“That you begged Mr. Madison not to tell any one, and that you had tried not to meet him, and that no one knew it. It is certainly very mysterious, Vic, and I think you ought to tell us.”
Victoria, sitting on the steps with her white dressgleaming in the moonlight, was silent. She would like to tell them the whole story. Should she do so? But then, if Katherine—she stopped short, even in her thoughts. She wished that her Aunt Sophia had never presented so disagreeable an idea to her imagination.
Should she tell them, or should she not? It would be a distinct relief to talk it over with them, and to feel free at last from the burden of a secret. She was about to speak when Katherine motioned to her to be silent.
“Wait a minute,” Katherine said in a whisper. She had been watching intently the clump of trees and shrubbery, near the side of the house, which separated them from the flower garden. “I’m sure I heard something or somebody moving, and I thought I saw the shadow of a man. Who can it be?”
“Let’s go find out,” said Victoria, promptly, glad to have the matter decided for her and the subject changed. “It was probably a night-hawk or an owl. It couldn’t be a man, Katherine!”
The three went around the corner of the house and walked about among the shrubbery. No thought of fear entered their minds.
“It is nothing, after all,” said Katherine at last.“I must have been mistaken, but it was exactly like the shadow of a man.”
“Well, I am going to bed as long as your shadow isn’t going to materialize,” said Victoria; “so good night, girls!” And abruptly leaving them, she went into the house.
“It is funny about Vic, isn’t it, Honor?” said Katherine. “I mean that she won’t explain why she doesn’t like Mr. Madison.”
“Very, and I am going to speak to her again about it. Perhaps she would tell me more if we were alone.”
“You mean without me? Why, I should like to know? However, if you do find out, you mustn’t fail to tell me, for I really am most curious about it.”
Victoriawent upstairs to her room, but it was long before she went to bed. Sophy was fast asleep in her little bed in the corner, and Victoria knew that there was no danger of her waking. The shades at the two windows had been drawn as high as they would go, and the moonlight streamed in, lying in white patches upon the floor and making the room as light as day.
Victoria sat down in the shadow near one of the windows and looked out into the night. Her room was next to that of her aunt, and over the dining-room. Beneath her window was the shrubbery in which Katherine had heard the suspicious sounds a short time since. Beyond lay the flower garden, the beds bathed in the moonlight, and the roses lifting their heads to catch the dew. On the other side of the flower garden was the vegetable patch, and beyond that again the pasture and the woods.
The window near which she sat was directly above the bay-window of the dining-room, the roof of which projected from the side of the house. Vines grew up over the dining-room window and had been trained on either side of Victoria’s, so that in summer time she looked through a veritable bower of green, and this year a pair of bluebirds had built their nest there and sometimes wakened her in the early dawn with their sweet singing.
Victoria sat for a long time quite motionless. She heard her aunt come up to her room and, after a half-hour of activity, subside into the tranquillity of night. She felt it to be a merciful arrangement of human affairs and habits that people were forced to rest for a few hours out of the twenty-four, otherwise the stirring nature of Mrs. Wentworth Ward would know no calm.
She heard Katherine mount to her rooms in the third story, and Honor go to hers on the other side of the house.
At last all was still. Victoria’s brain, wide awake and unusually alert for this hour of the night, was still occupied with the tiresome topics of the afternoon. She felt that she could notsleep until she had imparted some of the new ideas with which it was teeming to some one, and that some one must be Honor. Her sister could not yet be asleep, Victoria thought; so leaving her window wide open, she went across the hall and around the gallery to Honor’s room and knocked softly on the door. Her sister opened it at once.
“What is the matter, Vic?” she asked. “Are you ill? Why, you are still in your dress, and you came up two hours ago!”
“I know it. Hush, Honor, don’t speak so loud! I don’t want any one to hear me. Do you mind if I come in and talk? Are you very sleepy?”
“No, not a bit sleepy. Come in, of course. I want especially to see you. What is the matter, Vic? You have looked so anxious all the afternoon, and not a bit like yourself. What is it?”
“It is all Aunt Sophia,” said Victoria, curling herself up on the foot of the bed.
“Aunt Sophia! Why, what has she been saying? I thought you were too busy, when you were with her, to talk.”
“Is Aunt Sophia ever too busy to say what she wants to?”
“But what was it about?”
“Dave Carney, for one thing.”
Honor laughed. “Surely, my dear child, you are not staying up half the night just because Aunt Sophia sees fit to criticise Dave Carney? If I minded her as much as that, I should never sleep a wink after she had been talking about poor B. Lafferty, who, by the way, declares that she is going to-morrow ‘for certain sure!’ What does she say about Dave?”
“Oh, she doesn’t think he is honest, because she was sure she saw him going into a pawnbroker’s shop. As if that proved anything! She might just as well say that I wasn’t, because I sold the gold and the—” Victoria paused.
“Not quite the same thing,” said Honor, “for you really had the things to sell; but I can’t imagine where Dave Carney gets anything to pawn. But I can’t think why you are so worried, Vic. Aunt Sophia has been saying that sort of thing all our lives.”
“Oh, I know that. It isn’tthatI am worried about, of course, Honor. She was speaking about something else, that I hadn’t thought of before. Something about Katherine.”
“What about her?” asked Honor, quickly.
“Well, she said first that she was selfish and extravagant, and then—I really hate to repeat it, Honor, for it doesn’t seem a bit nice, but I must tell you—then she said it didn’t make so much difference as she was going to marry a rich man, or ‘make a good match,’ as she expressed it. Don’t you think it was rather disagreeable for Aunt Sophia to say that? And whomdoyou suppose she meant, Honor?”
“Mr. Madison, of course.”
Honor’s voice was so peculiar that Victoria glanced at her sharply, but it was too dark in the room for her to see her face very clearly.
“Yes, Mr. Madison; but I don’t see how you happened to guess it so quickly.”
“Chiefly because there is no one else whom Aunt Sophia could possibly mean. There isn’t another man in the neighborhood.”
“But, Honor, have you noticed anything? Do you think that Katherine—well, that she cares for him? Of course he likes her, he couldn’t help liking her, but—oh, I don’t know! It doesn’t seem a bit nice to talk about Katherine this way, and I wish Aunt Sophia hadn’t said anything. Itold her that probably they were just good friends, and she said that was almost impossible. Don’t you think that is a most ridiculous idea, Honor?”
“Very ridiculous, and I agree with you that it isn’t very nice to talk about it. I know lots of girls do, and we should be considered very old-fashioned and peculiar not to want to. We are different from most girls, and I think we feel differently about those things. So don’t let us say any more, Vic, unless Katherine wants to speak about it herself.”
“And there is nothing for us to do?”
“No,” said Honor, very quietly, “there is nothing for us to do.” And then, very much to the surprise of Victoria, she hid her face in the pillow.
“Why, are you so sleepy, Honor?” asked the younger sister. “You don’t look so. What is the matter?”
“No, I’m not really sleepy, but—but I think we have talked long enough, Vicky dear! If you don’t mind, I would rather not say any more.”
“But I haven’t been here more than fifteen minutes, Honor, and there is something else that I thought of telling you.”
“Not to-night, please, dear. I would rather nottalk any more to-night, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Well, just as you say, of course!” said Victoria, as she got up. “I think you are very queer, though. You said you were glad to see me and that you wanted to talk about something yourself, and now, almost right away, you tell me to go! What did you want to say to me?”
“Don’t be huffy, dear! I know I did want to, but really, I can’t talk about anything more to-night. I—I have a headache.”
“Oh, you poor thing!” cried Victoria, her resentment fading at once. “Why didn’t you tell me so before? I thought you looked different from usual. Can’t I do anything for you? It was a shame for me to come and bother you, but you seemed glad to have me when I came. Shall I bathe your head with cologne?”
“No, I thank you. If I once get asleep, I shall be all right, and it is really pretty late, Vic. It is nearly twelve o’clock. You had better go to bed right away. Good night, dear.”
Honor was almost pushing her sister out of the room as she spoke, and Victoria heard her close and lock the door behind her.
“If Honor isn’t too funny!” she said to herself. “Locking me out, actually! Well, if she isn’t going to worry, there is no need of my doing so. People never do what you expect them to. Honor is certainly queer.
‘Jog on, jog on the footpath way’—
‘Jog on, jog on the footpath way’—
Why, how very peculiar! I am sure I didn’t leave my door open.”
She had reached her own room and paused before the open door. She had certainly not left it open, because of the draught which Sophy would have been in between it and the window. Perhaps the breeze had blown it open, and yet that did not seem possible, for the night was a still one, and it seemed to be growing warmer. She went into the room and found Sophy sitting up in bed.
“Oh, is that you, Vic?” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad! Have you just come up? And did you meet Dave?”
“My dear child, you must be dreaming! Of course I didn’t meet Dave. It is the middle of the night.”
“But Dave just went through here,” said Sophy. “I heard a sound that woke me up, and when I opened my eyes there was Dave just going out the door. Didn’t you see him?”
“Dearest, I know you have been dreaming,” said Victoria, sitting down beside her little sister and taking her hand. “I tell you, it is after twelve o’clock, and Dave is probably sound asleep in his room at the barn. You know he is never upstairs here, and of course he wouldn’t be going through our room at any hour. You have such vivid dreams sometimes, Sophy. Don’t you remember the one about the pony that you thought was here in the room?”
Sophy laughed. “That was a funny one,” she said, “and the other about the animals that could talk, after Peter had been reading those stories to me. Well, perhaps you’re right, Vic, and this was a dream about Dave, but it was a very clear one, and I was frightened when I woke up and you weren’t here. Are you going to bed now?”
“Yes, very quickly, and you must try to go to sleep right away, it is so late.”
Sophy obediently lay down and was soon fast asleep again.
“Funny how the child dreams,” thought Victoria, “and it was funny, too, that I should have left the door open. Something must have blown down in the breeze and waked her up, and thatwas the noise she heard. Yes, here is a photograph on the floor, and this little book that was near the edge of my table. It must have been a pretty strong wind to blow that off, and yet it seems so warm now.”
And before long Victoria was herself asleep, having dismissed her cares and anxieties with the determination to think no more about them. If Honor was not troubled by them, why should she be?
It seemed to Victoria that she had been asleep but a few moments when she was awakened by a sharp and excited rapping upon her door. It must be morning, however, for instead of the moon which had lighted her room when she went to sleep, the sun was now shining in the heavens, already quite high and well advanced upon his day’s journey.
“Vic,” said Honor’s voice in the hall, “open your door quickly! The most dreadful thing has happened.”
Victoria sprang to let her in.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The house has been robbed,” said Honor. “Burglars have been here, and everything downstairs has been ransacked! Oh, Vic, isn’t it too dreadful?”
Victoria was speechless with surprise and consternation.
“I thought I heard a noise in the night,” continued Honor; “I didn’t sleep very well, and I thought of going down to the dining-room to get a glass of water. Oh, Vic, suppose I had! I should have met them! Instead, I took some water from the pitcher in my room, and I remember setting the pitcher down on the floor with quite a hard thump. It was after that, I think, that I heard a sound like a door shutting. It grew very warm in the night, and I opened my window with quite a noise. I shouldn’t wonder if it had frightened them off.”
“Have they taken much?” asked Victoria.
“I don’t know yet, for everything is in confusion. Blanch came up to tell me. The silver was most of it in my room, fortunately. It is a good thing we are in the habit of bringing it up every night. How do you suppose they got in?”
