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Anna Katharine Green >> Initials Only
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"When I lost my daughter, I lost everything," he declared, as they
walked slowly up the road. "Nothing excites my interest, save that
which once excited hers. I am told that the deepest interest of
her life lay here. I am also told that it was an interest quite
worthy of her. I expect to find it so. I hope with all my heart
to find it so, and that is why I have come to this town and expect
to linger till Mr. Brotherson has recovered sufficiently to see me.
I hope that this will be agreeable to him. I hope that I am not
presuming too much in cherishing these expectations."
Doris turned her candid eyes upon him.
"I cannot tell; I do not know," said she. "Nobody knows, not even
the doctor, what effect the news we so dread to give him will have
upon Mr. Brotherson. You will have to wait--we all shall have to
wait the results of that revelation. It cannot be kept from him
much longer. When I return, I shall shrink from his first look, in
the fear of seeing it betray this dreadful knowledge. Yet I have
a faithful woman there to keep every one out of his room."
"You have had much to carry for one so young," was Mr. Challoner's
sympathetic remark. "You must let me help you when that awful
moment comes. I am at the hotel and shall stay there till Mr.
Brotherson is pronounced quite well. I have no other duty now in
life but to sustain him through his trouble and then, with what
aid he can give, search out and find the cause of my daughter's
death which I will never admit without the fullest proof, to have
been one of suicide."
Doris trembled.
"It was not suicide," she declared, vehemently. "I have always
felt sure that it was not; but to-day I KNOW."
Her hand fell clenched on her breast and her eyes gleamed strangely.
Mr. Challoner was himself greatly startled. What had happened
--what could have happened since yesterday that she should
emphasise that now?
"I've not told any one," she went on, as he stopped short in the
road, in his anxiety to understand her. "But I will tell you.
Only, not here, not with all these people driving past; most of
whom know me. Come to the house later--this evening, after Mr.
Brotherson's room is closed for the night. I have a little
sitting-room on the other side of the hall where we can talk without
being heard. Would you object to doing that? Am I asking too much
of you?"
"No, not at all," he assured her. "Expect me at eight. Will that
be too early?"
"No, no. Oh, how those people stared! Let us hasten back or they
may connect your name with what we want kept secret."
He smiled at her fears, but gave in to her humour; he would see her
soon again and possibly learn something which would amply repay him,
both for his trouble and his patience.
But when evening came and she turned to face him in that little
sitting-room where he had quietly followed her, he was conscious of
a change in her manner which forbade these high hopes. The gleam
was gone from her eyes; the tremulous eagerness from her mobile and
sensitive mouth. She had been thinking in the hours which had
passed, and had lost the confidence of that one impetuous moment.
Her greeting betrayed embarrassment and she hesitated painfully
before she spoke.
"I don't know what you will think of me," she ventured at last,
motioning to a chair but not sitting herself. "You have had time
to think over what I said and probably expect something real,
--something you could tell people. But it isn't like that.
It's a feeling--a belief. I'm so sure--"
"Sure of what, Miss Scott?"
She gave a glance at the door before stepping up nearer. He had not
taken the chair she preferred.
"Sure that I have seen the face of the man who murdered her. It
was in a dream," she whisperingly completed, her great eyes misty
with awe.
"A dream, Miss Scott?" He tried to hide his disappointment.
"Yes; I knew that it would sound foolish to you; it sounds foolish
to me. But listen, sir. Listen to what I have to tell and then
you can judge. I was very much agitated yesterday. I had to
write a letter at Mr. Brotherson's dictation--a letter to her.
You can understand my horror and the effort I made to hide my
emotion. I was quite unnerved. I could not sleep till morning,
and then--and then--I saw--I hope I can describe it."
Grasping at a near-by chair, she leaned on it for support, closing
her eyes to all but that inner vision. A breathless moment
followed, then she murmured in strained monotonous tones:
"I see it again--just as I saw it in the early morning--but even
more plainly, if that is possible. A hall--(I should call it a
hall, though I don't remember seeing any place like it before),
with a little staircase at the side, up which there comes a man,
who stops just at the top and looks intently my way. There is
fierceness in his face--a look which means no good to anybody
--and as his hand goes to his overcoat pocket, drawing out
something which I cannot describe, but which he handles as if it
were a pistol, I feel a horrible fear, and--and--" The child was
staggering, and the hand which was free had sought her heart where
it lay clenched, the knuckles showing white in the dim light.
