Part 3

“There’s one thing that puzzles me,” I went on; “I never know beforehand what is going to annoy him.”

She pondered. “I’ll tell you, then,” she said suddenly. “It has annoyed him that no one thought of asking him to give one of his water-colours to the sale.”

“Didn’t we?”

“No. Homer Davids was asked, and that made it ... rather more marked....”

“Oh, of course! I suppose we all forgot—”

She looked away. “Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose he likes to be forgotten.”

“You mean: to have his accomplishments forgotten?”

“Isn’t that a little condescending? I should say, his _gifts_,” she corrected a trifle sharply. Sharpness was so unusual in her that she may have seen my surprise, for she added, in her usual tone: “After all, I suppose he’s our most brilliant man, isn’t he?” She smiled a little, as if to take the sting from my doing so.

“Of course he is,” I rejoined. “But all the more reason—how could a man of his kind resent such a trifling oversight? I’ll write at once—”

“Oh, _don’t_!” she cut me short, almost pleadingly.

Mrs. Durant’s word was law: Cranch was not asked for a water-colour. Homer Davids’s, I may add, sold for two thousand dollars, and paid for a heating-system for our hospital. A Boston millionaire came down on purpose to buy the picture. It was a great day for Harpledon.

IV

About a week after the fair I went one afternoon to call on Mrs. Durant, and found Cranch just leaving. His greeting, as he hurried by, was curt and almost hostile, and his handsome countenance so disturbed and pale that I hardly recognized him. I was sure there could be nothing personal in his manner; we had always been on good terms, and, next to Mrs. Durant, I suppose I was his nearest friend at Harpledon—if ever one could be said to get near Waldo Cranch! After he had passed me I stood hesitating at Mrs. Durant’s open door—front doors at Harpledon were always open in those friendly days, except, by the way, Cranch’s own, which the stern Catherine kept chained and bolted. Since meeting me could not have been the cause of his anger, it might have been excited by something which had passed between Mrs. Durant and himself; and if that were so, my call was probably inopportune. I decided not to go in, and was turning away when I heard hurried steps, and Mrs. Durant’s voice. “Waldo!” she said.

I suppose I had always assumed that she called him so; yet the familiar appellation startled me, and made me feel more than ever in the way. None of us had ever given Cranch his Christian name.

Mrs. Durant checked her steps, perceiving that the back in the doorway was not Cranch’s but mine. “Oh, do come in,” she murmured, with an attempt at ease.

In the little drawing-room I turned and looked at her. She, too, was visibly disturbed; not angry, as he had been, but showing, on her white face and reddened lids, the pained reflection of his anger. Was it against her, then, that he had manifested it? Probably she guessed my thought, or felt her appearance needed to be explained, for she added quickly: “Mr. Cranch has just gone. Did he speak to you?”

“No. He seemed in a great hurry.”

“Yes.... I wanted to beg him to come back ... to try to quiet him....”

She saw my bewilderment, and picked up a copy of an illustrated magazine which had been tossed on the sofa. “It’s that—” she said.

The pages fell apart at an article entitled: “Colonial Harpledon,” the greater part of which was taken up by a series of clever sketches signed by the Boston architect whom she had brought to Cranch’s a few months earlier.

Of the six or seven drawings, four were devoted to the Cranch house. One represented the façade and its pillared gates, a second the garden front with the windowless side of the wing, the third a corner of the box garden surrounding the Chinese summer house; while the fourth, a full-page drawing, was entitled: “The back of the slaves’ quarters and service-court: quaint window-grouping.”

On that picture the magazine had opened; it was evidently the one which had been the subject of discussion between my hostess and her visitor.

“You see ... you see....” she cried.

“This picture? Well, what of it? I suppose it’s the far side of the wing—the side we’ve never any of us seen.”

“Yes; that’s just it. He’s horribly upset....”

“Upset about what? I heard him tell the architect he could come back some other day and see the wing ... some day when the maids were not sitting in the court; wasn’t that it?”

