour or so before. The vines that
swayed about the window ceased their restless rustling and seemed to
cling with heavier shadow than usual to the dismal wall.
“Your father,” said the doctor, “was a man of one idea, but that idea
was a valuable one and it paid its projector well. The invention which
he conceived, perfected, and made practical, was an important one,
suited to large governmental undertakings and meeting the wants of
France especially. It was bought, as I have said, from your father for
the sum of twenty thousand dollars. But this good fortune, while
deserved, had not come early, and your mother, who had been overburdened
in her youth, was on her deathbed when the favorable news came. It
comforted her, but it almost maddened your father, if I may judge from
the frenzied expressions he used in my hearing. He did not touch the
money, and when she died he locked himself up in a room, from which he
only emerged to attend her funeral. This I tell you that you may see
that his paternal instinct was not as great as his conjugal one, or he
would not have forgotten you in his grief. Did you speak?”
“No, no; but it is gloomy here, after all; let us go on into the
highway.”
But the man clinging to the wall was not forced to move. The doctor did
not heed her entreaty, or if he did he ignored it, for his voice went
coldly and impassively on: “The night after your mother was buried, your
father was seen looking from one of the windows of his house. The next
morning he was missing. That is all I can tell you, Polly. No one knows
any more than that.”
“But wasn’t there somebody in the house besides himself? Where was I?”
“Oh, you were there, and an old woman who had been looking after you in
your mother’s illness. But you were too young to realize anything, and
the woman—she has since died—had nothing to say, but that she was sure
she heard your father go out.”
“And the money?”
“Went with him.”
“Oh, I have heard it all before,” came after a moment’s silence, in
sharp and plaintive tones. “But I was in hopes you could tell me
something different, something new. Did they look for my father as I
would have done had I been old enough to understand?”
“I headed the search myself, Polly; and later the police from Boston
came down, and went through the town thoroughly. But they met with no
results.”
“And now a stranger leaves me twenty thousand dollars! Dr. Izard, I
should like to know something about that stranger. He died in the
Chicago Hospital, I am told.”
“I will make inquiries.”
“If—if he had anything to do with my father’s disappearance——”
“You will never know it; the man is dead.”
A silence followed these few words, during which the agitated breathing
of the young girl could be heard. Then her quivering voice rose in the
impatient cry: “Yes, yes; but it would be such a relief to know the
truth. As it is, I am always thinking that each stranger I see coming
into town is he. Not that it makes me timid or melancholy; nothing could
do that, I think; but still I’m not quite happy, nor can this money make
me so while any doubts remain as to my father’s fate.”
“I cannot help you,” the doctor declared. “For fourteen years you have
borne your burden, little one, and time should have taught you patience.
If I were in a position like yours I would not allow old griefs to fret
me. I should consider that a man who had been missing most of my
lifetime was either dead or so indifferent that I ran but little chance
of seeing him again. I myself do not think there is the least likelihood
of your ever doing so. Why then not be happy?”
“Well, I will,” she sighed. “I’m sure it’s not my nature to be
otherwise. But something either in these dismal trees, or in yourself or
in myself makes me almost gloomy to-night. I feel as if a cloud, hung
over me. Am I very foolish, doctor, and will you be taking me back to
the office to give me a dose of some bitter, black stuff to drive away
the horrors? I had rather you would give me a fatherly word. I’m so
alone in the world, for all my friends.”
He may have answered this appeal by some touch or sympathetic move, but
if he did, the listener was not near enough to catch it. There was a
rustling where they stood and in another instant the bare head of the
young girl was visible again in the moonlight.
“I think I will be going home,” said she, and turned towards the
gateway. The doctor followed her and together they left the cemetery and
entered the high-road. When the sound of their voices had died away in
the distance, a deep and heavy shadow separated itself from the side of
the house near the window and resolving itself again into the image of
the man through whose ears we have listened to the broken dialogue we
have endeavored to transcribe, took up its stand before the still
lighted window and for several minutes studied the peculiar interior
most diligently. Then it drew off, and sliding down the path which
followed the side of the house, emerged upon the road and took its own
course to the village.
