charley weyman was anxious to learn how his boy friend had been received and entertained in the van kuren mansion, and he listened attentively while bruce described his visit, told him how friendly laura and harry had been, and with what courtesy he had been welcomed by their father and their aunt, but somehow he neglected to mention his long conversation with laura in the summer-house, nor did he refer to the dexter mansion at all. the young girl’s words still rang in his ears, and it was a pleasant thought to him that he had a secret to share with her, a secret which none of his other friends need know about. the little scrawl which she had placed in his hand at parting he kept in the innermost compartment of his pocket-book, and many a time during the day while engaged at his work he would take the little crumpled bit of paper out or its hiding place, read it carefully through and then return it, carefully folded up.
and as he did so, he would wonder for the thousandth time what her splendid idea could 97be, and how it could help him to solve the mystery of what she called the “haunted house.” it was just a week after his visit to the van kuren’s that he entered the quarters and found a letter addressed to him lying on the table in the back room. he recognized the handwriting at once, and was conscious of a faint color that crept into his cheeks as he seized the precious missive and went upstairs to read it. this is what he found when he tore off the envelope. it was carefully written in pencil on a sheet of paper, which looked as if it had been torn out of a school copy book.
“bruce decker, esq.
“dear friend: i have found out where my old nurse lives, and perhaps if you go to see her she will tell you what you want to know. don’t tell her that you know me, or that you were ever at our house, but ask her about mr. dexter and why he lives there all by himself. i think there is an awful mystery about it all, and perhaps some day you will be the hero of a story that will tell about it.
“when are you coming up to see us again? good-bye now, for the present.
your true friend,
laura van kuren.
p. s.—i heard papa say that you seemed to be a very nice boy.
p. s.—i forgot to tell you about ann’s address. she lives at 000 ave. a, and her name is mrs. ann crehan.”
98bruce was not long in making his way to the address given in laura’s letter. mrs. crehan seemed to be nearly a hundred years old, and was certainly very deaf. he succeeded after a while in making her understand what he wanted.
“aye, aye, sir,” she said, “shure they were good people, too, for all the master had his quarrel with them, but there’s none left now except the ould gentleman, for his son went away and never came back.”
“but what was the quarrel about?” bawled the boy at the top of his lungs.
“what was the quarrel about?” repeated the old woman. “why it was about family matters, of course. what else do people quarrel about?”
“but can’t you remember what sort of family matters they were?” persisted bruce.
“no, sir, i cannot,” rejoined the old woman, with a look of fox-like cunning on her face; “and if i could i’d not be talking about it either. what right have i, who was a servant in the family of mr. van kuren, and of his wife that’s dead and gone—may the lord have mercy on her soul—this ten year come next january, what right have i to be gossiping with the likes of you about their private matters? no, young man, ye’ll get nothing out of ann crehan about the van kurens, or the dexters, or any other of the rale quality that we had in thim days when i went out to service.”
she seemed to be nearly a hundred years old, and she was certainly very deaf.—page 98.
99for half an hour bruce vainly endeavored to elicit from the old woman some facts regarding the history of the dexter family. sometimes she seemed on the point of telling something, and then the old look of cunning would come back to her wrinkled face, and she would shake her head and chuckle, declaring that she knew her place and nothing could induce her to gossip about her old master or his family affairs.
he even went so far as to ask her if she remembered a tall, dark bearded man with a scar across his chin, who used to visit the family, occasionally, but at this inquiry the old woman became very angry and declared that he was an impertinent young spalpeen to come into a decent body’s house and attempt to pry into matters that did not concern him. she said, moreover, that she was going to tell mr. dexter himself, the next time he came to see her—“and he might be here any minute,” she added—and the boy on hearing this threat, departed with much speed, and slunk cautiously along the street, looking on every side for mr. samuel dexter.
100charley weyman told bruce that he had read in a “complete handbook of etiquette” that it was ordained by the leaders of fashion that any one entertained at a dinner party should make what is known as a “dinner call” within a week or ten days after the dinner. therefore he advised the young boy to present himself at the van kuren mansion some afternoon, in acknowledgment of the courtesy which had been shown him.
bruce, who had been trying for three days to contrive some plausible pretext for going up to that part of the town again, was only too glad to hear this, and that very afternoon, having first secured mr. trask’s permission, he made himself as neat as he possibly could, and started on the elevated train.
never before had a journey by steam seemed to him as long as this one. he counted the blocks as they passed beneath him, and rejoiced to think that every minute lessened the distance between him and the young girl who was now occupying a large share of his thoughts. as he approached the van kuren mansion, he strained his eyes to look over the hedge that separated the lawn from the highway, hoping that he might catch a glimpse of laura somewhere in the grounds.
