Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume Two: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries (Four thrilling novels in one volume!)

by Marion Bryce

  A short silence followed the last word, then a burst of applause testified to the appreciation of her audience, and Paula crept away to hide her blushing cheeks in the comparative darkness of a little vine-covered balcony that jutted out from the ante-room. What were her thoughts as she leaned there! In the subsidence of any great emotion—and Paula had felt every word she uttered—there was more or less of shock and tumult. She did not think, she only felt. Suddenly a hand was laid on her arm and a low voice whispered in her ear,

  “Did you write that poem yourself?”

  Turning, she encountered the shadowy form of a woman leaning close at her side and appearing in the dim light that shone on her from the lamps beyond, an eager image of expectancy.

  “Yes,” returned Paula, “why do you ask?”

  The woman, whoever she was, did not answer. “And you believe in such devotion as that!” she murmured. “You can understand a man, aye, or a woman either, risking happiness and fame, life and death, for the sake of a trust! Such things are not folly to you! You could see a heart spill itself drop by drop through a longer vigil than the eight months watching on the ramparts, and not sneer at a fidelity that could not falter because it had given its word? Speak; you write of faithfulness with a pen of fire, is your heart faithful too?”

  There was something in these words, spoken as they were in a tone of suppressed passion, that startled and aroused Paula. Leaning forward, she endeavored to see the face of the woman who thus forcibly addressed her, but the light was too dim. The outline of a brow covered by some close headgear was all she could detect.

  “You speak earnestly,” said Paula, “but that is what I like. Fidelity to a cause, or fidelity to a trust, demands the sympathy and admiration of all honest and generous hearts. If I am ever called upon to maintain either, I hope that my enthusiasm will not have all been expended in words.”

  “You please me,”, murmured the woman, “you please me; will you come and see me and let me tell you a story to mate the poem you have given us to-night?”

  The trembling eagerness of her tone it would be impossible to describe. Paula was thrilled by it. “If you will tell me who you are,” said Paula, “I certainly will try and come. I should be glad to hear anything you have to relate to me.”

  “I thought every one knew who I was,” returned the woman; and drawing Paula back into the anti-room, she turned her face upon her. “Any one will tell you where Margery Hamlin lives,” said she. “Do not disappoint me, and do not keep me waiting long.” And with a nod and a deep strange smile that made her aged face almost youthful, she entered the crowd and disappeared from Paula’s sight.

  It was the woman whose nightly visits to the deserted home of the Japhas had once been the talk and was still the unsolved mystery of the town.

  XXIV. THE JAPHA MANSION.

  “Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man

  Could field or grove, could any spot on earth

  Show to his eye an image of the pangs

  Which it has witnessed; render back an echo

  Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.

  —WORDSWORTH.

  Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen at every night-fall to leave her home, traverse the village streets, enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then re issue with tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was, or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so despondent when she came forth.

  But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a significance which had never lost its power either to excite her curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She felt herself drawn to that woman’s suffering heart as by invisible cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night, she would perceive as in a mirror a vision of its long gray front, barred door and sealed windows shining in the moon, save where the deep impenetrable shadows of its two guardian poplars lay black and dismal upon its ghostly surface. Again she would behold it as it reared itself dark and dripping in a blinding storm, its walls plastered with leaves from the immovable poplars, and its neglected garden lying sodden and forlorn under the flail of the ceaseless storm. Then its early morning face would strike her fancy. The slow looming of its chimney-tops against a brightening sky; the gradual coming out of its forsaken windows and solemn looking doors from the mystery of darkness into the no less mystery of day; the hint of roselight on its barren boards; the gleam of sunshine on its untrodden threshold; a sunshine as pure and sweet as if a bride stood there in her beauty, waiting for admission into the deserted halls beyond. All and everything that could tend to invest the house and its constant visitor with an atmosphere of awe and interest, had occurred to this young girl in her daily reveries and nightly dreams. It was therefore with a thrill deep as her expectation and vivid as her sympathy, that she recognized in her eager interlocutor and proposed confident, the woman about whose life and actions rested for her such a veil of impenetrable mystery. The thought moved her, excited her, and made the rest of the evening pass like a dream. She was anxious for the next day to come, that she might seek this Mrs. Hamlin in her home, and hear from her lips the tale of devotion that should mate her own simple but enthusiastic poem.

