STELLA had piled on the big oblong oak table in the library the letters
and legal documents relating to her father’s estate.
She had determined to treat John Graham’s first visit as a purely
business one, and make her approach to him by the more subtle way of
child-like dependence on his help and advice.
She wore on purpose the same simple green dimity dress in which she
had called at his office. Each step in her plans must be taken with the
utmost care. He had masked his feelings with an iron will and she could
as yet form no conception of the impression she had made.
Seated beside the table, idly turning the papers, she awaited his coming
to-night with the keenest interest, every faculty of her being keyed to
the highest pitch of power.
A letter from Ackerman had aroused anew her curiosity over every detail
of the murder of her father and had given her a definite purpose toward
which to work during John’s visit. She studied carefully again the
paragraph in which he said:
_“I have made several important discoveries in the past twenty-four
hours. (1) That old Isaac has left the county and is not holding a
sanctification meeting as he told his wife. (2) That Larkin and your
father had a violent quarrel on the day of the Convention. (3) That a
dozen young men, one at a time, have left Independence recently. (4)
And most important, that the tradition that there is a secret passage
somewhere into the Graham house must be true. If you can confirm this
fourth fact for me by its discovery my work will be greatly helped.”_
Stella had quietly ransacked the house from cellar to attic in vain
searching for this secret way. She had questioned Aunt Julie Ann without
results, and had made up her mind to gain from John first this important
fact.
The brass knocker struck three sharp strokes on the front door. With a
quick, cat-like movement she concealed Ackerman’s letter in her bosom,
smoothed her dress, and as the young lawyer entered, rose and greeted
him with a gracious smile.
“I must thank you again for undertaking this work for me,” she said,
taking his hand. “It is such a relief to feel that it is now in the
hands of one who understands--one I can trust implicitly.”
“It will be a pleasure if I can serve you,” he answered gravely.
“I have the papers all spread out here ready for you.”
“Pardon me, if I look about the room a moment,” John said with deep
emotion. “You see I haven’t been in this room before for years. I spent
many happy hours in it, in the old days.”
“I hope this will not be the last time you will enter, now that we are
going to be friends. When we have time you must take me all through
in every nook and corner--show me all the secret closets and dark
passageways and tell me its history.”
“Yes, of course”--he answered with an absent look.
“I don’t believe you were listening to what I said at all,” she
exclaimed with mock anger. “A penny for your real thoughts!”
“May I be bold enough to tell you just what I was thinking?”
“Yes.”
“I was thinking,” he said with a sober smile, “what a beautiful picture
you make in this old oak panelled room. The delicate lines of your face
seem at home here as though the master workman who carved the figure in
that mantel had seen you in a vision while he was at work.”
“What a dreamer you are!” she laughed.
“And you are willing to trust me as a lawyer?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I must prove myself worthy, mustn’t I?”
“The papers are ready”--she said, bustling about the table and mixing
the bundles in greater confusion with an attempt at arranging them in
business order.
John seated himself and began to examine them. She bent over his
shoulder saying with a light laugh:
“I’ll do my best to explain them--they are all Greek to me--but you’ll
understand.”
“I’m sure there will be no great difficulty.”
He ran rapidly over the bundles and in half an hour had made memorandums
of each division of the work before him. He took up one of the packages
and began its careful reading, but the writing faded. He could hear
Stella softly breathing as she bent near him and see the beautiful
little hand resting on the table. He was seized with a mad impulse to
grasp it and clasp her in his arms. He smiled and placed his hand on his
forehead a moment lest she might see his confusion. He could endure it
no longer. He must leave and regain control of himself.
He tied the packages of papers together and rose.
“You are going so soon?” she asked.
“Yes, I’ll take them down to my office. It will require several hours to
go over them.”
“You will come again to-morrow?” she said softly.
“I’ll report to you again to-morrow evening.”
“I shall expect you at eight,” she said, extending her hand.
He held it unconsciously for an instant, and wondered if she could feel
the pounding of his heart.
He came each evening for a week and spent two hours in the library with
Stella until every letter and paper had been thoroughly examined. In
a hundred little ways she had made him feel the power and charm of
her personality; in no way so keenly, perhaps, as in the long silences
during which she sat near with her great brown eyes watching him
intently. He could feel their deep mysterious light in whatever
direction he turned. In no other way could she have made so powerful an
appeal to his imagination. To his poetic fancy, this capacity for silent
comradeship in a girl so young revealed a depth of character which he
had not suspected.
