Sweetwater Returns
“You see me again, Miss Scott. I hope that yesterday’s intrusion has not prejudiced you against me.
“I have no prejudices,” was her simple but firm reply. “I am only hurried and very anxious. The doctor is with Mr. Brotherson just now; but he has several other equally sick patients to visit and I dare not keep him here too long.”
“Then you will welcome my abruptness. Miss Scott, here is a letter from Mr. Challoner. It will explain my position. As you will see, his only desire is to establish the fact that his daughter did not commit suicide. She was all he had in the world, and the thought that she could, for any reason, take her own life is unbearable to him. Indeed, he will not believe she did so, evidence or no evidence. May I ask if you agree with him? You have seen Miss Challoner, I believe. Do you think she was the woman to plunge a dagger in her heart in a place as public as a hotel reception room?
“No, Mr. Sweetwater. I’m a poor working girl, with very little education and almost no knowledge of the world and such ladies as she. But something tells me for all that, that she was too nice to do this. I saw her once and it made me want to be quiet and kind and beautiful like her. I never shall think she did anything so horrible. Nor will Mr. Brotherson ever believe it. He could not and live. You see, I am talking to you as if you knew him,— the kind of man he is and just how he feels towards Miss Challoner. He is —” Her voice trailed off and a look, uncommon and almost elevated, illumined her face. “I will not tell you what he is; you will know, if you ever see him.”
“If the favourable opinion of a whole town makes a good fellow, he ought to be of the best,” returned Sweetwater, with his most honest smile. “I hear but one story of him wherever I turn.”
“There is but one story to tell,” she smiled, and her head drooped softly, but with no air of self-consciousness.
Sweetwater watched her for a moment, and then remarked: “I’m going to take one thing for granted; that you are as anxious as we are to clear Miss Challoner’s memory.”
“O yes, O yes.”
“More than that, that you are ready and eager to help us. Your very looks show that.”
“You are right; I would do anything to help you. But what can a girl like me do? Nothing; nothing. I know too little. Mr. Challoner must see that when you tell him I’m only the daughter of a foreman.”
“And a friend of Mr. Brotherson,” supplemented Sweetwater.
“Yes,” she smiled, “he would want me to say so. But that’s his goodness. I don’t deserve the honour.”
“His friend and therefore his confidante,” Sweetwater continued. “He has talked to you about Miss Challoner?”
“He had to. There was nobody else to whom he could talk; and then, I had seen her and could understand.”
“Where did you see her?”
“In New York. I was there once with father, who took me to see her. I think she had asked Mr. Brotherson to send his little friend to her hotel if ever we came to New York.”
“That was some time ago?”
“We were there in June.”
“And you have corresponded ever since with Miss Challoner?”
“She has been good enough to write, and I have ventured at times to answer her.”
The suspicion which might have come to some men found no harbour in Sweetwater’s mind. This young girl was beautiful, there was no denying that, beautiful in a somewhat startling and quite unusual way; but there was nothing in her bearing, nothing in Miss Challoner’s letters to indicate that she had been a cause for jealousy in the New York lady’s mind. He, therefore, ignored this possibility, pursuing his inquiry along the direct lines he had already laid out for himself. Smiling a little, but in a very earnest fashion, he pointed to the letter she still held and quietly said:
“Remember that I’m not speaking for myself, Miss Scott, when I seem a little too persistent and inquiring. You have corresponded with Miss Challoner; you have been told the fact of her secret engagement to Mr. Brotherson and you have been witness to his conduct and manner for the whole time he has been separated from her. Do you, when you think of it carefully, recall anything in the whole story of this romance which would throw light upon the cruel tragedy which has so unexpectedly ended it? Anything, Miss Scott? Straws show which way the stream flows.”
She was vehement, instantly vehement, in her disclaimer.
“I can answer at once,” said she, “because I have thought of nothing else for all these weeks. Here all was well. Mr. Brotherson was hopeful and happy and believed in her happiness and willingness to wait for his success. And this success was coming so fast! Oh, how can we ever tell him! How can we ever answer his questions even, or keep him satisfied and calm until he is strong enough to hear the truth. I’ve had to acknowledge already that I have had no letter from her for weeks. She never wrote to him directly, you know, and she never sent him messages, but he knew that a letter to me, was also a letter to him and I can see that he is troubled by this long silence, though he says I was right not to let her know of his illness and that I must continue to keep her in ignorance of it till he is quite well again and can write to her himself. It is hard to hear him talk like this and not look sad or frightened.”
Sweetwater remembered Miss Challoner’s last letter, and wished he had it here to give her. In default of this, he said:
“Perhaps this not hearing may act in the way of a preparation for the shock which must come to him sooner or later. Let us hope so, Miss Scott.”
Her eyes filled.
“Nothing can prepare him,” said she. Then added, with a yearning accent, “I wish I were older or had more experience. I should not feel so helpless. But the gratitude I owe him will give me strength when I need it most. Only I wish the suffering might be mine rather than his.”
Unconscious of any self-betrayal, she lifted her eyes, startling Sweetwater by the beauty of her look. “I don’t think I’m so sorry for Oswald Brotherson,” he murmured to himself as he left her. “He’s a more fortunate man than he knows, however deeply he may feel the loss of his first sweetheart.
That evening the disappointed Sweetwater took the train for New York. He had failed to advance the case in hand one whit, yet the countenance he showed Mr. Gryce at their first interview was not a wholly gloomy one.
“Fifty dollars to the bad!” was his first laconic greeting. “All I have learned is comprised in these two statements. The second O. B. is a fine fellow; and not intentionally the cause of our tragedy. He does not even know about it. He’s down with the fever at present and they haven’t told him. When he’s better we may hear something; but I doubt even that.
“Tell me about it.”
Sweetwater complied; and such is the unconsciousness with which we often encounter the pivotal circumstance upon which our future or the future of our most cherished undertaking hangs, he omitted from his story, the sole discovery which was of any real importance in the unravelling of the mystery in which they were so deeply concerned. He said nothing of his walk in the woods or of what he saw there.
“A meagre haul,” he remarked at the close.
“But that’s as it should be, if you and I are right in our impressions and the clew to this mystery lies here in the character and daring of Orlando Brotherson. That’s why I’m not down in the mouth. Which goes to show what a grip my prejudices have on me.”
“As prejudiced as a bulldog.”
“Exactly. By the way, what news of the gentleman I’ve just mentioned? Is he as serene in my absence as when under my eye?”
“More so; he looks like a man on the verge of triumph. But I fear the triumph he anticipates has nothing to do with our affairs. All his time and thought is taken up with his invention.”
“You discourage me, sir. And now to see Mr. Challoner. Small comfort can I carry him.”
The Image of Dread
In the comfortable little sitting-room of the Scott cottage Doris stood, looking eagerly from the window which gave upon the road. Behind her on the other side of the room, could be seen through a partly opened door, a neatly spread bed, with a hand lying quietly on the patched coverlet. It was a strong looking hand which, even when quiescent, conveyed the idea of purpose and vitality. As Doris said, the fingers never curled up languidly, but always with the hint of a clench. Several weeks had passed since the departure of Sweetwater and the invalid was fast gaining strength. To-morrow, he would be up.
Was Doris thinking of him? Undoubtedly, for her eyes often flashed his way; but her main attention was fixed upon the road, though no one was in sight at the moment. Some one had passed for whose return she looked; some one whom, if she had been asked to describe, she would have called a tall, fine-looking man of middle age, of a cultivated appearance seldom seen in this small manufacturing town; seldom seen, possibly, in any town. He had glanced up at the window as he went by, in a manner too marked not to excite her curiosity. Would he look up again when he came back? She was waiting there to see. Why, she did not know. She was not used to indulging in petty suppositions of this kind; her life was too busy, her anxieties too keen. The great dread looming ever before her,— the dread of that hour when she must speak,— left her very little heart for anything dissociated with this coming event. For a girl of seventeen she was unusually thoughtful. Life had been hard in this little cottage since her mother died, or rather she had felt its responsibilities keenly.
Life itself could not be hard where Oswald Brotherson lived; neither to man, nor woman. The cheer of some natures possesses a divine faculty. If it can help no other way, it does so by the aid of its own light. Such was the character of this man’s temperament. The cottage was a happy place; only — she never fathomed the depths of that only. If in these days she essayed at times to do so, she gave full credit to the Dread which rose ever before her — rose like a ghost! She, Doris, led by inscrutable Fate, was waiting to hurt him who hurt nobody; whose mere presence was a blessing.
But her interest had been caught to-day, caught by this stranger, and when during her eager watch the small messenger from the Works came to the door with the usual daily supply of books and magazines for the patient, she stepped out on the porch to speak to him and to point out the gentleman who was now rapidly returning from his stroll up the road.