“I can imagine. Do you remember, Honor, that Katherine thought she heard some one in the shrubbery? I do wonder if the burglar was hiding there! How perfectly horrible it seems!”
“And we walked about there looking for him!I must go up and tell Katherine, and when you are dressed, we will go down and make a careful search.”
In the meantime, Sophy had waked up, and, hearing the news, could scarcely control her excitement. She flew about the room, constantly getting into Victoria’s way, begging to be helped with her innumerable buttons, and asking a thousand questions.
“What is a buggler, Vic?” she demanded. “I always thought a buggler was some kind of a bug, like a buffalo bug, or something of that sort. Is it really a real live man? And what did he want in our house? And how did he get in, Vic, with the doors all locked and bolted? I say, Vic, how did he get in?”
“I don’t know,” said Vic. “Sophy, do please get out of my way! I’m in such a hurry. Go stand by the window, there’s a good girl!”
“But won’t you tell me what a buggler is?” pleaded Sophy. “I won’t stir if you’ll only tell me.”
“It’s a robber. Do you know what that is?”
“Of course I do. That is a sensible name. Any one would know that a robber robs, but a buggler!”
“A buggler doesn’t bug,” said Victoria, laughing in spite of her hurry and dismay. “Let me tell you that it isburglar, and not buggler.”
Sophy had by this time taken up her station by the window.
“Why, Vic,” she cried, looking out, “did you know that all the vines are torn round this window? They’re just streaming! What do you s’pose has made ’em so?”
Victoria ran to look.
“They weren’t so last night,” said she. “Sophy, it looks exactly as if some one had climbed up here. Do you think the man could possibly have come in this way?”
She stood by the window, reviewing hastily in her mind the events of the night. She had sat there for a long time and then had left the room. She had been absent not more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and when she came back the door was open. It gave her a most uncomfortable sensation to feel that the robber had actually been in her very room.
“I shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Sophy. “You know I dreamed Dave Carney went through the room.”
So she had! Perhaps—perhaps, after all, it had not been a dream! Victoria felt a sudden and unaccountable weakness, and she was forced to sit down for a moment. Surely it could not have been Dave Carney who had thus entered the house of his benefactors!
“Sophy,” said Victoria, “don’t say anything about that dream, will you? Promise me that you won’t tell any one that you dreamed that about Dave.”
“Why, no, Vic; I won’t, if you don’t want me to; but why not? Why can’t I tell?”
“I have good reasons, Sophy dear, but I haven’t time to explain them now; but you know it is fun to have a secret with me, isn’t it?”
“Oh, very well,” said Sophy, greatly pleased with the idea. “Yes, I do love secrets with you, Vic. I’ll never tell.”
Downstairs all was in confusion. The dining-room had apparently been entered first, for the most thorough work had been done here. Drawers stood open, closets and sideboard were in confusion. The china had been left untouched, but the silver candlesticks and the old snuffers with their tray were gone, and some small articles in silverand plated ware which had not been carried upstairs at night with the table silver and the service.
A clock, which had stood upon the dining-room mantel-shelf, had been carried into the parlor and left there. No doubt the man or men had been frightened off by the noise which Honor made when she set down her pitcher and afterwards opened her window, for her room was over the parlor. They had gone out by way of the front door, for it was found unbolted. No other door or window had been disturbed, and it was reasonable to suppose that one man had entered by way of Victoria’s room and had then opened the front door to the others, if others there were.
It was astonishing that the man—who no doubt was the one in the shrubbery whom Katherine had heard—should have chosen the exact time during which Victoria was absent from the room to climb up over the dining-room window, and that he had not seen Victoria, when she was sitting in her room, as she said she had been doing for more than an hour. It could only be explained by the fact that she had sat in a low chair a little back from the window, and completely in the shadow. He had probably beenwatching from the shrubbery, and, not seeing any one and finding the window conveniently open, had determined to enter in that way, whatever his previous plans may have been; and he had chosen exactly the right moment for doing it.
Naturally enough, the Starrs were greatly excited by this occurrence, and none more so than Mrs. Wentworth Ward. She quite resented the fact that she had slept peacefully and unconsciously through the whole episode, and seemed to take it as a personal grievance that she had not awakened and descended in person to confront the burglar. The opportunity for that having passed by, she consoled herself by making active investigations into the amount of loss that had been sustained by her nieces, and by trying to fit the cap of guilt upon some member of the household.
“It is absurd to think the man got in through Victoria’s room,” said she. “It could not be! Her room is directly next to mine, and I should have heard him. I am a very light sleeper, I assure you. Besides, how could he have had the luck to choose the very time of all others when Victoria was out of the room? What if the vines are torn? That proves nothing. No, no!Depend upon it, some onein this houseopened the front door and let them in. You know very little about that extremely ignorant maid of yours. I have no doubt she was an accomplice.”
They had finished breakfast when Mrs. Ward made this statement and were again in the parlor, and while they were talking, Mr. Madison was seen approaching the house. He had come to ask Honor and Katherine to go out on the river with his sister and himself that afternoon.
When he came in, Victoria glanced quickly from one sister to the other. She was surprised to see that Honor was the one who looked embarrassed. Her color certainly changed, and her manner was somewhat stiff. Katherine, on the contrary, greeted the newcomer with her customary frankness.
“You are just the very one we need,” said she. “Here we lone, lorn women—the only man in the family laid up with a broken leg—have been robbed! The only wonder is that we were not murdered as well.”
They told him the history of the night, and Madison’s advice was that the matter should be placed in the hands of detectives at once. Heoffered to do it for them, and thought it probable that their property would be recovered, as such articles as the clock, and various other things that had been taken from the parlor, would be of no use to the burglars unless they were pawned. The silver candlesticks, on the contrary, could be melted down.
