PART III.

A RETURN.

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VII.

WHAT THE STROKE OF A BELL CAN DO.

IT was in the latter part of June, and the day was so perfect that it

seemed like wanton waste to use the hours for study or work. The roses,

which were always plentiful in the Fisher garden, had probably passed

their prime, but their perfume was still in the air, and there were

enough lingering buds on the thorny stalks to tempt Polly into their

midst. She had gathered quite a bouquet, and was turning toward the

house when she heard her name called. Blushing delightfully, she

stopped.

Young Unwin was leaning over the wall that separated the two gardens.

“Polly, Polly!” he called. “Come here, dear, I have something of real

importance to say to you.”

His tone was graver than usual, and her gay spirits were dashed, yet the

dimples remained in her cheeks and the saucy gleam in her eye, as

drawing near, she paused, with a mock curtsey, just out of his arm’s

reach on her side of the wall.

“Well, what is it, Mr. Persistency?” said she, a delicious smile robbing

her words of any sting they might otherwise have contained. “This is the

third time to-day you have summoned me to this wall.”

“Once to give you a rare flower, which had just opened in the

conservatory. Once to see if you appreciated this lovely day, and

once,—O Polly, my father is anything but well to-day.”

Her face, which had been brimming with mirth sobered instantly.

“Is he going to die?” she inquired, with alarm.

“I fear so, dear, and so it becomes our duty to tell him our wishes and

expectations. Are you willing to go with me to his bedside? We should

love each other more dearly for his blessing.”

“Do you think”—the words came with difficulty,—“that he will give us his

blessing?”

“I think so; he has always seemed to like you, has he not?”

“Yes, but——”

“I know what you mean, Polly; and it would be sheer hypocrisy for me not

to acknowledge what every one knows, that my father is a very proud man

and that he is likely to have ambitious hopes for his son. But are they

not likely to be realized by our marriage? When you have taken up your

abode in the old Izard mansion, you will be quite an eligible match even

for Squire Unwin’s son.” A tender, yet half-sarcastic smile took the

edge off these words, and showed the little maiden how dearly she was

loved. Whereupon she shook her pretty head.

“But I am so lacking in accomplishments, Clarke, and he so admires an

accomplished woman. Why, I barely know one language well, and your

stepmother, I hear, speaks three.”

“All of which she will teach you, dear. Accomplishments are easily

acquired. In five years you will be a model of learning and culture.”

She laughed. “I look like it, do I not? See. I have not even bought

myself a new dress. I have had other things to think of.”

“I like you in that rose pink gingham, but my father has a great

fondness for white. Haven’t you a white dress, Polly?”

“You know I have,” she pouted. “Didn’t you tell me last Sunday that——”

“Ah, I remember. Yes, yes, put that dress on and come round by the front

gate; I will be there to meet you.”

“But Mrs. Unwin? You have not told me whether she is likely to approve.

I should not want her to greet me coldly.”

“My mother? My darling mother? I never think of her as a stepmother,

Polly dear. Oh, she knows all about it and is ready to welcome you as a

daughter.”

The young girl, with a sudden lift of her head, smiled joyously and

seemed to gather courage at once.

“I will go,” she frankly declared. “And yet I dread to meet him. Is he

so very sick, and will his looks frighten me?”

“It may be,” answered Clarke, “but I shall be there to make it as easy

for you as possible. Do not think of my father, but of me and my love.”

She sighed with joy and ran off, as free a thing as the sun shone upon;

and he watching her felt his heart soften more and more to her womanly

sweetness.

“My father will feel her charm,” he murmured, and hastened up the garden

walk to the gate where he had promised to wait for her.

Clarke Unwin was no ordinary man. He was the thoughtful son of a proud

reserved father, and he had an aim in life quite apart from the

accumulation of wealth, which had so distinguished the elder man. He was

ambitious of becoming a famous electrician and had already shown

sufficient talent in this direction for his friends to anticipate great

results from his efforts. He had a scheme now on hand which only needed

the small capital which his father had promised him to become, as he

believed, a practical reality. Indeed, negotiations had already been

entered into for his entrance into a firm of enterprising men in

Cleveland, where his energy would have full scope. All that he needed

was the money which they required as a guaranty against failure, and

this money, some five thousand dollars or so, had, as I have said, been

promised to him, though not yet advanced, by his indulgent parent.

To sound that father’s mind on this and on the still dearer subject of

his marriage, young Unwin had prevailed upon Polly to enter this house

of sickness. At the door they were met by a sweet-faced lady, who took

Polly in her arms before seating her in a little ante-room.

“I must ask you to remain here for just a few minutes,” said she. “It

would be a shock to Mr. Unwin to see you without any preparation. Clarke

will have a talk with his father first, and then come back for you. Let

me hope it will be with a welcome that will make amends to you for your

long years of orphanage among us.”

“You are very good,” came from the trembling lips of the young girl.

Mrs. Unwin’s grace and unconscious dignity always abashed her.

“Clarke informs me that you are not lacking in that same desirable

quality,” whispered the other lady, and with a smile which gave an air

of pathos to her faded yet beautiful face, she turned away and followed

her son out into the hall. As they passed along she impetuously stopped

and faced him. Grace Unwin had been a mother to Clarke for thirteen

years, and she loved him devotedly.

“Clarke,” said she, “I dread this ordeal most unaccountably. Your father

has had something on his mind of late. Do you know of any trouble

weighing upon him besides this dreadful one of leaving us?”

“No,” rejoined the wondering youth. “He has never confided in me,

mother, as much as he has in you. If you know nothing—”

“And I do not,” she murmured.

“You must have been deceived by your affection. He is not the man to

brood over petty troubles, or to be cast down by matters he could

regulate with a word.”

“I know it, yet he has not appeared natural to me for some time. Long

before the physician told him that his disease was mortal, his actions

betrayed a melancholy which has always been foreign to his nature, and

for the very reason that he has succeeded in hiding it from you, I feel

that it has its seat in something vital.”

“And have you never asked him what it was, dear mother? You who are such

a tender nurse and so adored a wife must have moments when even his

reserve would yield to such gentle importunities as yours.”

“It would seem so, but I have never dared to broach the subject. When

your father chooses to be silent, it is difficult for any one to

question him.”

“Yes, mother; and yet I must dare his displeasure to-day. I must know

his mind about Polly.”

“Yes, that is right, and Heaven’s blessing go with you. I shall be

outside here in the hall. If you strike the bell once I will fetch in

Polly; if you strike it twice, I will come in alone; if you do not

strike it at all, I will remain where I am, praying God to give you

patience to meet the disappointment of your life.”

The man whose reticent nature had aroused this conversation was just

waking from a fretful sleep when his son entered. He was a tall, spare

man with an aristocratic air and a fine head, who was wont to walk the

streets as if the whole town belonged to him, and who had been spoken of

as “the Squire” from his earliest manhood. Now his proud head lay low,

and his once self-satisfied countenance wore a look that caused a pang

to strike the heart of his son, before the unrest visible in his whole

figure could find vent in words.

“What is it, father? You look distressed; cannot something be done to

relieve you?”

The man who had never been known to drop his eyes before anyone slowly

turned his face to the wall.

“There is no help,” he murmured; “my hour has come.” And he was silent.

Clarke moved uneasily; he hardly knew what to do. It seemed cruel to

disturb his father at this moment, and yet his conscience told him he

would be wrong to delay a communication that would set him right in his

own eyes. The father settled the matter by saying abruptly: “Sit down, I

have something to say to you.”

Clarke complied, drawing a chair close up to the bedside. He knew that

one of his father’s peculiarities was a dislike to raising his voice.

For a moment he waited, but the father seemed loath to speak. Clarke

therefore remarked, after a certain time had passed:

“Nothing you can say to me will fail of having my respectful attention.

If I can do anything to relieve your cares—” The look which his father

here turned upon him startled him from continuing. Never had he seen

such an expression in those eyes before.

“Can you go so far as to forgive?” the old man asked.

“Forgive?” echoed Clarke, hardly believing his ears. “What is there I

have to forgive in you? The benefits you have bestowed upon me, the

education I have received and your fatherly care?”

“Hush!” the half-lifted hand seemed to entreat and a shadow of the old

commanding aspect revisited the ashy countenance before him. “You do not

know all that has happened this last year. I have ruined you, Clarke,

ruined your mother; and now I must die without having the opportunity of

retrieving myself.”

Surprised out of his usual bearing of profound respect, Clarke sprang to

his feet.

“Do you mean,” he asked, “that your money is gone; that you are dying a

bankrupt?”

The old man—for Frederick Unwin was twenty years older than his

wife—grew so pale that his son became seriously alarmed.

“You are sick—fainting,” he cried; “let me call someone.” But a glance

from his father’s commanding eye held him where he stood.