Mr. Challoner watched her with dilated eyes, the spell under which
she spoke falling in some degree upon him. Had she finished? Was
this all? No; she is speaking again, but very low, almost in a
whisper.
"There is music--a crash--but I plainly see his other hand approach
the object he is holding. He takes something from the end--the
object is pointed my way--I am looking into--into--what? I do
not know. I cannot even see him now. The space where he stood is
empty. Everything fades, and I wake with a loud cry in my ears and
a sense of death here." She had lifted her hand and struck at her
heart, opening her eyes as she did so. "Yet it was not I who had
been shot," she added softly.
Mr. Challoner shuddered. This was like the reopening of his
daughter's grave. But he had entered upon the scene with a full
appreciation of the ordeal awaiting him and he did not lose his
calmness, or the control of his judgment.
"Be seated, Miss Scott," he entreated, taking a chair himself.
"You have described the spot and some of the circumstances of my
daughter's death as accurately as if you had been there. But you
have doubtless read a full account of those details in the papers;
possibly seen pictures which would make the place quite real to
you. The mind is a strange storehouse. We do not always know what
lies hidden within it."
"That's true," she admitted. "But the man! I had never seen the
man, or any picture of him, and his face was clearest of all. I
should know it if I saw it anywhere. It is imprinted on my memory
as plainly as yours. Oh, I hope never to see that man!"
Mr. Challoner sighed; he had really anticipated something from the
interview. The disappointment was keen. A moment of expectation;
the thrill which comes to us all under the shadow of the
supernatural, and then--this! a young and imaginative girl's dream,
convincing to herself but supplying nothing which had not already
been supplied both by the facts and his own imagination! A man had
stood at the staircase, and this man had raised his arm. She said
that she had seen something like a pistol in his hand, but his
daughter had not been shot. This he thought it well to point out
to her.
Leaning toward her that he might get her full attention, he waited
till her eyes met his, then quietly asked:
"Have you ever named this man to yourself?"
She started and dropped her eyes.
"I do not dare to," said she.
"Why?"
"Because I've read in the papers that the man who stood there had
the same name as--"
"Tell me, Miss Scott."
"As Mr. Brotherson's brother."
"But you do not think it was his brother?"
"I do not know."
"You've never seen his brother?"
"Never."
"Nor his picture?"
"No, Mr. Brotherson has none."
"Aren't they friends? Does he never mention Orlando?"
"Very, very rarely. But I've no reason to think they are not on
good terms. I know they correspond."
"Miss Scott?"
"Yes, Mr. Challoner."
"You must not rely too much upon your dream."
Her eyes flashed to his and then fell again.
"Dreams are not revelations; they are the reproduction of what
already lies hidden in the mind. I can prove that your dream is
such."
"How?" She looked startled.
"You speak of seeing something being leveled at you which made you
think of a pistol."
"Yes, I was looking directly into it."
"But my daughter was not shot. She died from a stab."
Doris' lovely face, with its tender lines and girlish curves, took
on a strange look of conviction which deepened, rather than melted
under his indulgent, but penetrating gaze.
"I know that you think so;--but my dream says no. I saw this
object. It was pointed directly towards me--above all, I saw his
face. It was the face of one whose finger is on the trigger and
who means death; and I believe my dream."
Well, it was useless to reason further. Gentle in all else, she
was immovable so far as this idea was concerned and, seeing this,
he let the matter go and prepared to take his leave.
She seemed to be quite ready for this. Anxiety about her patient
had regained its place in her mind and her glance sped constantly
toward the door. Taking her hand in his, he said some kind words,
then crossed to the door and opened it. Instantly her finger flew
to her lips and, obedient to its silent injunction, he took up his
hat in silence, and was proceeding down the hall, when the bell
rang, startling them both and causing him to step quickly back.
"Who is it?" she asked. "Father's in and visitors seldom come so
late."
"Shall I see?"
She nodded, looking strangely troubled as the door swung open,
revealing the tall, strong figure of a man facing them from the
porch.
"A stranger," formed itself upon her lips, and she was moving
forward, when the man suddenly stepped into the glare of the light,
and she stopped, with a murmur of dismay which pierced Mr.
