The Chief Legatee Part 21

"I have no wish to keep anything back from you. I am as much struck as you are by the mystery of this whole occurrence. I was as hard to convince. This is my story. It involves all that is known here with the exception of such facts as have been kept from us by the three parties directly concerned--of which three I consider you one."

As the last four words fell from his lips he looked for some change, slight and hardly perceptible perhaps, in the other's expression. But he was doomed to disappointment. The steady regard held, nothing moved about the man, not even the hand into which the poor disfigured chin had fallen. Ransom suppressed a sigh. His task was likely to prove a blind one. He had a sense of stumbling in the dark, but the gaze he had hoped to see falter compelled him to proceed, and he told his story without subterfuge or suppression.

One thing, and only one thing, caused a movement in the set figure before him. When he mentioned the will which Georgian had made a few hours prior to her disappearance, Hazen's hand slipped aside from the wound it had sought to cover, and Ransom caught sight of the sudden throb which deepened its hue. It was the one infallible sign that the man was not wholly without feeling, and it had sprung to life at an intimation involving _money_.

When his tale was quite finished, he rose. So did Hazen.

"Let us see this girl," suggested the latter.

It was the first word he had spoken since Ransom began his story.

"She is up-stairs. I will go see--"

"No, _we_ will go see. I particularly desire to take her unawares."

Ransom offered no objection. Perhaps he felt interested in the experiment himself. Together they left the room, together they went up-stairs. A turmoil of questions followed them from the throng of men and boys gathered in the halls, but they returned no answer and curiosity remained unsatisfied.

Once in the hall above, Ransom stopped a moment to deliberate. He could not enter Anitra's room unannounced, and he could not make her hear by knocking. He must find the landlady.

He knew Mrs. Deo's room. He had had more than one occasion to visit it during the last two days. With a word of explanation to Hazen, he pa.s.sed down the hall and tapped on the last door at the extreme left. No one answered, but the door standing ajar, he pushed it quietly open, being anxious to make sure that Mrs. Deo was not there.

The next moment he was beckoning to Hazen.

"Look!" said he, holding the door open with one hand and pointing with the other to a young girl sitting on a low stool by the window, mending, or trying to mend, a rent in her skirt.

"Why, that's Georgian!" exclaimed Hazen, and hastily entering he approached the anxious figure laboriously pushing her needle in and out of the torn goods, and p.r.i.c.king herself more than once in the attempt.

"Georgian!" he cried again and yet more emphatically, as he stepped up in front of her.

The young girl failed to notice. Awkwardly drawing her thread out to its extreme length, she prepared to insert her needle again, when her eye caught sight of his figure bending over her, and she looked up quietly and with an air of displeasure, which pleased Ransom,--he could hardly tell why. This was before her eyes reached his face; when they had, it was touching to see how she tried to hide the shock caused by its deformity, as she said with a slight gesture of dismissal:

"I'm quite deaf. I cannot hear what you say. If it is the landlady you want, she has gone down-stairs for a minute; perhaps, to the kitchen."

He did not retreat, if anything he approached nearer, and Ransom was surprised to observe the force and persuasive power of his expression as he repeated:

"No nonsense, Georgian," opening and shutting his hands as he spoke, in curious gesticulations which her eye mechanically followed but which seemed to convey no meaning to her, though he evidently expected them to and looked surprised (Ransom almost thought baffled) when she shook her head and in a sweet, impa.s.sive way reiterated:

"I cannot hear and I do not understand the deaf and dumb alphabet. I'm sorry, but you'll have to go to some one else. I'm very unfortunate. I have to mend this dress and I don't know how."

Hazen, who could hardly tear his eyes from her face, fell slowly back as she painfully and conscientiously returned to her task. "Good G.o.d!" he murmured, as his eye sought Ransom's. "What a likeness!" Then he looked again at the girl, at the wave of her raven black hair breaking into little curls just above her ear; at the smooth forehead rendered so distinguished by the fine penciling of her arching brows; at the delicate nose with nostrils all alive to the beating of an over-anxious heart; at the mouth, touching in its melancholy so far beyond her years; and lastly at the strong young figure huddled on the little stool; and bending forward again, he uttered two or three quick sentences which Ransom could not catch.