Something which he did not see and something which he did not hear, took
place at the other end of the town before a cheerfully lighted mansion.
Dr. Izard and Polly had traversed the length of the street, and had
nearly reached the cottage in which she was at present living, when the
former felt the little hand now thrust confidingly into his arm, flutter
and shift a trifle. As the girl had regained her spirits and was now
chatting in quite a merry way upon indifferent topics, he looked up to
see what it was that had affected her, and saw nothing save the lights
of the Unwin place and a figure which must have been that of young Unwin
sitting on the shadowy veranda. As he had reasons of his own for not
liking to pass this house, he stopped and glanced at the young girl
inquiringly. She had ceased speaking and her head was hanging so low
that the curls dropped against her cheek, hiding her eyes and the
expression of her mouth.
“I think,” she whispered, “if you don’t mind, that I will walk on the
other side of you. It is very late for me to be out, even with you, and
Clarke——”
The doctor, drawing in his breath, turned his full face on her and stood
so long gazing into her drooping countenance that she felt frightened
and attempted to move on. Instantly he responded to her wish and they
passed the house with quick and agitated steps, but when the shadows of
the next block had absorbed them, they both paused as it were
simultaneously, and the doctor said with something more than his usual
feeling in his thin, fine voice, “Do you care for Clarke Unwin, little
one?”
Her answer struck him.
“Do I care for breath, for life? He has been both to me ever since I
could remember anything. And now he cares for me.”
The doctor, lost in some overwhelming dream or thought, did not answer
her for several minutes. Then he suddenly lifted her face by its dainty
chin, and in a deep, controlled tone, totally different from the one he
had used a short time before, he solemnly remarked:
“For fourteen years I have taken an interest in you and done for you
what I have done for nobody else in the town. I hope that my care has
made a good girl of you, and that under all your fanciful ways and merry
antics there hides a true woman’s heart.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I know that I would rather give up my
fortune than one little memory connected with these last three weeks.”
“And he—he loves you? You are sure of it, little one?”
The lift of her head was eloquent; the doctor wished he could see her
face, but the darkness was too thick for that.
“May Heaven bless you!” faltered on his tongue; but the words were too
unusual to the ascetic’s cold lips for them to pass into speech, and the
girl thought his manner more distant and unsympathetic than common.
“It is a secret I have told you,” she murmured, and being then within a
few steps of her own gate, she slid from his grasp and vanished in the
darkness.
He, with a sigh that seemed to rend the icy bonds which years of
repression had bound about his breast, remained for a moment with his
head bent, gazing on the ground at his feet. Then he drew himself up,
and passed quickly back over the road he had come.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V.
NOCTURNAL WANDERINGS.
THE wanderer, of whose name even the landlord at the tavern seemed
uncertain, passed some curious days after this. Upon the plea of wanting
work, he visited house after house in the village, staying in each one
as long as he was made welcome. Though no talker, he seemed to like to
have talk going on around him, and if he sometimes went to sleep over
it, he was forgiven by the simple and credulous inhabitants on account
of his old age and seeming decrepitude. In one house he was given
breakfast, in another dinner, but in none did he find work, though he
assured everybody that he was very good in the field, notwithstanding
the unfortunate curvature of his back.
It was not an uncommon thing in Hamilton for men to pass from house to
house in this way, and he was little noted, but if anyone had been
curious enough to watch his eye they would have observed that it had a
remarkably penetrating power, and that but little escaped its notice.
Another thing that would also have been noticed was the curious look of
recognition which would suddenly creep into his eyes, as if he saw some
of these things for the second time; and if anyone had walked near
enough to him to listen as well as watch, he would have heard a name
drop from his lips now and then as he walked up the phlox-bordered walk
of some humble garden, or stopped at the back door of one of the more
pretentious mansions on the main street.