“I think it couldn’t have been a very experienced thief,” said Roger. “An old hand would have known better than to take plated things, as you say some of them were. However, we will tell the whole story to the detective. Suppose you leave things here just as they are. I will bring a man out from Boston in the first train I can get. I could telegraph, I suppose, for one to come, but it is just as well to move quietly in these matters, and perhaps it will not take any longer to go to town. I am inclined myself to the theory that the man came in the second-story window. The open door which Miss Victoria found, and the torn vines seem to point to that.”
“I donotagree with you,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward. “My nieces, Mr. Madison, quite against my better judgment, have insisted uponemploying two very inferior servants. One is the kitchen maid, who knows absolutely nothing—in fact, to use a slang expression to which I seriously object—is as green as the island she came from. The other is a farm boy, whom they picked up no one knows where. I have no doubt that he could give some information in regard to this robbery. Ellen Higgins, my own maid, who is here, tells me that this boy is behaving most unaccountably this morning. When he heard of the robbery, he first became very pale indeed, and then turned very red, and since then he has shown every evidence of guilt. In addition to this, with my own eyes I saw him going into a Boston pawnbroker’s shop a day or two ago, as I told my niece Victoria only yesterday.”
“Well, we will tell all that to the detectives,” said Madison. “They will soon find out who the guilty one is.”
As he spoke, his glance fell upon Victoria. At the mention of Dave Carney she too had become very white. She was thinking of Sophy’s dream. She almost wished that she could get speech with Roger Madison alone. She should like to tell him the whole story and ask him if therewere not some way of saving Dave from the iron hand of the law. She felt that if he were arrested, it would stain his reputation forever.
She did not for a moment believe that he was guilty, and yet—there was Sophy’s dream! Was it her duty to tell Mr. Madison this, or not? She would certainly not give her Aunt Sophia the benefit of the information. In the meantime Peter spoke.
“I know more about Dave Carney than any of you,” said he, “and you needn’t try to make me think that he had anything to do with it. I’ve been with him a lot, and I know him, and nobody has any right to say anything about him in connection with it.”
But confidently as Peter spoke he too felt uneasy, for he distinctly remembered the occasion of his first meeting with Carney.
He had been stealing apples!
Victoriaconcluded that if she wished to save Dave Carney, her best course was to say nothing to Mr. Madison. He would not be influenced by any feeling of pity for Dave, she feared, and if he knew that Sophy had imagined that the boy passed through the room, he would consider it his duty to tell the detective of the fact.
Victoria remembered that Sophy had been very confident when the incident occurred that she had not been dreaming, and the torn vines and the open door proved conclusively that some one had climbed in at the window. Victoria in her own mind was almost if not entirely convinced that it was Carney, but there was nothing to cause any one else to suspect him,—with the exception of her aunt, who suspected him on principle,—and if Victoria remained silent, she hoped that the boy would escape.
But then, again, was this course right? If Carney were so depraved as to steal from the family who had treated him with such kindness, surely it was their duty to deliver him into the hands of justice. Victoria knew that this would be Roger Madison’s opinion. She had just determined to say nothing and to allow matters to take their course without interference from her, when something which Peter said to her again unsettled her.
The boy was in the hammock, which was hung across one end of the piazza directly in front of the dining-room window. Seeing Victoria within, where she was busily washing the breakfast dishes, he called to her to come to him.
“What do you want?” asked Victoria, appearing on the other side of the wire screen at the window, with a saucer in her hand which she was vigorously wiping with a crash towel. “I’m awfully busy, Peter. It is ironing day, you know, and Honor and Katherine are making the beds, so I have to do the breakfast things alone. Sophy is helping me, but—you know what that means!”
“I want to speak to you,” said Peter, raising himself on one arm, and lowering his voice to amysterious whisper. “It’s really very important, Vic. About last night, you know. Can’t you come out here a minute? Is any one else in there?”
“Only Sophy.”
“Not Aunt Sophia?”
“No; she is upstairs.”
“Oh, then do come out, quick! It’s a good chance. And shut that window. I don’t want any one inside to hear me.”
Victoria saw that he had really something of importance to communicate, so, leaving several articles upon the tray for Sophy to wipe during her absence, and giving her strict injunctions to be careful, she closed the dining-room window, and went around through the door to Peter on the piazza.
“Have you seen Carney this morning?” he asked eagerly.
Victoria started. The mention of Carney’s name fitted so exactly with her own thoughts.
“No,” she replied.
“Vic, do you think it could have been he? I wasn’t going to let on to Aunt Sophia that I thought it for a minute, but I do feel kind of shaky about it.”
“Why, Peter, do you really?” said Victoria. “Wouldn’t it—at least, why should he have chosen that way of letting the burglars in? If it was really Dave who opened the door, I should think he could have found some other way of doing it. He is around the kitchen so much, he might have left a window unbolted, or something of that sort. It would have been easier than climbing up to my room. And now I come to think of it, Dave knew that was my room. He came up there once, to hang my book shelves. He never would have been so stupid as to climb in that way!”
Victoria’s tone expressed a sense of relief. She had not thought of this before. She almost forgot her surprise at Peter’s suspicions.
“But, Vic,” said her brother, “I must tell you something I have never told anybody, and it kind of bothers me. I never told you what Carney was doing when I first saw him.”
“No. Was it anything wrong, Peter?”
“He was—now don’t you tell any one, Vic, unless we decide that we had better. Now mind you don’t!”
“No, I won’t. Hurry, for I hear Sophy calling.”
“He was stealing apples from a barrel outside of a provision store in Fordham.”
“Peter!”
“Yes, he was! I caught him at it. He said he hadn’t any money to buy anything to eat, and he was awfully hungry, so I gave him some. And then he helped me,—in that fight, you know,—and he came home with me.” Peter could not yet endure to mention the name of Sirius.
