Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries Read online

  Abner sat unmoving by the hearth, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his palm propping up his jaw, his face clouded in deep lines. Randolph was consumed with vanity and the weakness of ostentation, but he shouldered his duties for himself. Presently he stopped and looked at the woman, wan, faded like some prisoner of legend escaped out of fabled dungeons into the sun.

  The firelight flickered past her to the box on the benches in the hall, and the vast, inscrutable justice of heaven entered and overcame him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Go! There is no jury in Virginia that would hold a woman for shooting a beast like that.” And he thrust out his arm, with the fingers extended toward the dead man.

  The woman made a little awkward curtsy.

  “I thank you, sir.” Then she hesitated and lisped, “But I have not shoot him.”

  “Not shoot him!” cried Randolph. “Why, the man’s heart is riddled!”

  “Yes, sir,” she said simply, like a child. “I kill him, but have not shoot him.”

  Randolph took two long strides toward the woman.

  “Not shoot him!” he repeated. “How then, in the name of heaven, did you kill Doomdorf?” And his big voice filled the empty places of the room.

  “I will show you, sir,” she said.

  She turned and went away into the house. Presently she returned with something folded up in a linen towel. She put it on the table between the loaf of bread and the yellow cheese.

  Randolph stood over the table, and the woman’s deft fingers undid the towel from round its deadly contents; and presently the thing lay there uncovered.

  It was a little crude model of a human figure done in wax with a needle thrust through the bosom.

  Randolph stood up with a great intake of the breath.

  “Magic! By the eternal!”

  “Yes, sir,” the woman explained, in her voice and manner of a child. “I have try to kill him many times—oh, very many times!—with witch words which I have remember; but always they fail. Then, at last, I make him in wax, and I put a needle through his heart; and I kill him very quickly.”

  It was as clear as daylight, even to Randolph, that the woman was innocent. Her little harmless magic was the pathetic effort of a child to kill a dragon. He hesitated a moment before he spoke, and then he decided like the gentleman he was. If it helped the child to believe that her enchanted straw had slain the monster—well, he would let her believe it.

  “And now, sir, may I go?”

  Randolph looked at the woman in a sort of wonder.

  “Are you not afraid,” he said, “of the night and the mountains, and the long road?”

  “Oh no, sir,” she replied simply. “The good God will be everywhere now.”

  It was an awful commentary on the dead man—that this strange half-child believed that all the evil in the world had gone out with him; that now that he was dead, the sunlight of heaven would fill every nook and corner.

  It was not a faith that either of the two men wished to shatter, and they let her go. It would be daylight presently and the road through the mountains to the Chesapeake was open.

  Randolph came back to the fireside after he had helped her into the saddle, and sat down. He tapped on the hearth for some time idly with the iron poker; and then finally he spoke.

  “This is the strangest thing that ever happened,” he said. “Here’s a mad old preacher who thinks that he killed Doomdorf with fire from Heaven, like Elijah the Tishbite; and here is a simple child of a woman who thinks she killed him with a piece of magic of the Middle Ages—each as innocent of his death as I am. And, yet, by the eternal, the beast is dead!”

  He drummed on the hearth with the poker, lifting it up and letting it drop through the hollow of his fingers.

  “Somebody shot Doomdorf. But who? And how did he get into and out of that shut-up room? The assassin that killed Doomdorf must have gotten into the room to kill him. Now, how did he get in?” He spoke as to himself; but my uncle sitting across the hearth replied:

  “Through the window.”

  “Through the window!” echoed Randolph. “Why, man, you yourself showed me that the window had not been opened, and the precipice below it a fly could hardly climb. Do you tell me now that the window was opened?”

  “No,” said Abner, “it was never opened.”

  Randolph got on his feet.

  “Abner,” he cried, “are you saying that the one who killed Doomdorf climbed the sheer wall and got in through a closed window, without disturbing the dust or the cobwebs on the window frame?”

  My uncle looked Randolph in the face.

