"I have been picturing the entire scene," she said, in an impressive whisper when the bonnet re-appeared, "and I assure you that when I heard your footsteps on those stairs, goose-flesh rose and ran like lightning down my spine." And Mrs. Strain, though out of breath, considered that her services had been well repaid.
Mr. Graub now returned, and measured the prints with the nicest accuracy. Owing to the widow's compliment to his hands, he had stopped to wash them, in order to give a finer effect to the operation. Mrs. Young requested that the figures be written down for her on a slip of paper, "as a memorial"; and then, with one more exhaustive look at the room, the stairway, and the garden, she went away, accompanied by her friend, leaving Mr. Graub more than ever convinced that he was a very unusual man.
Mrs. Strain was easily induced to finish the afternoon's dissipations by going through the grass meadow by the side of the track made by the murderer on his way to the river. They walked "by the side," because the track itself was railed off. So many persons had visited the meadow that Mr. Graub had been obliged to protect his relic in order to preserve its identity, and even existence. The little trail was now conspicuous by the fringing of tall grass which still stood erect on each side of it, the remainder of the meadow having been trodden flat.
"It ends at the river," said Mrs. Young, reflectively.
"Yes, where he came to wash his hands, after the deed was done," responded Mrs. Strain. "And what his visions and inward thoughts must have been at sech a moment I leave you, Mrs. Young, solemnly to consider."
Mrs. Young then returned homeward, after thanking her Timloesville friend for a "most impressive day."
"The outlines are too indistinct to be really of much use, Ruth," she said, as she removed her bonnet. "I believe it was so stated at the trial, wasn't it? But if I have eyes, they do not fit."
"Of course not, since it is the hand of another person," replied Anne. "But did you notice, or rather could you see, what the variations were?"
"A broader palm, I should say, and the fingers shorter. The only point, however, which I could make out with certainty was the thick cushion of flesh at the ends of the fingers; that seemed clear enough."
At sunset they went across the fields together to the point on the river-bank where the meadow trail ended.
"The river knows all," said Anne, looking wistfully at the smooth water.
"They think so too, for they've dragged it a number of times," responded Miss Lois. "All the boys in the neighborhood have been diving here ever since, I am told; they fancy the purse, watch, and rings are in the mud at the bottom. But they're safe enough in somebody's pocket, you may be sure."
"Miss Lois," said the girl, suddenly, "perhaps he went away in a boat!"
"My name is Deborah – Aunt Deborah; and I do wish, Ruth, you would not forget it so constantly. In a boat? Well, perhaps he did. But I don't see how that helps it. To-morrow is market-day, and I must go in to the village and look out for left-handed men; they won't escape me though they fairly dance jigs on their right!"
"He went away in a boat," repeated Anne, as they walked homeward through the dusky fields.
But the man was no nearer or plainer because she had taken him from the main road and placed him on the river; he seemed, indeed, more distant and shadowy than before.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
"The burnished dragon-fly is thine attendant,
And tilts against the field,
And down the listed sunbeam rides resplendent,
With steel-blue mail and shield."
– Longfellow.
Miss Lois came home excited. She had seen a left-handed man. True, he was a well-known farmer of the neighborhood, a jovial man, apparently frank and honest as the daylight. But there was no height of impossibility impossible to Miss Lois when she was on a quest. She announced her intention of going to his farm on the morrow under the pretext of looking at his peonies, which, she had been told, were remarkably fine, "for of course I made inquiries immediately, in order to discover the prominent points, if there were any. If it had been onions, I should have been deeply interested in them just the same."
Anne, obliged for the present to let Miss Lois make the tentative efforts, listened apathetically; then she mentioned her wish to row on the river.
"Better stay at home," said Miss Lois. "Then I shall know you are safe."
"But I should like to go, if merely for the air," replied Anne. "My head throbs as I sit here through the long hours. It is not that I expect to accomplish anything, though I confess I am haunted by the river, but the motion and fresh air would perhaps keep me from thinking so constantly."
