"Perhaps so."
"In that case can you solve it?"
Illustration (Untitled)
[Illustration.]
"No; and that is one reason why I have thought of you. Have you ever tried any thing of the kind?"
'What Is It All?' He Asked.
[Illustration: "'What Is It All?' He Asked."]
"No; never. And I don't see how you have learned any thing about it, or how you have been able to arrive at any principle of action."
"Oh, as to that," returned Hilda, "the principle upon which I work is very simple; but I wish you to try the solution with your own unaided ingenuity. So, simple as my plan is, I will not tell you any thing about it just now."
Gualtier looked again at the paper with an expression of deep perplexity.
"How am I even to begin?" said he. "What am I to do? You might as well ask me to translate late the Peschito version of the Syriac gospels, or the Rig-Veda."
"I think," said Hilda, coolly, "that you have sufficient ingenuity."
"I have," said Gualtier; "but, unfortunately, my ingenuity does not lie at all in this direction. This is something different from any thing that has ever come in my way before. See," he said, pointing to the paper, "this solid mass of letters. It is a perfect block, an exact rectangle. How do you know where to begin? Nothing on the letters shows this. How do you know whether you are to read from left to right, or from right to left, like Hebrew and Arabic; or both ways, like the old Greek Boustrephedon; or vertically, like the Chinese; or, for that matter, diagonally? Why, one doesn't know even how to begin!"
"That must all be carefully considered," said Hilda. "I have weighed it all, and know every letter by heart; its shape, its position, and all about it."
"Well," said Gualtier, "you must not be at all surprised if I fail utterly."
"At least you will try?"
"Try? I shall be only too happy. I shall devote to this all the time that I have. I will give up all my mind and all my soul to it. I will not only examine it while I am by myself, but I will carry this paper with me wherever I go, and occupy every spare moment in studying it. I'll learn every character by heart, and think over them all day, and dream about them all night. Do not be afraid that I shall neglect it. It is enough for me that _you_ have given this for me to attempt its solution."
Gualtier spoke with earnestness and impetuosity, but Hilda did not seem to notice it at all.
"Recollect," she said, in her usual cool manner, "it is as much for your interest as for mine. If my conjecture is right, it may be of the utmost value. If I am wrong, then I do not know what to do."
"You think that this implicates General Pomeroy in some crime?"
"That is my impression, from my own attempt at solving it. But, as I said, my solution is only a partial one. I can not fathom the rest of it, and do not know how to begin to do so. That is the reason why I want your help."
CHAPTER VIII.
DECIPHERING.
Many weeks passed away before Gualtier had another opportunity of having a confidential conversation with Miss Krieff. Zillah seemed to be perverse. She was as capricious as ever as to her music: some days attending to it for five minutes, other days half an hour; but now she did not choose to leave the room. She would quit the piano, and, flinging herself into a chair, declare that she wanted to see how Hilda stood it. As Hilda seated herself and wrought out elaborate combinations from the instrument, she would listen attentively, and when it was over she would give expression to some despairing words as to her own stupidity.
Yet Gualtier had opportunities, and he was not slow to avail himself of them. Confidential intercourse had arisen between himself and Miss Krieff, and he was determined to avail himself of the great advantage which this gave him. They had a secret in common--she had admitted him to her intimacy. There was an understanding between them. Each felt an interest in the other. Gualtier knew that he was more than an ordinary music-teacher to her.
During those days when Zillah persistently staid in the room he made opportunities for himself. Standing behind her at the piano he had chances of speaking words which Zillah could not hear.
Thus: "Your fingering there is not correct, Miss Krieff," he would say in a low tone. "You must put the second finger on G. I have not yet deciphered it."
"But the book indicates the third finger on G. Have you tried?"
"It is a blunder of the printer. Yes, every day--almost every hour of every day."
"Yet it seems to me to be natural to put the third finger there. Are you discouraged?"
"Try the second finger once or twice, this way;" and he played a few notes. "Discouraged? no; I am willing to keep at it for an indefinite period."
"Yes, I see that it is better. You must succeed. I was three months at it before I discovered any thing."
"That passage is _allegro_, and you played it _andante_. I wish you would give me a faint hint as to the way in which you deciphered it."
"I did not notice the directions," responded Miss Krieff, playing the passage over again.
