<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
<h3>IN MRS. DEO'S ROOM</h3>
<p>A prey to fresh agitation, he stepped back to Anitra's side. Surely she
must understand that it was Georgian and not herself about whom he was
most anxious to hear. But she did not seem to. The smile with which she
greeted him suggested nothing of the past. It spoke only of the future.</p>
<p>"I will learn to be like sister," she impulsively cried out, rising and
beaming brightly upon him. "I will forget the old gipsy ways and Mother
Duda's ways, and try to be nice and pretty like my sister. And you shall
learn me to read and write. I've known deaf people who learned. Then I
shall know what you think; now I only know how you feel."</p>
<p>He shook his head, a little sadly, perhaps. There were people who could
teach her these arts, but not he. He had neither the ability, the
courage, nor the patience.</p>
<p>"Then some one shall learn me," she loudly insisted, her cheek flushing
and her eye showing an angry spark. "I will not be ignorant always; I
will not, I will not." And turning, she fled from his side, and he was
left to think over her story and ask himself for the hundredth time what
it all meant, what his own sensations meant, and what would be the
outcome of conditions so complicated.</p>
<p>The possibly speedy appearance on the scene of Georgian's so-called
brother did not detract from his difficulty. He felt helpless without
the support of Mr. Harper's presence, and spent a very troubled forenoon
listening to the mingled condolences and advice of people who had no
interest in his concerns save such as sprang from curiosity and a morbid
craving for excitement.</p>
<p>At two o'clock occurred the event of which he had been forewarned. A
carriage drove up to the hotel and from it stepped two travelers; one
of them a stranger, the other the man with the twisted jaw. Mr. Ransom
advanced to meet the latter. He was anxious to listen to his first
inquiries and, if possible, be the person to answer them.</p>
<p>He was successful in this. Mr. Hazen no sooner saw him than he accosted
him without ceremony.</p>
<p>"What is this I hear and read about Georgian and her so-called twin?" he
cried. "Nothing that I can believe, I want you to know. Georgian may have
drowned herself. That is credible enough. But that the girl we read about
in the papers and whom she evidently induced to come to this place with
her should be the dead girl we called Anitra—why, that is all bosh—a
tale to deceive the public, and possibly you, but not one to deceive me.
The coincidence is much too improbable."</p>
<p>"'There are stranger things in heaven and earth'"—quoted Ransom; but
Hazen was already in conversation with the group of hotel idlers who had
crowded up at sound of his loud voice.</p>
<p>After a careful look which had taken in all of their faces, he had
approached one young fellow, covering the lower part of his face as he
did so.</p>
<p>"Halloo! Yates," he called out. "Don't you remember the day we tied two
chickens together, leg to leg, and sent them tumbling down the hill back
of old Wylie's barn?"</p>
<p>"Alf Hazen!" shouted the fellow, thus accosted. "Why, I thought you—"</p>
<p>"Dead, eh? Of course you did. So did everybody else. But I've come to
life, you see. With sad marks of battle on me," he continued, dropping
his hand. "You all recognize me?"</p>
<p>"Yes, yes," rose in one acclaim from a dozen or more throats after a
moment of awkward uncertainty.</p>
<p>"I know the eyes," vigorously asserted one.</p>
<p>"And the voice," chimed in another. After which rose a confused babel of
ejaculations and exclamatory questions, among which one could detect:</p>
<p>"How did it happen, Alf?" "What took off your jaw?" and other equally
felicitous expressions.</p>
<p>"I'll tell you all about that later," he replied, after silence had in a
measure been restored. "What I want to say now is this. Is it believable
that simultaneously with my own return from the grave another member of
my family should reappear before you from an older and much more certain
burying? I tell you no. The riddle is one which calls for quite another
solution and I have come to assist you in finding it."</p>
<p>Here he cast a sinister glance at Ransom.</p>
<p>The latter met the implied accusation with singular calmness.</p>
<p>"Any assistance will be welcome," said he, "which will enable us to solve
this very serious problem." Then, as Hazen's lip curled, he added with
dignified candor, "I scorn to retort by throwing any doubt on your
assertion of relationship to my lost wife, or the possibility of these
good people being misled by your confident bearing and a possible
likeness about the eyes to the boy they knew. But one question I will
hazard, and that before we have gone a step further. Why does it seem so
credible to you that Georgian, a much loved and loving woman, should have
leaped to a watery death within a week of her marriage? You have just
stated that you found no difficulty in that. Does not that statement call
