Mabinwas taken so thoroughly by surprise, on seeing the wild self-abandonment of her unhappy companion, that for a few minutes she stood staring at the crouching figure on the floor like one only half-awake.
Was this really Mrs. Dale, this haggard, panting creature with the hoarse voice, the twitching hands, the wide eyes full of unspeakable terror. Mabin’s sympathy was ready, but at first she did not dare to offer it. Such terrible anguish, such paralyzing fear, as that from which the miserable woman was suffering, was something surely beyond her poor powers of comfort! And even as the girl advanced timidly a step nearer to her grief-stricken friend, there flashed into her mind the horrible question: What must this secret be which was locked in the widow’s breast, that could throw her into such paroxysms of abject terror? For, not unnaturally, Mabin came to the conclusion that the vision which had alarmed Mrs. Dale was one of the results of the remorse from which she owned that she was suffering.
“Don’t! Don’t sob like that! You will make yourself ill; you will indeed. There is nothing, there is nobody here to frighten you,” said the girl at last, drawing a little closer to the crouching figure, but not yet daring to touch her, or to speak in a tone louder than a whisper.
At the first sound of her voice, Mrs. Dale had started, and raised her head quickly, turning to the girl’s view a face so much altered, so drawn, so old-looking, that she hardly recognized the features of the lovely widow. Then, when the voice ceased, she glanced round the room again, with the same hunted, anxious look as before.
“Nothing—nobody to frighten me!” she repeated in a shaking voice. “No, of course not, of course not. How silly I have been! I am afraid I frightened you, dear,—with my dreams, my silly fancies!”
She struggled, as if worn out and exhausted by her emotion, to gain her feet. Timidly, gently, Mabin helped her to rise.
“I’m very glad I was here,” answered Mabin, in kindly tones that sent a shiver of grateful recognition through her agitated companion. “Do you feel better now?”
“Yes, oh, yes, I am all right. I am not ill. I am so much ashamed of myself for disturbing you. I don’t know how to apologize,” answered Mrs. Dale, trying bravely to speak in her usual tone, but glancing at the door and then back to the windows as she uttered the words: “It must have been a dream, of course, that frightened me.”
And then, quite suddenly, she broke down again, and slipping from the supporting arm of her young companion, she threw herself into the wicker arm-chair, and burst into a passion of tears. Uncertain what to do, Mabin, in her sympathy and kindness, did exactly the right thing. She drew another chair besides the wicker one, sat down in it, and putting her right arm round Mrs. Dale’s shoulder, and holding the poor lady’s trembling fingers in her own, remained in perfect silence until the first ebullition of violent grief had passed away.
“I shall never forget your kindness, child, never,” said Mrs. Dale, when, as suddenly as it had begun, her passion of tears ended. “You have saved me from going mad—yes, mad. I—I must leave you now, or you won’t get any rest.”
She rose as she spoke; but Mabin saw that the panic of terror which had been upon her at her entrance was regaining its hold upon her as she approached the door. With her fingers on the handle she stopped, and seemed once more to grow rigid with fear.
Mabin was by her side in an instant.
“Stay here,” she said. “You will have the dream again perhaps, if you go away by yourself.”
At these words a shiver ran through Mrs. Dale, and she faltered.
“It must have been that gloomy room!” she said at last in a whisper. “And the effect of her visit! But it will kill me if it comes again!” Suddenly she turned to Mabin. “May I lie on the sofa until the morning?” she asked piteously. “I won’t disturb you. I feel as if I should be safe from—it—in here with you?”
The wistful pleading in her eyes brought the tears to Mabin’s.
“Of course you must stay,” she cried heartily. “And I do hope you will get to sleep, and not have any more dreams.”
Very quietly Mrs. Dale lay down on the couch between the windows, and drawing the sofa blanket over her, and refusing any other covering, she closed her eyes. Mabin knew that this apparent tranquillity was assumed only, and she placed herself on the bed in such a position that she could watch her friend, while appearing to be herself asleep.
Before many minutes had passed, she saw, from between half-closed eyelashes, that Mrs. Dale was sitting up, and bending her head in a listening attitude. And presently the slender figure with its white dressing-gown slipped softly off the sofa, and hurried on tiptoe across the floor to the door. There it knelt down and listened again. And after a few minutes Mrs. Dale turned the key in the lock and crept back, not to the couch, but to the arm-chair.
Mabin shut her eyes and tried to disentangle the knot of strange ideas that filled her brain:
What was the nature of the secret which weighed on the conscience of Mrs. Dale? Why was she kept in luxury by the very woman who tried to make her life unbearable, to cut her off from every human friend? What was the strange tie between the hard, elderly woman and the impulsive, volatile young one? What was the vision which had caused her so much distress? And, above all, why, if it was only a vision, did she try to keep it away by locking the door?
And why—and why—? More questions surged up into her tired brain; but Mabin forgot them as they rose. She fell asleep.
When she awoke in the morning it was to find that some one was knocking at the door, and then she heard the housemaid’s voice announcing that it was eight o’clock. She sprang up, and looked toward the sofa, but there was no one but herself in the room.
Surely, she thought, the strange visit of the night must have been a dream? The rug on the sofa was neatly folded, just as it had been when she came up to bed last night. Not a sign was to be seen of any intrusion during the night.
Even when she went downstairs and met Mrs. Dale in the hall, there was little to tell of the experience of the hours of darkness. Perhaps the pretty widow looked a little paler than usual, but in every other respect she was the same airy, impulsive creature, now smiling, now looking sad, as she had been before the dreadful visit of the lady whom irreverent Mabin called “the cat.”
It was not indeed until breakfast was over and they had gone out into the garden to cut some flowers while the dew was on them, that either of the ladies made any reference to the events of the night.
Mrs. Dale, with one daintily shod foot in a flower-bed, was stretching out her hands toward a bush of sweet-peas, when, without turning her head, she said:
“I am in great trouble about you, Mabin.”
“Are you? Why, Mrs. Dale?”
“I don’t quite know what to do with you. If I send you to Mrs. Bonnington, I shall have to tell some shocking tarradiddle about the drains having come up, or the roof having given way, and she will be sure to find me out and to pry, and to give both of us what the old women call ‘much unpleasantness.’ And if I send you on to Geneva, I don’t know whether they will be glad to see you when you arrive.”
“And I’m sure they won’t,” said Mabin heartily. “And there is one other objection to sending me anywhere, and that is that I won’t go.”
Mrs. Dale dropped her sweet-peas, and turned round. Her eyes were full of sudden tears.
“Nonsense, child!” she said sharply, but in a querulous tone which betrayed her emotion, “nonsense! It was decided yesterday afternoon that you were to go. You know it was.”
“You decided that I was to go.Ididn’t. And—” instinctively she dropped her voice—“And something that happened last night—in the night, mademedecide not to go. There!”
