Kitabı oku: «Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army Life», sayfa 12

THE MYSTERY OF 'MAHBIN MILL

CHAPTER I

Placid and homelike enough were all its surroundings, one would say. It seemed the very last place to look for romance or mystery – the very last place in the world to be confronted by a foul and savage crime. There was not a shadow on the bright, breeze-ruffled mill-pond whereon the ducks were splashing and quacking noisily. Not a willow drooped its mourning branches over the sunny shallows above, or the foaming, rushing, tumbling torrent below the dam. Not a tree with heavy, spreading foliage stood guard between the sunshine and the shores. Nothing but a few pert, sturdy young hickories fringed the banks, bolt upright in the broad glare of the noon-tide, and proclaiming in their very attitude their detestation of all that was vague, dark, or shadowy. There were no beetling cliffs – no firs, no pines, no dark hemlocks – nothing in the least suggestive of gloom or tragedy. The valley lay broad and open. Cosy homesteads and cottages gleamed here and there along the slopes, nestled in little groves of their own. Orchards, a vineyard, many fields of waving, yellowing grain, broad pastures dotted with drowsy sheep and drowsier, clover-fed cattle; bright green patches every now and then where the sugar-maples huddled together in rustling gossip; and smiling farms and winding, well-kept country roads lay north and south. Westward, a few hundred yards, the gleaming bosom of the island-dotted lake into which the mill-stream poured its swirling waters; eastward, a short mile, the roofs and chimneys of the thriving county town; and then, over towards the distant railway, a creamy spire, with the sacred emblem of the cross glinting and shimmering in the sunlight, peeped through the fringe of waving tree-tops. All was quiet, rural beauty. All told of peace, life, contentment, and prosperity this lovely July morning of the centennial year – all save the hush and awe that hung about old 'Mahbin mill.

Over by the waste weir, with musical splash and laughter and faint little clouds of spray, a tumbling sheet of water was disappearing into the cool depths below; but here, in the broad, beaten roadway around the worn threshold, was impressive silence. The busy whir and hum and clatter was all stilled, though elsewhere this had been a bustling Monday morn. Men spoke in low, awe-stricken whispers, and went on tip-toe over the creaking floor within. Peace and contentment, life and prosperity, flooding sunshine, laughing-water, merry-throated birds made glad the scene around; but within was silence and mystery and death. Here, prone on the flour-dusted floor of the old office lay all that was mortal of gray-haired Sam Morrow, the miller, murdered by murder most foul, as one and all could see; and young Dick Graham, his right-hand man for years, had gone, gone no one knew whither.

In all its peaceful history, Nemahbin had known no such sight or sensation as this. Thirty years had the old mill been the rallying-point of the farmers, to the exclusion of the attractions of the tavern in the little town. Morrow was a character – a man who read and remembered, a man who took the papers and had an opinion, backed by good reasoning, of public men and public affairs of the day. He grew to be an authority on many and most subjects, but he never grew to be popular. Morrow had an ugly temper when crossed, a lashing, venomous tongue when angered, and, of late, there had been growing up among the farmers who drove thither with their grain a suspicion that old Sam, in his grasping, money-loving greed had become unscrupulous. In this there was rank injustice. Crabbed and ill-tempered as the man had often been, surly and rough of speech as he had become, there did not live a more rigidly honest man – his word was his bond. His own dealings were beyond question, and six months before his death no man within a thirty-mile radius of Nemahbin had ever been heard to hint at such a thing as sharp practice at 'Mahbin mill.

