Chapter 11

He could trace what might have been the foundation of a house, a few blackened stones, a hearthstone showing where a chimney perhaps had stood, but these evidences of habitation would never have been marked except by one who knew where to look. He searched the ground over for signs of the tragedy that bound him to that spot--a smiling desolation, a sunny nothingness. The effect of this careless obliteration was quieting. Nature had played here once with two men and a woman. One of the toy men was lost, the other broken. She had forgotten where she put the broken one. There were mounds which looked like graves, but the seeker knew that artificial mounds in a place like this soon sink into hollows; and there were hollows like open graves, filled with unsightly human rubbish, washed in by the yearly rains.

He spent three days in the hollow, doing nothing, steeped in sunshine, lying down to rest broad awake in the tender twilight, making his peace with this place of bitter memory before bidding it good-by. His thoughts turned eastward as the planets rose. Time he was working back towards home. He would hardly get there if he started now, before his day was done. He saw his mother's grave beside his father's, in the southeast corner of the burying-ground, where the trees were thin. All who drove in through the big gate of funerals could see the tall white shafts of the Beviers and Brodericks and Van Eltens, but only those who came on foot could approach his people in the gravelly side-hill plots. “I'd like to be put there alongside the old folks in that warm south corner.” He could see their names on the plain gray slate stones, rain-stained and green with moss.

On the third May evening of his stay the horizon became a dust-cloud, the setting sun a ball of fire. Loomed the figure of a rider topping the heaving backs of his herd. All together they came lumbering down the slopes, all heading fiercely for the water. The rider plunged down a side-draw out of the main cloud. Clanking bells, shuffling hoofs, the “Whoop-ee-youp!” came fainter up the gulch. The cowboy was not pleased as he dashed by to see an earlier camp-fire smoking in the hollow. But he was less displeased, being half French, than if he had been pure-bred American.

The old man, squatting by his cooking-fire, gave him a civil nod, and he responded with a flourish of his quirt. The reek of sage smoke, the smell of dust and cattle rose rank on the cooling air. It was good to Boniface, son of the desert; it meant supper and bed, or supper and talk, for “Bonny” Maupin (“Bonny Moppin,” it went in the vernacular) would talk every other man to sleep, full or empty, with songs thrown in. To-night, however, he must talk on an empty stomach, for his chuck wagon was not in sight.

“W'ich way you travelin'?” he began, lighting up after a long pull at his flask. The old man had declined, though he looked as if he needed a drink.

“East about,” was the answer.

“Goin' far?”

“Well; summer's before us. I cal'late to keep moving till snow falls.”

“Shucks! You ain' pressed for time. Maybe you got some friend back there. Goin' back to git married?” He winked genially to point the jest and the old man smiled indulgently.

“Won't you set up and take a bite with me? You don't look to have much of a show for supper along.”

“Thanks, very much! I had bully breakfast at Rock Spring middlin' late this morning. They butcherin' at that place. Five fat hog. My chuck wagon he stay behin' for chunk of fresh pig. I won' spoil my appetide for that tenderloin. Hol' on yourself an' take supper wis me. No?--That fellah be 'long 'bout Chris'mas if he don' git los'! He always behin', pig or no pig!”

Bonny strolled away collecting fire-wood. Presently he called back, pointing dramatically with his small-toed boot. “Who's been coyotin' round here?” The hard ground was freshly disturbed in spots as by the paws of some small inquisitive animal. There was no answer.

“What you say? Whose surface diggin's is these? I never know anybody do some mining here.”

“That was me”--Bonny backed a little nearer to catch the old man's words. “I was looking round here for something I lost.”

“What luck you have? You fin' him?”

“Well, now, doos it reely matter to you, sonny?”

“Pardner, it don' matter to me a d--n, if you say so! I was jus' askin' myself what a man _would_ look for if he los' it here. Since I strike this 'ell of a place the very groun' been chewed up and spit out reg'lar, one hundred times a year. 'T'is a gris' mill!”

“I didn't gretly expect to find what I was lookin' for. I was just foolin' around to satisfy myself.”

“That satisfy me!” said Bonny pleasantly; and yet he was a trifle discomfited. He strolled away again and began to sing with a boyish show of indifference to having been called “sonny.”