“But, my dear——”
“No, Mrs. Dale, I’m not to be ‘got round.’ You’ve chosen to take me upon your shoulders, so now you must just keep me. Ha, ha! You didn’t know I had so much determination, did you?”
But Mrs. Dale could scarcely speak. Now for the first time that morning Mabin realized that the scene of the night had really taken place, for the emotion aroused by this little bit of talk had brought back into Mrs. Dale’s blue eyes a faint reproduction of the wild terror she had shown when she came to the girl’s room. When she had recovered her voice, the lady in black, pale, hoarse, shaken with her agitation, stammered out these words:
“My dear girl, it is beautiful of you to offer to stay. But I cannot let you. You ought never to have come. I was mad, wicked to let you come; and my madness and my wickedness I must bear alone.”
How strange these words seemed in the broad daylight, Mabin thought! By the weak glimmer of the night-light Mrs. Dale’s wild looks and words had seemed fantastic, weird. But the broad sunlight seemed to give the nameless horror which hung about the poor little lady in black a reality as vivid as it was painful. But with this feeling there came also into the heart of the young girl a great tenderness toward the suffering woman, who was haunted by the shadow of her own past. So she smiled, and with a pretty, half-shy look in her eyes, said:
“You told me I saved you from going mad. So I mean to stay. And I mean to sleep in the same room with you, so that you shall not be frightened any more.”
Mrs. Dale shook her head.
“I can’t let you do that,” said she. “I don’t sleep very well, and sometimes I start up and cry out. I should frighten you.”
“Then we will exchange rooms,” said Mabin.
By the look of joy and relief which flashed over Mrs. Dale’s face at this suggestion, Mabin saw that she had conquered.
“But—won’t you be afraid?” asked the widow in a troubled voice.
“What! Of a ghost, a vision? Or of having bad dreams? No, not a bit.”
Mrs. Dale glanced gratefully at the young face, with its look of robust Philistine scorn of phantoms.
“It is a temptation,” she murmured. “For, after all, I know, Iknowthat it was only a dream, a horrible dream. And there is no fear that the dream will come toyou.”
“And if it did,” retorted Mabin stoutly, “it wouldn’t frighten me. I’m too ‘stodgy;’ I have no imagination.”
Mrs. Dale smiled sadly.
“You are right,” she said. “If you did have the same dream, it would have no terrors for you. Your conscience is clear.”
“And my digestion good,” added Mabin lightly, as she picked up the fallen flowers and put them in her basket.
There was no doubt that her refusal to go had taken a load of melancholy from the shoulders of her hostess, who sent the young girl out for a walk as soon as the gathering of the flowers was over, and charged her not to go far enough to tire her still weak ankle.
Mabin, with a book and a sunshade, sauntered slowly down the hill to the nearest gap in the cliff, and went down the steep descent to the sands. This was no paradise of nursemaids and babies, but a solitary nook beloved by quiet maiden ladies and sentimental couples. With rash disregard of the danger of sitting under a chalk cliff, Mabin found a seat on a rock worn smooth by the sea, opened her book and began—notto read.
The circumstances to which she found herself were far too interesting for her to be able to give herself up to the milder excitements of fiction. She sat with her open book on her lap and her eyes staring out at the sea, which was vividly blue in the strong sunshine, when she became suddenly conscious of a footstep she knew in her immediate neighborhood.
Although she affected to be surprised when Rudolph appeared before her, she had known that he was approaching, and her heart began to beat very fast. He looked down at her between the spikes of her sunshade, pretending to be afraid to speak to her.
“Good-morning,” said she at last.
“I was wondering whether I dared say the same thing!”
“Dared?”
“Yes. After your treatment of me last night, I felt nervous.”
“My treatment of you! What treatment?”
“Why were you so unkind? Or mustn’t I ask why?”
“You may ask, of course. But I can’t give you any answer, because I didn’t know that I was unkind.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Well, if you won’t believe it, I have nothing to say.”
Rudolph was silent a few minutes. Then with a burst of explosive energy, he made up his mind.
“No!” he cried so loudly that Mabin started, and threw himself down on the sand beside her, “I will not be daunted. I will encase myself in double snub-proof armor plates, and I will try to teach her that to be dignified it is not necessary to be unkind—and—yes, I will say it—absolutely rude.”
Mabin became crimson, and the tears started to her eyes. She had not meant to be rude, but undoubtedly her behavior had laid her open to this accusation.
“I am stupid, clumsy; I am rude without meaning it,” she said in a tone of such excessive humility and penitence that it was impossible to doubt her sincerity. “I am very sorry. But you shouldn’t take any notice of what I do or say. Nobody does at home. When I am more awkward and tiresome than usual, they always say: ‘Oh, it’s only Mabin!’ And then nobody minds.”
“Ah, well, I can’t quite feel like that—that it’s only Mabin. When one likes a person, and wants to be good friends, very good friends with that person, just as one used to be when that person and one’s self were little things in short frocks and knickerbockers, it is very disheartening to find that person so determined to be—er—to be—er—so reserved that when one sits beside that person as I did last night, you know, she will only let one see so much of her right ear as to practically turn her back to one!”
“I didn’t!”
“You did though. And it is what you were doing again just now until the horror of hearing the truth made you turn around to fly at me! You did turn your back upon me last night, Miss Rose, and you hurt my feelings.”
“Indeed, you did not seem to be hurt. You seemed to be enjoying yourself very much!”
“Well, so I was in a way. But I should have enjoyed myself much more if you had been as nice as you were in the garden.”
Mabin heaved a deep sigh.
“It’s no use expecting me to be nice,” she said in a voice of despair, “I can only manage it so very seldom.”
“Well, could you hold out some signal, such as by wearing a particular flower, or color, or some especial knot of ribbon, to let one know when one may speak to you without being snubbed?”
“No, I couldn’t,” retorted Mabin with great fierceness, but with a twinkle of fun in her gray eyes, which gave greater hopes than her words did. “It is of no use for me to promise more than I can perform. You had much better look upon me as a decidedly disagreeable person, with rare moments of proper behavior.”
“Proper behavior, then, means niceness? I’m glad you think it proper to be nice to me!” said Rudolph. “I perceive that I’ve lighted upon one of the ‘rare moments,’ and I’m going to take advantage of it,” he added, as he came a little nearer to her, and looked up in her face with a glance of amusement and admiration which made her blush a little. “I’m going to make you talk to me, and amuse me, as you were told to do last night.”
“No! It wasyouwho were told to amuse me!”
“Was it? Well, we’ll take it in turn then. Do you remember how I taught you cricket?”
“Yes, oh yes.”
“And what a rage you used to be in when you were caught out?”
