CHAPTER VIII
ELIMINATION
At about three o'clock in the afternoon Mr. Ransom left his room. He hadbeen careful almost from his first arrival to sit with his door ajar. Hehad, therefore, only to give it a slight push and walk out when he heardthe bustle of preparation going on in the two rooms in whose futureoccupancy he was so vitally interested. A maid stood in the hall. A manwithin was pushing about furniture. The landlady was giving orders. Hiscourse down-stairs did not lead him so far as those rooms, so he calledout pleasantly:
"I have written till my head aches, Mrs. Deo. I must venture outnotwithstanding the rain. In which direction shall I find the bestwalking?"
She came to him all eagerness and smiles. "It's all bad, such a day,"said she, "but it's muddiest down by the factories. You had better climbthe hill."
"Where the cemetery is?" he asked.
"Yes; do you object to cemeteries? Ours is thought to be veryinteresting. We have stones there whose inscriptions are a hundred andfifty years old. But it's a bad day to walk amongst graves. Perhaps youhad better go east. I'm sorry we should have such a storm on your firstday. Must you go out?"
He forced a suffering look into his eyes, and insisting that nothing butoutdoor air would help him when he had a headache, hastened down-stairsand so out. A blinding gust seized him as he faced the hill, but he drewdown his umbrella and hurried on. He had a purpose in following hersuggestion as to a walk in this direction. Dark as the grasses were, hemeant to search the cemetery for the graves of the Hazens and see what hecould learn from them.
He met three persons on his way, all of whom turned to look at him.This was in the village. On the hillside he met nobody. Wind and rainand mud were all; desolation in the prospect and all but desolation inhis heart. At the brow he first caught sight of the broken stone wallwhich separated the old burying place from the road. There lay his path.Happily he could tread it unnoticed and unwatched. There was no onewithin sight, high or low.
He spent a half hour among the tombs beforehe struck the name he was looking for.Another ten minutes before he found thoseof his wife's family. Then he had his reward.On a low brown shaft he read the names offather and mother, and beneath them the followinglines:
Sacred to the memory of Anitra Died June 7, 1885 Aged 6 years and one day._Of such is the Kingdom of heaven._
The twin! Georgian was mad. This record showed that her little sister layhere. Anitra,--yes, that was the name of her other half. He remembered itwell. Georgian had mentioned it to him more than once. And this child,this Anitra, had been buried here for fifteen years.
Deeply indignant at his wife's duplicity, he took a look at the oppositeside of the shaft where still another surprise awaited him. Here was therecord of the brother; the brother he had so lately talked to and who hadseemingly proven his claim to the name he now read:
Alfred Francesco only son of Georgian Toritti afterwards Georgian Hazen. Lost at sea February, 1895. Aged twenty-five years.
An odd inscription opening up conjectures of the most curious andinteresting nature. But it was not this fact which struck him at thetime, it was the possibility underlying the simple statement, Lostat sea. This, as the wry-necked man had said, admitted of a possibleresurrection. Here was no body. A mound showed where Anitra had been laidaway; a little mound surmounted by a headstone carved with her name. Butonly these few words gave evidence of the young man's death, andinscriptions of this nature are sometimes false.
The conclusion was obvious. It was the brother and not the sister who hadreappeared. Georgian was not only playing him false but deceiving thegeneral public. In fact, knowingly or unknowingly, she was perpetratinga great fraud. He was inclined to think unknowingly. He began to regardwith less incredulity Hazen's declaration that the shock of her brother'sreturn had unsettled her mind.
Distressed, but no longer the prey of distracting doubt, he againexamined the inscription before him and this time noticed itspeculiarities. _Alfred Francesco, only son of Georgian Toritti afterwardsGeorgian Hazen._ Afterwards! What was meant by that _afterwards_? Thatthe woman had been married twice, and that this Alfred Francesco was theson of her first husband rather than of the one whose name he bore? Itlooked that way. There was a suggestion of Italian parentage in theFrancesco which corresponded well with the decidedly Italian Toritti.
Perplexed and not altogether satisfied with his discoveries, he turned toleave the place when he found himself in the presence of a man carrying akit of tools and wearing on his face a harsh and discontented expression.As this man was middle-aged and had no other protection from the rainthan a rubber cape for his shoulders, the cause of his discontent waseasy enough to imagine; though why he should come into this place withtools was more than Mr. Ransom could understand.
"I cut them letters there fifteen years ago. Now I'm tocut 'em out."]
