"There is something very wrong in this house," declared Janet. "Hotchkiss doesn't know what it is, Mrs. Brown doesn't."
"I think the Beeman knows," Oliver volunteered suddenly, although he could give no reason for his guess.
"Anyway," pursued Janet, "some one ought to know, for some one ought to help Cousin Jasper. I am certain that he has no mean secrets, as Anthony Crawford said. And so I think one of us should climb up and look over the wall. It had better be you," she added wisely but regretfully, "because, if we both try it, some one is sure to see us."
It was, therefore, Oliver who was stirring at sunrise, for his investigations5 must be made before any one else was up. He let himself out of the house very quietly and crossed the empty, silent garden. He had forgotten how beautiful a garden could be in the early morning with the dew shining on every grass tip and with the flowers all radiant in the vividness of color of newly created things. There were gay-colored beds below the terrace and long borders at each side of the house, then a wide stretch of grass behind the garage, and beyond that, back of the shrubs6 and the fruit trees and the thickly growing vines, was the wall. It was higher than the boundaries at the sides and front of Cousin Jasper's place, perhaps to afford a better surface for the grapevines and pear trees trained against it, perhaps for another reason.
Oliver walked along it slowly, looking up at the smooth bricks and wondering how it was to be climbed. The more difficult it appeared the more determined he became to get to the top. In the middle of the wall behind a summerhouse stood a stout7 trellis, the support of an exceedingly thorny8 rose vine. Here, he decided, was the place to scramble9 up, but he must make haste, for people in the house would be waking and would see him. Carefully he set a foot upon the lowest bar, found that it would hold, and began mounting upward.
There were trees beyond the wall, not the trimmed, well-kept kind that grew in Cousin Jasper's garden, but a scrubby growth of box elder and silver-leaved poplar such as spring up in myriads10 where the grass is never cut. Hanging over the top of the coping, he could peer through their branches and see a house beyond. He was astonished to see the shingled11 roof rising so close by, for he had not thought that they had neighbors who dwelt so near.
The house was a square one of yellow stone, with overhanging eaves and small windows and an old-fashioned stoop in front, over which the roof came down in a long sweep. It must have been built a hundred years ago, he thought, and it might have seemed a charming, comfortable old place were it not so unutterably dejected and dingy12. Its windows were cracked, the grass grew tall and ragged13 upon its lawns, a litter of rubbish lay about the back door, and the woodwork, that should have been white, was gray from want of paint.
"It looks as though the people who lived in it just—didn't care," Oliver commented. "It is a nice old house, but it seems worn out and discouraged, somehow, like John Massey's cottage. I wonder who owns it."
An open space between the dwelling14 and the wall had apparently15 once been a broad lawn, then had been plowed16 up for the planting of a patch of grain, and had at last been left as a neglected waste for weeds and brambles to flourish undisturbed. An old scarecrow still stood knee-deep in the tangled17 green, left there after the field had been abandoned, to drop slowly to pieces in the wind and rain. The grotesque18 figure, with its outstretched arms and hat set at a rakish angle, looked familiar for some incomprehensible reason. As Oliver clung to the wall, squinted19 through the leaves, and wondered why that should be, the mystery was suddenly solved. The door of the house opened with a squeak20 of rusty21 hinges and somebody came out on the step. It was Anthony Crawford. No wonder the scarecrow looked like its master, for it was wearing his old clothes, garments to which there always cling a vague resemblance to the person who once wore them.
A child with very yellow hair came running out upon the doorstone, laughing aloud at some small joke of his very own. When he saw Anthony Crawford, however, he sobered suddenly and slipped back into the house without a sound. The man stood upon the step and stared, with narrowed, penetrating22 eyes, over toward the wall. The gables and chimneys of Cousin Jasper's big house must show through the trees from where he stood and, judging by the look with which he regarded them, it seemed that he hated the very roof that sheltered Jasper Peyton. The luxurious23 mansion24 was, in truth, a sharp contrast to the unkempt, gone-to-seed yellow farmhouse25, although Oliver wondered whether, originally, the old stone dwelling had not been the more attractive of the two.
He leaned forward to see plainer, made an unwise move, and attracted the attention of the man on the step. The boy flushed scarlet26 as their eyes met, for Anthony Crawford, without making a sound, went through a pantomime of an ecstasy27 of glee. He had evidently expected to arouse Oliver's curiosity by his suggestion the day before, and was overcome with ill-natured delight to catch him in the very act of satisfying it.