“Yes,” answered Mabin, “I remember; but I don’t want to talk about cricket. I want to tell you something. Mrs. Dale has a fancy that ‘The Towers’ is haunted.”
And she related the adventure of the previous night, and her intention of changing rooms with her hostess.
Rudolph listened gravely, and there was a pause when she had finished before he made any comment. Then he said abruptly:
“You are not nervous, are you, Mabin? I know you used to have no end of pluck.”
“Well, I haven’t any less than I ever had.”
“Well, if you do change rooms, you have got to be prepared to see the ghost yourself.”
“You make me feel rather—rather creepy! What do you really think I shall see?”
“A face at the window probably. The face of the spy from your house. What else can she have seen?”
Mabin considered a moment.
“I’ll risk it!” she cried at last. “I shan’t go to bed at all. I shall sit up and watch.”
“I wish you would. We should find out something if you had the strength of mind to do that.”
Not without a wild beating of the heart, Mabin undertook the task of holding the strange night-watch, without saying a word to Mrs. Dale of her intention.
“She thinks she only had a dreadful dream, you know,” said Mabin.
“Well,” replied Rudolph, “I want to know what sort of dream you will have.”
He had to admire the courage she showed in undertaking a task which was, as she expressed it, “rather shuddery,” but when he left her at the gate of “The Towers” she was still steadfast in her intention.
It was not until after dinner that evening that Mrs. Dale introduced the young girl to the apartment she was to occupy that night. Mabin was astonished at its dinginess, its gloominess, contrasting so strongly as they did with the fresh prettiness of the room which had been prepared for herself.
It was a large square room, with a mouldy old-fashioned wall-paper, on which unnatural pink roses climbed up a succession of thin hop poles. The pictures were groups of trees, done with the pencil in the woolly early Victorian manner, and stiff bouquets, in water-color, of conventional early Victorian flowers. The bed, which was hung with green curtains, occupied an undue space; and Mabin felt that, in the weird circumstances of her tenancy of the room, she would have died rather than sleep in that funereal erection.
When Mrs. Dale had kissed her and bade her good-night, after receiving Mabin’s assurance that she did not feel in the least nervous, the young girl felt a strong inclination to follow her friend out of the room, and to implore her to find her some other sleeping-place.
By a valiant effort, however, she conquered this weakness, and made a careful survey of her surroundings. In the first place, the windows and their fastenings had to be examined. They were carefully secured, and were both so high above the ground that it would have been impossible for an intruder to reach them without a ladder.
There were three doors; and at first Mabin was inclined to regard this as a disquieting circumstance. But on finding that two of them were unused, locked, and without a key, and that there was a bolt on the door by which she had entered, she began to feel more at ease.
Exchanging her frock for a dressing-gown, and providing herself with a book, she placed herself in an arm-chair which stood near the fireplace, which, although shabby, was sufficiently comfortable, and, putting her candles on a small table beside her, settled herself to read. Her book was a novel of an excellent type, not too clever to be charming, not so commonplace as to be dull. Much to her own surprise, she got interested, and forgot, or almost forgot, the vague fears which kept her in the arm-chair instead of in bed.
She was in the very heart of the book, and her candles had burnt low in their sockets, when a sound, a very slight sound, behind her back, caused the blood almost to freeze in her veins.
It was a soft, stealthy tread.
Looking round, half paralyzed with terror, she saw that the door was ajar, and that creeping softly round toward the inside handle was the long, thin hand of a man.
Inthe ordinary course of things, it would have been natural for Mabin to conclude, on seeing a man’s hand inside her door in the middle of the night, that the intruder was a burglar. But her mind had been rendered more clear, her perceptions more acute, by the stimulating mystery which she had been for the past two days trying to solve.
Instead, therefore, of screaming, or stretching out her hand to the old-fashioned bell-rope which hung by the fireside at a little distance from her right hand, she waited, watched, and listened. Apparently she had unconsciously made some slight noise as she turned in her chair to look behind her, for the intruder, whoever he was, instead of entering, waited and listened also.
There was a pause; and then the hand which had crept so stealthily round the door was slowly and quietly withdrawn. Mabin, fascinated, watched the long, bloodless fingers as they gradually disappeared from her sight; and was sufficiently self-possessed to observe that the hand was that of a gentleman. And upon this discovery there sprang up in her mind a strong curiosity to see the face of the intruder.
Even while she felt the last remains of fear give place to courage and vivid interest, Mabin, with her wits all sharpened with excitement, wondered at the change in herself. She sprang lightly to her feet, and with the intention of taking him by surprise, ran lightly round on the tips of her toes toward the door. But the candles, flickering in the draught caused by her light hanging sleeves, caused the shadows on the dingy rose-covered wall to dance and quiver. The mysterious visitor, as much on the alert as the girl was, closed the door softly between her and himself.
Mabin, however, sprang forward and seized the door-handle. She heard the sound of rapid footsteps on the other side, and for one moment she hesitated to go in pursuit. With the clearness of intellect which belongs to the night, when there are no sounds of busy life, no distractions of bright light and vivid color to divert the attention, she saw both the dangers on the one hand, the attractions on the other, of a deeper dive into the mystery which surrounded her. For a few seconds the impulses struggled against each other, and then curiosity and youthful daring carried the day.
Throwing open the door, which had not been relocked, and in which there was no key, Mabin, considering this circumstance as she went, dashed through in pursuit.
It was indeed a daring thing to do, for she was not even mistress of the topography of the house. The room in which she now found herself she had never been in before, and the only light to guide her footsteps came through the window and was obscured by a yellow-white blind. It was by this light that Mabin knew that the dawn had come, and the knowledge gave her more courage. She could follow the intruder with greater security now that she knew that, if she chased him to the place where he had entered the house, she would see his face in the daylight.
As she entered the room the man was in the act of opening a door on the left which led into the corridor. Mabin saw him for a moment, against the brighter light which came through the windows on the east side of the house; and then this door closed between her and him as the other had done.
By the time she had got into the corridor in her turn, she saw the man disappear down the stairs at the end. She followed still. He reached the hall; he went down the four steps to the drawing-room, through the doorway of which he again passed out of her sight.
In the midst of the excitement which hurried her on to the drawing-room door, the young girl felt a chill in her blood as she remembered Mrs. Dale’s description of the gloom of the deserted apartment. She had described it as “a damp and mouldy mausoleum.” Mabin would have avoided the room if she could. The meeting with her mysterious visitor would be more uncanny there than in the warmer, more habitable parts of the house.
But she went on. Dashing into the room with impetuosity all the greater for her vague fears, Mabin found herself in a very long, wide, low-ceilinged room, the roof of which was supported by two rows of pillars, and the air of which struck a chill into her.
There were three large windows, two on the right hand, and one at the end of the room, in front of her. Above the shutters of those on her right the gray rays of the morning were creeping, making the marble of the heavy old mantelpiece look livid, and showing the stains of damp on the white and gold wall-paper.
