Bohemian Days Part 19

"That," said the preacher, "is probably off; though I never discovered in Andrew more evil than a light heart and occasional rebellion. If she loves him still, do not be in haste to jar her sensibility. It is thoughtfulness which engenders love."

The young women of Kensington were divided about Agnes Wilt. The poorer girls thought her perfect. But some marriageable and some married women, moving in her own sphere of society, criticised her popularity, and said she must be artful to control so many men. There are no depths to which jealousy cannot go in a small suburban society. Agnes, as an orphan, had felt it since childhood, but nothing had ever happened until now to concentrate slander as well as sympathy upon her. It was told abroad that she had been the mistress of her deceased benefactor, who had fallen by the hands of his infuriated son. Even the police authorities gave some slight consideration to this view. Old people remarked: "If she has been deceiving people, she will not stop now. She will have other secret lovers."

Inquiries had been made for some time as to who the unknown executor, Duff Salter, might be, when one day Rev. Mr. Van de Lear walked over to the Zane house with a broad-shouldered, grave, silent-eyed man, who wore a very long white beard reaching to his middle. As he was also tall and but little bent, he had that mysterious union of strength and age which was perfected by his expression of long and absolute silence.

"Agnes," said Mr. Van de Lear, "this is an old Scotch-Irish friend and cla.s.smate of the late Mr. Zane, Duff Salter of Arkansas. He cannot hear what I have said, for he is almost stone deaf. However, go through the motions of shaking hands. I am told he has heard very little of anything for the past ten years. An explosion in a quicksilver mine broke his ear-drums."

Agnes, dressed in deep black, shook hands with the grave stranger dutifully, and said:

"I am sure you are welcome, sir."

Mr. Salter looked at her closely and gently, and seemed to be pleased with the inspection, for he took a small gold box from his pocket, unlocked it and sniffed a pinch of snuff, and then gave a sneeze, which he articulated, plain as speech, into the words: "Jericho! Jericho!"

Then placing the box in the pocket of his long coat, he remarked:

"Miss Agnes, as one of the executors is a lady, and another is our venerable friend here, who has no inclination to attend to the settlement of Mr. Zane's estate, it will devolve upon me to examine the whole subject. I am a stranger in the East. As Mr. Van de Lear may have told you, I don't hear anything. Will I be welcome as a boarder under your roof as long as I am looking into my old friend's books and papers?"

"Not only welcome, but a protection to us, sir," answered Agnes.

He took a set of ivory tablets from his pocket, with a pencil, and handing it to her politely, said:

"Please write your answer."

She wrote "Yes."

The deaf lodger gave as little trouble as could have been expected. He had a bedroom, and moved a large secretary desk into it, and sat there all day looking at figures. If he ever wanted to make an inquiry, he wrote it on the tablets, and in the evening had it read and answered.

Agnes was a good deal of the time preoccupied, and Podge Byerly, who wrote as neatly as copper-plate, answered these inquiries, and conducted a little conversation of her own. Podge was a slender blonde, with fine blue eyes and a mischievous, sylph-like way of coming and going. Her freedom of motion and address seemed to concern the stranger. One day she wrote, after putting down the answer to a business inquiry:

"Are you married?"

He hesitated some time and wrote back, "I hope not."

She retorted, "Could one forget if one was married?"

He replied on the same tablet: "Not when he tried."

Podge rubbed it all off, and thought a minute, and then concluded that evening's correspondence:

"You are an old tease!"

The next morning, as usual, she wrapped herself up warmly and took the omnibus for her school, and saw him watching her out of the upper window. That night, instead of any inquiries, he stalked down in his worked slippers--the dead man's--and long dressing gown, and, after smiling at all, took Podge Byerly's hand and looked at it. This time he spoke in a sweet, modulated voice,

"Very pretty!"

She was about to reply, when he gave her the ivory tablet, and put his finger on his lip.

She wrote, "Did you ever fight a duel?"

He shook his head "No."

She wrote again, "What else do they do in Arkansas?"

He replied, "They love."

Then Mr. Duff Salter sneezed very loudly, "Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!"

Podge ran off at such a serious turn of responses, but was too much of a woman not to be lured back of her own will. He wrote later in the evening this touching query:

"How do the birds sing now? Are they all dumb?"

She answered, "Many can hear who never heard them."

He wrote again, "Are you suspicious?"

She replied, "_Very_. Are you?"

He shook his head "No."

"I believe he _is_," said Podge, turning to Agnes, who had entered. "He looks as if he had asked that question of himself."

Duff Salter seized his handkerchief and sneezed into it, "Jericho-o!

Jericho-wo!"

Podge was sure he was suspicious the next night when she read on his tablets the rather imputative remark,

"Is there anything demoralizing in teaching public schools?"

She replied tartly, "Yes, stupid old visitors and parents!"

"Excuse me!" he wrote; "I meant politicians."

She replied in the same spirit as before, "I think politicians are divine!"

Duff Salter looked a little wondering out of those calm gray eyes and his strong, yet benevolent Scotch-Irish countenance. Podge, who now talked freely with Agnes in his presence, said confidently:

"I believe I can tantalize this good old granny by giving him doubts about me! I am real bad, Aggy; you know that! It is no story to tell it!"

"Oh! we are both bad enough to try to improve," exclaimed Agnes absently.

"Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter.

He came down every evening, and began respectfully to bow to Agnes and to smile on Podge, and then stretched his feet out to the ottoman, drew his tablets up to the small table and proceeded to write. They hallooed into his ear once or twice, but he said he was deaf as a mill-stone, and might be cursed to his face and wouldn't understand it. They had formed a pleasing opinion of him, not unmixed with curiosity, when one night he wrote on the back of a piece of paper:

"Have you any idea who wrote this anonymous note to me?"

Podge Byerly took the note and found in a woman's handwriting these words:

"Mr. Duff Salter, I suppose you know where you are. Your hostesses are very insinuating and artful--and what else, _you can find out_!

One man has been murdered in that family; another has disappeared.

They say in Kensington the house of Zane is haunted.