“He seemed like such a nice fellow,” he continued, “and I thought it would be a shame to give him a bad name by saying he’d been stealing. I knew Honor would never have him here if I did, so I just kept quiet about that, and didn’t even tell you, but I thought I had better to-day. I don’t believe for a minute, though, that he had anything to do with the robbery. I can’t think it, can you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” said Victoria, again remembering Sophy’s so-called dream.
At that moment a loud crash sounded from within.
“Dear me,” cried Victoria, running into the house; “I do believe Sophy has broken something!”
She found her small sister gazing in dismay at the floor, which was strewn with broken glass.
“I never meant to!” she wailed, when she saw Victoria. “Indeed, Vic, I never meant to! I was only going to help you carry the tumblers to the china closet, and they all began to slip, and slide, and tumble off the tray. Is that the reason they’re called tumblers, Vic? Because they always tumble off? I never touched a tumbler when it didn’t tumble. Tell me, Vic, is it? Oh, I’m awful sorry, but I was only helping!”
“I suppose you were, but, oh dear!” said Victoria, hurrying away for the dust-pan and brush with which to sweep up the broken glass. “This is a day of misfortunes! What the burglars have left you have broken.”
“Oh, not everything, Vic! How can you say so? There’s all the china, dishes, and plates, and cups and saucers, and everything. I haven’t broken those.”
“No, and please don’t try to,” said her sister, struggling to remain calm and not to scold Sophy. A dozen good tumblers in atoms, and how could they spare the money to buy more?
“I never tried to!” cried Sophy, bursting intotears and burying her face in a dish-towel. “Oh, how can you say so? I never tried to break ’em!”
But for the first time in her life, Victoria turned a deaf ear to Sophy’s lamentations, and the child fled upstairs to Honor for consolation. She found her eldest sister in her own room. She was standing in the middle of the floor and she was directly confronted by B. Lafferty, who, with her hands on her hips, was haranguing her young mistress with all the eloquence at her command.
Sophy forgot her own grievance in wonder as to what Blanch could be talking about, and sidling up to Honor, she dried her tears and listened, her big brown eyes fastened upon the crimson countenance of the housemaid.
“I tell yer, I’m agoin’ ter go this very minute!” said Blanch. “I ain’t agoin’ ter stay where insults is heaped upon me. I’ve put up with the imperence of that proud an’ hotty girl long enough. Sayin’ she’s allus lived on Beacon Street an’ ain’t never lived in the country afore! An’ has allus been in the house with three others, a cook, a laundress, an’ an upstairs girl! An’ now she an’ yer aunt be afther sayin’ as it was me as let in the burglars, an’ me as sound asleep as anything an’adreamin’ o’ the ould counthry, an niver a word did I hear of any burglars till I come down this mornin’ an’ was agoin’ ter set the table for breakfast, an’ lo an’ behold, all the drawers an’ the closets was astandin’ open an’ I not knowin’ at all what it all mint. An’ yer know yerself as Miss Vic’s windy and doore was astandin’ wide open an’ the burglar walked in that way as sure as anything, an’ they be afther sayin’ as it was me or young Dave Carney as let ’em in, as honest a young feller as iver I seen. Oh, I tell yer—”
“Just wait a minute, Blanch,” interposed Honor. “Ido not think that you had anything to do with the robbery. Neither do my sisters, and we are the ones to whom you are accountable. If you go away in the next train, as you threaten to do, you will make others suspect you as well as my aunt. It will look exactly as if you were afraid of being caught and were running off. The detective who is coming out this morning will certainly say that you had something to do with it if he finds that you have gone, whereas if you stay quietly here and go about your work as usual, no one will dream of accusing you.”
There was an amount of common sense in thisstatement which B. Lafferty, excited though she was, could not fail to recognize.
“Very well,” said she, “I’ll stay till termorrow, but longer than that I couldn’t put up with that girl from Beacon Street. It’s long enough I’ve been afther standin’ it, and me keepin’ stiddy company with a widder man an’ havin’ the chance to git married any day I’ll set!”
And so saying she departed to the kitchen, leaving her mistress, who had recently been having a discussion with her aunt, strongly of the opinion that residents of Beacon Street were indeed difficult to live with.
It was not long before Roger Madison returned, bringing with him a detective. The man carefully examined the premises, took a list of the missing articles with an exact description of them all, and interviewed each member of the household.
There seemed to be no doubt that the person whom Katherine had heard in the shrubbery had entered through the window in Victoria’s room. Although Mrs. Wentworth Ward named her suspicions of both Blanch and Dave Carney to the detective, he did not seem inclined to agree with her in regard to the former. Honor had been given a very goodaccount of the Irishwoman’s honesty when she engaged her, and there had been nothing since she lived with them to cause her to doubt it.
As to Carney, that was a different matter. When the detective questioned him, he became very much confused and gave most unsatisfactory replies; and yet it seemed impossible that a boy who was familiar with the house, and knew that two members of the family occupied the room over the dining-room, should have chosen that means of entering. The detective could determine nothing as yet.
After he had gone back to Boston, and the affairs of the family had resumed their accustomed regularity, Victoria’s thoughts reverted to the matter which had been troubling her the evening before. There seemed to be no one to whom she could speak upon the subject. She attempted to draw Honor into conversation about it, but with no result. Honor replied rather shortly that her mind was too much occupied with the robbery to think of anything else. Naturally, to speak to Katherine was out of the question, and after all, said Victoria to herself, why was it necessary to speak to any one? It was only the foolish habit that they all had oftalking over their troubles together, that made her anxious to do so on this occasion.
