Miss Strange was not in a responsive
mood. This her employer had observed on first
entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying on
the table behind which she had ensconced herself in
the attitude of one besieged, an envelope thick with
enclosed papers.
“There,” said he. “Telephone
me when you have read them.”
“I shall not read them.”
“No?” he smiled; and,
repossessing himself of the envelope, he tore off
one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled,
and laid them down still unfolded, in their former
place on the table-top.
The suggestiveness of the action caused
the corners of Miss Srange’s delicate lips to
twitch wistfully, before settling into an ironic smile.
Calmly the other watched her.
“I am on a vacation,”
she loftily explained, as she finally met his studiously
non-quizzical glance. “Oh, I know that I
am in my own home!” she petulantly acknowledged,
as his gaze took in the room; “and that the
automobile is at the door; and that I’m dressed
for shopping. But for all that I’m on a
vacation a mental one,” she emphasized;
“and business must wait. I haven’t
got over the last affair,” she protested, as
he maintained a discreet silence, “and the season
is so gay just now so many balls, so many But
that isn’t the worst. Father is beginning
to wake up and if he ever suspects ”
A significant gesture ended this appeal.
The personage knew her father everyone
did and the wonder had always been that
she dared run the risk of displeasing one so implacable.
Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was
known to be quite capable of cutting her off with
a shilling, once his close, prejudiced mind conceived
it to be his duty. And that he would so interpret
the situation, if he ever came to learn the secret
of his daughter’s fits of abstraction and the
sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the
personage holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt
at all. Yet he only smiled at her words and remarked
in casual suggestion:
“It’s out of town this
time ’way out. Your health certainly
demands a change of air.”
“My health is good. Fortunately,
or unfortunately, as one may choose to look at it,
it furnishes me with no excuse for an outing,”
she steadily retorted, turning her back on the table.
“Ah, excuse me!” the insidious
voice apologized, “your paleness misled me.
Surely a night or two’s change might be beneficial.”
She gave him a quick side look, and
began to adjust her boa.
To this hint he paid no attention.
“The affair is quite out of
the ordinary,” he pursued in the tone of one
rehearsing a part. But there he stopped.
For some reason, not altogether apparent to the masculine
mind, the pin of flashing stones (real stones) which
held her hat in place had to be taken out and thrust
back again, not once, but twice. It was to watch
this performance he had paused. When he was ready
to proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling
facts for another’s enlightenment:
“A woman of unknown instincts ”
“Pshaw!” The end of the
pin would strike against the comb holding Violet’s
chestnut-coloured locks.
“Living in a house as mysterious
as the secret it contains. But ”
here he allowed his patience apparently to forsake
him, “I will bore you no longer. Go to
your teas and balls; I will struggle with my dark affairs
alone.”
His hand went to the packet of papers
she affected so ostentatiously to despise. He
could be as nonchalant as she. But he did not
lift them; he let them lie. Yet the young heiress
had not made a movement or even turned the slightest
glance his way.
“A woman difficult to understand!
A mysterious house possibly a mysterious
crime!”
Thus Violet kept repeating in silent
self-communion, as flushed with dancing she sat that
evening in a highly-scented conservatory, dividing
her attention between the compliments of her partner
and the splash of a fountain bubbling in the heart
of this mass of tropical foliage; and when some hours
later she sat down in her chintz-furnished bedroom
for a few minutes’ thought before retiring,
it was to draw from a little oak box at her elbow
the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written
paper which had been left for her perusal by her persistent
employer.
Glancing first at the signature and
finding it to be one already favourably known at the
bar, she read with avidity the statement of events
thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all
conscience to keep her awake for another full hour.
We here subscribe it:
I am a lawyer with an office in the
Times Square Building. My business is mainly
local, but sometimes I am called out of town, as witness
the following summons received by me on the fifth
of last October.
Dear sir,
I wish to make my will. I am
an invalid and cannot leave my room. Will you
come to me? The enclosed reference will answer
for my respectability. If it satisfies you and
you decide to accommodate me, please hasten your visit;
I have not many days to live. A carriage will
meet you at Highland Station at any hour you designate.
Telegraph reply.
A. Postlethwaite, Gloom Cottage, ,
N. J.
The reference given was a Mr. Weed
of Eighty-sixth Street a well-known man
of unimpeachable reputation.
Calling him up at his business office,
I asked him what he could tell me about Mr. Postlethwaite
of Gloom Cottage, , N. J. The answer
astonished me:
“There is no Mr. Postlethwaite
to be found at that address. He died years ago.
There is a Mrs. Postlethwaite a confirmed
paralytic. Do you mean her?”
I glanced at the letter still lying
open at the side of the telephone:
“The signature reads A. Postlethwaite.”
“Then it’s she. Her
name is Arabella. She hates the name, being a
woman of no sentiment. Uses her initials even
on her cheques. What does she want of you?”
“To draw her will.”
“Oblige her. It’ll
be experience for you.” And he slammed home
the receiver.
I decided to follow the suggestion
so forcibly emphasized; and the next day saw me at
Highland Station. A superannuated horse and a
still more superannuated carriage awaited me both
too old to serve a busy man in these days of swift
conveyance. Could this be a sample of the establishment
I was about to enter? Then I remembered that the
woman who had sent for me was a helpless invalid,
and probably had no use for any sort of turnout.
The driver was in keeping with the
vehicle, and as noncommittal as the plodding beast
he drove. If I ventured upon a remark, he gave
me a long and curious look; if I went so far as to
attack him with a direct question, he responded with
a hitch of the shoulder or a dubious smile which conveyed
nothing. Was he deaf or just unpleasant?
I soon learned that he was not deaf; for suddenly,
after a jog-trot of a mile or so through a wooded
road which we had entered from the main highway, he
drew in his horse, and, without glancing my way, spoke
his first word:
“This is where you get out.
The house is back there in the bushes.”
As no house was visible and the bushes
rose in an unbroken barrier along the road, I stared
at him in some doubt of his sanity.
“But ” I began;
a protest into which he at once broke, with the sharp
direction:
“Take the path. It’ll
lead you straight to the front door.”
“I don’t see any path.”
For this he had no answer; and confident
from his expression that it would be useless to expect
anything further from him, I dropped a coin into his
hand, and jumped to the ground. He was off before
I could turn myself about.
“‘Something is rotten
in the State of Denmark,’” I quoted in
startled comment to myself; and not knowing what else
to do, stared down at the turf at my feet.
A bit of flagging met my eye, protruding
from a layer of thick moss. Farther on I espied
another the second, probably, of many.
This, no doubt, was the path I had been bidden to
follow, and without further thought on the subject,
I plunged into the bushes which with difficulty I
made give way before me.
For a moment all further advance looked
hopeless. A more tangled, uninviting approach
to a so-called home, I had never seen outside of the
tropics; and the complete neglect thus displayed should
have prepared me for the appearance of the house I
unexpectedly came upon, just as, the way seemed on
the point of closing up before me.
But nothing could well prepare one
for a first view of Gloom Cottage. Its location
in a hollow which had gradually filled itself up with
trees and some kind of prickly brush, its deeply stained
walls, once picturesque enough in their grouping but
too deeply hidden now amid rotting boughs to produce
any other effect than that of shrouded desolation,
the sough of these same boughs as they rapped a devil’s
tattoo against each other, and the absence of even
the rising column of smoke which bespeaks domestic
life wherever seen all gave to one who
remembered the cognomen Cottage and forgot the pre-cognomen
of Gloom, a sense of buried life as sepulchral as
that which emanates from the mouth of some freshly
opened tomb.