Challoner's heart and prepared him for the words which now fell
shudderingly from her lips:
"It is he! it is he! I said that I should know him wherever I
saw him." Then with a quiet turn towards the intruder, "Oh, why,
why, did you come here!"
XXIX
DO YOU KNOW MY BROTHER
Her hands were thrust out to repel, her features were fixed; her
beauty something wonderful. Orlando Brotherson, thus met, stared
for a moment at the vision before him, then slowly and with effort
withdrawing his gaze, he sought the face of Mr. Challoner with the
first sign of open disturbance that gentleman had ever seen in him.
"Ah," said he, "my welcome is readily understood. I see you far
from home, sir." And with an ironical bow he turned again to Doris,
who had dropped her hands, but in whose cheeks the pallor still
lingered in a way to check the easy flow of words with which he
might have sought to carry off the situation. "Am I in Oswald
Brotherson's house?" he asked. "I was directed here. But possibly
there may be some mistake."
"It is here he lives," said she; moving back automatically till she
stood again by the threshold of the small room in which she had
received Mr. Challoner. "Do you wish to see him to-night? If so,
I fear it is impossible. He has been very ill and is not allowed
to receive visits from strangers."
"I am not a stranger," announced the newcomer, with a smile few
could see unmoved, it offered such a contrast to his stern and
dominating figure. "I thought I heard some words of recognition
which would prove your knowledge of that fact."
She did not answer. Her lips had parted, but her thought or at
least the expression of her thought hung suspended in the terror
of this meeting for which she was not at all prepared. He seemed
to note this terror, whether or not he understood its cause, and
smiled again, as he added:
"Mr. Brotherson must have spoken of his brother Orlando. I am he,
Miss Scott. Will you let me come in now?"
Her eyes sought those of Mr. Challoner, who quietly nodded.
Immediately she stepped from before the door which her figure had
guarded and, motioning him to enter, she begged Mr. Challoner, with
an imploring look, to sustain her in the interview she saw before
her. He had no desire for this encounter, especially as Mr.
Brotherson's glance in his direction had been anything but
conciliatory. He was quite convinced that nothing was to be gained
by it, but he could not resist her appeal, and followed them into
the little room whose limited dimensions made the tall Orlando look
bigger and stronger and more lordly in his self-confidence than ever.
"I am sorry it is so late," she began, contemplating his intrusive
figure with forced composure. "We have to be very quiet in the
evenings so as not to disturb your brother's first sleep which is
of great importance to him."
"Then I'm not to see him to-night?"
"I pray you to wait. He's--he's been a very sick man."
"Dangerously so?"
"Yes."
Orlando continued to regard her with a peculiar awakening gaze,
showing, Mr. Challoner thought, more interest in her than in his
brother, and when he spoke it was mechanically and as if in sole
obedience to the proprieties of the occasion.
"I did not know he was ill till very lately. His last letter was
a cheerful one, and I supposed that all was right till chance
revealed the truth. I came on at once. I was intending to come
anyway. I have business here, as you probably know, Miss Scott."
She shook her head. "I know very little about business," said she.
"My brother has not told you why he expected me?"
"He has not even told me that he expected you."
"No?" The word was highly expressive; there was surprise in it and
a touch of wonder, but more than all, satisfaction. "Oswald was
always close-mouthed," he declared. "It's a good fault; I'm
obliged to the boy."
These last words were uttered with a lightness which imposed upon
his two highly agitated hearers, causing Mr. Challoner to frown and
Doris to shrink back in indignation at the man who could indulge in
a sportive suggestion in presence of such fears, if not of such
memories, as the situation evoked. But to one who knew the strong
and self-contained man--to Sweetwater possibly, had he been present,
--there was in this very attempt--in his quiet manner and in the
strange and fitful flash of his ordinarily quick eye, that which
showed he was labouring--and had been labouring almost from his
first entrance, under an excitement of thought and feeling which in
one of his powerfully organised nature must end and that soon in an
outburst of mysterious passion which would carry everything before
it. But he did not mean that it should happen here. He was too
accustomed to self-command to forget himself in this presence. He
would hold these rampant dogs in leash till the hour of solitude;
then--a glittering smile twisted his lips as he continued to gaze,
first at the girl who had just entered his life, and then at the
man he had every reason to distrust, and with that firm restraint
upon himself still in full force, remarked, with a courteous
inclination:
"The hour is late for further conversation. I have a room at the
hotel and will return to it at once. In the morning I hope to see
my brother."