"I am a savage," said Miss Lois, "and you shall go where you please. The truth is, Ruth, that while I am pursuing this matter with my mental faculties, you are pursuing it with the inmost fibres of your heart." (The sentence was mixed, but the feeling sincere.) "I will go down this very moment, and begin an arrangement about a boat for you."
She kept her word. Anne, sitting by the window, heard her narrating to Mrs. Blackwell a long chain of reasons to explain the fancy of her niece Ruth for rowing. "She inherits it from her mother, poor child," said the widow, with the sigh which she always gave to the memory of her departed relatives. "Her mother was the daughter of a light-house keeper, and lived, one might say, afloat. Little Ruthie, as a baby, used to play boat; her very baby-talk was full of sailor words. You haven't any kind of a row-boat she could use, have you?"
Mrs. Blackwell replied that they had not, but that a neighbor farther down the river owned a skiff which might be borrowed.
"Borrow it, then," said Mrs. Young. "They will lend it to you, of course, in a friendly way, and then we can pay you something for the use of it."
This thrifty arrangement, of which Mrs. Blackwell unaided would never have thought, was carried into effect, and early the next morning the skiff floated at the foot of the meadow, tied to an overhanging branch.
In the afternoon Mrs. Young, in the farm wagon, accompanied by her hostess, and her hostess's little son as driver, set off for John Cole's farm, to see, in Mrs. Blackwell's language, "the pynies." A little later Anne was in the skiff, rowing up the river. She had not had oars in her hands since she left the island.
She rowed on for an hour, through the green fields, then through the woods. Long-legged flies skated on the still surface of the water, insects with gauzy wings floated to and fro. A dragon-fly with steel-blue mail lighted on the edge of the boat. The burnished little creature seemed attracted. He would not leave her, but even when he took flight floated near by on his filmy wings, timing his advance with hers. With one of those vague impulses by which women often select the merest chance to decide their actions, Anne said to herself, "I will row on until I lose sight of him." Turning the skiff, she took one oar for a paddle, and followed the dragon-fly. He flew on now more steadily, selecting the middle of the stream. No doubt he had a dragon-fly's motives; perhaps he was going home; but whether he was or not, he led Anne's boat onward until the river grew suddenly narrower, and entered a ravine. Here, where the long boughs touched leaf-tips over her head, and everything was still and green, she lost him. The sun was sinking toward the western horizon line; it was time to return; but she said to herself that she would come again on the morrow, and explore this cool glen to which her gauzy-winged guide had brought her. When she reached home she found Miss Lois there, and in a state of profound discomfiture. "The man was left-handed enough," she said, "but, come to look at him, he hadn't any little finger at all: chopped off by mistake when a boy. Now the little finger in the impression is the most distinct part of the whole; and so we've lost a day, and the price of the wagon thrown in, not to speak of enough talking about peonies to last a lifetime! There's a fair to-morrow, and of course I must go: more left hands: although now, I confess, they swim round me in a cloud of vexation and peonies, which makes me never want to lay eyes on one of them again;" and she gave a groan, ending in a long yawn. However, the next morning, with patience and energies renewed by sleep, she rose early, like a phœnix from her ashes, and accompanied Mrs. Blackwell to the fair. Anne, again in her skiff, went up the river. She rowed to the glen where she had lost the dragon-fly. Here she rested on her oars a moment. The river still haunted her. "He went away in a boat," had not been out of her mind since it first came to her. "He went away in a boat," she now thought again. "Would he, then, have rowed up or down the stream? If he had wished to escape from the neighborhood, he would have rowed down to the larger river below. He would not have rowed up stream unless he lived somewhere in this region, and was simply going home, because there is no main road in this direction, no railway, nothing but farms which touch each other for miles round. Now, as I believe he was not a stranger, but a resident, I will suppose that he went up stream, and I will follow him." She took up her oars and rowed on.
The stream grew still narrower. She had been rowing a long time, and knew that she must be far from home. Nothing broke the green solitude of the shore until at last she came suddenly upon a little board house, hardly more than a shanty, standing near the water, with the forest behind. She started as she saw it, and a chill ran over her. And yet what was it? Only a little board house.
