The Billop Mystery

I

ON the wall opposite, as I sit at my study table, hangs a small picture framed in white. Though but a sketch in water-colour, it shows the handling of a master; and if the observer be a connoisseur, he will recognise the touch of Winslow Homer. The subject is a New England farmhouse among the hills: time, sunset of an October day.

The house, as you see, occupies the summit of an acclivity. Its broad hip-roof, its blunt gables, and its massive chimney stand out against the sky. The orange light from the west illuminates the venerable front, and glows in its deep-set windows. Two trees of unknown age and vast size stand one on either side of the heavily framed doorway. That on the right is a butternut; the other is an elm: and in the apparently still solid trunk of the former (as I happen to know, though it could not be represented in Mr. Homer's sketch) is still embedded a bullet fired from a flint-lock musket in the hands of an Indian one hundred and eighty years ago. The bullet was meant for the stout heart of Mistress Nancy Billop, who, with her two sons, was defending the house against a raid of the savages during the absence of her husband on a trading trip to the coast. For the house, as well as the trees, stood there in 1715, looking, probably, not very different from what they do now. You may be glad to know that the Indians were beaten off, after three of them had been shot dead while unsuccessfully trying to set the building on fire; and the valiant little garrison was relieved betimes the next morning. I mention this episode merely to give you an idea what sort of stuff these Billops had in them. Be we democratic as we may, we cannot help liking our friends the better for descending from stock like that.

Let us make a skip of a century and a half or so, during which the Billops' generations succeeded one another in a steady, honourable, but somewhat uneventful career of prosperity; raising crops, breeding cattle, sending a representative to the wars, when there were any, and voting for that form of government which stands for liberty, security, and minding your own business.

The original Billop was a pioneer in that region, and owned everything in sight from his windows. When, in the course of time, other settlers came along, he had treated them hospitably, and bade them help themselves to everything that they wanted in the way of farms, up to within a radius of a mile from his doorstep. The land within that radius got to be known as Billop's Farm, and it contained the finest land—upland pasture, forest, and meadow—to be found in the neighbourhood. Early in the century, about half of this farm was sold to a man by the name of Corvin. We have business with some of his posterity in the present narrative.

The house which Corvin built stood halfway between the old Billop homestead and the village of Ken brook (which had been in gradual course of materialisation since before the Revolutionary War). Corvin was a lawyer. He had brought money with him and made more. He was a pushing, shrewd man. and before his death had served a term in the State Legislature. His son adopted the profession of law also, but did not make out so well with it. He seemed to lack the gift of success. Being, upon a time, in straits, he got a considerable loan of money. Now, no details of this loan were known, but it was the general impression that it came from Matthew Billop, the then head of the Billop clan, with whom Corvin was understood to be on rather intimate terms. What security did Corvin give for it? What was there for him to give, except a mortgage on his land? It was not known what use he made of the loan, but there were indications that he never paid any interest on it, and it was only a question of time, therefore, when it would be foreclosed. For Matthew Billop was not the sort of man to give up his just dues for anybody.

This Matthew is known in local history as Miser Billop. He was the last male of his race, and perhaps the ablest of any of them. For reasons best known to himself he never married. He had two sisters, one of whom, Sally, married John Linton, and died a year after, followed several years later by her husband: the other, Nancy, remained an old maid, and kept house for Matthew. We shall have the pleasure of her nearer acquaintance shortly. I will only observe here that she was in love, in her salad days, with a certain good-looking, easy-going young fellow by the name of Brent. Brent, being more good-looking than otherwise good, jilted her, and married her bosom friend, Mary Selwin. The pair went to New Orleans, and had a daughter: and then both died of yellow fever. Nancy might have said, "Serve 'em right!" but she did not, not being that sort of woman. But she had the little girl brought up north, and took care of her, and made her a daughter of her own. Betrayed by both her lover and friend, she loved their little Nellie all the more tenderly for their sakes.

This transaction took place about 1870. Now, Sally before her death had presented her husband with a son—Thomas; and this Thomas became an orphan at almost the date of the New Orleans tragedy. Thomas was eight or nine years Nellie's senior It will not surprise anyone to learn that Nancy adopted him also: being her own nephew, and destitute, she could hardly do less. Thus, although an old maid, she was provided, at the age of, say, five-and-thirty, with a son and daughter, whom she cherished and indulged as only an old-maid mother can. But how did Miser Matthew like these proceedings?