  When the next day did come, it rained, rained bitterly, persistent and with a steady drive from the north east, that made her going out impossible. The day following she was indisposed, and upon the succeeding afternoon, she was engaged in duties that precluded all thought of visiting. The next day was Sunday, and Monday had its own demands which she could not slight. It was therefore well nigh a week from the night of the entertainment, before the opportunity offered for which she was so anxious. Her curiosity and expectation had thus time to grow, and it was with a determination to allow nothing to stand in her way, that she set out from home in a mood of mild September sunshine, to visit Mrs. Hamlin. But alas, for resolutions made in a country village prior to the opening of a church fair! She had scarcely gone a dozen steps before she was accosted by one of the managers, a woman who neither observes your haste, nor pays any attention to your possible preoccupation. Do what she could, she found it impossible to escape from this persistent individual until she had satisfied her upon matters which it took a full half hour to discuss, and when at last she succeeded in doing so, it was only to fall into the hands of an aged deacon of the church, whose protecting friendship it were a sin to wound, while his garrulous tongue made it no ordinary trial of patience to stand and listen. In short the best part of the afternoon was gone before she found herself at the door of Mrs. Hamlin’s house. But she was not to be deterred by further hesitation from the pursuit of her object. Rapping smartly on the door, she listened. No stir came from within. Again she rapped and again she listened. No response came to assure her that her summons had been heard. Surprised at this, for she had been told Mrs. Hamlin was always at home during the afternoon, she glanced up at the church clock in plain view from the doorstep, and blushed to observe that it was six o’clock, the hour at which this mysterious woman always left her house, to accomplish her vigil at the Japha mansion.

  “What have I done?” thought Paula, and felt a strange thrill as she realized that even at that moment, the woman with the eager but restless eyes, was shut within the precincts of that deserted dwelling, engaged in prayer, perhaps wet with tears, who knows? The secret of what she did in that long and q
uiet twilight hour had never been revealed. Leaving the little brown house behind, Paula found herself insensibly taking the road to the Japha mansion. If she could not enter it and share the watch of the devoted woman who had promised her her confidence, she could at least observe if the windows were open or the blinds raised. To be sure she ought to be at home, but Miss Belinda was indulgent and did not question her comings and goings too closely. An irresistible force drew her down the street, and she did not hesitate to follow the lead of her impulse. No one accosted her now, it was the tea hour in most of these houses and the streets were comparatively deserted. The only house whose chimneys lacked the rising smoke, was the one towards which her footsteps were tending. She could descry it from afar. Its gaunt walls from which the paint had long ago faded, stared uncompromisingly upon her in the autumn sunshine. There was no welcome in its close shutters with their broken slats from which hung tangled strips of old rags—the remnants of some boy’s kite. The stiff and solemn poplars rose grim and forbidding at the gate once swung wide to the fashion and gallantry of proud ladies and stalwart gentlemen, but now pushed aside solely by the hand of a tremulous old woman, or the irreverent palm of some daring school-boy. From the tangled garden looked forth neither dower nor blossoming shrub. Beauty and grace could not thrive in this wilderness of decay. A dandelion would have felt itself out of place beneath the eye of that ghostly door, with the sinister plank nailed across it, like the separating line between light and darkness, right and wrong, life and death. What loneliness! what a monument of buried passions outliving death itself!

  Paula paused as she reached the gate; but remembering that Mrs. Hamlin was accustomed to enter the house by a side door, hurried around the corner and carefully surveyed the windows from that quarter. One of the shutters was open, allowing the flame of the setting sun to gild the panes like gold. She did not know then nor has she been able to explain since, what it was that came over her at the sight, but almost before she realized it, she had returned to the gate, opened it, threaded the overgrown garden, reached the door which she had so frequently beheld the aged woman enter and knocked.

  Instantly she was seized with a consciousness of what she had done, and frightened at her temerity, meditated an immediate escape. Drawing the folds of her mantle about her form and face, she prepared to fly, when she remembered the look of entreaty with which this woman had said on that night of their conversation, “Do not disappoint me! do not keep me long in suspense!” and moved by a fresh impulse, turned and inflicted another resounding knock on the door.

  The result was unlooked-for and surprising. To the sound from within of a quick passionate cry, there came a hurried movement, followed by a deep silence, then another hasty stir succeeded by a longer silence, then a rush which seemed to bring all things with it, and the door opened and Mrs. Hamlin appeared before her with a countenance so pallid with expectancy, that Paula instinctively felt that in some unconscious way, she had loosened the bonds of an uncontrollable emotion, and was drawing back, when the woman with a quick look at her shrouded face, exultantly caught her hand in hers, and drawing her over the threshold, gasped out in a delirium of incomprehensible joy:

  “I knew you would come! I knew that God would not let you forget! Fifteen years have I waited, I, Jacqueline! fifteen long, tedious, suffering years! But they all seem like nothing now! You have come, you have come, and all that I ask, is that God will not let me die till I realize my joy!”

  The emotion with which she uttered these strange words was so overpowering, and her body seemed so weak to stand the strain, that Paula instinctively put forth her hand to sustain her. The action loosened her cloak. Instantly the eyes that had been fixed upon her with such delirious rapture grew blank with dismay, a frightful shudder ran through the woman’s aged frame; she tore at the cloak that still enveloped the young girl’s shoulders, and pulling it off, took one view of the fresh and beautiful countenance before her, and without uttering a word, fell back in a deep and deadly swoon upon the floor.

  “O what have I done?” cried Paula, flinging herself down beside that pale and rigid figure; but instantly remembering herself she leaped to her feet and looked about for some means to resuscitate the sufferer. There was a goblet of water on a table near by. Seizing it, she bathed the face and hands of the woman before her, moaning aloud in her grief and dismay, “Have I killed her! O what is this mystery that brings such a doom of anguish to this poor heart?”

