Ellen seemed to understand my anxiety about Mrs. Packard and to
sympathize with it. That afternoon as I passed her in the hall she
whispered softly:
“I have just been unpacking that bag and putting everything back into
place. She told me she had packed it in readiness to go with Mr. Packard
if he desired it at the last minute.”
I doubted this final statement, but the fact that the bag had been
unpacked gave me great relief. I began to look forward with much
pleasure to a night of unbroken rest.
Alas! rest was not for me yet. Relieved as to Mrs. Packard, I found my
mind immediately reverting to the topic which had before engrossed it,
though always before in her connection. The mystery of the so-called
ghosts had been explained, but not the loss of the bonds, which had
driven my poor neighbors mad. This was still a fruitful subject of
thought, though I knew that such well-balanced and practical minds as
Mayor Packard’s or Mr. Steele’s would have but little sympathy with
the theory ever recurring to me. Could this money be still in the
house?--the possibility of such a fact worked and worked upon my
imagination till I grew as restless as I had been over the mystery of
the ghosts and presently quite as ready for action.
Possibly the hurried glimpse I had got of Miss Thankful’s countenance a
little while before, in the momentary visit she paid to the attic
window at which I had been accustomed to see either her or her sister
constantly sit, inspired me with my present interest in this old and
wearing trouble of theirs and the condition into which it had thrown
their minds. I thought of their nights of broken rest while they were
ransacking the rooms below and testing over and over the same boards,
the same panels for the secret hiding-place of their lost treasure,
of their foolish attempts to scare away all other intruders, and the
racking of nerve and muscle which must have attended efforts so out of
keeping with their age and infirmities.
It would be natural to regard the whole matter as an hallucination on
their part, to disbelieve in the existence of the bonds, and to regard
Miss Thankful’s whole story to Mrs. Packard as the play of a diseased
imagination.
But I could not, would not, carry my own doubts to this extent. The
bonds had been in existence; Miss Thankful had seen them; and the one
question calling for answer now was, whether they had been long ago
found and carried off, or whether they were still within the reach of
the fortunate hand capable of discovering their hiding-place.
The nurse who, according to Miss Thankful, had wakened such dread in
the dying man’s breast as to drive him to the attempt which had ended
in this complete loss of the whole treasure, appeared to me the chief
factor in the first theory. If any one had ever found these bonds, it
was she; how, it was not for me to say, in my present ignorant state
of the events following the reclosing of the house after this old man’s
death and burial. But the supposition of an utter failure on the part
of this woman and of every other subsequent resident of the house to
discover this mysterious hiding-place, wakened in me no real instinct of
search. I felt absolutely and at once that any such effort in my present
blind state of mind would be totally unavailing. The secret trap and
the passage it led to, with all the opportunities they offered for the
concealment of a few folded documents, did not, strange as it may appear
at first blush, suggest the spot where these papers might be lying
hid. The manipulation of the concealed mechanism and the difficulties
attending a descent there, even on the part of a well man, struck me
as precluding all idea of any such solution to this mystery. Strong
as dying men sometimes are in the last flickering up of life in the
speedily dissolving frame, the lowering of this trap, and, above all,
the drawing of it back into place, which I instinctively felt would be
the hardest act of the two, would be beyond the utmost fire or force
conceivable in a dying man. No, even if he, as a member of the family,
knew of this subterranean retreat, he could not have made use of it. I
did not even accept the possibility sufficiently to approach the place
again with this new inquiry in mind. Yet what a delight lay in the
thought of a possible finding of this old treasure, and the new life
which would follow its restoration to the hands which had once touched
it only to lose it on the instant.
The charm of this idea was still upon me when I woke the next morning.
At breakfast I thought of the bonds, and in the hour which followed, the
work I was doing for Mrs. Packard in the library was rendered difficult
by the constant recurrence of the one question into my mind: “What would
a man in such a position do with the money he was anxious to protect
from the woman he saw coming and secure to his sister who had just
stepped next door?” When a moment came at last in which I could really
indulge in these intruding thoughts, I leaned back in my chair and tried
to reconstruct the room according to Mrs. Packard’s description of it at
that time. I even pulled my chair over to that portion of the room where
his bed had stood, and, choosing the spot where his head would naturally
lie, threw back my own on the reclining chair I had chosen, and
allowed my gaze to wander over the walls before me in a vague hope of
reproducing, in my mind, the ideas which must have passed through his
before he rose and thrust those papers into their place of concealment.