Another thing: When he had done this, when he had uttered in his odd,
musing way, at the threshold of a house, the name of Fisher, Hutton,
Brown, Unwin, or what not, he invariably managed in some way, either
slyly or by bold question, to ascertain if this name really belonged to
the family then residing there. If it did, he nodded his head
complacently. If it did not, he frowned as if disappointed in his memory
or whatever it was that had played him false.
At one place he showed conclusively that he had been in the house
before, though no one seemed keen enough to detect the fact. He was
passing down a hall, when he turned to the right and came plumb up
against a wall. This was where there had formerly been a door of egress,
but a change which had been made some ten years back in the inner
arrangement of the house had placed it farther on, and his face showed
surprise when he noted it, though the expression was speedily
suppressed. Again at the Fishers’ he was very careful to sit in the deep
shadow, and though he eagerly drank in all that was said, he himself
made no remark after his first appeal for work. The Fishers were old
neighbors of the Earles, and it was with them that Polly was living.
In the afternoon he found himself at the eastern end of the town near
the church. As he noticed the venerable building he seemed to call to
mind his experiences of the night before, for he glanced eagerly toward
the cemetery, and finally turned his steps in that direction, saying
quietly to himself, “Let’s see how it looks by daylight.”
The street, which takes a sharp turn at this point, was headed by the
stately house whose dim columns and embowering trees had so struck the
wanderer’s attention the night before. Seen by daylight it was less
mysterious in appearance but fully as imposing, though there were signs
of neglect on its painted front and solitary balconies, which spoke of
long disuse as a dwelling. It had the name of Izard engraved on the
tarnished door-plate.
“Let me see,” mused the tramp, leaning upon one of the old-fashioned
gate-posts guarding the entrance, “I should remember how the house looks
inside; I was here to a ball once when we were all young folks together.
It was a fine old dwelling then, and Mrs. Izard, who always said she
could remember Martha Washington, looked like a queen in it.” Lifting
his head, he glanced up at the pillared front. “There was a large double
drawing-room on this side,” he murmured, “with a big-figured carpet on
the floor and panelled paper on the walls. I think I could remember the
very tints if I tried, for I sat that night for full ten minutes staring
at it, while Lillie Unwin chattered nonsense in my ear, and—” the rest
was lost in his long, dishevelled beard, which was much too gray to be
worn by any contemporary of Dr. Izard.
“On the left,” he presently proceeded, “was the library, with one or two
windows looking out upon the cemetery, which was then a respectable
distance off; and down the hall, which was wide enough to dance a
Virginia reel in, there hung a map of the Holy Land, with one corner
torn off. I wonder if it is hanging there still, and if I can remember
which corner was lacking.” He mused a minute with a sour smile.
“Something must be pardoned in one who has been gone fourteen years,” he
murmured. “I cannot remember whether it was the left or the right-hand
corner.” Shutting his eyes, he leaned his head again on the post, while
short, broken sentences issued by fits and starts from amid his beard as
he brooded over the past.
“Under the big front staircase,—I remember it well,—there was a smaller
circular one, which went down to a certain green door: the same one I
noticed in the doctor’s office, though there was no office then,—only a
rectangular porch. He must have had the office built in since I left the
town, for he used to see his patients in the library. Now, how did that
porch look? It was broad and low, and raised but a step or two above the
ground. There were two pillars in the opening toward the graveyard,
similar to the big columns in front, but smaller and set further apart.
At one end was a wooden seat built in the wood-work, and at the other a
green door, the same as that seen in the doctor’s room now. Will these
details answer for one recollection? I think they will. And now for a
glimpse of that shaft.”
Lifting his head from the gate-post, he picked his way through the
tangled weeds to the little gate on the highway which led directly to
the doctor’s office. Entering, he approached the tombstone against which
he had leaned the night before, and heedless of passers-by, took up his
stand before it and began reading the inscription.