With a mutter of angry words, Oliver dropped back into the garden.
"I wasn't looking just because he told me to—I wasn't!" he kept repeating.
As he walked toward the house he looked back more than once at the high wall, wondering at the things it hid. Here was squalid poverty almost under the windows of the great, handsome house where Cousin Jasper lived with everything that heart could desire. It was the poverty, too, of a member of his own family. Here was jealous enmity also, a hatred28 that seemed to point ominously29 to trouble before them, to all the harm that could be accomplished30 by an angry, unscrupulous man. No wonder Cousin Jasper looked changed, and haunted. What hold did Anthony Crawford have upon his cousin; why should one have so little and the other so much; why did that high wall forbid all intercourse31 with that strange neighbor? It was plain to Oliver at last that their night ride through lanes and crossroads had been necessary because the wall cut off any direct path, and that the goal of their expedition in the dark had been Anthony Crawford's sagging32, one-hinged gate.
The morning sun was rising higher, the cheerful sound of a grass cutter was going up and down the garden, and smoke was mounting from the kitchen chimney. With some care, lest he should be asked the cause of his scratched hands and torn sleeve, Oliver slipped into the house and sought his own room.
He and Janet talked over all that he had seen, but they could make little of it and were, indeed, more mystified than ever. At intervals33 during the day, they kept coming back to the subject and were still talking of it that evening as they sat in the library with the long windows open upon the terrace and upon the flowering garden. They had come to no conclusion, however, when the study door opened and Cousin Jasper came toward them across the hall. He looked less troubled to-night, and was smiling as though he had been looking forward to this hour they were to spend together. Yet his face changed in a moment at the sound of rattling34 wheels on the drive, followed by the appearance of a troubled Hotchkiss at the door, with the reluctant question:
"Will you see Mr. Crawford, sir?"
The visitor had not waited, but came pushing in behind him.
"We do not need to stand on ceremony," he said, "when it is all in the same family. These are your two guests, eh? You need not introduce them, we have met before. I saw the boy very recently, in fact; he seems to be an enterprising fellow and was conducting some investigations of his own. Well, well, we won't talk of it now."
Oliver writhed35 inwardly under his sharp glance, but could muster36 no appropriate reply. He was thinking again that Anthony Crawford might have been handsome except for those restless gray eyes that were set too near together. Although his host was obviously anxious to lead him away to the study, the visitor planted himself in the middle of the library floor and stood his ground firmly.
"Have you thought over my offer, Jasper?" he said. "Are you ready to give me my share, or shall I take all?"
"I have given up what seemed your share," Jasper Peyton returned steadily37, "and rather than quarrel with you further I would gladly give you all. But I believe to shut one's eyes to justice is wrong, even in such a matter as this."
The other's calm broke suddenly under the force of ungovernable anger.
"You will be sorry," he cried. "You will lose more than those fat acres by the river and this fine house where you hoped to live so happily—until I came. You won't give in, will you? Your high principles—or your stubbornness—will still hold you back from giving me what is mine? Then I can tell you that I will drag your good name down where my own stands, I will publish that disgrace of mine that you hushed up to save the family pride. You will have people looking into your own past; they will be saying, 'If one of the family was crooked38, why not another?' There is always a pack of gossips and scandalmongers who are only too glad to snap at the heels of any prominent man. I will loose them all upon you, Jasper Peyton, every one."
He stopped, perhaps to draw breath, while Cousin Jasper stood before him, very silent and very white. The man's narrow eyes turned first to Oliver who was bursting with unexpressed rage and then to Janet who was regarding him with astonished and horrified39 disapproval40.
"You do not like my way of talking?" he said to her. "I assure you that all I have said is the truth."
"Then I should not think," she replied bluntly, "that you would have many friends if you often tell them the truth in just that way."
"I have no friends," he declared. "Friends exist only to hurt you; it is my belief that men prosper41 better alone. Have no illusions, trust nobody, feel that every man's hand is against you, and then you will know where you stand. That is my policy. Your soft-hearted cousin, here—his one mistake is that he trusts every one, he likes everybody. He even trusts me a little, on very small evidence, I can assure you. He would hate me if he could, but, because we are of the same blood, he cannot even bring himself to do that. Eh, Jasper, am I not right?"
