THE DEAF MAN.
The inquest was held, and the jury pronounced the double crime murder by
persons unknown, but with strong suspicion resting on Andrew Zane and an
unknown laborer, who had left Pettit's or Treaty Island, at night, in an
open boat with William Zane and Sayler Rainey. A reward was offered for
Andrew Zane and the laborer.
The will of the deceased persons made Andrew Zane full legatee of both
estates, and left a life interest in the Queen Street house, and $2000 a
year to "Agnes Wilt, my ward and housekeeper." The executors of the Zane
estate were named as Agnes Wilt, Rev. Silas Van de Lear, and Duff
Salter. The two dead men were interred together in the old Presbyterian
burial-ground, and after a month or two of diminishing excitement,
Kensington settled down to the idea that there was a great mystery
somewhere; that Andrew Zane was probably guilty; but that the principal
evidence against him was his own flight.
As to Agnes, there was only one respectable opinion--that she was a
superb work of nature and triumph of womanhood, notwithstanding romantic
and possibly awkward circumstances of origin and relation. All men, of
whatever time of life and for whatsoever reason, admired her--the mean
and earthy if only for her mould, the morally discerning for her
beautiful quality that pitied, caressed, encouraged, or elevated all who
came within her sphere.
"Preachers of the Gospel ought to have such wives," said the Rev. Silas
Van de Lear, looking at his son Calvin, "as Agnes Wilt. She is the most
handy churchwoman in all my ministration in Kensington, which is now
forty years. Besides being pious, and virtuous, and humble before God,
she is very comely to the eye, and possesses a house and an independent
income. A wife like that would naturally help a young minister to get a
higher call."
Young Calvin, who was expected to succeed his father in the venerable
church close by, and was studying divinity, said with much cool
maturity:
"Pa, I've taken it all in. She's the only single girl in Kensington
worth proposing to. It's true that we don't know just who she is, but
it's not that I'm so much afraid of as her, her--in short, her piety."
"Piety does not stand in the way of marriage," answered the old man, who
was both bold and prudent, wise and sincere. "In the covenant of God
nothing is denied to his saints in righteousness. The sense of wedded
pleasure, the beauty that delights the eye, love, appetite, children,
and financial independence--all are ours, no less as of the Elect than
as worldly creatures. The love of God in the heart warms men and women
toward each other."
"Oh, as to that!" exclaimed Calvin, "I've been warmed toward Miss Agnes
since I was a boy. I think she is superb. But she is a little too good
for me. She looks at me whenever I talk to her, whereas the proper way
of humility would be to look down. She has been in love with Andrew
Zane, you know!"
"That," said the preacher, "is probably off; though I never discovered
in Andrew more evil than a light heart and occasional rebellion. If she
loves him still, do not be in haste to jar her sensibility. It is
thoughtfulness which engenders love."
The young women of Kensington were divided about Agnes Wilt. The poorer
girls thought her perfect. But some marriageable and some married women,
moving in her own sphere of society, criticised her popularity, and said
she must be artful to control so many men. There are no depths to which
jealousy cannot go in a small suburban society. Agnes, as an orphan, had
felt it since childhood, but nothing had ever happened until now to
concentrate slander as well as sympathy upon her. It was told abroad
that she had been the mistress of her deceased benefactor, who had
fallen by the hands of his infuriated son. Even the police authorities
gave some slight consideration to this view. Old people remarked: "If
she has been deceiving people, she will not stop now. She will have
other secret lovers."
Inquiries had been made for some time as to who the unknown executor,
Duff Salter, might be, when one day Rev. Mr. Van de Lear walked over to
the Zane house with a broad-shouldered, grave, silent-eyed man, who wore
a very long white beard reaching to his middle. As he was also tall and
but little bent, he had that mysterious union of strength and age which
was perfected by his expression of long and absolute silence.
"Agnes," said Mr. Van de Lear, "this is an old Scotch-Irish friend and
classmate of the late Mr. Zane, Duff Salter of Arkansas. He cannot hear
what I have said, for he is almost stone deaf. However, go through the
motions of shaking hands. I am told he has heard very little of anything
for the past ten years. An explosion in a quicksilver mine broke his
ear-drums."
Agnes, dressed in deep black, shook hands with the grave stranger
dutifully, and said:
"I am sure you are welcome, sir."
Mr. Salter looked at her closely and gently, and seemed to be pleased
with the inspection, for he took a small gold box from his pocket,
unlocked it and sniffed a pinch of snuff, and then gave a sneeze, which
he articulated, plain as speech, into the words: "Jericho! Jericho!"
