The thing in the woods
She seemed to take it quite as a matter of course that I should be
giving my directions to her instead of Mrs. Lessing. It was as if
she took the responsible place instinctively in the household. I
climbed into the buggy, turning the mare around, and she nodded a
good-bye to me. My last glimpse, as I left the house, was of her
slim bare-headed figure, wistful in its very air of self-reliance,
standing there in the sunshine with the setter by her side.
IV
DUTCHMAN'S HILL
To say the thing puzzled me would be to put it lightly enough. For
the rest of the day my thoughts kept turning to that enigmatic
household at the Bend. The most puzzling point of all, to my mind,
was why Lennox, in speaking of the people about, had not so much as
mentioned Lessing's name. Here was a patient to whom he had, as I
surmised, been called once before at least on the same mysterious
errand as my own that morning, with whom he was more or less on terms
of intimacy, and who must have provided almost his sole educated
companionship in the village, and yet he had not seen fit so much as
to touch upon Lessing's existence in my talk with him. Considering
the words with which my own advent had been that morning greeted, I
would have given much to be able to corner Lennox just then for ten
minutes' conversation.
I had heard nothing from him so far, and the following morning, on
the chance of there being a letter, I drove down to the village after
breakfast. As I entered the post office Miss Lessing was just coming
out. She had a brown-paper parcel--an obvious butcher's parcel--in
her hand, together with a couple of mail packets, and as I stood
aside to let her pass she stopped to exchange a few words with me.
Her brother was better, she said; he looked forward to seeing me that
afternoon. We chatted a moment, and when she turned to go I said
naturally:
"You might let me give you a lift up the road. I'm going straight
back."
She smiled. "I'm used to walking, thanks all the same! Besides,
there's a short cut through the woods I've found. It takes off
nearly half the distance."
"You don't mind the woods alone?"
"I've got the dog with me."
I watched her straight slim little figure up the street, the dog
following at her heels, and turned into the post office. The clerk
had grown familiar during our daily intercourse. He handed me two
letters with a ready grin--Lennox's handwriting was not among
them--then leaned his elbows on the shabby counter and spat
reflectively into the space below.
"Mr. Lessing had another attack, ain't he?"
"What do you mean," I said curtly.
"I heer'd you was called over thar, yesterday. Reckon you'll have
enough to do if you take on with all the crazy folks round here."
I looked at him hard.
"Oh, I ain't got nothing special against Mr. Lessing. He's a
pleasant-spoken chap, all I've seen of him. On'y when a man gits to
meddlin' with things it ain't no person's business to meddle with
he's liable to git called crazy--ef not worse. I ain't holdin' with
what people say when they get to talkin'--no sir! I got enough to do
tendin' my own business. But there's plenty won't go near Mr.
Lessing's place after dark nor no other time, an' if you was to
listen to them I reckon they got their reasons. They say his wife's
as crazy as he is. Seems when he ain't traipsin' round the woods all
hours o' the night he's shut up there in that stoodio place doin' his
vivisectin'----"
"_What?_"
I laughed in spite of myself. Mr. Johnson looked sulky.
"Ain't that what they call it? I ain't no doctor."
"Mr. Lessing happens to be a student of chemistry, not a medical
student, so if anyone's been trying to get round you with bogy tales
they're talking nonsense. I'm surprised at a man of your education,
Mr. Johnson, listening to such absurdities!"
"Then what does he shut himself up for, with a lamp you can see two
miles off, unless he's up to suthin' he don't want folks to know?"
"Probably because he doesn't want a pack of ignoramuses meddling with
his affairs."
"Well, that's what they say, and there's folks as believes it," he
said sullenly. "An' as fur his walkin' in the woods, I ain't tellin'
you anything but what's so. He was seen the same night as Jake
Menning got killed goin' down Dutchman's Hill. It was Jakey's
half-brother as seen him, an' Aaron ain't one to be tellin' lies.
No, sir! An' if Doctor Lennox was here now he would tell you the
same, for he was called out to see a sick child at the Bend that same
night and it was him as found Jake Menning there the next mornin'."
"Do you know you're saying things you might get into trouble over?" I
asked sternly.
"Oh, I ain't sayin' he had no hand in it," he returned promptly.
"Everyone knows Jakey got killed through bein' too drunk to look whar
he was goin'!"
I pushed a quarter over to him.
"Well, give me some stamps, Mr. Johnson. If you take my advice you
won't pay quite so much attention to idle gossip."
I drove home, thinking. Lennox, or someone, had been chattering;
that was clear. How far I had no means at present of knowing, for I
was not going to pursue any further conversation with Johnson, ready
as he was. A doctor who gives himself to gossip is no better than an
old hen. I felt a sharp contempt for Lennox that overrode whatever
interest I might once have had for him. If he had got himself into
any tangle down here he deserved it thoroughly.
