FORGOTTEN
From the stair-well some little light streamed up into the darkness of the
ghost-walk. And into this dim radiance came a little old lady--her
old-fashioned crimped hair an aureole of beautiful gray--leaning lightly
on an ebony crutch, which in turn tapped the floor in accompaniment to her
clicking step--
"Step--put; step--put; step--put."
Then she was out of the range of Helen's vision again. But she turned and
came back--her silken skirts rustling, her crutch tapping in perfect
time.
This was no ghost. Although slender--ethereal--almost bird-like in her
motions--the little old lady was very human indeed. She had a pink flush
in her cheeks, and her skin was as soft as velvet. Of course there were
wrinkles; but they were beautiful wrinkles, Helen thought.
She wore black half-mitts of lace, and her old-fashioned gown was of
delightfully soft, yet rich silk. The silk was brown--not many old ladies
could have worn that shade of brown and found it becoming. Her eyes were
bright--the unseen girl saw them sparkle as she turned her head, in that
bird-like manner, from side to side.
She was a dear, doll-like old lady! Helen longed to hurry down the
remaining steps and take her in her arms.
But, instead, she crept softly back to the head of the stairs, and slipped
into her own room again. _This_ was the mystery of the Starkweather
mansion. The nightly exercise of this mysterious old lady was the
foundation for the "ghost-walk." The maids of the household feared the
supernatural; therefore they easily found a legend to explain the rustling
step of the old lady with the crutch.
And all day long the old lady kept to her room. That room must be in the
front of the house on this upper floor--shut away, it was likely, from the
knowledge of most of the servants.
Mrs. Olstrom, of course, knew about the old lady--who she was--what she
was. It was the housekeeper who looked after the simple wants of the
mysterious occupant of the Starkweather mansion.
Helen wondered if Mr. Lawdor, the old butler, knew about the mystery? And
did the Starkweathers themselves know?
The girl from the ranch was too excited and curious to go to sleep now.
She had to remain right by her door, opened on a crack, and learn what
would happen next.
For an hour at least she heard the steady stepping of the old lady. Then
the crutch rapped out an accompaniment to her coming upstairs. She was
humming softly to herself, too. Helen, crouched behind the door,
distinguished the sweet, cracked voice humming a fragment of the old
lullaby:
"Rock-a-by, baby, on the tree-top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby----"
Thus humming, and the crutch tapping--a mere whisper of sound--the old
lady rustled by Helen's door, on into the long corridor, and disappeared
through some door, which closed behind her and smothered all further
sound.
Helen went to bed; but she could not sleep--not at first. The mystery of
the little old lady and her ghostly walk kept her eyes wide open and her
brain afire for hours.
She asked question after question into the dark of the night, and only
imagination answered. Some of the answers were fairly reasonable; others
were as impossible as the story of Jack the Giant Killer.
Finally, however, Helen dropped asleep. She awoke at her usual
hour--daybreak--and her eager mind began again asking questions about the
mystery. She went down in her outdoor clothes for a morning walk, with the
little old lady uppermost in her thoughts.
As usual, Mr. Lawdor was on the lookout for her. The shaky old man loved
to have her that few minutes in his room in the early morning. Although he
always presided over the dinner, with Gregson under him, the old butler
seldom seemed to speak, or be spoken to. Helen understood that, like Mrs.
Olstrom, Lawdor was a relic of the late owner--Mr. Starkweather's
great-uncle's--household.
Cornelius Starkweather had been a bachelor. The mansion had descended to
him from a member of the family who had been a family man. But that family
had died young--wife and all--and the master had handed the old homestead
over to Mr. Cornelius and had gone traveling himself--to die in a foreign
land.
Once Helen had heard Lawdor murmur something about "Mr. Cornelius" and she
had picked up the remainder of her information from things she had heard
Mr. Starkweather and the girls say.
Now the old butler met her with an ingratiating smile and begged her to
have something beside her customary coffee and roll.
"I have a lovely steak, Miss. The butcher remembers me once in a while,
and he knows I am fond of a bit of tender beef. My teeth are not what they
were once, you know, Miss."
