Evidence of Things Seen (3 page)

“I don't suppose you'd want us to have the door opened again for the summer? Mr. and Mrs. Heron's maid will have the room, and it would be nice and cool for her with the door open.”

“I guess it had better stay shut. Most people wouldn't care for an outside door to their bedroom, and the new paint will get marred up if we take the plug out and put back the latch.”

“Then I'll forget about it,” said Clara cheerfully. “Won't you come in, just for a minute, and see how nice everything is?”

“If you'll excuse me, I can't leave old Bill. He don't stand.”

“I could get a piece of rope.”

“I'd better be getting along home, if you'll excuse me.”

“Well, but you must come over and call on me some day; everybody calls on a new neighbor, don't they?”

“I hope you'll excuse me. You'd be surprised how much a farm takes out of you; and that old Sam I have, he can't hardly stoop to dig.” Miss Radford picked up the reins and chirped. The gray horse, which had not seemed averse to standing while the conversation went on, slowly extended himself for the pull uphill. The buggy moved away, and up to a slight widening in the road above the cottage.

Clara stood watching her landlady execute the maneuver of the turn; it was accomplished with much chirping on her part, much jerking of first one rein and then the other, much backing and advancing on the part of the gray, and a perilous undercutting of high wheels. As it passed the cottage again Miss Radford bowed stiffly, her hands close together and her wrists high. Clara thought: If Old Bill fell down, he'd drag her over the dashboard.

Maggie came out and took the basket. “Not a wheel did I hear,” she said. “This dirt road is as quiet as tanbark.”

“She won't come in, Maggie; and I don't think she wants me to go to the farm.”

“You'd be ate by the dogs. Nobody can go through that fence of hers unless she comes out and speaks to the animals.”

Clara forgot for the moment that she had not intended to discuss these matters with her maid. “I think she hates the cottage. She never once looked at it, and she talks about it as we were nothing to her.”

“Perhaps it's sad for her, on account of the sister dying in it. We ought to be thankful we'll not have her underfoot, counting the broken dishes.”

“I wonder whether the sister didn't die in that room with the sealed door.”

Maggie's face convinced Clara that that was where the sister had died. Clara walked around the kitchen wing again, pushed aside the sprawling branches of the great lilac, and once more contemplated the yellow panels and the plugged keyhole. The door was blank as a veiled face; it had a strange air of having lost its identity as a door, and become a mere closed chapter in Miss Radford's life.

Clara walked resolutely around to the front of the cottage, along the whole of its length, and up the outside stair to her bedroom. It was the longest route to the attic, but she was not conscious of having followed it for that reason; she would have declared to any listener that it was impossible to be afraid of an attic on a morning like this one.

She went through into the sitting room, and found the hasp tight in its socket; when she levered it up, and swung the flat door towards her, not a breath of air came down from above. Not a breath of air
could
come down, as she discovered when she had climbed the steep flight and emerged into hot dimness; the one low window, which faced to the east, was not only shut; it was sealed with a cobweb. But it was otherwise quite clean, as was the rest of the raftered place; even the floorboards were fairly free of dust—what she could see of them; for the attic, to her surprise, was far from empty. Miss Radford seemed to have left not only a lot of old furniture in the place, but a large trunk. There were some framed pictures, too, standing with their faces against the wall; and there was a big old wardrobe with a drawer under it—a drawer so crammed with books and papers that it could not be entirely closed.

The furniture was horrid stuff, ornate and plush-covered; the pictures shiny chromos, of no possible value; the trunk an old-fashioned monster, initialed
E. R. H.
Its lock hung open. Clara, wondering whether summer tenants were not supposed to need attic room, lifted its lid, and was instantly smothered by an overpowering odor of mothball. Really, this was too bad of Miss Radford; she had left all her winter things in the cottage. Dresses and underclothing; a shawl-like garment; and there in a corner some knitting and a work bag!

Feeling rather disgusted with her landlady, Clara got down on the floor and dragged open the long drawer under the wardrobe. Velvet-bound photograph albums, some old songs in flowery paper covers, old magazines and novels. Clara had never heard of the novels;
The Sorrows of Satan, Chandos, Beauty's Daughters
, but she thought they must surely go back to a day earlier than Miss Radford's own. She pushed the drawer in as far as it would go, got up from the floor, and swung open the doors of the wardrobe.