She shook her head tragically. “He didn’t mean it. Couldn’t you tell by the sound of his voice that he didn’t?”

Her tragedy airs were beginning to irritate me. “I don’t know that I pay as much attention as all that to the sound of his voice.”

She coloured, and choked back her tears. “I know him so well; I’m always sorry to see him lose his self-control. And then he considers me responsible.”

“You?”

“It was I who took the wretched man there. And of course it was an indiscretion to do that drawing; he was never really authorized to come back. In fact, Mr. Cranch gave orders to Catherine and all the other servants not to let him in if he did.”

“Well—?”

“One of the maids seems to have disobeyed the order; Mr. Cranch imagines she was bribed. He has been staying in Boston, and this morning, on the way back, he saw this magazine at the book-stall at the station. He was so horrified that he brought it to me. He came straight from the train without going home, so he doesn’t yet know how the thing happened.”

“It doesn’t take much to horrify him,” I said, again unable to restrain a faint sneer. “What’s the harm in the man’s having made that sketch?”

“Harm?” She looked surprised at my lack of insight. “No actual harm, I suppose; but it was very impertinent; and Mr. Cranch resents such liberties intensely. He’s so punctilious.”

“Well, we Americans are not punctilious, and being one himself, he ought to know it by this time.”

She pondered again. “It’s his Spanish blood, I suppose ... he’s frightfully proud.” As if this were a misfortune, she added: “I’m very sorry for him.”

“So am I, if such trifles upset him.”

Her brows lightened. “Ah, that’s what I tell him—such things _are_ trifles, aren’t they? As I said just now: ‘Your life’s been too fortunate, too prosperous. That’s why you’re so easily put out.’”

“And what did he answer?”

“Oh, it only made him angrier. He said: ‘I never expected that from _you_’—that was when he rushed out of the house.” Her tears flowed over, and seeing her so genuinely perturbed I restrained my impatience, and took leave after a few words of sympathy.

Never had Harpledon seemed to me more like a tea-cup than with that silly tempest convulsing it. That there should be grown-up men who could lose their self-command over such rubbish, and women to tremble and weep with them! For a moment I felt the instinctive irritation of normal man at such foolishness; yet before I reached my own door I was as mysteriously perturbed as Mrs. Durant.

The truth was, I had never thought of Cranch as likely to lose his balance over trifles. He had never struck me as unmanly; his quiet manner, his even temper, showed a sound sense of the relative importance of things. How then could so petty an annoyance have thrown him into such disorder?

I stopped short on my threshold, remembering his face as he brushed past me. “Something _is_ wrong; really wrong,” I thought. But what? Could it be jealousy of Mrs. Durant and the Boston architect? The idea would not bear a moment’s consideration, for I remembered _her_ face too. “Oh, well, if it’s his silly punctilio,” I grumbled, trying to reassure myself, and remaining, after all, as much perplexed as before.

All the next day it poured, and I sat at home among my books. It must have been after ten in the evening when I was startled by a ring. The maids had gone to bed, and I went to the door, and opened it to Mrs. Durant. Surprised at the lateness of her visit, I drew her in out of the storm. She had flung a cloak over her light dress, and the lace scarf on her head dripped with rain. Our houses were only a few hundred yards apart, and she had brought no umbrella, nor even exchanged her evening slippers for heavier shoes.

I took her wet cloak and scarf and led her into the library. She stood trembling and staring at me, her face like a marble mask in which the lips were too rigid for speech; then she laid a sheet of note-paper on the table between us. On it was written, in Waldo Cranch’s beautiful hand: “My dear friend, I am going away on a journey. You will hear from me,” with his initials beneath. Nothing more. The letter bore no date.

I looked at her, waiting for an explanation. None came. The first word she said was: “Will you come with me—now, at once?”

“Come with you—where?”

“To his house—before he leaves. I’ve only just got the letter, and I daren’t go alone....”