“Oh, Sally is the gal for me! Oh, Sally's the gal for me! On moonlight night when the star is bright--Oh”--

“Halloa! This some more your work, oncle? You ain' got no chicken wing for arm if you lif' this.--Ah, be dam! I see what you lif' him with. All same stove-lid.” Talking and swearing to himself cheerfully, Bonny applied the end of a broken whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old hearthstone which marked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a step-dance on it and found it hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon the stone where some prying tool had taken hold and slipped, showed he was not the first who had been curious.

“There you go, over on you' back, like snap' turtle; I see where you lay there before. What the dev'! I say!” Bonny, much excited with his find, extracted a rusty tin tobacco-box from the hole, pried open the spring lid and drew forth its contents: a discolored canvas bag bulging with coin and whipped around the neck with a leather whang. The canvas was rotten; Bonny supported its contents tenderly as he brought it over to the old man.

“Oncle, I ask you' pardon for tappin' that safe. Pretty good lil' nest-egg, eh? But now you got to find her some other place.”

“That don't belong to me,” said the old man indifferently.

“Aw--don't be bashful! I onderstan' now what you los'. You dig here--there--migs up the scent. I just happen to step on that stone--ring him, so, with my boot-heel!”

“That ain't my pile,” the other persisted. “I started to build a fire on that stone two nights ago. It rung hollow like you say. I looked and found what you found--”

“And put her back! My soul to God! An' you here all by you'self!”

“Why not? The stuff ain't mine.”

“Who _is_ she? How long since anybody live here?”

“I don't know,--good while, I guess.”

“Well, sar! Look here! I open that bag. I count two hondre' thirteen dolla'--make it twelve for luck, an' call it you' divvee! You strike her first. What you say: we go snac'?”

“I haven't got any use for that money. You needn't talk to me about it.”

“Got no h'use!--are you a reech man? Got you' private car waitin' for you out in d' sagebrush? Sol' a mine lately?”

“I don't know why it strikes you so funny. It's no concern of mine if a man puts his money in the ground and goes off and leaves it.”

“Goes off and die! There was one man live here by himself--he die, they say, 'with his boots on.' He, I think, mus' be that man belong to this money. What an old stiff want with two hondre' thirteen dolla'? That money goin' into a live man's clothes.” Bonny slapped his chappereros, and the dust flew.

“I've no objection to its going into _your_ clothes,” said the old man.

“You thing I ain' particular, me? Well, eef the party underground was my frien', and I knew his fam'ly, and was sure the money was belong to him--I'd do differend--perhaps. Mais,--it is going--going--gone! You won' go snac'?”

The old man smiled and looked steadily away.

“Blas' me to h--l! but you aire the firs' man ever I strike that jib at the sight of col' coin. She don' frighten me!”

Bonny always swore when he felt embarrassed.

“Well, sar! Look here! You fin' you'self so blame indifferend--s'pose you _so_ indifferend not to say nothing 'bout this, when my swamper fellah git in. I don' wish to go snac' wis him. I don' feel oblige'. See?”

“What you want to pester me about this money for!” The old man was weary. “I didn't come here, lookin' for money, and I don't expect to take none away with me. So I'll say good-night to ye.”

“Hol' on, hol' on! Don' git mad. What time you goin' off in the morning?”

“Before you do, I shouldn't wonder.”

“But hol'! One fine idea--blazin' good idea--just hit me now in the head! Wan' to come on to Chicago wis me? I drop this fellah at Felton. He take the team back, and I get some one to help me on the treep. Why not you? Ever tek' care of stock?”

“Some consid'able years ago I used to look after stock. Guess I'd know an ox from a heifer.”

“Ever handle 'em on cattle-car?”

“Never.”

“Well, all there is, you feed 'em, and water 'em, and keep 'em on their feets. If one fall down, all the others they have too much play. They rock”--Bonny exhibited--“and fall over and pile up in heap. I like to do one turn for you. We goin' the same way--you bring me the good luck, like a bird in the han'. This is my clean-up, you understand. You bring me the beautiful luck. You turn me up right bower first slap. Now it's goin' be my deal. I like to do by you!”