She rowed past; it seemed empty and silent. She turned the skiff, came back, and gathering her courage, landed, and timidly tried the door; it was locked. She went round and looked through the window. There was no one within, but there were signs of habitation – some common furniture, a gun, and on the wall a gaudy picture of the Virgin and the Holy Child. She scrutinized the place with eyes that noted even the mark of muddy boots on the floor and the gray ashes from a pipe on the table. Then suddenly she felt herself seized with fear. If the owner of the cabin should steal up behind her, and ask her what she was doing there! She looked over her shoulder fearfully. But no one was visible, no one was coming up or down the river; her own boat was the only thing that moved, swaying to and fro where she had left it tied to a tree trunk. With the vague terror still haunting her, she hastened to the skiff, pushed off, and paddled swiftly away. But during the long voyage homeward the fear did not entirely die away. "I am growing foolishly nervous," she said to herself, with a weary sigh.
Miss Lois had discovered no left-handed men at the fair; but she had seen a person whom she considered suspicious – a person who sold medicines. "He was middle-sized," she said to Anne, in the low tone they used when within the house, "and he had a down look – a thing I never could abide. He spoke, too, in an odd voice. I suspected him as soon as I laid my eyes upon him, and so just took up a station near him, and watched. He wasn't left-handed exactly," she added, as though he might have been so endowed inexactly; "but he is capable of anything – left-handed, web-footed, or whatever you please. After taking a good long look at him, I went round and made (of course by chance, and accidentally) some inquiries. Nobody seemed to know much about him except that his name is Juder (and highly appropriate in my opinion), and he came to the fair the day before with his little hand-cart of medicines, and went out again, into the country somewhere, at sunset. Do you mark the significance of that, Ruth Young? He did not stay at the Timloe hotel (prices reduced for the fair, and very reasonable beds on the floor), like the other traders; but though the fair is to be continued over to-morrow, and he is to be there, he took all the trouble to go out of town for the night."
"Perhaps he had no money," said Anne, abstractedly.
"I saw him with my own eyes take in dollars and dollars. Singular that when country people will buy nothing else, they will buy patent medicines. No: the man knows something of that murder, and could not stay at that hotel, Ruth Young. And that's my theory."
In her turn Anne now related the history of the day, and the discovery of the solitary cabin. Miss Lois was not much impressed by the cabin. "A man is better than a house, any day," she said. "But the thing is to get the man to say 'cold.' I shall ask him to-morrow if he has any pills for a cold in the head or on the lungs; and, as he tells long stories about the remarkable cures his different bottles have effected, I hope, when I once get him started, to hear the word several times. I confess, Ruth, that I have great hopes; I feel the spirit rising within me to run him down."
Miss Lois went again to the fair, her mission bubbling within her. At eight in the morning she started; at nine in the evening she returned. With skirt and shawl bedraggled, and bonnet awry, she came to Anne's room, closed the door, and demanded tragically that the broom-switch should be taken from the shelf and applied to her own thin shoulders. "I deserve it," she said.
"For what?" said Anne, smiling.