“Go to Cranch’s house? But I ... at this hour.... What is it you are afraid of?” I broke out, suddenly looking into her eyes.

She gave me back my look, and her rigid face melted. “I don’t know—any more than you do! That’s why I’m afraid.”

“But I know nothing. What on earth has happened since I saw you yesterday?”

“Nothing till I got this letter.”

“You haven’t seen him?”

“Not since you saw him leave my house yesterday.”

“Or had any message—any news of him?”

“Absolutely nothing. I’ve just sat and remembered his face.”

My perplexity grew. “But surely you can’t imagine.... If you’re as frightened as that you must have some other reason for it,” I insisted.

She shook her head wearily. “It’s the having none that frightens me. Oh, do come!”

“You think his leaving in this way means that he’s in some kind of trouble?”

“In dreadful trouble.”

“And you don’t know why?”

“No more than you do!” she repeated.

I pondered, trying to avoid her entreating eyes. “But at this hour—come, do consider! I don’t know Cranch so awfully well. How will he take it? You say he made a scene yesterday about that silly business of the architect’s going to his house without leave....”

“That’s just it. I feel as if his going away might be connected with that.”

“But then he’s mad!” I exclaimed.

“No; not mad. Only—desperate.”

I stood irresolute. It was evident that I had to do with a woman whose nerves were in fiddle-strings. What had reduced them to that state I could not conjecture, unless, indeed, she were keeping back the vital part of her confession. But that, queerly enough, was not what I suspected. For some reason I felt her to be as much in the dark over the whole business as I was; and that added to the strangeness of my dilemma.

“Do you know in the least what you’re going for?” I asked at length.

“No, no, no—but come!”

“If he’s there, he’ll kick us out, most likely; kick _me_ out, at any rate.”

She did not answer; I saw that in her anguish she was past speaking. “Wait till I get my coat,” I said.

She took my arm, and side by side we hurried in the rain through the shuttered village. As we passed the Selwick house I saw a light burning in old Miss Selwick’s bedroom window. It was on the tip of my tongue to say: “Hadn’t we better stop and ask Aunt Lucilla what’s wrong? She knows more about Cranch than any of us!”

Then I remembered Cranch’s expression the last time Aunt Lucilla’s legend of the hobby-horse had been mentioned before him—the day we were planning the jumble sale—and a sudden shiver checked my pleasantry. “He looked then as he did when he passed me in the doorway yesterday,” I thought; and I had a vision of my ancient relative, sitting there propped up in her bed and looking quietly into the unknown while all the village slept. Was she aware, I wondered, that we were passing under her window at that moment, and did she know what would await us when we reached our destination?

V

Mrs. Durant, in her thin slippers, splashed on beside me through the mud.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, stopping short with a gasp, “look at the lights!”

We had crossed the green, and were groping our way under the dense elm-shadows, and there before us stood the Cranch house, all its windows illuminated. It was the only house in the village except Miss Selwick’s that was not darkened and shuttered.

“Well, he can’t be gone; he’s giving a party, you see,” I said derisively.

My companion made no answer. She only pulled me forward, and yielding once more I pushed open the tall entrance gates. In the brick path I paused. “Do you still want to go in?” I asked.

“More than ever!” She kept her tight clutch on my arm, and I walked up the path at her side and rang the bell.

The sound went on jangling for a long time through the stillness; but no one came to the door. At length Mrs. Durant laid an impatient hand on the door-panel. “But it’s open!” she exclaimed.

It was probably the first time since Waldo Cranch had come back to live in the house that unbidden visitors had been free to enter it. We looked at each other in surprise and I followed Mrs. Durant into the lamplit hall. It was empty.

With a common accord we stood for a moment listening; but not a sound came to us, though the doors of library and drawing-room stood open, and there were lighted lamps in both rooms.

“It’s queer,” I said, “all these lights, and no one about.”

