"Hush! I see some one at the kitchen window. Let us move warily and be sure not to confound these prints with those of any other person. It looks as if a great many people had passed here."
"Yes, this is the way to the chicken-coops and out-houses. But in the ground beyond I think I see a single line of steps again,—small steps like these. Where can they be leading? They are deep like those of a person running."
"And straggling, like those of a person running in the dark. See how they waver from the direct line down there, turn, and almost come up against that wood-pile! Whose steps are these? Whose, Mr. Harper? Quick! I must see where they go. Our time will not be lost. The key to the labyrinth is in our hands."
The lawyer was in the rear and the eyes of the other were fixed far ahead. For this reason, perhaps, the former allowed himself a quiet shake of the head, which might not have encouraged the other so very much, had he caught sight of it. They were now on the verge of the garden, or what would soon be a garden if these rains betokened spring. A path ran along its edge and in this path the footsteps they were following lost themselves; but they came upon them again among the hillocks of some old potato-hills beyond, and finally traced them quite across the garden waste to a fence, along which they ran, blundering from ploughed earth to spots of smoother ground, and so back again till they came upon an old turn-stile!
Passing through this, the two men stopped and looked about them. They were in a road ridged with grass and flanked by bushes. One end ran east into a wooded valley, the other debouched on the highway a few feet to the right of the tavern.
"The lane!" exclaimed Mr. Harper. "The lead towards the waterfall was a feint. It was in this direction she fled, and it is from this point that search must be made for her."
Ransom, greatly perturbed, for this possibility of secret flight opened vistas of as much mystery, if not of as much suffering, as her death in the river, glanced at the sodden ground under their feet, and thus along the lane to where it lost itself from view among the trees.
"No possible following of steps here," he declared. "A hundred people must have come this way since early morning."
"It's a short cut from the Ferry. They told me last night that it lessened the distance by fully a quarter of a mile."
"The Ferry! Can she be there? Or in the woods, or on her way to some unknown place far out of our reach? The thought is maddening, Mr. Harper, and I feel as helpless as a child under it. Shall we get detectives from the county-seat, or start on the hunt ourselves? We might hear something further on to help us."
"We might; but I should rather stay on the immediate scene at present. Ah, there comes a fellow in a cart who should be able to tell us something! Stand by and I'll accost him. You needn't show your face."
Mr. Ransom turned aside. Mr. Harper waited till the slow-moving horse, dragging a heavily jogging wagon, came alongside, and he had caught the eye of the low-browed, broad-faced farmer boy who sat on a bag of potatoes and held the reins.
"Good morning," said he. "Bad news this way. Any better at the Ferry, or down east, as you call it?"
"Eh?" was the lumbering, half-suspicious answer from the startled boy. "I've heard naught down yonder, but that a gal threw herself over the waterfall up here last night. Is that a fact, sir? I'm mighty curus to know. My mother knew them Hazens; used to wash for 'em years ago. She told me to bring up these taters and larn all I could about it."
"We don't know much more than that ourselves," was the smooth and cautious reply. "The lady certainly is missing, and she is supposed to have drowned herself." Then, as he noted the fellow's eyes resting with some curiosity on Mr. Ransom's well-clad, gentlemanly figure, added gravely, and with a slight gesture towards the latter:
"The lady's husband."
The lad's jaw fell and he looked very sheepish.
"Excuse me, misters, I didn't know," he managed to mutter, with a slash at his horse which was vainly endeavoring to pull the cart from the rut in which it had stuck. "I guess I'll go along to the hotel. I've a bag of taters for Mrs. Deo."
But the cart didn't budge and the lawyer had time to say:
"Guess you didn't hear anything said about another lady I am interested in. No talk down your way of a strange young woman seen anywhere on the highway or about any of the houses between here and the Landing?"
"Jerusha! I did hear a neighbor of mine say somethin' about a stranger gal he saw this very mornin'. Met her down by Beardsley's. She was goin' through the mud on foot as lively as you please. Asked him the way to the Ferry. He noticed her because she was pretty and spoke in such a nice way—just like a city gal," he said. "Is it any one from this hotel?" added the fellow with a wondering look. "If so, she walked a mile before daylight in mud up to her ankles. A girl of powerful grit that! with a mighty good reason for catching the train."
