Lost Man’s Lane · Book IV · Chapter 33 (2/2)

The latter seemed to be absorbed entirely by the aspect of Mother Jane, who stood upon her doorstep in an attitude so menacing that it was little short of tragic. Her hood, for the first time in the memory of those present, had fallen away from her head, revealing a wealth of gray hair which flew away from her head like a weird halo. Her features we could not distinguish, but the emotion which inspired her, breathed in every gesture of her uplifted arms and swaying body. It was wrath personified, and yet an unreasoning wrath. One could see she was as much dazed as outraged. Her lares and penates were being attacked, and she had come from the heart of her solitude to defend them.

“I declare!” Hannah protested. “It is pitiful. She has nothing in the world but that garden, and now they are going to root that up.”

“Do you think that the sight of a little money would appease her?” I inquired, anxious for an excuse to drop a word into the ear of Mr. Gryce.

“Perhaps,” said Hannah. “She dearly loves money, but it will not take away her fright.”

“It will if she has nothing to be frightened about,” said I; and turning to the girls, I asked them, somewhat mincingly for me, if they thought I would make myself conspicuous if I crossed the road on this errand, and when Loreen answered that that would not deter her if she had the money, and Lucetta added that the sight of such misery was too painful for any mere personal consideration, I took advantage of their complaisance, and hastily made my way over to the group, who were debating as to the point they would attack first.

“Gentlemen,” said I, “good morning. I am here on an errand of mercy. Poor old Mother Jane is half imbecile and does not understand why you invade her premises with these implements. Will you object if I endeavor to distract her mind with a little piece of gold I happen to have in my pocket? She may not deserve it, but it will make your task easier and save us some possible concern.”

Half of the men at once took off their hats. The other half nudged each other’s elbows, and whispered and grimaced like the fools they were. The first half were gentlemen, though not all of them wore gentlemen’s clothes.

It was Mr. Gryce who spoke:

“Certainly, madam. Give the old woman anything you please, but⁠—” And here he stepped up to me and began to whisper; “You have something to say. What is it?”

I answered in the same quick way: “The mine you thought exhausted has possibilities in it yet. Question Lucetta. It may prove a more fruitful task than turning up this soil.”

The bow he made was more for the onlookers than for the suggestion I had given him. Yet he was not ungrateful for the latter, as I, who was beginning to understand him, could see.

“Be as generous as you please!” he cried aloud. “We would not disturb the old crone if it were not for one of her well-known follies. Nothing will take her over forty rods away from her home. Now what lies within those forty rods? These men think we ought to see.”

The shrug I gave answered both the apparent and the concealed question. Satisfied that he would understand it so, I hurried away from him and approached Mother Jane.

“See!” said I, astonished at the regularity of her features, now that I had a good opportunity of observing them. “I have brought you money. Let them dig up your turnips if they will.”

She did not seem to perceive me. Her eyes were wild with dismay and her lips trembling with a passion far beyond my power to comfort.

“Lizzie!” she cried. “Lizzie! She will come back and find no home. Oh, my poor girl! My poor, poor girl!”

It was pitiable. I could not doubt her anguish or her sincerity. The delirium of a broken heart cannot be simulated. And this heart was not controlled by reason; that was equally apparent. Immediately my heart, which goes out slowly, but none the less truly on that account, was touched by something more than the surface sympathy of the moment. She may have stolen, she may have done worse, she may even have been at the bottom of the horrible crimes which have given its name to the lane we were in, but her acts, if acts they were, were the result of a clouded mind fixed forever upon the fancied needs of another, and not the expression of personal turpitude or even of personal longing or avarice. Therefore I could pity her, and I did.

Making another appeal, I pressed the coin hard into one of her hands till the contact effected what my words had been unable to do, and she finally looked down and saw what she was clutching. Then indeed her aspect changed, and in a few minutes of slowly growing comprehension she became so quiet and absorbed that she forgot to look at the men and even forgot me, who was probably nothing more than a flitting shadow to her.

“A silk gown,” she murmured. “It will buy Lizzie a silk gown. Oh! where did it come from, the good, good gold, the beautiful gold; such a little piece, yet enough to make her look fine, my Lizzie, my pretty, pretty Lizzie?”

No numbers this time. The gift was too overpowering for her even to remember that it must be hidden away.

I walked away while her delight was still voluble. Somehow it eased my mind to have done her this little act of kindness, and I think it eased the minds of the men too. At all events, every hat was off when I repassed them on my way back to the Knollys gateway.

