mrs. durant, in her thin slippers, splashed on beside me through the mud.
“oh,” she exclaimed, stopping short with a gasp, “look at the lights!”
we had crossed the green, and were groping our way under the dense elm-shadows, and there before us stood the cranch house, all its windows illuminated. it was the only house in the village except miss selwick’s that was not darkened and shuttered.
“well, he can’t be gone; he’s giving a party, you see,” i said derisively.
my companion made no answer. she only pulled me forward, and yielding once more i pushed open the tall entrance gates. in the brick path i paused. “do you still want to go in?” i asked.
“more than ever!” she kept her tight clutch on my arm, and i walked up the path at her side and rang the bell.
the sound went on jangling for a long time through the stillness; but no one came to the door. at length mrs. durant laid an impatient hand on the door-panel. “but it’s open!” she exclaimed.
it was probably the first time since waldo cranch had come back to live in the house that unbidden visitors had been free to enter it. we looked at each other in surprise and i followed mrs. durant into the lamplit hall. it was empty.
with a common accord we stood for a moment listening; but not a sound came to us, though the doors of library and drawing-room stood open, and there were lighted lamps in both rooms.
“it’s queer,” i said, “all these lights, and no one about.”
my companion had walked impulsively into the drawing-room and stood looking about at its familiar furniture. from the panelled wall, distorted by the wavering lamp-light, the old spanish ancestress glared down duskily at us out of the shadows. mrs. durant had stopped short — a sound of voices, agitated, discordant, a strange man’s voice among them, came to us from across the hall. silently we retraced our steps, opened the dining-room door, and went in. but here also we found emptiness; the talking came from beyond, came, as we now perceived, from the wing which none of us had ever entered. again we hesitated and looked at each other. then “come!” said mrs. durant in a resolute tone; and again i followed her.
she led the way into a large pantry, airy, orderly, well-stocked with china and glass. that too was empty; and two doors opened from it. mrs. durant passed through the one on the right, and we found ourselves, not, as i had expected, in the kitchen, but in a kind of vague unfurnished anteroom. the quarrelling voices had meanwhile died out; we seemed once more to have the mysterious place to ourselves. suddenly, beyond another closed door, we heard a shrill crowing laugh. mrs. durant dashed at this last door and it let us into a large high-studded room. we paused and looked about us. evidently we were in what cranch had always described as the lumber-room on the ground floor of the wing. but there was no lumber in it now. it was scrupulously neat, and fitted up like a big and rather bare nursery; and in the middle of the floor, on a square of drugget, stood a great rearing black and white animal: my aunt lucilla’s hobby-horse . . .
i gasped at the sight; but in spite of its strangeness it did not detain me long, for at the farther end of the room, before a fire protected by a tall nursery fender, i had seen something stranger still. two little boys in old-fashioned round jackets and knickerbockers knelt by the hearth, absorbed in the building of a house of blocks. mrs. durant saw them at the same moment. she caught my arm as if she were about to fall, and uttered a faint cry.
the sound, low as it was, produced a terrifying effect on the two children. both of them dropped their blocks, turned around as if to dart at us, and then stopped short, holding each other by the hand, and staring and trembling as if we had been ghosts.
at the opposite end of the room, we stood staring and trembling also; for it was they who were the ghosts to our terrified eyes. it must have been mrs. durant who spoke first.
“oh . . . the poor things . . . ” she said in a low choking voice.
the little boys stood there, motionless and far off, among the ruins of their house of blocks. but, as my eyes grew used to the faint light — there was only one lamp in the big room — and as my shaken nerves adjusted themselves to the strangeness of the scene, i perceived the meaning of mrs. durant’s cry.
the children before us were not children; they were two tiny withered men, with frowning foreheads under their baby curls, and heavy-shouldered middle-aged bodies. the sight was horrible, and rendered more so by the sameness of their size and by their old-fashioned childish dress. i recoiled; but mrs. durant had let my arm go, and was moving softly forward. her own arms outstretched, she advanced toward the two strange beings. “you poor poor things, you,” she repeated, the tears running down her face.
i thought her tender tone must have drawn the little creatures; but as she advanced they continued to stand motionless, and then suddenly — each with the same small falsetto scream — turned and dashed toward the door. as they reached it, old catherine appeared and held out her arms to them.
“oh, my god — how dare you, madam? my young gentlemen!” she cried.
they hid their dreadful little faces in the folds of her skirt, and kneeling down she put her arms about them and received them on her bosom. then, slowly, she lifted up her head and looked at us.
i had always, like the rest of harpledon, thought of catherine as a morose old englishwoman, civil enough in her cold way, but yet forbidding. now it seemed to me that her worn brown face, in its harsh folds of gray hair, was the saddest i had ever looked upon.
“how could you, madam; oh, how could you? haven’t we got enough else to bear?” she asked, speaking low above the cowering heads on her breast. her eyes were on mrs. durant.
the latter, white and trembling, gave back the look. “enough else? is there more, then?”