“No, no; it is from shame, Clarke, possibly from grief. You have been on

the whole a good boy, and I have taken pride in you. To leave you with

your hopes dashed, and the care of a mother on your hands, is a

humiliation I never expected. I—I have lost all, Clarke, and am,

besides, in debt. I have not five hundred dollars to give you, let alone

five thousand. You will have to take up with some lesser position, some

clerkship with a salary, reserving to yourself the right to curse a

father who was so shortsighted as to invest his whole fortune in a mine

that petered out before the machinery was paid for.”

Clarke, to whom the prospect thus opened meant the demolition of more

than one dream, sat dazed for a moment in a state of despair, not

noticing that his arm had struck the bell on the small table beside

which he was sitting, making it ring out in one clear, low note.

“There is even a mortgage on this house,” the wretched father went on.

“I thought the amount so raised might bridge me over my present

difficulties, but it is gone like the rest, and now it only remains for

me to be gone, too, for you to understand into what a position I have

put you by my folly and ignorance.”

“Father I would not let any one else speak of you so in my hearing. You

meant to better your position, and if you made mistakes, we—that is, my

mother and myself, must try and retrieve them.”

“But your chances with Stevens and Wright? Your excellent plan for—” The

son suppressed the sigh that rose to his lips and resolutely lifted his

head.

“That dream is over,” he said. “I shall think no more of my own

advancement, but only of supporting my mother by any humble means that

offers.”

“You have not confidence enough in your schemes to borrow the money you

want?”

“I will never borrow.”

The old man, weakened by illness and shaken by the break he had just

made in an almost life-long reserve, uttered a deep sigh. Clarke, whose

thoughts were with Polly as much as they were with his surrendered

hopes, re-echoed this sound of despair before saying:

“I have always cherished a certain sort of pride, too. I could not feel

free under a burden of debt incurred for something whose value is yet to

be tested. I cannot be beholden to any one for a start which is as

likely to lead to failure as to success.”

“Not if that person is your promised wife?” burst from trembling and

eager lips behind him, and Polly, accompanied by Mrs. Unwin, who had

mistaken the ring of the bell for the signal which had been established

between herself and Clarke, stepped into the room, and advanced with

timid steps but glowing cheeks into the presence of the equally

astonished son and father.

“Polly!” sprang involuntarily from the lover’s lips, as he rose and cast

a doubtful glance toward his father. But the latter, roused by the fresh

young face turned so eagerly toward him, had lost his white look, and

was staring forward with surprised but by no means repelling glances.

“What does she say?” he murmured. “This should be Polly Earle, to whom

some kindly friend has just left twenty thousand dollars. Does she love

you, Clarke, and was the word she just used ‘wife’? I’m getting so dull

of hearing with this ceaseless pain, that I do not always understand

what is said in my presence.”

Clarke, delighted with the eagerness apparent in his suffering father’s

look and manner, took the young girl by the hand and brought her

forward. “This is the woman whom I chose for my wife when I thought my

prospects warranted me in doing so. But now that I have little else than

debts to offer her, I have scruples in accepting her affection, dear as

it is and disinterested as she shows herself. I would not seem to take

advantage of her youth.”

“But it is I,” she broke in gayly, “who am likely to take advantage of

your disappointments! I heard by mistake, I think, something of what

your father has had to say to you, and my only feeling, you see, is one

of delight that I can do something to show my gratitude for all that you

and others have done for me in the years when I was a penniless orphan.

Is that a wrong feeling, Mr. Unwin, and will you deny me the privilege

of—” She could say no more, but her eyes, her lips, her face were one

appeal, and that of the most glowing kind. Clarke’s eyes dropped lest

they should betray his feelings too vividly, and Mrs. Unwin, who had

thrown her arm around Polly, turned her face toward her husband with

such an expression of thankfulness that he did not know which caused him

the greater surprise, his wife’s sudden beauty or the frank yet timorous

aspect of this hitherto scarcely noted young girl in the presence of the

two great masters of the world, Love and Death.

“Come here!” he finally entreated, holding out one shaking hand toward

Polly. She tossed her hat aside like a wild creature who recoils from

any sort of restraint, and coming up close to the bed, fell on her knees

by his side.

“So you love Clarke?” he queried.

Her eyes and cheeks spoke for her.

“Love him well enough to marry him even now, with all his debts and

disabilities?”

Still her looks spoke; and he went calmly on: “Then, my little girl, you

shall marry him, and when you see him prosperous and on the high road to

success in his chosen field of labor,—think that his father blesses you

and that by your loyalty and devotion you took away the sting from an

old man’s death.”

A sob and a smile answered him, and Clarke, to whom this scene was the

crowing glory of his love, turned and took his mother in his arms,

before stooping to raise his young betrothed. It was the happiest hour

in this family’s history, but it was the precursor of sorrow. That night

Mr. Unwin died.

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VIII.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

THERE were two topics of interest agitating the town. One was the

appearance of a new hermit in the old cave on the mountain side, and the

other, the sale of the Unwin mansion and the prospective removal of

Frederick Unwin’s widow and son into the haunted house of the Earles.

The latter occasioned the greater amount of talk. That this move on

their part was but the preliminary step to a marriage between Clarke and

the young heiress had been known for some time. But to see a house so

long deserted reopened, its doors and windows thrown wide to the sun,

and the smoke rising once more from its desolate chimneys, was an event

calculated to interest all who had felt the indescribable awe

surrounding a place abandoned by human life while yet possessing all the

appointments of a home.

Polly, who for some reason had given up her former plan of renting the

big Izard place, was full of business and glowing with the excitement of

what was considered by many in the town a rather daring venture. Even

Dr. Izard, who was not wont to show emotion, looked startled when he

heard of her intentions, and seemed disposed to forbid the young girl

letting a house so given over to damp and mildew. But when she urged the

necessity of providing Mrs. Unwin with an immediate home and hinted at

the reluctance which that lady had shown to living at the other end of

the village, he relented and merely insisted that the place should be

thoroughly aired and renovated before Mrs. Unwin went into it. As he was

not that lady’s physician, had never been even a visitor at the Unwin

mansion, he could say no more. But Polly needed no further hint, and

went back to her own humble home with the most generous projects in her

head for Mrs. Unwin’s future comfort and happiness.

It was a great day in Hamilton when she and Clarke and five or six

interested neighbors first threw open the creaking front door of the

Earle cottage and let the sunlight stream into its hushed interior. To

her, who had never been permitted to enter the place since she had been

taken from it fourteen years before, it was an event merely to press her

foot on the worm-eaten carpets and slide her fingers along the walls

that had once felt the touch of her parents’ garments. Each room was a

revelation, each corner a surprise. She glided from hall to chamber and

from chamber to hall like the spirit of a younger age introduced into

the memorials of a long-departed one. Her fresh cheek, from which even

awe could not quite banish the dimples, looked out of place and yet

strangely beautiful amid the dim surroundings of the stiffly-ordered

rooms and old-fashioned furnishings.

With an instinct natural enough under the circumstances, she had wished

to be the first to enter the house and cross the threshold of each

apartment. But Clarke was not far behind her. In front of the portrait

of her father she paused and drew her friends around her.

“Oh!” she cried; “it was wrong to keep this from me; I should have been

brought up under the influence of that face.” But as she further

contemplated it, her first enthusiasm faded and an indescribable look of

vague distrust stole into her rosy countenance, and robbed it of half

its joyousness. “I—I wish there was a picture of my mother here,” she

whispered to Clarke, whose arm she had nervously seized. “She had a

beautiful face, they say, all gentleness and goodness.”

“Perhaps we shall find one upstairs,” he suggested, turning to open more

windows.

“Oh, it is cold,” she murmured, and moved with quite an unaccustomed air

of gravity toward the staircase. Her mother’s room, with its many

suggestions of days which were not entirely forgotten by her, seemed to

restore her mental balance, shaken by that short contemplation of her

father’s portrait. She wept as her eyes fell upon the bed where she had

last seen the outstretched form of her dying mother; but her tears were

tender and quite unlike, both in their source and effect, the shuddering

recoil which had seized her after she had gazed a few minutes at her

father’s pictured face.

The book which a certain hand had hesitated to touch not so very long

ago, she took up, and opening with some difficulty the pages which time

and dampness had glued together, she showed Clarke these words, written

on one of the blank leaves in front:

“Ah! what is life!

’Tis but a passing touch upon the world;

A print upon the beaches of the earth

Next flowing wave will wash away; a mark

That something passed; a shadow on a wall,

While looking for the substance, shade departs:

A drop from the vast spirit-cloud of God,

That rounds upon a stock, a stone, a leaf,

A moment, then exhales again to God.”

“My mother’s writing, I know! What a difference in our dispositions!

Where do you suppose I got my cheerful temperament from? Not from my

father?” And again she faintly shuddered.

“Your father’s desk is in the other room,” commented somebody. Looking

up she laid the book softly down and prepared to leave the one spot in

the house of which she had any remembrance. “I shall hate to see this

dust removed, or these articles touched. Do you think I could be allowed

to do the first handling? It is so like a sacrilege to give it over to

some stranger.”