But these impressions, natural enough
to my youth, were necessarily transient, and soon
gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving
the curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still
blocking my approach, I pushed my way resolutely through,
and presently found myself stumbling upon the steps
of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not of
wood, as its name of Cottage had led me to expect,
but of carefully cut stone which, while showing every
mark of time, proclaimed itself one of those early,
carefully erected Colonial residences which it takes
more than a century to destroy, or even to wear to
the point of dilapidation.
Somewhat encouraged, though failing
to detect any signs of active life in the heavily
shuttered windows frowning upon me from either side,
I ran up the steps and rang the bell which pulled
as hard as if no hand had touched it in years.
Then I waited.
But not to ring again; for just as
my hand was approaching the bell a second time, the
door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before
me the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole
life. He was so old I was astonished when his
drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the lawyer
from New York. I would as soon have expected a
mummy to wag its tongue and utter English, he looked
so thin and dried and removed from this life and all
worldly concerns.
But when I had answered his question
and he had turned to marshal me down the hall towards
a door I could dimly see standing open in the twilight
of an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that his
step was not without some vigour, despite the feeble
bend of his withered body and the incessant swaying
of his head, which seemed to be continually saying
No!
“I will prepare madam,”
he admonished me, after drawing a ponderous curtain
two inches or less aside from one of the windows.
“She is very ill, but she will see you.”
The tone was senile, but it was the
senility of an educated man, and as the cultivated
accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to
the position he held in the house. Interested
anew, I sought to give him another look, but he had
already vanished through the doorway, and so noiselessly,
it was more like a shadow’s flitting than a man’s
withdrawal.
The darkness in which I sat was absolute;
but gradually, as I continued to look about me, the
spaces lightened and certain details came out, which
to my astonishment were of a character to show that
the plain if substantial exterior of this house with
its choked-up approaches and weedy gardens was no
sample of what was to be found inside. Though
the walls surrounding me were dismal because unlighted,
they betrayed a splendour unusual in any country house.
The frescoes and paintings were of an ancient order,
dating from days when life and not death reigned in
this isolated dwelling; but in them high art reigned
supreme, an art so high and so finished that only
great wealth, combined with the most cultivated taste,
could have produced such effects. I was still
absorbed in the wonder of it all, when the quiet voice
of the old gentleman who had let me in reached me
again from the doorway, and I heard:
“Madam is ready for you.
May I trouble you to accompany me to her room.”
I rose with alacrity. I was anxious
to see madam, if only to satisfy myself that she was
as interesting as the house in which she was self-immured.
I found her a great deal more so.
But before I enter upon our interview, let me mention
a fact which had attracted my attention in my passage
to her room. During his absence my guide evidently
had pulled aside other curtains than those of the
room in which he had left me. The hall, no longer
a tunnel of darkness, gave me a glimpse as we went
by, of various secluded corners, and it seemed as
if everywhere I looked I saw a clock.
I counted four before I reached the staircase, all
standing on the floor and all of ancient make, though
differing much in appearance and value. A fifth
one rose grim and tall at the stair foot, and under
an impulse I have never understood I stopped, when
I reached it, to note the time. But it had paused
in its task, and faced me with motionless hands and
silent works a fact which somehow startled
me; perhaps, because just then I encountered the old
man’s eye watching me with an expression as
challenging as it was unintelligible.
I had expected to see a woman in bed.
I saw instead, a woman sitting up. You felt her
influence the moment you entered her presence.
She was not young; she was not beautiful; never
had been I should judge, she had not even
the usual marks about her of an ultra strong personality;
but that her will was law, had always been, and would
continue to be law so long as she lived, was patent
to any eye at the first glance. She exacted obedience
consciously and unconsciously, and she exacted it with
charm. Some few people in the world possess this
power. They frown, and the opposing will weakens;
they smile, and all hearts succumb. I was hers
from the moment I crossed the threshold till But
I will relate the happenings of that instant when
it comes.
She was alone, or so I thought, when
I made my first bow to her stern but not unpleasing
presence. Seated in a great chair, with a silver
tray before her containing such little matters as
she stood in hourly need of, she confronted me with
a piercing gaze startling to behold in eyes so colourless.
Then she smiled, and in obedience to that smile I seated
myself in a chair placed very near her own. Was
she too paralysed to express herself clearly?
I waited in some anxiety till she spoke, when this
fear vanished. Her voice betrayed the character
her features failed to express. It was firm,
resonant, and instinct with command. Not loud,
but penetrating, and of a quality which made one listen
with his heart as well as with his ears. What
she said is immaterial. I was there for a certain
purpose and we entered immediately upon the business
of that purpose. She talked and I listened, mostly
without comment. Only once did I interrupt her
with a suggestion; and as this led to definite results,
I will proceed to relate the occurrence in full.
In the few hours remaining to me before
leaving New York, I had learned (no matter how) some
additional particulars concerning herself and family;
and when after some minor bequests, she proceeded to
name the parties to whom she desired to leave the
bulk of her fortune, I ventured, with some astonishment
at my own temerity, to remark:
“But you have a young relative!
Is she not to be included in this partition of your
property?”
A hush. Then a smile came to
life on her stiff lips, such as is seldom seen, thank
God, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
“The young relative of whom
you speak, is in the room. She has known for
some time that I have no intention of leaving anything
to her. There is, in fact, small chance of her
ever needing it.”
The latter sentence was a muttered
one, but that it was loud enough to be heard in all
parts of the room I was soon assured. For a quick
sigh, which was almost a gasp, followed from a corner
I had hitherto ignored, and upon glancing that way,
I perceived, peering upon us from the shadows, the
white face of a young girl in whose drawn features
and wide, staring eyes I beheld such evidences of
terror, that in an instant, whatever predilection
I had hitherto felt for my client, vanished in distrust,
if not positive aversion.
I was still under the sway of this
new impression, when Mrs. Postlethwaite’s voice
rose again, this time addressing the young girl:
“You may go,” she said,
with such force in the command for all its honeyed
modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the
room in frightened obedience.
But though the startled girl had lost
none of the terror which had made her face like a
mask, no power of movement remained to her. A
picture of hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless
moment, with her eyes fixed in unmistakable appeal
on mine; then she began to sway so helplessly that
I leaped with bounding heart to catch her. As
she fell into my arms I heard her sigh as before.
No common anguish spoke in that sigh. I had stumbled
unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which
I held but a doubtful key.
“She seems very ill,”
I observed with some emphasis, as I turned to lay
my helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
“She’s doomed.”
The words were spoken with gloom and
with an attempt at commiseration which no longer rang
true in my ears.
“She is as sick a woman as I
am myself,” continued Mrs. Postlethwaite.
“That is why I made the remark I did, never imagining
she would hear me at that distance. Do not put
her down. My nurse will be here in a moment to
relieve you of your burden.”
A tinkle accompanied these words.
The resolute woman had stretched out a finger, of
whose use she was not quite deprived, and touched a
little bell standing on the tray before her, an inch
or two from her hand.
Pleased to obey her command, I paused
at the sofa’s edge, and taking advantage of
the momentary delay, studied the youthful countenance
pressed unconsciously to my breast.