“Who is that, Johnny?” she asked. “You know everybody who comes to town. What is the name of the gentleman you see coming?”
The boy looked, searched his memory, not without some show of misgiving.
“A queer name,” he admitted at last. “I never heard the likes of it here before. Shally something. Shally — Shally —”
“Challoner?”
“Yes, that’s it. How could you guess? He’s from New York. Nobody knows why he’s here. Don’t seem to have no business.”
“Well, never mind. Run on, Johnny. And don’t forget to come earlier to-morrow; Mr. Brotherson gets tired waiting.”
“Does he? I’ll come quick then; quick as I can run.” And he sped off at a pace which promised well for the morrow.
Challoner! There was but one Challoner in the world for Doris Scott,— Edith’s father. Was this he? It must be, or why this haunting sense of something half remembered as she caught a glimpse of his face. Edith’s father! and he was approaching, approaching rapidly, on his way back to town. Would he stop this time? As the possibility struck her, she trembled and drew back, entering the house, but pausing in the hall with her ear turned to the road. She had not closed the door; something within — a hope or a dread — had prevented that. Would he take it as an invitation to come in? No, no; she was not ready for such an encounter yet. He might speak Edith’s name; Oswald might hear and — with a gasp she recognised the closeness of his step; heard it lag, almost halt just where the path to the house ran into the roadside. But it passed on. He was not going to force an interview yet. She could hear him retreating further and further away. The event was not for this day, thank God! She would have one night at least in which to prepare herself.
With a sense of relief so great that she realised, for one shocked moment, the full extent of her fears, she hastened back into the sitting-room, with her collection of books and pamphlets. A low voice greeted her. It came from the adjoining room.
“Doris, come here, sweet child. I want you.”
How she would have bounded joyously at the summons, had not that Dread raised its bony finger in every call from that dearly loved voice. As it was, her feet moved slowly, lingering at the sound. But they carried her to his side at last, and once there, she smiled.
“See what an armful,” she cried in joyous greeting, as she held out the bundle she had brought. “You will be amused all day. Only, do not tire yourself.”
“I do not want the papers, Doris; not yet. There’s something else which must come first. Doris, I have decided to let you write to her. I’m so much better now, she will not feel alarmed. I must — must get a word from her. I’m starving for it. I lie here and can think of nothing else. A message — one little message of six short words would set me on my feet again. So get your paper and pen, dear child, and write her one of your prettiest letters.”
Had he loved her, he would have perceived the chill which shook her whole body, as he spoke. But his first thought, his penetrating thought, was not for her and he saw only the answering glance, the patient smile. She had not expected him to see more. She knew that she was quite safe from the divining look; otherwise, he would have known her secret long ago.
“I’m ready,” said she. But she did not lay down her bundle. She was not ready for her task, poor child. She quailed before it. She quailed so much that she feared to stir lest he should see that she had no command over her movements.
The man who watched without seeing wondered that she stood so still and spoke so briefly. But only for a moment. He thought he understood her hesitation, and a look of great earnestness replaced his former one of grave decision.
“I know that in doing this I am going beyond my sacred compact with Miss Challoner,” he said. “I never thought of illness,— at least, of illness on my part. I never dreamt that I, always so well, always so full of life, could know such feebleness as this, feebleness which is all of the body, Doris, leaving the mind free to dream and long. Talk of her, child. Tell me all over again just how she looked and spoke that day you saw her in New York.”
“Would it not be better for me to write my letter first? Papa will be coming soon and Truda can never cook your bird as you like it.”
Surprised now by something not quite natural in her manner, he caught at her hand and held her as she was moving away.
“You are tired,” said he. “I’ve wearied you with my commission and complaints. Forgive me, dear child, and —”
“You are mistaken,” she interrupted softly. “I am not tired; I only wished to do the important thing first. Shall I get my desk? Do you really wish me to write?”
“Yes,” said he, softly dropping her hand. “I wish you to write. It will ensure me good sleep, and sleep will make me strong. A few words, Doris; just a few words.”
She nodded; turning quickly away to hide her tears. His smile had gone to her very soul. It was always a beautiful one, his chief personal attraction, but at this moment it seemed to concentrate within it the unspoken fervours and the boundless expectations of a great love, and she who was the aim and cause of all this sweetness lay in unresponsive silence in a distant tomb!
But Doris’ own smile was not lacking in encouragement and beauty when she came back a few minutes later and sat down by his side to write. His melted before it, leaving his eyes very earnest as he watched her bending figure and the hard-worked little hand at its unaccustomed task.
“I must give her daily exercises,” he decided within himself. “That look of pain shows how difficult this work is for her. It must be made easy at any cost to my time. Such beauty calls for accomplishment. I must not neglect so plain a duty.”
Meantime, she was struggling to find words in face of that great Dread. She had written Dear Miss Challoner and was staring in horror at the soulless words. Only her sense of duty upheld her. Gladly would she have torn the sheet in two and rushed away. How could she add sentences to this hollow phrase, the mere employment of which seemed a sacrilege. Dear Miss Challoner. Oh, she was dear, but —
Unconsciously the young head drooped, and the pen slid from her hand.
“I cannot,” she murmured, “I cannot think what to say.”
“Shall I help you?” came softly from the bed. “I’ll try and not forget that it is Doris writing.”
“If you will be so good,” she answered, with renewed courage. “I can put the words down if you will only find them for me.”
“Write then. ‘Dear Miss Challoner!”
“I have already written that.”
“Why do you shudder?”
“I’m cold. I’ve been cold all day. But never mind that, Mr. Brotherson. Tell me how to begin my letter.”
“This way. ‘I’ve not been able to answer your kind letter, because I have had to play nurse for some three or four weeks to a very fretful and exacting patient.’ Have you written that?”
“No,” said Doris, bending over her desk till her curls fell in a tangle over her white cheeks. “I do not like to,” she protested at last, with an attempt at naivete which seemed real enough to him.
“Well, leave out the fretful if you must, but keep in the exacting. I have been exacting, you know.”
Silence, broken only by the scratching of the stubborn, illy-directed pen.
“It’s down,” she whispered. She said, afterward, that it was like writing with a ghost looking over one’s shoulder.
“Then add, ‘Mr. Brotherson has had a slight attack of fever, but he is getting well fast, and will soon —, Do I run on too quickly?”
“No, no, I can follow.”
“But not without losing breath; eh, Doris?”
As he laughed, she smiled. There was a heroism in that smile, Oswald Brotherson, of which you knew nothing.
“You might speak a little more slowly,” she admitted.
Quietly he repeated the last phrase. “‘But he is getting well fast and will soon be ready to take up the management of the Works which was given him just before he was taken ill.’ That will show her that I am working up,” he brightly remarked as Doris carefully penned the last word. “Of myself you need say nothing more, unless —” he paused and his face took on a wistful look which Doris dared not meet; “unless — but no, no, she must think it has been only a passing indisposition. If she knew I had been really ill, she would suffer, and perhaps act imprudently or suffer and not dare to act at all, which might be sadder for her still. Leave it where it is and begin about yourself. Write a good deal about yourself, so that she will see that you are not worried and that all is well with us here. Cannot you do that without assistance? Surely you can tell her about that last piece of embroidery you showed me. She will be glad to hear — why, Doris!”
“Oh, Mr. Brotherson,” the poor child burst out, “you must let me cry! I’m so glad to see you better and interested in all sorts of things. These are not tears of grief. I— I— but I’m forgetting what the doctor told me. You are growing excited, and I was to see that you were calm, always calm. I will take my desk away. I will write the rest in the other room, while you look at the magazines.”
“But bring your letter back for me to seal. I want to see it in its envelope. Oh, Doris, you are a good little girl!”
She shook her head, and hastened to hide herself from him in the other room; and it was a long time before she came back with the letter folded and in its envelope. When she did, her face was composed and her manner natural. She had quite made up her mind what her duty was and how she was going to perform it.
“Here is the letter,” said she, laying it in his outstretched hand. Then she turned her back. She knew, with a woman’s unerring instinct why he wished to handle it before it went. She felt that kiss he folded away in it, in every fibre of her aroused and sympathetic heart, but the hardest part of the ordeal was over and her eyes beamed softly when she turned again to take it from his hand and affix the stamp.
“You will mail it yourself?” he asked. “I should like to have you put it into the box with your own hand.”
“I will put it in to-night, after supper,” she promised him.
His smile of contentment assured her that this trial of her courage and self-control was not without one blessed result. He would rest for several days in the pleasure of what he had done or thought he had done. She need not cringe before that image of Dread for two, three days at least. Meanwhile, he would grow strong in body, and she, perhaps, in spirit. Only one precaution she must take. No hint of Mr. Challoner’s presence in town must reach him. He must be guarded from a knowledge of that fact as certainly as from the more serious one which lay behind it.