But Clarke shook his head. “I have let you come with us into this damp

house because it seemed only proper that your eyes should be the first

to meet its desolation. I shall not let you remain here one moment after

we are gone. If I were willing, Dr. Izard would not be; so do not think

of it again.”

The name of the doctor seemed to awaken in her a strange chain of

thought.

“Ah, Dr. Izard! He was standing beside my father when he closed my

mother’s eyes. Why did he not come with me this morning to see me open

the house? I begged him to do so but he declined quite peremptorily.”

“Dr. Izard does not like me,” remarked Clarke sententiously.

“Does not like you? Why?” queried Polly innocently, pausing on the

threshold they were crossing.

“I do not know: he has always avoided me, more than he has other people,

I mean—and once when I spoke to him, the strangest expression crossed

his face.”

“I do not understand. He has always been very kind to me. Are you sure

that you like him?”

“I am indifferent to him; that is, I admire him, as everyone must who

has eyes and an understanding. But I have no feeling toward him; he does

not seem to have any place in my life.”

“He has in mine,” she reluctantly admitted. “I often go to him for

advice.”

“Was it by his advice,” whispered Clarke, bending till his mouth touched

her ear, “that you gave me your heart?”

The little hand that lay on his arm drew itself slowly out and fell

quite softly and significantly on her heaving breast.

“No,” said she. “I have another adviser here, fully as powerful as he

can ever be.”

The gesture, the accent were so charming that he was provoked at the

peering curiosity of the persons accompanying them. He would have liked

to kiss those rosy lips for the sweetest thing they had ever said.

Had the midnight visitor of a few weeks back known what a careless crowd

would soon invade these hidden premises he might not have been so wary

in his movements. When Polly reached her father’s desk, she found one or

two neighbors there before her.

“Oh, look at this curious old inkstand!” exclaimed one.

“And at this pile of note-books standing just where Ephraim Earle must

have laid them down!”

“And at this pen with the ink dried on it!”

“And at this ridiculous little China shepherdess pursing up her lips as

if she knew the whole mystery but would not tell!”

Polly, whose ears had been more or less closed by the episode with

Clarke just above mentioned, seemed scarcely to hear their words. She

stood by her father’s work-table with her hand on her father’s chair, in

a dream of love that moistened her down-cast eyes and awakened strange,

tremulous movements in the corners of her sensitive lips. But soon the

tokens of past ambition and of interrupted labor everywhere apparent,

began to influence her spirits, and her looks showed a depression which

was nothing less than startling to Clarke. Even the neighbors observed

it and moved chattering away, so that in a few minutes Polly and Clarke

were left standing alone in this former scene of her father’s toil and

triumphs.

“What is the matter, my darling?” he now asked, seeing her turn away

from the very objects he supposed would interest her most.

“I do not know,” she answered. “I do not like this room; I do not like

the effect it has upon me.” Had the gliding visitant whose shadow had

last fallen on these walls left some baleful influence behind him, or

was the cause of her distrust of deeper origin and such as she hardly

dared admit to herself?

“The air is close here,” remarked Clarke; “and the presence of all this

dust is enough to stifle anyone. Let us go down into the garden and get

a breath of fresh air.”

She pointed to the open windows. “How can it be close with all this

light pouring in? No, no, it is not that; I am simply frightened. Did

you ever stop to think?” she suddenly inquired, “what I should do or how

I should feel if—_if my father came back_?”

“No,” he replied startled. “No one supposes him to be alive. Why should

you have such morbid thoughts?”

“I do not know.” She laughed and endeavored to throw off the shadow that

had fallen upon her. “You must think me very superstitious, but I would

not walk down that rear passage for anything; not even with you, I

should expect to encounter a tall, military-looking figure, with a face

pleasing enough at first sight, but which would not bear close scrutiny.

A face like the painted one below,” she added, with an involuntary

shudder.

“But that is not a bad face; it is only a keen and daring one. I like it

very much. I remember my mother has always said you inherited your

beauty from your father.”

But this seemed to irritate her indescribably. “No, no,” she cried,

shaking her head and almost stamping her little foot. “I don’t believe

it and I won’t have it!” Then, as if startled by her own vehemence, she

blushed and dragged him away toward the door. “He may have been

handsome, but I have not eyes like his, I am sure. If I could only see

how my mother looked.”

In the hall below they paused. There was much to be said concerning the

contemplated alterations to be made in the house, but she did not seem

to take any interest in the matter. Evidently the effect of her visit

upstairs had not entirely left her, for just as they were turning toward

the door she gave an involuntary look behind her, and laughing, to show

her sense of the foolishness of her own words, she cried:

“So we did not meet my father’s ghost after all. Well now, I may be sure

that his interest is in other scenes and that he will never come back

here.” As she spoke a shadow crossed the open doorway.

“Do not be too sure of anything!” interposed a voice, and a strange but

by no means attractive looking man stepped calmly into the house and

paused with a low bow before her.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IX.

ASK DR. IZARD.

POLLY uttered a sharp cry and stared at the intruder blankly. He was

tall and military looking and had a smooth, well-shaven face. But his

clothes were in rags and his features, worn by illness and coarsened by

dissipation were of a type to cause a young girl like her to recoil.

“Who is this man?” she cried at last, “and what is he doing here?”

“It is the new hermit! The man who has taken up with Hadley’s old

quarters,” exclaimed one of the neighbors from the group about Polly. “I

saw him yesterday in the graveyard.”

“Yes, and there is his dog, Piper. He follows every old tramp who comes

into town. Don’t you remember how he tagged at the heels of that old

beggar with a long beard, who went through here a month ago?”

“This fellow looks as if he were strong enough to work,” whispered one

of the women.

“I shan’t give any of my stale victuals to a man with an arm strong

enough to fell an ox,” murmured another.

Here Clarke, who had only waited for an opportunity to speak, now

advanced to the man standing in the doorway. As he did so he noticed

that the wayfarer’s attention was not fixed upon the persons before him,

but upon the walls and passages of the house they were in.

“Have you come here begging?” he inquired. “If so you have made a

mistake; this is a disused house which we have been opening for the

first time in years.”

“I know its every room and its every corner,” answered the

haggard-looking tramp imperturbably. “I could tell you what lies under

the stairs in the cellar, and point out to you the books which have been

stacked away in the garret: That is, if no other hand has disturbed them

since I placed them there fifteen years ago.”

A cry of astonishment, of despair almost, answered these words. It came

from the blanching lips of Polly. Clarke trembled as he heard it, but

otherwise gave no sign of concern. On the contrary he eyed the intruder

authoritatively.

“Tell me your name!” he demanded. “Are you——”

“I will not say who I am, here, with the sunlight streaming on my back

and no friendly eye to recognize my features. I will only speak from

under the portrait of Ephraim Earle; I want a witness to the truth of my

statements and in that canvas I look for it.”

And neither heeding Clarke’s detaining hand, nor the almost frantic

appeal which spoke in the eyes of the young girl whose question he had

at last answered, he stalked into the parlor and paused directly beneath

the portrait he had named.

“Cannot you see who I am?” he asked, rearing his tall head beside the

keen-faced visage that looked down from the wall.

“The same man grown older,” exclaimed one.

“Ephraim Earle himself!” echoed another.

“Come back from the dead!”

“The moment the house was opened!”

“Are you Ephraim Earle?” demanded Clarke, trembling for Polly in whose

breast a real and unmistakable terror was rapidly taking the place of an

imaginary one.

“Since I must say so, yes!” was the firm reply. “Where is my daughter?

She should be on hand here to greet me.”

“I have no words of welcome. I never thought of my father being like

this. Take me away, Clarke, take me away!” So spoke the terrified little

one, clinging to one of her best-known neighbors for support.

“I will take you away,” Clarke assured her. “There is no need of your

greeting this man till he has proved his claim to you. A girl’s heart

cannot be expected to embrace such a fact in a moment.”

“Oh, it’s Ephraim Earle fast enough,” insisted one old woman. “I

remember him well. Don’t you remember me, old neighbor?”

“Don’t I?” was the half hearty, half jeering answer. “And I wish I had a

pair of your green and white worsted socks now.”

“It’s he, it’s he!” vociferated the delighted woman. “When he was a

young man I sold him many a pair of my knitting. To be sure I use blue

now instead of green, but they were all green in his day, bless him!” As

this prayer was not repeated by her companions in the room, upon whom

his reckless if not sinister appearance had made anything but a happy

impression, he came slowly from under the picture and stood for a moment

before the dazed and shrinking Polly.

“You are not glad to see me,” he remarked, “and I must say I do not

wonder. I have lived a hard life since I left you a crying child in your

mother’s room upstairs, but I am your father, for all that, and you owe

me respect if not obedience. Look up, Maida, and let me see what kind of

a woman you have grown to be.”

