“Alice!” Curtis was amazed. “Do you mean ... is it Miss Harper?”
“Sure thing. Never was anyone else in my life ... well, not really. Preacher, I’ve always worshipped the ground she walked on. Years ago, when I was working for old Winthrop Field, I was crazy mad about her. She never knew it. I didn’t think I could ever get her, of course. She was one of the aristocratic Fields and I was a hired boy. But I never forgot her ... never could get really interested in anybody else. When I made my pile I says to myself, ‘Now I’m going straight back to P.E. Island and if Alice Harper isn’t married yet I’ll see if she’ll have me.’ You see, I’d never heard from Mowbray Narrows for years ... never heard of Alice’s accident. I thought it likely she’d be married but there was a chance. Preacher, it was an awful jolt when I came home and found her like she is. And the worst of it is I’m just as fond of her as ever ... too fond of her to take up with anybody else ... though there’s a girl at the Glen ... but never mind about that. Since I can’t get Alice I don’t want to marry anyone else ... though Mrs. Blythe says ... but never mind that. And me wanting to marry, with lots of cash to give my woman the dandiest house at the Coast. Deuced hard luck, ain’t it? Excuse me. I always forget I’m talking to a minister when I’m with you. Never forgot it with old Mr. Sheldon. But then he is a saint.”
Curtis agreed that it was hard luck. Privately he thought it did not matter much, as far as Henry Kildare was concerned, whether Alice could or could not marry. Surely she could never care for this brusque, boastful man.
But there was real feeling in Kildare’s voice and Curtis felt very sympathetic just then with anyone who loved in vain.
“What’s that in the Field orchard?” demanded Henry in a startled tone.
Curtis saw it at the same moment. The moon had burst out and the orchard was day-clear in its radiance. A slender, light-clad figure stood among the trees.
“Good Lord, maybe it’s the spook!” said Henry.
As he spoke the figure began to run. Curtis voicelessly bounded over the fence in pursuit.
After a second’s hesitation Henry followed him.
“No preacher is going where I dassn’t follow him,” he muttered.
He caught up with Curtis just as the other rounded the corner of the house and the object of their pursuit darted through the front door.
Curtis had a sickening flash of conviction that the solution of the mystery which had seemed within his grasp had again evaded him.
Then a wild gust of wind swept through the hall of the house ... the heavy door clanged shut with a bang ... and caught in it hard and fast was the skirt of the fleeing figure’s garment.
Curtis and Henry bounded up the steps ... clutched the dress ... flung open the door ... confronted the woman inside.
“Good God!” cried Henry.
“You! You!” said Curtis in a terrible voice. “You!”
Alice Harper looked at him, her face distorted with rage and hatred.
“You dog!” she hissed venomously.
“It’s been you ...” gasped Curtis. “You all the time ... you ... you devil ... you ...”
“Easy on, preacher.” Henry Kildare closed the door softly. “Remember you’re speaking to a lady ...”
“A ...”
“A lady,” repeated Henry firmly. “Don’t let us have too much of a fuss. We don’t want to disturb the rest of the folks. Let’s go in the parlour here and talk this matter over quiet-like.”
Curtis did as he was told. In the daze of the moment he would probably have done anything he was told. Henry followed with his hand on Alice’s arm and closed the door.
Alice confronted them defiantly. Amid all Curtis’ bewil-derment one idea came out clearly in his confusion of thought.
How much Alice looked like Lucia! In daylight the difference of colouring kept the resemblance hidden. In the moonlit room it was clearly seen.
Curtis was shaken with the soul sickness of a horrible disillusionment. He tried to say something but Henry Kildare interrupted.
“Preacher, you’d better let me handle this. You’ve had a bit of a shock.”
A bit of a shock!
“Sit down there,” said Henry kindly. “Alice, you take the rocking chair.”
Both obeyed. Kildare seemed suddenly changed into a quiet, powerful fellow whom it would be well to obey.
“Here, Alice, my dear.” He wheeled a rocking chair out from the corner and put her gently into it.
