Mrs. Sharpe never heard this, though she knew something was going on. She knew that one night Judge Peters was out till midnight, no one knew where; she saw him come home and she thought he didn't put his latch key in any too easy: and that she had met Marsh Mallow and Very Jordano at ten o'clock, when she was hastening home to her bed, having taken some gruel to those Jessups who were never thankful for anything, and she met those two men walking in the street, with their faces turned away from their homes, they best knew why. This was all she knew: she made the most of it, and succeeded in impressing Mrs. Scatter and Mrs. Wibird with a sense of impending calamity; but when the latter went to her brother with a face of woe, and "Oh, Marshall! what is going on in Cyrus Village? Is Satan abroad in our midst, think? I do feel a trembling like in my inside!" she was met with a calm, "Take a dose of rhubarb, Marshy! that'll drive Satan out if he has got into your cistern!"
Mr. Mallow meant "system" presumably: anyhow he was pleased with his remark, and repeated it to Mrs. Wibird's indignant back as she left the room.
"The idea!" he said to the fire-irons. "Nine o'clock bell's a good thing, and I allus stand for it; but a man might stay up till half past or so once in a while, you'd think, 'thout every woman in the place gettin' all frustrated up!"
All this was ten years ago, be it remembered. The whispers had died away; silence had spread and deepened about the deserted house; all was as it had been.
Kitty took Mr. Chanter's hint, and said no more about the stranger who had startled her and Pilot. Late that afternoon we two went for a walk, as we were apt to do when she was at liberty, and I turned naturally into what we always called Sunset Road, because the sun seemed to go down at the end of it. Kitty hesitated a moment at the corner, as if she would suggest another direction; then turned with a little shrug of self-rebuke and walked beside me. She was rather silent; we usually babbled like twin brooks towards the close of the day. When we passed the Gaylord house, I looked up and to my amazement saw a thin blue thread stealing up from one of the chimneys.
"Kitty!" I said. "Look! do you see the smoke? Some one is in the Gaylord house!"
Kitty told no one but me and Judge Peters; I am very sure Mr. Chanter told no one else: but little by little the knowledge sifted through Cyrus that Russell Gaylord had come back once more. That he was living in a corner of his great house, with not even a dog to bear him company. That there was no use in any one's trying to see him, as he would not open the door, even to the Messrs. Jebus, his old schoolmates, who had wished to show that they were prepared to let bygones be bygones and welcome the prodigal back to their kindly shop. Lastly, that he was a wreck, and no one knew how he lived or where he got bread to put in his mouth.
This last statement was false; some one did know. Mr. Mallow sat up long after curfew these spring nights; long after his staid "help" were snugly tucked in their beds. Usually his bedroom light went out at ten punctually; now it might be midnight when, nodding by the kitchen fire, he would hear, or think he heard, a shuffling step on the walk outside the back door. Then he would open the door and stand in the cold, holding it wide open so that the red fire-light would shine out on the darkness.
"Russ," he would whisper, "that you? Come in, won't you? Step in, and set with me a spell! what say? I'm rill lon'some!"
Usually no answer came; then he would say, "Basket's behind the door, Russ! Call again when 'tis empty! Good-night, old chap!" and shut the door with a sigh, and so to bed. Usually, I say: but if now and then a bent, shivering figure crept in and sat for half an hour by the fire, warming its hands and listening dumbly to the friendly pleadings, the kindly offers, why, no one but Marshall Mallow ever knew it.