A light covered wagon, such as hucksters use, was outside the gate
when I got back, and a man, who had evidently been bargaining with
Mrs. Searle at the back door, came round and climbed into it. I had
to pull the mare up to one side to give him room to drive off, and as
I waited I happened to notice him rather closely, the more so as he
gave me a civil but obvious scrutiny himself as he climbed over the
wagon-wheel. He was a man of about forty, in a tightly buttoned coat
of greasy black oilskin and a peaked cap, which might have belonged
earlier in its career to a seafaring man, pulled down over his
forehead. His face, with unpleasantly close-set eyes, was scarred by
smallpox, and apart from the repugnance which this disfigurement
always inspires more or less, I think I have seldom seen a
countenance which impressed me more disagreeably. He was a man whom
I would have ordered off my own premises anywhere at first sight, and
I replied with a curt nod to his over-subservient greeting.
I left the mare in the yard and went into the parlor. Mrs. Searle
had evidently been interrupted in her morning tidying, and she came
back, duster in hand, as I stood there. I had enough experience to
know her for a woman who did not give herself to gossip, though she
probably knew all that was afoot, by the curious intuitive sense so
highly developed in all women of her class. With her I would be
perfectly safe in any inquiries I chose to make.
She apologized for her intrusion and set about completing her tour of
the furniture, with noiseless briskness.
"I see you've been down to the village, sir," she said after a
moment. "I was going to ask whether you'd order some more coal up
for tomorrow, from Harkness's. It's most finished."
"I'll send Pete this afternoon. He can walk in. By the way, Mrs.
Searle, what was this story about Jake Menning? I just heard
something of it in the village today."
"Jake Menning..." She paused in her dusting, setting back a vase
carefully on the mantelshelf. "I suppose you'd have heard of it,
sir. He was killed last March, goin' down Dutchman's Hill. There
isn't much water now, but it's generally deep there, long after the
spring rains. Some did say it was done a-purpose, but the most of
'em thinks he jest had a fit an' fell in. Doctor Lennox found him,
about six o'clock in the mornin', driving back from a night call. He
was lyin' jest at the foot of the hollow, where them planks begin,
with his face in the water. It wasn't deep enough to drown anyone
ordinarily, an' that's why they thought it was a seizure.
"There was two half-brothers, Jake an' Aaron, both livin' over near
the Bend. Aaron's took the whole business over now. Jake was always
kind o' queer; they called him crazy sometimes, round the village.
They was as like as two peas, which was queer, seein' they was on'y
half related, so to speak. Down to the smallpox scars an' all.
They'd both took the smallpox, but Jake took it worse, and they said
that was what affected his brain some. You couldn't tell 'em apart,
on'y for Aaron's stutterin'.
"Aaron was the best of the two. He's a good chapel member, and he's
done a lot better in the business since Jakey's out of it. I heard
they used to quarrel a lot in Jake's lifetime. Aaron's savin', and a
bit close with his money too, and I recon he kep' Jake under some.
He was an awful ill-lookin' man, Jake Menning--not that I like to say
wrong of the dead, but I know a bad-lookin' man when I see one, an'
Jake was that, for all his craziness. There weren't anyone liked him
much, so they said he was harmless as a child, and right smart in
business, an' now they ain't content with his being dead but they
must get to startin' nonsense about his walking---excuse me
mentionin' any such silly talk to you, sir!"
"Walking?" I stared.
"What they call it, sir," she explained apologetically. "You see,"
she went on, taking up her duster again, "Dutchman's Hill always did
have a bad name, account of a pedlar bein' drowned there years ago,
and now with this other business they try to make out the place is
haunted again.. They don't seem to know rightly whether it's Crazy
Jake or the pedlar I told you of, but there's quite a lot of folks
now won't go nigh the place after dark, no more'n if it had the
plague."
"So that's what all this nonsense has been about!" I said, a light
beginning to dawn on me. "I suppose Pete is right in it all?"
"Pete is like all the niggers, sir. They ain't happy unless they've
got some sort of a ha'nt to tell about. Not that the other folks
here is any better, an' I will say that of 'em. I never met such a
gossipin' set in my life till I come here!"
Mrs. Searle herself was originally from New England, and eight years'
residence here had not altered her original opinion of the people.
For this reason, if for none other, I knew that she kept herself very
sternly aloof from the minor scandal-making of the place.
"I suppose there was an inquest on this man?"
"Oh, yes, sir. They brought it in accidental causes, an' Doctor
Lennox seemed to think the man died of heart-failure, an' he must
have been dead before he fell in. Anyway it wasn't drownin', simple.
I don't know. It was Aaron had heart-weakness in the family, as I
heard, so it was queer Jake bein' the one took off that way!"
I rose.
"Well, I suppose the people here have precious little to gossip
about, and they like to make a mystery of whatever does happen!"
"That's about as I take it, sir." She moved toward the door. "An'
now I think, it was funny your asking me about Jake Menning, just
this moment. That was Aaron as came round to the back door a while
ago, as you drove up. He wanted to know if we'd like any chickens,
so I took one for Sunday, seen' he only gets round once a fortnight
now he has the whole business to attend to. I don't know whether
it's thinkin' over it, but it seems to me he's getting to look more
like Jakey every day. If it wer'n't for his stutterin' I could take
him for a ghost myself!"
So that was Aaron Menning. Well, he might be a good chapel member,
but he had a face that would hang him if my impressions went for
anything. All the same, this put me no nearer to clearing up the
mystery at the Bend, which was what interested me at the moment.