XLVIII
A gloomy evening. I am speaking of its physical aspects. A lowering sky, a pelting rain with a wind that drove the lurching branches of the closely encircling trees against windows reeking with wet.
Every lamp in the electroliers from the ground floor to the top was alight. Edgar would have it so. As he swung into Uncle’s room, that too leaped vividly into view, under his hand. It was as of old; every disturbed thing had been restored to order; the bed, the picture; ah, the picture! the winged chair with its infinite memories, all stood in their proper places. Had Uncle been entering instead of ourselves, he would have found everything as he was accustomed to see it. Could it be that he was there, unseen, impalpable but strong as ever in love and purpose?
We were gathered at the foot of the bed.
“Let me have the key, Orpha.”
She put up her hand to her neck and then I perceived there the encircling glint of a very finely linked chain. As she drew this up a key came with it. As she allowed this to fall to the full length of the chain, it became evident that the latter was long enough to be passed over her head without unclasping. But it was with an indifferent eye I watched her do this and hand key and chain to Edgar, for a thought warm with recovered joy had come to me that had she not believed the key thus cherished to be the very one worn by her father she would never have placed it thus over her heart.
I think Edgar must have recognized my thought from the look he cast me as he drew the key from the chain and laid the latter on the table standing in its corner by the fire-place. Instantly I recognized his purpose; and watched his elbows for what I knew would surely take place before he turned around again. Always an adept at legerdemain it was a simple thing for him to substitute the key he had brought from New York for the one he had just received from Orpha; and in a moment he had done this and was facing us as before, altogether his most interesting self, ready for action and primed to succeed.
“Do you know,” he began, taking us all in with one sweeping glance from his proud eye, “I have felt for years, though I have never spoken of it, that Uncle had some place of concealment in this room inaccessible to anybody but himself. Papers which had not been sent to the bank and had not been put away in his desk would disappear between night and morning only to come into view again when wanted, and this without any explanation. I used to imagine that he hid these things in the drawer at the back of his bed, but I soon found out that this was not so, and, losing all interest in the matter, scarcely gave it another thought. But now its importance has become manifest; and what we must look for is a crack in or out of this room, along which we can slip the point of this key. It will find its home somewhere.” And he began to look about him.
I remained where I was but missed not one of his movements whether of eye or hand. The girls, on the contrary, followed him step by step, Lucy with an air of polite interest and Orpha eagerly if not hopefully. But the cracks were few in that carefully paneled room, and the moments sped by without apparent accomplishment. As Edgar’s spirits began to give way before repeated disappointment, I asked him to grant me a momentary trial with the key.
“I have an idea.”
He passed it over to me, without demur. Indeed, with some relief.
It was the first time I had held it in my hand and a thrill ran through me at the contact. Was my idea a good one?
“Uncle was a large man and tall. He wore the chain about his neck. The chain is long; I doubt if he found it necessary to take off the key in using it. The crack, as you call it, must have been within easy reach of his hand. Let us see.”
Taking up the chain, I ran it through the hole in the end of the key and snapping the clasp, threw the chain over my head. As I did so, I chanced to be looking at Orpha. The change in her expression was notable. With eyes fixed on the key dangling at my breast, the color which had enlivened her checks slowly died out, leaving her pale and slightly distraught as though she were struggling to revive some memory or settle some question she did not quite understand.
“Let me think,” she murmured dreamily. “Let me think.”
And we, lost in our own wonder, watched her as the color came creeping back to her cheeks, and order took place in her thoughts, and with hands suddenly pressed against her eyes, she cried:
“I see it all again. My father, with that chain hanging just so over his coat. I am in his arms—a hole—all dark—dark. He draws my head down—he stoops.... The rest is gone from me. I can remember nothing further.”
Edgar stared. Lucy glanced vaguely about the walls. Orpha dropped her hands and her glance flew to my face and not to the key this time—when with a crash! a burst of wind rushed upon the house, shaking the windows blinded with wet, and ripping a branch from the tree whose huge bulk nestled against the western wall.
They shuddered, but not I. I was thinking as I had never thought before. Memories of things said, of things done, were coming back to match the broken and imperfect ones of my confused darling. My reasoning faculties are not of the best but I used what I had in formulating the theory which was fast taking on the proportions of a settled conviction. When I saw that I had them all expectant, I spoke. I had to raise my voice a little for the storm just then was at its height.
“What Orpha has said”—so I began—“has recalled the surprise which I felt on first entering this room. To you who have been brought up in it, its peculiarities have so long been accepted by you as a matter of course that you are blind to the impression they make on a stranger. Look at this wall.”
I laid my hand on the one running parallel with the main hall—the one in which was sunk the alcove holding the head of the bed.
“You are used to the two passageways connecting the wall of this room with that of the hall where the staircase runs down to the story below. You have not asked why this should be in a mansion so wonderful in its proportions and its finish, or if you have, you have accounted for it by the fact that a new house with new walls had been joined to an old one, whose wall was allowed to stand, thus necessitating little oddities in construction which, on the whole, were interesting and added to the quaintness of the interior. But what of the space between those two walls? It cannot have been filled. If I see right and calculate right there must run from here down to the second floor, if no further, an empty space less than one yard in width, blocked from sight by the wall of this room, by that of the hall and”—here I pulled open the closet door—“by that of this closet at one end and by the wall holding the medicine cabinet at the other. Isn’t that so, Edgar? Has my imagination run away with me; or is my conclusion a reasonable one?”
“It—it looks that way,” he stammered; “but—but why—”
“Ah! the why is another matter. That may be buried in Uncle’s grave. It is the fact I want to impress upon you that there is a place somewhere near us, a place dark and narrow, down which Orpha, when a child, was once carried and which if we can reach it will open up for us the solution of where Uncle used to hide the papers which, according to Edgar, never went to the bank and not into any of the drawers which this room contains.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Orpha, “if I could only remember! But all is blank except what I have already told you. The dark—my father stooping—and a box—yes, I saw a box—he laid my hand upon it—but where or why I cannot say. Only, there is no suggestion of fear in these strange, elusive memories. Rather one of happiness,—of love,—of a soft peace which was like a blessing. What does it all mean? You have got us thus far, take us further.”
“I will try.” But I hesitated over what I had to say next. I was risking something. But it could not be helped. It was to be all or nothing with me. I must speak, whatever the result.
“Orpha, did you ever think, or you, Edgar, that there was some grain of truth in the tradition that this house held a presence never seen but sometimes felt?”
Orpha started, and, gripping Edgar by the arm, stood thus, a figure of amazement and dawning comprehension. Edgar, whom I had always looked upon as a man of most vivid imagination, appeared on the contrary to lack the power—even the wish to follow me into this field of suggestion.
“So, that’s coming in,” he exclaimed in a tone of open irony.
“Yes,” I answered, “that is coming in; for I have had my own experience with this so-called Presence. I was coming up the stairs outside one night when I felt—Well, a little peculiar and knew that the experience of which I had heard others speak was about to be mine. But when it came, it came with a difference. I heard a cough. A sight—a sound may be supernatural,—that is from the romanticist’s standpoint,—but not a cough. I told Uncle about it once and I am sure he flushed. Edgar, there is a second staircase between these walls, and the Presence was Uncle.”
“It may be.” His tone was hearty; he seemed glad to be convinced. “And if so,” he added, with a gesture towards the key hanging over my breast, “you have the means there of reaching it. How do you propose to go about it?”
“There is but one possible way. This closet provides that. Somewhere along these shelves, among these shoes and hats we shall find the narrow slit this key will fit.”
Turning the bulb in the square of ceiling above me, the closet was flooded with light. When they were all in, the narrow space was filled and I was enabled to correct an impression I had previously formed. Miss Colfax was so near me I could hear her pulses beat. For all her lofty bearing she was as eager and interested as any one could be whose fortunes were not directly wrapped up in the discoveries of the next few minutes.
Calling attention to a molding running along the edge of one of the shelves, I observed quite boldly: “To my eyes there is a line there dark enough to indicate the presence of something like a slit. Let us see.” And lifting the key from my breast I ran its end along the line I had pointed out till suddenly it came to a stop, entered, and, yielding to the turn I gave it, moved the lock cunningly hidden beyond and the whole series of shelves swung back, revealing an opening into which we were very nearly precipitated in our hurry and surprise.
Recovering our equilibrium, we stood with fascinated gaze fixed on what we beheld slanting away into the darkness of this gap between two walls.
A series of iron steps with a railing on one side—ancient of make, but still serviceable, offered us a means of descent into depths which the light from the closet ceiling, strong as it was, did not entirely penetrate.
“Will you go down?” I asked Edgar; “or shall I? The ladies had better remain where they are.”
I was quite confident what his answer would be and I was not disappointed.
“I will go down, of course. You can follow if you wish: Lucy, Orpha, not one step after me, do you hear?”
His tone and attitude were masterful; and instinctively they shrank back. But my anxiety for their safety was equal to his. So I added my appeal.
“You will do as Edgar says,” I prayed. “We must go down, both of us; but you will remain here?”
“Unless you call us.”
“Unless you are gone too long.”
“I will not be gone too long.” And I hurried down, Edgar having got the start of me by several steps.
As I went, I noticed what settled a question which had risen in my mind since I became assured of the existence of this secret stairway.
My uncle was an unusually tall man. How could he with so many inches to his credit manage to pass under the bridge between the two walls made by the flooring of the intervening alcove. It must have caused effort—an extraordinary effort for a man so weakened, so near to being moribund. But I saw that it could be done if he had the strength and knew just when to bend his body forward, for the incline of the stairway was rapid and moreover began much further back from the alcove than I had supposed in measuring the distance with my eye. Indeed the whole construction, as I noted it in my hasty descent, was a remarkable piece of masonry built by an expert with the evident intention of defying detection except by one as knowing as himself. The wall of the inn, which had been a wooden structure, had been reënforced by a brick one into which was sunk the beams of the various bridges upholding the passage-ways and the floor of the alcove already alluded to. Hundreds of dollars must have been spent in perfecting this arrangement, but why and to what end was a question which did not then disturb me, for the immediate mystery of what we should find below was sufficiently engrossing to drive all lesser subjects from my mind.
Meanwhile Edgar had reached a small wooden platform backed by a wall which cut off all further descent, and was calling up for more light. As the stairs, narrowed by the brick reënforcement of which I have spoken, were barely wide enough to allow the passage down of a goodly sized man, I could not but see that it was necessary for me to remove myself from his line of vision for him to get the light he wanted. So with a bound or two I cleared the way and stood in a sort of demi-glow at his side.
A bare wall in front,—nothing there, and nothing at the right; but on the left an old-fashioned box clamped to the wall at the height of a man’s shoulder. It was indeed an ancient box, and stained brown with dust and mold. There was a lid to it. This lid was half wrenched away and hung over at one side, leaving the box open. From the top of this box protruded the folded ends of what looked like a legal document.
As our eyes simultaneously fell on this, we each made a movement and our glances clashed. Then a long deep breath from him was answered by the same from my own chest heaving to suffocation.
“We have found it,” he muttered, choking; and reached out his hand.
But I was quicker than he.
“Wait,” said I, pulling him back. “Before either of us touch it, listen to me. If that is the will we are looking for and if it makes you the master here, I here swear to recognize your rights instantly and without question. There will be no legal procedure and no unpleasantness so far as I am concerned.”
With this I loosened my clasp.
Would he respond with a like promise? No, he could not. It was not in his nature to do so. He tried,—I felt him make the struggle, but all that resulted were some choked words in recognition of my generosity, followed by a quick seizure of the paper and a rush up the first half dozen steps. But there he stopped, his silhouette against the light making a picture stamped indelibly upon my memory.
“I’ve got it; I’ve got it!” he shouted to those above, waving the paper over his head in a triumph almost delirious.
I could not see their faces, but I heard two gasping cries and dashed up, overtaking him just as he emerged into the full light.
He was unfolding the document, all eagerness and anticipatory delight. He could not wait to reach the room itself; he could not wait even to reach the closet; he must see now—at once—while the woman he loved was within reach. A minute lost was so much stolen from the coming rapture.
I was at his shoulder eager to know my own fate, as his trembling fingers threw the covering leaf back. I knew where to look—I endeavored to forget everything but the spot where the name should be,—the name which would tell all; I wished to see it first. I wished—
A cloud came over me, but through it as if the words blazed beyond the power of any mist to hide them I read:
Edgar Quenton Bartholomew, son of James—
Myself!