He had not been a happy man. His home life had been far from sweet and peaceful. Ten years ago his patient and devoted wife had died – worn out, some neighbors were good enough to say, by his outbreaks of fury and his cutting injustice. But he had loved her, loved her well, and he mourned her bitterly. Two children she had left him: one a son, high-spirited, impulsive, and wilful, between whom and his father there waged incessant feud while he was at home, and between whom and that same father there passed frequent letters of most loving description when the boy was placed at boarding-school. Young Sam had been liberally provided for when he went away, and his pocket-money was unstinted. The boy was not vicious, but the restraints of school discipline seemed to tempt him from one mad exploit to another, and, after two years of sorely tried patience, the authorities of the school requested his withdrawal. Sam was fifteen then, a bright, quick-witted fellow, a leader in all boyish sports and mischief, and immensely popular among the farm folk around Nemahbin. His chum and intimate friend from early boyhood had been Dick Graham; like himself, an only son of an idolizing mother, but, unlike himself, compelled to labor for her support. When young Sam had been sent away to school after his mother's death, the old man was noticed on several consecutive days hovering uncertainly about the little country store where his boy's friend was working from morn till night doing hard jobs and thankfully carrying home his scanty wages at the end of the week. One day he blustered in on the "boss" with brief ceremony:

"Murphy," said he, "you work that boy too hard, and pay him too little. If you don't double his wages, I will, and take him out to the mill to boot." Murphy was vastly angered at the proceeding, and Murphy's adherents voted around the fire that night that old Sam Morrow had no business to be "spilin' the market for boys," and undermining other folk's concerns in that way; but the miller stuck to his word; Murphy would not agree, and at the end of the month Dick Graham moved out to the mill, where his bright face, and cheery, alert ways, soon deepened the interest old Sam felt in him for his own boy's sake. Then he moved Mrs. Graham out there, and placed her and her boy in the cottage near the mill-house, as his own home was termed. And then the minister of the pretty church over towards the railway had come over to call on Mr. Morrow – who was not of the fold – and to shake hands with him, and when he went away he bent down and kissed pretty little Nellie – the miller's only daughter, and his darling – and had asked that his own little girls might come over to make her acquaintance and to gather pond lilies. All this had happened ten years back, when Nellie was a blue-eyed, sunny-haired child, and Sam was in his first turbulent year at school.

Little Nell had to go to her own school very soon. It lay across country over where the minister lived, and many was the time in the rough spring weather when Dick Graham had to carry her over the rushing brooks that burst across the roadway from the deep-drifted slopes of snow. He was a splendid, sturdy boy of fifteen then – manly, truthful, independent; and loyally he strove to serve his benefactor in the clattering old mill, and still more loyally he watched over the bonny child who seemed that master's all in all.

Things went smoothly enough, in all conscience, a year or two. Dick trudged off to evening school during the wintry season, and had found a good friend in that same minister, who lent him books and helped him along in his studies; but then Sam came home, virtually expelled from school, and then began a series of domestic troubles between father and son that brought sorrow and anxiety to all. Old Sam in his wrath would taunt the boy with having disgraced him, and young Sam in his flush of temper would threaten to quit his father's home for good and all. Dick strove to reason with his friend, but the boy was sensitive and stung to the quick. A kind word, a loving touch from his father would have melted his heart in an instant. He would have gone back to school full of apology and promises to amend; but his father's eyes were averted and his tongue edged with fire. Sam swore it was of no use to try and be patient. Then Dick went to the minister in his perplexity, and that worthy gentleman came strolling over to the mill, and looking over the ground, so to speak. His was a diplomatic mind, and it had reason to be. It was easy to win the son's confidence. He, Dick, and Sam junior soon formed a trio of fast friends, and before long another scheme was broached; and, with some surly misgiving on old Morrow's part, Sam was sent to another and larger school. It was the old man's hobby that his boy should be well educated. But a plethora of pocket-money, said the authorities of the first establishment, had been the cause of his downfall, and now the old man sternly refused to give his son a cent. All his expenses were to be met and paid, and the principal of the new school was to give him a certain trifling sum on holidays. There was no known trouble for a year as the result of this arrangement. The boy felt that he had amends to make and so did his best. A widowed sister of old Morrow had come to his home and taken charge of it and little Nell, and there was another era of comparative peace.