My companion had walked impulsively into the drawing-room and stood looking about at its familiar furniture. From the panelled wall, distorted by the wavering lamp-light, the old Spanish ancestress glared down duskily at us out of the shadows. Mrs. Durant had stopped short—a sound of voices, agitated, discordant, a strange man’s voice among them, came to us from across the hall. Silently we retraced our steps, opened the dining-room door, and went in. But here also we found emptiness; the talking came from beyond, came, as we now perceived, from the wing which none of us had ever entered. Again we hesitated and looked at each other. Then “Come!” said Mrs. Durant in a resolute tone; and again I followed her.

She led the way into a large pantry, airy, orderly, well-stocked with china and glass. That too was empty; and two doors opened from it. Mrs. Durant passed through the one on the right, and we found ourselves, not, as I had expected, in the kitchen, but in a kind of vague unfurnished anteroom. The quarrelling voices had meanwhile died out; we seemed once more to have the mysterious place to ourselves. Suddenly, beyond another closed door, we heard a shrill crowing laugh. Mrs. Durant dashed at this last door and it let us into a large high-studded room. We paused and looked about us. Evidently we were in what Cranch had always described as the lumber-room on the ground floor of the wing. But there was no lumber in it now. It was scrupulously neat, and fitted up like a big and rather bare nursery; and in the middle of the floor, on a square of drugget, stood a great rearing black and white animal: my Aunt Lucilla’s hobby-horse....

I gasped at the sight; but in spite of its strangeness it did not detain me long, for at the farther end of the room, before a fire protected by a tall nursery fender, I had seen something stranger still. Two little boys in old-fashioned round jackets and knickerbockers knelt by the hearth, absorbed in the building of a house of blocks. Mrs. Durant saw them at the same moment. She caught my arm as if she were about to fall, and uttered a faint cry.

The sound, low as it was, produced a terrifying effect on the two children. Both of them dropped their blocks, turned around as if to dart at us, and then stopped short, holding each other by the hand, and staring and trembling as if we had been ghosts.

At the opposite end of the room, we stood staring and trembling also; for it was they who were the ghosts to our terrified eyes. It must have been Mrs. Durant who spoke first.

“Oh ... the poor things....” she said in a low choking voice.

The little boys stood there, motionless and far off, among the ruins of their house of blocks. But, as my eyes grew used to the faint light—there was only one lamp in the big room—and as my shaken nerves adjusted themselves to the strangeness of the scene, I perceived the meaning of Mrs. Durant’s cry.

The children before us were not children; they were two tiny withered men, with frowning foreheads under their baby curls, and heavy-shouldered middle-aged bodies. The sight was horrible, and rendered more so by the sameness of their size and by their old-fashioned childish dress. I recoiled; but Mrs. Durant had let my arm go, and was moving softly forward. Her own arms outstretched, she advanced toward the two strange beings. “You poor poor things, you,” she repeated, the tears running down her face.

I thought her tender tone must have drawn the little creatures; but as she advanced they continued to stand motionless, and then suddenly—each with the same small falsetto scream—turned and dashed toward the door. As they reached it, old Catherine appeared and held out her arms to them.

“Oh, my God—how dare you, madam? My young gentlemen!” she cried.

They hid their dreadful little faces in the folds of her skirt, and kneeling down she put her arms about them and received them on her bosom. Then, slowly, she lifted up her head and looked at us.

I had always, like the rest of Harpledon, thought of Catherine as a morose old Englishwoman, civil enough in her cold way, but yet forbidding. Now it seemed to me that her worn brown face, in its harsh folds of gray hair, was the saddest I had ever looked upon.

“How could you, madam; oh, how could you? Haven’t we got enough else to bear?” she asked, speaking low above the cowering heads on her breast. Her eyes were on Mrs. Durant.

The latter, white and trembling, gave back the look. “Enough else? Is there _more_, then?”

