The Chief Legatee Part 22

The test was one he had not sought and did not welcome. Yet he felt bound, now that he recognized it as such, to see it through and accept its teaching for what it surely would be worth. Only he began to move with more precaution and studied more to hide his approach than to give any warning of it.

The close ranks of the elderberry bushes lining the fences on the final hill-top lent themselves to the concealment he now sought. As soon as he was sure of her having left the road he drew up close to these bushes and walked under them till he was almost at the gate. Then he allowed himself to peer through their close branches and received an unexpected shock at seeing her figure standing very near him, posed in an uncertainty which, for some reason, he had not expected, but which restored him to himself, though why he had not the courage, the time, nor the inclination to ask.

She was babbling in a low tone to herself, an open sesame to her mind, which Ransom hailed with a sense of awe. If only he might distinguish the words! But this was difficult; not only was her head turned partly away, but she spoke in a murmur which was far from distinct. Yet--yes, that one sentence was plain enough. She had muttered musingly, anxiously, and with a searching look among the graves:

"It was on this side. I know it was on this side."

Watching her closely lest some chance glance of hers should stray his way, he listened still more intently and was presently rewarded by catching another sentence.

"A single grave all by itself. I fell over it and my mother scolded me, saying it was my father's. There was a bush near it. A bush with white flowers on it. I tried to pick some."

Ransom's heart was growing lighter and lighter. She did not even know that there had been placed over that grave a monument with her name on it and that of the mother who had scolded her for tripping over her father's sod. Only Anitra could be so ignorant or expect to find a grave by means of a bush blooming with flowers fifteen years ago. As she went wandering on, peering to right and left, he thought of Hazen and his doubts, and wished that he were here beside him to mark her perplexity.

When quite satisfied that she would never find what she sought without help, Ransom stepped from his hiding-place and joined her among the gra.s.sy hillocks. The start of pleasure she gave and her almost childish look of relief warmed his heart, and it was with a smile he waited for her to speak.

"My father's grave!" she explained. "I was looking for my father's grave.

I remember my mother taking me to it when I was little. There was a bush close by it--oh! I see what you think. The bush would be big now--I forgot that. And something else! You are thinking of something else. Oh, I know, I know. He wouldn't be lying alone any more. My mother must have died, or sister would have taken me to her. There ought to be two graves."

He nodded, and taking her by the hand led her to the family monument. She gazed at it for a moment, amazed, then laid her finger on one of the inscriptions.

"My father's name?" she asked.

He nodded.

She hung her head thoughtfully for a moment, then slipping to the other side of the stone laid her hand on another.

"My mother's?"

Again he signified yes.

"And this? Is this sister's name? No, she's not buried yet. I had a brother. Is it his?"

Ransom bowed. How tell her that it was a false inscription and that the man whose death it commemorated was not only alive but had only a little while before spoken to her.

"I didn't like my brother. He was cruel and liked to hurt people. I'm glad he's dead."

Ransom drew her away. Her frankness was that of a child, but it produced an uncomfortable feeling. He didn't like this brother either, and in this thoughtless estimate of hers he seemed to read a warning to which his own nature intuitively responded.

"Come!" he motioned, leading the way out.

She followed with a smile, and together they entered the highway. As they did so, Ransom caught sight of a man speeding down the hill before them on a bicycle. He had not come front the upper road, or they would have seen him as he flew past the gateway. Where had he come from, then? From the peep-hole where Ransom himself had stood a few minutes before. No other conclusion was possible, and Ransom felt both angry and anxious till he could find out who the man was. This he did not succeed in doing till he reached the hotel. There a bicycle leaning against a tree gave point to his questions, and he learned that it belonged to a clerk in one of the small stores near by, but that the man who had just ridden it up and down the road on a trial of speed was the stranger who had just come to town with Mr. Hazen.

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE CARS

This episode, which to Ransom's mind would bear but one interpretation, gave him ample food for thought. He decided to be more circ.u.mspect in the future and to keep an eye out for inquisitive strangers. Not that he had any thing to conceal, but no man enjoys having his proceedings watched, especially where a woman is concerned.