This was all that the girl had time to notice when suddenly the shutters of the window at the end of the room were thrown back with a clatter of wood and a clang of iron, and she saw the green of the trees outside, and the man of whom she was in pursuit standing in the opening he had made. And then she saw that the French window was open, and knew that this was the way by which he had entered the house.
The word “Stop!” was on her lips when suddenly he seemed to stagger, and she heard him gasp and struggle for his breath. Surely this was no burglar, this man with the thin white hands, who could not run a distance of a hundred yards without inconvenience.
She tumbled over a footstool, and as she drew herself up again, she saw that she was alone in the room.
Running lightly and quickly to the window she looked out into the garden. The fresh morning breeze blew the open window against the wooden shutter with a loud crash. At the same moment she caught sight of the figure of which she had been in pursuit so long, under the trees to the right. At the noise of the crashing window the man turned quickly round, and in the pale light of the dawn Mabin saw his face distinctly.
In a moment the last trace of fear of him which had lingered in her heart disappeared. Almost as pale as a mask of the dead, the face she saw was that of a man on whom every form of suffering seemed to have left its mark. The hollow eyes were full of unspeakable sadness; the deep lines about the mouth were those of illness or sorrow rather than of age; while even the thick sprinkling of gray hairs among the brown which Mabin detected in the searching cold light of the morning told the same tale of weight of grief rather than of years.
All these things the girl’s quick young eyes saw in one brief look. Then, instinctively, she took a step forward into the garden, with some vague intention of asking him a question. But the moment she moved he turned; and disappearing from her sight behind the trees and shrubs which grew between the lawn and the spot where she stood, left her in a state of surprise and bewilderment from which it took her some minutes to recover.
It was the physical fact that she began to shiver violently in the keen morning air which at last roused her from the dazed condition into which the chase and its end had thrown her. She got into the house again, shut the window, fastened the shutter carefully, wondering by what magical means it had been opened from the outside, and stumbled along the musty drawing-room in the half-light until she reached the door.
Opening it quickly, she caught sight of Annie, the housemaid, rapidly turning the corner of the staircase above. With suspicion in her mind, she called the girl; but Annie disappeared into the upper regions of the house, paying no attention to her.
Uneasy, interested, puzzled, Mabin went slowly upstairs, started violently when the tall clock on the stairs struck four close to her ear, and stood before the open door of the room through which the intruder had passed on his way to and from hers.
Who was this man with the grave, sad, handsome face, who got into the house by night, and stole his way to the very bed-chamber of Mrs. Dale? In what relation did he stand to the lovely widow?
No honest man, whether relation, friend, or lover, would pay his mysterious visits like these! And yet there was something in his face so attractive, so interesting, that Mabin would fain have believed that there was some reason, some excuse, for his strange conduct. And the one excuse which she unwillingly had to find was this: the man must be mad.
This began to show a way out of the mystery; but it was by no means cleared up. Was he the man who had taken her father’s house as “Mr. Banks”? This seemed probable, and at any rate this could be easily ascertained. If so, and if “Mr. Banks” was a madman, why was he unattended by any keeper?
And what, “Mr. Banks” or no “Mr. Banks,” was the meaning of these stealthy nocturnal visits? That they were so unexpected, so unwelcome, as to be inconceivable on the part of Mrs. Dale, had been abundantly proved by the fact that she had believed the visitor to be a vision of her imagination only, and not a human being. For Mabin could not doubt that the appearance which Mrs. Dale had taken for a horrible dream had been in reality the living man she had just seen.
Who then could he be, and what could he want? Was the refined, sensitive face, with its sad eyes and worn mouth, the mask and not the index of the man?
The more Mabin thought, the clearer it seemed to grow to her that the man was either a relation or a lover, who had gone out of his mind, and whose insanity had taken this strange form of nocturnal persecution.
But then, again, if he had been insane, would not Mrs. Dale have heard of it? And was it not rather the act of a sane man than of a madman to assume a name not his own in order to hide his identity from the woman he meant to harass? Again, was the intruder the tenant of “Stone House” at all?
Even of this she was not sure; and Mabin decided that this question must be answered definitely before she could think herself on the road to the discovery of the mystery.
In the mean time, the door of the room through which she had passed in pursuit of the intruder being still open, she entered, and instinctively looked round, to see if he had left any trace of his presence.
She drew up the blind and let the daylight stream into the corners.
The room was like the rest of the house, shabby and furnished with little taste. It had perhaps been a study or a school-room, for in front of the one window there was a large leather-covered writing-table, much splashed with ink. The rest of the furniture consisted of a couple of small ottomans and half a dozen chairs, all covered with green rep, and trimmed with green worsted fringe, and of a mahogany bookcase which stood near the door.
Mabin, with one glance round, had satisfied herself that nothing in the room betrayed the recent presence of an intruder, when her attention was suddenly arrested by a picture on the wall to her left.
It was a portrait in oils of a man, very young, very handsome, and bearing, as she saw at once, a great resemblance to the man she had seen a quarter of an hour before escaping from the house.
A great resemblance, that was all; it did not occur to her for some minutes that the man in the picture and the man she had seen could be the same person. But as her fascinated eyes pored over the painting, studying each feature, it grew upon her gradually that the likeness between it and the man was that of a face in happiness to a face in sorrow, and she saw the possibility that they were one and the same person.
As this thought crossed her mind, she stepped back startled by her own discovery. The light, growing stronger every moment, began to bathe the picture in the brightness of a summer morning, and she noticed then with what care it had been preserved. A tiny rod ran along the top of the picture, and from it hung two curtains, now drawn aside, of dark blue satin, hung with bullion fringe, and embroidered richly in shades of blue and gold.
Mabin’s eyes, attracted by the beautiful colors, were fixed upon this handsome hanging, when a piercing cry, uttered by a voice she did not recognize, but which thrilled her by its wild grief, made her start and turn round.
Just within the door by which she had entered the room Mrs. Dale was lying prone, motionless, on the floor.
Mabin, trembling from head to foot, went down on her knees beside her friend, and found that she had fainted. Not wishing to call the servants, she ran into the adjoining bedroom, fetched some water, and sprinkled it on the face of the unconscious woman. But at first Mrs. Dale gave no sign of life, and Mabin had time to reflect on the course she had better take.
And as, she thought, Mrs. Dale’s sudden loss of consciousness must be in some way connected with the picture, it would be better that she should find herself, on recovering, in another room.
Mabin was so much taller than Mrs. Dale that she found it a comparatively easy task to drag the little, slenderly made creature into the adjoining bedroom, and when she got her upon the sofa at the foot of the bed she found that the pink color was returning to her patient’s cheeks, that her hands and eyelids were moving slightly, and that a sigh was struggling up to her lips.
