The Open Window: Tales of the Months

by Mabel Osgood Wright

“There were only two boys of us who lived to grow up at home, John and me. Of course, when my father died, John, being the elder, had the land holdings, a goodish bit of a farm that had given a fair living when well managed, while I had very little, but leave to get out. My mother loved me best, I knew, but John was the heir, and that was the beginning and the end of it. To keep me by her, she would have been willing to see me knuckle down to be little more than a field hand to my brother, but I would not. I had no trade except if knowing a good horse and how to ride him could be called one, but I could shoot straight, and through friendship with a game-keeper, I knew the ways of every beastie of the woods and fallows of a great estate on the edge of which our land lay. Many a night I’ve lain out in the fern with him, and miles did I tramp after him when he went about setting and tending his traps for things that killed the game. Poor McTaggert, I remember him well; he only died last year.

“What I meant to do more than get away, I never knew when I took my fortune, less than a hundred pounds, and left for America, for John was hard and had an underhand way of working between me and my mother that made every day I stayed a battle. Then, too, he made trouble with my boyish sweetheart, Annie Fenton, a neighbour’s daughter, that in my eyes always acted as if she feared and disliked him, yet dared not tell him so. For a couple of months I drifted about here and there, but never locating. One night when I had been thinking that my money would likely run low before I had made my start, I was stopping at a cheap commercial hotel in New York, when I heard them talking of the rats that overran the kitchen, and about one Harry Leverings, who, with a gang of men under him, made a handsome living at rat-catching. This man, moreover, was coming there that night.

“Then my old days with McTaggert and my work of trap-setting came to me, and getting leave to go below stairs, I chanced to fall in with Leverings himself, who proved to be a fellow-countryman. One thing led to another; I told him of a kind of trap McTaggert made, and sent for one; soon I was working for him, improved the trap, took out a patent on it, and five years later, when he was ready to drop out and go home, I succeeded to his business, as the card says, and sometimes employed upwards of twenty men who travelled all about the country, though for some reason I can’t explain, my own name never appeared as head of the business.

“Meanwhile, things had gone badly at home; soon after I left, Annie Fenton’s father, thinking a bird in the hand the best bargain, tried to force her to marry my brother, but she slipped away to an aunt somewhere in America, leaving no trace of herself.

“John mismanaged the land, and, being caught in sharp practice, fell into debt, leased out what he could of the place without thought of mother, and went, some said, to Australia, though others said he had followed Annie. Next, my mother fell into straits, and as I knew she couldn’t be happy here, at least until I had a settled home, I sent her money every month, through old McTaggert, lest it should be caught in any way to pay my brother’s debts.

“It was close upon Christmas of the sixth year after I left home when I had about made up my mind to go back for the holidays, that one of my best customers, the owner of several large buildings for which I cared, asked me if I would go out to his country house for a week or so and see if I could do something about the rats, that, since cold weather, had come into the cellar in a drove and were working up through the house, destroying the woodwork and furnishings. He was to have house parties there all through the holidays, and he wished, if possible, to have the rats kept down, if nothing more, lest they annoy his guests.

“By this time I had given up personal jobs, preferring to look over the ground and arrange the plans for my men, but Mr. —— rather insisted that I should go to his place alone, promising to put me up at the lodge, and so I went. Talk about seeing life, Dr. Russell, no one sees more of it behind the scenes, as it were, than a rat-catcher. To do his work properly on a large scale, he must be trusted to go everywhere, at all hours. Those years had educated me, and at the same time made me old at thirty. I saw into all their ways, how houses were furnished, the pictures and books people bought, what food they ate, and what wine they drank, and—beg pardon, sir, I’m getting off my story.

“This country house had sliding doors, draped by curtains all through, and I saw at once that it was through these doors the rat runways lay. Not wishing to make talk of the matter, Mr. —— explained my errand only to the butler and told him to give me freedom of all below the bedroom floors at night, so that I could remove both traps and rats, if any were caught before daylight. The second night of my stay there was a long dinner that lasted well into the night, with music and a play, for among the guests that had come were some singers and a famous artist, who rigged up a stage in the drawing-room and trimmed it up with draperies and the like.

“I saw a good deal of the doings from behind a curtain where the first of my trap line was set, and after everybody had gone to bed, and the extra waiters had left for their quarters outside, I took my dark lantern that I always kept lighted and went about the dining-room to see if any fruit or sweets that would distract the rats had been left upon the sideboard. At that moment I heard a rustling in a cage-trap, a kind I seldom use, on the opposite side of the room; going to it I found that three young rats had crowded into it together. Not wishing to go out, I dropped trap and all into the bag that a rat-catcher always carries. Then I continued across the room carefully, for the chairs were all in confusion, the men having been tired and left in a hurry. I was about to open the slide in the lantern front, when I saw, reflected in one of the long mirrors, a woman’s figure coming down the stairs, shading the candle that she carried in one hand.

“The figure came on through the open door straight into the dining room, where I stood half in the corner with the curtain held before me. The woman was slender and rather tall; her hair was hanging loosely and looked black in the dim light. She wore a white wrapper of some sort, and by the muffled sound of her steps, I knew that she was in stocking feet.