The packer turned over and looked up at the cool sky, pricked through with early stars. He was silent a long time. His pale old face was like a fine bit of carving in the dusk.

“What you think?” asked Moppin, almost tenderly. “I thing you better come wis me. You too hold a man to go like so--alone.”

“I'll have to think about it first;--let you know in the morning.”

XXI

INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE

A Rush of wheels and a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through streaming showers that darkened the panes.

“Isn't that Mrs. Bogardus? Why, it is! Put on your shoes, Chauncey, quick! Help her in 'n' take her horse to the shed. Take an umbrella with you.” Chauncey the younger, meekly drying his shoes by the kitchen fire, put them on, not stopping to lace them, and slumped down the porch steps, pursued by his mother's orders. She watched him a moment struggling with a cranky umbrella, and then turned her attention to herself and the room.

Mrs. Bogardus made her calls in the morning, and always plainly on business. She had not seen the inside of Cerissa's parlor for ten years. This was a grievance which Cerissa referred to spasmodically, being seized with it when she was otherwise low in her mind.

“My sakes! Can't I remember my mother telling how _her_ mother used to drive over and spend the afternoon, and bring her sewing and the baby--whichever one was the baby. They called each other Chrissy and Angevine, and now she don't even speak of her own children to us by their first names. It's 'Mrs. Bowen' and 'Mr. Paul;' just as if she was talking to her servants.”

“What's that to us? We've got a good home here for as long as we want to stay. She's easy to work for, if you do what she says.”

Chauncey respected Mrs. Bogardus's judgment and her straightforward business habits. Other matters he left alone. But Cerissa was ambitious and emotional, and she stayed indoors, doing little things and thinking small thoughts. She resented her commanding neighbor's casual manners. There was something puzzling and difficult to meet in her plainness of speech, which excluded the personal relation. It was like the cut and finish of her clothes--mysterious in their simplicity, and not to be imitated cheaply.

When the two met, Cerissa was immediately reduced to a state of flimsy apology which she made up for by being particularly hot and self-assertive in speaking of the lady afterward.

“There is the parlor, in perfect order,” she fretted, as she stood waiting to open the front door; “but of course she wouldn't let me take her in there--that would be too much like visiting.”

The next moment she had corrected her facial expression, and was offering smiling condolences to Mrs. Bogardus on the state of her attire.

“It is only my jacket. You might put that somewhere to dry,” said the lady curtly. Raindrops sparkled on the wave of thick iron-gray hair that lifted itself, with a slight turn to one side, from her square low brow. Her eyes shone dark against the fresh wind color in her cheeks. She had the straight, hard, ophidian line concealing the eyelid, which gives such a peculiar strength to the direct gaze of a pair of dark eyes. If one suspects the least touch of tenderness, possibly of pain, behind that iron fold, it lends a fascination equal to the strength. There was some excitement in Mrs. Bogardus's manner, but Cerissa did not know her well enough to perceive it. She merely thought her looking handsomer, and, if possible, more formidable than usual.

She sat by the fire, folding her skirts across her knees, and showing the edges of the most discouragingly beautiful petticoats,--a taste perhaps inherited from her wide-hipped Dutch progenitresses. Mrs. Bogardus reveled in costly petticoats, and had an unnecessary number of them.

“How nice it is in here!” she said, looking about her. Cerissa, with the usual apologies, had taken her into the kitchen to dry her skirts. There was a slight taint of steaming shoe leather, left by Chauncey when driven forth. Otherwise the kitchen was perfection,--the family room of an old Dutch farmhouse, built when stone and hardwood lumber were cheap,--thick walls; deep, low window-seats; beams showing on the ceiling; a modern cooking-stove, where Emily Bogardus could remember the wrought brass andirons and iron backlog, for this room had been her father's dining-room. The brick tiled hearth remained, and the color of those century and a half old bricks made a pitiful thing of Cerissa's new oil-cloth. The woodwork had been painted--by Mrs. Bogardus's orders, and much to Cerissa's disgust--a dark kitchen green,--not that she liked the color herself, but it was the artistic demand of the moment,--and the place was filled with a green golden light from the cherry-trees close to the window, which a break in the clouds had suddenly illumined.

