The breakfast room was a charming little corner reclaimed from a dingy cell, where in by-gone days guns and ammunition had been stored, but the peace-loving inhabitants of later times had rendered these no longer necessary. It was now the most modern room Paul had seen since his arrival at this great unconventional homestead, looking quite as if it had been tacked on by mistake to the dismal old mansion.
Upon entering, he found Miss Guir sitting alone at the table. She was attired in a charming costume, and looked as fresh as the flowers before her. She greeted him with a smile, and asked how he had slept.
"Perfectly!" he answered, seating himself by her side, where he looked out of a low French window opening upon a garden with boxwood borders and a few belated blossoms.
"But do you know," he continued, "the most extraordinary thing happened."
He went on to tell of his experience in the closet, thinking it best to take the _bull by the horns_ and see if anything in Dorothy"s expression would lead him to suspect foul play. She listened to his story with interest, and, as Paul thought, a slight display of anxiety, but nothing more. When he had finished, she simply advised him not to go down those stairs any more, as they were rotten and dangerous. This was all. Nevertheless Henley felt sure that the girl knew what lay upon the other side of the door at the bottom. They chatted along quite pleasantly, Paul endeavoring to lead the conversation into some instructive channel, but without success.
"I thought perhaps I should have met some of your people at breakfast," he said, while sipping his coffee.
Dorothy stopped with a piece of toast half way to her lips.
"_My people_!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," said Paul, unmindful of the impression he had made.
"Really, Mr. Henley, what are you talking about?"
"The Guirs!" said Paul, still unheedful.
Suddenly he looked up, and the expression on the girl"s face startled him.
"Are you ill?" he cried. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"No, no," she gasped. "It is nothing. I am nervous. I am always nervous in the morning, and you gave me quite a turn. There now, I shall feel better directly."
If Paul was astonished before, he was dumfounded now. He could not imagine how anything he had said could produce such an effect, but he watched the return of color to the girl"s face with satisfaction.
Presently she looked up at him with a smile and said:
"It is all right now, but you must excuse me for a minute. I shall be back immediately."
She got up and left the room, leaving Paul alone. His appet.i.te had quite departed, so he turned his chair around and looked out of the window at the boxwood bushes and the trees beyond. Not a human figure was in sight, nor was there a sound to indicate that there were living creatures about the premises. Where was the family? Surely such a large house could not be occupied solely by the few individuals he had already met. If there were other members, where had they kept themselves? He would have given the world to have asked a few straightforward questions, but there seemed no opportunity to do so. Where was Ah Ben? Even he had not shown his face at the breakfast table. A painful sense of mystery was growing more oppressive each hour, which the bright morning sunlight had not dispelled, as he had hoped it would. If this feeling had confined itself to Ah Ben and the house, Paul thought he might have shaken off the gloom while in the company of the girl, but even she was subject to such extraordinary flights of eccentricity, such sudden fits of nervous depression, that he felt she was not surely to be depended on as a solace to his troubled soul. While he was meditating, the door opened, and Dorothy returned. She was full of smiles; and the color had come back to her cheeks.
"I can"t imagine how I could have given you such a turn," said Paul apologetically, as he resumed his place at the table.
"It was altogether my fault," she answered. Then looking at him very earnestly, added:
"I hope, Mr. Henley, that you may never become an outcast, as I am.
I hope _your people_ will never disown you. But let us talk of something else."
As upon the previous evening, she was solicitous about his food, that it should be of the best, and that he should enjoy it, although apparently indifferent about her own.
"Of course, you will find us quite different from other people, Mr.
Henley," she continued, sipping her coffee (she never seemed to drink or eat anything heartily); "our ideas and manner of living being quite at variance with theirs."
"Yes," Paul replied, as if he understood it perfectly. She was toying with her cup as though not knowing exactly how to continue. Presently she looked up at him appealingly, possessed of a sudden idea, and added:
"And what do you think about the brain?"
Paul was astonished at the irrelevancy of the question.
"I think it is in the head," he answered, smiling, in the hope of averting a difficulty. "That is, I think it ought to be there," he added in a minute, "although it is doubtless missing in some cases.
Still, there can be but little dissent from the general opinion that the skull is the proper place for it."
She looked puzzled, and Paul began to wonder if he had offended her, but in another moment she relaxed into a smile.
"I"m sure you don"t think anything of the kind," she answered, "for if you do, you"re not up to date. The latest investigations have shown that brain matter is distributed throughout the body. No, I"m not joking. We all think more or less with our hands and feet."