His persistence, or the near approach of his face to hers, angered her.

Rising quickly to her feet, she vehemently cried out:

"Go away from here. It is not right to keep on talking to a deaf girl after she has told you she cannot hear you." Then catching sight of Ransom, who had advanced a step in his sympathy for her, she gave a little sigh of relief and added querulously:

"Make this man go away. This is the landlady's room. I don't like to have strangers talk to me. Besides--" here her voice fell, but not so low as to be inaudible to the subject of her remark, "he's not pretty. I've seen enough of men and women who are--"

At this point Ransom drew Hazen out into the hall.

"What do you think now?" he demanded.

Hazen did not reply. The room they had just left seemed to possess a strange fascination for him. He continued to look back at it as he preceded Ransom down the hall. Ransom did not press his questions, but when they were on the point of separating at the head of the stairs, he held Hazen back with the words:

"Let us come to some understanding. Neither of us can desire to waste strength in wrong conclusions. Can that woman be other than your own sister?"

"No." The denial was absolute. "She is my sister."

"Anitra?" emphasized Ransom.

The smile which he received in reply was strangely mirthless.

"I never rush to conclusions," was Hazen's remark after a moment of possibly mutual heart-beat and unsettling suspense. "Ask me that same question to-morrow. Perhaps by then I shall be able to answer you."

CHAPTER XX

BETWEEN THE ELDERBERRY BUSHES

"No."

The word came from Ransom. He had reached the end of his patience and was determined to have it out with this man on the spot.

"Come into my room," said he. "If you doubt her, you doubt me; and in the present stress of my affairs this demands an immediate explanation."

"I have no time to enter your room, and I cannot linger here any longer talking on a subject which at the present moment is not clear to either of us," was the resolute if not quite affable reply. "Later, when my conclusions are made, I will see you again. Now I am going to eat and refresh myself. Don't follow me; it will do you no good."

He turned to descend. Ransom had an impulse to seize him by his twisted throat and drag from him the secret which his impa.s.sive features refused to give up. But Ransom was no fool and, stepping back out of the way of temptation, he allowed him to escape without further parley.

Then he went to his room. But, after an hour or two spent with his own thoughts, his restlessness became so great that he sought the gossips below for relief. He found them all cl.u.s.tered about Hazen, who was reeling off stories by the mile. This was unendurable to him and he was striding off, when Hazen burst away from his listeners and, joining Ransom, whispered in his ear:

"I saw her go by the window just now on her way up-street. What can she find there to interest her? Where is she going?"

"I don't know. She doesn't consult me as to her movements. Probably she has gone for a walk. She looks as if she needs it."

"So do you," was the unexpected retort given by Hazen, as he stepped back to rejoin his a.s.sociates.

Ransom paused, watching him askance in doubt of the suggestion, in doubt of the man, in doubt of himself. Then he yielded to an impulse stronger than any doubt and slipped out into the highway, where he turned, as she had turned, up-street.

But not without a struggle. He hated himself for his puppet-like acceptance of the hint given him by a man he both distrusted and disliked. He felt his dignity impaired and his self-confidence shaken, yet he went on, following the high road eagerly and watching with wary eye for the first glimpse of the slight figure which was beginning to make every scene alive to him.

It had rained heavily and persistently the last time he came this way, but to-day the sun was shining with a full radiance, and the trees stretching away on either side of the road were green with the tender tracery of early leaf.a.ge; a joy-compelling sight which may have accounted for the elasticity of his step as he ascended one small hill after another in the wake of a fluttering skirt.

It was the cemetery road, and odd as the fancy was, he felt that he should overtake her at the old gate, behind which lay so many of her name. Here he had seen her name before its eras.e.m.e.nt from the family monument, and here he should see--could he say Anitra if he found her bending over those graves; the woman who could not hear, who could not read,--whose childish memory, if she had any in connection with this spot, could not be distinct enough or sufficiently intelligent to guide her to this one plot? No. Human credulity can go far, but not so far as that. He knew that all his old doubts would return if, on entering the cemetery, he found her under the brown shaft carved with the name of Hazen.