  But from those pallid lips came no response, and feeling greatly alarmed, Paula was about to rush from the house for assistance, when she felt a tremulous pull upon her skirt, and turning, saw that the glassy eyes had opened at last and were now gazing upon her with mute but eloquent appeal.; She instantly returned. “O I am so sorry,” she murmured, sinking again upon her knees beside the suffering woman. “I did not know, could not realize that my presence here would affect you so deeply. Forgive me and tell me what I can do to make you forget my presumption.”

  The woman shook her head, her lips moved and she struggled vainly to rise. Paula immediately lent her the aid of her strong young hand and in a few minutes, Mrs. Hamlin was on her feet. “O God!” were her first words as she sank into the chair which Paula hastily drew forward, “that I should taste the joy and she be still unsaved!”

  Seeing her so absorbed, Paula ventured to glance around her. She found herself in a large square room sparsely but comfortably furnished in a style that bespake it as the former sitting-room of the dead and buried Japhas. From the walls above hung a few ancient pictures. A large haircloth sofa of a heavy antique shape, confronted the eye from one side of the room, an equally ancient book-case from the other. The carpet was faded and so were the curtains, but they had once been of an attractive hue and pattern. Conspicuous in the midst stood a large table with a well-trimmed lamp upon it, and close against it an easy chair with an upright back. This last as well as everything else in the room, was in a condition of neatness that would have surprised Paula if she had not been acquainted with the love and devotion of this woman, who in her daily visits to this house, probably took every pains to keep things freshened and in order.

  Satisfied with her survey, she again directed her attention to Mrs. Hamlin, and started to find that person’s eyes fixed upon her own with an expression of deep, demanding interest.

  “You are looking at the shadows of things that were,” exclaimed the old lady in thrilling tones. “It is a fearful thought to be shut up with the ghost of a vanished past, is it not? That chair by your side has not been sat in since Colonel Japha rose from it twelve years ago to totter to the bed where he breathed his last. It is waiting, everything is waiting. I thought the end had come to-night, that the vigil was over, the watch finished, but God In his wisdom says, ‘No,’ and I must wait a little longer. Alas in a little while longer the end will be here indeed!”

  The despondency with which she uttered these last words showed where her thoughts were tending, and to comfort her, Paula drew up a chair and sat down by her side. “You were going to tell me the story of a great love and a great devotion. Cannot you do so now?”

  The woman started, glanced hastily around, and let her eyes travel to Paula’s face where they rested with something of their old look of secret longing and doubt.

  “You are the one who wrote the poem,” she murmured; “I remember.” Then with a sudden feverish impulse, leaned forward, and stroking back the waving locks from Paula’s brow, exclaimed hurriedly, “You look like her, you have the same dark hair and wonderful eyes, more beautiful perhaps, but like her, O so like her! That is why I made such a mistake.” She shuddered, with a quick low sob, but instantly subdued her emotion and taking Paula’s hand in hers continued, “You are young, my daughter; youth does not enjoy carrying burdens; can I, a stranger ask you to assist me with mine?”

  “You may,” returned Paula. “If it will give you any relief I will help you bear it willingly.”

  “You will! Has heaven then sent
me the aid my failing spirits demand? Can I count on you, child? But I will ask for no promise till you have heard my story. To no one have I ever imparted the secret of my life, but from the first moment I saw your fair young face, I felt that through you would come my help, if help ever came to make my final moments easier and my last days less bitter.” And rising up, she led Paula to a door which she solemnly opened. “I am glad that you are here,” said she. “I could never have asked you to come, but since you have braved the dead and crossed this threshold, you must see and know the whole. You will understand my story better.”

  Taking her through a dark passage, she threw wide another door, and the parlors of the vanished Japhas opened before them. It was a ghostly vision. A weird twilight scene of clustered shadows brooding above articles of musty grandeur. In spite of the self-command learned by her late experiences, Paula recoiled, saying,

  “It is too sad, too lonesome!” But the woman without heeding her, hurried her on over the worm-eaten carpet and between the time-worn chairs and heavy-browed cabinets, to the hall beyond.

  “I have not been here, myself, for a year,” said Mrs. Hamlin, glancing fearfully up and down the dusky corridor. “It is not often I can brave the memories of this spot.” And she pointed with one hand towards the darkened door at its end, whose spacious if not stately panels gave no hint to the eye of the dread bar that crossed it like a line of doom upon the outside, and then turning, let her eye fall with still heavier significance upon the broad and imposing staircase that rose from the centre of the hall to the duskier and more dismal regions above.

  “A brave, old fashioned flight of steps is it not! But the scene of a curse, my child.” And unheeding Paula’s shudder, she drew her up the stairs.

  “See,” continued her panting guide as they reached a square platform near the top, from which some half dozen or more steps branched up on either side. “They do not build like this nowadays. But Colonel Japha believed in nothing new, and thought more of his grand old hall and staircase, than he did of all the rest of his house. He little dreamed of what a scene it would be the witness. But come, it is getting late and you must see her room.”