"Hello, stranger." It was this man who spoke. "Interested in the Hazenmonument, eh? Well, I'll soon give you reason to be more interested yet.Do you see this inscription--On June 7, 1885; Anitra, aged six, and therest of it? Well, I cut them letters there fifteen years ago. Now I'm tocut 'em out. The orders has just come. The youngster didn't die it seems,and I'm commanded to chip the fifteen-year-old lie out. What do you thinkof that? A sweet job for a day like this. Mor'n likely it'll put me undera stone myself. But folks won't listen to reason. It's been here fifteenyears and seventeen days and now it must come out, rain or shine, beforenight-fall. 'Before the sun sets,' so the telegram ran. I'll be blessedbut I'll ask a handsome penny for this job."
Mr. Ransom, controlling himself with difficulty, pointed to the littlemound. "But the child seems to have been buried here," he said.
"Lord bless you, yes, a child was buried here, but we all knew years agothat it mightn't be Hazen's. The schoolhouse burned and a dozen childrenwith it. One of the little bodies was given to Mr. Hazen for burial. Hebelieved it was his Anitra, but a good while after, a bit of the dressshe wore that day was found hanging to a bush where some gipsies hadbeen. There were lots of folks who remembered that them gipsies hadpassed the schoolhouse a half hour before the fire, and they now sayfound the little girl hiding behind the wood-pile, and carried her off.No one ever knew; but her death was always thought doubtful by every onebut Mr. and Mrs. Hazen. They stuck to the old idee and believed her to beburied under this mound where her name is."
"But one of the children was buried here," persisted Ransom. "You musthave known the number of those lost and would surely be able to tell ifone were missing, as must have been the case if the gipsies had carriedoff Anitra before the fire."
"I don't know about that," objected the stone-cutter. "There was, inthose days, a little orphan girl, almost an idiot, who wandered aboutthis town, staying now in one house and now in another as folks tookcompassion on her. She was never seen agin after that fire. If she was inthe schoolhouse that day, as she sometimes was, the number would be madeup. No one was left to tell us. It was an awful time, sir. The villagehasn't got over it yet."
Mr. Ransom made some sympathetic rejoinder and withdrew towards thegateway, but soon came strolling back. The man had arranged his tools andwas preparing to go to work.
"It seems as if the family was pretty well represented here," remarkedRansom. "Is it the girl herself,--Anitra, I believe you called her,--whohas ordered this record of her death removed?"
"Oh, no, you don't know them Hazens. There's one of 'em who has quite astory; the twin of this Anitra. She lived to grow up and have a lot ofmoney left her. If you lived in Sitford, or lived in New York, you'd knowall about her; for her name's been in the papers a lot this week. She'sthe great lady who married and left her husband all in one day; and forwhat reason do you think? We know, because she don't keep no secrets fromher old friends. _She's found this sister_, and it's her as has orderedme to chip away this name. She wants it done to-day, because she's cominghere with this gal she's found. Folks say she ran acro
ss her in thestreet and knew her at once. Can you guess how?"
"From her name?"
"Lord, no; from what I hear, she hadn't any name. _From her looks!_ Shesaw her own self when she looked at her."
"How interesting, how very interesting," stammered Mr. Ransom, feelinghis newly won convictions shaken again. "Quite remarkable the wholestory. And so is this inscription," he added, pointing to the words_Georgian Toritti_, etc. "Did the woman have two husbands, and was theAlfred Hazen, whose death at sea is commemorated here, the son of Torittior of Hazen?"
"Of Toritti," grumbled the man, evidently displeased at the question. "Ablack-browed devil who it won't do to talk about here. Mrs. Hazen wasonly a slip of a gal when she married him, and as he didn't live but acouple o' months folks have sort o' forgiven her and forgotten him. To usMrs. Hazen was always Mrs. Hazen; and Alf--well, he was just Alf Hazentoo; a lad with too much good in him to perish in them murderous waters athousand miles from home."
So they still believed Hazen dead! No intimation of his return had as yetreached Sitford. This was what Ransom wanted to know. But there was stillmuch to learn. Should he venture an additional question? No, that wouldshow more than a stranger's interest in a topic so purely local. Betterleave well enough alone and quit the spot before he committed himself.
Uttering some commonplace observation about the fatality attendingcertain families, he nodded a friendly good-by and made for the entrance.
As he stepped below the brow of the hill he heard the first click of theworkman's hammer on the chisel with which he proposed to eliminate theword _Anitra_ from the list of the Hazen dead.