It was one whose appeal lay less in
its beauty, though that was of a touching quality,
than in the story it told, a story, which
for some unaccountable reason I did not
pause to determine what one I felt it to
be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no questions
then; I did not even venture a comment; and yielded
her up with seeming readiness when a strong but none
too intelligent woman came running in with arms outstretched
to carry her off. When the door had closed upon
these two, the silence of my client drew my attention
back to herself.
“I am waiting,” was her
quiet observation, and without any further reference
to what had just taken place under our eyes, she went
on with the business previously occupying us.
I was able to do my part without any
too great display of my own disturbance. The
clearness of my remarkable client’s instructions,
the definiteness with which her mind was made up as
to the disposal of every dollar of her vast property,
made it easy for me to master each detail and make
careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent
the ebb and flow within me of an undercurrent of thought
full of question and uneasiness. What had been
the real purport of the scene to which I had just
been made a surprised witness? The few, but certainly
unusual, facts which had been given me in regard to
the extraordinary relations existing between these
two closely connected women will explain the intensity
of my interest. Those facts shall be yours.
Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted
with a peculiar fascination which, as we have seen,
had not altogether vanished with age. Consequently
she had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank
and Andrew Postlethwaite. The latter was the
older, the handsomer, and the most prosperous (his
name is remembered yet in connection with South American
schemes of large importance), but it was Frank she
married.
That real love, ardent if unreasonable,
lay at the bottom of her choice, is evident enough
to those who followed the career of the young couple.
But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival, and
as Frank Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic
nature, scenes soon occurred between them which, while
revealing the extraordinary force of the young wife’s
character, led to no serious break till after her son
was born, and this, notwithstanding the fact that Frank
had long given up making a living, and that they were
openly dependent on their wealthy brother, now fast
approaching the millionaire status.
This brother the Peruvian
King, as some called him must have been
an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection
for the spirited Arabella to the point of remaining
a bachelor for her sake, he betrayed none of the usual
signs of disappointed love; but on the contrary made
every effort to advance her happiness, not only by
assuring to herself and husband an adequate income,
but by doing all he could in other and less open ways
to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake
in preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and
unstable brother. She should have adored him;
but though she evinced gratitude enough, there is
nothing to prove that she ever gave Frank Postlethwaite
the least cause to cherish any other sentiment towards
his brother than that of honest love and unqualified
respect. Perhaps he never did cherish any other.
Perhaps the change which everyone saw in the young
couple immediately after the birth of their only child
was due to another cause. Gossip is silent on
this point. All that it insists upon is that
from this time evidences of a growing estrangement
between them became so obvious that even the indulgent
Andrew could not blind himself to it; showing his
sense of trouble, not by lessening their income, for
that he doubled, but by spending more time in Peru
and less in New York where the two were living.
However, and here we enter
upon those details which I have ventured to characterize
as uncommon, he was in this country and in the actual
company of his brother when the accident occurred which
terminated both their lives. It was the old story
of a skidding motor, and Mrs. Postlethwaite, having
been sent for in great haste to the small inn into
which the two injured men had been carried, arrived
only in time to witness their last moments. Frank
died first and Andrew some few minutes later an
important fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter’s
will came to be read.
This will was a peculiar one.
By its provisions the bulk of the King’s great
property was left to his brother Frank, but with this
especial stipulation that in case his brother failed
to survive him, the full legacy as bequeathed to him
should be given unconditionally to his widow.
Frank’s demise, as I have already stated, preceded
his brother’s by several minutes and consequently
Arabella became the chief legatee; and that is how
she obtained her millions. But and
here a startling feature comes in when
the will came to be administered, the secret underlying
the break between Frank and his wife was brought to
light by a revelation of the fact that he had practised
a great deception upon her at the time of his marriage.
Instead of being a bachelor as was currently believed,
he was in reality a widower, and the father of a child.
This fact, so long held secret, had become hers when
her own child was born; and constituted as she was,
she not only never forgave the father, but conceived
such a hatred for the innocent object of their quarrel
that she refused to admit its claims or even to acknowledge
its existence.
But later after his death,
in fact she showed some sense of obligation
towards one who under ordinary conditions would have
shared her wealth. When the whole story became
heard, and she discovered that this secret had been
kept from his brother as well as from herself, and
that consequently no provision had been made in any
way for the child thus thrown directly upon her mercy,
she did the generous thing and took the forsaken girl
into her own home. But she never betrayed the
least love for her, her whole heart being bound up
in her boy, who was, as all agree, a prodigy of talent.
But this boy, for all his promise
and seeming strength of constitution, died when barely
seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with
nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter
of her husband’s first wife. The fact that
this child, slighted as it had hitherto been, would,
in the event of her uncle having passed away before
her father, have been the undisputed heiress of a
large portion of the wealth now at the disposal of
her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now
that the boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would
proceed to acknowledge the little Helena as her heir,
and give her that place in the household to which
her natural claims entitled her.
But no such result followed.
The passion of grief into which the mother was thrown
by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and
implacable, and when, as very soon happened, she fell
a victim to the disease which tied her to her chair
and made the wealth which had come to her by such
a peculiar ordering of circumstances little else than
a mockery even in her own eyes, it was upon this child
she expended the full fund of her secret bitterness.
And the child? What of her?
How did she bear her unhappy fate when she grew old
enough to realize it? With a resignation which
was the wonder of all who knew her. No murmurs
escaped her lips, nor was the devotion she invariably
displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as
well as all the rest of her household with a rod of
iron ever disturbed by the least sign of reproach.
Though the riches, which in those early days poured
into the home in a measure far beyond the needs of
its mistress, were expended in making the house beautiful
rather than in making the one young life within it
happy, she never was heard to utter so much as a wish
to leave the walls within which fate had immured her.
Content, or seemingly content, with the only home
she knew, she never asked for change or demanded friends
or amusements. Visitors ceased coming; desolation
followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed
to a riot of weeds and undesirable brush, till a towering
wall seemed to be drawn about the house cutting it
off from the activities of the world as it cut it
off from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort
of a star-lit heaven by night. And yet the young
girl continued to smile, though with a pitifulness
of late, which some thought betokened secret terror
and others the wasting of a body too sensitive for
such unwholesome seclusion.
These were the facts, known if not
consciously specialized, which gave to the latter
part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy
of interest which had never attended any of my former
experiences. The peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite
towards her indurate tormentor awakened in my agitated
mind something much deeper than curiosity, but when
I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiring
more particularly into her condition, such a look
confronted me from the steady eye immovably fixed
upon my own, that my courage or was it my
natural precaution bade me subdue the impulse
and risk no attempt which might betray the depth of
my interest in one so completely outside the scope
of the present moment’s business. Perhaps
Mrs. Postlethwaite appreciated my struggle; perhaps
she was wholly blind to it. There was no reading
the mind of this woman of sentimental name but inflexible
nature, and realizing the fact more fully with every
word she uttered I left her at last with no further
betrayal of my feelings than might be evinced by the
earnestness with which I promised to return for her
signature at the earliest possible moment.
This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
“I can still write my name if
the paper is pushed carefully along under my hand.
See to it that you come while the power remains to
me.”
I had hoped that in my passage downstairs
I might run upon someone who would give me news of
Miss Postlethwaite, but the woman who approached to
conduct me downstairs was not of an appearance to invite
confidence, and I felt forced to leave the house with
my doubts unsatisfied.
Two memories, equally distinct, followed
me. One was a picture of Mrs. Postlethwaite’s
fingers groping among her belongings on the little
tray perched upon her lap, and another of the intent
and strangely bent figure of the old man who had acted
as my usher, listening to the ticking of one of the
great clocks. So absorbed was he in this occupation
that he not only failed to notice me when I went by,
but he did not even lift his head at my cheery greeting.