“I may just as well learn to do without it,” thought she. “It is a good chance to begin. I have several things on my mind now. Katherine, the etchings, and Dave. Secrets and responsibilities seem to be multiplying. I think I’ll slip off to the grove and have a good think all to myself.”
This was not so easy of accomplishment as might appear at first sight, but after having promised Aunt Sophia that the afternoon should be devoted to her correspondence, and having established Peter and Sophy at a game of halma, and leaving Katherine at the piano and Honor at the sewing-machine, Victoria departed to the pine grove.
It was a warm day, and now at noon the sun shone down with oppressive heat. The weather, which had been unusually cool during the past few days for the season of the year, had suddenly changed, and a hot wave had reached that part of the country and was about to envelop them with its relentless intensity. There was not a breath of air in the grove, and the aromatic smell of the pine needles which covered the ground like a thick carpet seemed to add to the heat.
Victoria wondered if it would be cooler on the river, drawn up in the shadow of the bank. She went to the little boathouse and loosing the old boat, she stepped into it and pushed out into midstream. Then with one oar she paddled close up to shore and made herself fast to a convenient stump.
The boat was not a very comfortable craft, and it was inclined to leak, but by sitting with her feet carefully tucked to one side, she managed to avoid the pools of water in the bottom. The Starrs had long wished for a canoe, and their father had intended to buy one for them. After his death there was no money with which to get it, although Katherine had made known her intention more than once of buying one as soon as she had saved enough.
“I don’t believe she will, though,” said Victoria to herself, as she leaned her head upon her hands and prepared for a “good think.” “I really believe Katherine is growing a tiny mite more economical. She hasn’t bought anything at all, lately. I wonder if it is because of her interest in her music and—and the Madisons.”
The name had scarcely crossed her mind whenshe was startled by a voice that seemed to be very close to her. She had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she had not heard the gentle dip of a paddle nor the slight sound in the water of an approaching canoe. Turning quickly, she found that Roger Madison had drawn up directly alongside.
“Did I startle you?” he said. “I beg your pardon. I thought you would hear me coming. No, to be quite truthful, I didn’t really think so. I wanted to catch you, and not give you a chance to run away from me, as usual. No, you needn’t look up there,” he added, seeing that Victoria’s glance involuntarily sought the river bank, which was high and particularly steep at this point. “You couldn’t possibly climb up there, if you were to try, without falling back into the river, and I should have to rescue you from a watery grave.”
“A muddy one, I think,” said Victoria, laughing in spite of her desire for flight. She could not help liking Roger Madison, much as she wished to avoid him. She had liked him that memorable day in the picture store; and since then what a good friend he had proved himselfto be! He had saved Peter’s life, he had come again and again to see the boy, and had done much, Victoria felt confident, to help him to bear his accident patiently; and now to-day he had taken all this trouble in regard to the robbery.
“I have long been waiting for this chance,” said Madison; “and, now that it has come, I intend to make the most of it, and you shall not be allowed to escape until you have explained matters. I felt that I was staying out of town for some good reason to-day, and now it is explained. It was to see you. I want to know why you always try to avoid me. Have I ever done anything to make you dislike me?”
“Never!” replied Victoria, with such emphasis that there was no doubting her sincerity.
“Then why do you run away whenever I come within speaking distance?”
“I should think you would know,” said she. “It is because you were the man who bought that etching.”
“But I don’t see the connection,” said Roger. “Why should that make you wish to avoid me? You didn’t cheat me. The etching was worth all I gave you for it. It was simply a matter ofbusiness. If you feel that you must avoid all the people you have ever transacted any business with—”
“But itwasn’tworth all that you gave me for it,” cried Victoria, turning towards him her flushed and troubled face, and, in her excitement, allowing her feet to slip down into the bottom of the boat. “It wasn’t! That is just it! You gave me more than you should have done; and I accepted it, which was dreadful! When I came home and told the girls about it, Honor hoped that I should never see you again. She felt very badly about it, and so did I. I didn’t dare tell them that it was you. That is the reason I ran away the day we went to call on your sister and I saw you in the parlor. The girls couldn’t understand it, and have never been able to since.”
“Then they don’t know it yet?”
“No. I have never dared tell them.”
“Then don’t tell them now, will you? It might prejudice them against me.”
“I won’t if I can help it,” said Victoria. “They asked me last night about it, and said that Sophy repeated something I said yesterday afternoon. I think I should have told them then if Katherinehadn’t heard that noise in the shrubbery just at that minute, and we were interrupted.”
“But I wish you would explain why you feel so,” said Roger, with a puzzled expression upon his face. “Why did you wish to avoid me? Why did you never wish to see me again? I can’t understand.”
“Dear me, you are very dense!” exclaimed Victoria. “It is as simple as possible, I’m sure! In the first place, I took ten dollars more from you, or five dollars at least, than I should have done, because there was no reason why you should give me more than you would have paid in the store. Then, it—well, Honor felt dreadfully about having let me go to Boston to sell those etchings, and said I ought not to have gone alone, and you, ‘the young man,’ would think it very strange that I was allowed to go when I was so young, and she should have gone with me. That is the reason she hoped we should never see you again. Then when you came here to live I couldn’t tell her that you were the one, because she had felt uncomfortable about calling on your sister anyhow.”
“But why?” asked Madison. “Didn’t she like our looks?”
“Oh, not that at all! Because we are so poor and are working for our living. She felt that you were strangers and perhaps wouldn’t understand, and perhaps wouldn’t want us to call upon you or know you. You see, we haven’t always been so, and it makes it harder. We had great difficulty, Katherine and I, in getting her to go, and when she finally did and liked you all so much I couldn’t bear to spoil it by telling her.”