"If you think you have said enough to these children," said Cousin Jasper, wincing42, but still quiet, "perhaps we had better discuss this business further in some other room."
"Very well," returned the other, quite good-tempered again. "I should be glad enough to have them hear the whole. But of course if there are some things that you do not wish known——"
He walked away toward the study, quite at his ease, humming a tune43 and casting sharp, appraising44 glances about him as though the thought of ownership were already in his mind. The door beyond the hall closed behind them.
"What a hateful man!" cried Janet, almost in tears. "Poor Cousin Jasper! And we can't do anything to help him."
Oliver, equally miserable45, stood at the window. The moon was coming up behind the trees, a great red moon just past the full, misshapen and lopsided, that seemed to be laughing at them. He stamped his foot in angry impotence.
"And he doesn't seem to me even to believe in himself; it is as though he were playing a part, just showing off." He pointed46 through the window at the disgraceful cart and dejected old horse standing47 before the wide white steps.
"I don't think he has to drive that wretched wagon48 at all. He just does it to make Cousin Jasper ridiculous."
The session in the study was prolonged so late that in the end Janet and Oliver abandoned their sleepy effort to wait until Anthony Crawford should depart, and went dispiritedly upstairs to bed.
"I have made up my mind to one thing," said Oliver firmly, as they reached the top of the stairs, "I am going to ask the Beeman what we ought to do. I feel as though I had known him always and I am sure he can help us."
"But ought we to tell him Cousin Jasper's secrets?" objected Janet doubtfully, "and, by the way, what is his name? You never told me."
"Why—I don't know it," exclaimed Oliver in a tone of complete astonishment49. "I never even noticed that I didn't. It doesn't matter, I will ask him to-morrow. And you understand, from the first minute he speaks, that you can trust the Beeman."
He went away to his room where, so it seemed to him, he had been asleep a long time before the rattle50 of wheels aroused him. He peered drowsily51 through the window and saw the old white horse with its lean, erect52 driver move slowly down toward the gate, long-shadowed and unreal in the moonlight, fantastic omens53 of some unknown mischief54 that was brewing55.
Next morning, as he and Janet left the car beside the orchard56 wall and climbed the grassy57 slope of the hill, Oliver's one misgiving58 was lest the Beeman should not be there. But yes, as they came up the steep path they heard voices and smelled the sharp, pleasant odor of wood smoke drifting down toward them. The wind was high to-day, singing and swooping59 about the hilltop, slamming the swinging door of the house, and scattering60 in all directions such bold bees as had ventured out to ride down the boisterous61 breeze to the honey-filled meadows below.
Janet was as warmly welcomed as Oliver, and they were both bidden to come in and sit down beside the table where Polly was sorting the little wooden boxes in which the bees build the honeycomb.
"We were just going to begin a story," said the Beeman. "Polly has been clamoring for it for half an hour."
"But I wanted to ask you something," broke in Oliver, too much excited for good manners. "Couldn't you wait?"
"I believe," said the Beeman slowly, giving him an odd glance that seemed to carry a message of complete understanding, "I believe that sometimes it is better, when you are troubled about something, to cool off and settle down, and come at an affair slowly. And I think this is one of the times."
Oliver nodded. He felt quite sure that the Beeman was right.
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1
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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thorny
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| adj.多刺的，棘手的 | |
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scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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shingled
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| adj.盖木瓦的；贴有墙面板的v.用木瓦盖(shingle的过去式和过去分词形式) | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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plowed
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| v.耕( plow的过去式和过去分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过 | |
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17
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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squinted
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| 斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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squeak
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| n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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sagging
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| 下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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34
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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muster
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| v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册 | |
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37
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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prosper
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| v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣 | |
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42
wincing
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的现在分词 ) | |
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43
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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44
appraising
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| v.估价( appraise的现在分词 )；估计；估量；评价 | |
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45
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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48
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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49
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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50
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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51
drowsily
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| adv.睡地，懒洋洋地，昏昏欲睡地 | |
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52
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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53
omens
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| n.前兆，预兆( omen的名词复数 ) | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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55
brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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56
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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57
grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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58
misgiving
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕 | |
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59
swooping
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
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60
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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61
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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