But to young Sam the school life was far from bright. Stinted now where he had formerly been indulged, he found himself forced into a position greatly contrasted with the prominence and popularity he had enjoyed among the youngsters of the year before. He was beginning to learn the lesson that sooner or later saddens and often embitters the brightest minds – the lesson that even here in free America money is the standard of even personal value. It was not so with Western boys before the war. Money was a thing well-nigh unknown to them, but the "flush" days brought with them new ideas, and the ideas stuck fast long after the flush days had gone. Sam Morrow found that he was no longer the pet of the "best set." Money and reckless good-nature had won it for him in the old school; good-nature unbacked by money was no help here at the new. Sam said nothing to his father, but his letters to Dick became more frequent. He stood to his work like a little man, and despite the sorrow and loneliness of that year he came home the better for it all. He had made excellent progress. His teacher had praised him; the minister put him through his paces and extolled him; and old Morrow, proud and pleased, wanted to unbend and send the boy back for his second year with some substantial token of his pleasure; but stubborn pride on both sides seemed to stand between father and son. Sam junior would ask nothing, and the old man's reply to the minister's well-meant suggestion was, "Well, if the boy wants money now let him come and say so." And this Sam swore he would not do, and so it ended.

Next year there was a catastrophe. Sam was now a stalwart, handsome young fellow of seventeen. "Ready to go to college," said his teachers. One day old Morrow received a telegraphic despatch begging him to come at once to the school. He went, and in four days was home again with Sam and a broken heart. Small sums of money had been missed from time to time by various pupils of the school. Suspicion had fastened on a sharp boy who was believed to spend more money than he legitimately received. A watch was kept, a search was made, and Sam Morrow was detected passing at a store some of the marked money. Questioned as to where he got it, he for the time declined to answer, until told that he was suspected of the theft. He then confessed that it was part of a small sum Fielding, the sharp boy aforementioned, paid him from time to time for translating his Cæsar for him. Fielding promptly, and with much apparent indignation, denied the story. Receiving such assistance and passing off another boy's work as his own was an offence for which a pupil was always severely punished. The case rested as a question of veracity between the two boys, with the odds vastly in favor of Sam – for a few hours only, pending further investigation, but that investigation was fatal. At least twelve dollars of the missing money was found secreted in Sam's books and clothing. He had furiously denied everything; he protested in vain that he had no idea how it came there, but his lonely, solitary ways were remembered, his habits of hanging about the dormitories apparently at study when the boys were at play – and there was no one to stand up for him. Old Morrow came, listened in crushed silence, and took his boy home. Honest to the backbone himself, he was sore stricken to think that his son should steal. He had heard first the stories of the teachers and pupils before being ushered into the presence of the accused. All hot impulse and fury, he had come upon his lonely and friendless son, and when the poor fellow, bursting into tears in his misery and excitement of the moment, had thrown his arms about his father's neck, sobbing, "I have not done it, I am innocent," he had sternly unclasped the pleading hands and ordered him to prepare at once to go home with him. Sam seemed utterly stunned by his father's refusal to hear a word. He was almost crazed with misery when he reached home. The minister and Dick listened to his story and believed it. Old Sam shut himself up; refused to see any one for some days, until Nellie's tears and petitions secured a brief interview for the worthy churchman. This time the latter was not diplomatic. He believed the boy wronged from beginning to end. He told old Morrow in so many words that his pride and stubbornness were sin and shame, and roused the old man to such a pitch of wrath that he shrieked out his hope that the son who had disgraced him might never come before his sight again – and he never did. Sam Morrow heard the furious words. Pride came to his aid; and never saying a word of farewell to the friends whom he knew would strive to dissuade him, but clinging long to sweet twelve-year-old Nellie, and sobbing as though his heart would break, Sam left his father's roof that night. Five years had passed away, and not one word was ever heard from him. The old man's curse had indeed come home to rest; his fading eyes were never more to be blessed by the sight of his son.

But this was only half of his misery. The minister left the house with his blood up; went forthwith to that school and was closeted some hours with his old friend the principal. Sam's side of the story had an intelligent advocate; a revulsion of feeling had set in; boys and men both began to recall good points about Morrow that had not occurred to them before, and queer things about that fellow Fielding. In less than a month after Sam's disappearance there came a letter to old Morrow one day which he read in gasping amaze, and then fell prone and senseless on the floor of the very office where he lay now prone and dead. Sam's story was true; Fielding had confessed even to having stolen the money and hiding portions of it in Sam's property, to divert suspicion from himself.

