Estabrook hesitated a moment with his hand reaching behind him for my sleeve. He pulled at it twice, without turning.
"Is she safe?" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.
"Yes, in every way. The Lord wouldn"t allow the contrary to happen,"
said I. "If she should need me later, call me. I shall be downstairs."
I stepped back then as softly as a cat. I shut the door after me with the greatest pains. In the reception room below I looked about for the letter I had laid on my chair. It was gone!
I called Margaret softly. I searched cautiously through the halls, whispering her name. She was nowhere. At last I brushed against a hanging which, being withdrawn, disclosed the message itself on the floor. Its sheets were crumpled together, so that it was evident that some one else had read it. I suppose that the old servant had done so.
If her curiosity was pardonable, so was my theft. I folded the paper and thrust it in my pocket as I sat down to wait.
The minutes went by and many of them had gone before I heard some one in the back part of the house, descending the stairs. The breath of this person was labored like the breath of one who carries a heavy handbag. A little later I heard a door creak and a latch click below. Then all was still.
The house was terribly still. The stillness beat as before, like a thing with feathery wings. The distant clock tick came and went between these flurries of silence. I looked at my watch. An hour had gone. It was growing dark. My patient chauffeur had lit his lights. Pa.s.sers-by came and went, in and out of their white glare. I had smoked two cigars.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE DID NOT SPEAK. SHE SEEMED IN DOUBT]
Finally a pair of feet ran up the front steps. The bell rang. There was no movement in the house. It rang again. The feet on the steps stamped impatiently. Again the bell buzzed. The sound came from some unexplored region of the house, but the little thing made a shocking hubbub in that desert of silence.
After this last vehement a.s.sault by the newcomer I heard a door open above. A man, burning one match after another to light his way, came down the stairs. When he had reached the bottom, I saw that it was Estabrook. His face was illuminated by the little flame, but a hundredfold more by an expression of happiness, the equal of which I have never seen.
"Great Scott, Doctor," he cried in sincere surprise. "I forgot you were here!"
"Come! Come!" said I. "Some one is wearing his thumb off on that bell."
As he swung the door back, obeying me like a man in a dream, a voice outside mumbled indistinctly.
"Yes," said Estabrook, "I am he."
Then closing the door he came into the room, fumbling along the wall for the electric switch. The flood of light disclosed him trying to tear open an envelope.
As he read the contents, his face grew black as if with rage, then it brightened again. He uttered an exclamation of pleasure.
"Thank G.o.d!" he cried. "Here! Read this. It"s from Margaret Murchie."
I took the paper.
"You will never see me again," it said. "I have gone to Monty Cranch.
You won"t ever see either of us again. He is going with me. We plan to finish life, what is left of it, together. We will never turn up again.
You better not worry.
"I have caused enough trouble already," it went on in its rough scrawl.
"I have been wicked enough and had to pay dear for my lies. Julianna is not the daughter of Monty Cranch. That is the truth. She is the daughter of the Judge, so help me. Mrs. Welstoke is to blame for that first lie.
I stole the locket from the Cranch baby"s neck and after the fire I saw a chance to get the Judge in my power. I snapped the locket on and I fooled him otherwise. G.o.d knows I suffered enough for it afterward when I got to love him and Julianna. I never attempted any blackmail. But I did not dare to tell the truth. It was the only home I had and I was afraid. I have done the best I could. You will never see me again. Monty knows now she is not his. I have money saved. We won"t come back."
"Well," said Estabrook, when I had tossed it on the table, "I am dumb. I am the happiest man alive. The Estabrooks, when you come right down to it quickly, would have been sorry if--"
"Pardon me, sir," I said. "I will call later. You do not need me now and I will step into the Marburys"."
"But, Doctor!" cried the young man.
I shook my head.
"My dear fellow," said I solemnly, "I cannot bear to hear you talk about the respectable Estabrooks!"
Our hands met, however, and, I believe, with a warmth that meant more than many words.
As I went up the Marburys" steps a minute later, I looked up. A light was burning in Mrs. Estabrook"s room. I saw the shadows of a man and a woman pa.s.s the curtain together.
This pretty picture was in my mind as I entered little Virginia"s room, where Miss Peters met me with a smile--the first human smile I had ever seen on her metallic face.
For many minutes I sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at the child that I had grown to love, as a foolish old doctor sometimes will. Then I bent and kissed her cool, white forehead.
"She is out of danger," said I softly.
"Oh, yes," said Miss Peters. "She will get well. You have saved her."
She moved her angular shoulders as she adjusted her belt, she strode noiselessly across the room and moved the shade on the lamp. The light now shone so that the blue wall, with its ethereal depths, had turned rosy as with the light of dawn.
"Suppose, Miss Peters--" said I, after staring at it a moment, "suppose that you were called upon for one guess about this wall and its effect upon this child."
She wheeled about and stared at me.
"I"ve thought of that," she said.
"What"s behind that wall?" she mused as if to herself. "As between something and somebody, it is not a thing, but a person. A person has been there--perhaps some one overcoming evil or winning some victory over disease."
"Well," said I, seeing that she was hesitating, "go on."
"I can"t exactly go on," she said. "I don"t want you to take me for a fool. Only, don"t you suppose that you and I, ourselves, must throw out some influence that is not seen with the eyes or heard with the ears?
Don"t we affect every one near us with our good and evil? Don"t we affect the people who live above and below in apartments, or to the right and left in houses? Doesn"t strength or weakness come through wood and iron and stone? Didn"t it come through this wall, Doctor?"
"My dear Miss Peters," said I, shrugging my shoulders, "how can I say?
I can only tell you that you have just finished the longest, the most human, and, on the whole, in the best sense, the most scientific observation I have ever known you to make."
CHAPTER II
"WHY CARE?"
There is the tale, all told. Many may want to ask me my theories. I have none. My story, except as to form, is like the data I keep in every case which comes before my notice--it is a somewhat incomplete and matter-of-fact section out of human life. Like poor MacMechem I try to keep my mind open. I simply offer a narrative of the sequence of events.
One thing only troubles me. Did Margaret Murchie lie when she said Mrs.
Estabrook was the daughter of Cranch? or when she said that she was the daughter of Judge Colfax? And to this question many will say, "Why care?" Others will decide--each for himself.
THE END