His grunts and groans during all this formed a running accompaniment which would have afforded me great secret amus.e.m.e.nt had my purpose been less serious. As it was, I could pay but little attention to him, especially after I had stepped back far enough to take a glance at the window over the one I had just located as that of the Flower Parlor. It was, as I expected, the third one from the rear corner; but it was not this fact which gave me a thrill of feeling so strong that I have never had harder work to preserve my equanimity. _It was the knot of black c.r.a.pe with which the shutters were tied together._

XX

QUESTIONS

I kept the promise I had made to myself and did not go to the stables.

Had I intended to go there, I could not have done so after the discovery I have just mentioned. It awakened too many thoughts and contradictory surmises. If this knot was a signal, for whom was this signal meant? If it was a mere acknowledgment of death, how reconcile the sentimentality which prompted such an acknowledgment with the monstrous and diseased pa.s.sions lying at the base of the whole dreadful occurrence? Lastly, if it was the result of pure carelessness, a bit of c.r.a.pe having been caught up and used for a purpose for which any ordinary string would have answered, what a wonderful coincidence between it and my thoughts,--a coincidence, indeed, amounting almost to miracle!

Marvelling at the whole affair and deciding nothing, I allowed myself to stroll down alone to the gate, William having left me at my peremptory refusal to drag my skirts any longer through the briers. The day being bright and the sunshine warm, the road looked less gloomy than usual, especially in the direction of the village and Deacon Spear's cottage.

The fact is, that anything seemed better than the grim and lowering walls of the house behind me. If my home was there, so was my dread, and I welcomed the sight of Mother Jane's heavy figure bent over her herbs at the door of her hut, a few paces to my left, where the road turned.

Had she not been deaf, I believed I would have called her. As it was, I contented myself with watching the awkward swayings of her body as she pottered to and fro among her turnips and carrots. My eyes were still on her when I suddenly heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the highway.

Looking up, I encountered the trim figure of Mr. Trohm, bending to me from a fine sorrel.

"Good morning, Miss b.u.t.terworth. It's a great relief to me to see you in such good health and spirits this morning," were the pleasant words with which he endeavored, perhaps, to explain his presence in a spot more or less under a ban.

It was certainly a surprise. What right had I to look for such attentions from a man whose acquaintance I had made only the day before?

It touched me, little as I am in the habit of allowing myself to be ruled by trivial sentimentalities, and though I was discreet enough to avoid any further recognition of his kindness than was his due from a lady of great self-respect, he was evidently sufficiently gratified by my response to draw rein and pause for a moment's conversation under the pine trees. This for the moment seemed so natural that I forgot that more than one pair of eyes might be watching me from the windows behind us--eyes which might wonder at a meeting which to the foolish understandings of the young might have the look of premeditation. But, pshaw! I am talking as if I were twenty instead of--Well, I will leave you to consult our family record on that point. There are certain secrets which even the wisest among us cannot be blamed for preserving.

"How did you pa.s.s the night?" was Mr. Trohm's first question. "I hope in all due peace and quiet."

"Thank you," I returned, not seeing why I should increase his anxiety in my regard. "I have nothing to complain of. I had a dream; but dreams are to be expected where one has to pa.s.s a half-dozen empty rooms to one's apartment."

He could not restrain his curiosity.

"A dream!" he repeated. "I do not believe in sleep that is broken by dreams, unless they are of the most cheerful sort possible. And I judge from what you say that yours were not cheerful."

I wanted to confide in him. I felt that in a way he had a right to know what had happened to me, or what I thought had happened to me, under this roof. And yet I did not speak. What I could tell would sound so puerile in the broad sunshine that enveloped us. I merely remarked that cheerfulness was not to be expected in a domicile so given over to the ravages of time, and then with that lightness and versatility which characterize me under certain exigencies, I introduced a topic we could discuss without any embarra.s.sment to himself or me.

"Do you see Mother Jane over there?" I asked. "I had some talk with her yesterday. She seems like a harmless imbecile."

"Very harmless," he acquiesced; "her only fault is greed; that is insatiable. Yet it is not strong enough to take her a quarter of a mile from this place. Nothing could do that, I think. She believes that her daughter Lizzie is still alive and will come back to the hut some day.

It's very sad when you think that the girl's dead, and has been dead nearly forty years."

"Why does she harp on numbers?" I asked. "I heard her mutter certain ones over and over."

"That is a mystery none of us have ever been able to solve," said he.

"Possibly she has no reason for it. The vagaries of the witless are often quite unaccountable."

He remained looking at me long after he had finished speaking, not, I felt sure, from any connection he found between what he had just said and anything to be observed in me, but from--Well, I was glad that I had been carefully trained in my youth to pay the greatest attention to my morning toilets. Any woman can look well at night and many women in the flush of a bright afternoon, but the woman who looks well in the morning needs not always to be young to attract the appreciative gaze of a man of real penetration. Mr. Trohm was such a man, and I did not begrudge him the pleasure he showed in my neat gray silk and carefully adjusted collar. But he said nothing, and a short silence ensued, which was perhaps more of a compliment than otherwise. Then he uttered a short sigh and lifted the reins.

"If only I were not debarred from entering," he smiled, with a short gesture toward the house.

