Chapter 18

"What worked there, rotting like some infernal yeast? What terrible energy, what malignant, vindictive lust infected that place? What distorted, unhappy soul first sickened there? How long ago? _How long ago?_ Are there centres of negation? Oh, I tell you, the table-tippers are harmless beside the sickening truths, the simply incredible possibilities of this little crevice we walk along!

"Was it like a grain of that nasty musk that gets into a woman's drawer and taints endlessly?

"I tell you, I saw that girl disintegrate, decay, turn fungoid under my eyes--ugh!

"There had to be an end, of course. I asked where she was going one afternoon, and then she smiled and looked up at me sidewise.

"'You needn't come back,' I said abruptly. 'I'll settle with your mother. Do you understand?'

"She arched her shoulder and flashed a glance straight above me, out of the open window.

"'I'm sorry you don't want me, doctor,' she said softly. I could see poor George tremble--the porch vines shook.

"Then I took her by the shoulders and shook her.

"'Get out of my house, you black slut!' I said--but I didn't say 'slut.' And she went. It was the only time I was ever brutal to a woman."

He gulped the rest of his tumbler.

"The next day I moved my office stuff back, and that damned house was empty.

"'I'm sorry about Mynie, Althea,' I said to the mother, the day afterward. 'If you ever need any money----'

"'Thank you, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh. You couldn't help it. But I guess she'll never need money, seh,' she said quietly. And she was right enough, of course.

"She knew. They're not far from the apes, and they know a lot we've forgotten, I believe. Perhaps forgetting it is what civilised us.

"I never saw Mynie again. She went off East, and George with her. They're both dead, now. His wife stayed on in the cottage.

"I gave her all the help I could ... it was my fault, I suppose. And yet, God knows, I meant nothing. I thought _I_ was undertaking that damned house, you see--how could I tell how the thing worked?"

They watched him eagerly: his face showed that he had more to tell. Not a man moved, unless it were to knock the ash from his cigar or to light a fresh one.

"There was a Catholic priest there, then," he said slowly. "He's been moved higher up, since, and you'd all know his name, if I gave it. We'll call him Father Kelly--though that wasn't it, of course. He and I were great friends--he was a little older than I was--and we used to have many a good talk together, meeting on our rounds, you see. Often I'd take him miles on his way, and drop my driver out on the road, just for the pleasure of his company. Of course we disagreed entirely on what he considered the most important points, but leaving them out, we were thoroughly congenial, and we were often glad of each other's opinion, I can tell you, for we often had the same patients.

"Well, a day or two after I'd moved my stuff out of that cursed house, he came to the office with a drug case he was trying to reform: he'd persuaded the fellow as far as the pledge went, and I was to talk to him about diet and exercise and all the rest. After the man left, Father Kelly looked at me once or twice, talked a bit about the weather, and finally pulled out his old blackened pipe and looked around the office.

"'Have ye a bit of tobacco about ye, doctor?' says he. 'If so, and you're not too busy, I could do with a little rest--I was up all night.'

"I was glad enough, for I felt blue and out of sorts, and we pulled our chairs in front of the fireplace, from habit, and after a few minutes I found myself telling him the whole business.

"'Now what do you make of it, Father?' I asked.

"'I make the devil out of it, doctor,' said he, very placidly.

"'Oh, well,' I began impatiently, 'of course I can't be expected----'

"'Now, wait a bit, doctor,' he put in. 'If you don't go with my diagnosis, what's your own? What do you make out of it?'

"Well, there he had me.

"'Of course,' I said, 'it's a mere coincidence.'

"'Ah,' says he, 'then would you be willing to go and live there with your wife?'

"'Good God, no!' I burst out, before I thought. And then I wouldn't back out of it. You see, there had been five women. Five good, ordinary, honest women--six, if you count Miss Jessop.

"'I thought not,' said he quietly.

"He sat and puffed awhile.

"Finally, 'I'll have to be taking a look at your house, doctor,' he said.

"'All right,' said I. 'When?'

"'This evening,' he said, 'after my confessions. Say about nine. And I'll go home and have a nap. I'm thinking I'll need one.'

"And he knocked out his pipe and left.