"But why should I eat your nice steak?" demanded Helen, laughing at him.
"My teeth are good for what the boys on the range call 'bootleg.' That's
steak cut right next to the hoof!"
"Ah, but, Miss! There is so much more than I could possibly eat," he
urged.
He had already turned the electricity into his grill. The ruddy
steak--salted, peppered, with tiny flakes of garlic upon it--he brought
from his own little icebox. The appetizing odor of the meat sharpened
Helen's appetite even as she sipped the first of her coffee.
"I'll just _have_ to eat some, I expect, Mr. Lawdor," she said. Then she
had a sudden thought, and added: "Or perhaps you'd like to save this
tidbit for the little old lady in the attic?"
Mr. Lawdor turned--not suddenly; he never did anything with suddenness;
but it was plain she had startled him.
"Bless me, Miss--bless me--bless me----"
He trailed off in his usual shaky way; but his lips were white and he
stared at Helen like an owl for a full minute. Then he added:
"Is there a lady in the attic, Miss?" And he said it in his most polite
way.
"Of course there is, Mr. Lawdor; and you know it. Who is she? I am only
curious."
"I--I hear the maids talking about a ghost, Miss--foolish things----"
"And I'm not foolish, Mr. Lawdor," said the Western girl, laughing
shortly. "Not that way, at least. I heard her; last night I saw her. Next
time I'm going to speak to her--Unless it isn't allowed."
"It--it isn't allowed, Miss," said Lawdor, speaking softly, and with a
glance at the closed door of the room.
"Nobody has forbidden _me_ to speak to her," declared Helen, boldly. "And
I'm curious--mighty curious, Mr. Lawdor. Surely she is a nice old
lady--there is nothing the matter with her?"
The butler touched his forehead with a shaking finger. "A little wrong
there, Miss," he whispered. "But Mary Boyle is as innocent and harmless as
a baby herself."
"Can't you tell me about her--who she is--why she lives up there--and
all?"
"Not here, Miss."
"Why not?" demanded Helen, boldly.
"It might offend Mr. Starkweather, Miss. Not that he has anything to do
with Mary Boyle. He had to take the old house with her in it."
"What _do_ you mean, Lawdor?" gasped Helen, growing more and more amazed
and--naturally--more and more curious.
The butler flopped the steak suddenly upon the sizzling hot plate and in
another moment the delicious bit was before her. The old man served her as
expertly as ever, but his face was working strangely.
"I couldn't tell you here, Miss. Walls have ears, they say," he whispered.
"But if you'll be on the first bench beyond the Sixth Avenue entrance to
Central Park at ten o'clock this morning, I will meet you there.
"Yes, Miss--the rolls. Some more butter, Miss? I hope the coffee is to
your taste, Miss?"
"It is all very delicious, Lawdor," said Helen, rather weakly, and feeling
somewhat confused. "I will surely be there. I shall not need to come back
for the regular breakfast after having this nice bit."
Helen attracted much less attention upon her usual early morning walk this
time. She was dressed in the mode, if cheaply, and she was not so
self-conscious. But, in addition, she thought but little of herself or her
own appearance or troubles while she walked briskly uptown.
It was of the little old woman, and her mystery, and the butler's words
that she thought. She strode along to the park, and walked west until she
reached the bridle-path. She had found this before, and came to see the
riders as they cantered by.
How Helen longed to put on her riding clothes and get astride a lively
mount and gallop up the park-way! But she feared that, in doing so, she
might betray to her uncle or the girls the fact that she was not the
"pauper cowgirl" they thought her to be.
She found a seat overlooking the path, at last, and rested for a while;
but her mind was not upon the riders. Before ten o'clock she had walked
back south, found the entrance to the park opposite Sixth Avenue, and sat
down upon the bench specified by the old butler. At the stroke of the hour
the old man appeared.
"You could not have walked all this way, Lawdor?" said the girl, smiling
upon him. "You are not at all winded."