Miss Lois returned no answer until she had removed her bonnet and brought forward a chair, seated herself upon it, severely erect, with folded arms, and placed her feet on the round of another. "I went to that fair," she began, in a concentrated tone, "and I followed that medicine man; wherever he stopped his hand-cart and tried to sell, I was among his audience. I heard all his stories over and over again; every time he produced his three certificates, I read them. I watched his hands, too, and made up my mind that they would do, though I did not catch him in open left-handedness. I now tried 'cold.' 'Have you any pills for a cold in the head?' I asked. But all he said was 'yes,' and he brought out a bottle. Then I tried him with a cold on the lungs; but it was just the same. 'What are your testimonials for colds?' I remarked, as though I had not quite made up my mind; and he thereupon told two stories, but they were incoherent, and never once mentioned the word I was waiting to hear. 'Haven't you ever had a cold yourself?' I said, getting mad. 'Can't you speak?' And then, looking frightened, he said he often had colds, and that he took those medicines, and that they always cured him. And then hurriedly, and without waiting for the two bottles which I held in my hand tightly, he began to move on with his cart. But he had said 'gold,' Ruth – he had actually said 'gold!' And, with the stings of a guilty, murderous conscience torturing him, he was going away without the thirty-seven and a half cents each which those two bottles cost! It was enough for me. I tracked him from that moment – at a distance, of course, and in roundabout ways, so that he would not suspect. I think during the day I must have walked, owing to doublings and never stopping, twenty miles. When at last the fair was over, and he started away, I started too. He went by the main road, and I by a lane, and such work as I had to keep him in sight, and yet not let him see me! I almost lost him several times, but persevered until he too turned off and went up a hill opposite toward a grove, dragging his little cart behind him. I followed as quickly as I could. He was in the grove as I drew near, stepping as softly as possible, and others were with him; I heard the murmur of voices. 'I have come upon the whole villainous band,' I thought, and I crept softly in among the trees, hardly daring to breathe. Ruth, the voices had a little camp; they had just lighted a fire; and – what do you think they were? Just a parcel of children, the eldest a slip of a girl of ten or eleven! I never was more dumbfounded in my life. Ruth, that medicine man sat down, kissed the children all round, opened his cart, took out bread, cheese, and a little package of tea, while the eldest girl put on a kettle, and they all began to talk. And then the youngest, a little tot, climbed up on his knee, and called him – Mammy! This was too much; and I appeared on the scene. Ruth, he gathered up the children in a frightened sort of way, as if I were going to eat them. 'What do you mean by following me round all day like this?' he began, trying to be brave, though I could see how scared he was. It was rather unexpected, you know, my appearing there at that hour so far from town. 'I mean,' said I, 'to know who and what you are. Are you a woman, or are you a man?'
"'Can't you see,' said the poor creature; 'with all these children around? But it's not likely from your looks that you ever had any of your own, so you don't know.' She said that," thoughtfully remarked Miss Lois, interrupting her own narrative, "and it has been said before. But how in the world any one can know it at sight is and always will be a mystery to me. Then said I to her, 'Are you the mother, then, of all these children? And if so, how came you to be selling medicines dressed up like a man? It's perfectly disgraceful, and you ought to be arrested.'
"'No one would buy of me if I was a woman,' she answered. 'The cart and medicines belonged to my husband, and he died, poor fellow! four weeks ago, leaving me without a cent. What was I to do? I know all the medicines, and I know all he used to say when he sold them. He was about my size, and I could wear his clothes. I just thought I'd try it for a little while during fair-time for the sake of the children – only for a little while to get started. So I cut my hair and resked it. And it's done tolerably well until you come along and nearly scared my life out of me yesterday and to-day. I don't see what on earth you meant by it.'
"Ruth, I took tea with that family on the hill-side, and I gave them all the money I had with me. I have now come home. Any plan you have to propose, I'll follow without a word. I have decided that my mission in this life is not to lead. But she did say gold for cold," added Miss Lois, with the spirit of "scissors."
"I am afraid a good many persons say it," answered Anne.
The next day Miss Lois gave herself up passively to the boat. They were to take courage in each other's presence, and row to the solitary cabin on the shore. When they reached it, it was again deserted.
"There is no path leading to it or away from it in any direction," said Miss Lois, after peeping through the small window. "The fire is still burning. The owner, therefore, whoever it is, uses a boat, and can not have been long gone either, or the fire would be out."
"If he had gone down the river, we should have met him," suggested Anne, still haunted by the old fear, and watching the forest glades apprehensively.
"How do you know it is a he?" said Miss Lois, with grim humor. "Perhaps this, too, is a woman. However, as you say, if he had gone down the river, probably we should have met him – a 'probably' is all we have to stand on – and the chances are, therefore, that he has gone up. So we will go up."
They took their places in the skiff again, and the little craft moved forward. After another half-hour they saw, to their surprise, a broad expanse of shining water opening out before them: the river was the outlet of a little lake two miles long.
"This, then, is where they go fishing," said Miss Lois. "The Blackwells spoke of the pond, but I thought it was on the other side of the valley. Push out, Ruth. There are two boats on it, both dug-outs; we'll row by them."
