XXIII. DORIS
"A young girl named Doris Scott?"
The station-master looked somewhat sharply at the man he was addressing,and decided to give the direction asked.
"There is but one young girl in town of that name," he declared, "andshe lives in that little house you see just beyond the works. But let metell you, stranger," he went on with some precipitation--
But here he was called off, and Sweetwater lost the conclusion ofhis warning, if warning it was meant to be. This did not trouble thedetective. He stood a moment, taking in the prospect; decided that theWorks and the Works alone made the town, and started for the house whichhad been pointed out to him. His way lay through the chief businessstreet, and greatly preoccupied by his errand, he gave but a passingglance to the rows on rows of workmen's dwellings stretching away to theleft in seemingly endless perspective. Yet in that glance he certainlytook in the fact that the sidewalks were blocked with people andwondered if it were a holiday. If so, it must be an enforced one, forthe faces showed little joy. Possibly a strike was on. The anxiety heeverywhere saw pictured on young faces and old, argued some trouble; butif the trouble was that, why were all heads turned indifferently fromthe Works, and why were the Works themselves in full blast?
These questions he may have asked himself and he may not. His attentionwas entirely centred on the house he saw before him and on the possibledevelopments awaiting him there. Nothing else mattered. Briskly hestepped out along the sandy road, and after a turn or two which led himquite away from the Works and its surrounding buildings, he came outupon the highway and this house.
It was a low and unpretentious one, and had but one distinguishingfeature. The porch which hung well over the doorstep was unique in shapeand gave an air of picturesqueness to an otherwise simple exterior; apicturesqueness which was much enhanced in its effect by the backgroundof illimitable forest, which united the foreground of this pleasingpicture with the great chain of hills which held the Works and town inits ample basin.
As he approached the doorstep, his mind involuntarily formed ananticipatory image of the child whose first stitches in embroidery werelike a fairy's weaving to the strong man who worked in ore and possiblyfigured out bridges. That she would prove to be of the anemic type,common among working girls gifted with an imagination they have butscant opportunity to exercise, he had little doubt.
He was therefore greatly taken aback, when at his first step upon theporch, the door before him flew open and he beheld in the dark recessbeyond a young woman of such bright and blooming beauty that he hardlynoticed her expression of extreme anxiety, till she lifted her hand andlaid an admonitory finger softly on her lip:
"Hush!" she whispered, with an earnestness which roused him from hisabsorption and restored him to the full meaning of this encounter."There is sickness in the house and we are very anxious. Is your errandan important one? If not--" The faltering break in the fresh, youngvoice, the look she cast behind her into the darkened interior, wereeloquent with the hope that he would recognise her impatience and passon.
And so he might have done,--so he would have done under all ordinarycircumstances. But if this was Doris--and he did not doubt the factafter the first moment of startled surprise--how dare he forego thisopportunity of settling the question which had brought him here.
With a slight stammer but otherwise giving no evidence of the effectmade upon him by the passionate intensity with which she had urged thisplea, he assured her that his errand was important, but one so quicklytold that it would delay her but a moment. "But first," said he, withvery natural caution, "let me make sure that it is to Miss Doris Scott Iam speaking. My errand is to her and her only."
Without showing any surprise, perhaps too engrossed in her own thoughtsto feel any, she answered with simple directness, "Yes, I am DorisScott." Whereupon he became his most persuasive self, and pulling outa folded paper from his pocket, opened it and held it before her, withthese words:
"Then will you be so good as to glance at this letter and tell me if theperson whose initials you will find at the bottom happens to be in townat the present moment?"
In some astonishment now, she glanced down at the sheet thus boldlythrust before her, and recognising the O and the B of a well-knownsignature, she flashed a look back at Sweetwater in which he read aconfusion of emotions for which he was hardly prepared.
"Ah," thought he, "it's coming. In another moment I shall hear what willrepay me for the trials and disappointments of all these months."
But the moment passed and he had heard nothing. Instead, she droppedher hands from the door-jamb and gave such unmistakable evidences ofintended flight, that but one alternative remained to him; he becameabrupt.
Thrusting the paper still nearer, he said, with an emphasis which couldnot fail of making an impression, "Read it. Read the whole letter. Youwill find your name there. This communication was addressed to MissChalloner, but--"
Oh, now she found words! With a low cry, she put out her hand in quickentreaty, begging him to desist and not speak that name on any pretextor for any purpose. "He may rouse and hear," she explained, with anotherquick look behind her. "The doctor says that this is the critical day.He may become conscious any minute. If he should and were to hear thatname, it might kill him."
"He!" Sweetwater perked up his ears. "Who do you mean by he?"
"Mr. Brotherson, my patient, he whose letter--" But here her impatiencerose above every other consideration. Without attempting to finish hersentence, or yielding in the least to her curiosity or interest in thisman's errand, she cried out with smothered intensity, "Go! go! I cannotstay another moment from his bedside."