I Hope Never to See that Man
That this would be a difficult thing to do, Doris was soon to realise. Mr. Challoner continued to pass the house twice a day and the time finally came when he ventured up the walk.
Doris was in the window and saw him coming. She slipped softly out and intercepted him before he had stepped upon the porch. She had caught up her hat as she passed through the hall, and was fitting it to her head as he looked up and saw her.
“Miss Scott?” he asked.
“Yes, Mr. Challoner.”
“You know me?” he went on, one foot on the step and one still on the walk.
Before replying she closed the door behind her. Then as she noted his surprise she carefully explained:
“Mr. Brotherson, our boarder, is just recovering from typhoid. He is still weak and acutely susceptible to the least noise. I was afraid that our voices might disturb him. Do you mind walking a little way up the road? That is, if your visit was intended for me.”
Her flush, the beauty which must have struck ever him, but more than all else her youth, seemed to reconcile him to this unconventional request. Bowing, he took his foot from the step, saying, as she joined him:
“Yes, you are the one I wanted to see; that is, to-day. Later, I hope to have the privilege of a conversation with Mr. Brotherson.”
She gave him one quick look, trembling so that he offered her his arm with a fatherly air.
“I see that you understand my errand here,” he proceeded, with a grave smile, meant as she knew for her encouragement. “I am glad, because we can go at once to the point. Miss Scott,” he continued in a voice from which he no longer strove to keep back the evidences of deep feeling, “I have the strongest interest in your patient that one man can have in another, where there is no personal acquaintanceship. You who have every reason to understand my reasons for this, will accept the statement, I hope, as frankly as it is made.”
She nodded. Her eyes were full of tears, but she did not hesitate to raise them. She had the greatest desire to see the face of the man who could speak like this to-day, and yet of whose pride and sense of superiority his daughter had stood in such awe, that she had laid a seal upon the impulses of her heart, and imposed such tasks and weary waiting upon her lover. Doris forgot, in meeting his softened glance and tender, almost wistful, expression, the changes which can be made by a great grief, and only wondered why her sweet benefactress had not taken him into her confidence and thus, possibly, averted the doom which Doris felt had in some way grown out of this secrecy.
“Why should she have feared the disapproval of this man?” she inwardly queried, as she cast him a confiding look which pleased him greatly, as his tone now showed.
“When I lost my daughter, I lost everything,” he declared, as they walked slowly up the road. “Nothing excites my interest, save that which once excited hers. I am told that the deepest interest of her life lay here. I am also told that it was an interest quite worthy of her. I expect to find it so. I hope with all my heart to find it so, and that is why I have come to this town and expect to linger till Mr. Brotherson has recovered sufficiently to see me. I hope that this will be agreeable to him. I hope that I am not presuming too much in cherishing these expectations.
Doris turned her candid eyes upon him.
“I cannot tell; I do not know,” said she. “Nobody knows, not even the doctor, what effect the news we so dread to give him will have upon Mr. Brotherson. You will have to wait — we all shall have to wait the results of that revelation. It cannot be kept from him much longer. When I return, I shall shrink from his first look, in the fear of seeing it betray this dreadful knowledge. Yet I have a faithful woman there to keep every one out of his room.”
“You have had much to carry for one so young,” was Mr. Challoner’s sympathetic remark. “You must let me help you when that awful moment comes. I am at the hotel and shall stay there till Mr. Brotherson is pronounced quite well. I have no other duty now in life but to sustain him through his trouble and then, with what aid he can give, search out and find the cause of my daughter’s death which I will never admit without the fullest proof, to have been one of suicide.”
Doris trembled.
“It was not suicide,” she declared, vehemently. “I have always felt sure that it was not; but to-day I KNOW.”
Her hand fell clenched on her breast and her eyes gleamed strangely. Mr. Challoner was himself greatly startled. What had happened — what could have happened since yesterday that she should emphasise that now?
“I’ve not told any one,” she went on, as he stopped short in the road, in his anxiety to understand her. “But I will tell you. Only, not here, not with all these people driving past; most of whom know me. Come to the house later — this evening, after Mr. Brotherson’s room is closed for the night. I have a little sitting-room on the other side of the hall where we can talk without being heard. Would you object to doing that? Am I asking too much of you?”
“No, not at all,” he assured her. “Expect me at eight. Will that be too early?”
“No, no. Oh, how those people stared! Let us hasten back or they may connect your name with what we want kept secret.”
He smiled at her fears, but gave in to her humour; he would see her soon again and possibly learn something which would amply repay him, both for his trouble and his patience.
But when evening came and she turned to face him in that little sitting-room where he had quietly followed her, he was conscious of a change in her manner which forbade these high hopes. The gleam was gone from her eyes; the tremulous eagerness from her mobile and sensitive mouth. She had been thinking in the hours which had passed, and had lost the confidence of that one impetuous moment. Her greeting betrayed embarrassment and she hesitated painfully before she spoke.
“I don’t know what you will think of me,” she ventured at last, motioning to a chair but not sitting herself. “You have had time to think over what I said and probably expect something real, — something you could tell people. But it isn’t like that. It’s a feeling — a belief. I’m so sure —”
“Sure of what, Miss Scott?”
She gave a glance at the door before stepping up nearer. He had not taken the chair she preferred.
“Sure that I have seen the face of the man who murdered her. It was in a dream,” she whisperingly completed, her great eyes misty with awe.
“A dream, Miss Scott?” He tried to hide his disappointment.
“Yes; I knew that it would sound foolish to you; it sounds foolish to me. But listen, sir. Listen to what I have to tell and then you can judge. I was very much agitated yesterday. I had to write a letter at Mr. Brotherson’s dictation — a letter to her. You can understand my horror and the effort I made to hide my emotion. I was quite unnerved. I could not sleep till morning, and then — and then — I saw — I hope I can describe it.”
Grasping at a near-by chair, she leaned on it for support, closing her eyes to all but that inner vision. A breathless moment followed, then she murmured in strained monotonous tones:
“I see it again — just as I saw it in the early morning — but even more plainly, if that is possible. A hall —(I should call it a hall, though I don’t remember seeing any place like it before), with a little staircase at the side, up which there comes a man, who stops just at the top and looks intently my way. There is fierceness in his face — a look which means no good to anybody — and as his hand goes to his overcoat pocket, drawing out something which I cannot describe, but which he handles as if it were a pistol, I feel a horrible fear, and — and —” The child was staggering, and the hand which was free had sought her heart where it lay clenched, the knuckles showing white in the dim light.
Mr. Challoner watched her with dilated eyes, the spell under which she spoke falling in some degree upon him. Had she finished? Was this all? No; she is speaking again, but very low, almost in a whisper.
“There is music — a crash — but I plainly see his other hand approach the object he is holding. He takes something from the end — the object is pointed my way — I am looking into — into — what? I do not know. I cannot even see him now. The space where he stood is empty. Everything fades, and I wake with a loud cry in my ears and a sense of death here.” She had lifted her hand and struck at her heart, opening her eyes as she did so. “Yet it was not I who had been shot,” she added softly.
Mr. Challoner shuddered. This was like the reopening of his daughter’s grave. But he had entered upon the scene with a full appreciation of the ordeal awaiting him and he did not lose his calmness, or the control of his judgment.
“Be seated, Miss Scott,” he entreated, taking a chair himself. “You have described the spot and some of the circumstances of my daughter’s death as accurately as if you had been there. But you have doubtless read a full account of those details in the papers; possibly seen pictures which would make the place quite real to you. The mind is a strange storehouse. We do not always know what lies hidden within it.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “But the man! I had never seen the man, or any picture of him, and his face was clearest of all. I should know it if I saw it anywhere. It is imprinted on my memory as plainly as yours. Oh, I hope never to see that man!”
Mr. Challoner sighed; he had really anticipated something from the interview. The disappointment was keen. A moment of expectation; the thrill which comes to us all under the shadow of the supernatural, and then — this! a young and imaginative girl’s dream, convincing to herself but supplying nothing which had not already been supplied both by the facts and his own imagination! A man had stood at the staircase, and this man had raised his arm. She said that she had seen something like a pistol in his hand, but his daughter had not been shot. This he thought it well to point out to her.
Leaning toward her that he might get her full attention, he waited till her eyes met his, then quietly asked:
“Have you ever named this man to yourself?”
She started and dropped her eyes.
“I do not dare to,” said she.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve read in the papers that the man who stood there had the same name as —”
“Tell me, Miss Scott.”
“As Mr. Brotherson’s brother.”
“But you do not think it was his brother?”
“I do not know.”
“You’ve never seen his brother?”
“Never.”
“Nor his picture?
“No, Mr. Brotherson has none.”
“Aren’t they friends? Does he never mention Orlando?”