"I was busy all the afternoon, so busy that I almost forgot the whole thing, and as a matter of fact, I had had no time for dinner, when he called for me. He was so fresh and bright and jolly that you'd never have suspected he'd just got a murderer to agree to give himself up, gone with him to see him safely jailed, and sent his confession up to the governor--oh, he was a remarkable man, that man! And it's a remarkable institution, the Confessional. We're learning to do more with it now than we did twenty years ago. But they've always known ... they've always known..."

He ruminated long, and crushed the ashes in the brass tray before him. The men nodded, but kept silence, dreading lest he lose the thread.

"I had the horse ready and drove myself. When I unlocked the door of the house I lighted the lamp in the hall, and so on in every room we went through, kitchen and all. In every room there was a fresh shining lamp, filled and ready, for Althea had left everything like a new pin, and in every room that lamp was lighted, when we left it. You know what a nice, warm glow an old-fashioned kerosene lamp gives a place--electricity's nothing to it, in my opinion.

"'This seems a good sort of house, doctor,' said Father Kelly to me, as we came back and sat down in the pretty little sitting-room, with a palm in it, and cushions my wife had made, and books on the table. 'I can't see any harm here.'

"'All right,' said I, 'then let's go home. I missed my dinner. Since you see there's no devil here----'

"'I don't see that,' said he, calmly, 'I only see that I haven't found him yet. If a woman has a cancer, doctor, you don't know it the moment you shake hands with her, do ye? So with me and my patients. Now let's think a bit, and if you don't object, I'll call a little consultation.'

"So he takes a little black book out of his pocket, and actually sits there reading! I humoured him, and smoked. After a while he looks up, crosses himself, puts away the book and nods at me contentedly.

"'Now, which room would all of these women use the most, doctor?' says he.

"'The kitchen,' I said directly, thinking of Mynie and Althea. Then, 'No, no, for Mrs. Mears used this for her consulting-room. But the parson's wife spent most of her time in her bedroom. Still, the jeweller's wife didn't--they used the dining-room to sit in. There's no one room, you see.'

"'Unless they all had the same bedroom,' he suggested quietly.

"'By George, they did, then!' I cried, 'for I gave it to Mynie and Althea because it was the coolest. I always sleep on the ground floor.'

"'Then we'll try the bedroom, doctor,' says he, and we went up-stairs. He was a stocky, short little fellow, strong as a bull, with iron-grey hair, very solid on his feet, yet quick and active, like a thin man. He sat down in the rocking-chair in the neat, empty bedroom and I brought in another lamp from across the hall.

"'You don't think you'll need the dark for your materializations, Father?' I said, half laughing, as I set my lamp on the bureau.

"'No, no, doctor,' he answered, smiling. 'The Church doesn't work in the dark, you know. We're all for candles, and plenty of 'em.'

"I had to grin at that. He was as quick a man with his tongue as I ever met.

"Well, we sat there, and sat there, and he shut his eyes and tipped back and forth in that chair like a woman, and I might as well have not been there. I mean I was out of his consciousness entirely. Finally I got nervous and bored.

"'There's nothing here, Father,' I said, rather testily. 'Haven't I been here hours on end with the parson's wife? Wouldn't I have known it?'

"He never opened his eyes.

"'Probably not, doctor,' he said pleasantly. 'It's not your job, you see. You were thinking about her liver.'

"'And you?' said I.

"'Her life everlasting,' said he.

"And his eyes shut, all the time!

"So I shut my mouth and watched him. And suddenly his lips began to work, and he was mumbling to himself, and I saw that his hands were grasping the arms of the wooden chair tight, so tight that as he prayed, he actually worked himself over the floor, as a child will, you know. After he'd moved several feet that way, between me and the fireplace--I was counting the inches, to keep myself quiet--he stopped suddenly, opened his eyes and loosened his hands.

"'I've got it now, thanks be!' he said, looking straight at me. 'It's this room, sure enough, doctor!'

"'What do you mean, for heaven's sake?' I said, getting up and coming to him, interested enough, now, you can believe.

