The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин
attract the appreciative gaze of a man of real penetration. Mr. Trohm was such a man, and I did not begrudge him the pleasure he showed in my neat gray silk and carefully adjusted collar. But he said nothing, and a short silence ensued, which was perhaps more of a compliment than otherwise. Then he uttered a short sigh and lifted the reins.
“If only I were not debarred from entering,” he smiled, with a short gesture toward the house.
I did not answer. Even I understand that on occasion the tongue plays but a sorry part in interviews of this nature.
He sighed again and uttered some short encouragement to his horse, which started that animal up and sent him slowly pacing down the road toward the cheerful clearing whither my own eyes were looking with what I was determined should not be construed even by the most sanguine into a glance of anything like wistfulness. As he went he made a bow I have never seen surpassed in my own parlor in Gramercy Park, and upon my bestowing upon him a return nod, glanced up at the house with an intentness which seemed to increase as some object, invisible to me at that moment, caught his eye. As that eye was directed toward the left wing, and lifted as far as the second row of windows, I could not help asking myself if he had seen the knot of crape which had produced upon me so lugubrious an impression. Before I could make sure of this he had passed from sight, and the highway fell again into shadow—why, I hardly knew, for the sun certainly had been shining a few minutes before.
Chapter XXI.
Mother Jane
“Well, well, what did Trohm want here this morning?” cried a harsh voice from amid the tangled walks behind me. “Seems to me he finds this place pretty interesting all of a sudden.”
I turned upon the intruder with a look that should have daunted him. I had recognized William’s courteous tones and was in no mood to endure a questioning so unbecoming in one of his age to one of mine. But as I met his eye, which had something in it besides anger and suspicion—something that was quizzical if not impertinent—I changed my intention and bestowed upon him a conciliatory smile, which I hope escaped the eye of the good angel who records against man all his small hypocrisies and petty deceits.
“Mr. Trohm rides for his health,” said I. “Seeing me looking up the road at Mother Jane, he stopped to tell me some of the idiosyncrasies of that old woman. A very harmless courtesy, Mr. Knollys.”
“Very,” he echoed, not without a touch of sarcasm. “I only hope that is all,” he muttered, with a sidelong look back at the house. “Lucetta hasn’t a particle of belief in that man’s friendship, or, rather, she believes he never goes anywhere without a particular intention, and I do believe she’s right, or why should he come spying around here just at a time when”—he caught himself up with almost a look of terror—“when—when you are here?” he completed lamely.
“I do not think,” I retorted, more angrily than the occasion perhaps warranted, “that the word spying applies to Mr. Trohm. But if it does, what has he to gain from a pause at the gate and a word to such a new acquaintance as I am?”
“I don’t know,” William persisted suspiciously. “Trohm’s a sharp fellow. If there was anything to see, he would see it without half looking. But there isn’t. You don’t know of anything wrong here, do you, which such a man as that, hand in glove with the police as we know him to be, might consider himself interested in?”
Astonished both at this blundering committal of himself and at the certain sort of anxious confidence he showed in me, I hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment, since, if half my suspicions were true, this man must not know that my perspicacity was more to be feared than even Mr. Trohm’s was.
“If Mr. Trohm shows an increased interest in this household during the last two days,” said I, with a heroic defiance of ridicule which I hope Mr. Gryce has duly appreciated, “I beg leave to call your attention to the fact that on yesterday morning he came to deliver a letter addressed to me which had inadvertently been left at his house, and that this morning he called to inquire how I had spent the night, which, in consideration of the ghosts which are said to haunt this house and the strange and uncanny apparitions which only three nights ago made the entrance to this lane hideous to one pair of eyes at least, should not cause a gentleman’s son like yourself any astonishment. It does not seem odd to me, I assure you.”
He laughed. I meant he should, and, losing almost instantly his air of doubt and suspicion, turned toward the gate from which I had just moved away, muttering:
“Well, it’s a small matter to me anyway. It’s only the girls that are afraid of Mr. Trohm. I am not afraid of anything but losing Saracen, who has pined like the deuce at his long confinement in the court. Hear him now; just hear him.”
And I could hear the low and unhappy moaning of the hound distinctly. It was not a pleasant sound, and I was almost tempted to bid William unloose the dog, but thought better of it.
“By the way,” said he, “speaking of Mother Jane, I have a message to her from the girls. You will excuse me if I speak to the poor woman.”
Alarmed by his politeness more than I ever have been by his roughness and inconsiderate sarcasms, I surveyed him inquiringly as he left the gate, and did not know whether to stand my ground or retreat to the house. I decided to stand my ground; a message to this woman seeming to me a matter of some interest.
I was glad I did, for after some five minutes’ absence, during which he had followed her into the house, I saw him come back again in a state of sullen displeasure, which, however, partially disappeared when he saw me still standing by the gate.
“Ah, Miss Butterworth, you can do me a favor. The old creature is in one of her stubborn fits to-day, and won’t give me a hearing. She may not be so deaf to you; she isn’t apt to be to women. Will you cross the road and speak to her? I will go with you. You needn’t be afraid.”
The way he said this, the confidence he expected to inspire, had almost a ghastly effect upon me. Did he know or suspect that the only thing I feared in this lane was he? Evidently not, for he met my eye quite confidently.
It would not do to shake his faith at such a moment as this, so calling upon Providence to see me safely through this adventure, I stepped into the highway and went with him into Mother Jane’s cottage.
Had I been favored with any other companion than himself, I should have been glad of this opportunity. As it was, I found myself ignoring any possible danger I might be running, in my interest in the remarkable interior to which I was thus introduced.
Having been told that Mother Jane was poor, I had expected to confront squalor and possibly filth, but I never have entered a cleaner place or one in which order made the poorest belongings look more decent. The four walls were unfinished, and so were the rafters which formed the ceiling, but the floor, neatly laid in brick, was spotless, and the fireplace, also of brick, was as deftly swept as one could expect from the little scrub I saw hanging by its side. Crouched within this fireplace sat the old woman we had come to interview. Her back was to us, and she looked helplessly and hopelessly deaf.
“Ask her,” said William, pointing towards her with a rude gesture, “if she will come to the house at sunset. My sisters have some work for her to do. They will pay her well.”
Advancing at his bidding, I passed a rocking-chair, in the cushion of which a dozen patches met my eye. This drew my eyes toward a bed, over which a counterpane was drawn, made up of a thousand or more pieces of colored calico, and noticing their varied shapes and the intricacy with which they were put together, I wondered whether she ever counted them. The next moment I was at her back.
“Seventy,” burst from her lips as I leaned over her shoulder and showed her the coin which I had taken pains to have in my hand.
“Yours,” I announced, pointing in the direction of the house, “if you will do some work for Miss