Why, nobody knows; for Miser Matthew had died the year before the proceedings took place. When I say that he died, however. I speak hastily. I should have said he disappeared; and, as he never reappeared and sent no messages, it was finally assumed that dead he must be; and since his disappearance (or death) happened to occur at the very period when that mortgage of Corvin's would naturally have been foreclosed, and since no trace of a deed of mortgage or anything else referring to affairs with Corvin was discovered among his papers; and, finally, since the last time he was seen alive was the evening he left home, after telling Nancy that he was going down to have a chat with Corvin—why, people were free to form their own opinions, and they did so. But if their opinions had any significance—if, for example, they leant towards connecting the vanished man's fate with the fact that Corvin was thereby relieved of the necessity of losing most of his worldly possessions—nothing ever came of them, because nothing ever transpired to indicate that Corvin knew or had a hand in the taking off of his creditor. On the contrary, he was quite active in searching for him; but Matthew had gone out of sight like a soap-bubble, leaving not a trace behind him.

Hitherto you will have observed that there has been a good deal of chronology and genealogy, but there is no need of punctually remembering them. They were introduced merely to provide a background and an atmosphere for the events of the story itself. Stories of mystery, such as this is, need background and atmosphere in order to produce their full effect. Little except mystery will be found in what is to follow, and if you are able to sound the depths before the evolution of events brings it to light, all I can say is that you are cleverer than the present chronicler was at the time, or than any of his neighbours. Meanwhile, you will appreciate Mr. Homer's artistic purpose in enveloping his sketch in that dreamy, mysterious, Indian summer haze. Is there not something ghostly in that wreath of mist stealing along the middle distance, behind the big butternut-trees?

I should have mentioned another reason for the local suspicion of Mr. Corvin. We have seen that Matthew was a wealthy man: his money was invested chiefly in real estate and railroads But it became known that, shortly before his disappearance, he had been calling in these investments, and turning them into hard cash, with the design of putting the money in certain Western enterprises that paid a higher interest. He must, then, have had a great many thousand dollars actually in his hands; for there was no trace of his having deposited any of it in the local banks. What had become of it? Like himself, it had dissolved, every dollar of it, into thin air. It was gone. But, on the other hand, Mr. Corvin soon after began to show symptoms of decided solvence. His luck took a turn; he was looking up in the world at last. Instead of forfeiting his estate to the Billops, he presently found himself in a position to add some of the Billop acres to his own. Nancy, being so unexpectedly reduced in circumstances, and having no more head for business than a hen, was thankful to exchange parcels of land for a little cash. The neighbours shook their heads; but what could they do?—or say, even, above their breaths? Corvin was a lawyer, and a hard one; he would have been down on every one of them to whom he could trace an insinuation against his perfect integrity. They might think what they liked; but he was much more apt to put them in jail for libel than they were to get him hanged for murder. They had not even a corpus delicli.

What they did venture to say was that Corvin meant bit by bit to possess himself of the entire Billop estate, house and all, and turn poor Nancy out to shift for herself. For it was remembered that at the time Nancy had been betrothed to Brent, Corvin had himself been paying attentions to her; and that he had taken the rebuff very ill. Of course, his marriage with Miser Billop's sister would have been the making of him. He had married another girl immediately afterwards; but he was of a temper to cherish grudges; and now he had his chance he meant to satisfy it.

Thus do the guilty triumph in this world, and there is no help for it. In this case, though, one hope was still indulged by a few of the more innocent and credulous of the community. It was recalled that, during the lifetime of Matthew, the Billop house was believed to be haunted. Matthew's spirit, instead of adding to the supernatural crew, however, had apparently taken the existent ghosts away with it; at all events, the manifestations had come to a stop with his disappearance. But it was plausibly argued that a house which has once been haunted is likely to be haunted again: indulgence in spirits clings to a house just as it does to a man. Now (argued these philosophers) although Matthew's immaterial part might very well forbear to disturb the peace of his good sister, who had never done anybody any harm, but who was mortally afraid of disembodied intelligences, yet the saturnine old miser, foreseeing the future, might be only biding his time, and saving up his energies to harry the man who had shed his blood, as soon as the latter should venture to set foot in his ancient domicile. Yes, he would haunt Lawyer Corvin as never lawyer had been haunted before; and it would go hard but the whole secret of the murder—if murder there had been—would be revealed, the lost money recovered, and Nancy reinstated in her own.

Certainly, that would be poetical justice, and things as strange are said to have happened. We shall see what did happen shortly!

