Mr. Homer said no more, but stood gazing at his picture, rapt in contemplation. Jaquith was silent, too, watching him, half in amus.e.m.e.nt, half--or more than half--in something not unlike reverence. Mr. Homer was not an imposing figure: his back was long, his legs were short, his hair and nose were distinctly absurd; but now, the homely face seemed transfigured, irradiated by an inward glow of feeling.
Jaquith recalled Mrs. Tree"s words. Had this quaint little gentleman really been in love with his beautiful mother? Poor Mr. Homer! It was very funny, but it was pathetic, too. Poor Mr. Homer!
The young man"s thoughts ran on swiftly. The Peak in Darien! Well, that was all true. Only, how if--unconsciously he spoke aloud, his eyes on the picture--"How if a man were misled for a time by--I shall have to mix my metaphors, Mr. Homer--by a will-o"-the-wisp, and fell into the quagmire, and lost sight of his mountain for a time, only to find it again, more lovely than--would he have any right to--what was it you said, sir?--to try once more to scale those crystal heights?"
"Undoubtedly he would!" said Mr. Homer Hollopeter. "Undoubtedly, if he were sure of himself, sure that no false light--I perceive the mixture of metaphors, but this cannot always be avoided--would again fall across his path."
"He is sure of that!" said Will Jaquith, under his breath.
He had risen, and the two men were standing side by side, both intent upon the picture. Twilight was falling, but a ray of the setting sun stole through the little window, and rested upon the Peak in Darien.
"He is sure of that!" repeated William Jaquith.
When he spoke again, his voice was husky, his speech rapid and broken.
"Mr. Homer" (no one ever said "Mr. Hollopeter," nor would he have been pleased if any one had), "I have been here six months, have I not? six months to-morrow?"
"Yes, William," said Mr. Homer, turning his mild eyes on his a.s.sistant.
"Have I--have I given satisfaction, sir?"
"Eminent satisfaction!" said Mr. Homer, cordially. "William, I have had no fault to find; none. Your punctuality, your exactness, your a.s.siduity, leave nothing to be desired. This has been a great gratification to me--on many accounts."
"Then, you--you think I have the right to call myself a man once more; that I have the right to take up a man"s life, its joys, as well as its labors?"
"I think so, most emphatically," cried the little gentleman, nodding his head. "I think you deserve the best that life has to give."
"Then--then, Mr. Homer, may I have a day off to-morrow, please? I want"--he broke into a tremulous laugh, and laid his hand on the elder man"s shoulder,--"I want to climb the Peak, Mr. Homer!"
So it came to pa.s.s one day, soon after this, that as Mrs. Tree was sitting by her fire, with the parrot dozing on his perch beside her, there came to the house two young people, who entered without knock or ring, and coming hand in hand to her side, bent down, not saying a word, and kissed her.
"Highty tighty!" cried Mrs. Tree, her eyes twinkling very brightly under a tremendous frown.
"What is the meaning of all this, I should like to know? How dare you kiss me, w.i.l.l.y Jaquith?"
"Old friends to love!" said Jocko, opening one yellow eye, and ruffling his feathers knowingly.
"Jocko knows how I dare!" said Will Jaquith. "Dear old friend, I will tell you what it means. It means that I have brought you another Golden Lily in place of the one you said I spoiled. You can only have her to look at, though, for she is mine, mine and my mother"s, and we cannot give her up, even to you."
"I didn"t exactly break my promise, Lily!" cried the old lady; her hands trembled on her stick, but her cap was erect, immovable. "I didn"t tell him, but I never promised not to tell James Stedman, you know I never did."
The lovely, dark-eyed girl bent over her and kissed the withered cheek again.
"My dear! my naughty, wicked, delightful dear," she murmured, "how shall I ever forgive you--or thank you?"
CHAPTER XIII.
LIFE IN DEATH
"Drive to Miss Dane"s!" said Mrs. Tree.
"Drive where?" asked old Anthony, pausing with one foot on the step of the ancient carryall.
"To Miss Dane"s!"