She sat gazing at the both of them, a beautiful woman in the kind moonlight, the pale blue silk of her wrapper falling about her slender form in graceful folds.
Curtis wished he might wake up. This was the worst nightmare he had ever had ... it must be a nightmare. Nothing like this could be true.
Henry seated himself calmly on the sofa and leaned forward.
“Now, Alice, my dear, tell us all about it. You have to, you know. Then we’ll see what can be done. The game’s up, you know. You can’t expect us to keep this a secret.”
“Oh, I know. But I’ve had five glorious years. Nothing can rob me of that. Oh, I’ve ruled them ... from my ‘sickbed’ I’ve ruled them. I pulled the strings and they danced ... my puppets! Black Lucia and condescending Alec ... and that lovesick boy there! All but the Blythes. I knew they had suspicions but they couldn’t prove them ... they didn’t even dare voice them.”
“Yes, it must have been fun,” agreed Henry. “But why, Alice, my dear?”
“I was sick of being patronized and snubbed and condescended to,” said Alice bitterly. “That is what my youth was. You know that well enough, Henry Kildare.”
“Yes, I had a good idea of it,” agreed Henry.
“I was just the poor relation,” said Alice. “Why, when they had company I often had to wait and eat afterwards.”
“Only when the table wasn’t big enough,” said Henry.
“No! It was because I wasn’t thought good enough to talk to their company! I was only good enough to lay the table and cook the food. I hated every one of them ... but Lucia most of all.”
“Come, come, now, I used to think Lucia was uncommon nice to you.”
“Like a man! She was the petted darling. Her father wouldn’t let the winds of heaven visit her too roughly. I slept in a dark, stuffy back room. She had the sunny look-out. She was four years younger than I was ... but she thought she was my superior in everything.”
“Come, come, now, didn’t you imagine a good deal of that?” asked Henry mildly.
“No, I did not! When she was invited to Ingleside, was I ever asked, too?”
“But people all thought you hated them.”
“I did, too. And Lucia was sent away to school. No one ever thought of educating me. Yet I was far cleverer than she was.”
“Clever, yes,” agreed Henry, with a curious emphasis. “But the teachers always said you wouldn’t try to learn.”
Curtis felt that he should not let Alice say such things of Lucia but a temporary paralysis seemed to have descended upon him. It was a dream ... a nightmare ... one couldn’t ...
“Uncle Winthrop was always saying sarcastic things to me. I remember them ... every one. Do you remember them, Henry?”
“Yes. The old chap had a habit that way. He was the same with everybody. He didn’t mean much by it. But I did think the old chap wasn’t as nice to you as he might have been. But your aunt was good to you.”
“She slapped me one day before company.”
“Yes ... but you had sassed her.”
“I hated her after that,” said Alice, ignoring his words. “I never spoke a word to her for ten weeks. And she never noticed it. One day, when I was nineteen, she said, ‘I was married at your age.’”
“I heard her say the same thing to Nan Blythe.”
“Whose fault was it that I was not married?” said Alice, who seemed determined not to hear anything Henry said.
“You seemed to hate going about with other young people,” he protested.
/> “I wasn’t as well dressed as they were. I knew they looked down on me for it.”
“Nonsense! That was just your imagination.”
“Laura Gregor taunted me once with living on charity,” retorted Alice, her voice shaking with passion. “If I had been dressed like Lucia Roy Major would have noticed me.”
“I remember the Carman girls had old gingham dresses on that night,” reflected Henry.
“I was shabby ... dowdy ... he didn’t want to be seen with me. I ... I loved him ... I would have done anything to win him.”
“I remember how jealous I was of him,” said Henry reflectively. “And there wasn’t any real need. He was crazy mad about Amy Carr ... and a dozen other girls afterwards. What fools young people can be!”
Alice swept on as if she had not heard him.
“When Marian Lister told me that she and Roy were going to be married and asked me to be her bridesmaid I could have killed her. She did it on purpose to hurt me.”
