XVI.
A STRANGE VISITOR.
Frank's visit and interview with Hermione had this advantage for thelatter, that it took away some of the embarrassment which her firstmeeting with Emma, after the revelations of the night before, hadnecessarily occasioned. She had breakfasted in her own room, feelingthat it would be impossible for her to meet her sister's eye, but havingbeen led into giving such proof of her preference for Mr. Etheridge, andthe extent of his influence over her, there could of course be nofurther question of Dr. Sellick, or any need for explanations betweenherself and Emma regarding a past thus shown to be no longer of vitalinterest to her. When, therefore, she came in from the garden and sawEmma waiting for her at the side-door, she blushed, but that was all, inmemory of the past night; and murmuring some petty commonplace, soughtto pass her and enter again the house which she had not left before in afull year.
But Emma, who was bright with a hope she had not felt in months, stoppedher with a word.
"There is an old man waiting in the parlor who says he wants to see us.He sent in this card--it has Dr. Ruthven's name on it--and Doris says heseemed very eager and anxious. Can you guess who he can be?"
"No," rejoined Hermione, wondering. "But we can soon see. Our visitorsare not so numerous that we can afford to slight one." And tripping byEmma, she led the way into the parlor.
A slight, meagre, eager-eyed man, clad in black and wearing apropitiatory smile on very thin lips, rose as she entered, and bowedwith an awkward politeness that yet had something of the breeding of agentleman in it.
Hermione did not like his looks, but she advanced cordially enough,perhaps because her heart was lighter than usual, and her mind lessunder the strain of one horrible fixed idea than it had been in months.
"How do you do?" said she, and looked at him inquiringly.
Huckins, with another bow, this time in recognition of her unexpectedbeauty and grace, shambled uneasily forward, and said in a hard,strained voice which was even more disagreeable than his face:
"I am sure you are very good to receive me, Miss Cavanagh. I--I had agreat desire to come. Your father----"
She drew back with a gasp.
"My father----" she repeated.
"Was an old friend of mine," he went on, in a wheedling tone, inseeming oblivion of the effect his words had had upon her. "Did younever hear him speak of Hope, Seth Hope?"
"Never," cried Hermione, panting, and looking appealingly at Emma, whohad just entered the room.
"Yet we were friends for years," declared the dissimulator, folding hishands with a dreary shake of his head.
"For years?" repeated Emma, advancing and surveying him earnestly.
"Our father was a much older man than you, Mr.--Mr. Hope."
"Perhaps, perhaps, I never saw him. But we corresponded for years. Haveyou not come across letters signed by my name, in looking over hiseffects?"
"No," answered Emma, firmly, while Hermione, looking very pale,retreated towards the door, where she stopped in mingled distress andcuriosity.
"Then he must have destroyed them all," declared their visitor. "Somepeople do not keep letters. Yet they were full of information, I assureyou; full, for it was upon the ever delightful subject of chemistry wecorresponded, and the letters I wrote him sometimes cost me a week'seffort to indite."
Emma, who had never met a man like this before, looked at him withwide-open eyes. Had Hermione not been there, she would have liked tohave played with his eccentricities, and asked him numberless questions.But with her sister shrinking in the doorway, she dared not encouragehim to pursue a theme which she perceived to be fraught with the keenestsuffering for Hermione. So she refrained from showing the distrust whichshe really felt, and motioning the old man to sit down, asked, quietly:
"And was it for these letters you came? If so, I am sorry that none suchhave been found."
"No, no," cried Huckins, with stammering eagerness, as he marked theelder sister's suspicious eyes and unencouraging manner. "It was not toget them back that I ventured to call upon you, but for the pleasure ofseeing the house where he lived and did so much wonderful work, and thelaboratory, if you will be so good. Why has your sister departed?" hesuddenly inquired, in fretful surprise, pointing to the door whereHermione had stood a moment before.
"She probably has duties," observed Emma, in a troubled voice. "And sheprobably was surprised to hear a stranger ask to see a room no one butthe members of his family have entered since our father's death."