"Oh! there's an early train then?" asked the lawyer, ignoring the other's question with unmoved good-humor. "One, I mean, before the 10:50 express?"
"Yes, sir, or so I've heard. I never took it. Folks don't from here, except they're in an awful hurry. Will y'er say who the young woman is? Not—not—"
"We don't know who she is," quietly objected the lawyer. "And you don't know who she is either," he severely added, holding the yawping countryman with his eye. "If you're the man I think you, you'll not talk about her unless you're asked by the constable or some one you are bound to answer. And what's more, you'll earn a five-dollar bill by going back the road you've come and bringing here, without any talk or fuss, the man you were just telling us about. I want to have a talk with him, but I don't want any one but you and him to know this. You can tell him it's worth money, if he don't want to come. Do you understand?"
"You bet," chuckled the grinning lad. "A five-dollar bill is mighty clearing to the mind, sir. But must I turn right back before going on to the hotel and hearing the news?"
"We'll help you turn the cart," grimly suggested Mr. Harper. "Get up there, Dobbin, or whatever your name is. Here, Ransom, lend a hand!"
There was nothing for the fellow to do but to accept the help proffered, and turn his cart. With one longing look towards the hotel he jerked at the rein and shouted at the horse, which, after a few feeble efforts, pulled the cart about and started off again in the desired direction.
"Sooner done, sooner paid," shouted the lawyer, as lad and cart went jolting off. "Remember to ask for Lawyer Harper when you come back. I won't be far from the office."
The fellow nodded; gave one grinning look back and whipped up his nag. The lawyer and Ransom eyed one another. "It's only a possibility," emphasized the former. "Don't lay too much stress upon it."
"Let us speak plainly," urged Ransom. "Mr. Harper, are you sure that you know just what my thought is?"
"The time has not come for discussing that question. Let us defer it. There is a fact to be settled first."
"Whether the girl—"
"No; this! Whether your wife could have jumped from her window to the balcony, as Anitra said. It did not look feasible from below, but as I then remarked to you, our opinion may change when we consider it from above. Will you go up-stairs with me to your wife's room?"
"I will go anywhere and do anything you please, so that we learn the exact truth. But spare me the curiosity of these people. The crowd on this side is increasing."
"We will go in by the kitchen door. Some one there will show us the way up-stairs."
And in this manner they entered; not escaping entirely all curious looks, for human nature is human nature, whether in the kitchen or parlor.
In the hall above Mr. Ransom took the precedence. As they neared the fatal room he motioned the lawyer to wait till he could ascertain if Miss Hazen would be disturbed by their intrusion. The door, which had been broken in between the two rooms, could not have been put back very securely, and he dreaded incommoding her. He was gone but a minute. Almost as soon as the lawyer started to follow him, he could be seen beckoning from poor Georgian's door.
"Miss Hazen is asleep," whispered Ransom, as the other drew near. "We can look about this room with impunity."
They both entered and the lawyer crossed at once to the window.
"Your wife could never have taken the leap ascribed to her by the woman you call Anitra," he declared, after a minute's careful scrutiny of the conditions. "The balustrade of the adjoining balcony is not only in the way, but the distance is at least five feet from the extreme end of this window-ledge. A woman accustomed to a life of adventure or to the feats of a gymnasium might do it, but not a lady of Mrs. Ransom's habits. If your wife made her way from this room to the balcony outside her sister's window, she did it by means of the communicating door."
"But the door was found locked on this side. There is the key in the lock now."
"You are sure of this?"
"I was the first one to call attention to it."
"Then," began the lawyer judicially, but stopped as he noted the peculiar eagerness of Ransom's expression, and turned his attention instead to the interior of the room and the various articles belonging to Mrs. Ransom which were to be seen in it. "The dress your wife wore when she signed her will," he remarked, pointing to the light green gown hanging on the inside of the door by which they had entered.
Ransom stepped up to it, but did not touch it. He could see her as she looked in this gown in her memorable passage through the hall the evening before, and, recalling her expression, wondered if they yet understood the nature of her purpose and the determination which gave it such extraordinary vigor.