II

Few houses were better adapted for the accommodation of ghosts than the old Billop homestead. The two mighty trees cast a shadow over it even at midday, and its cavernous cellar and Dædalian garret seemed ideal stamping grounds for spectres. The acclivity on which the house stood—the site had been chosen with an eye to its defensibility in Indian times—sloped gently down in front, but fell away quite abruptly behind and at the sides. On the right side, almost beneath the roots of the butternut-tree, a small natural cave entered the rocky soil; it had been artificially enlarged so as to shelter the farm wagons and tools when the barn was over-full of produce. The barn stood farther down the slope, near the meadow, and was itself a delightfully mysterious and scary place; both the cave and the barn had been highly prized by the Billop children, as well as by their mothers, when, in rainy weather, they wanted to have some peace in the house. "May we play in the barn, or the cave, mother?" was a request seldom refused. Sometimes, no doubt, the children played ghosts till they were ready to expire with delightful creeps and horrors, and thus confirmed among themselves the weird legends which came down from generation to generation.

When Tom Linton, aged eleven, took up his abode at the house, Nellie Brent was a mere baby, just able to walk and utter a few Orphic words; so he had to do most of his playing by himself. But he was a boy of unusual resources and genius, and as his tenancy of the premises was, unfortunately, brief, and his fate grievous, we must make him as distinct as possible while he lasts. He had the energy and vitality of a whole school at noon recess, and was as sensational and indomitable in his manifestations as were Robin Hood and his merry men in the Sherwood forest. He neither feared ghosts nor believed in them; but his noises and surprises were more terrible than a battalion of the disincarnate. He was on the jump from morning till night—arms, legs, lungs, and brain in full function; he was the cleverest pupil in the school, though out of none of them did the master have less hope of evolving a sober and useful citizen. He was as inevitably the centre of all mischief as the hub is the centre of a wheel; and though nobody could help liking the young rascal, he was so good-tempered, amusing (so to say), contagious, yet all shook their heads over him, and opined that his future looked ominous. Nancy only, who suffered most from his outrageousness, not merely loved him with all her heart, but had faith in his final triumph over all evil; she continued to believe in him, in the teeth of ail evidence, when his misfortune came upon him; and when, at last, the poor little drowned body was picked out of the river, she thanked the Lord, on her knees, through her sobs, that she had never harboured an uncharitable thought towards him. This is how it came about.

There was one person in the parish with whom Tom was at open war—Lawyer Corvin. His aversion to him, instinctively at first, was confirmed by what he had heard and credited as to his shady conduct towards his deceased uncle. Tom expected, in due season, to become the master of Billop's, and then he meant to take it out of lawyer Corvin. Meanwhile, Corvin had a son, Peter, about Tom's size. Peter was a bully. He was once incautious enough to get into a fuss with Tom, and the latter thrashed him with such joy and thoroughness (as much on the lawyer's account as Peter's) that Peter ceased from that day to be a bully, and became a sneak.

One day a lot of the boys, Tom and Peter among them, went in bathing at the ford in Fenbrook. Peter took occasion to remark that Tom was a pauper anyhow, and that his (Peter's) father could sell him and his old aunt up to-morrow if he chose. The moment he selected for saying this was when he was standing dressed on the bank, and Tom was swimming naked in the middle of the stream. Tom, as he made his way with all possible speed towards shore, was heard to retort that Lawyer Corvin's money was not his own, and that one of these days he would wake up and find he was a pauper himself. As Tom approached the landing, with obvious designs on Peter's person, the latter took to flight; Tom pursued him as far as his own undraped plight made decorous, and then came back with an expression significant of vengeance to come. Apparently, however, he soon forgot all about the matter, and parted from his companions with his wonted good-humour.

But next morning a rumour ran that Lawyer Corvin's house had been entered and robbed during the night; the boys discussed it outside the school-house, and Peter, when he came up, confirmed it, and upon being asked if anything was known of the thieves, put on a very pregnant look, and said he guessed something would be known before long. The master came; the boys took their seats, but it was found that Tom was absent—not, unfortunately, a rare occurrence. But Peter looked more sagacious than ever.

School let out at noon. They swarmed forth into the elm-shadowed country road. Who were these approaching yonder? One of them, as Peter observed, was his father. A boy walked beside him—it was Tom. And who was that man with his hand resting on Tom's shoulder? Why, it was John Higgins, the constable. And there was Nancy Billop following on behind, with the tears streaming down her plump cheeks. What did it all mean? What could be opposed to such testimony as this?

Illustration: IT MEANT, ALAS! THAT TOM HAD BEEN ARRESTED FOR THE ROBBERY.

It meant, alas! that Tom had been arrested for the robbery. His jack-knife had been found on the ledge of the back window, which had been forced. The threat which he had made the day before was remembered. But all this and more would have weighed nothing had not an overwhelming piece of evidence come to light in Tom's pockets—nothing less than a wad of bank-notes which Lawyer Corvin proved he had drawn out of the bank the morning previous, as well as several coins and a gold ring, likewise his property.