“Do you feel better now, dear?” asked Mabin rather tremulously.
For she had some doubts as to the scene which might be impending.
Mrs. Dale opened her eyes, but made no answer. She did not seem to hear Mabin; she seemed to be listening, trying to remember.
“Would you like a little water?” went on Mabin, rather frightened by the silence, and betraying her feelings in her tone and in the expression of her face. Then Mrs. Dale sat up, and the rather vacant look on her face grew into one of weary sadness.
“No, dear, thank you. I am not thirsty; and I—and I—am quite well.”
As she said this she rose, and glanced anxiously round the room. Then she looked at the door which communicated with the adjoining apartment, and suddenly sprang toward it.
“Don’t, don’t go in there!” cried Mabin, quickly, imploringly.
Mrs. Dale, with a deadly white face, stopped short, turned and looked at her.
“Why not?” she asked abruptly, in a whisper.
“Why, because—because—” stammered the girl, “it was in there you fainted. Don’t you remember?”
She took one of Mrs. Dale’s ice-cold hands in her own, in the hope of communicating the warmth of her own young blood to her terror-stricken friend.
“I—I remember. I found you looking——”
She broke off suddenly, snatched her hand from the girl’s, and ran into the next room. Mabin followed hesitatingly, and found her standing in front of the picture, with her eyes fixed upon it. Mabin said nothing, afraid lest by some unlucky word she should increase the mental distress of the unhappy woman. She uttered a cry as Mrs. Dale, turning upon her fiercely, asked in a tone which she had never used to her before:
“Why did you come in here? And what made you draw back the curtains?” Then evidently regretting her violence of manner when she saw how strong an effect it had upon the girl, she added with an abrupt change to apologetic gentleness, and with tears of penitence in her eyes: “I beg your pardon, dear; but—but it is not like you to be so curious.”
Mabin hesitated. She did not dare to tell Mrs. Dale what it was that had brought her into the room. For, she argued to herself, if the mere sight of this man’s portrait, and the belief that she had only dreamed she saw him, had such an effect upon the little woman, what might not the result be of finding that he had been there in the flesh?
“The door was open,” she said at last.
And she felt quite glad that Mrs. Dale evidently doubted her word, and looked again in a puzzled manner at the portrait.
“What made you draw back the curtains?” was her next question.
“I didn’t. I found the picture like that. I haven’t touched it,” answered Mabin quickly and rather indignantly.
But her transitory anger passed away when she saw the change to deep trouble which instantly took place in Mrs. Dale’s face. Putting up her handkerchief with shaking fingers to her wet, white face, the little lady clung with the other hand to the old writing-table, by which she was standing. She was in a state of great agitation, but Mabin did not know whether she ought to appear to be conscious of the fact or not. At last Mrs. Dale asked, in a hoarse whisper:
“That noise—I heard a noise in the house—and Annie, I saw Annie running upstairs—What was it?”
“The drawing-room window had been left open and it banged against the shutter,” replied Mabin. “I went down and shut it, and Annie went down too.”
She was ashamed to have to make this equivocal answer, but she dared not tell the whole truth—yet. She must have more of her friend’s confidence first, she must know more. And again she asked herself whether this man was some old lover of Mrs. Dale’s, who had been shut up on account of insanity, and of whose confinement Mrs. Dale had heard. She thought she would make an attempt to find out.
“What a handsome face this is!” she said, controlling her own nervous agitation as well as she could, and fixing her gaze upon the picture. “I don’t think I ever saw a face I admired so much.”
There was a pause, and Mabin, without looking round, heard her companion draw a deep breath. Presently, however, the latter recovered her self-possession sufficiently to ask, with an assumption of her usual playful tone:
“Not—Rudolph’s?”
Mabin was taken completely off her guard. Her mind filled with the story of her friend, she had for the time forgotten her own.
“Oh, that is a different type of face, quite different,” she replied, relapsing at once into the formal tone of the shy school-girl.
“But not without its good points?” suggested Mrs. Dale, coming behind the girl and putting her little hands on her waist.
Mabin, with an inspiration of astuteness, thought she received a short cut to her friend’s confidence, a confidence which would clear the ground for further discoveries, further enlightenments.
“Haven’t you ever felt that one—person—was outside everything else? And not to be measured by standards at all?” she asked in a soft, shy voice.
Mrs. Dale’s answer, the answer, too, of a widow, came upon her like a thunderbolt.
“No, dear. I have had no such experience myself. I have never cared for a man in all my life.”
And she spoke with the accents of sincerity.
“Mabin!”
“Oh!”
A single syllable hardly conveys the amount of alarm, of horror, of paralyzing fright which Mabin puts into the exclamation.
And yet the occasion was an ordinary one enough. It had simply happened that she had taken her work to the old seat at the edge of the plantation, where the primitive picnics used to take place in the old days, and that Rudolph had come up softly over the fields without her hearing his footsteps on the yielding grass.
“I frightened you?”
“N—no, not exactly, but you made me drop my needle. I thought you were at Portsmouth!”
“So I was. But that isn’t five thousand miles off. I came back this morning.”
Mabin said nothing. She had not seen him for a fortnight,—not, in fact, since the morning when he had met her on the seashore, and when he had applauded her resolution of sleeping in the room in which Mrs. Dale had had her bad dream. He had been called away suddenly on the following day, and had therefore heard nothing of Mabin’s adventure.
“Haven’t you got any news for me? I had rather expected a budget.”
Now Mabin had a budget for him, and had been looking forward most anxiously for his return, that she might confide in him some of the suspicions, the surmises, which filled her brain by day, and even kept her awake at night. But as usual with events long looked forward to, this return of Rudolph’s had not taken place as she expected, and she found herself in a state of unreadiness to meet him.
In the first place, she felt so ridiculously excited, so absurdly glad, that all the things she had been storing up in her mind to tell him dwindled into sudden insignificance. What did they matter, what did anything matter just now, except that Rudolph had come back, and that she must try not to let him guess how glad she was?
“Yes,” she said deliberately, after a short pause, looking across the clover field to the sea, and carefully choosing another needle, “I have plenty to tell you. I had it all ready, but—but you came up so suddenly that you have scattered all the threads of the story, and now I don’t remember where to begin.”
“I’m so awfully sorry. First you say I make you lose your needle, and then I scatter your threads. I’m afraid you think me in the way.”
No answer.
“Must I go?”
Rudolph got up and drew back a step, standing in the long, rank grass which bordered the clover field in the shade of the trees of the plantation.
“If I say yes, I suppose you will say I’m being rude again!” said Mabin, as she threw up at him, from under her big shady hat, a shy glance so full of attraction in its unconscious coquetry that Rudolph also forgot the budget, and thought he had never seen any girl look half so pretty as she did.