“Very, very rarely. But I’ve no reason to think they are not on good terms. I know they correspond.”
“Miss Scott?”
“Yes, Mr. Challoner.”
“You must not rely too much upon your dream.”
Her eyes flashed to his and then fell again.
“Dreams are not revelations; they are the reproduction of what already lies hidden in the mind. I can prove that your dream is such.”
“How?” She looked startled.
“You speak of seeing something being leveled at you which made you think of a pistol.”
“Yes, I was looking directly into it.”
“But my daughter was not shot. She died from a stab.”
Doris’ lovely face, with its tender lines and girlish curves, took on a strange look of conviction which deepened, rather than melted under his indulgent, but penetrating gaze.
“I know that you think so;— but my dream says no. I saw this object. It was pointed directly towards me — above all, I saw his face. It was the face of one whose finger is on the trigger and who means death; and I believe my dream.”
Well, it was useless to reason further. Gentle in all else, she was immovable so far as this idea was concerned and, seeing this, he let the matter go and prepared to take his leave.
She seemed to be quite ready for this. Anxiety about her patient had regained its place in her mind and her glance sped constantly toward the door. Taking her hand in his, he said some kind words, then crossed to the door and opened it. Instantly her finger flew to her lips and, obedient to its silent injunction, he took up his hat in silence, and was proceeding down the hall, when the bell rang, startling them both and causing him to step quickly back.
“Who is it?” she asked. “Father’s in and visitors seldom come so late.”
“Shall I see?”
She nodded, looking strangely troubled as the door swung open, revealing the tall, strong figure of a man facing them from the porch.
“A stranger,” formed itself upon her lips, and she was moving forward, when the man suddenly stepped into the glare of the light, and she stopped, with a murmur of dismay which pierced Mr. Challoner’s heart and prepared him for the words which now fell shudderingly from her lips:
“It is he! it is he! I said that I should know him wherever I saw him.” Then with a quiet turn towards the intruder, “Oh, why, why, did you come here!”
Do You Know My Brother
Her hands were thrust out to repel, her features were fixed; her beauty something wonderful. Orlando Brotherson, thus met, stared for a moment at the vision before him, then slowly and with effort withdrawing his gaze, he sought the face of Mr. Challoner with the first sign of open disturbance that gentleman had ever seen in him.
“Ah,” said he, “my welcome is readily understood. I see you far from home, sir.” And with an ironical bow he turned again to Doris, who had dropped her hands, but in whose cheeks the pallor still lingered in a way to check the easy flow of words with which he might have sought to carry off the situation. “Am I in Oswald Brotherson’s house?” he asked. “I was directed here. But possibly there may be some mistake.”
“It is here he lives,” said she; moving back automatically till she stood again by the threshold of the small room in which she had received Mr. Challoner. “Do you wish to see him to-night? If so, I fear it is impossible. He has been very ill and is not allowed to receive visits from strangers.”
“I am not a stranger,” announced the newcomer, with a smile few could see unmoved, it offered such a contrast to his stern and dominating figure. “I thought I heard some words of recognition which would prove your knowledge of that fact.”
She did not answer. Her lips had parted, but her thought or at least the expression of her thought hung suspended in the terror of this meeting for which she was not at all prepared. He seemed to note this terror, whether or not he understood its cause, and smiled again, as he added:
“Mr. Brotherson must have spoken of his brother Orlando. I am he, Miss Scott. Will you let me come in now?”
Her eyes sought those of Mr. Challoner, who quietly nodded. Immediately she stepped from before the door which her figure had guarded and, motioning him to enter, she begged Mr. Challoner, with an imploring look, to sustain her in the interview she saw before her. He had no desire for this encounter, especially as Mr. Brotherson’s glance in his direction had been anything but conciliatory. He was quite convinced that nothing was to be gained by it, but he could not resist her appeal, and followed them into the little room whose limited dimensions made the tall Orlando look bigger and stronger and more lordly in his self-confidence than ever.
“I am sorry it is so late,” she began, contemplating his intrusive figure with forced composure. “We have to be very quiet in the evenings so as not to disturb your brother’s first sleep which is of great importance to him.”
“Then I’m not to see him to-night?”
“I pray you to wait. He’s — he’s been a very sick man.”
“Dangerously so?”
“Yes.”
Orlando continued to regard her with a peculiar awakening gaze, showing, Mr. Challoner thought, more interest in her than in his brother, and when he spoke it was mechanically and as if in sole obedience to the proprieties of the occasion.
“I did not know he was ill till very lately. His last letter was a cheerful one, and I supposed that all was right till chance revealed the truth. I came on at once. I was intending to come anyway. I have business here, as you probably know, Miss Scott.”
She shook her head. “I know very little about business,” said she.
“My brother has not told you why he expected me?”
“He has not even told me that he expected you.”
“No?” The word was highly expressive; there was surprise in it and a touch of wonder, but more than all, satisfaction. “Oswald was always close-mouthed,” he declared. “It’s a good fault; I’m obliged to the boy.”
These last words were uttered with a lightness which imposed upon his two highly agitated hearers, causing Mr. Challoner to frown and Doris to shrink back in indignation at the man who could indulge in a sportive suggestion in presence of such fears, if not of such memories, as the situation evoked. But to one who knew the strong and self-contained man — to Sweetwater possibly, had he been present, — there was in this very attempt — in his quiet manner and in the strange and fitful flash of his ordinarily quick eye, that which showed he was labouring — and had been labouring almost from his first entrance, under an excitement of thought and feeling which in one of his powerfully organised nature must end and that soon in an outburst of mysterious passion which would carry everything before it. But he did not mean that it should happen here. He was too accustomed to self-command to forget himself in this presence. He would hold these rampant dogs in leash till the hour of solitude; then — a glittering smile twisted his lips as he continued to gaze, first at the girl who had just entered his life, and then at the man he had every reason to distrust, and with that firm restraint upon himself still in full force, remarked, with a courteous inclination:
“The hour is late for further conversation. I have a room at the hotel and will return to it at once. In the morning I hope to see my brother.”
He was going, Doris not knowing what to say, Mr. Challoner not desirous of detaining him, when there came the sound of a little tinkle from the other side of the hall, blanching the young girl’s cheeks and causing Orlando Brotherson’s brows to rise in peculiar satisfaction.
“My brother?” he asked.
“Yes,” came in faltering reply. “He has heard our voices; I must go to him.”
“Say that Orlando wishes him a good night,” smiled her heart’s enemy, with a bow of infinite grace.
She shuddered, and was hastening from the room when her glance fell on Mr. Challoner. He was pale and looked greatly disturbed. The prospect of being left alone with a man whom she had herself denounced to him as his daughter’s murderer, might prove a tax to his strength to which she had no right to subject him. Pausing with an appealing air, she made him a slight gesture which he at once understood.
“I will accompany you into the hall,” said he. “Then if anything is wrong, you have but to speak my name.”
But Orlando Brotherson, displeased by this move, took a step which brought him between the two.
“You can hear her from here if she chooses to speak. There’s a point to be settled between us before either of us leaves this house, and this opportunity is as good as another. Go to my brother, Miss Scott; we will await your return.”
A flash from the proud banker’s eye; but no demur, rather a gesture of consent. Doris, with a look of deep anxiety, sped away, and the two men stood face to face.
It was one of those moments which men recognise as memorable. What had the one to say or the other to hear, worthy of this preamble and the more than doubtful relation in which they stood each to each? Mr. Challoner had more time than he expected in which to wonder and gird himself for whatever suffering or shock awaited him. For, Orlando Brotherson, unlike his usual self, kept him waiting while he collected his own wits, which, strange to say, seemed to have vanished with the girl.
But the question finally came.
“Mr. Challoner, do you know my brother?”
“I have never seen him.”
“Do you know him? Does he know you?”
“Not at all. We are strangers.”
It was said honestly. They did not know each other. Mr. Challoner was quite correct in his statement.
But the other had his doubts. Why shouldn’t he have? The coincidence of finding this mourner if not avenger of Edith Challoner, in his own direct radius again, at a spot so distant, so obscure and so disconnected with any apparent business reason, was certainly startling enough unless the tie could be found in his brother’s name and close relationship to himself.
He, therefore, allowed himself to press the question:
“Men sometimes correspond who do not know each other. You knew that a Brotherson lived here?”
“Yes.”
“And hoped to learn something about me
“No; my interest was solely with your brother.”
“With my brother? With Oswald? What interest can you have in him apart from me? Oswald is —”
Suddenly a thought name — an unimaginable one; one with power to blanch even his hardy cheek and shake a soul unassailable by all small emotions.