“You keep it beautifully,” said Mrs. Bogardus, her eyes shedding compliments as she looked around. “I should not dare go in my own kitchen at this time of day. There are no women nowadays who know how to work in the way ladies used to work. If I could have such a housekeeper as you, Cerissa.”

Cerissa flushed and bridled. “What would Chauncey do!”

“I don't expect you to be my housekeeper,” Mrs. Bogardus smiled. “But I envy Chauncey.”

“She has come to ask a favor,” thought Cerissa. “I never knew her so pleasant, for nothing. She wants me to do up her fruit, I guess.” Cerissa was mistaken. Mrs. Bogardus simply was happy--or almost happy--and deeply stirred over a piece of news which had come to her in that morning's mail.

“I have telephoned Bradley not to send his men over on Monday. My son is bringing his wife home. They may be here all summer. The place belongs to them now. Did Chauncey tell you? Mr. Paul writes that he has some building plans of his own, and he wishes everything left as it is for the present, especially this house. He wants his wife to see it first just as it is.”

“Well, to be sure! They've been traveling a long time, haven't they? And how is his health now?”

“Oh, he is very well indeed. You will be glad not to have the trouble of those carpenters, Cerissa? Pulling down old houses is dirty work.”

“Oh, dear! I wouldn't mind the dirt. Anything to get rid of that old rat's nest on top of the kitchen chamber. I hate to have such out of the way places on my mind. I can't get around to do every single thing, and it's years--years, Mrs. Bogardus, since I could get a woman to do a half-day's cleaning up there in broad daylight!”

Mrs. Bogardus stared. What was the woman talking about!

“I call it a regular eyesore on the looks of the house besides. And it keeps all the old stories alive.”

“What stories?”

“Why, of course your father wasn't out of his head--we all know that--when he built that upstairs room and slep' there and locked himself in every night of his life. It was only on one point he was a little warped: the fear of bein' robbed. A natural fear, too,--an old man over eighty livin' in such a lonesome place and known to be well off. But--you'll excuse my repeating the talk--but the story goes now that he re'ly went insane and was confined up there all the last years of his life. And that's why the windows have got bars acrost them. Everybody notices it, and they ask questions. It's real embarrassin', for of course I don't want to discuss the family.”

“Who asks questions?” Mrs. Bogardus's eyes were hard to meet when her voice took that tone.

“Why, the city folks out driving. They often drive in the big gate and make the circle through the grounds, and they're always struck when they see that tower bedroom with windows like a prison. They say, 'What's the story about that room, up there?'”

“When people ask you questions about the house, you can say you did not live here in the owner's time and you don't know. That's perfectly simple, isn't it?”

“But I do know! Everybody knows,” said Cerissa hotly. “It was the talk of the whole neighborhood when that room was put up; and I remember how scared I used to be when mother sent me over here of an errand.”

Mrs. Bogardus rose and shook out her skirts. “Will Chauncey bring my horse when it stops raining? By the way, did you get the furniture down that was in that room, Cerissa?--the old secretary? I am going to have it put in order for Mr. Paul's room. Old furniture is the fashion now, you know.”

Cerissa caught her breath nervously. “Mrs. Bogardus--I couldn't do a thing about it! I wanted Chauncey to tell you. All last week I tried to get a woman, or a man, to come and help me clear out that place, but just as soon as they find out what's wanted--'You'll have to get somebody else for that job,' they say.”

“What is the matter with them?”

“It's the room, Mrs. Bogardus; if I was you--I'm doing now just as I'd be done by--I would not take Mrs. Paul Bogardus up into that room--not even in broad daylight; not if it was my son's wife, in the third month of her being a wife.”

“Well, upon my word!” said Mrs. Bogardus, smiling coldly. “Do you mean to say these women are afraid to go up there?”

“It was old Mary Hornbeck who started the talk. She got what she called her 'warning' up there. And the fact is, she was a corpse within six months from that day. Chauncey and me, we used to hear noises, but old houses are full of noises. We never thought much about it; only, I must say I never had any use for that part of the house. Chauncey keeps his seeds and tools in the lower room, and some of the winter vegetables, and we store the parlor stove in there in summer.”