The real depth of its meaning he could not dream. The moments of
exultant triumph, of breathless suspense, of merciless cruelty with
which she watched him slowly entering the trap she had set, were safely
concealed beneath the childlike expression of her beautiful face.
Each night he felt his resolution to allow no word of love to pass
his lips harder and harder to keep. And each night she watched with
increasing excitement his gradual approach to the brink of the precipice
to which she silently beckoned.
On the night of his final report when the work was finished, she looked
at him intently and said: “Now, I’m going to hold you to your promise.”
“And have I broken one?”
“Only forgotten it, I think--you must go over the old house with
me--every nook and corner. But before we start, come, you are tired,
I’ve some refreshments for you.”
She led the way into the dining room where she had prepared a dainty
supper. Aunt Julie Ann in spotless white cap and apron, stood smiling
her welcome. The table was lighted with a dozen wax candles set in two
old silver candelabra which had belonged to the Graham family more
than a hundred years, until they had fallen with the house and its
furnishings into the Judge’s hands.
Stella seated herself at one end of the table which had been shortened
to its smallest size and placed John at the other. Her position, the
lights and the effects of the picture in his imagination, she had
carefully planned and rehearsed before his arrival. She meant to win
to-night.
Behind her stood the rich old mahogany sideboard of Colonial pattern,
the Graham silver flashing in the quaint gold mirror which hung above
it. In the mirror her own image was clearly reflected. The man opposite
could look into her face and at the same time see in the shining silvery
picture above the sideboard the black ringlets of curling hair at the
back of her neck, as well as the exquisite lines of her figure.
John gazed at her in silent wonder. Never had he seen a picture so
appealing in its beauty to every sense of his being. He felt that she
was born to sit at that table amid such surroundings.
She lifted the teapot to fill his cup:
“This little feast is to celebrate the completion of our work.”
“And seal our friendship, may I hope?” he broke in with a smile.
“Yes,” she answered in a whisper.
These soft notes of her voice thrilled the man before her, and his
whole being quivered in response to their call. He wondered if he could
conceal the hunger with which he was looking into her eyes.
He had always thought her the most beautiful being he had ever seen, but
to-night for the first time she had dressed specially to receive him,
and his imagination had not dreamed the picture--Her beauty fairly
stunned him.
Her dress was of filmy zephyr-like white chiffon, cut low to show the
full lines of the neck and shoulders. Around the upper part of her
beautiful bare arms, where they melted into the shoulders, was drawn a
scarf of delicate lace. Where it crossed the waist line in V shape, was
pinned an ivorytype miniature portrait of her proud mother, painted at
her own age of twenty, which looked so strikingly like the living form
above, it might have been taken for the image of a twin sister. A sash
of pink ribbon encircled her figure. The skirt hung in full puffy lines
draped over a number of under-skirts after the fashion of the period.
The bottom of the skirt was finished with a border of lace on the top
of which were set at intervals clusters of little pink roses wrought in
silk.
Her curly crown of black hair was parted in the middle and drawn low
on the side of the face in two great waves and tied behind with a
pink ribbon. The long ends were curled into four strands and thrown
carelessly around her neck in front and hung to the waist. Her head was
circled with a tiny wreath of the living pink roses from which the silk
ones had been modelled. To John’s fancy this wreath against her black
hair seemed the jewelled crown of a queen set in priceless rubies.
She poured the tea with her bare arm uplifted in a fascinating pose,
the right arm curved just enough to tilt the teapot and yet preserve the
dimple at her elbow. In all his life he could not remember an arm like
these--so graceful, so seductive each little movement, they seemed to
possess a conscious soul of their own. Her whole being spoke the charm
of the boundless vitality of youth just budding into perfect womanhood.
Her delicate skin flashed its tints in harmony with every mood of
thought in her voice. She had as a divine gift a sensitiveness of
expression, so acute that it could be controlled by the fierce will
which hid beneath the velvet surface. She could blush at will because
her imagination was so vivid that she could direct its powers by a
subtle process of auto-suggestion.
John had not realised until he saw her eat how wonderful were the lines
of her luscious lips. He felt that he could sit there forever and
watch her dainty wrist and tapering fingers lift the cup. Her eyes
were friendly to-night! They looked at him with dreamy tenderness, a
childlike trust, and perfect faith.