Mr. Harper called his attention to two other articles of dress hanging in another part of the room. These were her long gray rain-coat and the hat and veil she had worn on the train.
"She went out bare-headed and in the plain serge dress in which she arrived," remarked Mr. Harper with a side glance at Ransom. "I wonder if the girl met on the highway was without hat and dressed in black serge."
Ransom was silent.
"Anitra's hat is below and here is Mrs. Ransom's. She who escaped from this house last night went out bare-headed," repeated the lawyer.
Mr. Ransom, moving aside to avoid the probing of the other's eye, merely remarked:
"You noticed my wife's dress very particularly it seems. It was of serge, you say."
"Yes. I am learned in stuffs. I remarked it when she got into the coach, possibly because I was struck by its simplicity and conventional make. There was no trimming on the bottom, only stitching. Her sister's was just like it. They had the look of being ready-made."
"But Anitra had no rain-coat. I remember that her shoulders were wet when she came in from the lane."
"No, she had no protection but her blouse, black like her dress. I presume that her hot blood resented every kind of wrap."
Again that sidelong glance from his keen eye. "She wore a checked silk handkerchief about her neck—the one she afterwards put over her head."
"You were on the same train with my wife and sister-in-law," Ransom now said. "Did you sit near them? Converse with them, that is, with Mrs. Ransom?"
"I have no reason for deceiving you in that regard," replied Mr. Harper. "I did not come up from New York on the same train they did. They must have come up in the morning, for when I arrived at the place they call the Ferry, I saw them standing on the hotel steps ready to step into the coach. I spoke to Mrs. Ransom then, but only a word. My grip-sack had been put under the driver's seat, and I saw that I was expected to ride with him, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather. Mrs. Ransom saw it too and possibly my natural hesitation, for she turned to me after she had seen her sister safely ensconced inside, and said something about her regret at having subjected me to such inconvenience, but did not offer to make room for me in the body of the coach, though there was room enough if the other had been the quiet lady she was herself. But she was not, and possibly this was Mrs. Ransom's excuse for her apparent lack of consideration for me. Before we reached the point where the lane cuts in, I became aware of some disturbance behind me, and when we really got there, I heard first the coach door opening, then your wife's voice, raised in entreaty to the driver, calling on him to stop before her sister jumped out and hurt herself. 'She is deaf and very wild' was all the explanation she gave after Miss Hazen had leaped into the wet road and darted from sight into what looked to me, in the darkness, like a tangled mass of bushes. Then she said something about her having had hard work to keep her still till we got this far; but that she was sure she would find her way to the hotel, and that we mustn't bother ourselves about it for she wasn't going to; Anitra and she had run this road too many times when they were children. That is all I have to tell of my intercourse with these ladies prior to our appearance at the hotel. I think it right for me to clear the slate, Ransom. Who knows what we may wish to write upon it next?"
A slight shiver on Ransom's part was the sole answer he gave to this innuendo; then both settled themselves to work, the eyes of either flashing hither and thither from one small object to another, in this seemingly deserted room. In the momentary silence which followed, the even breathing of the woman in the adjoining room could be distinctly heard. It seemed to affect Mr. Ransom deeply, though he strove hard to maintain the business-like attitude he had assumed from the beginning of this unofficial examination.
"She has confided nothing more to you since your return from the river bank?" suggested the lawyer.
"No."
The word came sharply, considering Mr. Ransom's usual manner. The lawyer showed surprise but no resentment, and turned his attention to the bag both had noted lying open on two chairs.
"Nothing equivocal here," he declared, after a moment's careful scrutiny of its remaining contents. "The only comment I should make in regard to what I find here is that all the articles are less carefully chosen than you would expect from one of your wife's fondness for fine appointments."
"They were collected in a hurry and possibly by telephone," returned the unhappy husband, after a shrinking glance into the bag. "The ones she provided in anticipation of her wedding are at the hotel in New York. In the trunks and bags there you will find articles as elegant as you could wish." Here he turned to the dresser, and pointed to the various objects grouped upon it.
"These show that she arranged herself with care for her meeting with you last night. How did she appear at that interview? Natural?"