He was going, Doris not knowing what to say, Mr. Challoner not
desirous of detaining him, when there came the sound of a little
tinkle from the other side of the hall, blanching the young girl's
cheeks and causing Orlando Brotherson's brows to rise in peculiar
satisfaction.
"My brother?" he asked.
"Yes," came in faltering reply. "He has heard our voices; I must
go to him."
"Say that Orlando wishes him a good night," smiled her heart's
enemy, with a bow of infinite grace.
She shuddered, and was hastening from the room when her glance fell
on Mr. Challoner. He was pale and looked greatly disturbed. The
prospect of being left alone with a man whom she had herself
denounced to him as his daughter's murderer, might prove a tax to
his strength to which she had no right to subject him. Pausing
with an appealing air, she made him a slight gesture which he at
once understood.
"I will accompany you into the hall," said he. "Then if anything
is wrong, you have but to speak my name."
But Orlando Brotherson, displeased by this move, took a step which
brought him between the two.
"You can hear her from here if she chooses to speak. There's a
point to be settled between us before either of us leaves this
house, and this opportunity is as good as another. Go to my brother,
Miss Scott; we will await your return."
A flash from the proud banker's eye; but no demur, rather a gesture
of consent. Doris, with a look of deep anxiety, sped away, and the
two men stood face to face.
It was one of those moments which men recognise as memorable. What
had the one to say or the other to hear, worthy of this preamble
and the more than doubtful relation in which they stood each to each?
Mr. Challoner had more time than he expected in which to wonder and
gird himself for whatever suffering or shock awaited him. For,
Orlando Brotherson, unlike his usual self, kept him waiting while he
collected his own wits, which, strange to say, seemed to have
vanished with the girl.
But the question finally came.
"Mr. Challoner, do you know my brother?"
"I have never seen him."
"Do you know him? Does he know you?"
"Not at all. We are strangers."
It was said honestly. They did not know each other. Mr. Challoner
was quite correct in his statement.
But the other had his doubts. Why shouldn't he have? The
coincidence of finding this mourner if not avenger of Edith
Challoner, in his own direct radius again, at a spot so distant,
so obscure and so disconnected with any apparent business reason,
was certainly startling enough unless the tie could be found in
his brother's name and close relationship to himself.
He, therefore, allowed himself to press the question:
"Men sometimes correspond who do not know each other. You knew
that a Brotherson lived here?"
"Yes."
"And hoped to learn something about me?"
"No; my interest was solely with your brother."
"With my brother? With Oswald? What interest can you have in him
apart from me? Oswald is--"
Suddenly a thought name--an unimaginable one; one with power to
blanch even his hardy cheek and shake a soul unassailable by all
small emotions.
"Oswald Brotherson!" he repeated; adding in unintelligible tones
to himself--"O. B. The same initials! They are following up these
initials. Poor Oswald." Then aloud: "It hardly becomes me, perhaps,
to question your motives in this attempt at making my brother's
acquaintance. I think I can guess them; but your labour will be
wasted. Oswald's interests do not extend beyond this town; they
hardly extend to me. We are strangers, almost. You will learn
nothing from him on the subject which naturally engrosses you."
Mr. Challoner simply bowed. "I do not feel called upon," said he,
"to explain my reasons for wishing to know your brother. I will
simply satisfy you upon a point which may well rouse your curiosity.
You remember that--that my daughter's last act was the writing of
a letter to a little protegee of hers. Miss Scott was that protegee.
In seeking her, I came upon him. Do you require me to say more on
this subject? Wait till I have seen Mr. Oswald Brotherson and then
perhaps I can do so."
Receiving no answer to this, Mr. Challoner turned again to the man
who was the object of his deepest suspicions, to find him still in
the daze of that unimaginable thought, battling with it, scoffing
at it, succumbing to it and all without a word. Mr. Challoner was
without clew to this struggle, but the might of it and the mystery
of it, drove him in extreme agitation from the room. Though proof
was lacking, though proof might never come, nothing could ever alter
his belief from this moment on that Doris was right in her estimate
of this man's guilt, however unsubstantial her reasoning might
appear.