But now came a long illness in which old Morrow lay at death's door. He raved for his boy. He cursed his own mad folly and injustice. He did everything that could be suggested to bring the wanderer home again. The story went into the papers. Advertisements were circulated through the Western States. Even detectives were called upon, but to no purpose. Sam never returned. The old man, bent and sorrowing, but with as fiery a temper and an even more envenomed tongue, seemed to live only for Nellie's sake and the hope of once more greeting his boy. Nellie herself had spent some years at boarding-school and had grown into a lovely girl of eighteen. Dick Graham was a fine, manly fellow, good to look at and better to trust and tie to. "Too good a man to stay grubbing for old Morrow at the mill," said the neighbors. "Far too valuable and intelligent for the humble stipend that is paid him," said the minister. "Old Morrow" had grown miserly and grasping, said Public Opinion – and it was true. He had no confidant; he had no friends to whom he could open his heart. In dumb sorrow he shrank from the world, ever looking with haggard eyes for some trace of the lost boy whom his injustice and cruelty had driven into exile. Nellie was his one comfort. He gloried in her budding beauty, but he meant to make a lady of her, and even during her school vacation she did not always come home. It was too lonely and sad a spot for one so bright as she, said the old man, and he willingly permitted her to visit school friends in their city homes, and went month after month to see her – and bear to her, and the friends she liked, huge and uncouth offerings of candy or flowers in his efforts to show his appreciation of their interest in his precious child. Nellie was a princess in his eyes, but others saw in her a somewhat spoiled and over-petted beauty. That is – some others – most others. There was one who worshipped her as even her father never dreamed of doing; one to whom her faintest wish was law; one to whom her lightest word was sacred, and to whom her smile, or the touch of her little hand meant heaven. People wondered how Dick Graham could consent to hang on there at 'Mahbin mill, "grubbing" for that grasping old Morrow like a slave. Poor Dick! Slave he was, as many another had been, but not the miller's. He could and would have broken with him three years before, when the death of his invalid mother left the young fellow independent of all claim – but he could not and would not break the tie that bound him to 'Mahbin and the dusty, dingy, red-shingled old mill. He idolized Nellie Morrow, and she held his life in her hands.

She had learned to be very fond of Dick in the year that followed her brother's disappearance. She had grown into his heart the year before she went to school, and when she came home from her first vacation, child though she was, she knew it and gloried in it. Each year added to her maidenly graces, and to his thraldom, and the very winter that preceded this centennial summer Dick had brought her home from a sleighing-party one night fairly wild with joy and pride. In answer to his impetuous and trembling words she had murmured to him that he was dearer to her than anybody else could be, and he believed it, though Miss Nellie had grave doubts in her own mind as to the truth of that statement even when she made it. Still, it was very nice to have the best-looking and smartest young man in and around 'Mahbin for her own, when she was home, but he was not quite to be compared with the exquisites she saw in the city streets, or the brothers of some of her school friends. And there was one – oh! so romantic a fellow! whom she met that very winter in Chicago when spending Thanksgiving holidays with a schoolmate; a dark-eyed, splendid-looking man, tall, straight, athletic, with bronzed features and such a strange history! He was much older than these school-girls. He must have been thirty or thereabouts, and was own cousin to her friend. He had been a soldier when very young; had run away from home and fought in the great war, and had been a wanderer almost ever since; had been to California and to sea, and – they did not really know where else. Nellie was too young to notice that he had not been cordially welcomed by the old people on his arrival at the home of her friend. He had been wild and reckless, had "Cousin Harry," and papa did not like him, was the explanation of subsequent coldness she could not help seeing. But to the girls he was perfect. He had so mournful, mysterious, pathetic a manner. He was trying so hard to find some steady employment – was so eager to settle down – and he soon became so interested in Nellie, so devoted to her in fact, and the very day they returned to school – how it came about she never knew exactly, his sympathetic manner did it, perhaps, – she told him about her brother and his utter disappearance, and then she wondered at the sudden eager light in his eyes, the color that shot into his face through bronze and all, and the unmistakable agitation with which he had asked the question, "What was his name?" For an instant she believed he must have met Sam and known him, but this he denied, denied even when he asked to see his photograph.

Then "Cousin Harry" had been searching in his questions about Nellie, her father, his age, his property, her prospects. It was easy enough to extract all manner of information from her school-girl friend, and, when Nellie went back to school, she had reason to believe there was something very real in Mr. Henry Frost's decided interest in her.

She knew Dick loved her. She had given him every reason to hope that she was growing to care for him; yet before the Christmas holidays she twice had more reason to remember Harry Frost's devoted manner – and when she started home for those very holidays he was on the train.

It was Christmas eve that sent Dick Graham home happier than he had ever been in his life, but in one short week the happiness had fled. Mr. Frost had taken up his abode at the little tavern in the village; had acquired some strange influence over old Morrow, and was playing the devoted to Nellie in a way she too plainly liked. Early in January she went back to school, but Frost remained. He had indeed gained a powerful influence over the lonely old man – no one knew how – for Morrow invited the stranger to his house to stay awhile, and, before January was over, the tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired, athletic man was occupying a desk in the office of the old mill.

There was great speculation and conjecture and gossip all around 'Mahbin over this matter. The mill had been doing rather less business than usual; no additional men were needed. The office required little attention, for old Morrow had kept his own books and done his own letter-writing for years. If a clerk were needed, why take in a stranger whom nobody knew, they urged, when there was young Graham, whom everybody liked and trusted? And yet, before spring had fairly set in, old Morrow had turned over his bookkeeping and writing to this Mr. Frost; and though the key of the little safe was never intrusted to any hand but that of the master, and though there was one desk no one but Morrow himself could open, Frost was soon as much at home in the mill as though he had lived there a lifetime.

When the brief Easter holiday came an odd thing happened. Nellie Morrow declined to go with any of her school-friends. She wrote that she wanted to see dear old 'Mahbin again, and delightedly the miller brought her home. It was a week of torment to poor Dick Graham; a holiday that proved far from satisfactory to Morrow, for he saw with sudden start that his bonny Nell was becoming vastly interested in Mr. Frost, whom he was beginning to distrust.

When Frost had come to Nemahbin, in December, he had sought the old miller, requested a confidential interview, told him, with all apparent frankness, of his meeting with Nellie at the home of his uncle, near Chicago, and of her telling him the sad story of Sam's disappearance.

"Mr. Morrow," said he, "I believe I met and knew your son on the Pacific coast. What is more, I believe I can find him." The miller knew that Frost's relations were people of high position, but did not know that the man before him was very far from standing well in their esteem. But he had been imposed upon more than once by people who sought to make money from his eagerness to obtain any clue to the whereabouts of his missing boy. He closely questioned Frost, and was speedily convinced that there was no imposition here. He had known him, and known him well; for, even in little tricks of speech and manner, Frost could describe Sam to the life. The old man's first impulse was to take Frost with him and start for the Pacific coast at once; but the latter pointed out to him that the journey to mid Arizona was very long and expensive, and that he had reason to believe Sam had left there and gone with miners to Montana. He had friends and correspondents; he would write; he did write, and showed Morrow the letters, and they went apparently to Prescott, Arizona, but not for three months did answers come; and then they were vague and indefinite, and meantime the old man's heart had been torn with suspense and anxiety, and he rebelled at the restriction placed upon him by Frost, that he should admit to nobody that they were on the trail of his absent son – that Frost had known him well "in the mines," as he said, though by another name. He disliked it still more that there was so much of his own life while in the distant West of which Frost gave varying accounts, and always avoided speaking; and now it was plain that he was "making up" to Nellie; it was plain that she was far from averse to the attentions of this handsome and distinguished fellow, with his air of reserve and mystery; and it was plain that poor Dick Graham was both miserable and suspicious. He had been set against Frost from the very first.

Still there was a certain element with whom he had attained popularity – the young men about the village, and especially those of the large and thriving town over on the railway. He was a superb horseman, and had ridden with grace and ease a horse that poor Dick had pronounced utterly unmanageable. Then, one night during the Easter holidays, a large party of the young people of Nemahbin had driven over to town to attend the ball given by a local military organization. Nellie was the belle on the occasion, and was coquetting promiscuously with the officers and the members of the company, evidently to the annoyance of that hitherto unrivalled Mr. Frost. Even gloomy Dick Graham found some comfort in this, but his comfort gave way to dismay when, after a brief and rather clumsily executed drill of his command, the captain had suddenly turned over his sword to Mr. Frost, and the latter, as though by previous arrangement, stepped forward, and, with all the ease of an expert tactician and drill-master, and with stirring, martial voice and bearing, put the company through one evolution after another with surprising rapidity, and finally retired, the applauded and envied hero of the occasion. Nellie had monopolized him the rest of the evening, and all men held him in great esteem. Questioned as to his wonderful proficiency, he laughingly answered, "Why, I soldiered through the last two years of the war in the volunteers, and saw a good deal of the regulars afterwards, out West – that is, I used to watch them with great interest," and quickly changed the subject.

But Dick Graham's jealous eyes – and no eyes are so sharp as those whose scrutiny is so whetted – marked that he had changed color, and that his manner was nervous and embarrassed. From that day on he watched Frost like a cat.

June came in with sunshine and roses, and a great centennial celebration and exhibition in the far East, and a great convention for the nomination of a president, and the country was so taken up with these stirring events that, when June went out, precious little attention was paid to an affair that, a year earlier or later, would have thrilled the continent with horror. In one short, sharp, desperate struggle of a quarter of an hour, Custer, the daring cavalry leader of the great war – Custer, the yellow-haired, the brave, the dashing, the hero of romance and fiction and soldierly story – Custer and his whole command had been swept out of existence by an overwhelming force of Indians.

Nellie was home again, and Frost was now occupying a room in Sam Morrow's little house. The old man had come to Dick but a short time before her return, and, with something of his old kind and confidential way, had said to him that Frost was to remain with them but a few weeks longer, and that he was unwilling to have him under the same roof with Nellie even during that little while. Morrow had begun to look on Frost as a liar. He felt certain that he had known his lost boy, but doubted now his pretensions as to his ability to find him. Indeed, Frost admitted that he had lost the clue, and it was at this time that Morrow at last told the minister of the matter. That he was being deceived in more ways than one the old man was convinced, yet had nothing tangible to work upon; but his worst suspicions had not really done justice to the facts in the case. Morrow would have killed the man could he have known the truth – that he knew well just where the missing son was to be found, and would not tell – and that, virtually robbing the old miller of one child, he had now well-nigh robbed him of the other. Between him and Nellie letters had secretly passed, at regular intervals, ever since the Christmas vacation. She was fascinated, yet she, too, distrusted. He swore that he loved her – longed to make her his wife – yet forbade her confessing to her father that such was the case. More than that, he had cautioned her to look for an indifferent manner on his part on her return. He explained that her father disliked him, and would send him away instantly if their love were suspected. He even urged her to encourage Dick Graham. He was playing a desperate game, indeed. He had hoped to win the father's confidence with the daughter's love, and secure his consent – and blessing – and fortune; but, as matters stood, he knew that, though he might win Nellie, it would be in defiance of the father's will, and that meant disinheritance and banishment for both.

By every art in his power he had striven, of late, to curry favor with Graham, but without success. Dick was coldly civil, and would have been thankful for an excuse at open rupture. He suspected Frost of having won Nellie away from him, but could prove absolutely nothing. He believed him to be a mere adventurer, and had urged the miller to write to those connections of whom he had boasted – the Chicago relatives – and ascertain his history; but Morrow had sternly silenced him with the information that he knew it all – at least he knew enough. "Mr. Frost is here for a purpose, and it is sufficient that I have brought him here," was the old man's reply to further objections, and so poor Dick felt that nothing more was to be said.