Anna Green - Dark Hollow

But it was not upon the mass of undistinguishable tree-tops or the line they made against the sky that his gaze lingered. It was on something more material; something which rose from the brow of the hill in stark and curious outline not explainable in itself, but clear enough to one who had seen its shape by daylight. Judge Ostrander had thus seen it many times in the past, and knew just where to look for the one remaining chimney and solitary gable of a house struck many years before by lightning and left a grinning shell to mock the eye of all who walked this path or crossed this bridge.

Black amid blackness, with just the contrast of its straight lines to the curve of natural objects about it, it commanded the bluff, summoning up memories of an evil race cut short in a moment by an outraged Providence, and Judge Ostrander marking it, found himself muttering aloud as he dragged himself slowly away: "Why should Time, so destructive elsewhere, leave one stone upon another of this accursed ruin?"

Alas! Heaven has no answer for such questions.

When he had reached the middle of the bridge, he stopped short to look back at Dark Hollow and utter in a smothered groan, which would not be repressed, a name which by all the rights of the spot should have been Algernon's, but was not.

The utterance of this name seemed to startle him, for, with a shuddering look around, he hastily traversed the rest of the bridge, and took the turn about the hill to where Factory Road branched off towards the town. Here he stopped again and for the first time revealed the true nature of his destination. For when he moved on again it was to take the road along the bluff, and not the one leading directly into town.

This meant a speedy passing by the lightning-struck house. He knew this of course, and evidently shrunk from the ordeal, for once up the hill and on the level stretch above, he resolutely forbore to cast a glance at its dilapidated fence and decayed gate posts. Had he not done this—had his eyes followed the long line of the path leading from these toppling posts to the face of the ruin, he would have been witness to a strange sight. For gleaming through the demolished heart of it,—between the chimney on the one side and the broken line of the gable on the other—could be seen the half circle of the moon suddenly released from the clouds which had hitherto enshrouded it. A weird sight, to be seen only when all conditions favoured. It was to be seen here to-night; but the judge's eye was bent another way, and he passed on, unnoting.

The ground was high along this bluff; almost fifty feet above the level of the city upon, which he had just turned his back. Of stony formation and much exposed to the elements, it had been considered an undesirable site by builders, and not a house was to be seen between the broken shell of the one he had just left, and the long, low, brilliantly illuminated structure ahead, for which he was evidently making. The sight of these lights and of the trees by which the house was surrounded, suggested festival and caused a qualm of indecision to momentarily disturb him in his purpose. But this purpose was too strong, and the circumstances too urgent for him to be deterred by anything less potent than a stroke of lightning. He rather increased his pace than slackened it and was rewarded by seeing lamp after lamp go out as he approached.

The pant of a dozen motors, the shouting of various farewells and then the sudden rushing forth of a long line of automobiles, proclaimed that the fete of the day was about over and that peace and order would soon prevail again in Claymore Inn.

Without waiting for the final one to pass, the judge slid around to the rear and peered in at the kitchen door. If Mrs. Yardley were the woman he supposed her to be from the sergeant's description, she would be just then in the thick of the dish-washing. And it was Mrs. Yardley he wished to see.

Three women were at work in this busiest of scenes, and, deciding at a glance which was the able mistress of the house, he approached the large, pleasant and commanding figure piling plates at the farther end of the room and courteously remarked:

"Mrs. Yardley, I believe?"

The answer came quickly, and not without a curious smile of constraint:

"Oh, no. Mrs. Yardley is in the entry behind."

Bowing his thanks, he stepped in the direction named, just as the three women's heads came simultaneously together. There was reason for their whispers. His figure, his head, his face, were all unusual, and at that moment highly expressive, and coming as he did out of the darkness, his presence had an uncanny effect upon their simple minds. They had been laughing before; they ceased to laugh now. Why?

Meanwhile, Judge Ostrander was looking about him for Mrs. Yardley. The quiet figure of a squat little body blocked up a certain doorway.

"I am looking for Mrs. Yardley," he ventured.

The little figure turned; he was conscious of two very piercing eyes being raised to his, and heard in shaking accents, which yet were not the accents of weakness, the surprised ejaculation:

"Judge Ostrander!"

Next minute they were together in a small room, with the door shut behind them. The energy and decision of this mite of a woman were surprising.

"I was going—to you—in the morning—" she panted in her excitement. "To apologise," she respectfully finished.

"Then," said he, "it was your child who visited my house to-day?"

She nodded. Her large head was somewhat disproportioned to her short and stocky body. But her glance and manner were not unpleasing. There was a moment of silence which she hastened to break.

"Peggy is very young; it was not her fault. She is so young she doesn't even know where she went. She was found loitering around the bridge—a dangerous place for a child, but we've been very busy all day—and she was found there and taken along by—by the other person. I hope that you will excuse it, sir."

Was she giving the judge an opportunity to recover from his embarrassment, or was she simply making good her own cause? Whichever impulse animated her, the result was favourable to both. Judge Ostrander lost something of his strained look, and it was no longer difficult for her to meet his eye.

Nevertheless, what he had to say came with a decided abruptness.

"Who is the woman, Mrs. Yardley? That's what I have come to learn, and not to complain of your child."

The answer struck him very strangely, though he saw nothing to lead him to distrust her candour.

"I don't know, Judge Ostrander. She calls herself Averill, but that doesn't make me sure of her. You wonder that I should keep a lodger about whom I have any doubts, but there are times when Mr. Yardley uses his own judgment, and this is one of the times. The woman pays well and promptly," she added in a lower tone.

"Her status? Is she maid, wife or widow?"

"Oh, she says she is a widow, and I see every reason to believe her."

A slight grimness in her manner, the smallest possible edge to her voice, led the judge to remark:

"She's good-looking, I suppose."

A laugh, short and unmusical but not without a biting humour, broke unexpectedly from the landlady's lips.

"If she is, HE don't know it. He hasn't seen her."

"Not seen her?"

"No. Her veil was very thick the night she came and she did not lift it as long as he was by. If she had—"

"Well, what?"

"I'm afraid that he wouldn't have exacted as much from her as he did. She's one of those women—"

"Don't hesitate, Mrs. Yardley."

"I'm thinking how to put it. Who has her will of your sex, I might say. Now I'm not."

"Pretty?"

"Not like a girl, sir. She's old enough to show fade; but I don't believe that a man would mind that. She has a look—a way, that even women feel. You may judge, sir, if we, old stagers at the business, have been willing to take her in and keep her, at any price,—a woman who won't show her face except to me, and who will not leave her room without her veil and then only for walks in places where no one else wants to go,—she must have some queer sort of charm to overcome all scruples. But she's gone too far to-day. She shall leave the Inn to-morrow. I promise you that, sir, whatever Samuel says. But sit down; sit down; you look tired, judge. Is there anything you would like? Shall I call Samuel?"