“Nonsense again. She had no other girl friends. And if you felt like that why did you consent?”
“Because I was determined she should not suspect and triumph over me. I thought my heart would break the day of the wedding. I prayed that God would give me the power to avenge my suffering on somebody.”
“You poor kid,” said Henry pityingly. Curtis felt only sickening aversion.
“That was my life for twenty years. Then I fell from the loft. I was paralyzed at first. For months I couldn’t move. Then I found I could. But I wouldn’t. An idea had come to me. I had found a way to punish ... and rule them. Oh, how I laughed when I thought of it!”
Alice laughed again. Curtis remembered that he had never heard her laugh before. There was something unpleasant in it which reminded him of the haunted nights. And yet it vaguely resembled Lucia’s laughter. The thought was hateful to him.
“My idea worked well. I was afraid I could not deceive the doctors. But it was easy ... so easy. I could never have believed it was so easy to fool supposedly intelligent and educated people. How I laughed to myself as they consulted over me with solemn faces! I never complained, I must be patient, saintly, heroic. Uncle Winthrop had several specialists. He had to spend some money on his despised niece at last ... as much as would have sufficed to send me to Queen’s. They were all easy to hoodwink except Dr. Blythe. I always felt that he ... a plain country doctor in consultation with men from Montreal and New York ... was vaguely suspicious. He always has been. So I said no more doctors.
“The household waited on me hand and foot. Oh, how I gloried in feeling such power over them ... I whom they had disdained. I had never been of any importance to them.”
“You were of importance to me,” said Henry.
“Was I really? You hid it well.”
“I suppose you would never have thought of a hired boy presuming to fall in love with a Field!”
“I wish Uncle Winthrop had known. He would have taken the hide off you.”
“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. I could fight then as well as now. But of course he would have sent me away. And I couldn’t bear the thought of being parted from you.”
“Really, I was of more importance than I knew,” said Alice sarcastically. “It was rather a pity you didn’t tell me. I might have ... recovered ... and married you to humiliate them. Well, at any rate, I was the most important person in the house now. Lucia came home to wait on me. She thought it her ‘duty.’ Lucia always took herself very seriously.”
Curtis made a quick movement but Henry put out a restraining hand. Alice shot a malicious glance at him.
“People said my patience was angelic. They began to call me the angel of Mowbray Narrows. I never heard that Dr. Blythe did so, though. Once I did not speak a word for four days. The household was terribly alarmed. And I made Lucia rub my back and shoulders every night for half an hour. It was excellent exercise for her and amused me. Some days I pretended to suffer horribly. Had the room darkened, moaned occasionally for hours. I had those attacks whenever I thought Lucia needed a little discipline.
“Then I discovered that Alec wanted to marry Edna Pollock.”
“Why should you have cared if he did?”
“Why, it wouldn’t have suited me at all. Lucia would be free to go then ... and Edna Pollock would not have waited on me properly. Besides, a Pollock was not good enough for a Field. I have my share of the family pride, after all, you see, my dear Mr. Burns. Then the idea of playing spook came to me.”
“Ah, now we’re coming to the interesting part,” said Henry. “How in the name of the Old Nick did you manage those stunts, locked in your room?”
“There is a closet in my room ... and its back wall is not plastered. It is merely a partition of boards between the closet and the alcove where the garret stairs are. When I was a child I discovered that two of those boards could be easily and noiselessly slipped back. I kept it a secret ... I liked to know something nobody else of all the wise Fields knew.”
“Fancy, now,” said Henry, as if he rather admired her cleverness in keeping a secret.
“It was very easy to slip in and out through that space. Nobody ever suspected me with my locked door.”
Again Curtis felt a sickening sensation. How easily they had all been fooled!
“But how could you get out of the garret?” asked Henry. “There is only one way up and down.”
“Haven’t I told you people are easy to fool? Yes, even the astute Dr. Blythe.”
“Let’s leave Dr. Blythe out of it. Just answer my questions.”