"Hardly; she was much too excited. But I had no suspicion of what she was cherishing in her mind. I thought her intentions whimsical, and endeavored to edge in a little advice, but she was in no mood to receive it. Her mind was too full of what she intended to do.
"Here's where she ate her supper," he added, picking up a morsel of crust from a table set against the wall. "And so this door was found fastened on this side?" he proceeded, laying his hand on the broken lock.
"It had to be burst open, you see."
"And the window?"
"Was up. The carpet, as you can tell by look and feeling, is still wet with the soaking it got."
Mr. Harper's air changed to one of reluctant conviction.
"The evidence seems conclusive of your wife having left this room and the house in the remarkable manner stated by Miss Hazen. Yet—"
This yet showed that he was not as thoroughly convinced as the first phrase would show. But he added nothing to it; only stood listening, apparently to the even breathing of the sleeper on the other side of this loosely hanging door.
As he did so, his eye encountered the hot, dry gaze of Mr. Ransom, fixed upon him in a suspense too cruel to prolong, and with a sudden change of manner he moved from the door, saying significantly as he led the way out:
"Let us have a word or two in your own room. It is a principle of mine not to trust even the ears of the deaf with what it is desirable to keep secret."
Had the glance with which he said this lingered a moment longer on his companion's face, he would undoubtedly have been startled at the effect of his own words. But being at heart a compassionate man, or possibly understanding his new client much better than that client supposed, he had turned quite away in crossing the threshold, and so missed the conscious flash which for a moment replaced the somber and feverish expression that had already aged by ten years the formerly open features of this deeply grieved man.
Once in the hall, it was too dark to note further niceties of expression, and by the time Mr. Ransom's room was reached, purpose and purpose only remained visible in either face.
As they were crossing the threshold, the lawyer wheeled about and cast a quick look behind him.
"I observe," said he, "that you have a full and unobstructed view from here of the whole hall and of the two doors where our interest is centered. I presume you kept a strict watch on both last night. You let nothing escape you?"
"Nothing that one could see from this room."
With a thoughtful air, the lawyer swung to the door behind them. As it latched, the face of Mr. Ransom sharpened. He even put out a hand and rested it on a table standing near, as if to support himself in anticipation of what the lawyer would say now that they were again closeted together.
Mr. Harper was not without his reasons for a corresponding agitation, but he naturally controlled himself better, and it was with almost a judicial air that he made this long-expected but long-deferred suggestion:
"You had better tell me now, and as explicitly as possible, just what is in your mind. It will prevent all misunderstanding between us, as well as any injudicious move on my part."
Mr. Ransom hesitated, leaning hard on the table; then, with a sudden burst, he exclaimed:
"It sounds like folly, and you may think that my troubles have driven me mad. But I have a feeling here—a feeling without any reason or proof to back it—that the woman now sleeping off her exhaustion in Anitra's room is the woman I courted and married—Georgian Hazen, now Georgian Ransom, my wife."
"Good! I have made no mistake. That is my thought, too," responded the lawyer.
CHAPTER XV
ANITRA
A few minutes later they were discussing this amazing possibility.
"I have no reason for this conclusion,—this hope," admitted Mr. Ransom. "It is instinct with me, an intuition, and not the result of my judgment. It came to me when she first addressed me down by the mill-stream. If you consider me either wrong or misled, I confess that I shall not be able to combat your decision with any argument plausible enough to hold your attention for a moment."
"But I don't consider you either wrong or misled," protested the other. "That is," he warily added, "I am ready to accept the correctness of the possibility you mention and afterwards to note where the supposition will lead us. Of course, your first sensation is that of relief."
"It will be when I am no longer the prey of doubts."
"Notwithstanding the mystery?"
"Notwithstanding the mystery. The one thing I have found it impossible to contemplate is her death;—the extinction of all hope which death alone can bring. She has become so blended with my every thought since the hour she vanished from my eyes and consequently from my protection, that I should lose the better part of my self in losing her. Anything but that, Mr. Harper."
"Even possible shame?"
"How, shame?"
"Some reason very strong and very vital must underlie her conduct if what we suspect is true, and she has not only been willing to subject you and herself to a seeming separation by death, but to burden herself with the additional misery of being obliged to assume a personality cumbered by such a drawback to happiness and even common social intercourse as this of the supposed Anitra."