"But I am not a stranger," artfully pursued the cringing Huckins,making himself look as benevolent as he could. "I am an admirer, adevoted admirer of your remarkable parent, and I could show youpapers"--but he never did,--"of writing in that same parent's hand, inwhich he describes the long, narrow room, with its shelves full ofretorts and crucibles, and the table where he used to work, with themystic signs above it, which some said were characters taken fromcabalistic books, but which he informed me were the new signs he wishedto introduce into chemistry, as being more comprehensive and less liableto misinterpretation than those now in use."
"You do seem to know something about the room," she murmured softly, tooinnocent to realize that the knowledge he showed was such as he couldhave gleaned from any of Mr. Cavanagh's intimate friends.
"But I want to see it with my own eyes. I want to stand in the spotwhere he stood, and drink in the inspiration of his surroundings, beforeI go back to my own great labor."
"Have you a laboratory? Are you a chemist?" asked Emma, interested indespite of the dislike his wheedling ways and hypocritical air naturallyinduced.
"Yes, yes, I have a laboratory," said he; "but there is no romance aboutmine; it is just the plain working-room of a hard-working man, whilehis----"
Emma, who had paled at these words almost as much as her sister had doneat his first speech about her father, recoiled with a look in which thewonderment was strangely like fear.
"I cannot show you the room," said she. "You exaggerate your desire tosee it, as you exaggerate the attainments and the discoveries of myfather. I must ask you to excuse me," she continued, with a slightacknowledgment in which dismissal could be plainly read. "I am verybusy, and the morning is rapidly flying. If you could come again----"
But here Hermione's full deep tones broke from the open doorway.
"If he wishes to see the place where father worked, let him come; thereis no reason why we should hide it from one who professes such sympathywith our father's pursuits."
Huckins, chuckling, looked at Emma, and then at her sister, and movedrapidly towards the door. Emma, who had been taken greatly by surpriseby her sister's words, followed slowly, showing more and moreastonishment as Hermione spoke of this place, or that, on their wayup-stairs, as being the spot where her father's books were kept, or hischemicals stored, till they came to the little twisted staircase at thetop, when she became suddenly silent.
It was now Emma's turn to say:
"This is the entrance to the laboratory. You see it is just as you havedescribed it."
Huckins, with a sly leer, stepped into the room, and threw around onequick, furtive look which seemed to take in the whole place in aninstant. It was similar to his description, and yet it probably struckhim as being very different from the picture he had formed of it in hisimagination. Long, narrow, illy lighted, and dreary, it offered anythingbut a cheerful appearance, even in the bright July sunshine that siftedthrough the three small windows ranged along its side. At one end was arow of shelves extending from the floor to the ceiling, filled withjars, chemicals, and apparatus of various kinds. At the other end was atable for collecting gases, and beneath each window were more shelves,and more chemicals, and more apparatus. A large electric machine perchedby itself in one corner, gave a grotesque air to that part of the room,but the chief impression made upon an observer was one of bareness anddesolation, as of the husk of something which had departed, leaving asmell of death behind. The girls used the room for their dreary midnightwalks;
otherwise it was never entered, except by Doris, who kept it inperfect order, as a penance, she was once heard to declare, she having aprofound dislike to the place, and associating it always, as we havebefore intimated, with some tragic occurrence which she believed to havetaken place there.
Huckins, after his first quick look, chuckled and rubbed his handstogether, in well-simulated glee.
"Do I see it?" he cried; "_the room_ where the great Cavanagh thoughtand worked! It is a privilege not easily over-estimated." And he flittedfrom shelf to drawer, from drawer to table, with gusts of enthusiasmwhich made the cold, stern face of Hermione, who had taken up her standin the doorway, harden into an expression of strange defiance.
Emma, less filled with some dark memory, or more swayed by her anxietyto fathom his purposes, and read the secret of an intrusion which as yetwas nothing but a troublous mystery to her, had entered the room withhim, and stood quietly watching his erratic movements, as if she halfexpected him to abstract something from the hoard of old chemicals orcollection of formulas above which he hung with such a pretence ofrapture.
"How good! how fine! how interesting!" broke in shrill ejaculation fromhis lips as he ambled hither and thither. But Emma noticed that his eyeever failed to dwell upon what was really choice or unique in thecollection of her father's apparatus, and that when by chance he touchedan alembic or lifted a jar, it was with an awkwardness that betrayed anunaccustomed hand.