Then placing the box in the pocket of his long coat, he remarked:
"Miss Agnes, as one of the executors is a lady, and another is our
venerable friend here, who has no inclination to attend to the
settlement of Mr. Zane's estate, it will devolve upon me to examine the
whole subject. I am a stranger in the East. As Mr. Van de Lear may have
told you, I don't hear anything. Will I be welcome as a boarder under
your roof as long as I am looking into my old friend's books and
papers?"
"Not only welcome, but a protection to us, sir," answered Agnes.
He took a set of ivory tablets from his pocket, with a pencil, and
handing it to her politely, said:
"Please write your answer."
She wrote "Yes."
The deaf lodger gave as little trouble as could have been expected. He
had a bedroom, and moved a large secretary desk into it, and sat there
all day looking at figures. If he ever wanted to make an inquiry, he
wrote it on the tablets, and in the evening had it read and answered.
Agnes was a good deal of the time preoccupied, and Podge Byerly, who
wrote as neatly as copper-plate, answered these inquiries, and conducted
a little conversation of her own. Podge was a slender blonde, with fine
blue eyes and a mischievous, sylph-like way of coming and going. Her
freedom of motion and address seemed to concern the stranger. One day
she wrote, after putting down the answer to a business inquiry:
"Are you married?"
He hesitated some time and wrote back, "I hope not."
She retorted, "Could one forget if one was married?"
He replied on the same tablet: "Not when he tried."
Podge rubbed it all off, and thought a minute, and then concluded that
evening's correspondence:
"You are an old tease!"
The next morning, as usual, she wrapped herself up warmly and took the
omnibus for her school, and saw him watching her out of the upper
window. That night, instead of any inquiries, he stalked down in his
worked slippers--the dead man's--and long dressing gown, and, after
smiling at all, took Podge Byerly's hand and looked at it. This time he
spoke in a sweet, modulated voice,
"Very pretty!"
She was about to reply, when he gave her the ivory tablet, and put his
finger on his lip.
She wrote, "Did you ever fight a duel?"
He shook his head "No."
She wrote again, "What else do they do in Arkansas?"
He replied, "They love."
Then Mr. Duff Salter sneezed very loudly, "Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!"
Podge ran off at such a serious turn of responses, but was too much of a
woman not to be lured back of her own will. He wrote later in the
evening this touching query:
"How do the birds sing now? Are they all dumb?"
She answered, "Many can hear who never heard them."
He wrote again, "Are you suspicious?"
She replied, "_Very_. Are you?"
He shook his head "No."
"I believe he _is_," said Podge, turning to Agnes, who had entered. "He
looks as if he had asked that question of himself."
Duff Salter seized his handkerchief and sneezed into it, "Jericho-o!
Jericho-wo!"
Podge was sure he was suspicious the next night when she read on his
tablets the rather imputative remark,
"Is there anything demoralizing in teaching public schools?"
She replied tartly, "Yes, stupid old visitors and parents!"
"Excuse me!" he wrote; "I meant politicians."
She replied in the same spirit as before, "I think politicians are
divine!"
Duff Salter looked a little wondering out of those calm gray eyes and
his strong, yet benevolent Scotch-Irish countenance. Podge, who now
talked freely with Agnes in his presence, said confidently:
"I believe I can tantalize this good old granny by giving him doubts
about me! I am real bad, Aggy; you know that! It is no story to tell
it!"
"Oh! we are both bad enough to try to improve," exclaimed Agnes
absently.
"Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter.
He came down every evening, and began respectfully to bow to Agnes and
to smile on Podge, and then stretched his feet out to the ottoman, drew
his tablets up to the small table and proceeded to write. They hallooed
into his ear once or twice, but he said he was deaf as a mill-stone, and
might be cursed to his face and wouldn't understand it. They had formed
a pleasing opinion of him, not unmixed with curiosity, when one night he
wrote on the back of a piece of paper:
"Have you any idea who wrote this anonymous note to me?"
Podge Byerly took the note and found in a woman's handwriting these
words:
"Mr. Duff Salter, I suppose you know where you are. Your hostesses
are very insinuating and artful--and what else, _you can find out_!
One man has been murdered in that family; another has disappeared.
They say in Kensington the house of Zane is haunted.
"A WARNER."
Podge read the note, and her tears dropped upon it. He moved forward as
if to speak to her, but correcting himself hastily, he wrote upon the
tablets:
"Not even a suspicious person is affected the least by an anonymous
letter. I only keep it that possibly I may detect the sender!"