But a thunderbolt could not have moved Sweetwater after the hearing ofthat name. "Mr. Brotherson!" he echoed. "Brotherson! Not Orlando?"
"No, no; his name is Oswald. He's the manager of these Works. He's sickwith typhoid. We are caring for him. If you belonged here you would knowthat much. There! that's his voice you hear. Go, if you have any mercy."And she began to push to the door.
But Sweetwater was impervious to all hint. With eager eyes straininginto the shadowy depths just visible over her shoulder, he listenedeagerly for the disjointed words now plainly to be heard in some near-bybut unseen chamber.
"The second O. B.!" he inwardly declared. "And he's a Brotherson also,and--sick! Miss Scott," he whisperingly entreated as her hand fell inmanifest despair from the door, "don't send me away yet. I've a questionof the greatest importance to put you, and one minute more cannot makeany difference to him. Listen! those cries are the cries of delirium; hecannot miss you; he's not even conscious."
"He's calling out in his sleep. He's calling her, just as he has calledfor the last two weeks. But he will wake conscious--or he will not wakeat all."
The anguish trembling in that latter phrase would have attractedSweetwater's earnest, if not pitiful, attention at any other time,but now he had ears only for the cry which at that moment came ringingshrilly from within--
"Edith! Edith!"
The living shouting for the dead! A heart still warm sending forth itslonging to the pierced and pulseless one, hidden in a far-off tomb!To Sweetwater, who had seen Miss Challoner buried, this summons ofdistracted love came with weird force.
Then the present regained its sway. He heard her name again, and thistime it sounded less like a call and more like the welcoming cry ofmeeting spirits. Was death to end this separation? Had he found thetrue O. B., only to behold another and final seal fall upon this closelyfolded mystery? In his fear of this possibility, he caught at Doris'hand as she was about to bound away, and eagerly asked:
"When was Mr. Brotherson taken ill? Tell me, I entreat you; the exactday and, if you can, the exact hour. More depends upon this than you canreadily realise."
She wrenched her hand from his, panting with impatience and a vaguealarm. But she answered him distinctly:
"On the Twenty-fifth of last month, just an hour after he was mademanager. He fell in a faint a
t the Works."
The day--the very day of Miss Challoner's death!
"Had he heard--did you tell him then or afterwards what happened in NewYork on that very date?"
"No, no, we have not told him. It would have killed him--and may yet."
"Edith! Edith!" came again through the hush, a hush so deep thatSweetwater received the impression that the house was empty save forpatient and nurse.
This discovery had its effects upon him. Why should he subject thisyoung and loving girl to further pain? He had already learned more thanhe had expected to. The rest would come with time. But at the firstintimation he gave of leaving, she lost her abstracted air and turnedwith absolute eagerness towards him.
"One moment," said she. "You are a stranger and I do not know your nameor your purpose here. But I cannot let you go without begging you not tomention to any one in this town that Mr. Brotherson has any interest inthe lady whose name we must not speak. Do not repeat that delirious cryyou have heard or betray in any way our intense and fearful interestin this young lady's strange death. You have shown me a letter. Do notspeak of that letter, I entreat you. Help us to retain our secreta little longer. Only the doctor and myself know what awaits Mr.Brotherson if he lives. I had to tell the doctor, but a doctor revealsnothing. Promise that you will not either, at least till this crisis ispassed. It will help my father and it will help me; and we need all thehelp we can get."
Sweetwater allowed himself one minute of thought, then he earnestlyreplied:
"I will keep your secret for to-day, and longer, if possible."
"Thank you," she cried; "thank you. I thought I saw kindness in yourface." And she again prepared to close the door.
But Sweetwater had one more question to ask. "Pardon me," said he, as hestepped down on the walk, "you say that this is a critical day with yourpatient. Is that why every one whom I have seen so far wears such a lookof anxiety?"
"Yes, yes," she cried, giving him one other glimpse of her lovely,agitated face. "There's but one feeling in town to-day, but one hope,and, as I believe, but one prayer. That the man whom every one loves andevery one trusts may live to run these Works."
"Edith! Edith!" rose in ceaseless reiteration from within.
But it rang but faintly now in the ears of our detective. The door hadfallen to, and Sweetwater's share in the anxieties of that household wasover.
Slowly he moved away. He was in a confused yet elated condition of mind.Here was food for a thousand new thoughts and conjectures. An OrlandoBrotherson and an Oswald Brotherson--relatives possibly, strangerspossibly; but whether relatives or strangers, both given to signingtheir letters with their initials simply; and both the acknowledgedadmirers of the deceased Miss Challoner. But she had loved only one, andthat one, Oswald. It not difficult to recognise the object of thishigh hearted woman's affections in this man whose struggle with themaster-destroyer had awakened the solicitude of a whole town.