How could he live through the evening without telling her of his love!
Yet he must keep silent. He felt with deep foreboding an approaching
catastrophe which must soon overwhelm the men who had created an Empire
whose power they could not control. That Empire had left a stain of
blood on the floor of this house--a stain that must forever darken his
own life and hers--and yet--how could he give her up?
He rose from the table at her suggestion and followed her in a spell as
she lifted a silver candlestick above her head and started to explore
the house.
He found his tongue at last and told her with boyish enthusiasm the
legends of the old mansion, the associations of each room, and sketched
with good-humoured criticism the peculiarities of his people. In the
gallery of the observatory he showed her the spots from which the
slightest sounds were echoed to the hall below, and explained the
origin of many of the ghost stories which the Negroes believed with such
implicit faith.
Stella leaned over the railing and looked down into the hall at the
chair in which her father had fallen the night of the dance, and a
curious smile played about her lips.
“And what are you smiling at?” he asked softly.
Without the quiver of an eyelid, either in surprise or recognition of
the fact that he had caught her in a moment off her guard, she replied:
“I was just wondering if you ever believed in ghosts?”
“Of course,” he laughed.
“Really?”
“Yes. When Aunt Julie Ann used to tell them to me at night in the
nursery they were vivid and terrible realities.”
“And you’ve laughed away all the romances of childhood now?”
“No,” he answered firmly. “I halfway believe in ghosts still, and the
old dreams of beauty and love, of honour and truth, seem to me more and
more the only things in human life that have any value.”
They had returned to the hall. Stella placed the candle on the table and
sat down on the davenport. John followed her instinctively and seated
himself by her side.
Suddenly she placed her soft hand on his, exclaiming:
“Oh! There’s one thing we’ve forgotten!” She felt him tremble at her
touch.
“What?”
“The legend of the secret way--tell me about it--how it originated and
all--of course, I know it is only a legend. Such things are only found
in stories.”
John looked at her, with a smile playing about the corners of his mouth.
“You have ceased to believe in romance, ghosts and fairies?”
“I’ll believe it if you tell me,” she said softly.
John took her hand and lifted her from the lounge.
“Have you faith enough to follow me through the dark secret way to-night
if I can find it for you?”
“Yes!” she whispered, leaning toward him trustingly.
“Then I’m going to do what was never done before--show this secret way
to one who does not answer to the name of Graham.”
Stella’s bosom rose and fell with deep emotion as she turned her brown
eyes on John.
“But why not?” he continued. “The house is yours. And I’m haunted with
the strange fancy that your spirit has lived here before.”
“I have grown to love it,” she said hesitatingly, “in spite of the
tragedy. It’s strange. I wonder at myself for it.”
John turned toward the panel in the wainscoting whose location he knew
so well, paused and said:
“I’d better wait and let you change your dress. You’ll soil it against
the damp narrow walls.”
Stella’s eyes were sparkling now with excitement.
“No matter. I can’t wait a minute. The mystery and romance will be worth
a dress. Show me the way. I’ll follow.”
“All right,” John answered, as he extended his hand and pressed the
moulding behind which lay the spring. The panel flew open and a rush of
cool air took Stella’s breath.
“Heavens!” she exclaimed, clinging suddenly to John’s arm, “why, I had
no idea it could open here just behind us in the hall!”
He could feel her tremble.
“There’s not the slightest danger--you need not be afraid,” he said,
tenderly. “Wait, I’ll get the candle and go before you.”
He took the candle from the centre table and entered the passage-way,
closing the panel.
“Wait, you must hold my hand,” Stella cried timidly.
He took the soft little hand in his with a throb of joy and carefully
led her down the tiny stairs into the basement, where the passage turned
between two walls and again descended a half dozen steps to another door
which led out of the house into the long straight way to the vault.
Trembling with excitement, she clung in silence to his hand as they
entered the long damp passage. He closed the door suddenly, the sound
crashing through the narrow walls in a thousand startling echoes.
Stella sprang into his arms, nestling close and whispered:
“Mercy! what was that?”
“Only the door,” he laughed.
“It scared me nearly to death,” she faltered, slowly withdrawing from
his sheltering protection while she skilfully managed to press her soft
bare arm against his hand. She felt him tremble, his breath deepen and
quicken at the touch of her flesh.