"Well, I snum!" said old Anthony.
The Dane Mansion, as it was called, stood on the outskirts of the village; a gaunt, gray house, standing well back from the road, with dark hedges of Norway spruce drawn about it like a funeral scarf. The panelled wooden shutters of the front windows were never opened, and a stranger pa.s.sing by would have thought the house uninhabited; but all Elmerton knew that behind those darkling hedges and close shutters, somewhere in the depths of the tall many-chimneyed house, lived--"if you can call it living!" Mrs. Tree said--Miss Virginia Dane. Miss Dane was a contemporary of Mrs. Tree"s,--indeed, report would have her some years older,--but she had no other point of resemblance to that lively potentate. She never left her house. None of the present generation of Elmertonians had ever seen her face; and to the rising generation, the boys and girls who pa.s.sed the outer hedge, if dusk were coming on, with hurried step and quick affrighted glances, she was a kind of spectre, a living phantom of the past, probably terrible to look upon, certainly dreadful to think of. These terrors were heightened by the knowledge, diffused one hardly knew how, that Miss Dane was a spiritualist, and that in her belief at least, the silent house was peopled with departed Danes, the brothers and sisters of whom she was the last remaining one.
Things being thus, it was perhaps not strange that old Anthony, usually the most discreet of ch.o.r.emen, was driven by surprise to the extent of "snumming" by the order he received. He allowed himself no further comment, however, but flecked the fat brown horse on the ear with his whip, and said "Gitty up!" with more interest than he usually manifested.
Mrs. Tree was arrayed in her India shawl, and crowned with the bird-of-paradise bonnet, from which swept an ample veil of black lace.
She sat bolt upright in the carriage, her stick firmly planted in front of her, her hands crossed on its crutch handle, and her whole air was one of uncompromising energy.
"Shall I knock?" said Anthony, glancing up at the blind house-front with an expression which said plainly enough "It won"t be any use."
"No, I"m going to get out. Here, help me! the other side, ninnyhammer!
You have helped me out on the wrong side for forty years, Anthony Barker; I must be a saint after all, or I never should have stood it."
The old lady mounted the granite steps briskly, and knocked smartly on the door with the top of her stick. After some delay it was opened by a grim-looking elderly woman with a forbidding squint.
"How do you do, Keziah? I am coming in. You may wait for me, Anthony."
"I don"t know as Miss Dane feels up to seein" company, Mis" Tree," said the grim woman, doubtfully, holding the door in her hand.
"Folderol!" said Mrs. Tree, waving her aside with her stick. "She"s in her sitting-room, I suppose. To be sure! How are you, Virginia?"
The room Mrs. Tree entered was gaunt and gray like the house itself; high-studded, with blank walls of gray paint, and wintry gleams of marble on chimneypiece and furniture. Gaunt and gray, too, was the figure seated in the rigid high-backed chair, a tall old woman in a black gown and a close muslin cap like that worn by the Shakers, with a black ribbon bound round her forehead. Her high features showed where great beauty, of a masterful kind, had once dwelt; her sunken eyes were cold and dim as a steel mirror that has lain long buried and has forgotten how to give back the light.
These eyes now dwelt upon Mrs. Tree, with recognition, but no warmth or kindliness in their depths.
"How are you, Virginia?" repeated the visitor. "Come, shake hands! you are alive, you know, after a fashion; where"s the use of pretending you are not?"
Miss Dane extended a long, cold, transparent hand, and then motioned to a seat.
"I am well, Marcia," she said, coldly. "I have been well for the past fifteen years, since we last met."
"I made the last visit, I remember," said Mrs. Tree, composedly, hooking a gray horsehair footstool toward her with her stick, and settling her feet on it. "You gave me to understand then that I need not come again till I had something special to say, so I have stayed away."
"I have no desire for visitors," said Miss Dane. She spoke in a hollow, inward monotone, which somehow gave the impression that she was in the habit of talking to herself, or to something that made no response. "My soul is fit company for me."
"I should think it might be!" said Mrs. Tree.