“Oswald Brotherson!” he repeated; adding in unintelligible tones to himself —“O. B. The same initials! They are following up these initials. Poor Oswald.” Then aloud: “It hardly becomes me, perhaps, to question your motives in this attempt at making my brother’s acquaintance. I think I can guess them; but your labour will be wasted. Oswald’s interests do not extend beyond this town; they hardly extend to me. We are strangers, almost. You will learn nothing from him on the subject which naturally engrosses you.”
Mr. Challoner simply bowed. “I do not feel called upon,” said he, “to explain my reasons for wishing to know your brother. I will simply satisfy you upon a point which may well rouse your curiosity. You remember that — that my daughter’s last act was the writing of a letter to a little protegee of hers. Miss Scott was that protegee. In seeking her, I came upon him. Do you require me to say more on this subject? Wait till I have seen Mr. Oswald Brotherson and then perhaps I can do so.”
Receiving no answer to this, Mr. Challoner turned again to the man who was the object of his deepest suspicions, to find him still in the daze of that unimaginable thought, battling with it, scoffing at it, succumbing to it and all without a word. Mr. Challoner was without clew to this struggle, but the might of it and the mystery of it, drove him in extreme agitation from the room. Though proof was lacking, though proof might never come, nothing could ever alter his belief from this moment on that Doris was right in her estimate of this man’s guilt, however unsubstantial her reasoning might appear.
How far he might have been carried by this new conviction; whether he would have left the house without seeing Doris again or exchanging another word with the man whose very presence stifled him, he had no opportunity to show, for before he had taken another step, he encountered the hurrying figure of Doris, who was returning to her guests with an air of marked relief.
“He does not know that you are here,” she whispered to Mr. Challoner, as she passed him. Then, as she again confronted Orlando who hastened to dismiss his trouble at her approach, she said quite gaily, “Mr. Brotherson heard your voice, and is glad to know that you’re here. He bade me give you this key and say that you would have found things in better shape if he had been in condition to superintend the removal of the boxes to the place he had prepared for you before he became ill. I was the one to do that,” she added, controlling her aversion with manifest effort. “When Mr. Brotherson came to himself he asked if I had heard about any large boxes having arrived at the station shipped to his name. I said that several notices of such had come to the house. At which he requested me to see that they were carried at once to the strange looking shed he had had put up for him in the woods. I thought that they were for him, and I saw to the thing myself. Two or three others have come since and been taken to the same place. I think you will find nothing broken or disturbed; Mr. Brotherson’s wishes are usually respected.”
“That is fortunate for me,” was the courteous reply.
But Orlando Brotherson was not himself, not at all himself as he bowed a formal adieu and past the drawn-up sentinel-like figure of Mr. Challoner, without a motion on his part or on the part of that gentleman to lighten an exit which had something in it of doom and dread presage.
Chaos
It is not difficult to understand Mr. Challoner’s feelings or even those of Doris at the moment of Mr. Brotherson’s departure. But why this change in Brotherson himself? Why this sense of something new and terrible rising between him and the suddenly beclouded future? Let us follow him to his lonely hotel-room and see if we can solve the puzzle.
But first, does he understand his own trouble? He does not seem to. For when, his hat thrown aside, he stops, erect and frowning under the flaring gas-jet he had no recollection of lighting, his first act was to lift his hand to his head in a gesture of surprising helplessness for him, while snatches of broken sentences fell from his lips among which could be heard:
“What has come to me? Undone in an hour! Doubly undone! First by a face and then by this thought which surely the devils have whispered to me. Mr. Challoner and Oswald! What is the link between them? Great God! what is the link? Not myself? Who then or what?”
Flinging himself into a chair, he buried his face in his hands. There were two demons to fight — the first in the guise of an angel. Doris! Unknown yesterday, unknown an hour ago; but now! Had there ever been a day — an hour — when she had not been as the very throb of his heart, the light of his eyes, and the crown of all imaginable blisses?
He was startled at his own emotion as he contemplated her image in his fancy and listened for the lost echo of the few words she had spoken — words so full of music when they referred to his brother, so hard and cold when she simply addressed himself.
This was no passing admiration of youth for a captivating woman. This was not even the love he had given to Edith Challoner. This was something springing full-born out of nothing! a force which, for the first time in his life, made him complaisant to the natural weaknesses of man! a dream and yet a reality strong enough to blot out the past, remake the present, change the aspect of all his hopes, and outline a new fate. He did not know himself. There was nothing in his whole history to give him an understanding of such feelings as these.
Can a man be seized as it were by the hair, and swung up on the slopes of paradise or down the steeps of hell — without a forewarning, without the chance even to say whether he wished such a cataclysm in his life or no?
He, Orlando Brotherson, had never thought much of love. Science had been his mistress; ambition his lode-star. Such feeling as he had acknowledged to had been for men — struggling men, men who were down-trodden and gasping in the narrow bounds of poverty and helplessness. Miss Challoner had roused — well, his pride. He could see that now. The might of this new emotion made plain many things he had passed by as useless, puerile, unworthy of a man of mental calibre and might. He had never loved Edith Challoner at any moment of their acquaintanceship, though he had been sincere in thinking that he did. Doris’ beauty, the hour he had just passed with her, had undeceived him.
Did he hail the experience? It was not likely to bring him joy. This young girl whose image floated in light before his eyes, would never love him. She loved his brother. He had heard their names mentioned together before he had been in town an hour. Oswald, the cleverest man, Doris, the most beautiful girl in Western Pennsylvania.
He had accepted the gossip then; he had not seen her and it all seemed very natural;— hardly worth a moment’s thought. But now!
And here, the other Demon sprang erect and grappled with him before the first one had let go his hold. Oswald and Challoner! The secret, unknown something which had softened that hard man’s eye when his brother’s name was mentioned! He had noted it and realised the mystery; a mystery before which sleep and rest must fly; a mystery to which he must now give his thought, whatever the cost, whatever the loss to those heavenly dreams the magic of which was so new it seemed to envelope him in the balm of Paradise. Away, then, image of light! Let the faculties thou hast dazed, act again. There is more than Fate’s caprice in Challoner’s interest in a man he never saw. Ghosts of old memories rise and demand a hearing. Facts, trivial and commonplace enough to have been lost in oblivion with the day which gave them birth, throng again from the past, proving that nought dies without a possibility of resurrection. Their power over this brooding man is shown by the force with which his fingers crush against his bowed forehead. Oswald and Challoner! Had he found the connecting link? Had it been — could it have been Edith? The preposterous is sometimes true; could it be true in this case?
He recalled the letters read to him as hers in that room of his in Brooklyn. He had hardly noted them then, he was so sure of their being forgeries, gotten up by the police to mislead him. Could they have been real, the effusions of her mind, the breathings of her heart, directed to an actual O. B., and that O. B., his brother? They had not been meant for him. He had read enough of the mawkish lines to be sure of that. None of the allusions fitted in with the facts of their mutual intercourse. But they might with those of another man; they might with the possible acts and affections of Oswald whose temperament was wholly different from his and who might have loved her, should it ever be shown that they had met and known each other. And this was not an impossibility. Oswald had been east, Oswald had even been in the Berkshires before himself. Oswald — Why it was Oswald who had suggested that he should go there — go where she still was. Why this second coincidence, if there were no tie — if the Challoners and Oswald were as far apart as they seemed and as conventionalities would naturally place them. Oswald was a sentimentalist, but very reserved about his sentimentalities. If these suppositions were true, he had had a sentimentalist’s motive for what he did. As Orlando realised this, he rose from his seat, aghast at the possibilities confronting him from this line of thought. Should he contemplate them? Risk his reason by dwelling on a supposition which might have no foundation in fact? No. His brain was too full — his purposes too important for any unnecessary strain to be put upon his faculties. No thinking! investigation first. Mr. Challoner should be able to settle this question. He would see him. Even at this late hour he ought to be able to find him in one of the rooms below; and, by the force of an irresistible demand, learn in a moment whether he had to do with a mere chimera of his own overwrought fancy, or with a fact which would call into play all the resources of an hitherto unconquered and undaunted nature.
There was a wood-fire burning in the sitting-room that night, and around it was grouped a number of men with their papers and pipes. Mr. Brotherson, entering, naturally looked that way for the man he was in search of, and was disappointed not to find him there; but on casting his glances elsewhere, he was relieved to see him standing in one of the windows overlooking the street. His back was to the room and he seemed to be lost in a fit of abstraction.
As Orlando crossed to him, he had time to observe how much whiter was this man’s head than in the last interview he had held with him in the coroner’s office in New York. But this evidence of grief in one with whom he had little, if anything, in common, neither touched his feelings nor deterred his step. The awakening of his heart to new and profound emotions had not softened him towards the sufferings of others if those others stood without the pale he had previously raised as the legitimate boundary of a just man’s sympathies.