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
HULDAH EARLE.
Born December Third, 1854.
Died August Ninth, 1878.
“I wonder who put up this monument,” he muttered, and shuddered slightly
as he recalled the chilliness of the stone against which he had pressed
his breast the night before. But the emotion was but transitory, and he
was soon surveying the small square window through whose panes the one
light had shone on the previous night. It was near the office door, and
was surrounded, as he had so gratefully experienced at that time, by a
thick-leaved trumpet-vine, whose long and swaying branches recalled to
him the anxious moment when the doctor had stepped to the door, drawn by
some sound he had made in his curiosity and interest. Just now a curtain
hung before the window, sure sign that the doctor was within; but he did
not heed this, possibly because he did not understand the signal, and
remained where he was, musing on the past, till the steps of some
advancing visitor advised him that he might better indulge his
thoughtful mood in a less conspicuous place, and in a solitude not so
likely to be invaded by curious eyes.
The dog which had joined him at his first appearance in town continued
to be his constant companion. All day this faithful animal followed him,
and when night came, they went together into the small attic chamber
which was the only room in the house he could afford to pay for. But one
journey which the man took was not shared by the dog. It took place at
midnight and in the following mysterious way:
He had noticed by a minute inspection of the roof stretching below his
one small window that by a few daring steps down the first incline one
might reach a ledge from which descent to the ground would be easy. It
was a path which might be taken with safety by a young man or a still
vigorous middle-aged man. But would it be a feasible one for him? He
seemed to decide in the affirmative, for in the small wee hours of the
night he rose from his bed, and quieting his ready dog, dressed himself,
and took another long survey from the window. Then he proceeded to open
the bundle he had brought into town, taking from it a small object,
which he hid in the breast of his coat. Then he thrust a box of matches
into the pocket of his shirt, and ignoring his hat, which hung on a nail
in one corner, he began his daring descent. Throwing one leg out of the
window and clinging to the narrow jamb, he whirled himself about, and
developing some of the instincts of the cat, soon reached the ledge in
safety. Instantly his form, which had hitherto been so bent as to
present almost the appearance of deformity, straightened itself until
his whole person betrayed an agility and precision surprising to behold
in any man past the first flush of youth.
To pass from the eaves to the shed and thence to the ground was the work
of a moment. The crooked branch of an old apple-tree which grew near the
house, was of decided use to him and enabled him to make his risky
descent with comparatively no noise. When he was on the ground, he
stopped and listened, then wheeling rapidly about, proceeded to walk up
the street.
The night was dark and threatened storm. Everywhere there was a sound of
swishing boughs and rattling panes which served to deaden the noise of
his tread on the pavement, but he seemed so anxious not to attract
attention even in the darkness and solitude of this midnight hour that
he stepped into the grass that bordered the road, and even took off his
shoes that no echo might follow his movements.
The course he took led him in an entirely different direction from any
he had traversed during the day. As soon as he reached the point where
the court house stands, he turned east and went up Carberry hill. As
there are but two or three houses on this slope, his destination became
speedily apparent. On the brow of the hill where the wind blows
strongest, stands the old Earle cottage, with its windows closed to
every eye and its untrod doorstep hidden amid weeds that had choked up
the entrance for many a year. In the daylight it had an utterly lonesome
and deserted look, but at night, especially when the moon was hidden and
the winds blew, it possessed a forbidding, almost an ominous look, which
would have deterred anyone whose errand was less pressing than that of
our midnight wanderer, from approaching, much less examining a spot so
given over to solitude. A row of stunted oak trees shielded the house on
one side, and marked off the limits of the deserted garden, where
burdock and thistles grew instead of the homely vegetables and
old-fashioned flowers of years ago. To-night all these trees were
bending one way in the sharp gale, their whistling leaves and the _pat,
pat_ of the long limbs against the clap-boards of the house adding to
the lugubriousness of the scene.
