LXXIII
I have one more memory of that night. As I was leaving—for I was resolved to remain at my hotel until our marriage, which, for many reasons, was to be an immediate one without preparation and with but little ceremony,—I asked my love why in the months of her father’s illness, and during the time when perplexities of various kinds were in all our hearts, she never allowed herself to remain alone with me or to go where I went even with her father’s permission.
And her answer, given with a smile and a blush was this:
“I did not dare.”
She did not dare! My conscientious darling.
And I had not dared. But my fears were not her fears. I had feared to be presumptuous; of building up a fairyland out of dreams; of yielding to my imagination rather than to my good sense. And yet, deep down in some inner consciousness, a faint insidious hope had whispered to itself that if I showed myself worthy, perhaps—perhaps—
And now perhaps had become reality, and all doubt and mistrust a vanished dream.
But though I had walked in clouded ways and had not known my Orpha’s heart, there had been one in the household who had. I learned it that night from a few words uttered by Clarke on my return to the hotel.
I was not surprised to find him waiting for me in the lobby; we had come into such close contact during the strenuous days that had just passed, that it would have seemed unnatural not to have found him there. But what did astonish me was to see the wistful look with which he contemplated me as I signified to him my wish for him to follow me upstairs. But once together in my room, I understood, and letting the full joyousness of my heart to appear, I smilingly said:
“You may congratulate me, Clarke. My good fortune is complete.”
And this is what he uttered in response, greatly to my surprise and possibly to his own:
“I thought it would all come right, sir.”
But it was not till he was on the point of leaving me for the night that I learned his full mind.
His hand was on the knob of the door and he was about to turn it, when he suddenly loosened his hold and came back.
“Excuse me, sir, but I shan’t feel quite right till I tell you all the truth about myself. Did you, when things looked a little dark after the terrible news the doctors gave us, get a queer looking sort of note hidden in your box of cigars?”
“Yes, I did, Clarke; and I don’t know yet who took that much compassion on me?”
“It was I, Mr. Bartholomew.” (Never had he called me that before. I wonder if it came with a long dreaded effort.) “But it was not from compassion for you, sir—more’s the pity; but because I knew my young lady’s heart and felt willing to help her that much in her great trouble.”
“You knew—”
“Not by any words, sir; but by a look I saw on her face one day as she stood in the window watching you motor away. You were to be gone a week and she could not stand the thought of it. I hope you will pardon me for speaking so plainly. I have always felt the highest regard for Miss Bartholomew.”
Oh, the pictures that came back! Pictures I had not seen at the time but which now would never leave me.
Perhaps he saw my emotion; perhaps he only realized it, but an instant of silence passed before he quietly added:
“A man thinks he’s honest till he comes to the point of trial. When they asked me if I wrote anything to anybody about that key, I said No, for I didn’t write anything as you must know who read the printed letters I pasted in such crooked lines on a slip of paper.”
I smiled; it was easy to smile that night.
“You know where the key was found. How do you think it got there?”
“In the flower-pot? Of course, I can’t say for certain, but this is how I’ve figured it out. On the morning he died, you found him, as you must remember, in the same flannel robe which he had worn while sitting up. This was because he would not allow me as he had always done before to remove it. That robe was buttoned close to his neck when we left him, but it was not so buttoned in the morning, and we know why. He had wanted to use the key he wore strung on a chain about his neck, and that key hung under his pajama jacket. To get it he had first to unfasten his dressing-gown and then his pajama jacket, or if he did not want to go to that trouble, to simply pull it up into his hand by means of the chain which held it. He probably did the latter, being naturally impatient with buttons and such like and letting it fall within reach, went about the business he had planned.
“So far excitement had kept him up, but when, after an act which would have tired a well man, he came back into his room—Well! that was different. He could draw into place the shelves which had hidden the secret stairway, and he could put out the light in his closet; for all this had to be done if he did not want to give away his secret. And he could manage, though not without difficulty, I’m sure, to reach and unlock his two doors; but that done, the little job of unbuttoning his jacket, throwing the chain over his head and rearranging his whole clothing so that the key would be invisible to his nurse when she came in, was just a little too much. But the key had to be hidden, and hidden quickly and easily, and he being, as there is every reason to believe on the further side of the bed where he had gone to unlock the upper door, he was at this time of failing strength within a foot of the potted plant standing in the window, and this gave him his idea.
“Gathering up the chain and key in his hand, he made use of the latter to push aside the soil in the pot sufficiently to make a hole large enough to hold anything so thin and slight as that chain and key. A flick given by his fingers to the loose mold and they were covered. That’s how I’ve reasoned it out; and if it is not all true some of it is for his slippers were found lying on that side of the bed, instead of under the stand by the closet where I had placed them on taking them off. What do you think, sir? Doesn’t that answer your question?”
“Yes, Clarke, as well as it ever will be answered. Have you given this explanation to Miss Bartholomew, or to any one else in fact?”
“No, sir. I’m not quick to talk and I should not have said as much to you if you had not asked me. For after all it is only my thoughts, sir. We shall never know all that passed through the mind of your uncle during those last three hours.”
It was after our return from a very short wedding journey, during which we had seen Edgar married to Lucy, that one evening when life seemed very sweet to us, Orpha put into my hands a sheet of discolored paper, folded letter-wise, saying softly:
“My last secret, Quenton. That is an old, old letter written by my father and found by me at the same time I found the early will in the old box at the foot of the hidden stairway. It was lying underneath the will and would have escaped my notice if the box had not fallen from its peg while I was pulling at the crumpled-up document in my effort to get it out. It is a treasure and the time has come for you to share it with me. Read it, Quenton.”
And this is what I read:
Some day, my darling child, you will find this letter. When you do, you will wonder why in building this house, I took such pains to retain within its walls a portion of the old iron stairway belonging to the ancient inn against which I chose to rear this structure.
I am going to tell you. You are a child now, thirteen last Tuesday. I hope you will be a woman when you read these lines, and a fine one, as just and as generous-hearted as your mother. You will understand me better so, especially if that great alchemist, Love, has wrought his miracle in your heart.
For Love is my theme, dear child, the love I felt for your mother. The stairway down which you have stepped in such amazement was our trysting place in those days. At its base was the spot where we pledged our young love. She lived within with her father and mother, but there were moments when she could steal out under the stars,—moments so blessed to me, a thoughtless lad, that their influence is with me yet though the grave has her sweet body, and Immortal Love her soul.
You will be like her. You will be to Edgar what your mother has been to me. When you are that—when a woman is a guiding star to her husband—she may face the ills of life without fear, for the blessing of Heaven is upon her.
As is that of your father,
Edgar Quenton Bartholomew.
THE END