That Hazen was antagonistic to him he had always known; but that he was regarded by him with suspicion he had not realized till now. Hazen suspicious of _him_! that meant what? He wished that he had Mr. Harper at his side to enlighten him.

It was now five o'clock and he was sitting in his room awaiting the usual report from the river, when a quick tap at his door was followed by the entrance of the very man he was thinking about. He rose eagerly to receive him, determined, however, to allow no inconsiderate impulse to drive him into unnecessary speech.

"I have already said too much," he reminded himself in self-directed monition. "It's time he did some of the talking."

Hazen seemed willing enough to do this. Taking the seat proffered him, he opened the conversation as follows:

"Mr. Ransom, I have been doing you an injustice. I do not consider it necessary to tell you just how I have found this out, but I am now convinced that you are as much in the dark as myself in regard to this unfortunate affair, and are as willing as I am to take all justifiable means to enlighten yourself. I own that at first I thought it more than probable you were in collusion with the girl here to deceive me. That I wouldn't stand. I'm glad to find you as truly a victim of this mystery as myself."

Ransom straightened himself.

"If this is an apology," he returned, "I am willing to accept it in the spirit in which it is proffered. But I should like something more than apology from you. Candor for candor;--your whole story in return for mine."

"I'm afraid it would be a trifle tedious,--my whole story," smiled Hazen.

"If you mean such part of it as concerns Georgian's peculiar actions and the complications with which we are at this moment struggling, I can only repeat what I have already told you, both at the St. Denis in New York and here. I am Georgian's returned brother, saved from the jaws of h.e.l.l to see my own country again. I arrived in New York on the tenth.

Naturally, after securing a room at the hotel, I took up the papers. They were full of the approaching marriage of Miss Hazen. I recognized my sister's name, though not her splendor, for we were the sole survivors of a poor country family and I knew nothing of the legacy I am now told she received. Anxious to see her, I attended the ceremony. She recognized me.

I had not expected this, and feeling old affections revive, I followed her friends to the house and was presented to them and to you. What I whispered to her on this occasion were my a.s.sumed name and the place where I was to be found. My changed countenance called for explanations, for which a bridal reception offered no opportunity. Besides, as I have already said, I stood in sore need of a definite amount of money. I meant her to come and see me, but I did not expect her to play a trick on you in order to do so. This had its birth in the to me unaccountable mystery embodied in the girl you call Anitra, but whom I'm not ready yet to name.

For when I do, action must follow conviction and that without mercy or delay."

"Action?" repeated Ransom, with quick suspicion and a confused rush of contradictory visions in his mind. "What do you mean by that?"

Hazen covered his chin with his hand.

"I will try and explain," he replied. "If I am abrupt in my language, it is owing to the exigencies of the case. I have no time to waste and no disposition to whitewash a rough piece of work. To speak to the point, I have an intense interest in my sister Georgian. I have little or none in my sister Anitra. Georgian's intelligence, good-will, and command of money would be of inestimable benefit to me. Anitra, on the contrary, could be nothing but a burden, unless--" here he cast a very sharp glance at Ransom--"unless Georgian should have been sufficiently considerate to leave her a good share of her fortune in the will you say she made just before her disappearance and supposed death."

"That I can say nothing about," rejoined Ransom in answer to this feeler.

"The will is in the hands of her lawyer, but if it will help your argument any we will suppose that she left her sister to the care of her friends without any especial provision for her in the way of money."

The steady fingers clutching the scarred neck loosed their grip to wave this supposition aside.

"A hardly supposable case," was the cold comment with which he supplemented this disclaimer; "but one which would make the girl a burden indeed; a burden which for many reasons I could not a.s.sume." Here he struck himself sharply on the neck, with the first display of pa.s.sion he had shown. "My advantages are not such as to make it easy for me to support myself. It would be simply impossible for me to undertake the care of any girl, least of all of one with a manifest infirmity."