"You mean her deafness?"
"I mean that, yes. What could Mrs. Ransom's motive be (if the woman sleeping yonder is Mrs. Ransom) for so tremendous a sacrifice as this you ascribe to her? The rescue of her sister from some impending calamity? That would argue a love of long standing and of superhuman force; one far transcending even her natural affection for the husband to whom she has just given her hand. Such a love under such circumstances is not possible. She has known this long lost sister for a few days only. Her sense of duty towards her, even her compassion for one so unfortunate, might lead her to risk much, but not so much as that. You must look for some other explanation; one more reasonable and much more personal."
"Where? where? I'm all at sea; blinded, dazed, almost at my wits' end. I can see no reason for anything she has done. I neither understand her nor understand myself. I ought to shrink from the poor creature there, sleeping off—I don't know what. But I don't. I feel drawn to her, instead, irresistibly drawn, as if my place were at her bedside to comfort and protect."
At this impulsive assertion springing from a depth of feeling for which the staid lawyer had no measure, a perplexed frown chased all the urbanity from his face. Some thought, not altogether welcome, had come to disturb him. He eyed Mr. Ransom closely from under his clouded brows. He could do this now with impunity, for Mr. Ransom's glances were turned whither his thoughts and inclinations had wandered.
"I would advise you," came in slow comment from the watchful lawyer, "not to be too certain of your conclusions till doubt becomes an absolute impossibility. Instinct is a good thing but it must never be regarded as infallible. It may be proved that it is your wife who has fled, after all. In which case it would be a great mistake to put any faith in this gipsy girl, Anitra."
Mr. Ransom's face hardened; his eyes did not leave the direction in which they were set.
"I will remember," said he.
His companion did not appear satisfied, and continued emphatically:
"Whether the woman now here is Mrs. Ransom or her wild and irresponsible sister, she is a person of dangerous will and one not to be lightly regarded nor carelessly dealt with. Pray consider this, Mr. Ransom, and do not allow impulse to supersede judgment. If you will take my advice—"
"Speak."
"I should treat her as if she were the woman she calls herself, or, at least, as if you thought her so. Nothing—" this word he repeated as he noted the incredulity with which the other listened—"would be so likely to make her betray herself as that."
"Let us go back and listen again at her door," was Mr. Ransom's emphatic but inconsequent reply.
The lawyer desisted from further advice, but sighed as he followed his new client into the hall. At the turn of the staircase they were stopped by the sound of wrangling voices in the office below. Mr. Harper heard his name mentioned and hastened to interfere. Assuring Mr. Ransom of his speedy return, he stepped down-stairs, and in a few minutes reappeared with a middle-aged man of characteristic appearance, whom he introduced to Mr. Ransom as Mr. Goodenough. The sight of the uncouth head of their youthful acquaintance of the morning peering up after him from the foot of the stairs was warranty sufficient that this was the man who had met the strange young lady on the highway early that morning.
At sight of him Mr. Ransom felt that inner recoil which we all experience at the prospect of an immediate and definite termination of a long brooding doubt. In another instant and with one word this uncultured and hitherto unknown man would settle for him the greatest question of his life. And he did not feel prepared for it. He had an impulse almost of flight, as if in this way he could escape a certainty he feared. What certainty? Perhaps he could not have answered had he been asked. His mind was in a turmoil. He had feelings—instincts; that was all.
The lawyer, noting his condition, undertook the leadership of affairs. Beckoning Mr. Goodenough into Mr. Ransom's room, he softly closed the door upon the many inquiring ears about, and, assuming the manner most likely to encourage the unsophisticated but straightforward looking man with whom he had to deal, quietly observed:
"We hear that you met this morning a young girl going towards the Ferry. There is great reason why we should know just how this young girl looks. A lady disappeared from here last night, and though, from a letter she left behind her, we have every reason to believe that her body is somewhere in the river, yet we don't want to overlook the possibility of her having escaped alive in another direction. Can you describe the person you saw?"
"Wa'al, I'm not much good at talk," was the embarrassed, almost halting reply. "I saw the gal and I remember just how she looked, but I couldn't put it into words to save my soul. She was pretty and chipper and walked along as if she was part of the mornin'; but that don't tell you much, does it? Yet I don't know what else to say. P'raps you could help me by asking questions."