“There’s everything—.” The old servant got to her feet, keeping her two charges by the hand. She put her finger to her lips, and stooped again to the dwarfs. “Master Waldo, Master Donald, you’ll come away now with your old Catherine. No one’s going to harm us, my dears; you’ll just go upstairs and let Janey Sampson put you to bed, for it’s very late; and presently Catherine’ll come up and hear your prayers like every night.” She moved to the door; but one of the dwarfs hung back, his forehead puckering, his eyes still fixed on Mrs. Durant in indescribable horror.

“Good Dobbin,” cried he abruptly, in a piercing pipe.

“No, dear, no; the lady won’t touch good Dobbin,” said Catherine. “It’s the young gentlemen’s great pet,” she added, glancing at the Roman steed in the middle of the floor. She led the changelings away, and a moment later returned. Her face was ashen-white under its swarthiness, and she stood looking at us like a figure of doom.

“And now, perhaps,” she said, “you’ll be good enough to go away too.”

“Go away?” Mrs. Durant, instead, came closer to her. “How can I—when I’ve just had this from your master?” She held out the letter she had brought to my house.

Catherine glanced coldly at the page and returned it to her.

“He says he’s going on a journey. Well, he’s been, madam; been and come back,” she said.

“Come back? Already? He’s in the house, then? Oh, do let me—” Mrs. Durant dropped back before the old woman’s frozen gaze.

“He’s lying overhead, dead on his bed, madam—just as they carried him up from the beach. Do you suppose, else, you’d have ever got in here and seen the young gentlemen? He rushed out and died sooner than have them seen, the poor lambs; him that was their father, madam. And here you and this gentleman come thrusting yourselves in....”

I thought Mrs. Durant would reel under the shock; but she stood quiet, very quiet—it was almost as if the blow had mysteriously strengthened her.

“He’s dead? He’s killed himself?” She looked slowly about the trivial tragic room. “Oh, now I understand,” she said.

Old Catherine faced her with grim lips. “It’s a pity you didn’t understand sooner, then; you and the others, whoever they was, forever poking and prying; till at last that miserable girl brought in the police on us—”

“The police?”

“They was here, madam, in this house, not an hour ago, frightening my young gentlemen out of their senses. When word came that my master had been found on the beach they went down there to bring him back. Now they’ve gone to Hingham to report his death to the coroner. But there’s one of them in the kitchen, mounting guard. Over what, I wonder? As if my young gentlemen could run away! Where in God’s pity would they go? Wherever it is, I’ll go with them; I’ll never leave them.... And here we were at peace for thirty years, till you brought that man to draw the pictures of the house....”

For the first time Mrs. Durant’s strength seemed to fail her; her body drooped, and she leaned her weight against the door. She and the housekeeper stood confronted, two stricken old women staring at each other; then Mrs. Durant’s agony broke from her. “Don’t say I did it—don’t say that!”

But the other was relentless. As she faced us, her arms outstretched, she seemed still to be defending her two charges. “What else would you have me say, madam? You brought that man here, didn’t you? And he was determined to see the other side of the wing, and my poor master was determined he shouldn’t.” She turned to me for the first time. “It was plain enough to you, sir, wasn’t it? To me it was, just coming and going with the tea-things. And the minute your backs was turned, Mr. Cranch rang, and gave me the order: ‘That man’s never to set foot here again, you understand.’ And I went out and told the other three; the cook, and Janey, and Hannah Oast, the parlour-maid. I was as sure of the cook and Janey as I was of myself; but Hannah was new, she hadn’t been with us not above a year, and though I knew all about her, and had made sure before she came that she was a decent close-mouthed girl, and one that would respect our ... our misfortune ... yet I couldn’t feel as safe about her as the others, and of her temper I wasn’t sure from the first. I told Mr. Cranch so, often enough; I said: ‘Remember, now, sir, not to put her pride up, won’t you?’ For she was jealous, and angry, I think, at never being allowed to see the young gentlemen, yet knowing they were there, as she _had_ to know. But their father would never have any but me and Janey Sampson about them.