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Frank Etheridge walked musingly towards town. When half-way there he heard his name pronounced behind him in tremulous accents, and turning, saw hastening in his wake the woman who had brought him the message which first took him to Miss Cavanagh's house. She was panting with the haste she had made, and evidently wished to speak to him. He of course stopped, being only too anxious to know what the good woman had to say. She flushed as she came near to him.
"Oh, sir," she cried with an odd mixture of eagerness and restraint, "I have been wanting to talk to you, and if you would be so good as to let me say what is on my mind, it would be a great satisfaction to me, please, and make me feel a deal easier."
"I should be very glad to hear whatever you may have to tell me," was his natural response. "Are you in trouble? Can I help you?"
"Oh, it is not that," she answered, looking about to see if any curious persons were peering at them through the neighboring window-blinds, "though I have my troubles, of course, as who hasn't in this hard, rough world; it is not of myself I want to speak, but of the young ladies. You take an interest in them, sir?"
It was naturally put, yet it made his cheek glow.
"I am their lawyer," he murmured.
"I thought so," she went on as if she had not seen the evidences of emotion on his part, or if she had seen them had failed to interpret them. "Mr. Hamilton is a very good man but he is not of much use, sir; but you look different, as if you could influence them, and make them do as other people do, and enjoy the world, and go out to church, and see the neighbors, and be natural in short."
"And they do not?"
"Never, sir; haven't you heard? They never either of them set foot beyond the garden gate. Miss Emma enjoys the flower-beds and spends most of her time working at them or walking up and down between the poplars, but Miss Hermione keeps to the house and grows white and thin, studying and reading, and making herself wise—for what? No one comes to see them—that is, not often, sir, and when they do, they are stiff and formal, as if the air of the house was chilly with something nobody understood. It isn't right, and it's going against God's laws, for they are both well and able to go about the world as others do. Why, then, don't they do it? That is what I want to know."
"And that is what everybody wants to know," returned Frank, smiling; "but as long as the young ladies do not care to explain themselves I do not see how you or any one else can criticise their conduct. They must have good reasons for their seclusion or they would never deny themselves all the pleasures natural to youth."
"Reasons? What reasons can they have for actions so extraordinary? I don't know of any reason on God's earth which would keep me tied to the house, if my feet were able to travel and my eyes to see."
"Do you live with them?"
"Yes; or how could they get the necessaries of life? I do their marketing, go for the doctor when they are sick, pay their bills, and buy their dresses. That's why their frocks are no prettier," she explained.
Frank felt his wonder increase.
"It is certainly a great mystery," he acknowledged. "I have heard of elderly women showing their eccentricity in this way, but young girls!"
"And such beautiful girls! Do you not think them beautiful?" she asked.
He started and looked at the woman more closely. There was a tone in her voice when she put this question that for the first time made him think that she was less simple than her manner would seem to indicate.
"What is your name?" he asked her abruptly.
"Doris, sir."
"And what is it you want of me?"
"Oh, sir, I thought I told you; to talk to the young ladies and show them how wicked it is to slight the good gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon them. They may listen to you, sir; seeing that you are from out of town and have the ways of the big city about you."
She was very humble now and had dropped her eyes in some confusion at his altered manner, so that she did not see how keenly his glance rested upon her nervous nostril, weak mouth, and obstinate chin. But she evidently felt his sudden distrust, for her hands clutched each other in embarrassment and she no longer spoke with the assurance with which she had commenced the conversation.
"I like the young ladies," she now explained, "and it is for their own good I want them to do differently."
"Have they never been talked to on the subject? Have not their friends or relatives tried to make them break their seclusion?"
"Oh, sir, the times the minister has been to that house! And the doctor telling them they would lose their health if they kept on in the way they were going! But it was all waste breath; they only said they had their reasons, and left people to draw what conclusions they would."