But to the man who stood in the long grass at the rear of this disused
dwelling there was nothing in the hour or place to arouse dread or
awaken apprehension. He studied the house, but not with the eyes of a
dreamer, and when he finally made up his mind to approach the rear door
it was with determination in his face and a certain calculation in his
movement which proved that he was there with a definite purpose.
One pull at the door evidently satisfied him of the uselessness of
endeavoring to enter by force, for he left the spot at once, and began
climbing a small shed near by. Reversing the plan he had followed at the
tavern, he succeeded in climbing from ledge to ledge, until he reached a
certain window which he ruthlessly smashed in. In less time than one
would think, he had effected entrance into the house at the very place
where there was least likelihood of the attempt being discovered,
namely, under the shadow of one of those swishing trees whose branches
brushed so close against the wall that a spray of leaves immediately
thrust itself into the opening after him, covering up his passage with
unnecessary haste, considering that there were no watchers within half a
mile or more.
The place in which he found himself on dropping to the floor was so
close and dark that he involuntarily opened out his arms to grope his
way. But fearing broken floors and open staircases, he presently stopped
and drew out the small object he had hidden in his breast, and which
proved to be a pocket lantern. Lighting this, he looked around him and
drew a deep breath of satisfaction. He was in a small attic room whose
unfinished beams were so overlaid with cobwebs that he involuntarily
ducked his head, though he was in but little danger of thrusting it
against these noisome objects. A bed covered with a patched quilt was
within reach of one hand, and on the other side was a chest of drawers
with the articles necessary for making an humble toilet still on it, but
so covered by the dust and cobwebs of years that he choked as he looked
at it, and hesitated to set down his lantern on it.
Finally he compromised matters by placing it on an old chair; after
which he took out a small blank book and began to jot down notes of what
he saw. When finished with this room, he passed into another and so on
into the more roomy living chambers in front. Here he paused and took a
deeper breath, though the air was still stifling and musty.
An opening, square in shape, occupied the middle of this upper floor,
from which branched off the three sleeping rooms of this simple but not
uncomfortable cottage. In the square were books, many of which this
strange intruder took from the shelves and rapidly glanced over. Then he
opened the small drawers at the bottom of the shelves, examining the
trinkets and knick-knacks thus disclosed, with an eye rapidly
brightening into an expression of mingled hope and determination. The
pictures on the wall were few, but he apparently saw them all, nor did
he pass the decayed fringes of the window curtains without touching them
and noting their faded colors. When all that was to be seen in this
small place was carefully remarked, the man crossed the threshold of the
right-hand door and entered the large west chamber.
Something,—was it the atmosphere of the place, or some train of
recollections awakened by the objects about him?—seemed to subdue him at
this point, and he paused for a moment with his head fallen on his
breast. Then he raised it again, and with even more resolution than
before began to survey the mildewed walls and faded furniture, with an
eye that missed nothing, from the great four-poster to the mould-covered
bellows at the side of the open fireplace. It had been Mrs. Earle’s
bed-room, and had witnessed the birth of Polly and the long and
mysterious illness which had terminated in the death of the mother. Here
Ephraim Earle had lavished kisses on his babe and laid his icy hand over
the scarcely colder lids of his dead wife. Here had he experienced his
keenest joys and here had he suffered his greatest sorrows. The room
seemed alive with them yet, and from every corner stared mementos of the
past which were all the more eloquent and impressive that no foreign
hand had touched them since their owner had passed away from their midst
a dozen years before. Even the candle which had lighted her last gasp
remained where it had been left on a little table in one corner; and
beside it was a book from which the finger seemed to have been just
withdrawn, though the dust that covered it lay thick on its browned
cover, and the mark which issued from one end of its discolored leaves
had lost its pristine hue and had faded to a tint almost beyond
recognition. The stranger stopped before this book and seemed to be
tempted to take it up, but refrained from doing so, as he had already
refrained from meddling with many another object lying on the high
cupboards and the tall mantel-shelf. But before the sticks in the
fireplace he showed no such hesitation. He turned them and twirled them,
and examined the ashes in which they had lain, and finally, seeing the
end of a piece of paper, he drew it out. It was the fragment of a
letter, worthless probably and of no especial interest in itself, but he
seemed to regard it as a treasure, and after looking at it for a minute,
he thrust it into his pocket.
There were a few articles of apparel hanging in the press at the foot of
the bed, and these he looked carefully over. Some of them were men’s
clothes, and these he handled with a lingering touch, smiling grimly as
he did so. He even took down a coat, and after a moment’s thought put it
on, and surveyed himself thus accoutered in the film-covered mirror at
the other end of the room. But the latter was too clouded to make a good
reflection, and pleased to see that the sleeves came naturally to the
wrist, though the buttons failed to fasten over the chest, he muttered
stealthily as he drew the garment off, “One’s arms do not lengthen with
age, though the body often grows larger. A very good test indeed!”
There was a chest under the bed, and this he drew out, though with some
evident misgivings and many a sly look at the worm-eaten carpet over
which he had been obliged to drag it. The lock had been fastened, but he
opened it with the crooked nail he drew from his pocket; and plunging
into the trunk, pulled out one article after another, muttering in an
indescribable tone as he handled each:
“My wife’s wedding dress! The locket and chain I gave her! The cashmere
shawl she always called her best! The lace folderols Aunt Milicent used
to wear, and Grandpa Hallam’s gown in which he died when he was struck
with apoplexy while preaching in Brother Burton’s pulpit in Charlestown.
A collection of keepsakes all remembered by me, even to this old
spectacle case which must have been her grandmother’s.”
Putting the things all back in the exact order in which he found them,
he relocked the trunk and thrust it carefully back into its old place.
But before leaving the room he stood for several minutes in the doorway,
and let, or seemed to let, the full aspect of the place sink into his
consciousness, after which with a half-frightened look at the floor, as
if he feared he had left the print of his feet behind him, he stepped
again to the hall, and so into a small room adjoining.
Here he remained longer than in the one he had just left; for it had
been Mr. Earle’s workroom and it was full of reminiscences of his old
labors. To enumerate the various objects which this strange intruder
examined would occupy us too long and needlessly encumber this
narrative. Enough that he gave the place the same minute inspection he
had accorded to every other spot he had previously entered, and by force
of vivid imagination or a faithful remembrance seemed to live for a
short half-hour in a past of hopeful work and mechanical triumphs. There
was an inventor’s model in one corner, and to this he gave his closest
attention. Though he laid no finger upon it, fearful perhaps of leaving
some trace of his presence behind him, he studied its parts with a
glistening eye and half-sarcastic smile, saying, as he turned away at
last:
“This is where the art of making explosives stood in ’63. We have got
further than that now.”
There was a secretary in this room and before it he spent most of the
remaining time. Some old letters which he found there engrossed him
completely, and from one small drawer he took an object that interested
him so much he failed to replace it on leaving the room. It was the
faded miniature of a pale young mother and a blue-eyed babe. The mother
had the look of the Lawrence family, and the child the promise of that
saucy and irresponsible loveliness he had seen the day before in the
new-made heiress, Polly Earle. This was not all he carried away. After
he had finished the letters, he sat a long time musing with knitted
brows and rigid hands, then he examined the desk, and sounding it,
listened with accustomed ear to the echo made by his knuckles on the
various partitions.