“You’re sure there’s no danger?” she asked.
“Not the slightest,” he replied cheerily. “Just one more little surprise
and we are out in the moonlight on the lawn.”
He led her clinging to his hand along the dark way, holding the
flickering candle above her head, a hundred mad impulses of love surging
through his brain.
They stopped at the stoneset door leading into the tomb, and he handed
her the candle, gently disengaging his other hand. He drew the heavy
door back, Stella stepped through and he followed close behind her.
She raised the candle high and looked about the vault. With a sudden
cry, she staggered into his arms gasping:
“Why,--we’re--in--the--vault!”
The candle dropped from her hand and she threw her arm around John’s
neck clinging to him frantically. Her hold relaxed and her head drooped
against his breast. He clasped her tenderly for a moment and his lips
instinctively touched the curling mass of her hair, as he cried in
agony:
“God help me--I’m lost!”
She revived as quickly as she had collapsed and murmured:
“I was about to faint--quick, let’s get out!”
He led her through the iron grilled door into the moonlit shadows of the
lawn.
“Oh!” she cried with a gasp of relief. “What a wild experience! I hope I
didn’t do anything very silly--did I?” she asked dreamily.
“You did just what any little girl of your age might do under such
conditions,” he replied, gazing at her with deep seriousness. “Come, let
us find a seat on the lawn and I’ll tell you the story of the vault and
the secret way.”
He led her to the seat on which he had sunk in despair the night he
came half-mad with pain to watch the masqueraders whirl past her lighted
windows.
The full moon wrapped the earth in the white mantle of Southern
midsummer glory, and the night wind stirred, its breath laden with the
rich perfume of every flower in full bloom. A katydid was singing a
plaintive song in the tree above, and in the rose bushes near the porch
a mocking-bird rehearsed in a burst of mad joy every love song of the
feathered world.
In low, rapid tones John told her the story of Robert Graham’s great
love for his Huguenot grandmother and why he built the vault and secret
way.
She listened and furtively watched him struggling with his emotions.
Suddenly he turned, looked tenderly into her eyes and took her hand.
“After all, Miss Stella, what else matters on earth, when life has once
been made glorious by a great, deathless love--such a love as that which
has grown in my own heart for you.”
Stella turned away to hide the flash of triumph with which her face was
flushed.
“Ah! don’t answer me now,” he rushed on. “I don’t ask it. I only beg the
privilege of telling you--telling you how you have lifted my soul from
the shadows of self and hate, and made life radiant and beautiful. I
dare not hope that you love me yet--that you only hear me is enough.
That I sit by your side and tell you is all I ask. My love is so deep,
so full, so rich, so great, it is glory and life and strength within
itself. I could die to-night and count my life a triumph, because I’ve
seen you and loved you, and you have heard me. May I tell you all that
is in my heart?”
He leaned closer and pressed her hand gently.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Why not?”
“I dare not tell you why I pause to ask the question. I’ve sometimes
thought that an impassable gulf yawned between us. To-night I’ve thrown
such rubbish to the winds. There’s no gulf so wide, so deep and dark
the heart of love may not leap it. Nothing matters save that I love you,
that you smile and hear me!”
“I am honoured in your love,” she answered gently.
“Ah! you can never know how sweet it is to hear that from your dear
lips. I cannot tell you the madness of the joy that fills me, when
I realise that I have found in you all I’ve ever dreamed of beauty,
tenderness and purity. All the songs of life that poets dream and find
no words in which to sing, I feel within. If you should send me from
your presence now, I’d laugh at Death for I have tasted Life! To win
your love is all I ask of this world or the next--You will let me try?”
“Yes,” said the low voice, as she placed her hand again in his.
“Then I must go,” he said, rising and lifting her from the seat--“I’ve
said enough to-night. I must go before I dare say too much and break the
spell of joy that holds me.”
At the door he asked.
“I may come again to-morrow?”
“Yes, at eight.”
He bowed and kissed the tips of her fingers.
“I may have something to say to you to-morrow,” she said seriously.
“I shall count the minutes of every hour that separates us.”
She watched the tall figure pass swiftly and joyously along the white
gravelled moonlit walk, while a paean of fierce joy welled within her
heart.
“I’ve won--I’ve won, beyond the shadow of a doubt!” she cried,
exultantly.