Here, if you please, was a summer wardrobe! Silk, gingham, voile—straw hats on a shelf. A faded dress and a sunbonnet, purple, with a small black sprig.

These could not be Miss Radford's clothes; none of the things in the attic were Miss Radford's. They were her dead sister's, from the trunk to the furniture, from the sentimental songs and novels to the garments in the wardrobe. Nothing to frighten anybody in that harmless fact, though Miss Radford might have had the common politeness to dispose of the relics before her tenants came in. But that limp purple dress, that sunbonnet hanging by its knotted strings—Clara had seen them, or their phantom replicas, before.

She stood looking at them, or rather she stood looking at nothing, in the pose of one who waits, listens, is afraid to turn. Then at last she pushed the doors to, and went across the attic to the stairs with her back straight, her shoulders rigid, her chin high. She descended, latched the attic door behind her, and walked quickly into and through her own bedroom to the flagstone outside its back door. She sat down on it, breathing hard.

Well; she could write to or telephone the agent and ask to have the things removed; but hadn't she better wait and consult with the Herons before entering upon what might be a controversy? Had she really seen—at some distance—a sunbonnet and a dress like those repulsive-looking things in the wardrobe? Was she getting sunbonnets on the brain?

At least she could get away from them, and from the cottage, for a while. She had an errand; she must get that man of Mrs. Simms' to look at the latch, and while he was about it he could attend to some doors that stuck. The Herons would not like their bedroom and bathroom doors to stick.

Clara used her car only when she was forced to use it; she liked walking, and now set out on her walk to the Simmses' farm. She went down the little hill behind the cottage, past the windows of the two ground-floor bedrooms, past the kitchen wing and across the field. Most of the Simms property lay on the other side of the highway, next to the Radford land; the farmhouse itself, a small, dingy affair, stood in its unkempt yard not more than a dozen feet from the roadway, backed by a paintless outbuilding or so and a square of vegetable garden. Mrs. Simms, a widow with married children, did not do much farming; she ran her place in a haphazard fashion, keeping it as a sort of rallying place for her clan. Sons, daughters and grandchildren were always staying with her in relays.

The Simmses' dog, a meek setter, escorted Clara to the back door, where fat Mrs. Simms stood waving.

Clara explained that she wanted the services of Web Hawley, the sly-looking thin hired man who lived in the barn. He joined her and his employer as they conversed, and offered himself with some enthusiasm; he had already had experience of Clara's tipping.

Mrs. Simms agreed that he could very well let Mrs. Gamadge have part of his dinner hour.

“Makin' out all right, up there?” she asked.

“Oh, yes; I love it.”

“Too bad your friends was kep'. Your help was tellin' me.”

“I have so much to do I shan't miss them.”

Mrs. Simms laughed for a long time over this naïve remark, and then said she hoped Mis' Gamadge wasn't on foot because there was anything wrong with her car.

“Oh, no; I like walking. I'm going to walk up the Ladder this afternoon to see Mr. and Mrs. Hunter.”

“My goodness, Hunters' is a township away!”

“Not if you go by the Ladder.”

“That's a walk I wouldn't take for a wager.”

“Look out for copperheads,” put in Web Hawley. “It's snake weather.”

“Don't scare me to death,” begged Clara.

Mrs. Simms reminded Web that nobody had seen any copperheads around yet that summer.

“Never knew a summer when one of ‘em didn't show up somewheres,” insisted Web, who liked to alarm the women.

“I'm real sorry,” continued Mrs. Simms, “that I can't help you out with vegetables and milk; but I guess Alvira Radford has plenty to sell. She hasn't got grandchildren to eat her out of provisions.”

“Oh, yes; Miss Radford lets me have all I need.”

“So your help told me. She's a real nice woman. Walks down here of an evening.”

“I understand Miss Radford lost her sister last summer,” said Clara. “She must be lonely, I should think.”