Suddenly he stopped, and leaning over a certain receptacle, from which
he had drawn a small drawer, he tapped again, and seeming to be
satisfied with the result, began to manipulate the place with his
penknife till the false bottom came out and he found in the shallow
space thus disclosed a small box which he eagerly pulled out, opened,
and examined. What it held I do not know, but whatever it was, he thrust
it with a triumphant look into his breast, and then repairing the
mischief he had done, first closed the drawers and then the desk,
shaking visibly as he did so, perhaps with something of the feeling of a
thief, though his face had none of the aspects of one, and his step when
he moved away had a resolution in it that added height to his stature,
which since he had allowed himself to walk upright was imposing.
In another moment he had carried the lantern from the room, and the
sleep of years had descended again upon its dark and silent precincts.
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VI.
THE PORTRAIT.
HAD the sides of this house suddenly fallen in and revealed to the
distant neighbors at the foot of the hill the vision of this creeping
marauder passing through the haunted rooms and down the creaking
staircases of this long-unopened house, what a panic of fear would have
swept through them at the uncanny sight! Glints of light from the small
lantern which he carried, passed flickering from wall to wall, and on
one window-shade threw an exaggerated outline of his form with its long
beard and groping hand, which if seen from without would have sent most
persons hurrying down the road. But there was no one in the fields that
night, and this passing glimpse of the intruder went out in darkness
without any other alarm being given than that which came from the
creaking pines and pollards without.
He was on the first floor now, and being more fearful of surprise than
in the rooms above he trod more carefully and was more attentive as to
where the light of his lantern fell. The parlor, which in houses of this
stamp is sufficiently musty when the place is inhabited and a dozen
children pass its charmed door every day, was worse than a tomb on this
night of its resurrection, and almost drove the man, who so fearlessly
opened it, into the open air for refreshment. Being near the ground, its
walls had become a prey to damp and mildew, and had not the two family
portraits adorning the space over the mantel-shelf been so fortunate as
to hang on an inner wall, their ruin would not have been confined to the
gilded frames.
It was before these pictures the visitor took his stand. One was the
portrait of an old man, and at this he barely glanced. But on the other
he gazed earnestly and long, calling up the living appearance of the man
it represented and comparing it with his own.
“Taken a year after marriage,” he presently commented, with his old
sarcastic smile. “That was, let me see, seventeen years ago. No wonder
the cheeks are fresh-colored and the locks unmixed with gray. When I am
shaved and my beard trimmed the difference of years will not be so
perceptible. Yet time makes changes under the most favorable
circumstances, and when a man has led a life like mine, his features
naturally coarsen. I must remember this fact when people tell me I have
lost the frank, attractive look I see here. Fast living and wild
expenditure leave their marks, and I will be as good an example of the
returned prodigal as any Bible-pounding exhorter could wish. Yet,” and
he sighed, “it is not altogether pleasant to remember one’s misdeeds, or
to note the difference in such a face as this and that which lies under
my long, disfiguring beard.”
These words, which he had uttered aloud, had no sooner left his lips
than he was startled by the silence that followed. A sense of his
position suddenly came over him, and casting one final glance at the
portrait, he turned quickly away, murmuring under his breath:
“That ring on the finger,—it was pawned long ago. What a past I will
have to disclose if my friends inquire into the matter too closely.”
Fifteen minutes more he spent in cellar and attic, and then he swung
himself out of the window on to the tree, and thence lightly to the
ground. As he did so he thought he heard a sigh, but just at that moment
the trees gave a great swish and bent almost double, and he forgot the
lesser sound and never thought to look behind him when he started to
move down the road.
Had he done so, he would have seen by the first faint streaks of morning
light, a figure standing at the angle of the house, with hat pulled low,
and hands thrust out in superstitious protest at what was evidently
considered a spectre stalking from the haunted house.
The next day the bent and feeble wayfarer announced that there was no
work to be found in Hamilton, and took his leave of the place, followed
by the faithful dog. But at the outskirts of the town, the latter
paused, and whining, raised his protest at this departure; and when he
found that his new master was determined to go, he lay down in the dusty
road and refused to accompany him any further.
He would not leave the town in which his old master lay buried.
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