"I never meant to leave Mrs. Leeth a penny more than the thousand a year mother and I always planned, but if Minnie can"t believe me, all right."
"Now, here"s an odd thing, aunty. No one of that family ever heard of this place, including Absolom himself. Precious few people know about it, anyhow, you see. It pays every one not to. Well. Mrs. Leeth is dismissed, arrangements made, I take him in a motor out here. We walk through the hall, and the first person we meet here--Mrs. Leeth. New housekeeper. It seems the old one died of heart failure overnight.
Dr. Jarvyse finds this one, by great good luck just out of a job.
Highly recommended by Mr. Absolom Vail. Never occupied just this post, apparently, but Jarvyse feels perfectly certain she"s just the woman for it. I don"t know how he knew it, but she certainly is. Best woman we ever had."
"How perfectly extraordinary! Was Mr. Vail surprised?"
"Not at all. He just smiled politely, and neither of "em has ever discussed it."
"What did the Countess have to say?"
"Oh, she was furious, till I pointed out that we couldn"t have the woman in a safer place, because every employee signs a bond on entering, never to receive by bequest or otherwise a penny from any patient. We all sign."
"What does the Italian Count think of it all?"
"Hannibal? He"s all right, Hannibal. He and I and Barkington had a little session in this very room about a fortnight ago. I was saying something about the question of Mr. Vail"s insanity.
""Question?" says Barkington. "Question? Why there is no question!
As a man of science, Count Hannibal, you know as well as I do----"
""But I am not a man of science, my dear fellow--I"m a Roman," says Hannibal, grinning away (those Italians speak wonderful English, you know). "Very odd things happen in Rome, now and then, my good Barkington!""
I looked at him steadily. He sat surrounded by his mysterious electric machines under shining gla.s.s domes, among costly leather-bound volumes whose very t.i.tles questioned the foundation of reason; telephones and telegrams ready to hand upon his orderly desk. And it seemed to me that he smiled mockingly at me behind his baffling eye-gla.s.ses.
"I don"t understand you, Will," I said slowly, "you seem to be leading me to ... do you mean me to understand that you believe that Mrs.
Vail"s--spirit--entered--came back ... do you mean you think Mr. Vail is right, all the time?"
"Not at all," he returned promptly. "I acknowledge no such conditions.
I know nothing of spirits nor what they do. I do not know that there are any. I study the human brain: when it ceases to respond to nervous stimuli, I cease to study it, that"s all."
"Then why do you--why do you look at me..."
He struck his fist on the table.
"I look at you," he cried, "because you amaze me so, you people who a.s.sume that you know all about the human brain, where I leave off!
Granted your premises, yours and Trix"s and the Barkingtons", why _don"t_ you believe him? I should. Look at that woman"s eyes! Try to talk to her! Do you suppose we haven"t tried? Ask Jarvyse what he"s got out of her! Get something out of her, yourself! Then ask yourself: _if what Absolom says is so, how would she act differently from the way she does act?_
"G.o.d! I wish I _could_ believe him!"
He struck the desk again, and it seemed to me that behind his gla.s.ses he scorned me for the nondescript I was.
I went quickly out of the office into the corridor. I would find Mrs.
Leeth and have it out with her. I would--she stood directly in front of me.
"Oh--how do you do!" I stammered. Her hands were full of cut flowers.
"How--how do you feel about Mr. Vail?" I demanded brusquely.
The ordinary, stocky, black-dressed figure raised its head slowly; the eyes met mine.
And suddenly I knew that the flowers in her hands were hyacinths, hyacinths and damp fern and mignonette. It grew and grew and surrounded me with a penetrating cloud of rich perfume, perfume and old, sweet memories that cut and soothed at once. I thought of the lily-of-the-valley bed under my mother"s window, and her brown, brown eyes held mine and she--my mother, back again and smiling--filled my heart so full that I stood drowned in the old days and listened for the school-bell and the other children"s voices!
It seemed that it had all been a mistake, a long mistake, and she had been there all the time.... I cannot tell you how sweet and certain it all was.
And then I knew the odour for what it was--hyacinth. Hyacinths in a round, spaded bed, with a robin singing near, and myself picking a stalk, and the man stepping up behind me that had blotted out all the other men, who were mistakes and slipped away ... and yet we would not begin again, my dearest! No, no, there is plenty of time!
And just as I was swimming back, staring at her eyes, it came over me that there had been hyacinths on the piano, almost overpowering in the dusk of the room that will always be nearest to me--I hope I may lie there, dead. I was playing Chopin, and life looked so rich: the boy was not born yet. I said, "If he should die"--but of course I couldn"t believe that he would. And then--and then it was as if he had _not_ died, after all, and I saw that this had been a mistake, too! It was so calm, so simple--no shock at all. Why had I never known? And all this while the girls and I had kept flowers on that tiny, tiny grave!
I must tell his father....
She dropped her eyes to the hyacinths and I put my hand on a chair to steady myself. My cheeks were all wet.
"Mr. Vail seems very contented," she said. "Of course, I am accustomed to looking after him."
She stepped quietly through an open door, the keys jangling softly at her belt.
I went South with my husband for a fortnight, and on my return Will dined with us.
"By the way," he said, "were you surprised at Vail"s death?"
It was three days" news and I had forgotten to mention it.
"He never was the same after the pneumonia, and he worried about his daughter Irene. She came through all right, though. Well, he was over sixty."
"How--what became of Mrs. Leeth?" I asked eagerly.
He smiled oddly.
"n.o.body knows. She"s never been seen since the funeral."
"Never been seen? But who is the housekeeper, then?"
"Oh, they"ve got another. Never"ll be Mrs. Leeth"s equal, though. She left on the first of the month."
"But when she was paid off, didn"t anybody inquire?"
"She never was paid off," he said quietly. "She never came for her money."
THE UNBURIED
The talk shifted at length--as it inevitably must--to women, and the unalterable and uncharted mystery of their mental currents: the jagged and cruelly unsuspected reefs that rear suddenly under rippling shoal-water, the maelstrom that boils just beyond the soft curve of the fairest cape.
"There"s no good asking "why,"" said the great doctor slowly, "you might as well ask, "why not." They"re incomprehensible. For thirty years I"ve studied them. Thirty years...."
He leaned forward over the table weightily. The others unconsciously bent toward him.