I did not answer. Even I understand that on occasion the tongue plays but a sorry part in interviews of this nature.

He sighed again and uttered some short encouragement to his horse, which started that animal up and sent him slowly pacing down the road toward the cheerful clearing whither my own eyes were looking with what I was determined should not be construed even by the most sanguine into a glance of anything like wistfulness. As he went he made a bow I have never seen surpa.s.sed in my own parlor in Gramercy Park, and upon my bestowing upon him a return nod, glanced up at the house with an intentness which seemed to increase as some object, invisible to me at that moment, caught his eye. As that eye was directed toward the left wing, and lifted as far as the second row of windows, I could not help asking myself if he had seen the knot of c.r.a.pe which had produced upon me so lugubrious an impression. Before I could make sure of this he had pa.s.sed from sight, and the highway fell again into shadow--why, I hardly knew, for the sun certainly had been shining a few minutes before.

XXI

MOTHER JANE

"Well, well, what did Trohm want here this morning?" cried a harsh voice from amid the tangled walks behind me. "Seems to me he finds this place pretty interesting all of a sudden."

I turned upon the intruder with a look that should have daunted him.

I had recognized William's courteous tones and was in no mood to endure a questioning so unbecoming in one of his age to one of mine.

But as I met his eye, which had something in it besides anger and suspicion--something that was quizzical if not impertinent--I changed my intention and bestowed upon him a conciliatory smile, which I hope escaped the eye of the good angel who records against man all his small hypocrisies and petty deceits.

"Mr. Trohm rides for his health," said I. "Seeing me looking up the road at Mother Jane, he stopped to tell me some of the idiosyncrasies of that old woman. A very harmless courtesy, Mr. Knollys."

"Very," he echoed, not without a touch of sarcasm. "I only hope that is all," he muttered, with a sidelong look back at the house. "Lucetta hasn't a particle of belief in that man's friendship, or, rather, she believes he never goes anywhere without a particular intention, and I do believe she's right, or why should he come spying around here just at a time when"--he caught himself up with almost a look of terror--"when--when you are here?" he completed lamely.

"I do not think," I retorted, more angrily than the occasion perhaps warranted, "that the word spying applies to Mr. Trohm. But if it does, what has he to gain from a pause at the gate and a word to such a new acquaintance as I am?"

"I don't know," William persisted suspiciously. "Trohm's a sharp fellow.

If there was anything to see, he would see it without half looking. But there isn't. You don't know of anything wrong here, do you, which such a man as that, hand in glove with the police as we know him to be, might consider himself interested in?"

Astonished both at this blundering committal of himself and at the certain sort of anxious confidence he showed in me, I hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment, since, if half my suspicions were true, this man must not know that my perspicacity was more to be feared than even Mr. Trohm's was.

"If Mr. Trohm shows an increased interest in this household during the last two days," said I, with a heroic defiance of ridicule which I hope Mr. Gryce has duly appreciated, "I beg leave to call your attention to the fact that on yesterday morning he came to deliver a letter addressed to me which had inadvertently been left at his house, and that this morning he called to inquire how I had spent the night, which, in consideration of the ghosts which are said to haunt this house and the strange and uncanny apparitions which only three nights ago made the entrance to this lane hideous to one pair of eyes at least, should not cause a gentleman's son like yourself any astonishment. It does not seem odd to me, I a.s.sure you."

He laughed. I meant he should, and, losing almost instantly his air of doubt and suspicion, turned toward the gate from which I had just moved away, muttering:

"Well, it's a small matter to me anyway. It's only the girls that are afraid of Mr. Trohm. I am not afraid of anything but losing Saracen, who has pined like the deuce at his long confinement in the court. Hear him now; just hear him."

And I could hear the low and unhappy moaning of the hound distinctly. It was not a pleasant sound, and I was almost tempted to bid William unloose the dog, but thought better of it.

"By the way," said he, "speaking of Mother Jane, I have a message to her from the girls. You will excuse me if I speak to the poor woman."

Alarmed by his politeness more than I ever have been by his roughness and inconsiderate sarcasms, I surveyed him inquiringly as he left the gate, and did not know whether to stand my ground or retreat to the house. I decided to stand my ground; a message to this woman seeming to me a matter of some interest.

I was glad I did, for after some five minutes' absence, during which he had followed her into the house, I saw him come back again in a state of sullen displeasure, which, however, partially disappeared when he saw me still standing by the gate.

"Ah, Miss b.u.t.terworth, you can do me a favor. The old creature is in one of her stubborn fits to-day, and won't give me a hearing. She may not be so deaf to you; she isn't apt to be to women. Will you cross the road and speak to her? I will go with you. You needn't be afraid."

The way he said this, the confidence he expected to inspire, had almost a ghastly effect upon me. Did he know or suspect that the only thing I feared in this lane was he? Evidently not, for he met my eye quite confidently.

It would not do to shake his faith at such a moment as this, so calling upon Providence to see me safely through this adventure, I stepped into the highway and went with him into Mother Jane's cottage.

Had I been favored with any other companion than himself, I should have been glad of this opportunity. As it was, I found myself ignoring any possible danger I might be running, in my interest in the remarkable interior to which I was thus introduced.