101he was not disappointed. just as he passed through the gate, he caught sight of some one seated in the summer-house—the very one in which he had had his long talk on the occasion of his first visit—and then it seemed to him that this some one looked up for a moment, recognized him, and then became absorbed in the pages of a book. it was laura; but although his feet sounded noisily on the gravel-walk she did not look up, and when at last he stopped, a little embarrassed, at the step of the summer-house, lifted his hat, and addressed her by name, she started as suddenly as if she had been awakened from a dream, and then, so it seemed to him, recognized him with much surprise.
she asked him to sit down, which he did, placing himself at the very edge of a rustic bench and holding his hat awkwardly over his knees. then she laid her book down on the table in the middle of the house, with the leaves open at the place where she had been reading, a proceeding which somehow gave to her visitor the impression that she hoped to resume it again at an early moment. this, taken in connection with a certain cool reserve in her manner, which was altogether different from what he had experienced at her hands before, acted like a 102cold chill upon the young man—which was precisely the effect which she had reckoned on.
the truth is that laura, like a great many of the most charming of her sex, was a natural born coquette, and, having noticed how eagerly her young admirer responded to her advances on the occasion of their first meeting, she took pleasure in treating him now with a degree of indifference which led him to fear that he had in some way managed to offend her.
bruce had had very little experience with girls, and for that reason he felt chilled and hurt at the manifest change in laura’s voice and manner. if he had known a little more of the sex he would have been very much flattered to think that this clever, brilliant and fascinating young beauty—for such laura really was—should have taken the trouble to play upon his feelings at all. and if, moreover, bruce had dreamt of the amount of interest that he had awakened in her, he would have been that afternoon the most jubilant young man in the whole city. she had been thinking of hardly anything but the romantic history of the good-looking, modest, young fire laddie, and she was at this very moment fairly burning to know if he had found out anything more about the mystery which enveloped his origin and in which it seemed to her 103that somehow her own friends were associated. if she could only find out why her father had quarreled with mr. dexter, she might be able to help him and perhaps to make him comprehend why the old doorway had looked so familiar.
for a few minutes the two conversed, stiffly, about matters in which neither had any real interest, for all the world as if they had been full grown people, instead of a mere boy and girl. then laura saw that her guest was too shy to broach the topic which was uppermost in the minds of both, and so she relented a little, smiled quite pleasantly, but not too pleasantly, and asked him with assumed carelessness if he had found out anything more about his mysterious origin.
“no,” replied bruce, but with a note of hesitation in his voice, which served to whet laura’s curiosity to such a degree that she exclaimed, bluntly, “do tell me if you went to see old ann, and what she said to you; i am just dying to know.”
her enthusiasm cheered bruce enormously and restored a good deal of the self-confidence which had disappeared when he believed that he had somehow offended her.
“i went to see her,” he said, “but i really could not get anything out of her, for she’s very 104old and deaf, and seems to be actuated by but one motive, which is to keep to herself whatever matters of family history she may have learned while she was in your father’s employ. i think she knows something about that mr. dexter and the reason of the family quarrel, and she might possibly talk to you about it, but she looked upon me as an impertinent stranger, and i could get nothing out of her. but there was something that happened the other day that might or might not lead to some further developments. but i suppose if i were to tell you, you would repeat it to your father or to harry——”
“go on this minute, and tell me! you know perfectly well we’re not either one of us to talk to anybody about our secret. just let me once catch you telling, that’s all. now go on.”
“well,” continued bruce, highly elated by the young girl’s interest in him and her return to her old manner, “the other day there was a fire down in a part of the city where it’s nothing but tenement houses and factories and where nobody but foreigners live. i drove the hook and ladder truck, of course,” the boy inflated his chest, proudly, as he said this, “and while i was sitting there looking at the fire i saw a well-dressed gentleman with a black beard, 105standing on the step of one of the tenement houses. as we were driving home slowly we passed him again, and a couple of the men on the truck saw him, too. who do you think he was?”
“i don’t know, tell me quick!” cried laura who was listening with breathless interest and cheeks flushed with more than their natural color.
“i noticed,” continued bruce in dramatic tones, “that he had a long scar across his chin——”
“mercy!” gasped laura. “it must have been that fearful man you told me about who used to come down to see your father. if we could only find him, the mystery would be solved.”
“but i couldn’t get off the truck, and so i had to go back to the quarters without learning anything more,” said bruce sadly, and just then harry came whooping across the lawn, seized bruce by both hands, waltzed him out of the summer-house and succeeded in throwing him on his back on the grass before the astonished boy fairly realized what had happened. this was harry’s exuberant way of welcoming a friend, and a moment later he had bruce on his feet again and was helping to rub the dust and the grass stains from his clothes.
106of course harry’s advent put an immediate stop to the conversation and half an hour later harry proposed that they should all go out for a walk.
“you’d better not unless you’ve got your lesson, mr. harry, i can tell you that,” said his sister in warning accents, “you know what will happen the next time you’re caught running off without doing your work first.”
“oh, bother the lessons,” cried the boy carelessly, “i can do them after i get back.”
ten minutes later as they were walking quietly along the highway bruce suddenly fell behind the others a step, seized laura’s arm in one hand and with the other pointed to a man who had just passed them, driving a fine pair of black horses.
laura looked at the driver and then at bruce in a surprised way and then seemed to signal with her lips, “who is he?”
in reply bruce simply drew his finger slowly down his chin and laura, catching his meaning at once, leaped excitedly on to a stone wall beside the road and gazed after the retreating buggy, straining her eyes to get a full, fair view of its occupant.
“what’s the matter with you laura?” demanded her brother brusquely, “you’re getting 107too old to be hopping up on stone walls, i can tell you.”
laura descended to the path again and walked quietly along with the two boys, not deigning to make any response to harry’s criticism.