  “The murderer of Doomdorf did even more,” he said. “That assassin not only climbed the face of that precipice and got in through the closed window, but he shot Doomdorf to death and got out again through the closed window without leaving a single track or trace behind, and without disturbing a grain of dust or a thread of a cobweb.”

  Randolph swore a great oath.

  “The thing is impossible!” he cried. “Men are not killed today in Virginia by black art or a curse of God.”

  “By black art, no,” replied Abner; “but by the curse of God, yes. I think they are.”

  Randolph drove his clenched right hand into the palm of his left. “By the eternal!” he cried. “I would like to see the assassin who could do a murder like this, whether he be an imp from the pit or an angel out of Heaven.”

  “Very well,” replied Abner, undisturbed. “When he comes back tomorrow I will show you the assassin who killed Doomdorf.”

  When day broke they dug a grave and buried the dead man against the mountain among his peach trees. It was noon when that work was ended. Abner threw down his spade and looked up at the sun.

  “Randolph,” he said, “let us go and lay an ambush for this assassin. He is on the way here.”

  And it was a strange ambush that he laid. When they were come again into the chamber where Doomdorf died he bolted the door; then he loaded the fowling piece and put it carefully back on its rack against the wall. After that he did another curious thing: He took the blood-stained coat, which they had stripped off the dead man when they had prepared his body for the earth, put a pillow in it and laid it on the couch precisely where Doomdorf had slept. And while he did these things Randolph stood in wonder and Abner talked:

  “Look you, Randolph… We will trick the murderer… We will catch him in the act.”

  Then he went over and took the puzzled justice by the arm.

  “Watch!” he said. “The assassin is coming along the wall!”

  But Randolph heard nothing, saw nothing. Only the sun entered. Abner’s hand tightened on his arm.

  “It is here! Look!” And he pointed to the wall.

  Randolph, following the extended finger, saw a tiny brilliant disk of light moving slowly up the wall toward the lock of the fowling piece. Abner’s hand became a vise and his voice rang as over metal.

  “‘He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.’ It is the water bottle, full of Doomdorf’s liquid, focusing the sun… And look, Randolph, how Bronson’s prayer was answered!”

  The tiny disk of light traveled on the plate of the lock.

  “It is fire from heaven!”

  The words rang above the roar of the fowling piece, and Randolph saw the dead man’s coat leap up on the couch, riddled by the shot. The gun, in its natural position on the rack, pointed to the couch standing at the end of the chamber, beyond the offset of the wall, and the focused sun had exploded the percussion cap.

  Randolph made a great gesture, with his arm extended.

  “It is a world,” he said, “filled with the mysterious joinder of accident!”

  “It is a world,” replied Abner, “filled with the mysterious justice of God!”

  Chapter 2

  The Wrong Hand

  Abner never would have taken me into that house if he could have helped it. He was on a desperate mission and a child was the last company he wished; but h
e had to do it. It was an evening of early winter—raw and cold. A chilling rain was beginning to fall; night was descending and I could not go on. I had been into the upcountry and had taken this short cut through the hills that lay here against the mountains. I would have been home by now, but a broken shoe had delayed me.

  I did not see Abner’s horse until I approached the crossroads, but I think he had seen me from a distance. His great chestnut stood in the grassplot between the roads, and Abner sat upon him like a man of stone. He had made his decision when I got to him.

  The very aspect of the land was sinister. The house stood on a hill; round its base, through the sodded meadows, the river ran—dark, swift and silent; stretching westward was a forest and for background the great mountains stood into the sky. The house was very old. The high windows were of little panes of glass and on the ancient white door the paint was seamed and cracked with age.

  The name of the man who lived here was a byword in the hills. He was a hunchback, who sat his great roan as though he were a spider in the saddle. He had been married more than once; but one wife had gone mad, and my Uncle Abner’s drovers had found the other on a summer morning swinging to the limb of a great elm that stood before the door, a bridle-rein knotted around her throat and her bare feet scattering the yellow pollen of the ragweed. That elm was to us a duletree. One could not ride beneath it for the swinging of this ghost.

