THE GHOST.
Spring broke on the snug little suburb, and buds and birds fulfilled
their appointments on the boughs of willows, ailanthuses, lindens, and
maples. Some peach-trees in the back yard of the Zane House hastened to
put on their pink scarves and bonnets, and the boys said that an old
sucker of Penn's Treaty Elm down in a ship-yard was fresh and blithsome
as a second wife. In the hearts and views of living people, too, spring
brought a budding of youthfulness and a gush of sap. Duff Salter
acknowledged it as he looked in Podge Byerly's blue eyes and felt her
hands as they wrapped his scarf around him, or buttoned his gloves.
Whispering, and without the tablets this time, he articulated:
"Happy for you, Mischief, that I am not young as these trees!"
"We'll have you set out!" screamed Podge, "like a piece of hale old
willow, and you'll grow again!"
Duff Salter frequently walked almost to her school with Podge Byerly,
which was far down in the old city. They seldom took the general cut
through Maiden and Laurel Streets to Second, but kept down the river
bank by Beach Street, to see the ship-yards and hear the pounding of
rivets and the merry adzes ringing, and see youngsters and old women
gathering chips, while the sails on the broad river came up on wind and
tide as if to shatter the pier-heads ere they bounded off.
In the afternoons Duff Salter sometimes called on Rev. Silas Van de
Lear, who had great expectations that Duff would build them a
much-required new church, with the highest spire in Kensington.
"Here, Brother Salter, is an historic spot," wrote the good old man. "I
shouldn't object to a spire on my church, with the figure of William
Penn on the summit. Friend William and his sons always did well by our
sect."
"Is it an established fact that he treated with the Indians in
Kensington?" asked Duff Salter, on his ivory tablets.
"Indisputable! Friend Penn took Thomas Fairman's house at
Shackamaxon--otherwise Eel-Hole--and in this pleasant springtime, April
4, 1683, he met King Tammany under the forest elm, with the savage
people in half-moon circles, looking at the healthy-fed and
business-like Quaker. There Tammany and his Indian allies surrendered
all the land between the Pennypack and Neshaminy."
"A Tammany haul!" interrupted young Calvin Van de Lear, rather
idiotically. "What did the shrewd William give?"
"Guns, scissors, knives, tongs, hoes, and Indian money, and
gew-gaws--not much. Philadelphia had no foundation then, and Shackamaxon
was an established place. We are the Knickerbockers here in
Kensington."
"An honest Quaker would not build a spire," wrote Duff Salter, with a
grim smile.
Duff Salter was well known to the gossips of Kensington as a fabulously
rich man, who had spent his youth partly in this district, and was of
Kensington parentage, but had roved away to Mexico as a sailor boy, or
clerk, or passenger, and refusing to return, had become a mule-driver in
the mines of cinnabar, and there had remained for years in nearly
heathen solitude, until once he arrived overland in Arkansas with a
train from Chihuahua, the whole of it, as was said, laden with silver
treasure, and his own property. He had been disappointed in love, and
had no one to leave his riches to. This was the story told by Reverend
Silas Van de Lear.
The people of Kensington were less concerned with the truth of this tale
than with the future intentions of the visitor.
"How long he tarries in Zane's homestead!" said the people that spring.
"Hasn't he settled that estate yet?"
"It never will be settled if he can help it," said public Echo, "as long
as there are two fine young women there, and one of them so fascinating
over men!"
Indeed, Duff Salter received letters, anonymous, of course--the
anonymous letter was then the suburban press--admonishing him to beware
of his siren hostess.
"_She has ruined two men_," said the elegant female handwriting before
observed. "_You must want to be the subject of a coroner's inquest. That
house is bloody and haunted, rich Mr. Duff Salter! Beware of Lady
Agnes, the murderess! Beware, too, of her accomplice, the insinuating
little Byerly!_"
Duff Salter walked out one day to make the tour of Kensington. He passed
out the agreeable old Frankford road, with its wayside taverns, and hay
carts, and passing omnibuses, and occasional old farm-like houses,
interspersed with newer residences of a city character, and he strolled
far up Cohocksink Creek till it meandered through billowy fields of
green, and skirted the edges of woods, and all the way was followed by a
path made by truant boys. Sitting down by a spring that gushed up at the
foot of a great sycamore tree, the grandly bearded traveller, all
flushed with the roses of exercise, made no unpleasing picture of a Pan
waiting for Echo by appointment, or holding talk with the grazing goats
of the poor on the open fields around him.