The first boat contained a boy, who said, "Good-day, mums," and showed a string of fish. The second boat, which was farther up the lake, contained a man. He was also fishing, and his face was shaded by an old slouch hat. Anne, who was rowing, could not see him as they approached; but she saw Miss Lois's hands close suddenly upon each other in their lisle-thread gloves, and was prepared for something, she knew not what. No word was spoken; she rowed steadily on, though her heart was throbbing. When she too could look at the man, she saw what it was: he was holding his rod with his left hand.
Their skiff had not paused; it passed him and his dug-out, and moved onward a quarter of a mile – half a mile – before they spoke; they were afraid the very air would betray them. Then Anne beached the boat under the shade of a tree, took off her straw hat, and bathed her pale face in the clear water.
"After all, it is the vaguest kind of a chance," said Miss Lois, rallying, and bringing forward the common-sense view of the case: "no better a one, at this stage, than the peony farmer or my medicine man. You must not be excited, Ruth."
"I am excited only because I have thought so much of the river," said Anne. "The theory that the man who did it went away from the foot of that meadow in a boat, and up this river, has haunted me constantly."
"Theories are like scaffolding: they are not the house, but you can not build the house without them," said Miss Lois. "What we've got to do next is to see whether this man has all his fingers, whether he is a woman, and whether he says, 'gold.' Will you leave it to me, or will you speak to him yourself? On the whole, I think you had better speak to him: your face is in your favor."
When Anne felt herself sufficiently calm, they rowed down the lake again, and passed nearer to the dug-out, and paused.
"Have you taken many fish?" said Anne, in a voice totally unlike her own, owing to the effort she made to control it. The fisherman looked up, took his rod in his right hand, and, with his left, lifted a string of fish.
"Pretty good, eh?" he said, regarding Anne with slow-coming approval. "Have some?"
"Oh no," she answered, almost recoiling.
"But, on the whole, I think I should like a few for tea, Ruth," said Miss Lois, hastening to the rescue – "my health," she added, addressing the fisherman, "not being what it was in the lifetime of Mr. Young. How much are your fish? I should like six, if you do not ask too much."
The man named his price, and the widow objected. Then she asked him to hold up the string again, that she might have a better view. He laid his rod aside, held the string in his right hand, and as she selected, still bargaining for the fish she preferred, he detached them with his left hand. Two pairs of eyes, one old, sharp, and aided by spectacles, the other young, soft, intent, yet fearful, watched his every motion. When he held the fish toward them, the widow was long in finding her purse; the palm of his hand was toward them, they could see the underside of the fingers. They were broad, and cushioned with coarse flesh.
Anne had now grown so pale that the elder woman did not dare to linger longer. She paid the money, took the fish, and asked her niece to row on down the lake, not forgetting, even then, to add that she was afraid of the sun's heat, having once had a sun-stroke during the life of the lamented Mr. Young. Anne rowed on, hardly knowing what she was doing. Not until they had reached the little river again, and were out of sight round its curve under the overhanging trees, did they speak.
"Left-handed, and cushions under his finger-tips," said Miss Lois. "But, Ruth, how you acted! You almost betrayed us."
"I could not help it," said Anne, shuddering. "When I saw that hand, and thought – Oh, poor, poor Helen!"
"You must not give way to fancies," said Miss Louis. But she too felt an inward excitement, though she would not acknowledge it.
The fisherman was short in stature, and broad; he was muscular, and his arms seemed too long for his body as he sat in his boat. His head was set on his shoulders without visible throat, his small eyes were very near together, and twinkled when he spoke, while his massive jaw contradicted their ferrety mirthfulness as his muscular frame contradicted the childish, vacant expression of his peculiarly small boyish mouth, whose upper lip protruded over narrow yellow teeth like fangs.
"Faces have little to do with it," said Miss Lois again, half to herself, half to Anne. "It is well known that the portraits of murderers show not a few fine-looking men among them, while the women are almost invariably handsome. What I noticed was a certain want in the creature's face, a weakness of some kind, with all his evident craftiness."