  The estate, undivided, belonged to Gaul and his brother. This brother lived beyond the mountains. He never came until he came that last time. Gaul rendered some accounting and they managed in that way. It was said the brother believed himself defrauded and had come finally to divide the lands; but this was gossip. Gaul said his brother came upon a visit and out of love for him.

  One did not know where the truth lay between these stories. Why he came we could not be certain; but why he remained was beyond a doubt.

  One morning Gaul came to my Uncle Abner, clinging to the pommel of his saddle while his great horse galloped, to say that he had found his brother dead, and asking Abner to go with some others and look upon the man before one touched his body—and then to get him buried.

  The hunchback sniveled and cried out that his nerves were gone with grief and the terror of finding his brother’s throat cut open and the blood upon him as he lay ghastly in his bed. He did not know a detail. He had looked in at the door—and fled. His brother had not got up and he had gone to call him. Why his brother had done this thing he could not imagine—he was in perfect health and he slept beneath his roof in love. The hunchback had blinked his red-lidded eyes and twisted his big, hairy hands, and presented the aspect of grief. It looked grotesque and loathsome; but—how else could a toad look in his extremity?

  Abner had gone with my father and Elnathan Stone. They had found the man as Gaul said—the razor by his hand and the marks of his fingers and his struggle on him and about the bed. And the country had gone to see him buried. The hills had been afire with talk, but Abner and my father and Elnathan Stone were silent. They came silent from Gaul’s house; they stood silent before the body when it was laid out for burial; and, bareheaded, they were silent when the earth received it.

  A little later, however, when Gaul brought forth a will, leaving the brother’s share of the estate to the hunchback, with certain loving words, and a mean allowance to the man’s children, the three had met together and Abner had walked about all night.

  As we turned in toward the house Abner asked me if I had got my supper. I told him “Yes”; and at the ford he stopped and sat a moment in the saddle.

  “Martin,” he said, “get down and drink. It is God’s river and the water clean in it.”

  Then he extended his great arm toward the shadowy house.

  “We shall go in,” he said; “but we shall not eat nor drink there, for we do not come in peace.”

  I do not know much about that house, for I saw only one room in it; that was empty, cluttered with dust and rubbish, and preempted by the spider. Long double windows of little panes of glass looked out over the dark, silent river slipping past without a sound, and the rain driving into the forest and the loom of the mountains. There was a fire—the trunk of an apple tree burning, with one end in the fireplace. There were some old chairs with black hair—cloth seats, and a sofa—all very old. These the hunchback did not sit on, for the dust appeared when they were touched. He had a chair beside the hearth, and he sat in that—a high-backed chair, made like a settee and padded—the arms padded too; but there the padding was worn out and ragged, where his hands had plucked it.

  He wore a blue coat, made with little capes to hide his hump, and he sat tapping the burning tree with his cane. There was a gold piece set into the head of this black stick. He had it put there, the gossips said, that his fingers might be always on the thing he loved. His gray hair lay along his face and the draft of the chimney moved it.

  He wondered why we came, and his eyes declared how the thing disturbed him; they flared up and burned down—now gleaming in his head as he looked us over, and now dull as he considered what he saw.

  The man was misshapen and doubled up, but there was strength and vigor in him. He had a great, cavernous mouth, and his voice was a sort of bellow. One has seen an oak tree, dwarfed and stunted into knots, but with the toughness and vigor of a great oak in it. Gaul was a thing like that.

  He cried out when he saw Abner. He was taken by surprise; and he wished to know if we came by chance or upon some errand.

  “Abner,” he said, “come in. It’s a devil’s night-rain and the driving wind.”

  “The weather,” said Abner, “is in God’s hand.”

  “God!” cried Gaul. “I would shoestrap such a God! The autumn is not half over and here is winter come, and no pasture left and the cattle to be fed.”