“Well, about this 'warning'?” Mrs. Bogardus interrupted.

“Yes! It was three years ago in May, and I remember it was some such a day as this--showery and broken overhead, and Mary disappointed me; but she came about noon, and said she'd put in half a day anyhow. She got her pail and house-cloths; but she wasn't gone not half an hour when down she come white as a sheet, and her mouth as dry as chalk. She set down all of a shake, and I give her a drink of tea, and she said: 'I wouldn't go up there again, not for a thousand dollars.' She unlocked the door, she said, and stepped inside without thinkin'. Your father's old rocker with the green moreen cushions stood over by the east window, where he used to sit. She heard a creak like a heavy step on the floor, and that empty chair across the room, as far as from here to the window, begun to rock as if somebody had just rose up from them cushions. She watched it till it stopped. Then she took another step, and the step she couldn't see answered her, and the chair begun to rock again.”

“Was that all?”

“No, ma'am; that wasn't all. I don't know if you remember an old wall clock with a brass ball on top and brass scrolls down the sides and a painted glass door in front of the pendulum with a picture of a castle and a lake? The paint's been wore off the glass with cleaning, so the pendulum shows plain. That clock has not been wound since we come to live here. I don't believe a hand has touched it since the night he was carried feet foremost out of that room. But Mary said she could count the strokes go tick, tick, tick! She listened till she could have counted fifty, for she was struck dumb, and just as plain as the clock before her face she could see the minute-hand and the pendulum, both of 'em dead still. Now, how do you account for that!

“I told Chauncey about it, and he said it was all foolishness. Do all I could he would go up there himself, that same evening. But he come down again after a while, and he was almost as white as Mary. 'Did you see anything?' I says. 'I saw what Mary said she saw,' says he, 'and I heard what she heard.' But no one can make Chauncey own up that he believes it was anything supernatural. 'There is a reason for everything,' he says. 'The miracles and ghosts of one generation are just school-book learning to the next; and more of a miracle than the miracles themselves.'”

“Chauncey shows his sense,” Mrs. Bogardus observed.

“He was real disturbed, though, I could see; and he told me particular not to make any talk about it. I never have opened the subject to a living soul. But when Mary died, within six months, folks repeated what she had been saying about her 'warning.' The 'death watch' she called it. We can't all of us control our feelings about such things, and she was a lonely widow woman.”

“Well, do you believe that ticking is going on up there now?” asked Mrs. Bogardus.

Cerissa looked uneasy.

“Is the door locked?”

“I re'ly couldn't say,” she confessed.

“Do you mean to say that all you sensible people in this house have avoided that room for three years? And you don't even know if the door is locked?”

“I--I don't use that part for anything, and cleaning is wasted on a place that's never used, and I can't _get_ anybody”--

“I am not criticising your housekeeping. Will you go up there with me now, Cerissa? I want to understand about this.”

“What, just now, do you mean? I'm afraid I haven't got the time this morning, Mrs. Bogardus. Dinner's at half-past twelve. It's a quarter to eleven”--

“Very well. You think the door is not locked?”

“If it is, the key must be in the door. Oh, don't go, please, Mrs. Bogardus. Wait till Chauncey conies in”--

“I wish you'd send Chauncey up when he does come in. Ask him to bring a screw-driver.” Mrs. Bogardus rose and examined her jacket. It was still damp. She asked for a cape, or some sort of wrap, as her waist was thin, and the rain had chilled the morning air.

For the sake of decency, Cerissa escorted her visitor across the hall passage into the loom-room--a loom-room in name only for upwards of three generations. Becky had devoted it to the rough work of the house, and to certain special uses, such as the care of the butchering products, the making of soft soap and root beer. Here the churning was done, by hand, with a wooden dasher, which spread a circle of white drops, later to become grease-spots. The floor of the loom-room was laid in large brick tiles, more or less loose in their sockets, with an occasional earthy depression marking the grave of a missing tile. Becky's method of cleaning was to sluice it out and scrub it with an old broom. The seepage of generations before her time had thus added their constant quota to the old well's sum of iniquity.