He was, as I have said, an extraordinary specimen of manly vigour in body and in mind, and his presence in any company always attracted attention and roused, if it never satisfied, curiosity. Conversation accordingly ceased as he strode up to Mr. Challoner’s side, so that his words were quite audible as he addressed that gentleman with a somewhat curt:
“You see me again, Mr. Challoner. May I beg of you a few minutes’ further conversation? I will not detain you long.”
The grey head turned, and the many eyes watching showed surprise at the expression of dislike and repulsion with which this New York gentleman met the request thus emphatically urged. But his answer was courteous enough. If Mr. Brotherson knew a place where they would be left undisturbed, he would listen to him if he would be very brief.
For reply, the other pointed to a small room quite unoccupied which opened out of the one in which they then stood. Mr. Challoner bowed and in an other moment the door dosed upon them, to the infinite disappointment of the men about the hearth.
“What do you wish to ask?” was Mr. Challoner’s immediate inquiry.
“This; I make no apologies and expect in answer nothing more than an unequivocal yes or no. You tell me that you have never met my brother. Can that be said of the other members of your family — of your deceased daughter, in fact?”
“No.”
“She was acquainted with Oswald Brotherson?”
“She was.”
“Without your knowledge?”
“Entirely so.”
“Corresponded with him?”
“Not exactly.”
“How, not exactly?”
“He wrote to her — occasionally. She wrote to him frequently — but she never sent her letters.”
“Ah!”
The exclamation was sharp, short and conveyed little. Yet with its escape, the whole scaffolding of this man’s hold upon life and his own fate went down in indistinguishable chaos. Mr. Challoner realised a sense of havoc, though the eyes bent upon his countenance had not wavered, nor the stalwart figure moved.
“I have read some of those letters,” the inventor finally acknowledged. “The police took great pains to place them under my eye, supposing them to have been meant for me because of the initials written on the wrapper. But they were meant for Oswald. You believe that now?”
“I know it.”
“And that is why I found you in the same house with him.”
“It is. Providence has robbed me of my daughter; if this brother of yours should prove to be the man I am led to expect, I shall ask him to take that place in my heart and life which was once hers.”
A quick recoil, a smothered exclamation on the part of the man he addressed. A barb had been hidden in this simple statement which had reached some deeply-hidden but vulnerable spot in Brotherson’s breast, which had never been pierced before. His eye which alone seemed alive, still rested piercingly upon that of Mr. Challoner, but its light was fast fading, and speedily became lost in a dimness in which the other seemed to see extinguished the last upflaring embers of those inner fires which feed the aspiring soul. It was a sight no man could see unmoved. Mr. Challoner turned sharply away, in dread of the abyss which the next word he uttered might open between them.
But Orlando Brotherson possessed resources of strength of which, possibly, he was not aware himself. When Mr. Challoner, still more affected by the silence than by the dread I have mentioned, turned to confront him again, it was to find his features composed and his glance clear. He had conquered all outward manifestation of the mysterious emotion which for an instant had laid his proud spirit low.
“You are considerate of my brother,” were the words with which he re-opened this painful conversation. “You will not find your confidence misplaced. Oswald is a straightforward fellow, of few faults.”
“I believe it. No man can be so universally beloved without some very substantial claims to regard. I am glad to see that your opinion, though given somewhat coldly, coincides with that of his friends.”
“I am not given to exaggeration,” was the even reply.
The flush which had come into Mr. Challoner’s cheek under the effort he had made to sustain with unflinching heroism this interview with the man he looked upon as his mortal enemy, slowly faded out till he looked the wraith of himself even to the unsympathetic eyes of Orlando Brotherson. A duty lay before him which would tax to its utmost extent his already greatly weakened self-control. Nothing which had yet passed showed that this man realised the fact that Oswald had been kept in ignorance of Miss Challoner’s death. If these brothers were to meet on the morrow, it must be with the full understanding that this especial topic was to be completely avoided. But in what words could he urge such a request upon this man? None suggested themselves, yet he had promised Miss Scott that he would ensure his silence in this regard, and it was with this difficulty and no other he had been struggling when Mr. Brotherson came upon him in the other room.
“You have still something to say,” suggested the latter, as an oppressive silence swallowed up that icy sentence I have already recorded.
“I have,” returned Mr. Challoner, regaining his courage under the exigencies of the moment. “Miss Scott is very anxious to have your promise that you will avoid all disagreeable topics with your brother till the doctor pronounces him strong enough to meet the trouble which awaits him.”
“You mean —”
“He is not as unhappy as we. He knows nothing of the affliction which has befallen him. He was taken ill —” The rest was almost inaudible.
But Orlando Brotherson had no difficulty in understanding him, and for the second time in this extraordinary interview, he gave evidences of agitation and of a mind shaken from its equipoise. But only for an instant. He did not shun the other’s gaze or even maintain more than a momentary silence. Indeed, he found strength to smile, in a curious, sardonic way, as he said:
“Do you think I should be apt to broach this subject with any one, let alone with him, whose connection with it I shall need days to realise? I’m not so given to gossip. Besides, he and I have other topics of interest. I have an invention ready with which I propose to experiment in a place he has already prepared for me. We can talk about that.”
The irony, the hardy self-possession with which this was said struck Mr. Challoner to the heart. Without a word he wheeled about towards the door. Without a word, Brotherson stood, watching him go till he saw his hand fall on the knob when he quietly prevented his exit by saying:
“Unhappy truths cannot be long concealed. How soon does the doctor think my brother can bear these inevitable revelations?”
“He said this morning that if his patient were as well to-morrow as his present condition gives promise of, he might be told in another week.”
Orlando bowed his appreciation of this fact, but added quickly:
“Who is to do the telling?”
“Doris. Nobody else could be trusted with so delicate a task.”
“I wish to be present.”
Mr. Challoner looked up, surprised at the feeling with which this request was charged.
“As his brother — his only remaining relative, I have that right. Do you think that Dor — that Miss Scott, can be trusted not to forestall that moment by any previous hint of what awaits him?”
“If she so promises. But will you exact this from her? It surely cannot be necessary for me to say that your presence will add infinitely to the difficulty of her task.”
“Yet it is a duty I cannot shirk. I will consult the doctor about it. I will make him see that I both understand and shall insist upon my rights in this matter. But you may tell Miss Doris that I will sit out of sight, and that I shall not obtrude myself unless my name is brought up in an undesirable way.”
The hand on the door-knob made a sudden movement.
“Mr. Brotherson, I can bear no more to-night. With your permission, I will leave this question to be settled by others.” And with a repetition of his former bow, the bereaved father withdrew.
Orlando watched him till the door closed, then he too dropped his mask.
But it was on again, when in a little while he passed through the sitting-room on his way upstairs.
No other day in his whole life had been like this to the hardy inventor; for in it both his heart and his conscience had been awakened, and up to this hour he had not really known that he possessed either.
What is he Making
Other boxes addressed to O. Brotherson had been received at the station, and carried to the mysterious shed in the woods; and now, with locked door and lifted top, the elder brother contemplated his stores and prepared himself for work.
He had been allowed a short interview with Oswald, and he had indulged himself in a few words with Doris. But he had left those memories behind with other and more serious matters. Nothing that could unnerve his hand or weaken his insight should enter this spot sacred to his great hope. Here genius reigned. Here he was himself wholly and without flaw;— a Titan with his grasp on a mechanical idea by means of which he would soon rule the world.
Not so happy were the other characters in this drama. Oswald’s thoughts, disturbed for a short time by the somewhat constrained interview he had held with his brother, had flown eastward again, in silent love and longing; while Doris, with a double dread now in her heart, went about her daily tasks, praying for strength to endure the horrors of this week, without betraying the anxieties secretly devouring her. And she was only seventeen and quite alone in her trouble. She must bear it all unassisted and smile, which she did with heavenly sweetness, when the magic threshold was passed and she stood in her invalid’s presence, overshadowed though it ever was by the great Dread.
And Mr. Challoner? Let those endless walks of his through the woods and over the hills tell his story if they can; or his rapidly whitening hair, and lagging step. He had been a strong man before his trouble, and had the stroke which laid him low been limited to one quick, sharp blow he might have risen above it after a while and been ready to encounter life again. But this long drawn out misery was proving too much for him. The sight of Brotherson, though they never really met, acted like acid upon a wound, and it was not till six days had passed and the dreaded Sunday was at hand, that he slept with any sense of rest or went his way about the town without that halting at the corners which betrayed his perpetual apprehension of a most undesirable encounter.
The reason for this change will be apparent in the short conversation he held with a man he had come upon one evening in the small park just beyond the workmen’s dwellings.
“You see I am here,” was the stranger’s low greeting.
“Thank God,” was Mr. Challoner’s reply. “I could not have faced to-morrow alone and I doubt if Miss Scott could have found the requisite courage. Does she know that you are here?”
“I stopped at her door.”