"Will that do? No, I will give no hint. You would only imitate me then, and I wish you to find out for yourself on your own principle."
"Yes, that is much better. But I have no principle to start on, and have not yet found out even how to begin."
"I must pay more attention to 'expression,' I see. You say my 'time' is correct enough. If you are not discouraged, you will find it out yet."
"Your 'time' is perfect. If it is possible, I will find it out. I am not discouraged."
"Well, I will hope for something better the next time, and now don't speak about it any more. The 'brat' is listening."
"_Allegro_, _allegro_; remember, Miss Krieff. You always confound _andante_ with _allegro_."
"So I do. They have the same initials."
Such was the nature of Gualtier's musical instructions. These communications, however, were brief and hurried, and only served to deepen the intimacy between them. They had now mutually recognized themselves as two conspirators, and had thus become already indispensable to one another.
They waited patiently, however, and at length their patient waiting was rewarded. One day Gualtier came and found that Zillah was unwell, and confined to her room. It was the slightest thing in the world, but the General was anxious and fidgety, and was staying in the room with her trying to amuse her. This Miss Krieff told him with her usual bitterness.
"And now," said she, "we will have an hour. I want to know what you have done."
"Done! Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No, nothing. My genius does not lie in that direction. You might as well have expected me to decipher a Ninevite inscription. I can do nothing."
"Have you tried?"
"Tried! I assure you that for the last month the only thing that I have thought of has been this. Many reasons have urged me to decipher it, but the chief motive was the hope of bringing to you a complete explanation."
"Have you not made out at least a part of it?"
"Not a part--not a single word--if there are words in it--which I very much doubt."
"Why should you doubt it?"
"It seems to me that it must consist of hieroglyphics. You yourself say that you have only made out a part of it, and that you doubt whether it is a valid interpretation. After all, then, your interpretation is only partial--only a conjecture. Now I have not begun to make even a conjecture. For see--what is this?" and Gualtier drew the well-thumbed paper from his pocket. "I have counted up all the different characters here, and find that they are forty in number. They are composed chiefly of astronomical signs; but sixteen of them are the ordinary punctuation marks, such as one sees every day. If it were merely a secret alphabet, there would be twenty-six signs only, not forty. What can one do with forty signs?
"I have examined different grammars of foreign languages to see if any of them had forty letters, but among the few books at my command I can find none; and even if it were so, what then? What would be the use of trying to decipher an inscription in Arabic? I thought at one time that perhaps the writer might have adopted the short-hand alphabet, but changed the signs. Yet even when I go from this principle I can do nothing."
"Then you give it up altogether?"
"Yes, altogether and utterly, so far as I am concerned; but I still am anxious to know what you have deciphered, and how you have deciphered it. I have a hope that I may gain some light from your discovery, and thus be able to do something myself."
"Well," said Miss Krieff, "I will tell you, since you have failed so completely. My principle is a simple one; and my deciphering, though only partial, seems to me to be so true, as far as it goes, that I can not imagine how any other result can be found.
"I am aware," she continued, "that there are forty different characters in the inscription. I counted them all out, and wrote them out most carefully. I went on the simple principle that the writer had written in English, and that the number of the letters might be disregarded on a first examination.
"Then I examined the number of times in which each letter occurred. I found that the sign [Aries image] occurred most frequently. Next was [Gemini image]; next [Taurus image]; and then [Cancer image], and [Leo image], and [Libra image], and [Sagittarius image], and [Mars image]." Miss Krieff marked these signs down as she spoke.
Gualtier nodded.
"There was this peculiarity about these signs," said Miss Krieff, "that they occurred all through the writing, while the others occurred some in the first half and some in the second. For this inscription is very peculiar in this respect. It is only in the second half that the signs of punctuation occur. The signs of the first half are all astronomical.
"You must remember," continued Miss Krieff, "that I did not think of any other language than the English. The idea of its being any dialect of the Hindustani never entered my head. So I went on this foundation, and naturally the first thought that came to me was, what letters are there in English which occur most frequently? It seemed to me if I could find this out I might obtain some key, partially, at any rate, to the letters which occurred so frequently in this writing.
"I had plenty of time and unlimited patience. I took a large number of different books, written by standard authors, and counted the letters on several pages of each as they occurred. I think I counted more than two hundred pages in this way. I began with the vowels, and counted up the number of times each one occurred. Then I counted the consonants."
"That never occurred to me," said Gualtier. "Why did you not tell me?"
"Because I wanted you to decipher it yourself on your own principle. Of what use would it be if you only followed over my track? You would then have come only to my result. But I must tell you the result of my examination. After counting up the recurrence of all the letters on more than two hundred pages of standard authors, I made out an average of the times of their recurrence, and I have the paper here on which I wrote the average down."
And Miss Krieff drew from her pocket a paper which she unfolded and showed to Gualtier. On it was the following:
AVERAGE OF LETTERS.
E.....222 times per page. N.....90 times per page.
T.....162 times per page. L.....62 times per page.
A.....120 times per page. D.....46 times per page.
H.....110 times per page. C.....42 times per page.
I..J..109 times per page. U..V..36 times per page.
S.....104 times per page. B.....36 times per page.
O.....100 times per page. W.....30 times per page.
R.....100 times per page. G.....30 times per page.
"The rest," said Miss Krieff, "occur on the average less than thirty times on a page, and so I did not mark them. 'F,' 'P,' and 'K' may be supposed to occur more frequently than some others; but they do not.
"'E,' then," she continued, "is the letter of first importance in the English language. 'A,' and 'T,' and 'H,' are the next ones. Now there are some little words which include these letters, such as 'the.' 'And' is another word which may be discovered and deciphered, it is of such frequent occurrence. If these words only can be found, it is a sign at least that one is on the right track. There are also terminations which seem to me peculiar to the English language; such as 'ng,' 'ing,' 'ed,' 'ly,' and so on. At any rate, from my studies of the Italian, French, and German, and from my knowledge of Hindustani, I know that there are no such terminations in any of the words of those languages. So you see," concluded Miss Krieff, with a quiet smile, "the simple principle on which I acted."
"Your genius is marvelously acute!" exclaimed Gualtier, in undisguised admiration. "You speak of your principle as a _simple_ one, but it is more than I have been able to arrive at."
"Men," said Miss Krieff, "reason too much. You have been imagining all sorts of languages in which this may have been written. Now, women go by intuitions. I acted in that way."
"Intuitions!" exclaimed Gualtier. "You have reasoned out this thing in a way which might have done honor to Bacon. You have laid down a great principle as a foundation, and have gone earnestly to work building up your theory. Champollion himself did not surpass you."
Gualtier's tone expressed profound admiration. It was not idle compliment. It was sincere. He looked upon her at that moment as a superior genius. His intellect bowed before hers. Miss Krieff saw the ascendency which she had gained over him; and his expressions of admiration were not unwelcome. Admiration! Rare, indeed, was it that she had heard any expressions of that kind, and when they came they were as welcome as is the water to the parched and thirsty ground. Her whole manner softened toward him, and her eyes, which were usually so bright and hard, now grew softer, though none the less bright.
"You overestimate what I have done," said she, "and you forget that it is only partially effected."
"Whether partially or not," replied Gualtier, "I have the most intense curiosity to see what you have done. Have you any objections to show it to me? Now that I have failed by myself, the only hope that I have is to be able to succeed through your assistance. You can show your superiority to me here; perhaps, in other things, I may be of service to you."
"I have no objections," said Miss Krieff. "Indeed I would rather show you my results than not, so as to hear what you have to say about them. I am not at all satisfied, for it is only partial. I know what you will say. You will see several reasons, all of which are very good, for doubting my interpretation of this writing."
"I can assure you that I shall doubt nothing. After my own disgraceful failure any interpretation will seem to me to be a work of genius. Believe me any interpretation of yours will only fill me with a sense of my own weakness."
"Well," said Miss Krieff, after a pause, "I will show you what I have done. My papers are in my room. Go and play on the piano till I come back."
Saying this she departed, and was absent for about a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, and then returned.
"How is Miss Pomeroy?" asked Gualtier, turning round on the piano-stool and rising.
"About the same," said Miss Krieff. "The General is reading Puss in Boots to her, I believe. Perhaps it is Jack and the Bean Stalk, or Beauty and the Beast. It is one of them, however. I am not certain which."
She walked up to a centre-table and opened a paper which she held in her hand. Gualtier followed her, and took a seat by her side.
"You must remember," said Miss Krieff, "that this interpretation of mine is only a partial one, and may be altogether wrong. Yet the revelations which it seemed to convey were so startling that they have produced a very deep impression on my mind. I hoped that you would have done something. If you had arrived at a solution similar to mine, even if it had been a partial one, I should have been satisfied that I had arrived at a part of the truth at least. As you have not done so, nothing remains but to show you what I have done."
Saying this, she opened the paper which she held and displayed it to Gualtier:
Illustration (Untitled)
[Illustration.]
"In that writing," said she, "there are twenty lines. I have been able to do any thing with ten of them only, and that partially. The rest is beyond my conjecture."
The paper was written so as to show under each character the corresponding letter, or what Miss Krieff supposed to be the corresponding letter, to each sign.
"This," said Miss Krieff, "is about half of the signs. You see if my key is applied it makes intelligible English out of most of the signs in this first half. There seems to me to be a block of letters set into a mass of characters. Those triangular portions of signs at each end, and all the lower part, seem to me to be merely a mass of characters that mean nothing, but added to conceal and distract."
"It is possible," said Gualtier, carefully examining the paper.
"It must mean something," said Miss Krieff, "and it can mean nothing else than what I have written. That is what it was intended to express. Those letters could not have tumbled into that position by accident, so as to make up these words. See," she continued, "here are these sentences written out separately, and you can read them more conveniently."
She handed Gualtier a piece of paper, on which was the following:
_Oh may God have mercy on my wretched soul Amen
O Pomeroy forged a hundred thousand dollars
O N Pomeroy eloped with poor Lady Chetwynde
She acted out of a mad impulse in flying
She listened to me and ran off with me
She was piqued at her husband's act
Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynd
Expelled the army for gaming
N Pomeroy of Pomeroy Berks
O I am a miserable villain_
Gualtier read it long and thoughtfully. "What are the initials 'O. N.?'"
"Otto Neville. It is the General's name."
Silence followed. "Here he is called O Pomeroy, O N Pomeroy, and N Pomeroy."
"Yes; the name by which he is called is Neville."
"Your idea is that it is a confession of guilt, written by this O. N. Pomeroy himself?"
"It reads so."
"I don't want to inquire into the probability of the General's writing out this and leaving it in his drawer, even in cipher, but I look only at the paper itself."
"What do you think of it?"
"In the first place your interpretation is very ingenious."
"But--?"
"But it seems partial."
"So it does to me. That is the reason why I want your help. You see that there are several things about it which give it an incomplete character. First, the mixture of initials; then, the interchange of the first and third persons. At one moment the writer speaking of Pomeroy as a third person, running off with Lady Chetwynde, and again saying he himself fell in with her. Then there are incomplete sentences, such as, 'Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynde--'"
"I know all that, but I have two ways of accounting for it."
"What?"
"First, that the writer became confused in writing the cipher characters and made mistakes."
"That is probable," said Gualtier. "What is another way?"
"That he wrote it this way on purpose to baffle."
"I think the first idea is the best: if he had wished to baffle he never would have written it at all."
"No; but somebody else might have written it in his name thus secretly and guardedly. Some one who wished for vengeance, and tried this way."
Gualtier said nothing in reply, but looked earnestly at Miss Krieff.
Illustration (Untitled)
[Illustration.]
CHAPTER IX.
A SERIOUS ACCIDENT.
About this time an event took place which caused a total change in the lives of all at Pomeroy Court. One day, when out hunting, General Pomeroy met with an accident of a very serious nature. While leaping over a hedge the horse slipped and threw his rider, falling heavily on him at the same time. He was picked up bleeding and senseless, and in that condition carried home. On seeing her father thus brought back, Zillah gave way to a perfect frenzy of grief. She threw herself upon his unconscious form, uttering wild ejaculations, and it was with extreme difficulty that she could be taken away long enough to allow the General to be undressed and laid on his bed. She then took her place by her father's bedside, where she remained without food or sleep for two or three days, refusing all entreaties to leave him. A doctor had been sent for with all speed, and on his arrival did what he could for the senseless sufferer. It was a very serious case, and it was not till the third day that the General opened his eyes. The first sight that he saw was the pale and haggard face of his daughter.
"What is this?" he murmured, confusedly, and in a faint voice. "What are you doing here, my darling?"