“I should say,” said he, bending his head as he spoke, and looking with great apparent interest at the work in her hands, “that you were unkind.”
There was another pause. Never before, even in the days of her wooden shyness, had Mabin found speech with him so difficult. A lump seemed to rise in her throat whenever she had a remark ready, and for fear of betraying the fact she remained silent altogether.
It was odd, too, that Rudolph, who had always been so fluent of speech himself, and had made her seem so dull, had now become infected with her own stupid reticence.
“You are a long time finding one,” said he at last.
“Yes. I—I seem to have lost all the fine ones,” replied Mabin, bending her head still lower than before over her needle case.
“Let me help you. Give me the work first, so that I can judge what size you want.”
“How can you tell—a man?” asked Mabin with indignation.
And in her contempt she looked up at him again.
“Oh-ho, madam! Don’t you know that we sailors can use a needle as well as any woman. Here let me show you.”
This was an admirable opportunity for seating himself on the bench beside her; and Rudolph, who had felt a strange hesitation about doing so before, now took the plunge, and placed himself on the end of the wooden seat.
“What is this? An antimacassar?”
“No. A cooking apron.”
“How interesting! Ladies ought not to make such things. They should do things that want lots of bundles of silks of all sorts of colors. This isn’t sufficiently decorative.”
“You mean fancy-work!” exclaimed Mabin with an expression of horror. “I hate fancy-work!”
“Girls who do fancy-work can always give a fellow things they have made themselves to remember them by. I have a heap of tobacco pouches, all very pretty and too good to use. Now you couldn’t give a fellow a cooking apron, to remember you by, could you?”
“I shouldn’t want anybody to remember me—with a lot of other girls!” retorted Mabin fiercely.
And then she felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and she thrust the needle-case quickly into his hands.
“Find one now, find one!” cried she imperiously, “and let me see what you can do. I believe you are only boasting when you say you can sew.”
Rudolph took the apron from her, and the needle-case, found a needle of the size he wanted in half the time she had spent in searching for one, and took up her hem where she had left off, working with fine, even stitches which called forth her unwilling admiration.
“Why,” she cried, in great surprise, “you do it beautifully! It’s better than mine!”
“Of course it is,” remarked Rudolph calmly. “Whatever the superior sex does bears, of course, the mark of superiority. The only thing that women can do really well is to receive prettily the attentions of the sex, it is useless for them to try to emulate. You used to do it very well once. I am hoping you haven’t lost the knack.”
“You haven’t lost your old knack of conceit, I see.”
“Oh, no. I have just the same opinion of myself and just the same opinion of you as when you used to send me wading into the pools between the rocks to get little crabs for you, and into the hedges for bird’s eggs, one from each nest, don’t you remember? And when you used to make me so proud by saying I found them quicker than anybody else. And then—do you remember what you used to do then?”
“Break them on the way home, I suppose,” said she, trying to look as if she had forgotten.
“Come, don’t you really remember any better than that?”
He had finished his needleful of thread, and handed her back the apron. So that he was at leisure to watch her face as she folded the big piece of holland, and collected the odds and ends of her work-bag. And it was quite clear to him that her memory was as true as his.
“Don’t you remember that you always gave me a kiss when I found a robin’s nest?”
“No, indeed, I don’t.”
But she did. Eyes, cheeks, and mouth all betrayed the scandalizing recollection.
“And used to promise to marry me when you grew up? Now, do you mean to say you’ve forgotten that?”
Evidently loss of memory was no protection with this person. Mabin blushed, and tried another sort of answer.
“Yes, I remember. What funny things children say!”
“Was it—funny?”
“Why, yes, I can’t help laughing at the idea now!”
And Mabin began to laugh hysterically, unnaturally, but withal so prettily, with so much of maidenly confusion and subdued happiness mingling with her amusement, that Rudolph threw his arm round her in the midst of her mirth, and cut it short by snatching a kiss.
“Oh!”
The monosyllable was meant to express astonishment and indignation, but it was a poor little protest after all, and one of which Rudolph did not feel bound to take much notice.
“Are you angry?” said he, not withdrawing his arm. “Are you very angry, Mabin? Don’t you think you will ever be able to forgive me?”
“I am angry, certainly,” answered she, trying to release herself. “I hope you are going to apologize for—for forgetting that I am not nine now.”
“How old are you, Mabin?”
“Nineteen.”
“Quite old enough to take up the promises you made ten years ago. Quite old enough to marry me.”
“Rudolph! What nonsense!”
“Oh, is it nonsense? If you think I’m going to allow my feelings to be trifled with by a chit of a girl who used to go halves with me in bull’s eyes, you’re very much mistaken! Now then, are you willing to ratify your promise, or am I to bring an action for breach?”
But Mabin, trembling with excitement and happiness so great as to be bewildering, felt dimly that there was too much levity about this abrupt settlement of the affairs of two lifetimes. This sudden proposal did not accord with her serious disposition, with her sense of the fitness of things. She looked at him with eyes pathetically full of something like terror.
“Rudolph!” she whispered, in a voice which was unsteady with strong emotion, “how can you talk like this? How can you? Don’t you know thatit hurts?”
“Hurts, little one? What do you mean by that?”
His tone was tender enough to satisfy the most exacting damsel, but Mabin was struck with fresh terror on remarking that instead of releasing her he tightened the grasp in which he held her.
“Why, I mean—I mean—that you are in play, that, it is amusement, fun, to you; while to me—”
And then she saw in his eyes something new, something of the earnestness, the seriousness which she had longed for, but which she had not before detected in the light-hearted sailor.
“While to you—? Why, little one, do you think it is anything to you, this promise that I am to have you to guard and to keep near my heart for our lives, more than it is to me? Do you think one must meet one’s happiness with a sour face, Mabin, and ask a girl to love you from the other side of a stone wall? Oh, my little sweetheart, with the shy eyes and the proud heart, you have a great deal to learn; and the very first thing is to trust me, and not to think my love of no account because I can woo you with a light heart.”
Every word seemed to echo in the young girl’s heart. She was taken off her feet, lifted high into an enchanted region where words were music, and a touch of the fingers ecstasy, and she hardly dared to speak, to move, to draw breath lest the spell should be broken, and she should wake up to commonplace life again. She listened, hardly speaking, to her lover as he told her how she had always remained in his mind as the childish figure that foreshadowed his womanly ideal; how her cold reserve had piqued him, made him study her the more; and finally how quickly these feelings had given place to warmer ones when he and she became friends once more.
They did not know how the time went. The sun rose high, the shadows shifted gradually, the dew dried on the long grass. At last a bell, ringing loudly in the garden behind the plantation, startled Mabin, and made her spring up.
“That’s for luncheon, it must be for luncheon!” she cried in blushing confusion. “I’d forgotten—forgotten everything!”
