But had she imposed on Brotherson? As the silence continued, Sweet.w.a.ter began to doubt. He understood quite well the importance of his neighbour's first movement. Were he to tear those letters into shreds!

He might be thus tempted. All depended on the strength of his present mood and the real nature of the secret which lay buried in his heart.

Was that heart as flinty as it seemed? Was there no place for doubt or even for curiosity, in its impenetrable depths? Seemingly, he had not moved foot or hand since his unwelcome visitors had left. He was doubtless still staring at the scattered sheets lying before him; possibly battling with unaccustomed impulses; possibly weighing deeds and consequences in those slow moving scales of his in which no man could cast a weight with any certainty how far its even balance would be disturbed.

There was a sound as of settling coal. Only at night would one expect to hear so slight a sound as that in a tenement full of noisy children.

But the moment chanced to be propitious, and it not only attracted the attention of Sweet.w.a.ter on his side of the wall, but it struck the ear of Brotherson also. With an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n as bitter as it was impatient, he roused himself and gathered up the letters. Sweet.w.a.ter could hear the successive rustlings as he bundled them up in his hand. Then came another silence--then the lifting of a stove lid.

Sweet.w.a.ter had not been wrong in his secret apprehension. His identification with his unimpressionable neighbour's mood had shown him what to expect. These letters--these innocent and precious outpourings of a rare and womanly soul--the only conceivable open sesame to the hard-locked nature he found himself pitted against, would soon be resolved into a vanishing puff of smoke.

But the lid was thrust back, and the letters remained in hand. Mortal strength has its limits. Even Brotherson could not shut down that lid on words which might have been meant for him, harshly as he had repelled the idea.

The pause which followed told little; but when Sweet.w.a.ter heard the man within move with characteristic energy to the door, turn the key and step back again to his place at the table, he knew that the danger moment had pa.s.sed and that those letters were about to be read, not casually, but seriously, as indeed their contents merited.

This caused Sweet.w.a.ter to feel serious himself. Upon what result might he calculate? What would happen to this hardy soul, when the fact he so scornfully repudiated, was borne in upon him, and he saw that the disdain which had antagonised him was a mere device--a cloak to hide the secret heart of love and eager womanly devotion? Her death--little as Brotherson would believe it up till now--had been his personal loss the greatest which can befall a man. When he came to see this--when the modest fervour of her unusual nature began to dawn upon him in these self-revelations, would the result be remorse, or just the deadening and final extinction of whatever tenderness he may have retained for her memory?

Impossible to tell. The balance of probability hung even. Sweet.w.a.ter recognised this, and clung, breathless, to his loop-hole. Fain would he have seen, as well as heard.

Mr. Brotherson read the first letter, standing. As it soon became public property, I will give it here, just as it afterwards appeared in the columns of the greedy journals:

"Beloved:

"When I sit, as I often do, in perfect quiet under the stars, and dream that you are looking at them too, not for hours as I do, but for one full moment in which your thoughts are with me as wholly as mine are with you, I feel that the bond between us, unseen by the world, and possibly not wholly recognised by ourselves, is instinct with the same power which links together the eternities.

"It seems to have always been; to have known no beginning, only a budding, an efflorescence, the visible product of a hidden but always present reality. A month ago and I was ignorant, even, of your name. Now, you seem the best known to me, the best understood, of G.o.d's creatures. One afternoon of perfect companionship--one flash of strong emotion, with its deep, true insight into each other's soul, and the miracle was wrought. We had met, and henceforth, parting would mean separation only, and not the severing of a mutual bond. One hand, and one only, could do that now. I will not name that hand. For us there is nought ahead but life.

"Thus do I ease my heart in the silence which conditions impose upon us. Some day I shall hear your voice again, and then-"

The paper dropped from the reader's hand. It was several minutes before he took up another.

This one, as it happened, antedated the other, as will appear on reading it:

"My friend:

"I said that I could not write to you--that we must wait. You were willing; but there is much to be accomplished, and the silence may be long. My father is not an easy man to please, but he desires my happiness and will listen to my plea when the right hour comes. When you have won your place--when you have shown yourself to be the man I feel you to be, then my father will recognise your worth, and the way will be cleared, despite the obstacles which now intervene.

"But meantime! Ah, you will not know it, but words will rise --the heart must find utterance. What the lip cannot utter, nor the looks reveal, these pages shall hold in sacred trust for you till the day when my father will place my hand in yours, with heart-felt approval.

"Is it a folly? A woman's weak evasion of the strong silence of man? You may say so some day; but somehow, I doubt it--I doubt it."

The creaking of a chair;--the man within had seated himself. There was no other sound; a soul in turmoil wakens no echoes. Sweet.w.a.ter envied the walls surrounding the unsympathetic reader. They could see. He could only listen.

A little while; then that slight rustling again of the unfolding sheet.

The following was read, and then the fourth and last:

"Dearest:

"Did you think I had never seen you till that day we met in Lenox?

I am going to tell you a secret--a great, great secret--such a one as a woman hardly whispers to her own heart.

"One day, in early summer, I was sitting in St. Bartholomew's Church on Fifth Avenue, waiting for the services to begin. It was early and the congregation was a.s.sembling. While idly watching the people coming in, I saw a gentleman pa.s.s by me up the aisle, who made me forget all the others. He had not the air of a New Yorker; he was not even dressed in city style, but as I noted his face and expression, I said way down in my heart, 'That is the kind of man I could love; the only man I have ever seen who could make me forget my own world and my own people.'

It was a pa.s.sing thought, soon forgotten. But when in that hour of embarra.s.sment and peril on Greylock Mountain, I looked up into the face of my rescuer and saw again that countenance which so short a time before had called into life impulses till then utterly unknown, I knew that my hour was come. And that was why my confidence was so spontaneous and my belief in the future so absolute.