Frank Etheridge, who had a gentleman's instincts, and yet who was too much of a lawyer not to avail himself of the garrulity of another on a question he had so much at heart, stopped, and weighed the matter a moment with himself before he put the one or two questions which her revelations suggested. Should he dismiss the woman with a rebuke for her forwardness, or should he humor her love for talk and learn the few things further which he was in reality burning to hear. His love and interest naturally gained the victory over his pride, and he allowed himself to ask:
"How long have they kept themselves shut up? Is it a year, do you think?"
"Oh, a full year, sir; six months at least before their father died. We did not notice it at first, because they never said anything about it, but at last it became very evident, and then we calculated and found they had not stepped out of the house since the day of the great ball at Hartford."
"The great ball!"
"Yes, sir, a grand party that every one went to. But they did not go, though they had talked about it, and Miss Hermione had her dress ready. And they never went out again, not even to their father's funeral. Think of that, sir, not even to their father's funeral."
"It is very strange," said he, determined at whatever cost to ask Edgar about that ball, and if he went to it.
"And that is not all," continued his now thoroughly reassured companion. "They were never the same girls again after that time. Before then Miss Hermione was the admiration and pride of the whole town, notwithstanding that dreadful scar, while Miss Emma was the life of the house and of every gathering she went into. But afterwards—well, you can see for yourself what they are now; and it was just so before their father died."
Frank longed to ask some questions about this father, but reason bade him desist. He was already humiliating himself enough in thus discussing the daughters with the servant who waited upon them; others must tell him about the old gentleman.
"The house is just like a haunted house," Doris now remarked. Then as she saw him cast her a quick look of renewed interest, she glanced nervously down the street and asked eagerly: "Would you mind turning off into this lane, sir, where there are not so many persons to pry and peer at us? It is still early enough for people to see, and as everybody knows me and everybody by this time must know you, they may wonder to see us talking together, and I do so long to ease my whole conscience now I am about it."
For reply, he took the road she had pointed out. When they were comfortably out of sight from the main street, he stopped again and said:
"What do you mean by haunted?"
"Oh, sir," she began, "not by ghosts; I don't believe in any such nonsense as ghosts; but by memories sir, memories of something which has happened within those four walls and which are now locked up in the hearts of those two girls, making them live like spectres. I am not a fanciful person myself, nor given to imaginings, but that house, especially on nights when the wind blows, seems to be full of something not in nature; and though I do not hear anything or see anything, I feel strange terrors and almost expect the walls to speak or the floors to give up their secrets, but they never do; and that is why I quake in my bed and lie awake so many nights."
"Yet you are not fanciful, nor given to imaginings," smiled Frank.
"No, for there is ground for my secret fears. I see it in the girls' pale looks, I hear it in the girls' restless tread as they pace hour after hour through those lonesome rooms."
"They walk for exercise; they do not use the streets, so they make a promenade of their own floors."
"Do people walk for exercise at night?"
"At night ?"
"Late at night; at one, two, sometimes three, in the morning? Oh, sir, it is uncanny, I tell you."
"They are not well; lack of change affects their nerves and they cannot sleep, so they walk."
"Very likely, but they do not walk together . Sometimes it's one, and sometimes it's the other. I know their different steps, and I never hear them both at the same time."
Frank felt a cold shiver thrill his blood.
"I have been in the house," she resumed, after a minute's pause, "for five years; ever since Mrs. Cavanagh died, and I cannot tell you what its secret is. But it has one, I am certain, and I often go about the halls and into the different rooms and ask low to myself, 'Was it here that it happened, or was it there?' There is a little staircase on the second floor which takes a quick turn towards a big empty room where nobody ever sleeps, and though I have no reason for shuddering at that place, I always do, perhaps because it is in that big room the young ladies walk so much. Can you understand my feeling this way, and I no more than a servant to them?"
A month ago he would have uttered a loud disclaimer, but he had changed much in some regards, so he answered: "Yes, if you really care for them."
The look she gave him proved that she did, beyond all doubt.
"If I did not care for them do you think I would stay in such a gloomy house? I love them both better than anything else in the whole world, and I would not leave them, not for all the money any one could offer me."
She was evidently sincere, and Frank felt a vague relief.