  Then he saw me, with my scared white face—and her was certain that we came by chance. He craned his thick neck and looked.

  “Bub,” he said, “come in and warm your fingers. I will not hurt you. I did not twist my body up like this to frighten children—it was Abner’s God.”

  We entered and sat down by the fire. The apple tree blazed and crackled; the wind outside increased; the rain turned to a kind of sleet that rattled on the window-glass like shot. The room was lighted by two candles in tall brass candlesticks. They stood at each end of the mantelpiece, smeared with tallow. The wind whooped and spat into the chimney; and now and then a puff of wood-smoke blew out and mounted up along the blackened fireboard.

  Abner and the hunchback talked of the price of cattle, of the “blackleg” among yearlings—that fatal disease that we had so much trouble with—and of the “lump-jaw.”

  Gaul said that if calves were kept in small lots and not all together the “blackleg” was not so apt to strike them; and he thought the “lump-jaw” was a germ. Fatten the bullock with green corn and put it in a car, he said, when the lump begins to come. The Dutch would eat it—and what poison could hurt the Dutch! But Abner said the creature should be shot.

  “And lose the purchase money and a summer’s grazing?” cried Gaul. “Not I! I ship the beast.”

  “Then,” said Abner, “the inspector in the market ought to have it shot and you fined to boot.”

  “The inspector in the market!” And Gaul laughed. “Why, I slip him a greenback—thus!” —and he set his thumb against his palm. “And he is glad to see me. ‘Gaul, bring in all you can,’ said one; ‘it means a little something to us both.’” And the hunchback’s laugh clucked and chuckled in his throat.

  And they talked of renters, and men to harvest the hay and feed the cattle in the winter. And on this topic Gaul did not laugh; he cursed. Labor was a lost art and the breed of men run out. This new set were worthless—they had hours—and his oaths filled all the rafters. Hours! Why, under his father men worked from dawn until dark and cleaned their horses by a lantern… These were decadent times that we were on. In the good days one bought a man for two hundred eagles; but now the
creature was a citizen and voted at the polls—and could not be kicked. And if one took his cane and drubbed him he was straightway sued at law, in an action of trespass on the case, for damages… Men had gone mad with these newfangled notions, and the earth was likely to grow up with weeds!

  Abner said there was a certain truth in this—and that truth was that men were idler than their fathers. Certain preachers preached that labor was a curse and backed it up with Scripture; but he had read the Scriptures for himself and the curse was idleness. Labor and God’s Book would save the world; they were two wings that a man could get his soul to Heaven on.

  “They can all go to hell, for me,” said Gaul, “and so I have my day’s work first.”

  And he tapped the tree with his great stick and cried out that his workhands robbed him. He had to sit his horse and watch or they hung their scythes up; and he must put sulphur in his cattle’s meal or they stole it from him; and they milked his cows to feed their scurvy babies. He would have their hides off if it were not for these tender laws.

  Abner said that, while one saw to his day’s work done, he must see to something more; that a man was his brother’s keeper in spite of Cain’s denial—and he must keep him; that the elder had his right to the day’s work, but the younger had also his right to the benefits of his brother’s guardianship. The fiduciary had One to settle with. It would go hard if he should shirk the trust.

  “I do not recognize your trust,” said Gaul. “I live here for myself.”

  “For yourself!” cried Abner. “And would you know what God thinks of you?”

  “And would you know what I think of God?” cried Gaul.

  “What do you think of Him?” said Abner.

  “I think He’s a scarecrow,” said Gaul. “And I think, Abner, that I am a wiser bird than you are. I have not sat cawing in a tree, afraid of this thing. I have seen its wooden spine under its patched jacket, and the crosspiece peeping from the sleeves, and its dangling legs. And I have gone down into its field and taken what I liked in spite of its flapping coattails… Why, Abner, this thing your God depends on is a thing called fear; and I do not have it.”