At this name, which had been a pet one with her parents and with them

alone, the neighbors stared and Polly shrank, feeling the iron of

certainty pierce deep into her soul. She met his eyes, however, with

courage and answered his demand by a very natural reproach.

“If you are my father, and alas! I see no reason to doubt it, I should

think you would feel some shame in alluding to a growth which you have

done nothing to advance.”

“I know,” he admitted, “that you have something with which to reproach

me; the secret of those days is not for ears like yours. I left you,

but—never ask me why, Maida. And now, go out into the sun. I should not

like to have my first act toward you a cruel one.”

Dazed, almost fainting, doubting whether or no she was the victim of

some horrible nightmare, she let herself be led away to where the sun

shone down on the lilacs of the overgrown garden. But no sooner did she

realize that the man of her dread had been left in the house with her

neighbors than she urged Clarke to return at once to where he was.

“Let him be watched,” she cried; “follow him as he goes about the house.

It is his; I feel that it is his, but do not let us succumb to his

demands without a struggle. He has such a wicked face, and his tones are

so harsh and unfatherly.”

Clarke, who had come to a similar conclusion, though by other means than

herself, hastened to obey her. He found the self-styled Earle in the

midst of the group of neighbors, chattering freely and answering

questions with more or less free and easy banter. Though privation spoke

in every outline of his face and form, and poverty in every rag of his

dress, his bearing gave evidences of refinement, and no one, not even

Clarke himself, doubted that if he were put to the test he would show

himself to be at least the wreck of the once brilliant scholar and man

of resources. He was drawing the whole crowd after him through the house

and was hazarding guesses right and left to prove the excellence of his

memory.

“Let us see,” he cried, as they one and all paused at the top of the

staircase, before entering the rooms on the upper floor. “I used to keep

my books here—such ones as I had not discarded and stacked away in the

topmost story. And I used to pride myself on knowing where every volume

was kept. Consult the shelves for me now and see if on the third one

from the bottom and nearer to the left than to the right there is not a

volume of Bacon’s Essays. There is? Good! I knew it would be there if

some one had not moved it. And the ten volumes of Shakespeare—are they

not on the lower shelf somewhere near the middle? I thought so. A

capital old edition it is, too; printed by T. Bensley for Wynne &

Scholey, Paternoster Row. And Gibbon’s _Rise and Fall_, with a volume of

Euripides for a companion? Yes? And on the topmost shelf of all, far out

of the reach of any hand but mine, a choice edition of Hawthorne—my

favorite author. Do you see them all? I am glad of that; I loved my

books, and often when very far away from them used to recall the hour

when I had them under my eye and within reach of my hand.”

“I wonder if he used to recall the child he left, tossed helpless upon

the mercies of the town?” murmured one of the neighbors.

“Is my desk here, and has it been touched?” he now asked, proceeding

hastily into the workroom. “Ah, it all looks very natural,” he remarked;

“very natural! I can scarcely believe that I have been gone more than a

day. Oh, there’s the model of the torpedo I was planning! Let me see,”

and he lifted up the half-completed model, with what Clarke could not

but call a very natural emotion, looking it over part by part and

finally putting it down with a sigh. “Good for those days,” he

commented, “but would not answer now. Too complicated by far; explosive

agencies should be more simple in their construction.” And so on for

half an hour; then he descended and walked away of his own accord to the

front door.

“I have seen the old place!” he blandly observed, “and that is all I

expected. If my daughter sees fit to acknowledge me, she will seek me in

the wild spot in which I have made for myself a home. Here I shall not

come again. I have not returned to the place of my birth to be a bugbear

to my only child.”

“But,” cried some one in protest, “you are poor and you are hungry.”

“I am what fate and my own folly have made me,” he declared. “I ask for

no sympathy, nor do I feel disposed to urge my natural rights.”

“If you are Polly Earle’s father, you will be fed and you will be

clothed,” put in Clarke hotly. “There is a meal for you now at the

tavern, if you will go there and take it.”

But the proud man, pointing to his dog drew himself up and turned

scornfully away. “He can procure me as much as that,” said he. “When my

daughter has affection and a child’s consideration to show me, then let

her come to Hadley’s cave. Food! Clothing! I have had an apology for

both for fourteen years, but love—never; and all I want just now is

love!”

Polly, who was not many steps off, heard these words and, moved by fear

or disgust, dropped her hands which she had instinctively raised at his

approach. He saw and smiled grimly, then with a bow that belied his

aspect and recalled the old days when a bow passed for something more

than a perfunctory greeting, he moved sternly down the walk and out

through the stiff old gate into the dusty highroad.

Half a dozen or more of the most eager witnesses of this extraordinary

scene followed him down the hill and into town, anxious no doubt to set

the town ablaze with news of Ephraim Earle’s return and of his identity

with the newly arrived hermit at Hadley’s cave.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

X.

AN INCREDIBLE OCCURRENCE.

DR. IZARD had of late presented a more cheerful appearance. His step was

lighter and his face less generally downcast. He even was seen to smile

one morning at the antics of some children, an unprecedented thing in

his history, one would think, from the astonishment it caused among the

gossips.

He had been called away several times during the month and the card with

the word “absent” on it was very often to be seen hanging beside his

door. People grew tired of this, though they knew it meant fame and

money to the doctor, and the newly-fledged physician from Boston, whose

office was at the other end of the town, prospered in consequence. But

Dr. Izard only seemed relieved at this and came and went, as I have

said, with a less gloomy if not positively brightened countenance.

He had always kept for himself one solitary place of resort in the

village. Without this refuge life would often have been insupportable to

him. It was—strange to say, for the Izards had always been

aristocratic—the humble house of the village shoemaker, a simple but

highly respected man who with his aged wife had been, from sheer worth

of character, a decided factor in town for the last twenty-five years.

The little house in which he lived and plied his useful trade stood on

the hill-side a few yards above the Fisher cottage, and it was in his

frequent visits to this spot that Dr. Izard had seen so much of Polly.

The window in which he usually sat overlooked the Fisher garden, and as

his visits had extended over years he had ample opportunity for

observing her growing beauty from the time she was a curly-headed imp of

four to the day she faced the world a gay-hearted damsel of eighteen.

It had been a matter of some mystery in the past why Dr. Izard, with his

trained mind and refined tastes, affected this humble home and sought

with such assiduity the companionship of this worthy but by no means

cultured couple. But this, together with other old wonders, had long

lost its hold upon public attention, no one thinking of inquiring any

longer into the cause of a habit that had become so fixed it was

regarded as part of the village’s history. One effect, however,

remained. No one thought of entering the shoemaker’s shop while Dr.

Izard sat there. It would have been thought an intrusion by both guest

and host.

Mr. and Mrs. Fanning, who had themselves long ceased to wonder at his

preference for their society, invariably stopped their work when he

entered and greeted him with the same words of welcome they had used

fourteen years before when he had unexpectedly taken a seat in the shop

without having been summoned for professional purposes. After which

necessary ceremony they turned again to their several labors and the

doctor sat down in his especial seat, which, as I have said, was in one

of the windows, and lapsed into the silence he invariably maintained for

half his stay. The time chosen for his visit was usually at nightfall,

and whether it was that the charms of nature were unusually attractive

to him at that hour, or whether something or somebody in the adjoining

gardens secretly interested him, he invariably turned his eyes outward,

with an expression that touched the heart of the old lady who watched

him and caused many a glance of secret intelligence to pass between her

and her equally concerned husband.

Not till it was quite dark and the lights had been lit in the shop,

would the doctor turn about—often with a sigh too unconscious to be

repressed—and face again the humble couple. But when he did so, it was

to charm them with the most cordial and delightful conversation. There

was even sparkle in it, but it was only for this aged pair of workers,

whose wit was sufficient for appreciation, and whose hearts responded to

every effort made to interest them by their much revered visitor. After

a quarter of an hour of this hearty interchange of neighborly comment,

he would leave the house, to come again a few evenings later.

But one evening there was a break in the usual order of things. The

doctor was sitting, as he had sat a hundred times before, in his chair

by the window, and Mr. Fanning was hammering away at his bench and Mrs.

Fanning reading the _Watchman_, when there came a sound of voices from

the front and the door burst open to the loud cry of—

“O Mrs. Fanning, Mrs. Fanning! Such news! Ephraim Earle has come back!

Ephraim Earle, whom we all thought dead ten years ago!”

Mrs. Fanning, who with all her virtues dearly loved a bit of gossip, and

who knew, or thought she did, everything that was going on in town, ran

without once looking round her to the door, and Mr. Fanning, who could

not but feel startled also by an event so unexpected and so long looked

upon as impossible, started to follow her, when something made him look

back at the doctor. The sight that met his eyes stunned him, and caused

him to pause trembling where he was. In all the years he had known Dr.