How far he might have been carried by this new conviction; whether
he would have left the house without seeing Doris again or
exchanging another word with the man whose very presence stifled
him, he had no opportunity to show, for before he had taken another
step, he encountered the hurrying figure of Doris, who was returning
to her guests with an air of marked relief.
"He does not know that you are here," she whispered to Mr. Challoner,
as she passed him. Then, as she again confronted Orlando who
hastened to dismiss his trouble at her approach, she said quite
gaily, "Mr. Brotherson heard your voice, and is glad to know that
you're here. He bade me give you this key and say that you would
have found things in better shape if he had been in condition to
superintend the removal of the boxes to the place he had prepared
for you before he became ill. I was the one to do that," she added,
controlling her aversion with manifest effort. "When Mr. Brotherson
came to himself he asked if I had heard about any large boxes having
arrived at the station shipped to his name. I said that several
notices of such had come to the house. At which he requested me to
see that they were carried at once to the strange looking shed he
had had put up for him in the woods. I thought that they were for
him, and I saw to the thing myself. Two or three others have come
since and been taken to the same place. I think you will find
nothing broken or disturbed; Mr. Brotherson's wishes are usually
respected."
"That is fortunate for me," was the courteous reply.
But Orlando Brotherson was not himself, not at all himself as he
bowed a formal adieu and past the drawn-up sentinel-like figure
of Mr. Challoner, without a motion on his part or on the part of
that gentleman to lighten an exit which had something in it of
doom and dread presage.
XXX
CHAOS
It is not difficult to understand Mr. Challoner's feelings or even
those of Doris at the moment of Mr. Brotherson's departure. But why
this change in Brotherson himself? Why this sense of something new
and terrible rising between him and the suddenly beclouded future?
Let us follow him to his lonely hotel-room and see if we can solve
the puzzle.
But first, does he understand his own trouble? He does not seem to.
For when, his hat thrown aside, he stops, erect and frowning under
the flaring gas-jet he had no recollection of lighting, his first
act was to lift his hand to his head in a gesture of surprising
helplessness for him, while snatches of broken sentences fell from
his lips among which could be heard:
"What has come to me? Undone in an hour! Doubly undone! First
by a face and then by this thought which surely the devils have
whispered to me. Mr. Challoner and Oswald! What is the link
between them? Great God! what is the link? Not myself? Who
then or what?"
Flinging himself into a chair, he buried his face in his hands.
There were two demons to fight--the first in the guise of an angel.
Doris! Unknown yesterday, unknown an hour ago; but now! Had there
ever been a day--an hour--when she had not been as the very throb
of his heart, the light of his eyes, and the crown of all imaginable
blisses?
He was startled at his own emotion as he contemplated her image in
his fancy and listened for the lost echo of the few words she had
spoken--words so full of music when they referred to his brother,
so hard and cold when she simply addressed himself.
This was no passing admiration of youth for a captivating woman.
This was not even the love he had given to Edith Challoner. This
was something springing full-born out of nothing! a force which,
for the first time in his life, made him complaisant to the natural
weaknesses of man! a dream and yet a reality strong enough to blot
out the past, remake the present, change the aspect of all his hopes,
and outline a new fate. He did not know himself. There was nothing
in his whole history to give him an understanding of such feelings
as these.
Can a man be seized as it were by the hair, and swung up on the
slopes of paradise or down the steeps of hell--without a
forewarning, without the chance even to say whether he wished such
a cataclysm in his life or no?
He, Orlando Brotherson, had never thought much of love. Science
had been his mistress; ambition his lode-star. Such feeling as he
had acknowledged to had been for men--struggling men, men who were
down-trodden and gasping in the narrow bounds of poverty and
helplessness. Miss Challoner had roused--well, his pride. He
could see that now. The might of this new emotion made plain many
things he had passed by as useless, puerile, unworthy of a man of
mental calibre and might. He had never loved Edith Challoner at
any moment of their acquaintanceship, though he had been sincere in
thinking that he did. Doris' beauty, the hour he had just passed
with her, had undeceived him.
Did he hail the experience? It was not likely to bring him joy.
This young girl whose image floated in light before his eyes, would
never love him. She loved his brother. He had heard their names
mentioned together before he had been in town an hour. Oswald, the
cleverest man, Doris, the most beautiful girl in Western Pennsylvania.
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