The hall was cold, so very cold. Yet just moments before she had felt her shawl too heavy. So cold! Persis forced open her eyes. Her candle was burning steadily, but it showed only emptiness. No, that was not quite so!
There was a glint, as if the limited radiance was caught for a second by something from which it was reflected. And that glitter moved, languidly, slowly, back and forth in the air about the height of her own breast.
Had those spots of light been at floor level, she could have told herself they marked the eyes of some animal. But these were in midair.
Voiceless, unable to move, Persis watched those small glints pass—until the dark at the other end of the hall swallowed them up. They had not been born of her imagination! And she would take oath that something had gone by her unseen, perhaps unseeing, in the hallway.
Shivering, but able now to move again, she slipped along, her shoulders scraping the wall. She would have to cross the open where that thing had passed, in order to reach her own door. For the present she could not bring herself to do that.
Her free hand caught on the latch of Uncle Augustin’s door. Still facing outward, for she could not yet turn her back on the hall, she lifted that latch, felt the door open behind her. Then she whipped inside, shutting the door with the last remnant of her strength.
Once that was closed, Persis stood, her breath ragged, hearing in her ears the pounding of her own heart. Logic and common sense began to war with her fear. The strange cold was gone, also the sound, and certainly she no longer saw those—eyes—eyes?
All houses had noises peculiar to themselves which were produced during the silences of the night. As for the glints—could those not be something like the lightning bugs she had so often seen in the dusk at her own home? Finding themselves trapped inside a house, they had risen to a higher level seeking freedom.
Yet all the time Persis fought to satisfy herself with such explanations, she knew that she was merely tamping down tightly such a fear as she had never known before. Now, resolutely, she turned away from the door. The portfolio had been on the bedside table. She held the candle a little higher. Yes, it was still there.
The bed was smooth of cover. There was nothing here save that which she had come for. After the fashion of the South, Uncle Augustin had been already en-coffined, and the sealed coffin waited in the parlor below. In the morning he would be laid to rest—far from all he had ever known, in a place where the island dead slept peacefully.
Persis, the portfolio in hand, crept back to the door. To open that again required every bit of confidence she could summon. Then, with it open, she looked up and down the hall, listened, until she could force herself to make the short journey to her own chamber.
There she latched the door quickly, threw the portfolio on the bed, and set about moving the heaviest chair in the room to blockade the entrance. Only when that was done, still breathing fast, she put the portfolio for safekeeping beneath her pillow, and blew out the candle, creeping into the wide bed, and letting the ghostly veil of the insect netting fall about her. This, gauze though it was, she welcomed now as a kind of barrier against the rest of the Leverett house.
Sheer fatigue overcame her at last and she slept uneasily, with dreams she could not remember after. A pounding awoke her abruptly. It was light and the chair she had used for a barrier was shaking as the door was shoved impatiently against its back.
“Miss Persis-!”
Molly! And what would she think about that chair? The sunlight from the window, Molly’s voice, banished the last of the night’s fears—or at least pushed them too deep into her mind to matter now.
Persis struggled through the netting, tugged the chair away in haste. But Molly’s expression of surprise made her aware explanations were necessary.
“Miss Persis—whatever—?”
“I had a nightmare, Molly. When I woke up—in the middle of the night—I thought I heard something moving out in the hall.”
“Heard something? Well, I never!” Molly set down with a decided thump the small tray she was carrying. “Miss Persis, what has gotten into you? You were never one for such fancies. I guess,” she nodded, “it is this house, what with all them stories about it. I’ll be thankful when we can pack up and go back to a proper town where there ain’t this whispering ’bout witches and haunts and such. Stay here long enough and we’ll all be believin’ in them. Now you drink up this chocolate. This is going to be a hard day and you’ll need somethin’ sustainin’ to weather it.”
Thus, delicately, she hinted of the funeral.
“Seein” as how there’s no decent black for mourning, Miss Persis,” she continued briskly as Persis sat down and obediently drank the lukewarm contents of the cup Molly had brought her, “I made out with some changes for your white cambric. There’s a black sash for that, and black gloves. It will just have to do.”
“Thank you, Molly.” The need for proper mourning had escaped Persis until this moment, but it would never have escaped Molly who prided herself on having things properly done.
“Since you are family and a female,” the maid continued with her usual competence, “you won’t be expected to show yourself until the service. That Sukie will bring you breakfast, and the Captain said, if you favored it, they would hold the service at nine. Seems like they have no proper preacher here,” Molly sniffed. “The Captain, he’ll read the service himself. He does it, they say for all them that are drowned and come ashore. Miss Persis—”
She stopped her bustling about and faced her mistress squarely. “I—” she began and then paused as if not quite sure of her words, then she hurried on, “Shubal, that poor old man’s clean tuckered out. Seems like now he’s decided he’s nothing to live for, him always havin’ been so close to Mr. Augustin. But, Miss Persis, what are we all goin’ to do?”
Persis set the chocolate cup carefully on its saucer. There was only one thing they could do, they must go ahead with Uncle Augustin’s plan to claim the estate in the Bahamas. Only she did not in the least have any idea of how to go about that.
Perhaps some lawyer in Key West would. She drew a deep breath. Molly, Shubal—neither one had lived since youth outside Uncle Augustin’s service. It was only right they should look to her now for answers. The trouble was, she did not have much of one—yet.
“We must go on to Key West as soon as possible,” she made herself say firmly. “I have Uncle Augustin’s papers. He explained to me—” she told Molly as simply as possible the tangle of family history which had brought them south.
“Amos Rooke!” an exclamation from Molly interrupted her in midsentence.
“What do you know about him?” Persis asked avidly.
The maid pursed her lips as she could do on occasion. “Well, it’s another old story, Miss Persis. You know that the master had three privateers out in 1812. He did right well with them, too. He always had a hate for the British —seeing his grandfather died in a British prison of fever and his father was killed in the war. So whenever he could, he took his revenge on them.
“They did say as how one of the ships which was took by the privateer Eagle came from the Bahamas and belonged to some kinsfolk of his. And that Amos Rooke’s son was killed when it was taken. It was just a story, mind you, no proof of it that I knew. Nor did the master ever have anything to do with it personally. He never even knew about it ’til months later. Men are killed when they go out fightin’, and it ain’t no fault but their own for being there.”
Persis was startled. If Uncle Augustin was even so remotely concerned in the death of Amos’ son—could that explain his dying cry that he was no murderer? And it might be the reason why he would not accept the first offer from Amos’ widow—though it was all so many years ago. It had nothing to do with her now, except that she was a Rooke also, and would profit by the fact that those deaths had occurred. But it made her uneasy and unhappy.
Molly seemed to sense those feelings for she said quickly:
“Now don’t you fret none ’bout claimin’ this money, Miss Persis. The old lady wouldn’t have left it in her will did she feel hard against the master. You do just what your uncle wanted. But ’bout goin’ to Key West-“