"I am glad," said he, "that they have so good a friend in their own house; as for your fears you will have to bear them, for I doubt if the young ladies will ever take any one into their confidence."
"Not—not their lawyer?"
"No," said he, "not even their lawyer."
She looked disappointed and suddenly very ill at ease.
"I thought you might be masterful," she murmured, "and find out. Perhaps you will some day, and then everything will be different. Miss Emma is the most amiable," said she, "and would not long remain a prisoner if Miss Hermione would consent to leave the house."
"Miss Emma is the younger?"
"Yes, yes, in everything."
"And the sadder!"
"I am not so sure about that, but she shows her feelings plainer, perhaps because her spirits used to be so high."
Frank now felt they had talked long enough, interesting as was the topic on which they were engaged. So turning his face towards the town, he remarked:
"I am going back to New York to-night, but I shall probably be in Marston again soon. Watch well over the young ladies, but do not think of repeating this interview unless something of great importance should occur. It would not please them if they knew you were in the habit of talking them over to me, and it is your duty to act just as they would wish you to."
"I know it, sir, but when it is for their good——"
"I understand; but let us not repeat it, Doris." And he bade her a kind but significant good-by.
It was now quite dusk, and as he walked towards Dr. Sellick's office, he remembered with some satisfaction that Edgar was usually at home during the early evening. He wanted to talk to him about Hermione's father, and his mood was too impatient for a long delay. He found him as he expected, seated before his desk, and with his wonted precipitancy dashed at once into his subject.
"Edgar, you told me once that you were acquainted with Miss Cavanagh's father; that you were accustomed to visit him. What kind of a man was he? A hard one?"
Edgar, taken somewhat by surprise, faltered for a moment, but only for a moment.
"I never have attempted to criticise him," said he; "but let me see; he was a straightforward man and a persistent one, never let go when he once entered upon a thing. He could be severe, but I should never have called him hard. He was like—well he was like Raynor, that professor of ours, who understood everything about beetles and butterflies and such small fry, and knew very little about men or their ways and tastes when they did not coincide with his own. Mr. Cavanagh's hobby was not in the line of natural history, but of chemistry, and that is why I visited him so much; we used to experiment together."
"Was it his pastime or his profession? The house does not look as if it had been the abode of a rich man."
"He was not rich, but he was well enough off to indulge his whims. I think he inherited the few thousands, upon the income of which he supported himself and family."
"And he could be severe?"
"Very, if he were interrupted in his work; at other times he was simply amiable and absent-minded. He only seemed to live when he had a retort before him."
"Apoplexy, I think; I was not here, so do not know the particulars."
"Was he—" Frank turned and looked squarely at his friend, as he always did when he had a venturesome question to put—"was he fond of his daughters?"
Edgar had probably been expecting some such turn in the conversation as this, yet he frowned and answered quite hastily, though with evident conscientiousness:
"I could not make out; I do not know as I ever tried to; the matter did not interest me."
But Frank was bound to have a definite reply.
"I think you will be able to tell me if you will only give your mind to it for a few moments. A father cannot help but show some gleam of affection for two motherless girls."
"Oh, he was proud of them," Edgar hurriedly asserted, "and liked to have them ready to hand him his coffee when his experiments were over; but fond of them in the way you mean, I think not. I imagine they often missed their mother."
"Did you know her ?"
"No, only as a child. She died when I was a youngster."
"You do not help me much," sighed Frank.
"Help you?"
"To solve the mystery of those girls' lives."
"Oh!" was Edgar's short exclamation.
"I thought I might get at it by learning about the father, but nothing seems to give me any clue."
Edgar rose with a restless air.
"Why not do as I do—let the matter alone?"
"Because," cried Frank, hotly, "my affections are engaged. I love Hermione Cavanagh, and I cannot leave a matter alone that concerns her so nearly."
"I see," quoth Edgar, and became very silent.
When Frank returned to New York it was with the resolution to win the heart of Hermione and then ask her to tell him her secret. He was so sure that whatever it was, it was not one which would stand in the way of his happiness.