Such mysteries were too much for me, and led me to
postpone my departure from town till I had sought
out Mrs. Postlethwaite’s doctor and propounded
to him one or two leading questions. First, would
Mrs. Postlethwaite’s present condition be likely
to hold good till Monday; and secondly, was the young
lady living with her as ill as her step-mother said.
He was a mild old man of the easy-going
type, and the answers I got from him were far from
satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when
I mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite’s
anxiety about her step-daughter, and paused, in the
dubious shaking of his head, to give me a short stare
in which I read as much determination as perplexity.
“I will look into Miss Postlethwaite’s
case more particularly,” were his parting words.
And with this one gleam of comfort I had to be content.
Monday’s interview was a brief
one and contained nothing worth repeating. Mrs.
Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction to
the reading of the will I had drawn up, and upon its
completion rang her bell for the two witnesses awaiting
her summons, in an adjoining room. They were
not of her household, but to all appearance honest
villagers with but one noticeable characteristic,
an overweening idea of Mrs. Postlethwaite’s
importance. Perhaps the spell she had so liberally
woven for others in other and happier days was felt
by them at this hour. It would not be strange;
I had almost fallen under it myself, so great was
the fascination of her manner even in this wreck of
her bodily powers, when triumph assured, she faced
us all in a state of complete satisfaction.
But before I was again quit of the
place, all my doubts returned and in fuller force
than ever. I had lingered in my going as much
as decency would permit, hoping to hear a step on
the stair or see a face in some doorway which would
contradict Mrs. Postlethwaite’s cold assurance
that Miss Postlethwaite was no better. But no
such step did I hear, and no face did I see save the
old, old one of the ancient friend or relative, whose
bent frame seemed continually to haunt the halls.
As before, he stood listening to the monotonous ticking
of one of the clocks, muttering to himself and quite
oblivious of my presence.
However, this time I decided not to
pass him without a more persistent attempt to gain
his notice. Pausing at his side, I asked him in
the friendly tone I thought best calculated to attract
his attention, how Miss Postlethwaite was to-day.
He was so intent upon his task, whatever that was,
that while he turned my way, it was with a glance as
blank as that of a stone image.
“Listen!” he admonished
me. “It still says No! No! I don’t
think it will ever say anything else.”
I stared at him in some consternation,
then at the clock itself which was the tall one I
had found run down at my first visit. There was
nothing unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could
hear, and with a compassionate glance at the old man
who had turned breathlessly again to listen, proceeded
on my way without another word.
The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
I had worked my way out through the
vines which still encumbered the porch, and was taking
my first steps down the walk, when some impulse made
me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
Did I bless the impulse? I thought
I had every reason for doing so, when through a network
of interlacing branches I beheld the young girl with
whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with her
head thrust forward, watching the descent of something
small and white which she had just released from her
hand.
A note! A note written by her
and meant for me! With a grateful look in her
direction (which was probably lost upon her as she
had already drawn back out of sight), I sprang for
it only to meet with disappointment. For it was
no billet-doux I received from amid the clustering
brush where it had fallen; but a small square of white
cloth showing a line of fantastic embroidery.
Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it down
again, when the thought that it had come from her hand
deterred me, and I thrust it into my vest pocket.
When I took it out again which was soon
after I had taken my seat in the car I discovered
what a mistake I should have made if I had followed
my first impulse. For, upon examining the stitches
more carefully, I perceived that what I had considered
a mere decorative pattern was in fact a string of
letters, and that these letters made words, and that
these words were:
I DO NOT WANT TO DIE BUT IS U RELY WILL IF
Or, in plain writing:
“I do not want to die, but I surely will if ”
Finish the sentence for me. That
is the problem I offer you. It is not a case
for the police but one well worth your attention, if
you succeed in reaching the heart of this mystery
and saving this young girl.
Only, let no delay occur. The
doom, if doom it is, is immanent. Remember that
the will is signed.
“She is too small; I did not
ask you to send me a midget.”
Thus spoke Mrs. Postlethwaite to her
doctor, as he introduced into her presence a little
figure in nurse’s cap and apron. “You
said I needed care, more care than I was
receiving. I answered that my old nurse could
give it, and you objected that she or someone else
must look after Miss Postlethwaite. I did not
see the necessity, but I never contradict a doctor.
So I yielded to your wishes, but not without the proviso
(you remember that I made a proviso) that whatever
sort of young woman you chose to introduce into this
room, she should not be fresh from the training schools,
and that she should be strong, silent, and capable.
And you bring me this mite of a woman is
she a woman? she looks more like a child, of pleasing
countenance enough, but who can no more lift me ”
“Pardon me!” Little Miss
Strange had advanced. “I think, if you will
allow me the privilege, madam, that I can shift you
into a much more comfortable position.”
And with a deftness and ease certainly not to be expected
from one of her slight physique, Violet raised the
helpless invalid a trifle more upon her pillow.
The act, its manner, and the smile
accompanying it, could not fail to please, and undoubtedly
did, though no word rewarded her from lips not much
given to speech save when the occasion was imperative.
But Mrs. Postlethwaite made no further objection to
her presence, and, seeing this, the doctor’s
countenance relaxed and he left the room with a much
lighter step than that with which he had entered it.
And thus it was that Violet Strange an
adept in more ways than one became installed
at the bedside of this mysterious woman, whose days,
if numbered, still held possibilities of action which
those interested in young Helena Postlethwaite’s
fate would do well to recognize.
Miss Strange had been at her post
for two days, and had gathered up the following:
That Mrs. Postlethwaite must be obeyed.
That her step-daughter (who did not
wish to die) would die if she knew it to be the wish
of this domineering but apparently idolized woman.
That the old man of the clocks, while
senile in some regards, was very alert and quite youthful
in others. If a century old which she
began greatly to doubt he had the language
and manner of one in his prime, when unaffected by
the neighbourhood of the clocks, which seemed in some
non-understandable way to exercise an occult influence
over him. At table he was an entertaining host;
but neither there nor elsewhere would he discuss the
family, or dilate in any way upon the peculiarities
of a household of which he manifestly regarded himself
as the least important member. Yet no one knew
them better, and when Violet became quite assured
of this, as well as of the futility of looking for
explanation of any kind from either of her two patients,
she resolved upon an effort to surprise one from him.
She went about it in this way.
Noting his custom of making a complete round of the
clocks each night after dinner, she took advantage
of Mrs. Postlethwaite’s inclination to sleep
at this hour, to follow him from clock to clock in
the hope of overhearing some portion of the monologue
with which he bent his head to the swinging pendulum,
or put his ear to the hidden works. Soft-footed
and discreet, she tripped along at his back, and at
each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear
his way. The extreme darkness of the halls, which
were more sombre by night than by day, favoured this
attempt, and she was able, after a failure or two,
to catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from his lips
in seeming repetition of what he heard the most of
them say.
The satisfaction in his tone proved
that the denial to which he listened, chimed in with
his hopes and gave ease to his mind. But he looked
his oldest when, after pausing at another of the many
time-pieces, he echoed in answer to its special refrain,
Yes! yes! yes! yes! and fled the spot with shaking
body and a distracted air.
The same fear and the same shrinking
were observable in him as he returned from listening
to the least conspicuous one, standing in a short
corridor, where Violet could not follow him. But
when, after a hesitation which enabled her to slip
behind the curtain hiding the drawing-room door, he
approached and laid his ear against the great one
standing, as if on guard, at the foot of the stairs,
she saw by the renewed vigour he displayed that there
was comfort for him in its message, even before she
caught the whisper with which he left it and proceeded
to mount the stairs:
“It says No! It always
says No! I will heed it as the voice of Heaven.”
But one conclusion could be the result
of such an experiment to a mind like Violet’s.
This partly touched old man not only held the key to
the secret of this house, but was in a mood to divulge
it if once he could be induced to hear command instead
of dissuasion in the tick of this one large clock.
But how could he be induced? Violet returned to
Mrs. Postlethwaite’s bedside in a mood of extreme
thoughtfulness.
Another day passed, and she had not
yet seen Miss Postlethwaite. She was hoping each
hour to be sent on some errand to that young lady’s
room, but no such opportunity was granted her.
Once she ventured to ask the doctor, whose visits
were now very frequent, what he thought of the young
lady’s condition. But as this question was
necessarily put in Mrs. Postlethwaite’s presence,
the answer was naturally guarded, and possibly not
altogether frank.
“Our young lady is weaker,”
he acknowledged. “Much weaker,” he
added with marked emphasis and his most professional
air, “or she would be here instead of in her
own room. It grieves her not to be able to wait
upon her generous benefactress.”
The word fell heavily. Had it
been used as a test? Violet gave him a look,
though she had much rather have turned her discriminating
eye upon the face staring up at them from the pillow.
Had the alarm expressed by others communicated itself
at last to the physician? Was the charm which
had held him subservient to the mother, dissolving
under the pitiable state of the child, and was he
trying to aid the little detective-nurse in her effort
to sound the mystery of her condition?
His look expressed benevolence, but
he took care not to meet the gaze of the woman he
had just lauded, possibly because that gaze was fixed
upon him in a way to tax his moral courage. The
silence which ensued was broken by Mrs. Postlethwaite:
“She will live this
poor Helena how long?” she asked,
with no break in her voice’s wonted music.
The doctor hesitated, then with a
candour hardly to be expected from him, answered:
“I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite’s
case. I should like, with your permission, to
consult some New York physician.”
“Indeed!”
A single word, but as it left this
woman’s thin lips Violet recoiled, and, perhaps,
the doctor did. Rage can speak in one word as
well as in a dozen, and the rage which spoke in this
one was of no common order, though it was quickly
suppressed, as was all other show of feeling when
she added, with a touch of her old charm:
“Of course you will do what
you think best, as you know I never interfere with
a doctor’s decisions. But” and here
her natural ascendancy of tone and manner returned
in all its potency, “it would kill me to know
that a stranger was approaching Helena’s bedside.
It would kill her. She’s too sensitive
to survive such a shock.”
Violet recalled the words worked with
so much care by this young girl on a minute piece
of linen, I do not want to die, and watched the doctor’s
face for some sign of resolution. But embarrassment
was all she saw there, and all she heard him say was
the conventional reply:
“I am doing all I can for her.
We will wait another day and note the effect of my
latest prescription.”
Another day!
The deathly calm which overspread
Mrs. Postlethwaite’s features as this word left
the physician’s lips warned Violet not to let
another day go by without some action. But she
made no remark, and, indeed, betrayed but little interest
in anything beyond her own patient’s condition.
That seemed to occupy her wholly. With consummate
art she gave the appearance of being under Mrs. Postlethwaite’s
complete thrall, and watched with fascinated eyes
every movement of the one unstricken finger which could
do so much.
This little detective of ours could
be an excellent actor when she chose.
III
To make the old man speak! To
force this conscience-stricken but rebellious soul
to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it
be done?
This continued to be Violet’s
great problem. She pondered it so deeply during
all the remainder of the day that a little pucker settled
on her brow, which someone (I will not mention who)
would have been pained to see. Mrs. Postlethwaite,
if she noticed it at all, probably ascribed it to
her anxieties as nurse, for never had Violet been more
assiduous in her attentions. But Mrs. Postlethwaite
was no longer the woman she had been, and possibly
never noted it at all.
At five o’clock Violet suddenly
left the room. Slipping down into the lower hall,
she went the round of the clocks herself, listening
to every one. There was no perceptible difference
in their tick. Satisfied of this and that it
was simply the old man’s imagination which had
supplied them each with separate speech, she paused
before the huge one at the foot of the stairs, the
one whose dictate he had promised himself to follow, and
with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered
wistfully:
“Oh! for an idea! For an idea!”
Did this cumbrous relic of old-time
precision turn traitor at this ingenuous plea?
The dial continued to stare, the works to sing, but
Violet’s face suddenly lost its perplexity.
With a wary look about her and a listening ear turned
towards the stair top, she stretched out her hand
and pulled open the door guarding the pendulum, and
peered in at the works, smiling slyly to herself as
she pushed it back into place and retreated upstairs
to the sick room.
When the doctor came that night she
had a quiet word with him outside Mrs. Postlethwaite’s
door. Was that why he was on hand when old Mr.
Dunbar stole from his room to make his nightly circuit
of the halls below? Something quite beyond the
ordinary was in the good physician’s mind, for
the look he cast at the old man was quite unlike any
he had ever bestowed upon him before, and when he
spoke it was to say with marked urgency:
“Our beautiful young lady will
not live a week unless I get at the seat of her malady.
Pray that I may be enabled to do so, Mr. Dunbar.”
A blow to the aged man’s heart
which called forth a feeble “Yes, yes,”
followed by a wild stare which imprinted itself upon
the doctor’s memory as the look of one hopelessly
old, who hears for the first time a distinct call
from the grave which has long been awaiting him!
A solitary lamp stood in the lower
hall. As the old man picked his slow way down,
its small, hesitating flame flared up as in a sudden
gust, then sank down flickering and faint as if it,
too, had heard a call which summoned it to extinction.
No other sign of life was visible
anywhere. Sunk in twilight shadows, the corridors
branched away on either side to no place in particular
and serving, to all appearance (as many must have
thought in days gone by), as a mere hiding-place for
clocks.
To listen to their united hum, the
old man paused, looking at first a little distraught,
but settling at last into his usual self as he started
forward upon his course. Did some whisper, hitherto
unheard, warn him that it was the last time he would
tread that weary round? Who can tell? He
was trembling very much when with his task nearly
completed, he stepped out again into the main hall
and crept rather than walked back to the one great
clock to whose dictum he made it a practice to listen
last.
Chattering the accustomed words, “They
say Yes! They are all saying Yes! now; but this
one will say No!” he bent his stiff old back
and laid his ear to the unresponsive wood. But
the time for no had passed. It was Yes! yes!
yes! yes! now, and as his straining ears took in the
word, he appeared to shrink where he stood and after
a moment of anguished silence, broke forth into a
low wail, amid whose lamentations one could hear:
“The time has come! Even
the clock she loves best bids me speak. Oh!
Arabella, Arabella!”
In his despair he had not noticed
that the pendulum hung motionless, or that the hands
stood at rest on the dial. If he had, he might
have waited long enough to have seen the careful opening
of the great clock’s tall door and the stepping
forth of the little lady who had played so deftly
upon his superstition.
He was wandering the corridors like
a helpless child, when a gentle hand fell on his arm
and a soft voice whispered in his ear:
“You have a story to tell.
Will you tell it to me? It may save Miss Postlethwaite’s
life.”