“there’s everything — .” the old servant got to her feet, keeping her two charges by the hand. she put her finger to her lips, and stooped again to the dwarfs. “master waldo, master donald, you’ll come away now with your old catherine. no one’s going to harm us, my dears; you’ll just go upstairs and let janey sampson put you to bed, for it’s very late; and presently catherine’ll come up and hear your prayers like every night.” she moved to the door; but one of the dwarfs hung back, his forehead puckering, his eyes still fixed on mrs. durant in indescribable horror.
“good dobbin,” cried he abruptly, in a piercing pipe.
“no, dear, no; the lady won’t touch good dobbin,” said catherine. “it’s the young gentlemen’s great pet,” she added, glancing at the roman steed in the middle of the floor. she led the changelings away, and a moment later returned. her face was ashen-white under its swarthiness, and she stood looking at us like a figure of doom.
“and now, perhaps,” she said, “you’ll be good enough to go away too.”
“go away?” mrs. durant, instead, came closer to her. “how can i— when i’ve just had this from your master?” she held out the letter she had brought to my house.
catherine glanced coldly at the page and returned it to her.
“he says he’s going on a journey. well, he’s been, madam; been and come back,” she said.
“come back? already? he’s in the house, then? oh, do let me — ” mrs. durant dropped back before the old woman’s frozen gaze.
“he’s lying overhead, dead on his bed, madam — just as they carried him up from the beach. do you suppose, else, you’d have ever got in here and seen the young gentlemen? he rushed out and died sooner than have them seen, the poor lambs; him that was their father, madam. and here you and this gentleman come thrusting yourselves in . . . ”
i thought mrs. durant would reel under the shock; but she stood quiet, very quiet — it was almost as if the blow had mysteriously strengthened her.
“he’s dead? he’s killed himself?” she looked slowly about the trivial tragic room. “oh, now i understand,” she said.
old catherine faced her with grim lips. “it’s a pity you didn’t understand sooner, then; you and the others, whoever they was, forever poking and prying; till at last that miserable girl brought in the police on us — ”
“the police?”
“they was here, madam, in this house, not an hour ago, frightening my young gentlemen out of their senses. when word came that my master had been found on the beach they went down there to bring him back. now they’ve gone to hingham to report his death to the coroner. but there’s one of them in the kitchen, mounting guard. over what, i wonder? as if my young gentlemen could run away! where in god’s pity would they go? wherever it is, i’ll go with them; i’ll never leave them . . . and here we were at peace for thirty years, till you brought that man to draw the pictures of the house . . . ”
for the first time mrs. durant’s strength seemed to fail her; her body drooped, and she leaned her weight against the door. she and the housekeeper stood confronted, two stricken old women staring at each other; then mrs. durant’s agony broke from her. “don’t say i did it — don’t say that!”
but the other was relentless. as she faced us, her arms outstretched, she seemed still to be defending her two charges. “what else would you have me say, madam? you brought that man here, didn’t you? and he was determined to see the other side of the wing, and my poor master was determined he shouldn’t.” she turned to me for the first time. “it was plain enough to you, sir, wasn’t it? to me it was, just coming and going with the tea-things. and the minute your backs was turned, mr. cranch rang, and gave me the order: ‘that man’s never to set foot here again, you understand.’ and i went out and told the other three; the cook, and janey, and hannah oast, the parlour-maid. i was as sure of the cook and janey as i was of myself; but hannah was new, she hadn’t been with us not above a year, and though i knew all about her, and had made sure before she came that she was a decent close-mouthed girl, and one that would respect our . . . our misfortune . . . yet i couldn’t feel as safe about her as the others, and of her temper i wasn’t sure from the first. i told mr. cranch so, often enough; i said: ‘remember, now, sir, not to put her pride up, won’t you?’ for she was jealous, and angry, i think, at never being allowed to see the young gentlemen, yet knowing they were there, as she had to know. but their father would never have any but me and janey sampson about them.
“well — and then, in he came yesterday with those accursed pictures. and however had the man got in? and where was hannah? and it must have been her doing . . . and swearing and cursing at her . . . and me crying to him and saying: ‘for god’s sake, sir, let be, let be . . . don’t stir the matter up . . . just let me talk to her . . . and i went in to my little boys, to see about their supper; and before i was back, i heard a trunk bumping down the stairs, and the gardener’s lad outside with a wheel-barrow, and hannah oast walking away out of the gate like a ramrod. ‘oh, sir, what have you done? let me go after her!’ i begged and besought him; but my master, very pale, but as calm as possible, held me back by the arm, and said: ‘don’t you worry, catherine. it passed off very quietly. we’ll have no trouble from her.’ ‘no trouble, sir, from hannah oast? oh, for pity’s sake, call her back and let me smooth it over, sir!’ but the girl was gone, and he wouldn’t leave go of my arm nor yet listen to me, but stood there like a marble stone and saw her drive away, and wouldn’t stop her. ‘i’d die first, catherine,’ he said, his kind face all changed to me, and looking like that old spanish she-devil on the parlour wall, that brought the curse on us . . . and this morning the police came. the gardener got wind of it, and let us know they was on the way; and my master sat and wrote a long time in his room, and then walked out, looking very quiet, and saying to me he was going to the post office, and would be back before they got here. and the next we knew of him was when they carried him up to his bed just now . . . and perhaps we’d best give thanks that he’s at rest in it. but, oh, my young gentlemen . . . my young gentlemen!”