Izard he had never seen him look as he did at that moment. Was it

surprise that affected him, or was it fear, or some other

incomprehensible emotion? The good old man could not tell; but he wished

the doctor would speak. At last the doctor did, and the hollow tones he

used made the aged shoemaker recoil.

“What is that? What are they talking about? They mentioned a name? Whose

name? Not Polly’s father’s?”

“Yes,” faltered his startled companion. “Ephraim Earle; they say he has

come back. Shall I go and see?”

The doctor nodded; it seemed as if he had no words at his command, and

the shoemaker, glad to be released, hastened hobbling from the room. As

his half bent figure vanished, the doctor, as if released from a spell,

looked about, shuddered, grasped the table nearest to him for support,

and then burst into a laugh so strange, so discordant, and yet so

thrilling with emotion, that had not a dozen men and women been all

talking together in the hall it would have been heard and commented on.

As it was he was left alone, and it was not till several minutes had

elapsed that Mrs. Fanning came rushing in, followed by her dazed and

somewhat awestruck husband.

“O doctor, it is true! It is true! I have just seen him; he is standing

at the Fisher’s corner. Polly is up at the house—You know she was to

open it to-day. They say she is more frightened than pleased, and who

can wonder? He looks like a weather-beaten tramp!”

“No, no,” shouted some one from the room beyond, “like a gentleman who

has been sick and who has had lots of trouble besides.”

“Come and see him!” called out a shrill voice, over Mrs. Fanning’s

shoulder. “You used to know him, doctor. Come and see Ephraim Earle.”

The doctor, with a curl of his lips, looked up and met the excited eyes

that were contemplating him, and slowly remarked:

“Your wits have certainly all gone wool-gathering. I don’t believe that

Ephraim Earle has returned. Some one has been playing a trick upon you.”

“Then it’s the ghost of Ephraim Earle if it’s not himself,” insisted the

other, as the whole group, losing their awe of the doctor in the

interest and growing excitement of the moment, came crowding into the

shop.

“And a very vigorous ghost! He is bound to have his rights; that you can

see.”

“But he won’t annoy his daughter. Did you hear what he said to the

child, up there by the lilac bushes?” And then they all chattered, each

striving to give his or her own views of the situation, till a sudden

vigorous “Hush!” brought them all to an abrupt standstill and set them

staring at the doctor with wide-open eyes and mouths.

“You are all acting like children!” protested that gentleman, with his

white face raised and his eyes burning fiercely upon them. “I say that

man is an impostor! Why should Ephraim Earle come back?”

“And why shouldn’t he?” asked another.

“Answer us that, Dr. Izard. Why shouldn’t the man come back?”

“True, true! Hasn’t he a daughter here?”

“With money of her own. Just the same amount as he once ran off with.”

“I tell you again to be quiet.” It was still the doctor who was talking.

“If you are daft yourselves, do not try to make other people so! Where

is this fellow? I will soon show you he is not the man you take him to

be.”

“I don’t know how you will do it,” objected one, as the group fell back

before the doctor’s advancing figure. “He’s as like him as one pea is

like another, and he remembers all of us and even chattered with Mother

Jessup about her famous worsted socks.”

“Fools!” came from beneath the doctor’s set lips as he strode from the

door and passed rapidly into the highway. “Here, you!” he cried,

accosting the man who was the centre of a group some rods away, “come up

here! I want to speak to you.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XI.

FACE TO FACE.

THE stranger, thus hailed, turned as the doctor’s voice rang down the

road, and acknowledging the somewhat rough summons with a bow of mock

affability, stepped obligingly up the hill. The neighbors who had

flocked into the street to watch the meeting, saw the doctor’s lip curl

as the wretched figure advanced. This man, Ephraim Earle? Why had he

called these credulous creatures fools? They were simply madmen. But in

another moment his countenance changed. The miserable fellow had paused

and was standing a few feet off with what could not be called other than

a look of old comradeship. He spoke first also and with quite a hearty

ring to his naturally strident voice.

“Well, Oswald, old boy, this is a pleasure! Now don’t say you don’t

remember me—” for the doctor had started back with an irrepressible

gesture of disgust that to some eyes was not without its element of

confusion, “I know I am changed, but no more so than you are, if you

have led a more respectable life than I.”

“Scoundrel!” leaped from Dr. Izard’s white lips. “How dare you address

me as if we were, or ever had been, friends! You are a brazen

adventurer, and I—”

“And you are the perfectly irreproachable physician with a well-earned

fame, and a past as free from shadow as—well, as your face is free from

surprise at this unexpected return of one you probably thought dead.”

Confounded by this audacity and moved by many inner and conflicting

emotions, Dr. Izard first flushed, then stood very still, surveying the

man with a silent passion which many there thought to be too emphatic a

return for what sounded to them like nothing more than an ill-judged

pleasantry. Then he spoke, quietly, but with a sort of gasp, odd to hear

in his usually even and melodious voice.

“I do not know you. Whatever you may call yourself, you are a stranger

to me, and no stranger has a right to address me with impertinence. What

_do_ you call yourself?” he suddenly demanded, advancing a step and

darting his gaze into the other’s eyes with a determination that would

have abashed most men whether they were all they proclaimed themselves

to be or not.

A playful sneer, a look in which good-natured forbearance still

struggled uppermost, were all that he got from this man.

“So you are determined not to recognize Ephraim Earle,” cried the

stranger. “You must have good reasons for it, Oswald Izard; reasons

which it would not be wise perhaps for one to inquire into too

curiously.”

It was an attack for which the doctor was not fully prepared. He

faltered for an instant and his cheek grew livid, but he almost

immediately recovered himself, and with even more than his former

dignity, answered shortly:

“Now you are more than impertinent, you are insolent. I do not need to

have secret reasons for repudiating any claims you may make to being

Polly Earle’s father. Your face denies the identity you usurp. You have

not a trait of the man you call yourself. Your eyes——”

“Oh, do not malign my eyes,” laughed the stranger. “They are faded I

know and one lid has got a way of drooping of late years, which has

greatly altered my expression. But they are the same eyes, doctor, that

watched with you beside the bed of Huldah Earle and if they fail to meet

you with just the same mixture of trembling hope and fear as they did

then it is because youthful passions die out with the years and I no

longer greatly care for any verdict you may have to give.”

A frown hard to fathom corrugated the doctor’s forehead and he continued

to survey in silence the bold face that declined to blench before him.

“So you persist—” he remarked at length. “Then you are a villain as well

as an impostor.”

“Villain or impostor, I am at least Ephraim Earle,” asserted the other;

adding as he noted the doctor’s fingers tighten on the slight stick he

carried, “Oh, you need not show your hatred quite so plainly, Dr. Izard.

I do not hate you, whatever cause I may have to do so. Have I not said

that my old passions are dried up, and even signified that my coming

back was but a whim? _Curraghven-hoodah_, Oswald, you weary me with your

egotism. Let us shake hands and be comrades once more.”

The audacity, the superiority even, with which these words were said,

together with the cabalistic phrase he used—a phrase which Dr. Izard was

ready to swear even at that moment of shock and confusion, was one known

only to himself and Polly’s father,—had such an effect upon him that he

reeled and surveyed the speaker with something of superstitious fear and

horror. But at the malicious gleam which this momentary weakness called

up in the eye of his antagonist, he again regained his self-command, and

stepping firmly up to him, he vociferated with stern emphasis:

“I repeat that you are an impostor. I do not know you, nor do I know

your name. You say you are Ephraim Earle, but that is a lie. I knew that

man too well to be deceived by you. You have neither his eyes, his

mouth, nor his voice, I will say nothing of his manners.”

“Oh,” spoke up a voice from behind, “he looks like Ephraim Earle. You

cannot say he does not look like Ephraim Earle.”

The doctor turned sharply, but his antagonist, who neither seemed to ask

nor need the support of any one or anything but his own audacity,

responded with a mocking leer:

“No matter what I look like. He says he cannot be deceived by my eyes,

my mouth, or my voice. That is good. That sounds like a man who is sure

of himself. But friends—” Here his voice rose and the menace which he

had hitherto held in abeyance became visible in his sharpened glance—“he

can be deceived by his own prejudices. Dr. Izard does not want to know

me because he was Huldah Earle’s attending physician, and her death, as

you all know, was very sudden and _very peculiar_.”

Venomous as the insinuation was, it was a master-stroke and won for its

audacious author the cause for which he had been battling. The doctor,

who had worked himself up into a white heat, flushed as if a

blood-vessel was about to burst in his brain, and drawing back, stepped

slowly from before the other’s steady and openly triumphant gaze. Not

till he reached the outskirts of the crowd, did he recover himself, and

then he halted only long enough to cry to the jostling and confused

crowd he had just left:

“He looks like a tramp and he talks like a villain. Be careful what

credit you give him, and above all, _look after Polly Earle_.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XII.

AT HOME.