“Was that safe?”
“I think so. Mr. Brotherson — the Brooklyn one,— is up in his shed. He sleeps there now, I am told, and soundly too I’ve no doubt.”
“What is he making?”
“What half the inventors on both sides of the water are engaged upon just now. A monoplane, or a biplane, or some machine for carrying men through the air. I know, for I helped him with it. But you’ll find that if he succeeds in this undertaking, and I believe he will, nothing short of fame awaits him. His invention has startling points. But I’m not going to give them away. I’ll be true enough to him for that. As an inventor he has my sympathy; but — Well, we will see what we shall see, to-morrow. You say that he is bound to be present when Miss Scott relates her tragic story. He won’t be the only unseen listener. I’ve made my own arrangements with Miss Scott. If he feels the need of watching her and his brother Oswald, I feel the need of watching him.”
“You take a burden of intolerable weight from my shoulders. Now I shall feel easier about that interview. But I should like to ask you this: Do you feel justified in this continued surveillance of a man who has so frequently, and with such evident sincerity, declared his innocence?”
“I do that. If he’s as guiltless as he says he is, my watchfulness won’t hurt him. If he’s not, then, Mr. Challoner, I’ve but one duty; to match his strength with my patience. That man is the one great mystery of the day, and mysteries call for solution. At least, that’s the way a detective looks at it.”
“May Heaven help your efforts!”
“I shall need its assistance,” was the dry rejoinder. Sweetwater was by no means blind to the difficulties awaiting him.
Tell Me, Tell it All
The day was a grey one, the first of the kind in weeks. As Doris stepped into the room where Oswald sat, she felt how much a ray of sunshine would have encouraged her and yet how truly these leaden skies and this dismal atmosphere expressed the gloom which soon must fall upon this hopeful, smiling man.
He smiled because any man must smile at the entrance of so lovely a woman, but it was an abstracted smile, and Doris, seeing it, felt her courage falter for a moment, though her steps did not, nor her steady compassionate gaze. Advancing slowly, and not answering because she did not hear some casual remark of his, she took her stand by his side and then slowly and with her eyes on his face, sank down upon her knees, still without speaking, almost without breathing.
His astonishment was evident, for her air was strange and full of presage,— as, indeed, she had meant it to be. But he remained as silent as she, only reached out his emaciated hand and, laying it on her head, smiled again but this time far from abstractedly. Then, as he saw her cheeks pale in terror of the task before her, he ventured to ask gently:
“What is the matter, child? So weary, eh? Nothing worse than that, I hope.”
“Are you quite strong this morning? Strong enough to listen to my troubles; strong enough to bear your own if God sees fit to send them?” came hesitatingly from her lips as she watched the effect of each word, in breathless anxiety.
“Troubles? There can be but one trouble for me,” was his unexpected reply. “That I do not fear — will not fear in my hour of happy recovery. So long as Edith is well — Doris! Doris! You alarm me. Edith is not ill;— not ill?”
The poor child could not answer save with her sympathetic look and halting, tremulous breath; and these signs, he would not, could not read, his own words had made such an echo in his ears.
“Ill! I cannot imagine Edith ill. I always see her in my thoughts, as I saw her on that day of our first meeting; a perfect, animated woman with the joyous look of a glad, harmonious nature. Nothing has ever clouded that vision. If she were ill I would have known it. We are so truly one that — Doris, Doris, you do not speak. You know the depth of my love, the terror of my thoughts. Is Edith ill?”
The eyes gazing wildly into his, slowly left his face and raised themselves aloft, with a sublime look. Would he understand? Yes, he understood, and the cry which rang from his lips stopped for a moment the beating of more than one heart in that little cottage.
“Dead!” he shrieked out, and fell back fainting in his chair, his lips still murmuring in semi-unconsciousness, “Dead! dead!”
Doris sprang to her feet, thinking of nothing but his wavering, slipping life till she saw his breath return, his eyes refill with light. Then the horror of what was yet to come — the answer which must be given to the how she saw trembling on his lips, caused her to sink again upon her knees in an unconscious appeal for strength. If that one sad revelation had been all!
But the rest must be told; his brother exacted it and so did the situation. Further waiting, further hiding of the truth would be insupportable after this. But oh, the bitterness of it! No wonder that she turned away from those frenzied, wildly-demanding eyes.
“Doris?”
She trembled and looked behind her. She had not recognised his voice. Had another entered? Had his brother dared — No, they were alone; seemingly so, that is. She knew,— no one better — that they were not really alone, that witnesses were within hearing, if not within sight.
“Doris,” he urged again, and this time she turned in his direction and gazed, aghast. If the voice were strange, what of the face which now confronted her. The ravages of sickness had been marked, but they were nothing to those made in an instant by a blasting grief. She was startled, although expecting much, and could only press his hands while she waited for the question he was gathering strength to utter. It was simple when it came; just two words:
“How long?”
She answered them as simply.
“Just as long as you have been ill,” said she; then, with no attempt to break the inevitable shock, she went on: Miss Challoner was struck dead and you were taken down with typhoid on the self-same day.”
“Struck dead! Why do you use that word, struck? Struck dead! she, a young woman. Oh, Doris, an accident! My darling has been killed in an accident!
“They do not call it accident. They call it what it never was. What it never was,” she insisted, pressing him back with frightened hands, as he strove to rise. “Miss Challoner was —” How nearly the word shot had left her lips. How fiercely above all else, in that harrowing moment had risen the desire to fling the accusation of that word into the ears of him who listened from his secret hiding-place. But she refrained out of compassion for the man she loved, and declared instead, “Miss Challoner died from a wound; how given, why given, no one knows. I had rather have died myself than have to tell you this. Oh, Mr. Brotherson, speak, sob, do anything but —”
She started back, dropping his hands as she did so. With quick intuition she saw that he must be left to himself if he were to meet this blow without succumbing. The body must have freedom if the spirit would not go mad. Conscious, or perhaps not conscious, of his release from her restraining hand, albeit profiting by it, he staggered to his feet, murmuring that word of doom: “Wound! wound! my darling died of a wound! What kind of a wound?” he suddenly thundered out. “I cannot understand what you mean by wound. Make it clear to me. Make it clear to me at once. If I must bear this grief, let me know its whole depth. Leave nothing to my imagination or I cannot answer for myself. Tell it all, Doris.”
And Doris told him:
“She was on the mezzanine floor of the hotel where she lives. She was seemingly happy and had been writing a letter — a letter to me which they never forwarded. There was no one else by but some strangers — good people whom one must believe. She was crossing the floor when suddenly she threw up her hands and fell. A thin, narrow paper-cutter was in her grasp; and it flew into the lobby. Some say she struck herself with that cutter; for when they picked her up they found a wound in her breast which that cutter might have made.”
“Edith? never!”
The words were chokingly said; he was swaying, almost falling, but he steadied himself.
“Who says that?” he asked.
“It was the coroner’s verdict.”
“And she died that way — died?”
“Immediately.”
“After writing to you?”
“Yes.”
“What was in that letter?”
“Nothing of threat, they say. Only just cheer and expressions of hope. Just like the others, Mr. Brotherson.”
“And they accuse her of taking her own life? Their verdict is a lie. They did not know her.”
Then, after some moments of wild and confused feeling, he declared, with a desperate effort at self-control: “You said that some believe this. Then there must be others who do not. What do they say?”
“Nothing. They simply feel as you do. They see no reason for the act and no evidence of her having meditated it. Her father and her friend insist besides, that she was incapable of such a horror. The mystery of it is killing us all; me above others, for I’ve had to show you a cheerful face, with my brain reeling and my heart like lead in my bosom.”
She held out her hands. She tried to draw his attention to herself; not from any sentiment of egotism, but to break, if she could, the strain of these insupportable horrors where so short a time before Hope sang and Life revelled in re-awakened joys.
Perhaps some faint realisation of this reached him, for presently he caught her by the hands and bowed his head upon her shoulder and finally let her seat him again, before he said:
“Do they know of — of my interest in this?”
“Yes; they know about the two O. B.s.”
“The two —” He was on his feet again, but only for a moment; his weakness was greater than his will power.
“Orlando and Oswald Brotherson,” she explained, in answer to his broken appeal. “Your brother wrote letters to her as well as you, and signed them just as you did, with his initials only. These letters were found in her desk, and he was supposed, for a time, to have been the author of all that were so signed. But they found out the difference after awhile. Yours were easily recognised after they learned there was another O. B. who loved her.”
The words were plain enough, but the stricken listener did not take them in. They carried no meaning to him. How should they? The very idea she sought to impress upon him by this seemingly careless allusion was an incredible one. She found it her dreadful task to tell him the hard, bare truth.
“Your brother,” said she, “was devoted to Miss Challoner, too. He even wanted to marry her. I cannot keep back this fact. It is known everywhere, and by everybody but you.
