"Poor little Gretchen! Will you never come?"
If he were expecting her now he no longer asked that the carriage be sent to meet her. That had been one of the proofs of his insanity as alleged by his brother, and Arthur was sane enough to avoid a repetition of that offense, but he often went himself to the station, when the New York trains were due, as it was from the west rather than the east that he was now looking for her.
Frank, who watched him nervously, with all his senses sharpened, guessed what had caused the change and grew more nervous and morbid on the subject of Gretchen than ever. At first his brother, who was greatly averse to going out, had asked him to post his letters; business letters they seemed to be, for they were addressed to business firms in New York, London and Paris, with all of which Arthur had relations. But one morning when Frank went as usual to his brother's room asking if there was any mail to be taken to the office, Arthur, who was just finishing a letter, replied:
"No, thank you, I will post this myself. I have been writing to Gretchen."
"Yes, to Gretchen?" Frank said, quickly, as he advanced nearer to the writing-desk, hoping to see the address on the envelope.
But Arthur must have suspected his motive, for he at once turned over the envelope and kept his hand upon it, while Frank said to him:
"Is she in London now?"
"No; she was never in London," was the curt reply, and then, turning suddenly, Arthur faced his brother and said: "Why are you so curious about Gretchen? It is enough for you to know that she is the sweetest, truest little girl that ever lived. When she comes I shall tell you everything, but not before. You have tried to prove me crazy: have said I was full of cranks; perhaps I am, and Gretchen is one of them, but it does not harm you, so leave me in peace, if you wish for peace yourself."
There was a menacing look in Arthur's eyes which Frank did not like, and he resolved to say no more to him of Gretchen, whose arrival he again began to look for and dread. But she did not come, or any tidings of her, and Christmas came and went, and the lovely bracelets which Arthur brought from the trunk he said was hers, and into which no one had ever looked but himself, remained unclaimed, as did the costly inlaid work-box and the cutglass bottles with the golden stoppers, while Arthur seemed to be settling into a state of great depression, caring nothing for the outside world, but spending all his time in the rooms he had prepared for himself and one who never came.
As far as possible he continued his foreign habits, having his coffee and rolls at eight in the morning, his breakfast, as he called it, at half-past twelve, and his dinner at half-past six. All these meals were served in his room as elaborately and with as much ceremony as if lords and ladies sat at the table instead of one lone man, who required the utmost attention and care in the waiting. The finest of linen, and china, and glass, and silver adorned his table, with a profusion of flowers—roses mostly, if he could get them, for Gretchen, he said, was fond of these, and, as she might surprise him at any moment, he wished to be ready for her and show that he was expecting her.
Opposite him, at the end of the table, was always an empty plate with its surroundings, and the curiously carved chair, which had seen the lion at Lucerne. But no one ever sat in it. No one ever used the decorated plate, or the glass mug at its side, with its twisted handle and the letter "G." on the silver cover. Just what this mug was for, none of the household knew, until Grace Atherton, who had traveled in Europe, and to whom Mrs. Tracy showed it one day when Arthur was out, said:
"Why, it is a beer-mug, such as is used in Germany, though more particularly among the Bavarian Alps and in the Tyrol. This Gretchen is probably a tippler, with a red nose and double chin. I wish to goodness she would come and satisfy our curiosity."
But Gretchen did not come, and as the days went by Arthur became more and more depressed and remained altogether in his room, seeing no one and holding no intercourse with the outside world. He had returned no calls, and had been but once to see Mrs. Crawford. That interview had been a long and sad one, and when they talked of Amy, whose grave Arthur had visited on his way to the cottage, both had cried together, and Gretchen seemed for the time forgotten. They talked of Amy's husband, and then Arthur spoke of Amy's son, who was not present, and whom he seemed to have forgotten, for when Mrs. Crawford said to him, "You saw him on the night of your return home," he looked at her in a perplexed kind of way, as if trying to remember something which had gone almost entirely from his mind. It was this utter forgetfulness of people and events which was a marked feature of his insanity, if insane he were, and he knew it and struggled against it; and when Mrs. Crawford told him he had seen Harold he tried to recall him, and could not until the boy came in, flushed and excited from a race with Dick St. Claire through the crisp November wind which had brought a bright color to his cheek and a sparkle to his eye. Then Arthur remembered everything, and something of his old prejudice came back to him, and his manner was a little constrained as he talked to the boy, whose only fault was that Harold Hastings had been his father.
He did not stay long after Harold came in, but said good-morning to Mrs. Crawford and walked slowly away, going again to Amy's grave, and taking from it a few leaves of the ivy which was growing around the monument. And this was all the intercourse he held with Mrs. Crawford, except to send her at Christmas a hundred dollars, which he said was for the boy Harold, to whom he had done an injustice.
After this he seldom went out, but settled down into the life of a recluse, talking occasionally to himself, with some unseen person, who must have spoken in a foreign tongue or tongues, for sometimes it was French, sometimes Italian, and oftener German in which he addressed his fancied guest, and neither Frank nor Dolly could understand a word of the strange jargon. On the whole, however, he was very quiet and undemonstrative, and if he were still expecting Gretchen, he gave no sign of it, and Frank was beginning to breathe freely, and to look upon his presence in the house as not altogether unbearable, when an event occurred which excited all Shannondale, and for a time made Frank almost as crazy as his brother.
CHAPTER XI.
THE STORM.
THE winter since Christmas had been unusually severe, and the oldest inhabitants, of whom there are always many in every town, pronounced the days, as they came and went, the coldest they had ever known. Ten, twelve, and even fourteen degrees below zero the thermometers marked more than once, while old Peterkin's which was hung inside the 'Lizy Ann and always took the lead, went down one morning to seventeen, and all the water-pipes and pumps in town either froze or burst, and Arthur Tracy, who never forgot the poor, sent tons and tons of coal to them, and whispered to himself:
"Poor Gretchen! It is hard for her if she is on the sea in such weather as this. Heaven protect her, poor little Gretchen!"
The next day there was a change for the better, and the next, and the next, until when the last day of February dawned people began to look more cheerful, while the sun tried to break through the grey clouds which shrouded the wintry sky. But this was only temporary, for before noon the mercury fell again to eight below, the wind began to rise, and when the New York train came panting to the station at half-past six, clouds of snow so dense and dark were driving over the hills and along the line of the track that nothing could be distinctly seen at a distance.
It was not until the train had moved