CHAPTER VIII
BEFORE the man on the old couch realized the actuality of the situation and sprang to his feet, his bewildered, incredulous eyes took in perforce the vision of a tall, graceful young girl with dark bands of hair wound about her small head and dark brows and eyes conspicuous in the dusk because of the pallor of her face. But pale as she was, and weak and faint and confused, Alice Lorraine’s fear took flight almost immediately. The first movement of the unknown man startled only to reassure her. He sprang to his feet, but only to shrink back into the corner as if to allow her to fly if she would.
He waited a moment for that before he spoke. In the inconsiderable interval, Alice, shaken as she was, saw the man so clearly that she could have given a fairly accurate description of him if she had never seen him thereafter. She saw that he was tall, thin and gaunt, but that his face, worn as it was, was almost the face of a boy. That must have been because of his eyes, which were deep set and wide apart, not large nor dark of colour but at once shy, kind and appealing. As he started to speak, it came to the girl that he was the very image of the man upon whom her thoughts had been dwelling from the moment ofher leaving the Hollow, except that he was thinner, more worn, older (save for his eyes) and much more shabby. But gaunt as the man was, he was no ghost.
“I beg your pardon. I must have frightened you,” he murmured in a gentle, deprecatory voice which would have been exactly the right sort of voice for the dead musician and which would of itself have reassured Alice had the dusk been so deep as to veil the kindliness of his countenance.
“I was—startled,” the girl gasped. “I didn’t know—I never dreamed——”
“Of course you didn’t. It was unpardonable in me,” he declared. “But I believed the house yonder was unoccupied. There was no one there all yesterday and no light at night. I could see that there had been someone living there, but I supposed whoever it was had gone—vamousedas we say in the West. I wouldn’t however,—at least I hope I wouldn’t have tried to enter that in any case. But I know this old shop as a boy and I couldn’t resist making an attempt to get in here. Then—I got to thinking of old times and—I have walked many miles during the last week—I threw myself down on the old lounge and fell asleep.”
He raised his eyes almost ingenuously to her, for the moment a shy boy.
“I hate to think what a sad shock it must have been to you coming upon me so,” he said contritely. “You look ready to drop. Won’t you sit down? Thechair over yonder by the stair railing is all right for I dusted it with my pocket handkerchief.”
“Thank you,” the girl faltered, “but——”
He understood. “Naturally you would like to get out of here right away? May I help you down? The stairway is steep and narrow and it is dark below. But perhaps you would rather go alone?”
The girl’s heart throbbed strangely.
“I should like to get out into the air,” she said. “I can get down all right, but——”
“May I come after and—explain myself?” he asked. “I want you to understand and to feel safe from further shocks of the sort.”
She murmured a confused affirmative and started to feel her way down.
“Do you mind my shining a light?” he asked. “I have an electric flash-light in my pocket, but please don’t think me a professional burglar for all that.”
Alice tried to laugh, though she was still shaken. He lighted her down and out, took her key, locked the door and handed it back to her.
“You live in the house?” he asked.
Alice explained that she lived there with her mother but that they were visiting in the part of the village called South Hollow. She knew that she shouldn’t be saying this to a stranger whom she had found in the upper storey of the shop; but for herself she felt that there are strangers and strangers.
“I know the Hollow,” he said. “I lived about here as a boy. Are you going back now?”
Alice replies that she ought to be, but that she felt as if she must sit down for a little first and would go up to the porch. He accompanied her thither and asked if he might wait. And when she gave the desired permission, he suggested that she get herself a wrap from the house. As she complied with the suggestion, the girl seemed to feel her mother’s horror. He unlocked the door for her and waited on the walk below. When she came out and dropped down upon one settee, he seated himself opposite.
“I want to apologise for my thoughtlessness which might have had serious consequences,” he said quietly. “And I give you my word that I will not come near the place again so that you needn’t feel nervous about coming in at any time. And—neither need your mother. I suppose you will tell her?”
“No, I don’t think I will,” said the girl slowly. “It would frighten her unnecessarily and what’s the use?”
“None if you feel so,” he said. “I confess that I shall be very glad if you do not, though I wouldn’t stand in the way of your doing so if you feel it right. As a matter of fact, I don’t want anyone to know I am about here—or that anyone is about who is not here ordinarily.”
“I won’t mention it,” she said.
“You are very good,” he returned simply.
For a little there was silence between them. Then he spoke.
“I really want to stay about for a little,” he began deprecatingly. “I have only just come, and—perhapsyou wouldn’t mind if I promise to keep away from here? I have been away a long time. All sorts of things have happened to me in the interval and also, I dare say, to the people in Farleigh I used to know. I am living and working in the Middle West. I saved up money to take a vacation and come East and look around. I don’t want people to see me but I want to try to see some of those I used to think a lot of. You will believe me, won’t you, when I say that I have no other purpose in mind?”
“Of course I will,” the girl cried warmly.
“Thank you. It might well look queer to you for me to be skulking about, but I simply cannot let anyone know anything about me, and yet I long above all things to find out about old friends—who is alive and—and all that. I thought it would be simple, for it is a very long time and I have changed so that I felt I was safe. But I came upon a drummer in New York who had known me only slightly and he recognised me. That took away my nerve. I couldn’t bluff now. So there’s nothing to do but to spy around nights. I can only see who’s here and who——”
“If you don’t see them you won’t think they’re dead?” protested the girl.
“The ones I care for would be dead if they weren’t here,” he said quietly.
He said this so exactly as Dick Cartwright would have said it, that it came to Alice Lorraine that it was not unlikely that he was a relative of the dead man. He looked enough like him—or like the image in Alice’smind which people who had known him had furnished material for—to be his brother. He wasn’t old enough to be his father nor young enough to be his son. Suppose it was really Dick Cartwright that the stranger had gone through so much to come and look up? How terribly sad to find him dead! But if that should be the case, it would, perhaps, be the kindest thing to tell him at once. As she felt for words to introduce the subject, it came to the girl that he would feel somewhat comforted to hear of her idea of a memorial.
“I wonder,” she began almost eagerly, then started again quietly. “The man that built this house—the shop was built years earlier, they tell me—he was—I wonder if he was here in your day? His name was Richard Cartwright.”
“O yes, I knew Cartwright,” he returned not at all enthusiastically.
“You may not have heard—that he is dead?” she said softly.
“I understood he was. He came to a bad end, I believe?”
“A sad end,” she amended with a trace of indignation. “He was killed in a railway accident.”
“But he was himself a wreck long before that, I believe,” he remarked. “However, you, being a stranger, would not have heard I suppose. If you hadn’t come to live in his house, you would never have heard of him at all and then only because it is a crazy-built house.”
“It’s a charming house,” the girl declared.
“It is attractive to look at,” he agreed, peering through the dusk. “But—he is pretty well forgotten by this time, I dare say?”
“Well, if he is, it isn’t fair! It isn’t fair at all!” she cried.
He had nothing to say.
“Mr. Langley, the minister, whom everybody looks up to, thought ever so much of Mr. Cartwright. I don’t believe he has forgotten him,” she asserted.
“Mr. Langley! You know Mr. Langley!” he exclaimed. “O tell me of him, please.”
“I have only seen him to speak to him once. But he is—O very impressive—I mean you take to him and feel he’s wonderful just as those who have always known him do.”
“How does he look? But I shall see him. I must. I’ll see him to-night. Does—but I ought not to let you stay here longer. It’s dark already. My name is John Converse. May I ask to whom I am indebted for this kindness?”
“I am Alice Lorraine,” she said, rising reluctantly.
He asked if he might walk to the Hollow with her. The girl hesitated, wondering if it were safe for him.
“I am sorry I am so shabby, Miss Lorraine,” he said. “I have decent clothes over at Marsden Bridge where I am staying—I didn’t dare risk Wenham—but I am less likely to be recognized in these.”
They set out at once. But they had gone only a few rods beyond the lane when the sound of lightfootsteps came clearly to them in the absolute stillness of the damp autumn evening.
“That’s Mr. Langley,” he said quietly. “I’ll have to leave you. He’s the one person I dare not meet even in black night.”
“O wait!” begged Alice in agonised whisper, panic stricken at the thought that she would never see him again. But at that moment a dark figure appeared in sight. Alice pressed the keys into the stranger’s hand. “To-morrow at four. I’ll come to the shop,” she whispered. John Converse disappeared into the bushes by the roadside.
It was barely a minute before Mr. Langley had stopped and was calling her by name.
“Why Miss Lorraine, is it indeed you?” he cried, surprised to see the girl out alone after dark. He bade her come back as far as the Smiths’ with him that he might get their horse and drive her back to Miss Penny’s, giving her no opportunity to refuse.
They were hardly in the carriage when Alice turned to the minister.
“Mr. Langley, I heard lately of a man returning to his birthplace after years of absence longing to find out all about the friends of his boyhood and to see them if he could do it secretly. How would you account for such a thing?”
Though Mr. Langley was quite accustomed to being bombarded with odd questions, sometimes hypothetical, sometimes otherwise, he hesitated now. He could not say to this girl whose father was in prison that theobvious solution of her problem was that the man had committed a crime and was a fugitive from justice or was ashamed of his record. But before the pause became awkward an happy suggestion came to his mind.
“Well, it might be another case of Enoch Arden,” he said. “This man might have been missing for so long that he had been taken for dead. That used to be very common in sea-faring places and among sea-faring people. His wife or sweet-heart may have married another. Or I can imagine a man being unwilling to make himself known when relatives have come into possession of his more material property.”
Alice’s heart leaped. She remembered Enoch Arden only vaguely, but enough to feel a thrill at her heart at the thought of re-reading it in her bed that night. There was a copy of Tennyson’s complete poems in the book-case of the room she occupied—which was Reuben’s old room.
The Smiths’ horse was a fine, strong creature which did not get sufficient exercise, but he didn’t fancy starting out just at supper time any more than Miss Penny’s fat pony, and he showed his reluctance plainly. It came to Alice that this was her chance to find out more of Richard Cartwright. She had said she would seize her first opportunity. Besides, Mr. Converse had spoken slightingly of him. It wouldn’t be bad to have Mr. Langley’s own word as to his respect and admiration for the dead genius.
“O Mr. Langley, I have—well living in the cottagewhere he lived I suppose it is natural for me to wonder about Mr. Cartwright,” she observed. “But—no one seems to have anything to say about him. Of course, he can’t be forgotten?”
“His son has rather overshadowed Cartwright’s memory,” Mr. Langley remarked quietly.
“One certainly hears enough ofhim,” the girl remarked.
“O Miss Lorraine, I hope you and your mother aren’t getting the impression that Reuben is anything of a prig,” he protested, “for he isn’t. He is—well, he is four-square, that boy is, Miss Lorraine, and I am happy to think that you will see him and judge for yourself in the Christmas holidays.”
“I shall be pleased, I’m sure,” she murmured conventionally. “But I can’t help being more interested in the father,—being so musical and wanting a pipe organ in his house and dying before it ever came to him. You knew him well, Mr. Langley?”
“Yes, I knew—and loved the man well,” he said sadly. “He was a charming fellow, the best of companions and friends.”
“And he played—well?”
“To me he seemed almost a genius,” he replied, and Alice heard herself repeating it triumphantly to John Converse.
“And yet—people have forgotten him already!” she exclaimed. “One would think—O Mr. Langley, has there ever been any idea of a memorial for him here in Farleigh?”
“O no, nothing of the kind,” he said in some surprise.
“But don’t you think there should be?” she cried.
“In his case, I think it is better as it is,” he said.
Alice’s heart sank. O dear, how terribly strict Mr. Langley was!
“You mean because he drank?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t mean that,” he said slowly. “I believe his taking to drink as he did shows weakness, but I cannot judge Dick Cartwright too severely for that. His artistic temperament made him different. Grief was truly more terrible to him and temptation stronger than to less gifted mortals. And when he went away and deserted his little son he was hardly a responsible person.”
Alice was silent until lights twinkling in the Hollow reminded her that she had only a few minutes. “But surely, Mr. Langley, you wouldn’t have him forgotten?” she asked.
Mr. Langley realised that Alice Lorraine was a girl of some force. She was apparently intent upon obtaining justice to Dick Cartwright’s memory—which must not be.
“It’s this way, Miss Lorraine,—for I am going to tell you something in strict confidence. It is for the best that Richard Cartwright be forgotten save in the minds of a few friends. He died in a railway wreck, it is true, but he was not an innocent victim. I myself thought him to have been at first. I wrote to a friend in Chicago hoping he might secure details which might be of comfort to Cartwright’s friends and later toReuben. But I regretted my action. My friend learned that Cartwright had turned ruffian and desperado. He was a member of a gang that killed the mail clerk and the engineer and thus wrecked the train.”
He sighed. He didn’t say that if Cartwright had not been killed he would to-day be serving life sentence in prison with others of the gang who had escaped. But he felt compelled to add: “I dislike to believe it and do not, but one of the men said that Cartwright fired the shot that killed the mail clerk. So I do not wish any attempt to revive the remembrance of Reuben’s father.”
“Of course not,” cried Alice. “I understand, and—thank you, Mr. Langley. I am sorry to have awakened sad memories for you.”
The house was in darkness but Alice did not mind that. Relieved at the absence of Miss Penny and her mother she rushed upstairs and removing her wraps threw herself on the bed, her thoughts a wild chaos. She did not know how long she had been there when she heard her name called from below.
Going down, she found Anna’s brother Frank who had lighted the lamp.
“I guess you were scared about your mother and Miss Penny,” the boy said sympathetically, gazing at her white face. “They thought you’d be, but they clean forgot. They’re over to our house. Anna’s come home and—something terrible’s happened to her!”