"Something to read, ma'am, before I go?" asked the prim foreign maid, placing the shaded lamp on the table by the fire and drawing up the arm-chair.
"No; that's all."
Val sat there alone, before the fire, till twelve o'clock; then, lighting a candle, she went to the head of the stair and listened. No sound. He had gone back with Scherer; he must surely come soon. A sudden noise, a sound like the shutting of the gate. She flew back to her room. On an uncontrollable impulse she shut and locked the door, and put out candle and lamp. Had he come that moment she would have feigned sleep. But it was a false alarm. Presently she relit the candle, opened the door, and stood listening. Slowly she went down-stairs, peering over the banisters, trailing her blue draperies from room to room, her hand about the candle-flame and her wide eyes intent.
"Looking for what? God knows. It must be Ethan I'm looking for. Why doesn't he come? I'm to 'sleep'—to sleep!"
She went to the front door and opened it. The night smelt fresh and pungent. The scent of the first falling leaves filled the air.
"Yes," she said to herself, "it's the time of the year when things happen."
The heavy burnished knocker caught the candle gleam, and she laid her hot forehead against the cool brass.
"He came, first, on such a night. And she went away from us two years ago to-morrow—no, it's to-day."
She came in and shut the door, but some one had entered with her. Val stood a moment in the silent hall, quite still. The dead woman seemed to have come back from her grave. The quiet house was full of her. Val stood before the long room door, and almost before she realized what she was doing, she had lifted her hand and knocked. Smiling faintly, she went in. In that dim light it was all just as it used to be. The only reason she couldn't see the figure in the great crimson chair was that the high back concealed the judge and comforter sitting there.
Val set the candle down, and, for the first time since the blow had fallen, she felt the rush of tears filling her wide strained eyes. They blurred the dim outlines of things, but, with hands out-stretched, she went towards the empty chair like one praying help and succor. At the side she knelt down and laid her cheek on the arm, crying noiselessly, remembering other days and other pains, but never before this stark denial of all comfort. How good it had been, as a child, to feel the light hand on her hair! Ah! the hand was lighter now. "Well, and so will the hearts of her children be, when they're dust," she said to herself, and rose up. She looked into the parlor. Daniel Boone, his hunters and his dogs, and before the big painting a picture etched on the air of a wild little girl with long flying hair, dancing in the dusk, until a fear fell on her that struck the quicksilver out of her veins and hung her limbs with lead. On the other side of the room was the new grand-piano that had come too late.