"'_For hell's sake_, would be nearer the mark,' he answered me, gently enough, but his jaw was set and there was a light in his eye I'd seen there once or twice. 'This is a bad business. This'll take more than sitting down, this will.'

"And flat on his knees he plumped, ahead of his chair, and crossed himself and started praying in Latin. He made no special noise nor movement, but after a while I saw the sweat stand out on his forehead and his face was drawn and pale--and grew paler. Every now and then he'd give a sort of deep sigh and hitch along, almost imperceptibly, on his knees, from fatigue and nervous tension, and after about ten minutes he was almost in the fireplace. With anybody else I could never have stood it, but it was impossible not to respect Father Kelly, and I can tell you that whatever prayers he prayed, they were no perfunctory mumblings: they took it out of him! He was like a man fighting, blindfolded--he breathed like a prize fighter, I tell you! And just at the edge of the hearth, when I thought I must stop him (that sort of auto-hypnosis will take a person straight out of an open six-story window, you know) he stopped himself, opened his eyes with a jerk, and pointed ahead of him.

"'Mother of God,' he said in a husky whisper, 'but it's there!'

"'There!' said I. 'What's there, Father? There can't be anything in that fireplace--I've seen a dozen fires in it.'

"He got up from his knees as unconcerned as he'd gotten down on them and cleared his throat.

"'Not in it, perhaps, doctor,' he said, 'but then, under it. Or over it, perhaps. But there, somewhere, it is.'

"'You mean the bricks?' I cried, and he nodded his head like a man too weak to talk.

"'Maybe,' he whispered. 'Look and see."

"There was a full set of fire-irons there, and I took the poker and tapped all about the hearth, as excited as a boy on a treasure hunt, though of course I didn't believe in it, any more than the boy does, really.

"'No, Father,' I said, 'there's nothing to show--' and then, just between the andirons, I hit a blow that rang as hollow as a drum!

"'But there's no brick loose!' I cried, and he whispered, 'Then break it!'

"It took more than a few blows and I broke the poker, but finally I loosened the mortar and there under the two centre bricks was an iron box, about seven inches square, made like a little trunk. I fished it out and opened it--it opened from the side--and pulled out two thick handfuls of yellow letters, without envelopes. I opened the top one eagerly, but it had no date nor address. For signature there was only the name 'Olive.'"

He stopped abruptly and stared at the thick-bellied decanter before him. His voice sank lower.

"I have never heard or read that name since," he said slowly, "without a thrill at my nerves like a picked violin string. They were the wickedest letters ever written, I think. Even for a woman, they were incredible."

The men stared at him, mystified, confused, eager.

"One, the third, I think, said something like this: '_They may bury me, now that you want me no longer. They shall never bury these letters--I swear it. Here in the room where I wrote them, they shall live after I am gone._'

"And they lived--God, they lived! As I pored over them, cross-legged by that little hearth, I believe that I was as lost to the world about me as Father Kelly had been a few moments before. They were not written for me, they offered me nothing, the writer was beyond doubt dead and gone; but for the moment those yellow papers held me, soul and body, in such a grip as I have never known before or since. I can't tell you ... I didn't know such things could be written...." He shook his head slowly.

"I'd always been fairly decent, you see--there were circumstances ... I couldn't take advantage...

"Did you ever turn over a good old sunny rock, flat, a little mossy, but clean and wholesome? And underneath it crawls--it crawls! Black, slimy slug things ... muck of the Pit!

"That was me. And every time my eyes fell on one of those amazing phrases on that yellow page, I had to hold the rock down!

"Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped like a woman. Father Kelly stood over me, and he looked, from where I sat below him, unhumanly tall. He held out his hand.

"'Give them to me,' he said.

"'But, Father, you don't want to see them!' I burst out. 'I'm going to destroy them. You--you mustn't see them! Let me burn them----'

"'Give them to me, my son," he repeated, and I gave them up like a child. It was remarkable.

"'At any rate, I warn you,' I began. But he only smiled.

"'When you are warned of fever in a house, do you pass it by, my son?' he asked me softly. 'But this is a different matter.'

"I admit that I couldn't meet his eyes.

"Well, he read them all through placidly, and then he sighed and shook his head.

"'Poor things, poor things!' he said, 'and now we'll burn them. There is nothing I can do.'