“Guess so. Mis' Hickson died a year ago this comin' sixth of July, just around sunset, and Alvira had to come and git Web to drive over to Avebury for the doctor. Web had to leave the cows.”

“Chased all over Avebury for Doc Knapp,” said Web. “Found him at the fairgrounds, listenin' to the band. Mis' Hickson was dead, time we got back here.”

“Handsome funeral,” said Mrs. Simms. “Web helped tote the coffin out.”

“Good thing it wasn't winter,” said Web. “That cottage is no place for anybody to die in bad weather.”

“What did she die of?” asked Clara, with Gamadge and his procedure firmly in mind.

Mrs. Simms looked up at a passing cloud. “Gastric stummick.”

Web Hawley added: “Or somethin',” and looked at the cloud too.

“Is Dr. Knapp a good doctor?” asked Clara. “We might need one; you never know.”

“He might seem old-fashioned to you folks,” said Mrs. Simms.

“I like that kind.”

“Well, there's one thing, he's used to the trip. He takes care of us, and he took care of the Radfords for years. Took care of Eva Hickson for this complaint she had, whatever it was, till she died of it. Couple of weeks she was sick, and out he'd come. He'll be comin' out to doctor you, if you walk all day in this heat.”

Clara turned to look up at the long range of forest behind her to the east. She said: “I'm going to follow that trail in those woods up there and find where it goes.”

Mrs. Simms chuckled. “You don't know where you'll come out?”

“No, where?”

“A cemetery.”

Clara, startled, repeated: “A cemetery?”

“Avebury Old Cemetery; the new one's the other side of town. That trail comes out of the woods just above Avebury, four five miles below here, and across a field is the old graveyard.”

Clara, after a pause, said that she must take her husband there; he liked old graveyards. She went on in a casual tone: “By the way, a woman comes along that trail sometimes, and out on the ridge behind the cottage. About sundown. I wondered who she was.”

“Woman?” Mrs. Simms was puzzled, and Web Hawley also wrinkled his face up.

“In a sunbonnet. I wondered if she might be helping you or Miss Radford, or something; so many women are getting back into farm work on account of the war.”

Mrs. Simms turned and looked at her hired man, who shook his head.

“Quite thin she is,” said Clara.

“Then it ain't me,” laughed Mrs. Simms. “I never go up there, anyway, and there's only us and Alvira Radford for miles. All north of this is the reservation. No women there!”

“Not in sunbonnets,” said Web.

“She doesn't come from my place, and Alvira hasn't any woman with her except that girl comes in half time; goes home after dinner. If it's Alvira, it's the first time she ever did such a thing in her life. When does this woman come, did you say?”

“About sunset.”

“That's suppertime for us folks. Funny,” said Mrs. Simms. But she looked as if she thought summer people might be capable of mistaking a man or a tree for a woman in a sunbonnet.

“I thought she might cut through from the route below here,” said Clara. “Then you wouldn't see her.”

“There ain't any farmhouse down the route for two miles.”

“Well,” said Clara, “it doesn't matter who she is. I only wondered.” She stooped to pat the head of the setter. “I do hope,” she said, “that this boy doesn't take it into his head to tackle Miss Radford's dogs.”

“Real dangerous, those black things,” agreed Mrs. Simms, “but she don't let ‘em off the place.”

“Barred up like a fort,” said Web Hawley. “Lucky she bought up the wire for that fence last year; she wouldn't get it now.”

“I don't know what she wants of that great fence—or of those dogs, either,” objected Clara. “Eli says it's so safe here.”

“She's so rich,” piped Web Hawley, in a sarcastic voice. “Fellers might hear about it an' come all the way from Hartford or New York.”

“Does she keep the money her sister left her in the house?” Clara tried to match her tone with his.

“Nobody knows where she keeps it,” said Web. “Her folks don't know, neither, from what I hear.”

“I can't see,” said Clara, “why if the sister—Mrs. Hickson, did you say her name was?—why if she was so rich they went on living in the cottage, instead of going back to their big house.”

“Miser,” said Mrs. Simms. “Don't say I said so.” She added: “Nobody knew Eva Hickson had money until she was dead and Alvira got it by will.”