"Watch that baby for a while," he remarked, "and you will learn the lesson of most human endeavour. Madam, I have a proposition to make you. You cannot wish to remain at the inn, nor can you be long happy separated from your daughter. I have lost Bela. I do not know how, nor would I be willing, to replace him by another servant. I need a housekeeper; some one devoted to my interests and who will not ask me to change my habits too materially. Will you accept the position, if I add as an inducement my desire to have Reuther also as an inmate of my home? This does not mean that I countenance or in any way anticipate her union with my son. I do not; but any other advantages she may desire, she shall have. I will not be strict with her."
"Judge Ostrander!"
Deborah Scoville was never more taken aback in her life. The recluse opening his doors to two women! The man of mystery flinging aside the reticences of years to harbour an innocence which he refused to let weigh against the claims of a son he has seen fit to banish from his heart and home!
"You may take time to think of it," he continued, as he watched the confused emotions change from moment to moment the character of her mobile features. "I shall not have my affairs adjusted for such a change before a week. If you accept, I shall be very grateful. If you decline, I shall close up my two rear gates, and go into solitary seclusion. I can cook a meal if I have to."
And she saw that he would do it; saw and wondered still more.
"I shall have to write to Reuther," she murmured. "How soon do you want my decision?"
"In four days."
"I am too disturbed to thank you, judge. Should—should we have to keep the gates locked?"
"No. But you would have to keep out unwelcome intruders. And the rights of my library will have to be respected. In all other regards I should wish, under these new circumstances, to live as other people live. I have been very lonely these past twelve years."
"I will think about it."
"And you may make note of these two conditions: Oliver's name is not to be mentioned in my hearing, and you and Reuther are to be known by your real names."
"You would—"
"Yes, madam. No secrecy is to be maintained in future as to your identity or my reasons for desiring you in my house. I need a housekeeper and you please me. That you have a past to forget and Reuther a disappointment to overcome, gives additional point to the arrangement."
Her answer was:
"I cannot take back what I have said about my determined purpose." In repeating this, she looked up at him askance.
He smiled. She remembered that smile long after the interview was over and only its memory remained.
XII
SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
Dearest Mother:
Where could we go that disgrace would not follow us? Let us then accept the judge's offer. I am the more inclined to do this because of the possible hope that some day he may come to care for me and allow me to make life a little brighter for him. The fact that for some mysterious reason he feels himself cut off from all intercourse with his son, may prove a bond of sympathy between us. I, too, am cut off from all companionship with Oliver. Between us also a wall is raised. Do not mind that tear-drop, mamma. It is the last.
Kisses for my comforter. Come soon.
Over this letter Deborah Scoville sat for two hours, then she rang for Mrs. Yardley.
The maid who answered her summons surveyed her in amazement. It was the first time that she had seen her uncovered face.
Mrs. Yardley was not long in coming up.
"Mrs. Averill—" she began in a sort of fluster, as she met her strange guest's quiet eye.
But she got no further. That guest had a correction to make.
"My name is not Averill," she protested. "You must excuse the temporary deception. It is Scoville. I once occupied your present position in this house."
Mrs. Yardley had heard all about the Scovilles; and, while a flush rose to her cheeks, her eyes snapped with sudden interest.
"Ah!" came in quick exclamation, followed, however, by an apologetic cough and the somewhat forced and conventional remark: "You find the place changed, no doubt?"
"Very much so, and for the better, Mrs. Yardley." Then, with a straightforward meeting of the other's eye calculated to disarm whatever criticism the situation might evoke, she quietly added, "You need no longer trouble yourself with serving me my meals in my room. I will eat dinner in the public dining-room to-day with the rest of the boarders. I have no further reason for concealing who I am or what my future intentions are. I am going to live with Judge Ostrander, Mrs. Yardley;—keep house for him, myself and daughter. His man is dead and he feels very helpless. I hope that I shall be able to make him comfortable."
Mrs. Yardley's face was a study. In all her life she had never heard news that surprised her more. In fact, she was mentally aghast. Judge Ostrander admitting any one into his home, and this woman above all! Yet, why not? He, certainly, would have to have some one. And this woman had always been known as a notable housekeeper. In another moment, she had accepted the situation, like the very sensible woman she was, and Mrs. Scoville had the satisfaction of seeing the promise of real friendly support in the smile with which Mrs. Yardley remarked:
"It's a good thing for you and a very good thing for the judge. It may shake him out of his habit of seclusion. If it does, you will be the city's benefactor. Good luck to you, madam. And you have a daughter, you say?"
After Mrs. Yardley's departure, Mrs. Scoville, as she now expected herself to be called, sat for a long time brooding. Would her quest be facilitated or irretrievably hindered by her presence in the judge's house? She had that yet to learn. Meanwhile, there was one thing more to be accomplished. She set about it that evening.
Veiled, but in black now, she went into town. Getting down at the corner of Colburn Avenue and Perry Street, she walked a short distance on Perry, then rang the bell of an attractive-looking house of moderate dimensions. Being admitted, she asked to see Mr. Black, and for an hour sat in close conversation with him. Then she took a trolley-car which carried her into the suburbs. When she alighted, it was unusually late for a woman to be out alone; but she had very little physical fear, and walked on steadily enough for a block or two till she came to a corner, where a high fence loomed forbiddingly between her and a house so dark that it was impossible to distinguish between its chimneys and the encompassing trees whose swaying tops could be heard swishing about uneasily in the keen night air. An eerie accompaniment, this latter, to the beating of Deborah's heart already throbbing with anticipation and keyed to an unusual pitch by her own daring.
Was she quite alone in the seemingly quiet street? She could hear no one, see no one. A lamp burned in front of Miss Weeks' small house, but the road it illumined (I speak of the one running down to the ravine) showed only darkened houses.
She had left the corner and was passing the gate of the Ostrander homestead, when she heard, coming from some distant point within, a low and peculiar sound which held her immovable for a moment, then sent her on shuddering.
It was the sound of hammering.
What is there in a rat-tat-tat in the dead of night which rouses the imagination and fills the mind with suggestions which we had rather not harbour when in the dark and alone? Deborah Scoville was not superstitious, but she had keen senses and mercurial spirits and was easily moved by suggestion.
Hearing this sound and locating it where she did, she remembered, with a quick inner disturbance, that the judge's house held a secret; a secret of such import to its owner that the dying Bela had sought to preserve it at the cost of his life.
Oh, she had heard all about that! The gossip at Claymore Inn had been great, and nothing had been spared her curiosity. There was something in this house which it behooved the judge to secrete from sight yet more completely before her own and Reuther's entrance, and he was at work upon it now, hammering with his own hand while other persons slept! No wonder she edged her way along the fence with a shrinking, yet persistent, step. She was circling her future home and that house held a mystery.