"So we burned them there and put back the bricks and he muttered some short prayer or other and made the sign of the cross over the fireplace and then turned to me.

"'Didn't I see some bread and ham and a cheese in that wire safe in the cellar, doctor?' says he. 'I had no supper to-night.'

"We went down and got them and a bottle of Scotch, too, and I remember perfectly that we polished off half a small ham, a whole Edam cheese, a loaf of bread and nearly a bottle of the Scotch--the bottle wasn't quite full, to begin with, you see.

"After we'd finished we had a smoke, and then I stared at him straight.

"'What's the meaning of it all, Father?' I asked.

"'I can't tell you, my son,' said he (he never called me so before or since that night) 'but you may be sure of one thing--God reigns. And now, what are you thinking to do?'

"'Burn down this house,' said I, 'and send for my wife to come back.'

"'By all means send for your wife,' says he quickly, 'but if you're bound to destroy this house--which strikes me as a very good sort of house--why not give it me?'

"'To you?' I cried. 'You don't mean that you'd use it?'

"'I could put a parochial school for girls there next week,' he said cheerfully. 'We need one at this end badly, but I hadn't the money."

"'And you'd put innocent girls in this place?'

"'Give me a chance, and then come hear Sister Mary Eustacia sing with 'em, next Sunday,' he said.

"So I deeded it to him, land and all, and they had a great kick-up there with little boys in lace night-gowns, and incense and what not. And, by George, the girls did sing for me, too, with Sister Somebody-or-other bowing and blushing behind 'em--all in white they were, with blue sashes, and voices like larks ... I never had a daughter...."

He half rose, heavily, leaning on his elbows. "Mind you, there's something there!" he said slowly.

"There's a Pit below--you have to count on it. Perhaps we're shovelling it in, all the time, shovelling it in...

"And the more you whistle, the better you'll work, of course. Very well, then, whistle! But don't mistake--it's there ... it's there."

They drew long breaths and pushed away from the table; the rain had stopped.

And still in silence they walked out together into the fresh, damp evening.

THE ORACLES

You'll wonder, no doubt, at me having the daring to make what you might call a sort of romance out of her life--now all's over. And, of course, it's not in my way at all. Not but what I've read enough of romance-books--many's the many! My mother was always at me to lay them by and take up some bit of work that 'ud bring me in more in the end--and yet, there's no doubt it was my readings and dreamings and such-like that brought me about Miss Lisbet's friendship, at the first, and that friendship was the making of me, one way and another, as mother never denied.

It was Dr. Stanchon that set me about it. He came into my cottage, a matter of a month or so back, looking fair grizzled and white--the heat, he said. And if I knew better, I never said so. He never minded the heat till this summer. And on his vacation at home, too! But he showed his age, fair.

"You haven't some kind of drink for me, have you, Rhoda?" he says, sort of faint-like. "It's been a hard day at the hospital."

Now that might do for some, but not for me, that's known the doctor fifty-four years come Easter. I looked at the wheels of the gig, and they were all clay, red clay from the one road hereabouts that's made of it--the graveyard road. And I knew where he'd been. But of course I says nothing, but brings him a palm-leaf fan, and seats him out of the glare, in the entry that looks over the little garden, and I waters the red bricks of the porch with a spray or two from the garden-pot (nothing so cooling as watered brick, I say!) and hurries in to beat up his drink. He settled down in the old chair I always keep for him--a Windsor, cushioned in some English chintz his wife brought me out from home, twenty years ago--and I heard him sigh and stretch as I got the lemons and the eggs. I beat up the whites, stiff as silver, added the lemon juice by littles, dusted a bit of castor sugar, and stuck in a sprig of mint from my sunken half-barrel where the cress grows.

"Ah, that makes a man new!" says he, handing back the glass. "It's a pity you can't patent that, Rhoda!"

And then he pulled out his old pipe, and smoked for a quarter-hour, without a word. But he rested.

"And how's Miss Jessop, these days, doctor?" says I, when I saw he was ready for talking.

"Finely, finely!" says he. "Her little girl wrote me a letter yesterday. Ten years old! Image of her father, that child. You're as bad as Lisbet, though, that never would learn to change."