Rudolph laughed gently, and picked up her bag and her work.
“I won’t come in,” said he. “But I’ll go through the plantation with you to carry these.”
Across Mabin’s face there came a cloud.
“You must see Mrs. Dale,” she said. “She will want to see you, and yet——”
“And yet what?”
“I’m jealous.”
“Are you? For shame, for shame! Can’t you trust me?”
“I will say yes, of course, but——”
“But you mean no. Well, I can promise not to break your heart.”
And he laughed at her and teased her, and told her that Mrs. Dale was too well off to trouble her head about a poor lieutenant.
But Mabin was only half comforted; she remembered how well they had got on together on that memorable evening when a misunderstanding had caused her to sulk, and she was too diffident to believe that her own charms could compete with brilliant Mrs. Dale’s.
As soon as they came out of the plantation, and within sight of the house, they saw across the lawn the young housemaid, Annie, shading her eyes with her hand, as if watching for some one. Mabin, thinking the girl was looking out for her, sprang away from Rudolph, calling out a last “Good-by” as she hurried over the lawn.
“Tell Mrs. Dale that I am coming to call upon her this afternoon, to ask her to give me some tea. And please remind her that she promised me peaches next time I came,” called out Rudolph after her as she ran.
Mabin merely waved her hand to imply that she heard, and ran on toward the house. Annie, instead of retreating into the hall at the approach of the young lady, stepped out into the garden. And when Rudolph, after skirting the plantation, reached the gravelled space on his way to the gate, he found the young housemaid holding it open for him. He saw, before he came up, by the girl’s look and manner that she had something to say to him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said in a low voice, as soon as he was near enough to hear, “but I hope you won’t mind me taking the liberty of speaking to you.”
The girl was a bright-looking young person, with intelligent eyes and an open, pleasant face.
“Well, what is the portentous secret?” asked Rudolph, smiling, much amused by her assumed airs of mystery and importance.
“Well, sir, it is a secret,” she retorted, rather nettled by his amusement. “It’s a warning I have to give you, sir.”
“A warning! Come, this begins to be interesting.”
“It isn’t a joke at all, sir,” said the housemaid, half offended, yet with increasing earnestness. “I saw you coming over the field this morning, sir, when I was out speaking to the gardener about the salad. And I thought you was most likely coming here, sir, and I’ve been on the lookout for you ever since.”
“Much obliged to you, I’m sure. But have you been told to warn me off the premises?”
The girl drew herself up.
“Well, I can tell you, sir, that you’d better not come about the place more than you can help, for if you do there’s some one that will find it out and maybe do you a mischief. Hoping you’ll excuse the liberty, sir; but I know something nobody else does, and I shouldn’t like you to come to any harm, sir.”
And leaving Rudolph in a state of mingled incredulity, amusement, and surprise, the girl shut the gate, through which he had by this time passed, ran back quickly and disappeared through the back door into the house.
It was with a shock that Mabin remembered, when she met Mrs. Dale, that in the excitement of her own happiness she had neglected to tell Rudolph the story of her midnight adventure. This remembrance filled the girl with compunction. She reproached herself with thinking of no one but herself, and was as miserable over her omission as she had been happy while with her lover. As it was in the dining-room that she met Mrs. Dale, the presence of the parlormaid prevented her from confiding to her friend’s ear the events of the morning. She said with a hot blush that she had met Rudolph and gave his message; but although Mrs. Dale received the intelligence with an arch smile she did not guess how extremely interesting the interview had proved.
And as after luncheon Mrs. Dale sent her into Seagate for peaches, while she wrote some letters, Mabin kept the secret of her engagement, saving it up until Rudolph should himself break the news.
The young girl felt an odd shyness about confessing her happiness. She was quite glad of the excuse circumstances afforded of keeping it all to herself for a few hours longer. It was a joy so far above all other joys that it seemed to her its bloom would not bear the rough touch of arch words and looks which would certainly follow the announcement of it.
Hugging her happiness to her heart, she went quickly to Seagate and back, not heeding the scorching heat of the sun, or the glare of the chalky roads, or the dust made by the vehicles which passed her on the way. And when she reached “The Towers” again, finding that Mrs. Dale had not yet come downstairs, she put on her hat and went back to the seat where Rudolph had sat with her that morning, to live over again the golden time they had spent there together.
But she could not free her mind from the self-reproach she felt at having forgotten, in the pleasure of the meeting with Rudolph, the affairs of her friend. There was just this excuse for her, that it was now a whole fortnight since the strange night adventure had happened, and during all that time nothing had occurred at “The Towers” to recall the visit of the intruder whom Mabin had chased out of the house. After that strange confidence of Mrs. Dale’s, following the incident of the picture, no word more had been exchanged by the two ladies on the subject. It was this new but unavoidable reserve between them which had made Mabin so shy of mentioning her new happiness. If Mrs. Dale had, as she averred, never been in love herself, what sympathy could she be expected to have for Mabin?
With these thoughts in her mind Mabin had at last got up from the seat, and sauntered along the narrow path through the plantation in the direction of her father’s house. Crossing the lane which separated the grounds of the two houses, she found herself, without thinking how she came there, on the path which ran along outside the wall at the bottom of her father’s garden.
She had gone about ten yards when she heard a slight noise on the inner side of the wall. She stopped. There flashed quickly into her mind the old forgotten question: Was her father’s tenant the man who had got into “The Towers” at night a fortnight ago?
Coming noiselessly close to the wall, she reached the top of it by a sudden spring, and saw, between the bushes of the border, the bent figure of a gentleman, sauntering along slowly with the aid of a stick.
The cry she uttered made him look up.
And the face she saw was the face of the picture in the shut-up room, the face of the man she had pursued through the house, whose thin, worn features she had seen a fortnight ago in the pale light of the morning.
Mabinhad only just time to recognize the face of the man who had got into “The Towers” at night as Mr. Banks, her father’s tenant, when he turned abruptly and hurried away toward the house.
Mabin’s first thought was to get over the wall, a proceeding to which, it must be admitted, she was not unaccustomed, and pursue him, as she had done upon a recent and well-remembered occasion. But she felt a certain natural shyness about such a bold course, and decided that she would proceed in more orthodox fashion by going round to the front door and asking for him.
It was not without fears that she would be unsuccessful that she made her way, slowly and with the slight limp which still remained from her bicycle accident, along the lane to the front of the house. This was the first time she had been inside her father’s gates since the morning the family went away, and it struck her with a sense of strangeness that she had lived a great deal faster than ever before since that memorable day. Mrs. Dale’s mysterious story; the visit of the old lady with the cruel tongue; the midnight intrusion of Mr. Banks; last, and chief of all, Rudolph’s confession of love—these things had opened a wide abyss between the child Mabin and the woman. She felt that she was not the shy girl who had had a nervous dread of leaving home mingling with the thoughts of coming pleasure. And she told herself that when the family came back they would find, not the angular girl they had left, but a woman, a full-fledged woman.