Did he understand? Would he respond
if he did; or would the shock of her appeal restore
him to a sense of the danger attending disloyalty?
For a moment she doubted the wisdom of this startling
measure, then she saw that he had passed the point
of surprise and that, stranger as she was, she had
but to lead the way for him to follow, tell his story,
and die.
There was no light in the drawing-room
when they entered. But old Mr. Dunbar did not
seem to mind that. Indeed, he seemed to have lost
all consciousness of present surroundings; he was
even oblivious of her. This became quite evident
when the lamp, in flaring up again in the hall, gave
a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling
figure. In the pleading gesture of his trembling,
outreaching arms, Violet beheld an appeal, not to
herself, but to some phantom of his imagination; and
when he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the
freedom of one to whom speech is life’s last
boon, and the ear of the listener quite forgotten
in the passion of confession long suppressed.
“She has never loved me,”
he began, “but I have always loved her.
For me no other woman has ever existed, though I was
sixty-five years of age when I first saw her, and
had long given up the idea that there lived a woman
who could sway me from my even life and fixed lines
of duty. Sixty-five! and she a youthful bride!
Was there ever such folly! Happily I realized
it from the first, and piled ashes on my hidden flame.
Perhaps that is why I adore her to this day and only
give her over to reprobation because Fate is stronger
than my age stronger even than my love.
“She is not a good woman, but
I might have been a good man if I had never known
the sin which drew a line of isolation about her, and
within which I, and only I, have stood with her in
silent companionship. What was this sin, and
in what did it have its beginning? I think its
beginning was in the passion she had for her husband.
It was not the every-day passion of her sex in this
land of equable affections, but one of foreign fierceness,
jealousy, and insatiable demand. Yet he was a
very ordinary man. I was once his tutor and I
know. She came to know it too, when but
I am rushing on too fast, I have much to tell before
I reach that point.
“From the first, I was in their
confidence. Not that either he or she put me
there, but that I lived with them and was always around,
and could not help seeing and hearing what went on
between them. Why he continued to want me in
the house and at his table, when I could no longer
be of service to him, I have never known. Possibly
habit explains all. He was accustomed to my presence
and so was she; so accustomed they hardly noticed
it, as happened one night, when after a little attempt
at conversation, he threw down the book he had caught
up and, addressing her by name, said without a glance
my way, and quite as if he were alone with her:
“’Arabella, there is something
I ought to tell you. I have tried to find the
courage to do so many times before now but have always
failed. Tonight I must.’ And then
he made his great disclosure, how, unknown
to, his friends and the world, he was a widower when
he married her, and the father of a living child.
“With some women this might
have passed with a measure of regret, and some possible
contempt for his silence, but not so with her.
She rose to her feet I can see her yet and
for a moment stood facing him in the still, overpowering
manner of one who feels the icy pang of hate enter
where love has been. Never was moment more charged.
I could not breathe while it lasted; and when at last
she spoke, it was with an impetuosity of concentrated
passion, hardly less dreadful than her silence had
been.
“‘You a father! A
father already!’ she cried, all her sweetness
swallowed up in ungovernable wrath. ’You
whom I expected to make so happy with a child?
I curse you and your brat. I ’
“He strove to placate her, to
explain. But rage has no ears, and before I realized
my own position, the scene became openly tempestuous.
That her child should be second to another woman’s
seemed to awaken demon instincts within her.
When he ventured to hint that his little girl needed
a mother’s care, her irony bit like corroding
acid. He became speechless before it and had
not a protest to raise when she declared that the
secret he had kept so long and so successfully he must
continue to keep to his dying day. That the child
he had failed to own in his first wife’s lifetime
should remain disowned in hers, and if possible be
forgotten. She should never give the girl a thought
nor acknowledge her in any way.
“She was Fury embodied; but
the fury was of that grand order which allures rather
than repels. As I felt myself succumbing to its
fascination and beheld how he was weakening under it
even more perceptibly than myself, I started from
my chair, and sought to glide away before I should
hear him utter a fatal acquiescence.
“But the movement I made unfortunately
drew their attention to me, and after an instant of
silent contemplation of my distracted countenance,
Frank said, as though he were the elder by the forty
years which separated us:
“’You have listened to
Mrs. Postlethwaite’s wishes. You will respect
them of course.’”
That was all. He knew and she
knew that I was to be trusted; but neither of them
has ever known why.
A month later her child came, and
was welcomed as though it were the first to bear his
name. It was a boy, and their satisfaction was
so great that I looked to see their old affection
revive. But it had been cleft at the root, and
nothing could restore it to life. They loved the
child; I have never seen evidence of greater parental
passion than they both displayed, but there their
feelings stopped. Towards each other they were
cold. They did not even unite in worship of their
treasure. They gloated over him and planned for
him, but always apart. He was a child in a thousand,
and as he developed, the mother especially, nursed
all her energies for the purpose of ensuring for him
a future commensurate with his talents. Never
a very conscientious woman, and alive to the advantages
of wealth as demonstrated by the power wielded by
her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the boy’s
prospects with money, great money, such money as Andrew
had accumulated, and now had at his disposal for his
natural heirs.
“Hence came her great temptation, a
temptation to which she yielded, to the lasting trouble
of us all. Of this I must now make confession
though it kills me to do so, and will soon kill her.
The deeds of the past do not remain buried, however
deep we dig their graves, but rise in an awful resurrection
when we are old old ”
Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful
speech.
Violet held her breath to listen.
Possibly the doctor, hidden in the darkest corner
of the room, did so also.
“I never knew how she became
acquainted with the terms of her brother-in-law’s
will. He certainly never confided them to her,
and as certainly the lawyer who drew up the document
never did. But that she was well aware of its
tenor is as positive a fact as that I am the most
wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the
darksome deed into which she was betrayed when both
the brothers lay dying among strangers, of a dreadful
accident?”
“I was witness to that deed.
I had accompanied her on her hurried ride and was
at her side when she entered the inn where the two
Postlethwaites lay. I was always at her side in
great joy or in great trouble, though she professed
no affection for me and gave me but scanty thanks.”
“During our ride she had been
silent and I had not disturbed that silence.
I had much to think of. Should we find him living,
or should we find him dead? If dead, would it
sever the relations between us two? Would I ever
ride with her again?”
“When I was not dwelling on
this theme, I was thinking of the parting look she
gave her boy; a look which had some strange promise
in it. What had that look meant and why did my
flesh creep and my mind hover between dread and a
fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas!
There was reason for all these sensations as I was
soon to learn.
“We found the inn seething with
terror and the facts worse than had been represented
in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She
had come just in time to witness the end. This
they told her before she had taken off her veil.
If they had waited if I had been given a
full glimpse of her face But it was hidden,
and I could only judge of the nature of her emotions
by the stern way in which she held herself.
“‘Take me to him,’
was the quiet command, with which she met this disclosure.
Then, before any of them could move:
“‘And his brother, Mr.
Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally injured too?’
“The reply was unequivocal.
The doctors were uncertain which of the two would
pass away first.
“You must remember that at this
time I was ignorant of the rich man’s will,
and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of
whom I had heard only one mention, hung in the balance
at that awful moment. But in the breathlessness
which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of
double death, I realized from my knowledge of her that
something more than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable
heart, and shuddered to the core of my being when
she repeated in that voice which was so terrible because
so expressionless:
“‘Take me to them.’”