Alas! those walls were barren of all suggestion, and my eyes went
wandering through the window before me in a vague appeal, when a sudden
remembrance of his last moments struck me sharply and I bounded up with
a new thought, a new idea, which sent me in haste to my room and brought
me down again in hat and jacket. Mrs. Packard had once said that the
ladies next door were pleased to have callers, and advised me to visit
them. I would test her judgment in the matter. Early though it was, I
would present myself at the neighboring door and see what my reception
would be. The discovery I had made in my unfortunate accident in the old
entry way should be my excuse. Apologies were in order from us to them;
I would make these apologies.
I was prepared to confront poverty in this bare and comfortless-looking
abode of decayed gentility. But I did not expect quite so many evidences
of it as met my eyes as the door swung slowly open some time after my
persistent knock, and I beheld Miss Charity’s meager figure outlined
against walls and a flight of uncarpeted stairs such as I had never
seen before out of a tenement house. I may have dropped my eyes, but I
recovered myself immediately. Marking the slow awakening of pleasure
in the wan old face as she recognized me, I uttered some apology for my
early call and then waited to see if she would welcome me in.
She not only did so, but did it with such a sudden breaking up of her
rigidity into the pliancy of a naturally hospitable nature, that my
heart was touched, and I followed her into the great bare apartment,
which must have once answered the purposes of a drawing-room, with very
different feelings from those with which I had been accustomed to look
upon her face in the old attic window.
“I should like to see your sister, too,” I said, as she hastily, but
with a certain sort of ceremony, too, pushed forward one of the ancient
chairs which stood at long intervals about the room. “I have not been
your neighbor very long, but I should like to pay my respects to both of
you.”
I had purposely spoken with the formal precision she had been accustomed
to in her earlier days, and I could see how perceptibly her self-respect
returned at this echo of the past, giving her a sudden dignity which
made me forget for the moment her neglected appearance.
“I will summon my sister,” she returned, disappearing quietly from the
room.
I waited fifteen minutes, then Miss Thankful entered, dressed in her
very best, followed by my first acquaintance in her same gown, but with
a little cap on her head. The cap, despite its faded ribbons carefully
pressed out but with too cold an iron, gave her an old-time fashionable
air which for the moment created the impression that she might have been
a beauty and a belle in her early days, which I afterward discovered to
be true.
It was Miss Thankful, however, who had the personal presence, and it was
she who now expressed their sense of the honor, pushing forward another
chair than that from which I had risen, with the remark:
“Take this, I pray. Many an honored guest has occupied this seat. Let us
see you in it.”
I could detect no difference between the one she offered and the one in
which I had just sat, but I at once stepped forward and took the chair
she proffered. She bowed and Miss Charity bowed, and then they seated
themselves side by side on the hair-cloth sofa, which was the only other
article of furniture in the room.
“We are--we are preparing to move,” stammered Miss Charity, a faint
flush tingeing her faded cheeks, as she caught the involuntary glance I
had cast about me.
Miss Thankful bridled and gave her sister a look of open rebuke. She
had, as one could instantly see from her strong features and purposeful
ways, been a woman of decided parts and of strict, upright character.
Weakened as she was, the shadow of an untruth disturbed her. Her pride
ran in a different groove from that of her once over-complimented,
over-fostered sister. She was going to add a protest in words to that
expressed by her gesture, but I hastily prevented this by coming at once
to the point of my errand.
“My excuse for this early call,” I said, this time addressing Miss
Thankful, “lies in an adventure which occurred to me yesterday in the
adjoining house.” It was painful to see how they both started, and how
they instinctively caught each at the other’s hand as they sat side
by side on the sofa, as if only thus they could bear the shock of what
might be coming next. I had to nerve myself to proceed. “You know, or
rather I gather from your kind greetings that you know that I am at
present staying with Mrs. Packard. She is very kind and we spend many
pleasant hours together; but of course some of the time I have to be
alone, and then I try to amuse myself by looking about at the various
interesting things which are scattered through the house.”
A gasp from Miss Charity, a look still more expressive from Miss
Thankful. I hastened to cut their suspense short.
“You know the little cabinet they have placed in the old entrance
pointing this way? Well, I was looking at that when the whim seized
me--I hardly know how--to press one of the knobs in the molding which
runs about the doorway, when instantly everything gave way under me
and I fell into a deep hole which had been scooped out of the
alley-way--nobody knows for what.”
A cry and they were on their feet, still holding hands and endeavoring
to show nothing but concern for my disaster.
“Oh, I wasn’t hurt,” I smiled. “I was frightened, of course, but not
so much as to lose my curiosity. When I got to my feet again, I looked
about in this surprising hole--”
“It was our uncle’s way of reaching his winecellar,” Miss Thankful
explained with great dignity as she and her sister sank back into their
seats. “He had some remarkable old wine, and, as he was covetous of it,
he conceived this way of securing it from everybody’s knowledge but
his own. It was a strange way, but he was a little touched,” she added,
laying a slow impressive finger on her forehead, “just a little touched
here.”
The short, significant glance she cast at Charity as she said this,
and the little smile she gave were to give me to understand that this
weakness had descended in the family. I felt my heart contract; my
self-imposed task was a harder one than I had anticipated, but I could
not shirk it now. “Did this wine-cellar you mention run all the way to
this house?” I lightly inquired. “I stumbled on a passage leading
here, which I thought you ought to know is now open to any one in Mayor
Packard’s house. Of course, it will be closed soon,” I hastened to add
as Miss Charity hurriedly rose at her sister’s quick look and anxiously
left the room. “Mrs. Packard will see to that.”
“Yes, yes, I have no doubt; she’s a very good woman, a very fair woman,
don’t you think so, Miss--”
“My name is Saunders.”
“A very good name. I knew a fine family of that name when I was younger.
There was one of them--his name was Robert--” Here she rambled on for
several minutes as if this topic and no other filled her whole mind;
then, as if suddenly brought back to what started it, she uttered in
sudden anxiety, “You think well of Mrs. Packard? You have confidence in
her?”
I allowed myself to speak with all the enthusiasm she so greedily
desired.
“Indeed I have,” I cried. “I think she can be absolutely depended on
to do the right thing every time. You are fortunate in having such good
neighbors at the time of this mishap.”
At this minute Miss Charity reentered. Her panting condition, as well as
the unsettled position of the cap on her head, told very plainly where
she had been. Reseating herself, she looked at Miss Thankful and Miss
Thankful looked at her, but no word passed. They evidently understood
each other.
“I’m obliged to Mrs. Packard,” now fell from Miss Thankful’s lips, “and
to you, too, young lady, for acquainting us with this accident. The
passage we extended ourselves after taking up our abode in this house.
We--we did not see why we should not profit by our ancestor’s old and
undiscovered wine-cellar to secure certain things which were valuable to
us.”
Her hesitation in uttering this final sentence--a sentence all the more
marked because naturally, she was a very straightforward person--awoke
my doubt and caused me to ask myself what she meant by this word
“secure.” Did she mean, as circumstances went to show and as I had
hitherto believed, that they had opened up this passage for the purpose
of a private search in their old home for the lost valuables they
believed to be concealed there? Or had they, under some temporary
suggestion of their disorganized brains, themselves hidden away among
the rafters of this unexplored spot the treasure they believed lost and
now constantly bewailed?
The doubt thus temporarily raised in my mind made me very uneasy for a
moment, but I soon dismissed it and dropping this subject for the nonce,
began to speak of the houses as they now looked and of the changes which
had evidently been made in them since they had left the one and entered
the other.
“I understand,” I ventured at last, “that in those days this house also
had a door opening on the alley-way. Where did it lead--do you mind
my asking?--into a room or into a hallway? I am so interested in old
houses.”
They did not resent this overt act of curiosity; I had expected Miss
Thankful to, but she didn’t. Some recollection connected with the name
of Saunders had softened her heart toward me and made her regard with
indulgence an interest which she might otherwise have looked upon as
intrusive.
“We long ago boarded up that door,” she answered. “It was of very little
use to us from our old library.”
“It looked into one of the rooms then?” I persisted, but with a wary
gentleness which I felt could not offend.
“No; there is no room there, only a passageway. But it has closets in
it, and we did not like to be seen going to them any time of day. The
door had glass panes in it, you know, just like a window. It made the
relations so intimate with people only a few feet away.”
“Naturally,” I cried, “I don’t wonder you wanted to shut them off if you
could.” Then with a sudden access of interest which I vainly tried to
hide, I thought of the closets and said with a smile, “The closets were
for china, I suppose; old families have so much china.”
Miss Charity nodded, complacency in every feature; but Miss Thankful
thought it more decorous to seem to be indifferent in this matter.
“Yes, china; old pieces, not very valuable. We gave what we had of worth
to our sister when she married. We keep other things there, too, but
they are not important. We seldom go to those closets now, so we don’t
mind the darkness.”
“I--I dote on old china,” I exclaimed, carefully restraining myself from
appearing unduly curious. “Won’t you let me look at it? I know that it
is more valuable than you think. It will make me happy for the whole
day, if you will let me see these old pieces. They may not look
beautiful to you, you are so accustomed to them; but to me every one
must have a history, or a history my imagination will supply.”
Miss Charity looked gently but perceptibly frightened. She shook her
head, saying in her weak, fond tones:
“They are too dusty; we are not such housekeepers as we used to be; I am
ashamed--”
But Miss Thankful’s peremptory tones cut her short.
“Miss Saunders will excuse a little dust. We are so occupied,” she
explained, with her eye fixed upon me in almost a challenging way, “that
we can afford little time for unnecessary housework. If she wants to see
these old relics of a former day, let her. You, Charity, lead the way.”
I was trembling with gratitude and the hopes I had suppressed, but I
managed to follow the apologetic figure of the humiliated old lady with
a very good grace. As we quitted the room we were in, through a door
at the end leading into the dark passageway, I thought of the day when,
according to Mrs. Packard’s story, Miss Thankful had come running across
the alley and through this very place to astound her sister and nephew
in the drawing-room with the news of the large legacy destined so soon
to be theirs. That was two years ago, and to-day--I proceeded no further
with what was in my mind, for my interest was centered in the closet
whose door Miss Charity had just flung open.
“You see,” murmured that lady, “that we haven’t anything of
extraordinary interest to show you. Do you want me to hand some of them
down? I don’t believe that it will pay you.”
I cast a look at the shelves and felt a real disappointment. Not that
the china was of too ordinary a nature to attract, but that the pieces I
saw, and indeed the full contents of the shelves, failed to include what
I was vaguely in search of and had almost brought my mind into condition
to expect.
“Haven’t you another closet here?” I faltered. “These pieces are pretty,
but I am sure you have some that are larger and with the pattern more
dispersed--a platter or a vegetable dish.”
“No, no,” murmured Miss Charity, drawing back as she let the door slip
from her hand. “Really, Thankful,”--this to her sister who was
pulling open another door,--“the look of those shelves is positively
disreputable--all the old things we have had in the house for years.
Don’t--”
“Oh, do let me see that old tureen up on the top shelf,” I put in. “I
like that.”
Miss Thankful’s long arm went up, and, despite Miss Charity’s complaint
that it was too badly cracked to handle, it was soon down and placed in
my hands. I muttered my thanks, gave utterance to sundry outbursts of
enthusiasm, then with a sudden stopping of my heart-beats, I lifted the
cover and--
“Let me set it down,” I gasped, hurriedly replacing the cover. I was
really afraid I should drop it. Miss Thankful took it from me and rested
it on the edge of the lower shelf.
“Why, how you tremble, child!” she cried. “Do you like old Colonial blue
ware as well as that? If you do, you shall have this piece. Charity,
bring a duster, or, better, a damp cloth. You shall have it, yes, you
shall have it.”
“Wait!” I could hardly speak. “Don’t get a cloth yet. Come with me back
into the parlor, and bring the tureen. I want to see it in full light.”