“Orlando?” His lips took an ironical curve, as he uttered the word. This was a young girl’s imaginative fancy to him. “Why Orlando never knew her, never saw her, never —”
“He met her at Lenox.”
The name produced its effect. He stared, made an effort to think, repeated Lenox over to himself; then suddenly lost his hold upon the idea which that word suggested, struggled again for it, seized it in an instant of madness and shouted out:
“Yes, yes, I remember. I sent him there —” and paused, his mind blank again.
Poor Doris, frightened to her very soul, looked blindly about for help; but she did not quit his side; she did not dare to, for his lips had reopened; the continuity of his thoughts had returned; he was going to speak.
“I sent him there.” The words came in a sort of shout. “I was so hungry to hear of her and I thought he might mention her in his letter. Insane! Insane! He saw her and — What’s that you said about his loving her? He couldn’t have loved her; he’s not of the loving sort. They’ve deceived you with strange tales. They’ve deceived the whole world with fancies and mad dreams. He may have admired her, but loved her,— no! or if he had, he would have respected my claims.”
“He did not know them.”
A laugh; a laugh which paled Doris’ cheek; then his tones grew even again, memory came back and he muttered faintly:
“That is true. I said nothing to him. He had the right to court her — and he did, you say; wrote: to her; imposed himself upon her, drove her mad with importunities she was forced to rebuke; and — and what else? There is something else. Tell me; I will know it all.”
He was standing now, his feebleness all gone, passion in every lineament and his eye alive and feverish, with emotion. “Tell me,” he repeated, with unrestrained vehemence. “Tell me all. Kill me with sorrow but save me from being unjust.”
“He wrote her a letter; it frightened her. He followed it up by a visit —”
Doris paused; the sentence hung suspended. She had heard a step — a hand on the door.
Orlando had entered the room.
Alone
Oswald had heard nothing, seen nothing. But he took note of Doris’ silence, and turning towards her in frenzy saw what had happened, and so was in a measure prepared for the stern, short sentence which now rang through the room:
“Wait, Miss Scott! you tell the story badly. Let him listen to me. From my mouth only shall he hear the stern and seemingly unnatural part I played in this family tragedy.”
The face of Oswald hardened. Those pliant features — beloved for their gracious kindliness — set themselves in lines which altered them almost beyond recognition; but his voice was not without some of its natural sweetness, as, after a long and hollow look at the other’s composed countenance, he abruptly exclaimed:
“Speak! I am bound to listen; you are my brother.”
Orlando turned towards Doris. She was slipping away.
“Don’t go,” said he.
But she was gone.
Slowly he turned back.
Oswald raised his hand and checked the words with which he would have begun his story.
“Never mind the beginnings,” said he. “Doris has told all that. You saw Miss Challoner in Lenox — admired her — offered yourself to her and afterwards wrote her a threatening letter because she rejected you.”
“It is true. Other men have followed just such unworthy impulses — and been ashamed and sorry afterwards. I was sorry and I was ashamed, and as soon as my first anger was over went to tell her so. But she mistook my purpose and —”
“And what?”
Orlando hesitated. Even his iron nature trembled before the misery he saw — a misery he was destined to augment rather than soothe. With pains altogether out of keeping with his character, he sought in the recesses of his darkened mind for words less bitter and less abrupt than those which sprang involuntarily to his lips. But he did not find them. Though he pitied his brother and wished to show that he did, nothing but the stern language suitable to the stern fact he wished to impart, would leave his lips.
“And ended the pitiful struggle of the moment with one quick, unpremeditated blow,” was what he said. “There is no other explanation possible for this act, Oswald. Bitter as it is for me to acknowledge it, I am thus far guilty of this beloved woman’s death. But, as God hears me, from the moment I first saw her, to the moment I saw her last, I did not know, nor did I for a moment dream that she was anything to you or to any other man of my stamp and station. I thought she despised my country birth, my mechanical attempts, my lack of aristocratic pretensions and traditions.”
“Edith?”
“Now that I know she had other reasons for her contempt — that the words she wrote were in rebuke to the brother rather than to the man, I feel my guilt and deplore my anger. I cannot say more. I should but insult your grief by any lengthy expressions of regret and sorrow.”
A groan of intolerable anguish from the sick man’s lips, and then the quick thrust of his re-awakened intelligence rising superior to the overthrow of all his hopes.
“For a woman of Edith’s principle to seek death in a moment of desperation, the provocation must have been very great. Tell me if I’m to hate you through life — yea through all eternity — or if I must seek in some unimaginable failure of my own character or conduct the cause of her intolerable despair.”
“Oswald!” The tone was controlling, and yet that of one strong man to another. “Is it for us to read the heart of any woman, least of all of a woman of her susceptibilities and keen inner life? The wish to end all comes to some natures like a lightning flash from a clear sky. It comes, it goes, often without leaving a sign. But if a weapon chances to be near —(here it was in hand)— then death follows the impulse which, given an instant of thought, would have vanished in a back sweep of other emotions. Chance was the real accessory to this death by suicide. Oswald, let us realise it as such and accept our sorrow as a mutual burden and turn to what remains to us of life and labour. Work is grief’s only consolation. Then let us work.”
But of all this Oswald had caught but the one word.
“Chance?” he repeated. “Orlando, I believe in God.”
“Then seek your comfort there. I find it in harnessing the winds; in forcing the powers of nature to do my bidding.”
The other did not speak, and the silence grew heavy. It was broken, when it was broken, by a cry from Oswald:
“No more,” said he, “no more.” Then, in a yearning accent, “Send Doris to me,”
Orlando started. This name coming so close upon that word comfort produced a strange effect upon him. But another look at Oswald and he was ready to do his bidding. The bitter ordeal was over; let him have his solace if it was in her power to give it to him.
Orlando, upon leaving his brother’s room, did not stop to deliver that brother’s message directly to Doris; he left this for Truda to do, and retired immediately to his hangar in the woods. Locking himself in, he slightly raised the roof and then sat down before the car which was rapidly taking on shape and assuming that individuality and appearance of sentient life which hitherto he had only seen in dreams. But his eye, which had never failed to kindle at this sight before, shone dully in the semi-gloom. The air-car could wait; he would first have his hour in this solitude of his own making. The gaze he dreaded, the words from which he shrank could not penetrate here. He might even shout her name aloud, and only these windowless walls would respond. He was alone with his past, his present and his future.
Alone!
He needed to be. The strongest must pause when the precipice yawns before him. The gulf can be spanned; he feels himself forceful enough for that; but his eyes must take their measurement of it first; he must know its depths and possible dangers. Only a fool would ignore these steeps of jagged rock; and he was no fool, only a man to whom the unexpected had happened, a man who had seen his way clear to the horizon and then had come up against this! Love, when he thought such folly dead! Remorse, when Glory called for the quiet mind and heart!
He recognised its mordant fang, and knew that its ravages, though only just begun, would last his lifetime. Nothing could stop them now, nothing, nothing. And he laughed, as the thought went home; laughed at the irony of fate and its inexorableness; laughed at his own defeat and his nearness to a barred Paradise. Oswald loved Edith, loved her yet, with a flame time would take long to quench. Doris loved Oswald and he Doris; and not one of them would ever attain the delights each was so fitted to enjoy. Why shouldn’t he laugh? What is left to man but mockery when all props fall? Disappointment was the universal lot; and it should go merrily with him if he must take his turn at it. But here the strong spirit of the man re-asserted itself; it should be but a turn. A man’s joys are not bounded by his loves or even by the satisfaction of a perfectly untrammelled mind. Performance makes a world of its own for the capable and the strong, and this was still left to him. He, Orlando Brotherson, despair while his great work lay unfinished! That would be to lay stress on the inevitable pains and fears of commonplace humanity. He was not of that ilk. Intellect was his god; ambition his motive power. What would this casual blight upon his supreme contentment be to him, when with the wings of his air-car spread, he should spurn the earth and soar into the heaven of fame simultaneously with his flight into the open.
He could wait for that hour. He had measured the gulf before him and found it passable. Henceforth no looking back.
Rising, he stood for a moment gazing, with an alert eye now, upon such sections of his car as had not yet been fitted into their places; then he bent forward to his work, and soon the lips which had uttered that sardonic laugh a few minutes before, parted in gentler fashion, and song took the place of curses — a ballad of love and fondest truth. But Orlando never knew what he sang. He had the gift and used it.
Would his tones, however, have rung out with quite so mellow a sweetness had he seen the restless figure even then circling his retreat with eyes darting accusation and arms lifted towards him in wild but impotent threat?
Yes, I think they would; for he knew that the man who thus expressed his helplessness along with his convictions, was no nearer the end he had set himself to attain than on the day he first betrayed his suspicions.