“I see,” said Roger. “And you won’t spoil it now by telling her, either, because—well, we are such capital friends now and it might make a difference. Wait until—until I know her better. Then we will tell her, you and I together, and have a good laugh over it. But I want to say something to you, Miss Victoria. You needn’t feel in that way about the etching. I happen to know that the picture dealer sold the others for thirty-five dollars each, and mine gave so much pleasure to my sister, to whom I gave it, that it is worth far more to me. I have never regretted buying it, I assure you. And I also want to tell you how much we admire and respect you for the way in which you have all done. So far from our not understanding, we had heard about youbefore we came, and were most anxious to meet you. We feel proud to know you. Would you mind shaking hands with me?”
Victoria promptly extended her hand, which was warmly grasped by the occupant of the other boat.
“You won’t run away any more,” said he, “will you?”
“No indeed! I’m thankful I don’t have to. You have done me a lot of good. It is one of the things I came down here to think over. You see I had no one to speak to about it, and I really seem to need some one always to talk things over with.”
“It is a great comfort. My sister and I have that habit, too. Can’t you talk the other ‘things’ over with me? You say this was one of them, so there must be more.”
Victoria blushed and turned away.
“Oh, no!” she said. “The others I shall have to keep to myself—except Dave Carney. I could consult you about him, but I think I had better not.”
“Do you mean in connection with the robbery?”
“Yes; and yet I don’t want to put it intowords. I wish I could have a little talk with Dave myself.”
“Why don’t you?” said Madison. “It would be more efficacious than anything I could do. You might induce him to tell you something.”
Victoria was silent for a moment. Then she suddenly looked at her feet.
“I am positively sitting with my feet in the river!” said she. “This leaky old boat is no good at all, and my shoes are soaking wet. I shall have to go right in and change them.”
“I suppose I shall have to allow you to go under those circumstances,” said Roger, as he pushed out of the way and watched her unfasten her boat, in the doing of which she scorned his proffered assistance. “But I am glad we have had this explanation. You won’t run away from me any more, will you?”
“No,” said Victoria, smiling brightly at him and disappearing within the shelter of the old boathouse. “I won’t run away from you any more.”
“BeforeI’d be afraid of a toad!”
“But, Peter, you’re not afraid of anything.”
“And you’re afraid of everything, so there’s the difference. I never saw such a girl. Snakes, and lizards, and toads, and spiders, and wasps—there isn’t a thing you’re not afraid of.”
“Yes, there is, too!” said Sophy, indignantly. “I’m not afraid of flies or butterflies or caterpillars—yes, I am afraid of caterpillars. They’re so fuzzy.”
“There, you see there is hardly anything! As for flies and butterflies, why, of course a baby wouldn’t mind them.”
“But what’s the use of those other things, Peter? What’s the use of wasps?”
“Wasps! Why, they’reveryuseful. They don’t hurt you unless you bother them, and they eat up slugs, and some kinds of caterpillars.”
“Well, wasps are very frightening, I think, even if they are useful, and so are hop toads, and hop toads are so ugly! Oh, here comes one now! Go away, you horrid, naughty toad!”
Peter and Sophy were on the piazza in the early twilight. Honor and Katherine were with the Madisons on the river, enjoying a picnic tea. Supper at Glen Arden was over, and Mrs. Wentworth Ward had walked to the village for her “constitutional,” which the hot weather had prevented during the day. Victoria had gone in search of Dave Carney, whom she thought she should be apt to find at liberty at this hour. It was the evening of the day upon which the robbery had been discovered.
“There is no use in an ugly toad, Peter,” continued Sophy.
“Indeed there is!” said her brother, in a tone of marked masculine superiority. “That just shows how little you know about things. Toads are regular policemen.”
“Peter! What do you mean? Do they arrest people?”
“No, of course not, you goosie! But they arrest insects. If you put toads into hotbeds orcold-frames, they’ll eat up all the bugs and worms that come after the plants. They keep regular guard, just as policemen do. There, do you hear that tree toad now?”
Sophy listened to the shrill song of the little creature that appeared to be sitting upon the branch of a tree close by.
“They’re as good as hop toads, for they eat caterpillars, and worms, and hateful flies that lay their eggs under the bark of the trees, and would eat up the trees if it were not for the toads.”
“I’m glad they eat caterpillars as well as the wasps,” said Sophy. “They’re so disagreeable. Why do you suppose caterpillars were made, Peter?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure. To eat up something else, I suppose, and to be food for toads. I’ll tell you another funny thing about hop toads. They never will touch a dead insect or bug or anything. They’ll only catch them alive. Isn’t that queer?”
“How much you do know, Peter!” said his sister, admiringly. “I wish I knew as much as you do. I’m going to keep asking questions all my life, and then perhaps some day I shall know as much.”
“You never will, for you are only a girl, and I’ma boy. You’ll never know as much as I do, for I shall always keep ahead of you. First place, I’m nearly five years older than you, and then, I’m a boy.”
“Oh, I know you think it’s very grand to be a boy,” said Sophy, still keeping a watchful eye upon the extremely active hop toad which with other members of its family had come forth from beneath the piazza for a hop in the evening air; “but some girls know a good deal. I was asking Mr. Madison about it the other day, and he said some girls knew as much as boys did, and when they grew up some women knew as much as some men. I think Mr. Madison likes girls better than you do, Peter. I think he likes Honor and Katherine very much indeed. He is always coming here to get them to go somewhere.”
“I know he is,” rejoined Peter. “I like Mr. Madison ever so much, and I think he’s a jolly good fellow, and I like the way he talks, usually, but he’s awfully silly about girls. We were having such an interesting talk the other day about animals and birds when Honor happened to come along, and he stopped right off short and walked off with her up to the house, and never came back to the treeswhere we were sitting at all! Oh, he’s downright silly about girls, and I don’t think you had better go by what he says about them.”
The dialogue was interrupted at this point by Victoria. She came up across the grass from the barn to the steps at the end of the piazza. There she paused.