"How changed!" spoke the traveller aloud. "I have caught fishes all
along this brook, and waded up its bed in summer to cool my feet. The
girl was beside me whose slender feet in innocent exposure were placed
by mine to shame their coarser mould. We thought we were in love, or as
near it as are the outskirts to some throbbing town partly instinctive
with a coming civic destiny. Alas! the little brook that once ran
unvexed to the river, freshening green marshes at its outlet, has become
a sewer, discolored with dyes of factories, and closed around by
tenements and hovels till its purer life is over. My playmate, too,
flowed on to womanhood, till the denser social conditions shut her in;
she mingled the pure current of her life with another more turgid, and
dull-eyed children, like houses of the suburbs, are builded on her
bosom. I am alone, like this old tree, beside the spring where once I
was a sapling, and still, like its waters, youth wells and wells, and
keeps us yet both green in root. Come back, O Love! and freshen me, and,
like a rill, flow down my closing years!"
Duff Salter's shoulder was touched as he ceased to speak, and he found
young Calvin Van de Lear behind him.
"I have followed you out to the country," said the young man, howling in
the elder's ear, "because I wanted to talk to you aloud, as I couldn't
do in Kensington."
Duff Salter drew his storied ivory tablets on the divinity student, and
said, crisply, "Write!"
"No, old man, that's not my style. It's too slow. Besides, it admits of
nothing impressive being said, and I want to convince you."
"Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter. "Young man, if you stun my ear
that way a third time I'll knock you down. I'm deaf, it's true, but I'm
not a hallooing scale to try your lungs on. If you won't write, we can't
talk."
With impatience, yet smiling, Calvin Van de Lear wrote on the tablets,
"Have you seen the ghost?"
"Ghost?"
"Yes, the ghosts of the murdered men!"
"I never saw a ghost of anything in my life. What men?"
"William Zane and Sayler Rainey."
"Who has seen them?"
"Several people. Some say it's but one that has been seen. Zane's ghost
walks, anyway, in Kensington."
"What for?"
"The fishwomen and other superstitious people say, because their
murderers have not been punished."
"And the murderers are--"
"Those who survived and profited by the murder, of course?"
"Jer-ri-choo-woo!" exploded Duff Salter. "Young man," he wrote
deliberately, "you have an idle tongue."
"Friend Salter, you are blind as well as deaf. Do you know Miss Podge
Byerly?"
"No. Do you?"
"She's common! Agnes Wilt uses her as a stool-pigeon. She fetches, and
carries, and flies by night. One of the school directors shoved her on
the public schools for intimate considerations. Perhaps you'll see him
about the house if you look sharp and late some night."
"Jer-rich-co! Jericho!"
Duff Salter was decidedly red in the face, and his grave gray eyes
looked both fierce and convicted. He _had_ seen a school director
visiting the house, but thought it natural enough that he should take a
kind interest in one of the youthful and pretty teachers. The deaf man
returned to his pencil and tablets.
"Do you know, Mr. Van de Lear, that what you are saying is indictable
language? It would have exposed you to death where I have lived."
The young man tossed his head recklessly. Duff Salter now saw that his
usually sallow face was flushed up to the roots of his long dry hair and
almost colorless whiskers, as if he had been drinking liquors.
Forgetting to use the tablets, Calvin spoke aloud, but not in as high a
key as formerly:
"Mr. Salter, Agnes Wilt has no heart. She was a step-niece of the late
Mrs. Zane--her brother's daughter. The girl's father was a poor
professional man, and died soon after his child was born, followed at no
great distance to the grave by his widow. While a child, Agnes was cold
and subtle. She professed to love me--that was the understanding in our
childhood. She has forgotten me as she has forgotten many other men. But
she is beautiful, and I want to marry her. You can help me."
"What do you want with a cold and calculating woman?" wrote Duff Salter
stiffly. "What do you want particularly with such a dangerous woman--a
demon, as you indicate?"
"I want to save her soul, and retrieve her from wickedness. Upon my
word, old man, that's my only game. You see, to effect that object would
set me up at once with the church people. I'm told that a little
objection to my prospects in the governor's church begins to break out.
If I can marry Agnes Wilt, she will recover her position in Kensington,
and make me more welcome in families. I don't mind telling you that I
have been a little gay."
"That's nothing," wrote Duff Salter smilingly. "So were the sons of
Eli."
"Correct!" retorted Calvin. "I need a taming down, and only matrimony
can do it. Now, with your aid I can manage it. Miss Wilt does not fancy
me. She can be made to do so, however, by two causes."
"And they are--"
"Her fears and her avarice. I propose to bring this murder close home to
her. If not a principal in it, she is an undoubted accessory after the
fact. Andrew Zane paid her a visit the night the dead bodies were
discovered in the river."
"You are sure of this?"
"Perfectly. I have had a detective on his track; too late to arrest the
rascal, but the identity of a sailor man who penetrated into the house
by the coal-hole is established by the discovery of the clothing he
exchanged for that disguise--it was Andrew Zane. Concealment of that
fact from the law will make her an accessory."
"Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter, but with a pale face, and said:
"That fact established would be serious; but it would be a gratuitous
and vile act for you, who profess to love her."
"It is love that prompts me--love and pain! A divine anger, I may call
it. I propose to make myself her rescuer afterward, and establish myself
in her gratitude and confidence. You are to help me do this by watching
the house from the inside."
"Dishonorable!"
"You were the friend of William Zane, the murdered man. Every obligation
of friendship impels you to discover his murderer. You are rich; lend me
money to continue my investigations. I know this is a cool proposition;
but it is better than spending it on churches."
"Very well," wrote Duff Salter, "as the late Mr. Zane's executor, I will
spend any proper sum of money to inflict retribution upon his injurers.
I will watch the house."
They went home through Palmer Street, on which stood the little brick
church--the street said to be occasionally haunted by Governor Anthony
Palmer's phantom coach and four, which was pursued by his twenty-one
children in plush breeches and Panama hats, crying, "Water lots! water
fronts! To let! to lease!"
As Duff Salter entered the house he saw the school director indicated by
Calvin Van de Lear sitting in the parlor with Podge Byerly. For the
first time Duff Salter noticed that they looked both intimate and
confused. He tried to reason himself out of this suspicion. "Pshaw," he
said; "it was my uncharitable imagination. I'll go back, as if to get
something, and look more carefully."
As the deaf man reopened the parlor-door he saw the school director
making a motion as if to embrace Podge, who was full of blushes and
appearing to shrink away.
"There's no imagination about that," thought Duff Salter. "If I could
only hear well enough my ears might counsel me."
He felt dejected, and his suspicions colored everything--a most
deplorable state of mind for a gentleman. Agnes, too, looked guilty, as
he thought, and hardly addressed a smile to him as he passed up to his
room.
Duff Salter put on his slippers, lighted his gas, drew the curtains down
and set the door ajar, for in the increasing warmth of spring his grate
fire was almost an infliction.
"I have not been wise nor just," he said to himself. "My pleasing
reception in this house, and feminine arts, have altogether obliterated
my great duty, which was to avenge my friend. Yes, suspicion was my
duty. I should have been suspicious from the first. Even this vicious
young Van de Lear, shallow as he is, becomes my unconscious accuser. He
says, with truth, that every obligation of friendship impels me to
discover the murderers of William Zane."
Duff Salter arose, in the warmth of his feelings, and paced up and down
the floor.
"Ah, William Zane," he said, "how does thy image come back to me! I was
the only friend he would permit. In pride of will and solitary purpose
he was the greatest of all. Rough, unpolished, a poor scholar, but full
of energy, he desired nothing but he believed it his. He desired me to
be his friend, and I could not have resisted if I would. He made me go
with him even on his truant expeditions, and carry his game bag along
the banks of the Tacony, or up the marshes of Rancocus. Yet it was a
happy servitude; for beneath his impetuous mastery was a soul of
devotion. He loved like Jove, and permitted no interposition in his
flame; his dogmatism and force were barbarous, but he gave like a child
and fought like a lion. I saw him last as he was about to enter on
business, in the twenty-first year of his age, an anxious young man with
black hair in natural ringlets, a pale brow, gray eyes wide apart, and
a narrow but wilful chin. He was ever on pivot, ready to spring. And
murdered!"
Duff Salter looked at the door standing ajar, attracted there by some
movement, or light, or shadow, and the very image he was describing met
his gaze. There were the black ringlets, the pale forehead, the anxious
yet wilful expression, and the years of youthful manhood. It was nothing
in this world if not William Zane!
Duff Salter felt paralyzed for a minute, as the blood flowed back to his
heart, and a sense of fright overcame him. Then he moved forward on
tip-toe, as if the image might dissolve. It did dissolve as he advanced;
with a tripping motion it receded and left a naked space. In the
darkness of the stairway it absorbed itself, and the deaf man grasped
the balustrade where it had stood, and by his trembling shook the rails
violently. He then staggered back to his mantel, first bolting the door,
as if instinctively, and swallowed a draught of brandy from a medicinal
bottle there.
"There is a ghost abroad!" exclaimed Duff Salter with a shudder. "I have
seen it."
He turned the gas on very brightly, so as to soothe his fears with
companionable light. Then, while the perspiration stood upon his
forehead, Duff Salter sat down to think.
"Why does it haunt me?" he said. "Yet whom but me should it haunt?--the
executor of my friend, intrusted with his dying wishes, bound to him by
ancient ties, and recreant to the high duty of punishing his murderers?
The ghost of William Zane admonishes me that there can be no repose for
my spirit until I take in hand the work of vengeance. Yes, if women
have been accessory to that murder, they shall not be spared. Miss Agnes
is under surveillance; let her be blameless, or beware!"