I had left both the girls there, but I found only one awaiting me. Lucetta had gone in, and so had Hannah. On what errand I was soon to know.

“What do you suppose that detective wants of Lucetta now?” asked Loreen as I took my station again at her side. “While you were talking to Mother Jane he stepped over here, and with a word or two induced Lucetta to walk away with him toward the house. See, there they are in those thick shrubs near the right wing. He seems to be pleading with her. Do you think I ought to join them and find out what he is urging upon her so earnestly? I don’t like to seem intrusive, but Lucetta is easily agitated, you know, and his business cannot be of an indifferent nature after all he has discovered concerning our affairs.”

“No,” I agreed, “and yet I think Lucetta will be strong enough to sustain the conversation, judging from the very erect attitude she is holding now. Perhaps he thinks she can tell him where to dig. They seem a little at sea over there, and living, as you do, a few rods from Mother Jane, he may imagine that Lucetta can direct him where to first plant the spade.”

“It’s an insult,” Loreen protested. “All these talks and visits are insults. To be sure, this detective has some excuse, but⁠—”

“Keep your eye on Lucetta,” I interrupted. “She is shaking her head and looking very positive. She will prove to him it is an insult. We need not interfere, I think.”

But Loreen had grown pensive and did not heed my suggestion. A look that was almost wistful had supplanted the expression of indignant revolt with which she had addressed me, and when next moment the two we had been watching turned and came slowly toward us, it was with decided energy she bounded forward and joined them.

“What is the matter now?” she asked. “What does Mr. Gryce want, Lucetta?”

Mr. Gryce himself spoke.

“I simply want her,” said he, “to assist me with a clue from her inmost thoughts. When I was in your house,” he explained with a praiseworthy consideration for me and my relations to these girls for which I cannot be too grateful, “I saw in this young lady something which convinced me that, as a dweller in this lane, she was not without her suspicions as to the secret cause of the fatal mysteries which I have been sent here to clear up. Today I have frankly accused her of this, and asked her to confide in me. But she refuses to do so, Miss Loreen. Yet her face shows even at this moment that my old eyes were not at fault in my reading of her. She does suspect somebody, and it is not Mother Jane.”

“How can you say that?” began Lucetta, but the eyes which Loreen that moment turned upon her seemed to trouble her, for she did not attempt to say any more⁠—only looked equally obstinate and distressed.

“If Lucetta suspects anyone,” Loreen now steadily remarked, “then I think she ought to tell you who it is.”

“You do. Then perhaps you⁠—” commenced Mr. Gryce⁠—“can persuade her as to her duty,” he finished, as he saw her head rise in protest of what he evidently had intended to demand.

“Lucetta will not yield to persuasion,” was her quiet reply. “Nothing short of conviction will move the sweetest-natured but the most determined of all my mother’s children. What she thinks is right, she will do. I will not attempt to influence her.”

Mr. Gryce, with one comprehensive survey of the two, hesitated no longer. I saw the rising of the blood into his forehead, which always precedes the beginning of one of his great moves, and, filled with a sudden excitement, I awaited his next words as a tyro awaits the first unfolding of the plan he has seen working in the brain of some famous strategist.

“Miss Lucetta,”⁠—his very tone was changed, changed in a way to make us all start notwithstanding the preparation his momentary silence had given us⁠—“I have been thus pressing and perhaps rude in my appeal, because of something which has come to my knowledge which cannot but make you of all persons extremely anxious as to the meaning of this terrible mystery. I am an old man, and you will not mind my bluntness. I have been told⁠—and your agitation convinces me there is truth in the report⁠—that you have a lover, a Mr. Ostrander⁠—”

“Ah!” She had sunk as if crushed by one overwhelming blow to the earth. The eyes, the lips, the whole pitiful face that was upturned to us, remain in my memory today as the most terrible and yet the most moving spectacle that has come into my by no means uneventful life. “What has happened to him? Quick, quick, tell me!”

For answer Mr. Gryce drew out a telegram.

“From the master of the ship on which he was to sail,” he explained. “It asks if Mr. Ostrander left this town on Tuesday last, as no news has been received of him.”

“Loreen! Loreen! When he left us he passed down that way!” shrieked the girl, rising like a spirit and pointing east toward Deacon Spear’s. “He is gone! He is lost! But his fate shall not remain a mystery. I will dare its solution. I⁠—I⁠—Tonight you will hear from me again.”

And without another glance at any of us she turned and fled toward the house.