"I'm sure I beg her pardon--Mrs. Weldon, of course, and her with a boy fourteen, too!" says I. "How Miss Lisbet did take to her, surely! I always thought having her to help with Master Louis's children when they were so bad, just helped poor Miss Lisbet to bear with her sorrow at not starting the hospital, and all that."

"Yes, yes," he said and nodded.

"She was a fine woman, Jessop was. Best nurse I ever had. Yes, yes--Weldon's a lucky fellow."

The cress smelled strong in the heat, then, and I couldn't but say:

"Do you remember when Miss Lisbet and I started the cress-bed, doctor, down in the Winthrop pond?"

At first he didn't answer, and I saw the old times in his face.

"How she did enjoy your cress-and-mustard salad!" he says, finally. "Mrs. Stanchon spoke of it this morning--have you a little mess I could take up to the house?"

And so we passed to talking about her, and it eased us both.

"It's like a sort of tale, sir, isn't it?" says I, thoughtful-like. "Often and often when my niece has left everything tidy, and made my tea and cakes, and put away the wash, and watered the brick, and gone home, and I sit here while the pot draws and there's only the cat for company (not that I complain! I've my thoughts, and plenty of books, and all the old days to live over!) often and often, as I say, it'll come to me in a sort of tale, like, and I wish there was some one to take it down; it would read off like a book!"

"And why not take it down yourself, Rhoda, my girl?" says he. "There's one, as I needn't tell you, would have no little pleasure reading it."

And so I began. You'd be surprised at the many that's offered to help me, and piece out bits of her life that maybe I wouldn't know. But I knew enough for what I had in mind to show, namely, what Miss Lisbet was always planning to do--and what she really did do.

So now I'll begin at the beginning.

* * * * *

It was the morning of the day I was ten years old that I first saw her. A Saturday it was, and a holiday, and mother gave me a piece of currant bread, buttered, for a treat, and the day free till sunset, after my morning tasks were through. I was all that was left her--five others buried, in fifteen years--and she was very easy with me, for which you could scarcely blame her, poor soul! Three lost in England, of the smallpox, and one that hardly opened his little eyes, and my sister of something that they had no name for rightly in those days, doctor says, but they call it appendicitis now. I was born over here, and never saw England, though I've always loved to read about it and always called it "home," not thinking, as one often will. Mother had black memories of the old country and was anxious for us to grow up little Americans, though I can see now that she went to work very wrong to bring that about, for we always curtseyed to the rector and old Madam Winthrop when she rode by in the coach, and never, in short, thought of looking higher than we were born.

So when I saw a lovely young lady drive up in a pony cart, hand the reins to the groom, get out, and walk through the gate toward me, I held the currant bread behind me and dropped a little curtsey.

"Is this Mrs. Pennyfield's house?" she says, stopping and staring at me.

"Yes, miss, she's my mother," says I.

"What is your name?" says she.

"Rhoda Pennyfield, please, miss," says I, and then, the goodness knows why, for I was a shy enough little thing commonly, "It's my birthday!"

"Why, how funny!" she says, smiling the loveliest smile in the world. "It's mine, too! How old are you, Rhoda Pennyfield?"

"Ten, miss."

"Isn't that wonderful!" she cries out, blushing like a rose peony. "I am ten to-day, too! What were your presents? Mine were the pony phaeton and this gold watch (she held it out to me on a chain about her neck) and a macaw from South America from my Uncle Mather, on an ebony perch. And a French doll from my aunty in New York, but I don't care for dolls any more. What had you?"

Now, as you can see, if I had really been a little American, I should have been jealous and ashamed that things were so different between us, but such a notion never entered my head.

"Mother baked currant bread, miss," I said, "and Madam Winthrop's gardener gave me a spotted kitten, and I have a string of blue beads and the day to myself. I'm thinking I'll go up to The Cedars and Mrs. Williams will let me read some of the books from the library for the afternoon."

"Why, that's where I live--The Cedars!" she says, surprised. "Madam Winthrop is my aunt, and Mrs. Williams dresses me! Come into the phaeton and I'll drive you there!"