IT was now nearing eight o’clock, and as Dr. Izard strode on through the

village streets, seeing no one and hearing no one, though more than one

person respectfully accosted him, the twilight deepened so rapidly that

it was quite dark when he passed the church and turned up the highroad

to his own house.

It was dark and it was chilly, else why should so strong a man as he

shiver? So dark that the monuments over the wall were hardly to be

discerned, and he had to fumble for the gate he usually found without

trouble. Yet when his hand finally fell upon it and he mechanically

lifted the latch he did not pass through at once but lingered, almost

with a coward’s hesitation, finding difficulty, as it seemed, in

traversing the dismal path before him to the no less dismal door beyond

and the solitude that there awaited him.

But he passed the gate at last, and groped his way along the path

towards his home, though with lingering footsteps and frequent pauses.

Dread was in his every movement, and when he stopped it was to clutch

the wall at his side with one hand and to push the other out before him

as though to ward off some threatening danger, or avert some expected

advance. In this attitude he would become rigidly still, and several

minutes would elapse before he stumbled on again. Finally he reached his

door, and unlocking it with difficulty threw himself into the house,

shuddering and uttering an involuntary cry as a spray of the swaying

vine clung to him.

Ashamed of his weakness, for he presently saw what had caught him by the

arm, he drew a deep breath, and tried to shut the door. But it would not

close. Some obstruction, a trivial one no doubt, had interposed to stop

it, and he being in an excited state pushed at it with looks of horror,

till his strength conquered and he both shut and locked the door.

He was trembling all over when he had accomplished this, and groping for

a chair he sat down in it, panting. But no sooner had he taken his seat

than the dim panes of the window struck his sight, and bounding to his

feet he drew down the shade as if he would shut out the whole world from

his view, and the burying-yard first of all.

Quite isolated now and in utter darkness, he stood for a few minutes

deeply breathing and cursing his own fears and pusillanimity. Then he

struck a light, and calmed by the sight of the familiar interior, sat

down at his desk and tried to think. But though he was a man of great

intellectual powers, he seemed to find it difficult to fix his thoughts

or even to remain quiet. Involuntary shudders shook his frame, and from

time to time his eye glanced fearfully towards the door as if he dreaded

to see it open and admit some ghostly visitor.

Suddenly he leaped to his feet, went to a mirror and surveyed himself.

Evidently the result was not encouraging for he uttered an exclamation

of dismay and coming back to the desk, took up a book and tried to read.

But the attempt was futile. With a low cry he flung the book aside, and

rising to his feet began to talk, uttering low and fearful words from

which he seemed himself to recoil without possessing the power of

stopping them. The name of Ephraim Earle mingled often with these words,

and always with that new short laugh of his so horrible to hear. And

once he spoke another name, but it was said so softly that only from the

tears which gushed impetuously from his eyes, could it be seen that it

stirred the deepest chords of his nature.

The clock, which lagged sorely that night, struck eleven at last, and

the sound seemed to rouse him, for he glanced toward his bed. But it was

only to cry “Impossible!” and to cast a hunted look about the room which

seemed like a prison to him.

At length he grasped the green door and began to pull at its hasps and

fastenings. Careless of the result of these efforts he shook a small

heathen god from its pedestal so that it fell rattling to the floor and

lay in minute pieces at his feet. But he did not heed. Recklessly he

pulled open the door, recklessly he passed into the space beyond. But

once out of the room, once in another atmosphere than that peopled by

his imagination, he seemed to grow calmer, and after a short survey of

the narrow hall in which he found himself and a glance up the tiny,

spiral staircase rising at his right, he stepped back into the office

and took up the lamp. Carrying it with him up the narrow staircase he

set it down in the hall above, and without looking to right or left,

almost without noting the desolation of those midnight halls, he began

pacing the floor back and forth with a restless, uneven tread, far

removed from his usual slow and dignified gait.

At early morning he was still pacing there.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XIII.

A TEST.

“O Clarke, wait: there is the doctor now.” It was Polly who was

speaking. She had come as far as the church in her search after Dr.

Izard and had just seen him issuing from his own gate.

“He has a bag in his hand; he is going on one of his journeys.”

“No, no,” she protested, “I cannot have it.” And bounding forward she

intercepted the doctor, just as he was about to step into his buggy. “O

doctor, you are not going away; you are not going to leave me with this

dreadful trouble; don’t, don’t, I pray!” The doctor, who in his

abstraction had not noted her approach, started at the sound of her

voice, and turning showed her a very haggard face.

“Why,” she cried, stepping back, “you are ill yourself.”

“No,” he answered shortly, drawing himself up in his old reserved

manner. “I had but little sleep last night, but I am not ill. What do

you want, Polly?”

“O don’t you know what I want? You, of all the town, have said he was an

impostor! To you then I come as to my only hope; speak, speak, is he not

my father?”

The doctor with a side glance at Clarke, who had remained in the

background, drew the girl’s hand within his arm and led her a few steps

away. But it seemed an involuntary movement on his part, for he

presently brought her back within easy earshot of her lover.

“He does not look to me like Ephraim Earle,” he was saying. “He has not

his eyes, nor does his voice sound familiar. I do not see why any one

acknowledges him.”

“But they can’t help it. He knows everybody, and everything. I—I thought

you had some good reason, Dr. Izard, something that would make it easy

for me to deny his claims.”

“You—” The doctor’s sleepless night seemed to have had a strange effect

upon him, for he stammered in speaking, he who was always so cold and

precise. “You thought—” he began, but presently broke into that new,

strange laugh of his, and urging Polly towards her lover, he addressed

his questions to the latter. “Does this man,” he asked, “make a serious

claim upon the Earle name and its rights?”

Clarke, who was always sensible when in Dr. Izard’s presence of

something intangible but positive acting like a barrier between them and

yet who strangely revered the doctor, summoned up his courage and

responded with the respect he really felt.

“Yes,” said he; but with a certain reserve, “that is our best reason

perhaps for believing him. He promises not to molest Polly, nor to make

any demands upon her until she herself recognizes her duty.”

The frown which darkened the doctor’s face deepened.

“He is a deep one, then,” said he, and stood for a moment silent.

“If he is an impostor, yes,” assented Clarke; “but Lawyer Crouse, who

talked with him half an hour last night, accepted him at once, and so

did Mr. Sutherland.” Mr. Sutherland was the Baptist minister.

“The fools!” muttered the doctor, as much in anger as amazement; “has

the whole town reached its dotage?”

Clarke, who seemed surprised at the doctor’s vehemence, quietly

remarked:

“You were Mr. Earle’s best friend. If you say that this man is not he,

there would of course be many to listen to you.”

But the doctor, resuming his accustomed expression, refused an answer to

this suggestion, at which Polly’s face grew very pale, and she grasped

his arm imploringly, saying as she did so:

“I cannot bear this uncertainty, I cannot bear to think there is any

question about this matter. If he is my father, I owe him everything; if

he is not——”

“Polly,”—The doctor spoke coldly but not unkindly, “marry Clarke, go

with him to Cleveland where he has the promise of a fine position, and

leave this arrant pretender to settle his rights himself. He will not

urge them long when he finds the money gone for which he is striving.”

“You bid me do that? Then you _know_ he is not my father.”

But the doctor instead of answering with the vigorous yes she had

expected, looked aside and carelessly murmured:

“I have said that I saw no likeness in him to the man I once knew. Of

course my judgment was hurried, our interview was short and I was

laboring under the shock of his appearance. But if everybody else in

town recognizes him as Ephraim Earle, I must needs think my opinion was

warped by my surprise and the indignation I felt at what I considered a

gross piece of presumption.”

“Then you do not know,” quoth poor Polly, her head sinking lower and

lower on her breast.

“No,” cried the doctor, turning shortly at the word and advancing once

more toward the buggy.

But at this move she sprang forward and sought again to detain him.

“But you will not go and leave me in this dreadful uncertainty,” she

pleaded. “You will stay and have another talk with this man and satisfy

yourself and me that he is indeed my father.”

But the stern line into which the doctor’s lip settled, assured her that

in this regard he was not to be moved; and frightened, overawed by the

prospect before her, she turned to Clarke and cried:

“Take me home, take me back to your mother; she is the only person who

can give me any comfort.”

The doctor who was slowly proceeding to his horse’s head, looked back.

“Then you don’t like my advice,” he smiled.

She stared, remembered what he had said and answered indignantly:

“If this poor, wretched, wicked-eyed man is my father—and I should never

have doubted it if you had not declared him an impostor before all the

town people—then I would be a coward to desert him and seek my happiness

in a place where he could not follow me.”

“Even if he is as wicked as his looks indicate?”

“Yes, yes, even if he is wicked. Who can say what caused that

wickedness.”

The doctor, fumbling with the halter, stopped and seemed to muse.

“Did you ever see your father’s picture hanging in the old cottage?”

“Yes, I saw it yesterday.”

“Did that have a wicked look?”