"I"ve not the slightest doubt of it," Paul answered, applying himself to his food; "and even if I had," he continued, "I should never dispute anything you told me." And then, looking her full in the face, he added: "Do you know, Miss Guir, that you have exerted a most remarkable influence over me? It might not be polite to say that it is inexplicable; but when I recall the fact that no girl ever before, in so short a time--"
He paused for a word, but before he could discover one that was satisfactory, she said:
"Do you mean to say that you have formed a liking for me already?"
"It is hardly the word. I have been fascinated from the moment I first saw you."
"I"m so glad," she answered, without the slightest appearance of coquetry, and as simply and naturally as though she were talking about the weather. Paul was puzzled. He could not understand her, and not knowing how to proceed, an awkward silence followed. Presently she leaned her head upon her hand, her elbow resting on the table, and with a languid yet interested scrutiny of his face, said:
"You doubtless know the world, its people and ways, far better than I, and perhaps you wouldn"t mind helping me with my book."
"Indeed! You are writing a book, then?"
"No, but I should like to do so."
"And may I ask what it is about?"
"It"s about myself and Ah Ben, and the awful predicament into which we have fallen."
"I should like greatly to help you," said Paul, thinking the subject might lead to a clearer insight of the situation; "but even were I competent to do so, which I doubt, I can not see how any little worldly knowledge I might possess could possibly be of service in a description of your own life."
"It is only that I should like to present our story in attractive form--one which would be read by worldly people."
"A laudable ambition. But what is the predicament you speak of?"
"The predicament is more directly my own; the situation, Ah Ben"s."
"Perhaps if you will explain them, I might aid you."
"You might indeed," she answered seriously, rising from the table; "but it would be premature. Let us go into the garden."
She led the way through the back of the house out into the old-fashioned yard, where boxwood bushes and chrysanthemums, together with other autumnal flowers, adorned the beds. They walked down a straight path and seated themselves upon a rustic bench in full view of the edifice.
Paul lighted a cigarette and watched the strange old building before him, while Dorothy was content to sit and look at him, as though he were some new variety of man just landed from the planet Mars. Presently she arose and wandered down the path in search of a few choice blossoms, leaving Paul alone, who watched her until she disappeared among the shrubbery.
Sitting quietly smoking his cigarette, Mr. Henley became absorbed in a critical study of the quaint old pile which had so suddenly risen to abnormal interest in his eyes. A part of the structure was falling rapidly to decay, while other portions were so deeply embedded in ivy and other creeping things that it was impossible to discover their actual state of preservation. The windows were small and far apart, and Paul recognized his own by its bearing upon a certain tree which he had noticed while looking out upon the previous night. Following down the line of the wall, he was surprised to find a large s.p.a.ce which was not pierced by either door or window, and naturally began to wonder what manner of apartment lay upon the opposite side, where neither light nor air were admitted. The wall, to be sure, was covered with Virginia creeper, which had made its way to the roof, but it was evident that it concealed no opening. Then his thoughts wandered back to the mysterious well, and he began to wonder if the closed door at the bottom connected with the unaccounted-for s.p.a.ce behind this wall. His curiosity grew as he brooded upon this possibility--a possibility which he now conceded to be a certainty as he marked the configuration of the building. The blank wall was beneath his bedroom. The well descended directly into it, or upon one side of it, and communicated with it through the door mentioned.
There was nothing to be learned by inquiry, and Henley determined to make another effort to force open the door. His resolution was not entirely the result of curiosity, for he had taken such a sudden and strong liking for the girl that he disliked the thought of leaving her; and yet the riddle of her environment was such that he conceived it to be no more than a proper regard for his own safety to take such a precaution while visiting her. Having reached this determination, he cast about for the means of executing it. He thought he should require a hammer and a cold chisel, but where such were to be found he could not conceive. Moreover, even were they in his possession, it was impossible to see exactly how he could make use of them without arousing the household. He thought of various devices, such as a m.u.f.fled hammer, or a crowbar to wrench the door from its hinges, but these were discarded in turn as impracticable, from the fact that they were un.o.btainable. He looked about him among the shrubbery, but there was nothing to aid him; and, indeed, how could he expect to find tools where there were no servants to use them? He got up and walked down the path, absorbed in reverie, and although unable to devise any immediate plan to accomplish the task, his resolution became more fixed as he dwelt upon it. He would risk all things in opening that door, and was impatient for an opportunity to renew the effort. Then the girl"s voice came floating through the air in a plaintive melody, and Henley was recalled to his surroundings. In another minute she had joined him.