Perhaps she congratulated herself prematurely upon the enormous advance she had made; at any rate, when she rang the bell, she found her heart beating very fast, and a curious feeling rising in her throat which threatened to affect the steadiness of her voice.
It was Langford who opened the door. The old servant had not seen Mabin since the day she had left the house, and her face broke out into smiles as she greeted her.
“Bless me, Miss Mabin, I never thought of its being you! But I am glad to see you. And how have you been getting on? And have you heard from Mrs. Rose lately?”
“I’m getting on splendidly, and I heard from mamma two days ago. Ethel’s got the mumps, but the rest are all right. I’ll talk to you another time. Come round and see me some evening. Can’t you get away? I’m in a hurry now; I want to see Mr. Banks.”
Langford shook her head emphatically.
“It’s no use wanting that, Miss Mabin. Mr. Banks never sees anybody, not even his lawyer if he can help it. He’s a character, he is. Is it a message you’ve got for him from Mr. Rose?”
“Oh, no. It’s something very important, much more important than that. And I must see him; I tell you Imust! And if you won’t help me, I shall go to work in a way of my own, and give the poor man a fright.”
“Oh, no, Miss Mabin, you won’t do that, I’m sure! You don’t know how delicate the poor gentleman is; more than once since he’s been here he has given me a fright, and made me think he was going to die. And he’s so peculiar; he won’t let one send for a doctor, not if it’s ever so, he won’t. I’m sure one morning, a fortnight ago, when I found him lying on the floor in the hall with the back garden door open, I thought he was dead, that I did. But when I’d brought him to—for he’d fainted, just like a woman—he wouldn’t hear of my getting any one to come and see him——”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mabin. “Was that on a Tuesday night—I mean Wednesday morning?”
“Yes, so it was.”
Mabin smiled.
“Well, I know the reason of that attack. And perhaps I’ll tell you some day, if you’ll manage to let me see him now. And first tell me what you think of him. Is he mad, do you think, or what? You remember, when he first came, you thought he was.”
Langford shook her head dubiously.
“Well, really, Miss Mabin, I can’t rightly tell you what I do think about him. Sometimes I do think he’s off his head altogether; he marches up and down the drawing-room—that’s the room he has taken to himself—by the hour together, going faster and faster, till I listen outside the door wondering if anything is going to happen, and whether he’s going to break out like and do himself a mischief. But if I make an excuse to go in, though his eyes are wide and glaring, so that at the first look he frightens one, yet he always speaks to me quite gently, and says he doesn’t want anything. Of course I pretend not to notice anything, and I think he likes the way I take him. For, though he’s always civil-spoken to every one, he doesn’t let the two girls come near him, if he can help it. If they come up from the kitchen or out of a room when he’s by, he just turns his back and waits till they’ve gone past.”
Mabin listened with deep interest, and without interrupting by a question. But when Langford paused for breath, the young girl asked suddenly:
“Does he have any letters? It isn’t just curiosity that makes me ask, I needn’t tell you.”
“No, Miss Mabin. He doesn’t have any letters sent here except under cover from his lawyer. They come in big envelopes, with the address stamped on the back, so I know. It looks as if he was in hiding or something, doesn’t it?” she added in a discreet whisper.
Mabin thought that it did, and the fact added to the fascination of the mystery.
“You don’t think he’s a detective, do you?” she whispered close to Langford’s ear.
“No, I’m quite sure he isn’t. Detectives aren’t gentlemen, and Mr. Banks is a gentleman, if ever there was one.”
“It’s very strange,” murmured Mabin vaguely, pondering on the fresh facts.
“You may well say that, Miss Mabin. I don’t know what to think myself. Some days he’ll sit all day long with his head in his hands without moving scarcely. Or he’ll sit poring over what looks like old letters and bits of things that I think must have been a woman’s somehow. But there, I feel like a sneak telling these things even to you; for it’s only by chance that I know anything about them myself, and for certain Mr. Banks didn’t think I should chatter about what I saw.”
“Ah, well, I know more than you do as it is,” said Mabin softly.
The words were still on her lips when a door opened behind them somewhere in the dark, cool hall, and Mabin started guiltily. She and Langford were standing just within the front doorway, out of hearing of any one in the house. But she forgot that she could not be heard, and felt confused and shy when a man’s voice, very low, very gentle, said:
“Langford, is that Miss Rose?”
“Yes, sir,” said Langford, as Mabin’s eyes at last saw which door it as that was open, and the servant passed her toward the drawing-room.
“I will see her if she wants to speak to me,” were his next, most unexpected words.
Mabin entered the drawing-room, and found herself face to face with the mysterious Mr. Banks.
He was standing in the middle of the long room, and as the young lady came in he held out his hand to her and offered her a seat. His hand was cold, his face looked more worn, more gray than ever, and as he moved he tottered, like a man recovering from an illness, or on the verge of one. But Mabin thought, as she looked at him, that her fancy that he must be insane was a mistaken one. It seemed to her now that there was the imprint of a great grief, an ever-present burden of melancholy, upon the grave stranger, but that his straightforward, clear eyes were the sanest she had ever seen.
“You wish to speak to me? To ask me some questions, I suppose?” he said courteously, as he leaned against the mantelpiece and bent his head to listen.
“Yes.”
Then there was a pause. It was rather a delicate matter to accuse this grave, courteous gentleman of a burglarious entry into another person’s house. Mabin had not felt the full force of this difficulty until now when she sat, breathing quickly, and wondering how to begin, while Mr. Banks still politely waited.
“I saw you just now in the garden,” she burst out at last, feeling conscious that her voice sounded coarse and harsh after his quiet tones, “and I recognized you. And I thought it was better to tell you so, to tell you that I knew it was you who—who——”
How could she go on? She didn’t. She broke down altogether, and sat looking at the gently stirring branches of the trees outside, wishing that she were under the shelter of their cool freshness, instead of going through this fiery ordeal indoors.
Then it suddenly became clear to her that Mr. Banks had been seized with a new idea.
“I suppose then,” he said, and she was delighted to see that he was at last beginning to feel some of the embarrassment which she was suffering, “that you are the lady who followed me through the drawing-room of ‘The Towers’ a fortnight ago?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then I don’t know how to apologize to you. I don’t know what to say to excuse myself. In fact, there is nothing for it but to confess that ill health had made me a sleepwalker, and that this is not the first time I have been put into very embarrassing situations by this terribly unfortunate habit.”
Mabin frowned frankly. She was an honest, truthful girl, and this man lost her respect the moment he began to tell her what she knew to be falsehoods. Her indignation gave her courage. It was in a much more assured tone that she went on: