One thing troubled me. Why, if the New Captain was living, had he permitted his will to be found? He could have hidden it, or have had Mattie dispose of it, so as to prevent its working against himself. By the terms that he had drawn up the house was to be sold; nothing could be more inconvenient to one who was trying to hide in it. Unless he deliberately planned to have it sold for the malicious purpose of driving out Mattie! He had bequeathed her nothing. If the house passed into other hands, she would inevitably be forced out; while he, as long as he lived furtively between two walls, was safe. Or perhaps he meant to make himself manifest after she had gone. Perhaps that was what he was trying to convey.
Why had he come to hate her? Yesterday I was sure that it was she who had tired of him, wearied of a liaison with a daft person, glad to go; to-day I was convinced that it was he who had grown restless under the oppression of her management. In doubt that death would release him from her spell, fearing to survive another cataleptic burial, he had cunningly drawn up this document which would rid him of her.
To test this hypothesis would be to ascertain beyond a doubt whether or not the New Captain was actually buried. There was a vault in the cemetery in the Hawes name, but unless I investigated the interior I would never feel sure that the old rogue was in it. I determined to make the judge show me the New Captain’s coffin.
On my way through the town I sent a telegram to Jasper, paralleling my letter and contradicting the substance of it:
Don’t like house. May give it up.
That would prepare him, should I decide to leave.
The judge was at home, but “busy.” Would I wait? I would, I assured Isabella.
The age of leisure has not vanished from the earth; it has taken the “accommodation” train, gone down the cape, and stopped off at Star Harbor. While my host finished washing his Ford, or whatever he was loitering over, I had full time to recognize the oddity of my behavior. Judge Bell himself was not so surprised to receive me as I was to be there. And yet a canny sense of the value of silence kept me from straightway breaking down and confessing the details of the sleepless nights which had led up to my demand. I felt, self-consciously, that, having bought the House of the Five Pines in spite of warnings, it had become so much my house and my mystery that I had no right to complain. If I confided in the judge, he would not try to help me. He would take my ghosts to his bosom as just so much corroborative evidence of his own pet psychic formulas. The time to explain was after I had solved my problems.
So when my host finally appeared I only said that I wanted to be sure the New Captain was in his coffin, and the judge replied that he could not blame me much for that.
“Are you sorry you bought the place?” he asked, switching the late asters with his cane as we crossed the downs.