“It is Wednesday,” he told himself: “by tomorrow noon I can be back in town. Cost what it may, I will get that money, and everything may yet be well. Surely Manhattan will not refuse; and if he does, and Jerolomon declines, then will I mortgage the homestead. H’m, it is odd I should have thought of that last. Meanwhile—”
“Bronx!” The door before him had opened, and a brakeman was bawling in his face.
“We are punctual as a comet,” he heard Jones exclaim.
Gathering their traps, they descended into the night. At the station but one vehicle was discernible, and that, from a loutish driver who stood dandling his whip, they presently discovered was for them. “You ought to have come earlier,” he remarked, with the affectionate familiarity which is peculiar to the New-Englander. “It was sundown when she died.”
“Well,” said Jones, when they had seated themselves in the carriage, “she was a good woman, and a Christian. It’s deuced rough I couldn’t have got here in time. I was her favorite relative,” he added, meditatively. And with that he drew out a large cigar, which he lighted with infinite care.
Through the window Gonfallon gazed at the frostbitten road which he knew so well. Over there, to the right, was the parsonage he had occupied. And here, to the right, was Sever’s house. How small it looked! And as the carriage rattled over the ruts one after another, he recalled the names of retreating structures.
“Yes, indeed,” he answered; “yes, indeed.”
“A woman,” Jones continued, “who may have been misunderstood, as good women often are, but who was never the subject of gossip. I was in knickerbockers when her husband ran off, but I can see him now. He looked like a young emperor of old Rome. And from her never a murmur could be wrung. She did not so much as mention him, or her friend, even, who disappeared at the same time—Mira Wheat her name was, the Admirable Miranda I remember she was called, a famous beauty, and a catch to boot. The count went down at Gravelotte, but what ever became of his travelling companion no one ever heard. It’s odd, those abrupt disappearances. You knew of the Besaluls, didn’t you? There’s a case in point. Besalul married a girl—a Miss Forbush, I think: to all intents and purposes they were dead in love with each other. Two months afterwards, when Besalul, after bringing his wife home from some reception, was sitting in the parlor over the Post, the butler announced dinner. ‘Go upstairs,’ said Besalul, ‘and tell my wife.’ The butler went up and came down: Mrs. Besalul was undiscoverable. They searched the house. In her room were the mantle and bonnet which she had worn at the reception, but of the lady herself not a trace. The night changed to morning, and morning into noon, and still no sign of the absentee. No one had heard her leave the house, and it seemed impossible for her to have done so unobserved. Detectives were summoned, rewards were offered, but all in vain. Three or four years later, when she was practically forgotten, a friend of Besalul’s happened in journeying through France to stop at Toulouse, and while wandering about the town recognized my lady in a rose-garden. She had run off with a man with whom no one knew she was even acquainted.”
And Jones, flicking the ashes from his cigar, added, “I would have worked it up into a novel, but somehow it lacked the dramatic. I never seemed to get a climax. Ah! here we are.”
A servant, a pensioner rather, Rebecca Hays by name, a woman white of face and of hair, whom Gonfallon remembered well, met and led them into the hall. Grief or excitement seemed to have made her vague of speech. The lids of her eyes were watery and pink, her lips twitched spasmodically.
“Elle est devenue idiote,” Jones remarked. “I suppose we had better go up.”
And, motioning to the woman to precede them, the novelist, followed by the clergyman, mounted the creaking stair.
It was a large room which they presently entered, a room that leaned to the south. Across one wall was a stretch of tapestry, not Gobelins, but Gothic, and pictorial of the visit of the Magi. The angle was bare, the other walls cut by windows that gave on the valley below. The floor was of lacquered wood, the centre protected by a rug. Between the rug and the tapestry was a bed draped with curtains that fell from a panoply affixed to the ceiling above. On either side of the bed was a chest of oak. And on these chests candles had been placed.
Very reverently Gonfallon drew one of the curtains aside, and then, as he took one of the candles and held it aloft that he might see the better, Jones peered over his shoulder.
Death had dealt gently with the occupant of that bed. The hue of the skin was little different from what it had been, the folded hands not a whit more transparent than before. Even the expression of the face had not altered:
