“Sweets to the sweet,” said he, with a smile that sunk down deep into my heart and made my eyes moisten with joy. In the hackneyed expression there rang nothing false. He was proud and he was glad to see me enter that dining-room as his wife.
The next moment I was before the board, which had been made as beautiful as possible with flowers and the finest of dinner services. But the table was set for four, two of whom could only be present in spirit.
I wondered if I were glad or sorry to see it—if I were more pleased with his loyalty to his absent employer, or disappointed that my presence had not made everybody else forgotten. To be consistent, I should have rejoiced at this evidence of sterling worth on his part; but girls are not consistent—at least, brides of an hour are not—and I may have pouted the least bit in the world as I pointed to the two places set as elaborately as our own, and said with the daring which comes with the rights of a wife:
“It would be a startling coincidence if Mrs. Ransome and her daughter should return today. I fear I would not like it.”
I was looking directly at him as I spoke, with a smile on my lips and my hand on the back of my chair. But the jest I had expected in reply did not come. Something in my tone or choice of topic jarred upon him, and his answer was a simple wave of his hand towards Ambrose, who at once relieved me of my bouquet, placing it in a tall glass at the side of my plate.
“Now we will sit,” said he.
I do not know how the meal would have passed had Ambrose not been present. As it was, it was a rather formal affair, and would have been slightly depressing, if I had not caught, now and then, flashing glances from my husband’s eye which assured me that he found as much to enchain him in my presence as I did in his. What we ate I have no idea of. I only remember that in every course there was enough for four.
As we rose, I was visited by a daring impulse. Ambrose had poured me out a glass of wine, which stood beside my plate undisturbed. As I stooped to recover my flowers again, I saw this glass, and at once lifted it towards him, crying:
“To Mrs. Ransome and her daughter, who did not return to enjoy our wedding-breakfast.”
He recoiled. Yes, I am sure he gave a start back, though he recovered himself immediately and responded with grave formality to my toast.
“Does he not like Mrs. Ransome?” I thought. “Is the somewhat onerous custom he maintains here the result of a sense of duty rather than of liking?”
My curiosity was secretly whetted by the thought. But with a girl’s lightness I began to talk of other things, and first of the house, which I now for the first time looked at with anything like seeing eyes.
He was patient with me, but I perceived he did not enjoy this topic any more than the former one. “It is not ours,” he kept saying; “remember that none of these old splendors are ours.”
“They are more ours than they are Mrs. Ransome’s, just now,” I at last retorted, with one of my girlhood’s saucy looks. “At all events, I am going to play that it is ours tonight,” I added, dancing away from him towards the long drawing-rooms where I hoped to come upon a picture of the absent lady of the house.
“Delight “—he was quite peremptory now—
“I must ask you not to enter those rooms, however invitingly the doors may stand open. It is a notion, a whim of mine, that you do not lend your beauty to light up that ghostly collection of old pictures and ugly upholstery, and if you feel like respecting my wishes–”
“But may I not stand in the doorway?” I asked, satisfied at having been able to catch a glimpse of a full-length portrait of a lady who could be no other than Mrs. Ransome. “See! my shadow does not even fall across the carpet. I won’t do the room any harm, and I am sure that Mrs. Ransome’s picture won’t do me any.”
“Come! come away!” he cried; and humoring his wishes, I darted away, this time in the direction of the dining-room and Ambrose. “My dear,” remonstrated my husband, quickly following me, “what has brought you back here?”
“I want to see,” said I, “what Ambrose does with the food we did not eat. Such a lot of it!”
It was childish, but then I was a child and a nervous one, too. Perhaps he considered this, for, while he was angry enough to turn pale, he did not attempt any rebuke, but left it to Ambrose to say:
“Mr. Allison is very good, ma’am. This food, which is very nice, is given each day to a poor girl who comes for it, and takes it home to her parents. I put it in this basket, and Mr. Allison gives it to the girl when she calls for it in the evening.”
“You are good,” I cried, turning to my husband with a fond look. Did he think the emphasis misplaced, or did he consider it time for me to begin to put on more womanly ways, for drawing me again into the library, he made me sit beside him on the big lounge, and after a kiss or two, demanded quietly, but oh, how peremptorily:
“Delight, why do you so often speak of Mrs. Ransome? Have you any reason for it? Has any one talked to you about her, that her name seems to be almost the only one on your lips in the few, short minutes we have been married?”
I did not know why this was so, myself, so I only shook my head and sighed, repentingly. Then, seeing that he would have some reply, I answered with what naiveté I could summon up at the moment:
“I think it was because you seem so ashamed of your devotion to them. I love to see your embarrassment, founded as it is upon the most generous instincts.”
His hand closed over mine with a fierceness that hurt me.
“Let us talk of love,” he whispered. “Delight, this is our wedding-day.”
CHAPTER III. ONE BEAD FROM A NECKLACE
After supper Mr. Allison put before me a large book. “Amuse yourself with these pictures,” said he; “I have a little task to perform. After it is done I will come again and sit with you.”
“You are not going out,” I cried, starting up. “No,” he smiled, “I am not going out.” I sank back and opened the book, but I did not look at the pictures. Instead of that I listened to his steps moving about the house, rear and front, and finally going up what seemed to be a servant’s staircase, for I could see the great front stairs from where I sat, and there was no one on them. “Why do I not hear his feet overhead?” I asked myself. “That is the only room he has given me leave to enter. Does his task take him elsewhere?” Seemingly so, for, though he was gone a good half hour, he did not enter the room above. Why should I think of so small a matter? It would be hard to say; perhaps I was afraid of being left in the great rooms alone; perhaps I was only curious; but I asked myself a dozen times before he reappeared, “Where is he gone, and why does he stay away so long?” But when he returned and sat down I said nothing. There was a little thing I noted, however. His hands were trembling, and it was five minutes before he met my inquiring look. This I should not consider worth mentioning if I had not observed the same hesitancy follow the same disappearance up-stairs on the succeeding night. It was the only time in the day when he really left me, and, when he came back, he was not like himself for a good half hour or more. “I will not displease him with questions,” I decided; “but some day I will find my own way into those lofts above. I shall never be at rest till I do.”
What I expected to find there is as much a mystery to my understanding as my other doubts and fears. I hardly think I expected to find anything but a desk of papers, or a box with money in it or other valuables. Still the idea that something on the floor above had power to shadow my husband’s face, even in the glow of his first love for me, possessed me so completely that, when he fell asleep one evening on the library lounge, I took the opportunity of stealing away and mounting the forbidden staircase to the third floor. I had found a candle in my bedroom, and this I took to light me. But it revealed nothing to me except a double row of unused rooms, with dust on the handles of all the doors. I scrutinized them all; for, young as I was, I had wit enough to see that if I could find one knob on which no dust lay that would be the one my husband was accustomed to turn. But every one showed tokens of not having been touched in years, and, baffled in my search, I was about to retreat, when I remembered that the house had four stories, and that I had not yet come upon the staircase leading to the one above. A hurried search (for I was mortally afraid of being surprised by my husband,) revealed to me at last a distant door, which had no dust on its knob. It lay at the bottom of a shut-in stair-case, and, convinced that here was, the place my husband was in the habit of visiting, I carefully fingered the knob, which turned very softly in my hand. But it did not open the door. There was a lock visible just below, and that lock was fastened.