The boy put a bold face on the matter; he admitted that he had been out a good part of the night, but he said he had been laying traps for woodchucks. He could not explain about his knife, except that he had lost it some days before. As to the terrible contents of his pockets, he vehemently professed to know nothing about it; but he was quite sure he had never been near Lawyer Corvin's. It was but a poor defence, and it was evident that his many friends were disappointed. As Tom looked around the little room in which the preliminary examination was held, there were no eyes to meet his own with encouragement and faith. Yet his self-command would not have faltered but for a sound of stifled sobbing that reached his cars. He looked around, and there was Nancy.

"My darling good boy," she cried out, "I know you didn't do it, if an angel was to sit right here and say you did. If they send you to prison, I'll go too, and Nellie with me. You were always the best boy in the world, and I'll lay down my life for you, I will, sooner than let them wrong you—I don't care who they are."

So the old fire in the Billop blood flashed out again, even in gentle Nancy. Tom, remembering, perhaps, how far from considerate he had been to this beloved woman who loved him, could not any longer keep the tears from raining down his stubborn brown phiz; and with a suddenness that disconcerted Mr. Higgins—who, however, secretly wished the boy had spread a pair of wings and flown out of harm's way altogether—he jumped over the high-backed bench that stood between him and her, and threw his arms around her comfortable shoulders, and pushed his cheeks against hers, and gulped out "Don't you cry, Mammy; they can't hurt me—inside—for I didn't do it; and goin' to prison's nothin' if you know you're all right. You'll see if I don't make somebody sweat for this, yet! I love you, you dear, and I wish I had always done what you wanted me!"

This, as the newspapers would say, created a visible impression favourable to the prisoner. Mr. Corvin, after a pause, observed that nobody would be more pleased than himself if Tom Linton succeeded in establishing his innocence; at the same time, until the facts before them were satisfactorily explained, justice to all parties required that the prisoner be kept in custody. He had no doubt Mr. Higgins would make him very comfortable. Still, stealing was stealing, and the law was bound to take action according to the evidence brought before it.

Then said the unlucky Tom, with a flash in his eyes, "If you was to tell how you got your money, maybe you'd be going to jail for stealing 'stead of me!"

That settled the question of bail; the magistrate thought it would be best to let Mr. Higgins retain charge of the prisoner for the present. In fact, everybody except Tom was more or less afraid of lawyer Corvin; and really, it was difficult to see how Tom could be otherwise than guilty.

Accordingly the worthy constable conveyed Tom to the village lock-up, which was a room in the disused water-mill below the falls. Fenbrook was a law-abiding community, and the lock-up was empty 350 days in the year; but this night it happened to contain another boy, a young tramp, who had been caught a while before in somebody's hen-house, and who was awaiting transference to the House of Correction in the neighbouring town.

It was an error of judgment on Mr. Higgins's part to put the two boys together. One boy is slippery enough, but there is no place that two boys, working together, cannot get out of. It may be that Mr. Higgins thought of this, but chose not to act upon the knowledge.

But, as people afterwards said, if he meant to give Tom a chance, he only succeeded in fixing his doom.

The next morning, when the constable opened the door to give his prisoners their breakfast, he found a hole in the roof hardly big enough for a cat to get through, but no boys.

The tramp, whom nobody was concerned about, seems to have got clean off. Why could he not have been drowned instead of Tom? It is to be feared that Nancy, in the anguish of her heart, asked the Lord of heaven and earth that question.

The body, almost unrecognisable save by his clothes, was found ten days later. The boy had tried to swim the river, probably intending to go down to the sea-coast, and perhaps ship as cabin-boy in some outward-bound vessel. It was the spring of the year, and a late flood had swollen the stream and carried away the bridge. Tom was a stout swimmer, but a floating tree may have overwhelmed him; at any rate, he was gone.

The whole village turned out for the funeral. They felt, somehow, responsible for poor Tom's death. Lawyer Corvin was there too, looking properly downcast. Hut when, at the grave, Nancy lifted her tear-stained face and fixed her eyes, which always were so kindly, upon him, he turned pale and got behind the others and slipped away. He could not meet that look; and yet what had he done that anybody in the place could have helped doing?

Nancy and little Nellie lived alone in the old house, and things went ill with them. But at last, when Nellie was about eleven years old, a mysterious event happened.