“There’s a big chest up there supposed to be packed full of quilts. Old Grandmother Field left them to me ... so nobody ever disturbed them. But it isn’t really full. There is quite a space between the quilts and the back of the chest. I used to slip in there. Nobody could ever get up the garret stairs without my hearing them. Two of the steps creaked.”
“Do they do that yet? I remember they did in my time. I had to sleep up there, you remember.”
“I never stepped on those creaky steps. When I heard anyone coming I slipped into the chest, shut the lid, and pulled one of those thick woollen quilts over my head. Dozens of people lifted the lid of that chest ... saw it apparently full of woollen quilts ... and shut the lid again. Dr. Blythe did it several times ... dear Mr. Burns here did it twice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Curtis miserably.
“And I was in it laughing at him! Oh, they were all such fools! But I was clever ... you can’t deny that.”
“A durn sight too clever,” said Henry.
“And I was a good actress. When I was a girl my ambition was to go on the stage. I could have managed it somehow. But you know what the idea of the stage was to a good Methodist. Perhaps it still is. I suppose Mr. Burns could tell you ... though he has almost lost the power of speech, it seems.”
“I understand how old Winthrop Field would look at it,” said Henry. “But you always were a good actress.”
“Ah, you admit that. And I could have been a great one. Don’t you admit that, Mr. Burns? But how contemptuous everyone was! ‘Do you suppose you could act, girl?’ a school-teacher jeered at me once. I wonder what he would think now. It was amusing to terrify people with an imitation of Uncle Winthrop’s laugh. I could mimic it and his voice to the life ... his and Anna Marsh’s ... anybody’s.”
“You were always a good mimic,” agreed Henry. “But how did you rock the cradle after it was taken away?”
“I never touched the cradle ... even when it was there. I made a rocking noise by wriggling a loose board in the floor. I could easily manipulate it without getting out of the chest.”
“But you must have taken a lot of chances.”
“Of course I did. That was part of the fun. Dozens of times I was almost caught ... especially the nights when Dr. Blythe watched. He was the only one I really feared. But even he wasn’t a match for me. I didn’t often play tricks on moonlight nights. Once for fun I climbed a ladder and walked along t
he flat ridge roof of the barn. But that was too dangerous. I was seen by some passer-by. Sometimes when people watched I did nothing. At other times it amused me to outwit them. Generally I slid down the banister. It was quicker and quieter.”
“I remember seeing you do that when you were a kid,” mused Henry. “You used to go like greased lightning. But old Winthrop didn’t think it ladylike, did he?”
“Lucia would never have done such a thing,” sneered Alice. “I never made any noise below stairs till I was through for the night,” continued Alice, who was plainly enjoying her confession. What fun it was to shock Curtis Burns! It seemed to surprise her that Henry Kildare took it all so coolly.
“I never did anything without planning out a way of escape beforehand. There were plenty of hiding places if I could not get back to the closet in time.”
“What about the violin? How did you get it without Lucia’s knowing?”
“Oh, it wasn’t Lucia’s. Don’t you remember that old fiddle of yours you left here when you went away?”
“By the nine gods I’d forgotten all about that!”
“I hid it behind the closet boards. When people began to suspect Lucia ... or rather hint things ... I raved so vehemently that they thought I protested too much. And yet every word I said was true.”
Alice laughed again.
“What about those bloody footprints and the curses?” demanded Henry. Curtis wished he would stop asking questions and go away.
“Oh, the Fields kept so many hens they never counted them. The curses cost me some pains of composition. But I found some very effective ones in the Bible. ‘There shall not be an old man in thine house.’ Can you tell me where that is found, Mr. Burns? I believe I really know my Bible better than you do. That especial curse made Alec think he was going to die young. Some of the Fields have always been a little superstitious.”
“Was it you cut Maggie Eldon’s hair?”
“Of course. For once she forgot to lock her door. So excited over George MacPherson driving her home from class meeting, I suppose. I wanted Julia back. She did not keep the late hours Maggie did.”
“And to think you were never caught!” marvelled Henry ... still admiringly.