"You do not hold a retort in that way," she finally remarked, going upto him and taking the article in question out of his hand. "This is howmy father was accustomed to handle them," she proceeded, and he, takenaback for the instant, blushed and murmured something about her fatherbeing his superior and she the very apt pupil of a great scholar and avery wise man.
"You wanted to see the laboratory, and now you have seen it," quothHermione from her place by the door. "Is there anything else we can dofor you?"
The chill, stern tones seemed to rouse him and he turned towards thespeaker.
"No, no, my dear, no, no. You have been very good." But Emma noticedthat his eyes still kept roaming here, there, and everywhere while hespoke, picking up information as a bird picks up worms.
"What does he want?" thought she, looking anxiously towards her sister.
"You have a very pleasant home," he now remarked, pausing at the head ofthose narrow stairs and peering into the nest of Hermione's own room,the door of which stood invitingly open. "Is that why you never leaveit?" he unexpectedly asked, looking with his foxy eyes from one sisterto the other.
"I do not think it is necessary for us to answer you," said Emma, whileHermione, with a flash in her eye, motioned him imperiously down, sayingas she slowly followed him:
"Our friends do not consider it wise to touch upon that topic, how muchmore should a stranger hesitate before doing so?"
And he, cowering beneath her commanding look and angry presence, seemedto think she was right in this and ventured no more, though his restlesseyes were never still, and he appeared to count the very banisters ashis hand slid down the railing, and to take in every worn thread thatshowed itself in the carpet over which his feet shuffled in almostundignified haste.
When they were all below, he made one final remark:
"Your father owed me money, but I do not think of pressing my claim. Youdo not look as if you were in a position to satisfy it."
"Ah," exclaimed Emma, thinking she had discovered the motive of hisvisit at last; "that is why you wanted to see the laboratory."
"Partly," he acknowledged with a sly wink, "but not altogether. Allthere is there would not buy up the I. O. U. I hold. I shall have to letthe matter go with other bad debts I suppose. But three hundred dollarsis a goodly sum, young ladies, a goodly sum."
Emma, who knew that her father had not been above borrowing money forhis experiments, looked greatly distressed for a moment, but Hermione,who had now taken her usual place as leader, said without attempting todisguise the tone of suspicion in her voice:
"Substantiate your claim and present your bill and we will try to payit. We have still a few articles of furniture left."
Huckins, who had never looked more hypocritically insinuating or morediabolically alert, exclaimed,
"I can wait, I can wait."
But Hermione, with a grand air and a candid look, answered bitterly andat once:
"What we cannot do now we can never do. Our fortunes are not likely toincrease in the future, so you had better put in your claim at once, ifyou really want your pay."
"You think so?" he began; and his eye, which had been bright before,now gleamed with the excitement of a fear allayed. "I----"
But just then the bell rang with a loud twang, and he desisted fromfinishing his sentence.
Emma went to the door and soon came back with a letter which she handedto Hermione.
"The man Jerry brought it," she explained, casting a meaning look at hersister.
Hermione, with a quick flush, stepped to the window and in the shadow ofthe curtains read her note. It was a simple word of warning.
DEAR MISS CAVANAGH:
I met a man at your gate who threatened to go in. Do not receive him, or if you have already done so, distrust every word he has uttered and cut the interview short. He is Hiram Huckins, the man concerning whom I spoke so frankly when we were discussing the will of the Widow Wakeham.
Yours most truly, FRANK ETHERIDGE.
The flush with which Hermione read these lines was quite gone when sheturned to survey the intruder, who had forced himself upon herconfidence and that of her sister by means of a false name. Indeed shelooked strangely pale and strangely indignant as she met his twinklingand restless eye, and, to any one who knew the contents of the notewhich she held, it would seem that her first words must be those ofangry dismissal.
But instead of these, she first looked at him with some curiosity, andthen said in even, low, and slightly contemptuous tones:
"Will you not remain and lunch with us, Mr. Huckins?"
At this unexpected utterance of his name he gave a quick start, but soonwas his cringing self again. Glancing at the letter she held, heremarked:
"My dear young lady, I see that Mr. Etheridge has been writing to you.Well, there is no harm in that. Now we can shake hands in earnest"; andas he held out his wicked, trembling palm, his face was a study for apainter.