“I do not think it had a good look.” This was said very low but it made

the doctor start.

“No?” he exclaimed.

“It made me feel a little unpleasant, as if something I could neither

understand nor sympathize with had met me in my father’s smile. It made

him more remote, and prepared me for the heartless figure of the man who

in the next few minutes claimed me as his daughter.”

“Strange!” issued from the doctor’s lips; and his face, which had been

hard to read from the first, became more and more inscrutable.

“My mother, who is as wise as she is gentle, advises Polly to give up

the cottage to her father; but not to live in it with him till his

character is better understood and his intentions made manifest.”

“Then your mother sees this man in the same light as others do?”

“She certainly considers him to be Ephraim Earle. It is not natural for

her to think otherwise under the circumstances.”

“I do indeed stand alone,” quoth the doctor.

“When I told her,” pursued Clarke, “what you had said, she looked amazed

but she said nothing to show that she had changed her opinion. I do not

think any one was really affected by your words.”

Something in the tone in which this was said showed where Clarke himself

stood. A bitter smile crossed the doctor’s lip, and he seemed more than

ever anxious to be gone.

“I shall be away,” he said, “several days. When I come back I hope to

see this thing settled.”

“I hate him,” burst from Polly’s lips. “I am terrified at my thoughts of

him, but in my inner consciousness I know him to be my father, and I

shall try and do my duty by him; shall I not, Clarke?”

Clarke, who had felt himself almost unnecessary in this scene, grasped

at the opportunity which this appeal gave him and took her tenderly by

the arm.

“We will try and do our duty,” he corrected, “praying Providence to help

us.”

And the doctor, with a glance at them both, sprang into his buggy and

was driving off when he rose and flung back at Polly this final word of

paternal advice:

“He is the claimant; you are the one in possession. Let him prove

himself to be the man he calls himself.”

Clarke, dropping Polly’s arm, sprang after the doctor.

“Wait! one moment,” he cried. “What do you call proof? You who knew him

so well in the past, tell us how to make sure that his pretensions are

not false.”

The doctor, drawing up his horse, paused for a moment in deep thought.

“Ask him,” he finally said, “to show you the medal given him by the

French government. As it has never been found in his house, and as it

was useless to raise money upon, he should, if he is Ephraim Earle, be

able to produce it. Till he does, I advise you to cherish doubts in his

regard, and above all to keep that innocent and enthusiastic young girl

out of his clutches.”

And with a smile which would have taken more than Clarke’s experience

with the world to understand, much less to explain, the doctor whipped

up his horse and disappeared down the road towards the station.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XIV.

GRACE.

THE doctor did not return in a few days nor in a few weeks. Two months

passed before his gate creaked on its hinges and the word ran through

the town, “Dr. Izard is back!”

He arrived in Hamilton at nightfall, and proceeded at once to his

office. There was in his manner none of the hesitation shown at his last

entrance there, and when by chance he passed the mirror in his quick

movements about the room he was pleased himself to note the calmness of

his features, and the quiet air of dignified reserve once more pervading

his whole appearance.

“I have fought the battle,” he quietly commented to himself; “and now to

face the new order of things!”

He looked about the room, put a few matters in order, and then stepped

out into the green space before his door. Glancing right and left and

seeing nobody in the road or in the fields beyond the cemetery, he

walked straight to the monument of Polly’s mother and sternly,

determinately surveyed it. Then he glanced down at the grave it shaded,

and detecting a stray leaf lying on its turf, he picked it up and cast

it aside, with a suggestion of that strange smile which had lately so

frequently altered his handsome features. After which he roamed through

the churchyard, coming back to his door by another path. The chill of

early September had touched many of the trees about, and there was

something like dreariness in the landscape. But he did not appear to

notice this, and entered in and sat down at his table with his former

look of concentration and purpose.

Evening came and with it several patients; some from need, some from

curiosity. To both kinds he listened with equal calmness, prescribing

for their real or fancied complaints and seeing them at once to the

door. At ten o’clock even these failed to put in an appearance, and

being tired, he was about to draw his shade and lock his door when there

came a low knock at the latter of so timid and so hesitating a character

that his countenance changed and he waited for another knock before

uttering his well known sharp summons to enter.

It came after a moment’s delay, and from some impulse difficult for

himself to explain, he proceeded to the door, and hastily opened it. A

tall, heavily veiled figure, clad in widow’s weeds, stood before him, at

sight of which he started back, hardly believing his eyes.

“Grace!” he ejaculated; “Grace!” and held out his arms with an

involuntary movement of which he seemed next moment ashamed, for with a

sudden change of manner he became on the instant ceremonious, and

welcoming in his visitor with a low bow, he pushed forward a chair, with

mechanical politeness, and stammered with intense emotion:

“You are ill! Or your son! Some trouble threatens you or you would not

be here.”

“My son is well, and I—I am as well as usual,” answered the advancing

lady, taking the chair he offered her, though not without some

hesitation. “Clarke is with the horses in front and I have ventured—at

this late hour—to visit you, because I knew you would never come to me,

even if I sent for you, Oswald.”

The tone, the attitude, the whole aspect of the sweet yet dignified

woman before him, seemed to awaken an almost uncontrollable emotion in

the doctor. He leaned toward her and said in tones which seemed to have

a corresponding effect upon her: “You mistake, Grace. One word from you

would have brought me at any time; that is, if I could have been of any

service to you. I have never ceased to love you—” He staggered back but

quickly recovered himself—“and never shall.”

“I do not understand you,” protested Mrs. Unwin, half rising. “I did not

come—I did not expect—” her agitation prevented her from proceeding.

“I do not understand myself!” exclaimed he, walking a step away. “I

never thought to speak such words to you again. Forgive me, Grace; you

have a world of wrong to pardon in me; add another mark of forbearance

to your list and make me more than ever your debtor.” She drooped her

head and sitting down again seemed to be endeavoring to regain her

self-possession.

“It was for Clarke,” she murmured, “that I came.”

“I might have known it,” cried the doctor.

“He would not speak for himself, and Polly, the darling child, has

become so dazed by the experiences of these last two months that she no

longer knows her duty. Besides, she seems afraid to speak to you again;

says that you frighten her, and that you no longer love her.”

“I never have loved her,” he muttered, but so low the words were not

carried to the other’s ears.

“Have you learned in your absence what has taken place here in

Hamilton?” she asked.

Rousing himself, for his thoughts were evidently not on the subject she

advanced, he took a seat near her and composed himself to listen, but

meeting her soft eyes shining through the heavy crape she wore, he said

with a slight appealing gesture:

“Let me see your face, Grace, before I attempt to answer. I have not

dared to look upon it for fourteen years, but now, with some of the

barriers down which held us inexorably apart, I may surely be given the

joy of seeing your features once more, even if they show nothing but

distrust and animosity toward me.”

She hesitated, and his face grew pale with the struggle of his feelings,

then her slim white hand went up and almost before he could realize it,

they sat face to face.

“O Grace,” he murmured; “the same! always the same; the one woman in all

the world to me! But I will not distress you. Other griefs lie nearer

your heart than any I could hope to summon up, and I do not know as I

would have it otherwise if I could. Proceed with your questions. They

were in reference to Clarke, I believe.”

“No, I only asked if you had kept yourself acquainted with what has been

going on in Hamilton since you left. Did you know that Ephraim Earle was

living again in the old house, and that Polly is rapidly losing her

fortune owing to his insatiable demands for money?”

“No!” He sprang to his feet and his whole attitude showed distress and

anger. “I told her to make the fellow give her a proof, an unmistakable

proof, that he was indeed the brilliant inventor of whose fame we have

all been proud.”

“And he furnished it, Oswald. You mean the medal which he received from

France, do you not? Well, he had it among his treasures in the cave, and

he showed it to her one day. It was the one thing, he declared, from

which he had never parted in all his adventurous career.”

“You are dreaming! he never had _that_! Could not have had _that_! It

was some deception he practised upon you!” exclaimed the doctor, aghast

and trembling.

But she shook her lovely head, none the less beautiful because her locks

were becoming silvered on the forehead, and answered: “It was the very

medal we saw in our youth, with the French arms and inscription upon it.

Dr. Sutherland examined it, and Mr. Crouse says he remembers it well.

Besides it had his name engraved upon it and the year.”

The doctor, to whom her words seemed to come in a sort of nightmare,

sank into his chair and stared upon her with such horror that she would

have recoiled from him in dismay had he been any other man than Oswald

Izard, so long loved and so long and passionately borne with,

notwithstanding his mysterious words and startling inconsistencies of

conduct.

“You do not know why this surprises me,” he exclaimed, and hung his

head. “I was so sure,” he added below his breath, “that this was some

impostor, and not Ephraim Earle.”