They looked amazed, but they followed me as I made a dash for the
drawing-room, Miss Thankful with the tureen in her hands. I was quite
Mistress of myself before I faced them again, and, sitting down, took
the tureen on my lap, greatly to Miss Charity’s concern as to the injury
it might do my frock.
“There is something I must tell you about myself before I can accept
your gift,” I said.
“What can you have to tell us about yourself that could make us hesitate
to bestow upon you such an insignificant piece of old cracked china?”
Miss Thankful asked as I sat looking up at them with moist eyes and
wildly beating heart.
“Only this,” I answered. “I know what perhaps you had rather have had me
ignorant of. Mrs. Packard told me about the bonds you lost, and how you
thought them still in the house where your brother died, though no one
has ever been able to find them there. Oh, sit down,” I entreated, as
they both turned very pale and looked at each other in affright. “I
don’t wonder that you have felt their loss keenly; I don’t wonder that
you have done your utmost to recover them, but what I do wonder at is
that you were so sure they were concealed in the room where he lay that
you never thought of looking elsewhere. Do you remember, Miss Quinlan,
where his eyes were fixed at the moment of death?”
“On the window directly facing his bed.”
“Gazing at what?”
“Sky--no, the walls of our house.”
“Be more definite; at the old side door through which he could see the
closet shelves where this old tureen stood. During the time you had been
gone, he had realized his sinking condition, and, afraid of the nurse he
saw advancing down the street, summoned all his strength and rushed with
his treasure across the alley-way and put it in the first hiding-place
his poor old eyes fell on. He may have been going to give it to you; but
you had company, you remember, in here, and he may have heard voices.
Anyhow, we know that he put it in the tureen because--” here I lifted
the lid--“because--” I was almost as excited and trembling and beside
myself as they were--“because it is here now.”
They looked, then gazed in each other’s face and bowed their heads.
Silence alone could express the emotion of that moment. Then with
a burst of inarticulate cries, Miss Charity rose and solemnly began
dancing up and down the great room. Her sister looked on with grave
disapproval till the actual nature of the find made its way into her
bewildered mind, then she reached over and plunged her hand into the
tureen and drew out the five bonds which she clutched first to her
breast and then began proudly to unfold.
“Fifty thousand dollars!” she exclaimed. “We are rich women from
to-day,” and as she said it I saw the shrewdness creep beck into her
eyes and the long powerful features take on the expressive character
which they had so pitifully lacked up to the moment. I realized that
I had been the witness of a miracle. The reason, shattered, or, let us
say, disturbed by one shock, had been restored by another. The real Miss
Thankful stood before me. Meanwhile the weaker sister, dancing still,
was uttering jubilant murmurs to which her feet kept time with almost
startling precision. But as the other let the words I have recorded here
leave her lips, she came to a sudden standstill and approaching her lips
to Miss Thankful’s ear said joyfully:
“We must tell--oh,” she hastily interpolated as she caught her sister’s
eyes and followed the direction of her pointing finger, “we have not
thanked our little friend, our good little friend who has done us such
an inestimable service.” I felt her quivering arms fall round my neck,
as Miss Thankful removed the tureen and in words both reasonable and
kind expressed the unbounded gratitude which she herself felt.
“How came you to think? How came you to care enough to think?” fell from
her lips as she kissed me on the forehead. “You are a jewel, little Miss
Saunders, and some day--”
But I need not relate all that she said or all the extravagant things
Miss Charity did, or even my own delight, so much greater even than any
I had anticipated, when I first saw this possible ending of my suddenly
inspired idea. However, Miss Thankful’s words as we parted at the door
struck me as strange, showing that it would be a little while yet before
the full balance of her mind was restored.
“Tell everybody,” she cried; “tell Mrs. Packard and all who live in the
house; but keep it secret from the woman who keeps that little shop.
We are afraid of her; she haunts this neighborhood to get at these very
bonds. She was the nurse who cared for my brother, and it was to escape
her greed that he hid this money. If she knew that we had found these
our lives wouldn’t be safe. Wait till we have them in the bank.”
“Assuredly. I shall tell no one.”
“But you must tell those at home,” she smiled; and the beaming light in
her kindled eye followed me the few steps I had to take, and even into
the door.
So Bess had been the old man’s nurse’!