"Anitra will prosper without your care," replied Ransom, overlooking the heartlessness of the man in the mad, unaccountable sense of relief with which he listened to his withdrawal from concerns for which he showed so little sympathy. "There are others who will be glad to do all that can be done for Georgian's forsaken sister."

"Yes. That is all right, but--" Here Hazen squared himself across the top of the table before which he had been sitting; "I must be made sure that the facts have been rightly represented to me and that the girl now in this house _is_ Georgian's deserted sister. I'm not yet satisfied that she is, and I must be convinced not only on this point but on many others, before this day is over. Business of great importance calls me back to the city and, it may be, out of the country. I may never be able to spend another day on purely personal affairs, so this one must tell. I have a scheme (it is a very simple one) which, if carried out as I have planned, will satisfy me as nothing else will as to the ident.i.ty of the girl we will call, from lack of positive knowledge, Anitra. Will you help me in its furtherance? It lies with you to do so."

"First, your reasons for doubting the girl," retorted Ransom. "They must be excellent ones for you to resist the evidence of such conclusive proofs as you have yourself been witness to since entering this house. I am Georgian's husband. I have the strongest wish in the world to see her again at my side; yet with the exception of her wonderful likeness to my wife, I find nothing in this raw if beautiful girl, of the polished, highly trained woman I married. I have not even succeeded in startling her ear--something which I should have been able to do if she were not the totally deaf woman she appears. Confide to me then your reasons for demanding additional proofs of her ident.i.ty. If they carry conviction with them, I will aid you in any scheme you can propose which will neither frighten nor afflict her."

Hazen rose to his feet. Narrow as the room was, he yielded to his restless desire to move about and began pacing up and down the restricted quarters bounded by the edge of the table and the door. Not until he had made the second turning did he speak; then it was with seeming openness.

"It's like putting the torch to my last ship," said he; "but this is no time to hesitate. Mr. Ransom, I do not trust my eyes, I do not trust my ears, nor your eyes, nor your ears, nor those of any one here, because I have talked with a man who was on the same train with my sisters. He noticed them because of their similar appearance and close intimacy.

They were not dressed alike, but they were veiled alike and one did not move without the other. More than that, they not only walked about the various stations where they waited, arm in arm, but they sat thus closely joined in the cars all the way from New York. This interested him especially as he noted great anxiety and incessant movement in the one, and complete pa.s.siveness in the other. She who sat in the outer seat was watchful, busy, and ready to press the other's arm at the least provocation, but if either spoke it was always the other. It was not till the quick rush and shrill whistle of a pa.s.sing train made one start and not the other, that he got the idea that one of them was deaf. As this was the one by the window, he felt that their peculiar actions were now accounted for, and indeed thus far it all tallied with what we might expect from Georgian traveling with the hapless Anitra. But there remained a fact to be told, which rouses doubt. When they reached G---- and he saw from their quick rising that they were about to leave the train, he naturally glanced their way again, and this time he caught a glimpse of the inner one's neck. Her veil had become slightly disarranged, exposing the whole nape. It was unexpectedly dark, almost brunette in color, and quite devoid of delicacy; such a skin as one might look for in the gipsy Anitra after years of outdoor living and a long lack of nice personal attention, but not such as I saw and admired a few hours ago on the neck of the woman bending over her work in the landlady's room. Oh, I recognized the difference; I have an eye for necks."

He paused, coming to a standstill in the middle of the room, to see what effect his words had had on Ransom.

"I have that man's name," he continued, "and can produce him if I have time and it seems to be necessary. But I had rather come to my own decision without any outside interference. This is not an affair for public gossip or newspaper notoriety. It is a question of justice to myself. If this girl is Georgian--" His whole face changed. For a moment Ransom hardly knew him. The quiet, self-contained man seemed to have given way to one of such unexpected power and threat that Ransom rose instinctively to his feet in recognition of a superiority he could no longer deny.