They were lying in one room, her husband
nearest the door, the other in a small alcove some
ten feet away. Both were unconscious; both were
surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell
back as she approached. A doctor stood at the
bed-head of her husband, but as her eye met his he
stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the
place empty for her.
“The action was significant.
I saw that she understood what it meant, and with
constricted heart watched her as she bent over the
dying man and gazed into his wide-open eyes, already
sightless and staring. Calculation was in her
look and calculation only; and calculation, or something
equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the
direction of his brother. What was in her mind?
I could understand her indifference to Frank even
at the crisis of his fate, but not the interest she
showed in Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering
her whole expression. I no longer knew her for
my dear young madam, and the jealousy I had never
felt towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my
breast as I beheld what very likely might be a tardy
recognition of the other’s well-known passion,
forced into disclosure by the exigencies of the moment.
“Alarmed by the strength of
my feelings, and fearing an equal disclosure on my
own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found
it in a little balcony opening out at my right.
On to this balcony I stepped and found myself face
to face with a star-lit heaven. Had I only been
content with my isolation and the splendour of the
spectacle spread out before me! But no, I must
look back upon that bed and the solitary woman standing
beside it! I must watch the settling of her body
into rigidity as a voice rose from beside the other
Postlethwaite saying, ’It is a matter of minutes
now,’ and then and then the
slow creeping of her hand to her husband’s mouth,
the outspreading of her palm across the livid lips its
steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps
of one already moribund, till the quivering form grew
still, and Frank Postlethwaite lay dead before my
eyes!
“I saw, and made no outcry,
but she did, bringing the doctor back to her side
with the startled exclamation:
“’Dead? I thought
he had an hour’s life left in him, and he has
passed before his brother.’
“I thought it hate the
murderous impulse of a woman who sees her enemy at
her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of
her long-cherished antagonism; and while something
within me rebelled at the act, I could not betray
her, though silence made a murderer of me too.
I could not. Her spell was upon me as in another
instant it was upon everyone else in the room.
No suspicion of one so self-repressed in her sadness
disturbed the universal sympathy; and encouraged by
this blindness of the crowd, I vowed within myself
never to reveal her secret. The man was dead,
or as good as dead, when she touched him; and now
that her hate was expended she would grow gentle and
good.
“But I knew the worthlessness
of this hope as well as my misconception of her motive,
when Frank’s child by another wife returned to
my memory, and Bella’s sin stood exposed.”
“But only to myself. I
alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and in
consequence her boy’s, had been won by a crime.
That if her hand had fallen in comfort on her husband’s
forehead instead of in pressure on his mouth, he would
have outlived his brother long enough to have become
owner of his millions; in which case a rightful portion
would have been insured to his daughter, now left
a penniless waif. The thought made my hair rise,
as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first
and last effort to rid my conscience of its new and
intolerable burden.
“But the woman I had known and
loved was no longer before me. The crown had
touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly
sexual up to this hour had merged into an intellectual
force, with which few men’s mentality could
cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the
first instant, I knew that a slavery of spirit, as
well as of heart, was henceforth to be mine.
“She did not wait for me to
speak; she had assumed the dictator’s attitude
at once.
“‘I know of what you are
thinking,"’ said she, ’and it is a subject
you may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr. Postlethwaite’s
child by his first wife is coming to live with us.
I have expressed my wishes in this regard to my lawyer,
and there is nothing left to be said. You, with
your close mouth and dependable nature, are to remain
here as before, and occupy the same position towards
my boy that you did towards his father. We shall
move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our
duties will be changed and their scope greatly increased;
but I know that you can be trusted to enlarge with
them and meet every requirement I shall see fit to
make. Do not try to express your thanks.
I see them in your face.’
“Did she, or just the last feeble
struggle my conscience was making to break the bonds
in which she held me, and win back my own respect?
I shall never know, for she left me on completion
of this speech, not to resume the subject, then or
ever.
“But though I succumbed outwardly
to her demands, I had not passed the point where inner
conflict ends and peace begins. Her recognition
of Helena and her reception into the family calmed
me for a while, and gave me hope that all would yet
be well. But I had never sounded the full bitterness
of madam’s morbid heart, well as I thought I
knew it. The hatred she had felt from the first
for her husband’s child ripened into frenzied
dislike when she found her a living image of the mother
whose picture she had come across among Frank’s
personal effects. To win a tear from those meek
eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was
her daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy
of impressing upon the girl by how little she had
missed a great fortune, and I have often thought,
much as I tried to keep my mind free from all extravagant
and unnecessary fancies, that half of the money she
spent in beautifying this house and maintaining art
industries and even great charitable institutions
was spent with the base purpose of demonstrating to
this child the power of immense wealth, and in what
ways she might expect to see her little brother expend
the millions in which she had been denied all share.
“I was so sure of this that
one night while I was winding up the clocks with which
Mrs. Postlethwaite in her fondness for old timepieces
has filled the house, I stopped to look at the little
figure toiling so wearily upstairs, to bed, without
a mother’s kiss. There was an appeal in
the small wistful face which smote my hard old heart,
and possibly a tear welled up in my own eye when I
turned back to my duty.”
“Was that why I felt the hand
of Providence upon me, when in my halt before the
one clock to which any superstitious interest was
attached the great one at the foot of the
stairs I saw that it had stopped and at
the one minute of all minutes in our wretched lives:
Four minutes past two? The hour, the minute in
which Frank Postlethwaite had gasped his last under
the pressure of his wife’s hand! I knew
it the exact minute I mean because
Providence meant that I should know it. There
had been a clock on the mantelpiece of the hotel room
where he and his brother had died and I had seen her
glance steal towards it at the instant she withdrew
her palm from her husband’s lips. The stare
of that dial and the position of its hands had lived
still in my mind as I believed it did in hers.
“Four minutes past two!
How came our old timepiece here to stop at that exact
moment on a day when Duty was making its last demand
upon me to remember Frank’s unhappy child?
There was no one to answer; but as I looked and looked,
I felt the impulse of the moment strengthen into purpose
to leave those hands undisturbed in their silent accusation.
She might see, and, moved by the coincidence, tremble
at her treatment of Helena.
“But if this happened if
she saw and trembled she gave no sign.
The works were started up by some other hand, and
the incident passed. But it left me with an idea.
That clock soon had a way of stopping and always at
that one instant of time. She was forced at length
to notice it, and I remember, an occasion when she
stood stock-still with her eyes on those hands, and
failed to find the banister with her hand, though
she groped for it in her frantic need for support.
“But no command came from her
to remove the worn-out piece, and soon its tricks,
and every lesser thing, were forgotten in the crushing
calamity which befell us in the sickness and death
of little Richard.
“Oh, those days and nights!
And oh, the face of the mother when the doctors told
her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself
then, and I have asked myself a hundred times since,
which of all the emotions I saw pictured there bit
the deepest, and made the most lasting impression
on her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If so,
she showed no change in her attitude towards Helena,
unless it was by an added bitterness. The sweet
looks and gentle ways of Frank’s young daughter
could not win against a hate sharpened by disappointment.
Useless for me to hope for it. Release from the
remorse of years was not to come in that way.
As I realized this, I grew desperate and resorted
again to the old trick of stopping the clock at the
fatal hour. This time her guilty heart responded.
She acknowledged the stab and let all her miseries
appear. But how? In a way to wring my heart
almost to madness, and not benefit the child at all.
She had her first stroke that night. I had made
her a helpless invalid.