When they came to the solitary cabin, Miss Lois proposed that they should wait and see whether it really was the fisherman's home. "It will be another small point settled," she said. "We can conceal our boat, and keep watch in the woods. As he has my money, he will probably come home soon, and very likely go directly down to the village to spend it: that is always the way with such shiftless creatures."
They landed, hid the boat in a little bay among the reeds some distance below the cabin, and then stole back through the woods until they came within sight of its door. There, standing concealed behind two tree trunks, they waited, neither speaking nor stirring. Miss Lois was right in her conjecture: within a quarter of an hour the fisherman came down the river from the lake, stopped at the house, brought out a jug, placed it in his dug-out; then, relocking the door, he paddled by them down the river. They waited some minutes without stirring. Then Miss Lois stepped from her hiding-place.
"Whiskey!" she said. "And my money pays for the damnable stuff!" This reflection kept her silent while they returned to the skiff; but when they were again afloat, she sighed and yielded it as a sacrifice to the emergencies of the quest. Returning to the former subject, she held forth as follows: "It is something, Ruth, but not all. We must not hope too much. What is it? A man lives up the river, and owns a boat; he is left-handed, and has cushions of flesh under his finger-tips: that is the whole. For we can scarcely count as evidence the fact that he is as ugly as a stump fence, such men being not uncommon in the world, and often pious as well. We must do nothing hurriedly, and make no inquiries, lest we scare the game – if it is game. To-morrow is market-day; he will probably be in the village with fish to sell, and the best way will be for me to find out quietly who his associates are, by using my eyes and not my tongue. His associates, if he has any, might next be tackled, through their wives, perhaps. Maybe they do sewing, some of them; in that case, we could order something, and so get to speaking terms. There's my old challis, which I have had dyed black – it might be made over, though I was going to do it myself. And now do row home, Ruth; I'm dropping for my tea. This exploring work is powerfully wearing on the nerves."
The next day she went to the village.
Anne, finding herself uncontrollably restless, went down and unfastened the skiff, with the intention of rowing awhile to calm her excited fancies. She went up the river for a mile or two. Her mind had fastened itself tenaciously upon the image of the fisherman, and would not loosen its hold. She imagined him stealing up the stairway and leaning over Helen; then escaping with his booty, running through the meadow, and hiding it in his boat, probably the same old black dug-out she had seen. And then, while she was thinking of him, she came suddenly upon him, sitting in his dug-out, not ten feet distant, fishing. Miss Lois had been mistaken in her surmise: he was not in the village, but here.
There had not been a moment of preparation for Anne; yet in the emergency coolness came. Resting on her oars, she spoke: "Have you any fish to-day?"
He shook his head, and held up one. "That's all," he said, drawing his hand over his mouth by way of preparation for conversation.
"I should not think there would be as many fish here as in the lake," she continued, keeping her boat at a distance by a slight motion of her oars.
"When the wind blows hard, there's more in the river," he answered. "Wind blows to-day."
Was she mistaken? Had he given a sound of d to th?
"But the water of the lake must be colder," she said, hardly able to pronounce the word herself.
"Yes, in places where it's deep. But it's mostly shaller."
"How cold is it? Very cold?" (Was she saying "gold" too?)
"No, not very, this time o' year. But cold enough in April."
"What?"
"Cold enough in April," replied the fisherman, his small eyes gazing at her with increasing approbation.
He had given the sound of g to the c. The pulses in Anne's throat and temples were throbbing so rapidly now that she could not speak.
"I could bring yer some fish to-morrer, I reckon," said the man, making a clicking sound with his teeth as he felt a bite and then lost it.
She nodded, and began to turn the boat.
"Where do you live?" he called, as the space between them widened.
She succeeded in pronouncing the name of her hostess, and then rowed round the curve out of sight, trying not to betray her tremulous haste and fear. All the way home she rowed with the strength of a giantess, not knowing how she was exerting herself until she began to walk through the meadow toward the house, when she found her limbs failing her. She reached her room with an effort, and locking her door, threw herself down on a couch to wait for Miss Lois. It was understood in the house that "poor Miss Young" had one of her "mathematical headaches."