"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 ap.r.o.n. "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 a.s.sured 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 repet.i.tion 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 pa.s.sed, 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 embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.siduous 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 c.u.mbrous 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 pa.s.sed. 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 superst.i.tion.