"We'll see. Was she light-complexioned? Yellow hair, you know, and blue eyes?"
"No; I don't think she was. Not what I call light. My Sal's light; this gal wasn't like my Sal."
"Dark, then, very dark, with a gipsy color and snapping black eyes?"
"No, not that either. What I should call betweens. But more dark than light."
Harper flashed a glance at Ransom before putting his next question.
"What did she have on her head?"
"Bless me if I can tell! It wasn't a sun-bonnet, nor was it slapped all over with ribbons and flowers like my darter's."
"But she had some sort of hat on?"
"Sartain. Did you think she was just running to the neighbors?"
"But she wore no coat?"
"I don't remember any coat."
"Do you remember her frock?"
"No, not exactly."
"Don't you remember its color?"
"No."
"Wasn't it black? the skirt of it, at least?"
"Black? Wa'al, I guess not. A gal of her age in black! No, she was as bright as the flowers in my wife's garden. Not a black thing on her. I should sooner think her clothes were red than black."
Harper showed his surprise.
"Not a black skirt?" he persisted.
"No, sir'ee. I haven't much eye for fixin's but I've eye enough to know when a gal's dressed like a gal and not like some old woman."
Harper's eye stole again towards Ransom.
"Checkmate in four moves," he muttered. "The person we are interested in could have worn no such clothing as Mr. Goodenough describes. Yet clothing can be changed. How, I cannot see in this instance; but I will risk no mistake. The trail we followed led too surely in the direction of the highway for us to drop all inquiries because of a colored skirt and a hat we cannot quite account for. If the face is one we know (and I really believe it was), we can leave the other discrepancies to future explanation." And turning back to the patient countryman, he composedly remarked: "You are positive in your recollections of the young lady's features. You would have no difficulty in recognizing her if you saw her again?"
"Not a bit. Once I get a picter in my mind of a man or a woman I see it always. And I can see her as plain as plain the moment I stop to think. She was pretty, you see, and just a little scared to speak to a stranger. But that went as she saw my face, and she asked me very perlite if she was on the right road to the Ferry."
"And you told her she was?"
"Sartain; and how much time she had to get there to catch the boat."
"I see. So you would know her again if you saw her."
"I jest would."
The lawyer made a move towards the door which Mr. Ransom hastened to open. As the long vista of the hall disclosed itself, Mr. Harper turned upon the countryman with the quiet remark:
"There were two ladies here, you know. Twins. Their likeness was remarkable. If we show you the remaining one who now lies asleep, you surely will be able to tell if she is like the lady you saw."
"If she looks just like her you can bet beans against potatoes on that."
"Come, then. You needn't feel any embarrassment, for she's not only sound asleep but so deaf she couldn't hear you if she were awake. You need only take one glance and nod your head if she looks like the other. It is very desirable that none of us should speak. The case is a mysterious one and there's enough talk about it already without the women hiding and listening behind every shut door you see, adding their gossip to the rest."
A knowing look, a twitch at the corners of a good-natured mouth, and the man followed them down the hall, past one or two of the doors alluded to, till they reached the one against the panel of which Mr. Ransom had already laid his ear.
"Still asleep," his gesture seemed to signify; and with a word of caution he led the way in.
The room was very dark. Mrs. Deo had been careful to draw down the shade when she put her strange charge to bed, and at this first moment of entrance it was impossible for them to see more than the outline of a dark head upon a snowy pillow. But gradually, feature by feature of the sleeping woman's countenance became visible, and the lawyer, turning his acute gaze on the man from whose recognition he expected so much, impatiently awaited the nod which was to settle their doubt.
But that nod did not come, not even after Mr. Ransom, astonished at the long pause, turned on the stranger his own haggard and inquiring eyes. Instead, Mr. Goodenough lifted a blank stare to either face beside him, and, shaking his head, stumbled awkwardly back in an endeavor to leave the room. Mr. Ransom, taken wholly by surprise, uttered some peremptory ejaculation, but a glance from the lawyer quieted him, and not till they were all shut up again in that convenient room at the head of the stairs did any of the three speak.