for some explanation? All your old friends here must see that this is my
due as well as hers."</p>
<p>For an instant the man hesitated, but in that instant his hand slipped
from his mouth over which he had again laid it, and his whole face, with
its changed lines and the threatening, almost cruel expression which
these gave it, appeared in all its combined eagerness and force. A murmur
escaped the watchful group about him, but this affected him little. His
eyes, which he had fixed on Ransom, sharpened a trifle, perhaps, and his
tone grew a thought more sarcastic as he finally retorted:</p>
<p>"I will explain myself to you but not to this crowd. And not to you till
I am sure of the facts which as yet have reached me only through the
newspapers. Let me hear a full account of what has transpired here since
you all came to town. I have an enormous interest in the matter;—a
family interest, as you are well aware for all your badly hidden
insinuations."</p>
<p>"Follow me," was the quiet reply. "There is a room on this very floor
where we can talk undisturbed."</p>
<p>Mr. Hazen cast a quick glance behind him at the man who had driven up
with him and whom nobody had noticed till now. Then without a word he
separated himself from the chattering group encircling him and stepped
after Mr. Ransom into the small room where the latter had held his first
memorable conversation with the lawyer.</p>
<p>"Now," said he as the door swung to behind them, "plain language and not
too much of it. I have no time to waste, but the truth about Georgian I
must know."</p>
<p>Ransom settled himself. He felt bound to comply with the other's request,
but he wished to make sure of not saying too much, or too little. Hazen's
attack had startled him. It revealed one of two things. Either this man
of mystery had assumed the offensive to hide his own connection with this
tragedy, or his antagonism was an honest one, springing from an utter
disbelief in the circumstances reported to him by the press and such
gossips as he had encountered on his way to Sitford.</p>
<p>With the first possibility he felt himself unable to cope without the aid
of Mr. Harper; the second might be met with candor. Should he then be
candid with this doubter, relate to him the facts as they had unrolled
themselves before his own eyes;—secret facts—convincing ones—facts
which must prove to him that whether Georgian did or did not lie at the
bottom of the mill-stream, the woman now in the house was his sister
Anitra, lost to him and the rest of the family for many years, but now
found again and restored to her position as a Hazen and Georgian's twin.
The discovery might not prove welcome. It would have a tendency to throw
Mr. Hazen's own claim into the disrepute he would cast on hers. But this
consideration could have no weight with Mr. Ransom. He decided upon
candor at all costs. It suited his nature best, and it also suited the
strange and doubtful situation. Mr. Harper might have concluded
differently, but Mr. Harper was not there to give advice; and the matter
would not wait. Little as he understood this Hazen, he recognized that he
was not a man to trifle with. Something would have to be said or done.</p>
<p>Meeting the latter's eye frankly, he remarked:</p>
<p>"I have no wish to keep anything back from you. I am as much struck
as you are by the mystery of this whole occurrence. I was as hard to
convince. This is my story. It involves all that is known here with the
exception of such facts as have been kept from us by the three parties
directly concerned—of which three I consider you one."</p>
<p>As the last four words fell from his lips he looked for some change,
slight and hardly perceptible perhaps, in the other's expression. But he
was doomed to disappointment. The steady regard held, nothing moved about
the man, not even the hand into which the poor disfigured chin had
fallen. Ransom suppressed a sigh. His task was likely to prove a blind
one. He had a sense of stumbling in the dark, but the gaze he had hoped
to see falter compelled him to proceed, and he told his story without
subterfuge or suppression.</p>
<p>One thing, and only one thing, caused a movement in the set figure before
him. When he mentioned the will which Georgian had made a few hours prior
to her disappearance, Hazen's hand slipped aside from the wound it had
sought to cover, and Ransom caught sight of the sudden throb which
deepened its hue. It was the one infallible sign that the man was not
wholly without feeling, and it had sprung to life at an intimation
involving <i>money</i>.</p>
<p>When his tale was quite finished, he rose. So did Hazen.</p>
<p>"Let us see this girl," suggested the latter.</p>
<p>It was the first word he had spoken since Ransom began his story.</p>
<p>"She is up-stairs. I will go see—"</p>
<p>"No, <i>we</i> will go see. I particularly desire to take her unawares."</p>
<p>Ransom offered no objection. Perhaps he felt interested in the experiment