“Peter,” said she, “have you seen Dave lately?”
“No, I haven’t seen him since—oh, I can’t think when it was.”
“Try and remember. I want to know particularly.”
“I guess it was before dinner. I saw him go across the garden towards the Ashmont road. I wondered where he was going.”
“I’m going around to the kitchen for a minute,” said Victoria, “and then I’ll come back.”
She was absent for five or ten minutes. When she returned, it was with a very grave face.
“Peter,” she said, “I’m very much afraid Dave has run away.”
“Vic! What do you mean?”
“Blanch says he hasn’t been in the kitchen since breakfast time. After the detective was here she saw him come out of the barn in very old clothes,and she thought he was going out to the farthest field to work. He went over in that direction.”
“Yes,” said Peter, eagerly, “that’s the way I saw him go.”
“He didn’t come in to dinner, and when she asked Wilson, the man who is working here to-day, you know, where he was, Wilson said that Dave said he had to go down to Fordham to get something, and he wouldn’t be home to dinner. Wilson supposed he was just going to take his noon hour to go down there, but he has never come back.”
“Why didn’t they tell us before?” asked Peter, impatiently.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Victoria. “You know what B. Lafferty is. She is dreadfully stupid about such things, and when I said something about it,—that she ought to have told us,—she said she wasn’t going to let on to that proud and haughty person from Beacon Street that her suspicions were correct.”
“Did she mean Aunt Sophia?” asked Sophy, who had forgotten her fear of the toads and was listening with eager attention.
“No; she meant Ellen Higgins, I suppose. Both Ellen and Aunt Sophia think that Davehad something to do with the robbery; and, do you know, Peter, it looks very much like it, now that Dave has gone.”
“Yes,” said Peter, very solemnly, “it really does. Oh, Vic, I never should have believed it of him, should you? I liked him so much. I can’t think so even now. I believe we’ll find out yet that he didn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe he was taken ill somewhere, or something has happened, and he can’t get back. Ican’tbelieve it was he.”
But the other members of the family did not agree with Peter. When they heard the news of Carney’s disappearance, they looked at one another with troubled faces. They had all liked the lad; and the discovery that he had deceived them and had treated them with such base ingratitude, after all that had been done for him, filled them with disappointment and real sorrow.
Mrs. Wentworth Ward was, of course, triumphant. She plumed herself upon her superior cleverness in having suspected the boy from the first; and she soundly berated the detective for having neglected to arrest him at once. Now the thief had escaped, and there was no knowing when hewould be found. With this exception, therefore, the Starrs awaited further developments with ill-concealed anxiety.
Honor and Katherine were very busy during these summer days; and even the intense heat which was raging at present did not keep them from their work. As soon as school had come to an end,—early in June,—they began upon their preserving. Glen Arden was famous for its currants and cherries, as well as for its apple and pear trees. As each fruit ripened, the huge kettle was brought out, a quantity of sugar ordered, and every available hand was brought into service.
Miss Madison, coming one morning to ask for Katherine’s assistance with some new music, found all so busy that she forgot her violin and, begging a large apron, sat down at the dining-room table with the others and began to stone cherries with vigor and enthusiasm.
Strawberries, when they came in season, were ordered in large quantities from the market, as not enough were grown upon the place to answer the purpose. In due time, currant jelly was to be put up, and the pears—for this was a pear year—were to be turned to account.
Mrs. Ward had ordered a liberal quantity of all varieties of preserves, and a message came from Mrs. Madison begging that she also might have the privilege of ordering some. All that were left were to be sent to the Woman’s Exchange in Boston, to be sold.
It was hot work, no doubt, and there were pleasanter things to be done in summer time than stirring with a long spoon in a kettle full of steaming fruit; but it was a source of great satisfaction to the girls to feel that they were making money as well now as when school and music pupils occupied their time, and it was certainly a far more entertaining way than that. The preserving days at Glen Arden proved to be the gayest of the summer; and Roger Madison, hearing about them from his sister, deliberately remained away from his law office one morning and, presenting himself at Glen Arden, begged for something to do, upon which they set him to stemming currants, with strict injunctions not to taste.
The week which followed the robbery passed away in this wise, and then one morning came the information that the stolen silver had been traced. Some of the articles had been found ina pawn-shop in Boston, having been left there by a young man—almost a boy, in fact—of slight figure, and with very light tow-colored hair. His eyes were peculiar, and would probably lead to his detection. They had a way of shifting uneasily, and of not meeting those of the person to whom he spoke.
This description fitted Dave exactly, with the exception of the part referring to the eyes. Dave had very good eyes, the Starrs thought, and a perfectly straightforward manner.
“Probably, since he did this dreadful thing,” said Victoria, sadly, “his eyes have changed.”
“I don’t believe he did it,” said Peter, stubbornly. “I shall never believe it unless he tells me so himself.”
Within a very short time, the suspected burglar was arrested, and it was found that his name was Carney! Roger Madison went to the jail to see him, and there, to his astonishment, found that it was James, and not David Carney. This young man closely resembled him, to be sure, but he was older, and his face had a totally different expression. He was David’s brother. His accomplice was also arrested, a much older manthan himself, and most of the stolen property was recovered.
The question now was, where was Dave? Was he also implicated, and had he for that reason run away? At all events, he had completely disappeared, and as the summer days passed by, and still there was no word of him, the Starrs gave up all hope of ever seeing him again. They did not wish, however, that any search should be made for him.
The elder Carney confessed that he had entered the house by way of the second-story window, which proved that Sophy had not dreamed that he went through the room, while his close resemblance to his brother easily accounted for the mistake of thinking that it was Dave. The only wonder was, that no one had remembered the brother before, but as he had been seen only by Peter and Sophy, perhaps that was not surprising.