"I trust your love which will work wonders; and I trust my own, which sprang at a look but only gathered strength and permanence when I found that the soul of the man I loved bettered his outward attractions, making the ideal of my foolish girlhood seem as unsubstantial and evanescent as a dream in the glowing noontide."

"My Own:

"I can say so now; for you have written to me, and I have the dancing words with which to silence any unsought doubt which might subdue the exuberance of these secret outpourings.

"I did not expect this. I thought that you would remain as silent as myself. But men's ways are not our ways. They cannot exhaust longing in purposeless words on sc.r.a.ps of soulless paper, and I am glad that they cannot. I love you for your impatience; for your purpose, and for the manliness which will win for you yet all that you covet of fame, accomplishment and love. You expect no reply, but there are ways in which one can keep silent and yet speak.

Won't you be surprised when your answer comes in a manner you have never thought of?"

XX. CONFUSION

In his interest in what was going on on the other side of the wall, Sweet.w.a.ter had forgotten himself. Daylight had declined, but in the darkness of the closet this change had pa.s.sed unheeded. Night itself might come, but that should not force him to leave his post so long as his neighbour remained behind his locked door, brooding over the words of love and devotion which had come to him, as it were from the other world.

But was he brooding? That sound of iron clattering upon iron!

That smothered exclamation and the laugh which ended it! Anger and determination rang in that laugh. It had a hideous sound which prepared Sweet.w.a.ter for the smell which now reached his nostrils. The letters were burning; this time the lid had been lifted from the stove with unrelenting purpose. Poor Edith Challoner's touching words had met, a different fate from any which she, in her ignorance of this man's nature,--a nature to which she had ascribed untold perfections--could possibly have conceived.

As Sweet.w.a.ter thought of this, he stirred nervously in the darkness, and broke into silent invective against the man who could so insult the memory of one who had perished under the blight of his own coldness and misunderstanding. Then he suddenly started back surprised and apprehensive. Brotherson had unlocked his door, and was coming rapidly his way. Sweet.w.a.ter heard his step in the hall and had hardly time to bound from his closet, when he saw his own door burst in and found himself face to face with his redoubtable neighbour, in a state of such rage as few men could meet without quailing, even were they of his own stature, physical vigour and prowess; and Sweet.w.a.ter was a small man.

However, disappointment such as he had just experienced brings with it a desperation which often outdoes courage, and the detective, smiling with an air of gay surprise, shouted out:

"Well, what's the matter now? Has the machine busted, or tumbled into the fire or sailed away to lands unknown out of your open window?"

"You were coming out of that closet," was the fierce rejoinder. "What have you got there? Something which concerns me, or why should your face go pale at my presence and your forehead drip with sweat? Don't think that you've deceived me for a moment as to your business here. I recognised you immediately. You've played the stranger well, but you've a nose and an eye n.o.body could forget. I have known all along that I had a police spy for a neighbour; but it didn't faze me. I've nothing to conceal, and wouldn't mind a regiment of you fellows if you'd only play a straight game. But when it comes to foisting upon me a parcel of letters to which I have no right, and then setting a fellow like you to count my groans or whatever else they expected to hear, I have a right to defend myself, and defend myself I will, by G.o.d! But first, let me be sure that my accusations will stand. Come into this closet with me. It abuts on the wall of my room and has its own secret, I know. What is it?

I have you at an advantage now, and you shall tell."

He did have Sweet.w.a.ter at an advantage, and the detective knew it and disdained a struggle which would have only called up a crowd, friendly to the other but inimical to himself. Allowing Brotherson to drag him into the closet, he stood quiescent, while the determined man who held him with one hand, felt about with the other over the shelves and along the part.i.tions till he came to the hole which had offered such a happy means of communication between the two rooms. Then, with a laugh almost as bitter in tone as that which rang from Brotherson's lips, he acknowledged that business had its necessities and that apologies from him were in order; adding, as they both stepped out into the rapidly darkening room:

"We've played a bout, we two; and you've come out ahead. Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Brotherson. You've cleared yourself so far as I am concerned. I leave this ranch to-night."

The frown had come back to the forehead of the indignant man who confronted him.

"So you listened," he cried; "listened when you weren't sneaking under my eye! A fine occupation for a man who can dove-tail a corner like an adept. I wish I had let you join the brotherhood you were good enough to mention. They would know how to appreciate your double gifts and how to reward your excellence in the one, if not in the other. What did the police expect to learn about me that they should consider it necessary to call into exercise such extraordinary talents?"

"I'm not good at conundrums. I was given a task to perform, and I performed it," was Sweet.w.a.ter's st.u.r.dy reply. Then slowly, with his eye fixed directly upon his antagonist, "I guess they thought you a man.

And so did I until I heard you burn those letters. Fortunately we have copies."

"Letters!" Fury thickened the speaker's voice, and lent a savage gleam to his eye. "Forgeries! Make believes! Miss Challoner never wrote the drivel you dare to designate as letters. It was concocted at Police Headquarters. They made me tell my story and then they found some one who could wield the poetic pen. I'm obliged to them for the confidence they show in my credulity. I credit Miss Challoner with such words as have been given me to read here to-day? I knew the lady, and I know myself. Nothing that pa.s.sed between us, not an event in which we were both concerned, has been forgotten by me, and no feature of our intercourse fits the language you have ascribed to her. On the contrary, there is a lamentable contradiction between facts as they were and the fancies you have made her indulge in. And this, as you must acknowledge, not only proves their falsity, but exonerates Miss Challoner from all possible charge of sentimentality."

"Yet she certainly wrote those letters. We had them from Mr. Challoner.

The woman who brought them was really her maid. We have not deceived you in this."

"I do not believe you."