himself. Together they left the room, together they went up-stairs. A
turmoil of questions followed them from the throng of men and boys
gathered in the halls, but they returned no answer and curiosity remained
unsatisfied.</p>
<p>Once in the hall above, Ransom stopped a moment to deliberate. He could
not enter Anitra's room unannounced, and he could not make her hear by
knocking. He must find the landlady.</p>
<p>He knew Mrs. Deo's room. He had had more than one occasion to visit it
during the last two days. With a word of explanation to Hazen, he passed
down the hall and tapped on the last door at the extreme left. No one
answered, but the door standing ajar, he pushed it quietly open, being
anxious to make sure that Mrs. Deo was not there.</p>
<p>The next moment he was beckoning to Hazen.</p>
<p>"Look!" said he, holding the door open with one hand and pointing with
the other to a young girl sitting on a low stool by the window, mending,
or trying to mend, a rent in her skirt.</p>
<p>"Why, that's Georgian!" exclaimed Hazen, and hastily entering he
approached the anxious figure laboriously pushing her needle in and out
of the torn goods, and pricking herself more than once in the attempt.</p>
<p>"Georgian!" he cried again and yet more emphatically, as he stepped up in
front of her.</p>
<p>The young girl failed to notice. Awkwardly drawing her thread out to its
extreme length, she prepared to insert her needle again, when her eye
caught sight of his figure bending over her, and she looked up quietly
and with an air of displeasure, which pleased Ransom,—he could hardly
tell why. This was before her eyes reached his face; when they had, it
was touching to see how she tried to hide the shock caused by its
deformity, as she said with a slight gesture of dismissal:</p>
<p>"I'm quite deaf. I cannot hear what you say. If it is the landlady you
want, she has gone down-stairs for a minute; perhaps, to the kitchen."</p>
<p>He did not retreat, if anything he approached nearer, and Ransom was
surprised to observe the force and persuasive power of his expression
as he repeated:</p>
<p>"No nonsense, Georgian," opening and shutting his hands as he spoke, in
curious gesticulations which her eye mechanically followed but which
seemed to convey no meaning to her, though he evidently expected them to
and looked surprised (Ransom almost thought baffled) when she shook her
head and in a sweet, impassive way reiterated:</p>
<p>"I cannot hear and I do not understand the deaf and dumb alphabet. I'm
sorry, but you'll have to go to some one else. I'm very unfortunate. I
have to mend this dress and I don't know how."</p>
<p>Hazen, who could hardly tear his eyes from her face, fell slowly back as
she painfully and conscientiously returned to her task. "Good God!" he
murmured, as his eye sought Ransom's. "What a likeness!" Then he looked
again at the girl, at the wave of her raven black hair breaking into
little curls just above her ear; at the smooth forehead rendered so
distinguished by the fine penciling of her arching brows; at the delicate
nose with nostrils all alive to the beating of an over-anxious heart; at
the mouth, touching in its melancholy so far beyond her years; and lastly
at the strong young figure huddled on the little stool; and bending
forward again, he uttered two or three quick sentences which Ransom could
not catch.</p>
<p>His persistence, or the near approach of his face to hers, angered her.
Rising quickly to her feet, she vehemently cried out:</p>
<p>"Go away from here. It is not right to keep on talking to a deaf girl
after she has told you she cannot hear you." Then catching sight of
Ransom, who had advanced a step in his sympathy for her, she gave a
little sigh of relief and added querulously:</p>
<p>"Make this man go away. This is the landlady's room. I don't like to have
strangers talk to me. Besides—" here her voice fell, but not so low as
to be inaudible to the subject of her remark, "he's not pretty. I've seen
enough of men and women who are—"</p>
<p>At this point Ransom drew Hazen out into the hall.</p>
<p>"What do you think now?" he demanded.</p>
<p>Hazen did not reply. The room they had just left seemed to possess a
strange fascination for him. He continued to look back at it as he
preceded Ransom down the hall. Ransom did not press his questions, but
when they were on the point of separating at the head of the stairs, he
held Hazen back with the words:</p>
<p>"Let us come to some understanding. Neither of us can desire to waste
strength in wrong conclusions. Can that woman be other than your own
sister?"</p>
<p>"No." The denial was absolute. "She is my sister."</p>
<p>"Anitra?" emphasized Ransom.</p>
<p>The smile which he received in reply was strangely mirthless.</p>
<p>"I never rush to conclusions," was Hazen's remark after a moment of
possibly mutual heart-beat and unsettling suspense. "Ask me that same
question to-morrow. Perhaps by then I shall be able to answer you."</p>
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