“I know,” she proceeded, after a moment, as soon, indeed, as she thought

he could understand her words, “that you did not credit his claims and

refused to recognize him as Polly’s father. But I had no idea you felt

so deeply on the subject or I might have written to you long ago. You

have some reasons for your doubts, Oswald; for I see that your

convictions are not changed by this discovery. What is it? I am ready to

listen if no one else is, for he is blighting Polly’s life and at the

same time shattering my son’s hopes.”

“I said—I swore to Polly that I had no reason,” he declared, gloomily

dropping his eyes and assuming at once the defensive.

But she with infinite tact and a smile he could not but meet, answered

softly: “I know that too; but I am better acquainted with you than she

is, and I am confident that you have had some cause for keeping the

truth from Polly, which will not apply to me. Is there not something

connected with those old days—something, perhaps, known only to you,

which would explain your horror of this man’s pretensions and help her

possibly out of her dilemma? Are you afraid to confide it to me, when

perhaps in doing so you would make two innocent ones happy?”

“I cannot talk about it,” he replied with almost fierce emphasis.

“Ephraim Earle and I—” He started, caught her by the arm and turned his

white face toward the door. “Hush!” he whispered, and stooped his ear to

listen. She watched him with terror and amazement, but he soon settled

back, and waving his hand remarked quietly:

“The boughs are losing their leaves and the vines sometimes tap against

the windows like human fingers. You were saying——”

“_You_ were saying that Ephraim Earle and you——”

But his blank looks showed that he had neither understood nor followed

her. “Were you not good friends?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, oh, yes,” he answered hastily; “too good friends for me to be

mistaken now.”

“Then it is from his looks alone that you conclude him to be an

impostor?”

The doctor did not respond, and she, seeming quite helpless to move, sat

for a minute silently contemplating his averted face.

“I know you did not talk with him long. Nor have I attempted to do so,

yet in spite of everybody’s opinion but your own I have come to the same

conclusion as yourself, that he is not Polly’s father.”

The doctor’s lips moved, but no words issued from them.

“That is why I press the matter; that is why I am here to pray and

entreat you to save Polly and to save my son. _Prove this man a

villain_, and force him to loose his hold upon the Earle estate before

Polly’s money is all gone!”

“Is it then a question of money?” asked the doctor. “Two months have

passed and you are afraid that he will dispose of twenty thousand

dollars!”

“He has already disposed of ten of them and the rest——”

“Disposed of ten thousand dollars!”

“Yes, for old gambling debts, pressing matters which Polly could not let

stand without shame.”

“The wretch!” leapt from the doctor’s lips. “Was there no one to advise

her, to forbid——”

“You were gone and Clarke was afraid of seeming mercenary. I think the

girl’s secret terror of her father and her lack of filial affection

drove her to yield so readily to his demands for money.”

An inarticulate word was the doctor’s sole reply.

“And that is not the whole. Clarke’s career is endangered and the

prospect of his carrying out his plans almost gone. Mr. Earle—I have

called him so—does not hesitate to say that he must have five thousand

dollars more by next October. If Polly accedes to this demand, and I do

not think we can influence her to refuse him, Clarke will have to forego

all hopes of becoming a member of the Cleveland firm, for he will never

take her last five thousand, even if she urges him to it on her knees.”

“It is abominable, unprecedented!” fumed the doctor, rising and pacing

the room. “But I can do nothing, prove nothing. He has been received as

Ephraim Earle, and is too strongly intrenched in his position for me to

drive him out.”

The absolutism with which this was said made his words final; and she

slowly rose.

“And so I too have failed,” she cried; but seeing his face and noting

the yearning look with which he regarded her, she summoned up her

courage afresh and finally said: “They have told me—I have heard—that

this man made some strange threats to you in parting. Is that the reason

why you do not like to interfere or to proclaim more widely your opinion

of him?”

The doctor smiled, but there was no answer in the smile and she went

vehemently on: “Such threats, Oswald, are futile. No one less sensitive

than you would heed them for a moment. You are above any one’s

aspersion, even on an old charge like that.”

“Men will believe anything,” he muttered.

“But men will not believe that. Do we not all know how faithfully you

attended Mrs. Earle in her last illness, and how much skill you

displayed? I remember it well, if the rest of the community do not, and

I say you need not fear anything this man can bring up against you. His

influence in town does not go so far as that.”

But the doctor with unrelieved sadness answered with decision, “I cannot

make this man my enemy; he has too venomous a tongue.” And she watching

him knew that Polly’s doom was fixed and her son’s also, and began

slowly to draw down her veil.

But he, noticing this action, though he had seemed to be blind to many

others she had made, turned upon her with such an entreating look that

she faltered and let her hand fall in deep emotion.

“Grace,” he pleaded, “Grace, I cannot let you go without one kindly word

to make the solitude which must settle upon this room after your

departure, less unendurable. You distrust me.”

“Does this visit here look like distrust?” she gently asked.

“And you hate me! But——”

“Do I look as if I hated you?” she again interposed, this time with the

look of an angel in her sad but beautiful eyes.

“Ah, Grace,” he cried, with the passion of a dozen years let loose in

one uncontrollable flood, “you cannot love me, not after all these

years. When we parted——”

“At whose instigation, Oswald?”

“At mine, at mine, I know it. Do not reproach me with that, for I could

not have done differently.—I thought, I dreamed that it was with almost

as much pain on your side as mine. But you married, Grace, married very

soon.”

“Still at whose instigation?”

“Again at mine. I dared not keep you from any comfort which life might

have in store for you, and the years which you have spent in happiness

and honor must have obliterated some of the traces of that love which

bound our lives together fifteen years ago.”

“Oswald, Mr. Unwin was a good husband and Clarke has always been like an

own son to me, but——”

“Oh,” interposed the doctor, starting back before the beauty of her

face, “don’t tell me that a woman’s heart can, like a man’s, be the

secret sepulchre of a living passion for fifteen years. I could not bear

to know that! The struggle which I waged fourteen years ago I have not

strength to wage now. No! no! woman of my dreams, of my heart’s dearest

emotion, loved once, loved now, loved always! tell me anything but

_that_,—tell me even that you hate me.”

Her eyes, which had fallen before his, swam suddenly with tears and she

started as if for protection toward the door.

“Oh, I must go,” she cried. “Clarke is waiting; it is not wise; it is

not seemly for me to be here.” But the doctor, into whom a fiery glow

had entered, was beside her before she could reach the threshold. “No,

no,” he pleaded, “not till you have uttered one word, one whisper of the

old story; one assurance—Ah, now I am entreating for the very thing, the

existence of which, I deprecated a few minutes ago! It shows how

unbalanced I am. Yes, yes, you can go; but, Grace, if you have ever

doubted that I loved you, listen to this one confession. Ever since the

day we parted, necessarily parted, fourteen years ago, I have never let

a week go by till these last few ones during which I have been away from

Hamilton, that I have not given up two nights a week to thinking of you

and watching you.”

“Watching me!”

“Twice a week for fourteen years have I sat for an hour in Mrs.

Fanning’s west window that overlooks your gardens. Thence, unnoted by

everybody, I have noted you, if by happy chance you walked in the

garden; and if you did not, noted the house that held you and the man

who sheltered your youth.”

“Oswald,”—she felt impelled to speak, “if—if you loved me like this, why

did you send me that cruel letter two days after our engagement? Why did

you bid me forget you and marry some one else, if you had not forgotten

me and did not wish me to release you in order that you might satisfy

your own wishes in another direction?”

“Grace, if I could explain myself now I could have explained myself

then. Fate, which is oftenest cruel to the most loving and passionate

hearts, has denied me the privilege of marriage, and when I found it

out——”

“True, you have never married. Cruel, cruel one! Why did you not let me

know that you would always live single for my sake; it would have made

it possible for me to have lived single for yours.”

The doctor with the love of a lifetime burning in his eyes, shook his

head at this, and answered: “That would have shown me to be a selfish

egotist, and I did not want to be other than generous to you. No, Grace,

all was done for the best; and this is for the best, this greeting and

this second parting. The love which we have acknowledged to-night will

be a help and not a hindrance to us both. But we will meet again, not

very soon, for I cannot trust a strength which has yielded so completely

at your first smile.”

“Farewell, then, Oswald,” she murmured. “It has taken the sting from my

heart to know that you did not leave me from choice.”

And he, striving to speak, broke down, and it was she who had to show

her strength by gently leaving him and finding her own way to the door.

But no sooner had the night blast blowing in from the graveyard struck

him, than he stumbled in haste to the threshold, and drawing her with a

frenzied grasp from the path she was blindly taking toward the graves,

led her from that path to the high road, where Clarke was waiting in

some anxiety for the end of this lengthy interview. As the doctor gave

her up and saw her taken in charge by her son, he said with a thrilling

emphasis not soon to be forgotten by either of the two who listened to

them:

“Try every means, and be sure you bid Polly to try every means, to rid

yourselves of the bondage of this interloper. If all fails, come to me.

But do not come till every other hope is dead.”