"No, Miss. I took the car. I am not up to such walks as you can take," and
he shook his head, mumbling: "Oh, no, no, no, no----"
"And now, what can you tell me, sir?" she said, breaking in upon his
dribbling speech. "I am just as curious as I can be. That dear little old
lady! Why is she in uncle's house?"
"Ah, Miss! I fancy she will not be there for long, but she was an
encumbrance upon it when Mr. Willets Starkweather came with his family to
occupy it."
"What _do_ you mean?" cried the girl.
"Mary Boyle served in the Starkweather family long, long ago. Before I
came to valet for Mr. Cornelius, Mary Boyle had her own room and was a
fixture in the house. Mr. Cornelius took her more--more philosophically,
as you might say, Miss. My present master and his daughters look upon poor
Mary Boyle as a nuisance. They have to allow her to remain. She is a life
charge upon the estate--that, indeed, was fixed before Mr. Cornelius's
time. But the present family are ashamed of her. Perhaps I ought not to
say it, but it is true. They have relegated her to a suite upon the top
floor, and other people have quite forgotten Mary Boyle--yes, oh, yes,
indeed! Quite forgotten her--quite forgotten her----"
Then, with the aid of some questioning, Helen heard the whole sad story of
Mary Boyle, who was a nurse girl in the family of the older generation of
Starkweathers. It was in her arms the last baby of the family had panted
his weakly little life out. She, too, had watched by the bed of the lady
of the mansion, who had borne these unfortunate children only to see them
die.
And Mary Boyle was one of that race who often lose their own identity in
the families they serve. She had loved the lost babies as though they had
been of her own flesh. She had walked the little passage at the back of
the house (out of which had opened the nursery in those days) so many,
many nights with one or the other of her fretful charges, that by and by
she thought, at night, that she had them yet to soothe.
Mary Boyle, the weak-minded yet harmless ex-nurse, had been cherished by
her old master. And in his will he had left her to the care of Mr.
Cornelius, the heir. In turn she had been left a life interest in the
mansion--to the extent of shelter and food and proper clothes--when
Willets Starkweather became proprietor.
He could not get rid of the old lady. But, when he refurnished the house
and made it over, he had banished Mary Boyle to the attic rooms. The girls
were ashamed of her. She sometimes talked loudly if company was about. And
always of the children she had once attended. She spoke of them as though
they were still in her care, and told how she had walked the hall with
one, or the other, of her dead and gone treasures the very night before!
For it was found necessary to allow Mary Boyle to have the freedom of that
short corridor on the chamber floor late at night. Otherwise she would not
remain secluded in her own rooms at the top of the house during the
daytime.
As the lower servants came and went, finally only Mrs. Olstrom and Mr.
Lawdor knew about the old lady, save the family. And Mr. Starkweather
impressed it upon the minds of both these employes that he did not wish
the old lady discussed below stairs.
So the story had risen that the house was haunted. The legend of the
"ghost walk" was established. And Mary Boyle lived out her lonely life,
with nobody to speak to save the housekeeper, who saw her daily; Mr.
Lawdor, who climbed to her rooms perhaps once each week, and Mr.
Starkweather himself, who saw and reported upon her case to his fellow
trustees each month.
It was, to Helen, an unpleasant story. It threw a light on the characters
of her uncle and cousins which did not enhance her admiration of them, to
say the least. She had found them unkind, purse-proud heretofore; but to
her generous soul their treatment of the little old woman, who must be but
a small charge upon the estate, seemed far more blameworthy than their
treatment of herself.
The story of the old butler made Helen quiver with indignation. It was
like keeping the old lady in jail--this shutting her away into the attic
of the great house. The Western girl went back to Madison Avenue (she
walked, but the old butler rode) with a thought in her mind that she was
not quite sure was a wise one. Yet she had nobody to discuss her idea
with--nobody whom she wished to take into her confidence.
There were two lonely and neglected people in that fine mansion. She,
herself, was one. The old nurse, Mary Boyle, was the other. And Helen felt
a strong desire to see and talk with her fellow-sufferer.