Evidence of Things Seen

 

EVIDENCE
OF THINGS SEEN

 

 

Elizabeth Daly

“
M
RS. GAMADGE,
that woman's there again.”

Clara looked up from the letter she was writing to her husband. Long shadows from the trees across the road came up the slope of the yard, up to the very edge of the narrow porch on which she was sitting, her feet in rough grass. Clara's face was rosy in the evening light; but the elderly maid, who stood under the branches of a maple at the corner of the cottage, had not all her customary high color.

Clara herself was disquieted, but she had adopted an attitude, and was maintaining it. “Up on the ridge?” she asked, with what seemed no more than mild curiosity.

“Ma'am, she's come down the hill. She's halfway to our wall.”

“Then she's on her way here, and we'll find out who she is,” said Clara, cheerfully.

“No, ma'am; she just stands there the way she did the other times. First she was up at the edge of the woods, and then she was out on the ridge, and now she's come down the hill. She just stands there and looks at us—in her sunbonnet.”

“I wonder where on earth she comes from, and where she's going.”

“There's no place for her to come to but here.”

“Can't you see her face this time?”

“No, ma'am; the sunbonnet falls together.”

“She's just wandering, Maggie; there can't be any harm in her. She
must
be somebody staying at Mrs. Simms', or at the egg-woman's. She's just taking an evening stroll, and of course she's interested in new summer people.”

“She doesn't belong at Mrs. Simms', ma'am, and there isn't any such person at Miss Radford's; I told you so before. And how did she get up there on the ridge unless she came through the woods? She never crossed the field; I would have seen her this time and the other times. I didn't see her. I just looked up, and there she was, in that dress and that sunbonnet, looking.”

“I only said she couldn't have come through the woods because the trail is miles long—miles!” Clara's voice had risen a little, but she continued more quietly: “Of course I suppose she may have cut through from farther down the highway; I suppose she could get through the underbrush.”

“There's not a house for three miles down the highway.”

“We don't know all the people around here, Maggie, or why they do things, or where they go. Miss Radford's cows are back there.”

“And they came home before this. I don't like the looks of it.”

Nor had Clara much liked the looks of it. Six days before, and again three days before, it had stood motionless—a thin figure in faded purple, its limp sunbonnet screening its face—and had looked across slope and hollow at the cottage, just when the sun had begun to sink below the trees across the road.

Clara laid her writing materials on the porch floor, got up, and followed Maggie around the kitchen wing of the house. Far to the right, beyond a broad field, the highway ran east and west; in the angle formed by it and the road to the cottage was a small farmhouse, and another larger one could just be seen among its trees across the way. Behind the cottage a long slope led down to a stone wall, on the other side of which the ground rose steeply to a ridge. Dense woods crowded up to the ridge on three sides, but at one spot the skyline was clear.

A narrow track emerged from the trees on the left, wandered diagonally across the hillside, and disappeared at last into the shadow of the trees on the right. The woman had stood twice on this trail; first at the very entrance to the woods, and then out on the ridge; she was nowhere on it now. There was no figure in the landscape.

Clara, standing in the long grass of the little orchard, gazed to right and left of the trail. “She's gone.”

“And I hope she went back where she came from!” Maggie fumbled with her apron. “I hope she's not about the place.”

“She went back the other times; walked along the path into the woods. Just like anybody.”

“It's her coming closer I don't like.”

“Next time I'll go and speak to her. I'll find out who she is.”

“You'll not catch her.” Maggie followed her employer around to the front of the cottage, which owned no proper back door.

“Probably she'll wait. Probably she'd love to be spoken to. Next time she may come right up to the house.”

“I don't want her coming up to the house. She's not right.”

Clara stopped to look reproachfully at the old servant who had been with one or another member of the family since Clara was born. “If she were out of her head they wouldn't let her go wandering around!”

“They might, in the country; but that's not what I mean.”

“You're just letting her get on your nerves. You're getting lonely here, and you promised you wouldn't. We've been only a week at the cottage, and you're tired of it already.”

“Indeed I am not. It's a beautiful spot. You'll have trout for your supper, Mrs. Gamadge; Mr. Craye's man brought them on a string.”

Clara said that that would be lovely, sat down on the porch again, and picked up her writing block. Maggie went in by the dining room door. This was a couple of yards from the living room door; if the cottage had no back entrance downstairs it had two front ones, both of which opened on the little roofed verandah. There were other somewhat pleasing anomalies about the house, which had originally been a double one.