“That was eight years ago, and
since then what? Stagnation. She lived with
her memories, and I with mine. Helena only had
a right to hope, and hope perhaps she did, till Is
that the great clock talking? Listen! They
all talk, but I heed only the one. What does it
say? Tell! tell! tell! Does it think I will
be silent now when I come to my own guilt? That
I will seek to hide my weakness when I could not hide
her sin?”
“Explain!” It was Violet
speaking, and her tone was stern in its command.
“Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt
towards Helena; you pitied her too much ”
“But I pitied my dear madam
more. It was that which affected me and drew
me into crime against my will. Besides, I did
not know not at first what was
in the little bowl of curds and cream I carried to
the girl each day. She had eaten them in her
step-mother’s room, and under her step-mother’s
eye as long as she had strength to pass from room
to room, and how was I to guess that it was not wholesome?
Because she failed in health from day to day?
Was not my dear madam failing in health also; and
was there poison in her cup? Innocent at that
time, why am I not innocent now? Because Oh,
I will tell it all; as though at the bar of God.
I will tell all the secrets of that day.
“She was sitting with her hand
trembling on the tray from which I had just lifted
the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had
seen her so a hundred times before, but not with just
that look in her eyes, or just that air of desolation
in her stony figure. Something made me speak;
something made me ask if she were not quite so well
as usual, and something made her reply with the dreadful
truth that the doctor had given her just two months
more to live. My fright and mad anguish stupefied
me; for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all; and
unconsciously I stared down at the bowl I held, unable
to breathe or move or even to meet her look.”
As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
“‘Why do you stand like
that?’ I heard her say in a tone of great irritation.
’And why do you stare into that bowl? Do
you think I mean to leave that child to walk these
halls after I am carried out of them forever?
Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as
that? I tell you that I would rot above ground
rather than enter it before she did?’
“I had believed I knew this
woman; but what soul ever knows another’s?
What soul ever knows itself?
“‘Bella!’ I cried;
the first time I had ever presumed to address her
so intimately. ‘Would you poison the girl?’
And from sheer weakness my fingers lost their clutch,
and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into a dozen
pieces.
“For a minute she stared down
at these from over her tray, and then she remarked
very low and very quietly:
“’Another bowl, Humphrey,
and fresh curds from the kitchen. I will do the
seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped.
You won’t?’ I had shaken my
head ’But you will! It will not
be the first time you have gone down the hall with
this mixture.’
“‘But that was before I knew ’
I began.
“‘And now that you do,
you will go just the same.’ Then as I stood
hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in
an instant, she added in a voice to tear the heart,
’Do not make me hate the only being left in
this world who understands and loves me.’
“She was a helpless invalid,
and I a broken man, but when that word ‘love’
fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning
in my veins, and all the crust of habit and years
of self-control loosen about my heart, and make me
young again. What if her thoughts were dark and
her wishes murderous! She was born to rule and
sway men to her will even to their own undoing.”
“‘I wish I might kiss
your hand,’ was what I murmured, gazing at her
white fingers groping over her tray.
“‘You may,’ she
answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief
instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently
about my task.
“But puppet though I was, I
was not utterly without sympathy. When I entered
Helena’s room and saw how her startled eyes fell
shrinkingly on the bowl I set down before her, my
conscience leaped to life and I could not help saying:
“’Don’t you like
the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them
very much.’
“‘His were ’
“‘What, Helena?’
“‘What these are not,’ she murmured.
“I stared at her, terror-stricken.
So she knew, and yet did not seize the bowl and empty
it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved
slowly towards it and drew it into place before her.
“‘Yet I must eat,’
she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of patient
despair, which yet was without accusation.
“But my hand had instinctively
gone to hers and grasped it.
“‘Why must you eat it?’
I asked. ’If if you do not find
it wholesome, why do you touch it?’
“‘Because my step-mother
expects me to,’ she cried, ’and I have
no other will than hers. When I was a little,
little child, my father made me promise that if I
ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest
wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint
the trust he put in me.’
“‘Even if you die of it?’
“I do not know whether I whispered
these words or only thought them. She answered
as though I had spoken.
“’I am not afraid to die.
I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some
day to do something I feel to be wrong.’
“When I fled down the hall that
night, I heard one of the small clocks speak to me.
Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I rushed
away from it with beaded forehead and rising hair.
“Then another’s note piped
up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! I
stopped and took heart. Disgrace the woman I
loved, on the brink of the grave? I ,
who asked no other boon from heaven than to see her
happy, gracious, and good? Impossible. I
would obey the great clock’s voice; the others
were mere chatterboxes.
“But it has at last changed
its tune, for some reason, quite changed its tune.
Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in obeying
it I save Helena. But what of Bella? and O God,
what of myself?”
A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy
silence, into which there finally broke the pealing
of the various clocks striking the hour. When
all were still again and Violet had drawn aside the
portiere, it was to see the old man on his knees,
and between her and the thin streak of light entering
from the hall, the figure of the doctor hastening to
Helena’s bedside.
When with inducements needless to
name, they finally persuaded the young girl to leave
her unholy habitation, it was in the arms which had
upheld her once before, and to a life which promised
to compensate her for her twenty years of loneliness
and unsatisfied longing.
But a black shadow yet remained which
she must cross before reaching the sunshine!
It lay at her step-mother’s door.
In the plans made for Helena’s
release, Mrs. Postlethwaite’s consent had not
been obtained nor was she supposed to be acquainted
with the doctor’s intentions towards the child
whose death she was hourly awaiting.
It was therefore with an astonishment,
bordering on awe, that on their way downstairs, they
saw the door of her room open and herself standing
alone and upright on the threshold she who
had not been seen to take a step in years. In
the wonder of this miracle of suddenly restored power,
the little procession stopped, the doctor
with his hand upon the rail, the lover with his burden
clasped yet more protectingly to his breast.
That a little speech awaited them could be seen from
the force and fury of the gaze which the indomitable
woman bent upon the lax and half-unconscious figure
she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed. Having
but one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched
it straight at the innocent breast which had never
harboured against her a defiant thought.
“Ingrate!” was the word
she hurled in a voice from which all its seductive
music had gone forever. “Where are you going?
Are they carrying you alive to your grave?”
A moan from Helena’s pale lips,
then silence. She had fainted at that barbed
attack. But there was one there who dared to answer
for her and he spoke relentlessly. It was the
man who loved her.
“No, madam. We are carrying
her to safety. You must know what I mean by that.
Let her go quietly and you may die in peace. Otherwise ”
She interrupted him with a loud call,
startling into life the echoes of that haunted hall:
“Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!”
But no Humphrey appeared.
Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:
“Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!”
But the answer was the same silence,
and only silence. As the horror of this grew,
the doctor spoke:
“Mr. Humphrey Dunbar’s
ears are closed to all earthly summons. He died
last night at the very hour he said he would four
minutes after two.”
“Four minutes after two!”
It came from her lips in a whisper, but with a revelation
of her broken heart and life. “Four minutes
after two!” And defiant to the last, her head
rose, and for an instant, for a mere breath of time,
they saw her as she had looked in her prime, regal
in form, attitude, and expression; then the will which
had sustained her through so much, faltered and succumbed,
and with a final reiteration of the words “Four
minutes after two!” she broke into a rattling
laugh, and fell back into the arms of her old nurse.
And below, one clock struck the hour
and then another. But not the big one at the
foot of the stairs. That still stood silent, with
its hands pointing to the hour and minute of Frank
Postlethwaite’s hastened death.