III

It was an October evening nine years later: the woods had glowed in their red and yellow splendour all day long, the sun had set in a rivalry of glory, and now it was getting so cool that a few logs were piled on the wide hearth, and a fire kindled. The pitch-pine sticks began to crackle and to ooze at the ends, the [illegible] smoke whirled upward in [illegible] of the chimney, and Nancy and Nellie, having cleared the supper things, were seated in a small and a big chair, side by side, face to the blaze. Nellie's head leaned against Nancy's substantial knee; her silky hair, which showed some of the colours of the golden flame at which she was gazing, or of the maple leaves of which she had gathered a big bunch that afternoon, shone in the flickering light with a lovely radiance. Nancy sat back in her chair with her stout arms folded across her ample waist. Never was there an old maid who looked the conventional type less than she. She was rosy, dimpled, plump, and cheery; yet she was not only a spinster of near fifty, but she had met with nothing but misfortune all her life. It is a marvel what some folks can thrive on!

Hut Nancy had in her bosom the innocent and kindly child's heart which was born with her; she was as much a child as the little girl beside her. Troubles could draw tears from her readily enough, but nothing could make her bitter or sullen. Her nature was of the summer quality, sometimes reverting to April, but never contracting into winter. Truly, she was not armed to contend with the artful and selfish world; yet the world could not hurt her. Her vital spots were beyond the world's reach.

Being of such a make, she and Nellie were full companions for each other. They were a pair of children. Things which to others would have been foolish and trivial interested them, and made the subject of their confidential talks. Each loved the sound of the other's voice and was secure in the other's sympathy. It is wonderful what a mutual comprehension love gives; the reason is, perhaps, because it so simplifies and illuminates the ordinary confusion and obscurity of ideas. We are ourselves the artificers of most of the riddles that perplex us.

"Nellie, you wouldn't have cared for me to marry that old Lawyer Corvin, would you, lovey?"

"Ugh!" said Nellie, prolonging a guttering of disgust. "He's horrid! You don't have to, do you?"

"No, but he asked me this afternoon." She gave a chuckling little laugh. "I declare I wonder what ailed the man. He did use to be spoonin' around 'bout twenty or thirty years ago, but I was young and smart then, and we was rich; and, anyway, I was fancyin' som'un else myself. So I said to him to-day, I says: 'Whatever ails you, Mr. Corvin? I guess you used to want me for the sake of my money,' I says; 'but now,' I says, 'you've got the money, and what under the canopy would you be wanting with me?' So I laughed; but I thought to myself, thinks I, 'Well, I guess I wouldn't marry a man that was the cause of my dear boy Tom gettin' drowned, not to speak of what folks said about my poor brother Matt; not that I b'lieve myself it was Mr. Corvin's fault, you know; but one feels things that way. I didn't tell him that; it's no use hurtin' folks' feelin's."

"What did he say?" asked Nellie.

"Well, he sort o' come out then; he says, 'That's just it,' he says; 'you ain't got no money an' I hate to have it that way, but what can I do?' he says. 'Here I've been lending you money these ten years back, Nancy,' he says, 'on the s'curity of your land an' cattle an' stuff,' he says, 'an' now you ain't got nothin' more to pledge, an' I'll have to foreclose on that mortgage to-morrow,' he says. 'An' what I thought was, Nancy, if you'd have me it would make it all smooth an' nice,' he says, 'for I was al'ays fond o' you, you know; an' now I've been a widower five years, an' everything's ready for you, ef you'll come,' he says. 'An' ef you don't, upon my word I don't see how you're going to get on anyway,' he says."

"He hasn't got this house, though, has he?" asked the child.

"No, lovey, he ain't: an' that's what I told him; an' I said I'd starve in it sooner 'n sell it, for it was Billop's house ever sence 'twas built, an' I don't consider I've any right to make away with it while I live. An' I told him maybe the folks around would give me work to do; anyhow, marry I couldn't. By'n' by he said, 'Well, I'm sorry to foreclose,' he says, 'but I can't help it; I need some cash to put into a new investment,' he says, an' than he went on to tell about a man had come to town with a new invention, some way of makin' crops grow with 'lectricity, but I didn' understand how 'twas. Mr. Corvin, he wanted to buy the stock of the invention, and had to have cash. So he said ef I wouldn't marry him, and didn't have the money for the mortgage to-morrow, why he'd be sorry, but he'd jest be obliged to sell up the farm an' fixin's. So I said, 'Well, ef you have to do it, sell away, Mr. Corvin,' I says, 'an' don't you bother 'bout Nellie an me,' I says; 'I guess the Lord'll look out after us, some way, 'an' then I told him I'd have to be gettin' the dinner ready, an' asked him would he stay? But he said 'No,' and so off he went."