Clara went on with her interrupted letter:

“Your supper is ready, Mrs. Gamadge,” said Maggie, coming to the dining room door in a white apron. “And that door to the attic is open again.”

Clara, looking a trifle disturbed, gathered up her things. “I suppose there's a draft,” she said, “and the old latch works loose.”

“There's no draft.”

“The door wasn't open when I came down for tea.”

“It is now. I was putting your room ready. I saw it when I came up the stairs.”

“Please, Maggie, don't bother with my room till the Herons get here with their maid. You have too much to do.” Clara went in through the living room, and up an enclosed stairway to a little sitting room on the second floor. The enclosed stairway led on up to an attic, with a landing and a door at the bottom of the last flight; this door undoubtedly stood wide open.

Clara looked at it, looked up into the dimness of the attic, stood for a moment with a failing heart, and then slammed the door and latched it; the hasp fell neatly into its slot, and would not be dislodged until she jerked hard at the handle below. She knew it would not; she had gone through the same performance twice before.

The sitting room divided her bedroom from the one which would be the Herons'; she had allotted them theirs because she thought they would like having a bathroom on their landing, but she thought her own the nicest room she had ever had. It was against a hillside, and had two outer doors; one led straight into the woods, the other had its own little porch and rustic stairway, which ended in the grass of the yard. There was something magical about living on two levels at once, something even more magical about going to sleep to the sound of falling water; behind the trees on the other side of the road there were a brook and a waterfall.

The four little windows and the two doors were screened; they could all be open at night. The wallpaper was white and green, the woodwork dark green, the furniture and the four-poster bed painted to match. Clara never entered the room without thinking how much Gamadge was going to like it.

When she was ready for supper she went through the sitting room and the Herons' bedroom, and down a second flight of enclosed stairs to the dining room. This flight went on up to the other attic of the double house, which had been remodeled and ceiled, and in which Maggie slept.

The double nature of the old cottage was again in evidence on the ground floor. Living room and dining room each had a little bedroom attached, as well as its own stairway. Each had its fireplace, once closed up and fitted with a stovepipe, now a neat brick rectangle furnished with andirons. There was a good deal of plain, authentic early American furniture in the cottage; Clara did not understand how the owner could have left it behind—she did not suppose that it had been bought expressly for summer tenants. A bathroom and a kitchen and pantry wing had been built on to the south.

Before sitting down at the narrow dinner table Clara went to the doorway and looked out at the sunset sky. The sky, the trees, the old dirt road—there was nothing else to be seen. So isolated the cottage was, yet so safe! Eli, the head keeper on the reservation, had told her that not in the memory of man had there been tramp or prowler in these parts, so well were they patrolled to the north by the reservation guards. He was an Indian, with the face of a mild Pharaoh, and he had stopped by several times while she was settling in, and sat on the porch with her; had helped her with odd jobs and considered advice. Clara felt much at peace in his company.

She turned away from the quiet scene and sat down at the table. Maggie brought in a dish of broiled trout.

“That's good,” said Clara. “I'm starving.”

“I wish you'd let me get you regular dinners, ma'am.”

“I don't want you to bother until the Herons come, and Mr. Gamadge comes.” The last words were spoken with a trace of wistfulness, and Maggie, noticing it, went on more briskly:

“I will say the things that Miss Radford sells us are fine. Broilers no bigger than squabs. That's a nice farm she has, four cows and a horse.”

“I suppose she rents the pasture back of the ridge from our landlord.”

“She's our landlord.”

Clara looked up in surprise. “The egg-woman owns the cottage?”

“And all the property, back to the pond in the woods.”

“Well, I never.”

“She and her sister lived here till the sister died, last summer. Mrs. Simms told me; she's rich.”

“She must be rich, with the cottage, and the farm, and everything.”

“No, ma'am, I mean
rich
. The sister left her a hundred and six thousand dollars, and she moved back to the farm. It's the old Radford farm, but it's been rented for years.”

“How did the sister come to have so much money, I wonder?”

“It was the sister's husband made it. When he died she came back to live here with Miss Radford. It wasn't fixed up the way it is now, it had no plumbing. The sister was a miser.”

“Was she?”

“Yes, and then when she died the bank told Miss Radford she'd left her the hundred and six thousand dollars. Miss Radford fixed up the farm, and moved in, and then fixed up the cottage. And without Mr. Gamadge and your friends, ma'am, ‘tis no place for you.”

“Maggie, I'm not going to abandon it for two weeks, after all our trouble getting settled, just because there's no man in the house. It's too silly. Mr. Gamadge might come home any day, and he would love having this place to come to; he hates hotels.”