The Return of Peter Grimm - David Belasco (best books to read for knowledge .TXT) 📗

words came from between them.

"There was Anne Marie--and me--and the Other One," said he.

"What Other One?" asked McPherson, speaking in a low, emotionless voice so as not to break in on the thought current.

"The man that came there," droned the boy.

"What man?"

"The man that made Anne Marie cry."

"What man made Anne Marie cry?"

"I--I can't remember," returned the boy, a hesitant note of trouble creeping into his dead voice.

"Yes, you can," prompted Peter Grimm. "You _can_ remember, Willem. You're afraid!"

"So you _do_ remember the time when you were with Anne Marie?" whispered Kathrien as the lad hesitated. "You always told me you didn't. Doctor, I have the strangest feeling. A feeling that all this somehow concerns _me_, and that I must sift it to the bottom. Think, Willem. Who was it that came and went at the house where you lived with Anne Marie?"

"That is what _I_ asked you, Willem," said Peter Grimm.

"That is what _he_ asked me," replied Willem mechanically.

"Who?" demanded McPherson. "Who asked you that question, Willem?"

"Mynheer Grimm."

"When?"

"Just now."

"Just now!" cried Kathrien and Mrs. Batholommey in a breath.

"S-sh!" admonished the doctor. "So you both asked the same question, eh? The man that came to see----?"

"It can't be possible," expostulated Mrs. Batholommey, "that the boy has any idea what he is talking about."

A glare from McPherson silenced her. Then the doctor asked:

"What did you tell Mr. Grimm, Willem?"

The boy hesitated.

"Better make haste," adjured the Dead Man, "Frederik is coming back."

Willem, with a shudder, glanced fearfully toward the outer door.

"Why does he do that?" wondered Kathrien. "He looked that way at the door when he spoke of 'the Other One.' Why should he?"

"He's afraid," answered Peter Grimm.

"I'm afraid," echoed Willem.

Kathrien gathered him more closely in her warm young arms and whispered soothingly to him. The fear died out of his eyes.

"You're not afraid, any more?" she reassured him.

"N-no," he faltered, "but--oh, _please_ don't let Mynheer Frederik come back, Miss Kathrien! _Please_, don't! Because--because then I'll be afraid again. I know I will."

McPherson whistled low and long. A light was beginning to break upon his shrewd Scotch brain.

"Willem!" pleaded the Dead Man. "_Willem!_"

"Yes, sir," answered the boy.

"You must say I am very unhappy."

"He is very unhappy," repeated Willem, parrot-like.

"Why is he unhappy?" demanded McPherson. "Ask him?"

"Why are you unhappy, Mynheer Grimm?" droned the boy.

"On account of Kathrien's future," replied Peter Grimm.

"What?" questioned Willem, who did not quite understand the meaning of the words "account" and "future."

"To-morrow----" began the Dead Man.

"To-morrow----" droned Willem.

"Kathrien's----" continued Peter Grimm.

"Your----" said the boy, glancing at Kathrien.

"Kathrien's?" asked the doctor. "Is he speaking about Kathrien?"

"What is it, Willem?" begged the girl. "What about me, to-morrow?"

"Kathrien must not marry Frederik," said Peter Grimm, as if teaching a simple lesson to a very stupid pupil.

"Kathrien----" began the boy, then flinching, and once more glancing fearfully over his shoulder toward the door, he whimpered:

"Oh, I must not say that!"

"Say _what_, Willem?" urged McPherson.

"What--what he wanted me to say!"

"Kathrien must not marry Frederik Grimm," repeated the Dead Man. "Say it, Willem?"

"Speak up, Willem," exhorted McPherson. "Don't be scared. No one will hurt you."

"Oh, yes," denied Willem, in terror, "_he_ will. I don't _want_ to say his name! Because--because----"

"Why won't you tell his name?" insisted McPherson.

"Hurry, Willem! Hurry!" begged the Dead Man.

"Oh," wailed Willem, with another terrified glance at the door, "I'm afraid! I'm _afraid_! He'll make Anne Marie cry again. And me! And _me_!"

"Why are you afraid of him?" asked Kathrien. "Was Frederik the man that came to see Anne Marie----?"

"Kathrien!" primly reproved Mrs. Batholommey.

Kathrien caught hold of the boy's hand as he rose, shaking, to his feet. She knelt before him.

"Willem!" she implored. "Was Frederik the man who came to see Anne Marie? _Tell_ me!"

"Surely," expostulated Mrs. Batholommey in pious horror, "surely, Kathrien, you don't believe----?"

"I have thought of a great many things this evening," replied Kathrien, vibrant with excitement, yet instinctively lowering her voice so as not to break in on Willem's semi-trance. "Little things that I've never noticed before. I'm putting them together. Just as Willem put that picture together. And I must know who the Other One was."

"Hurry, Willem!" exhorted the Dead Man. "Hurry! Frederik is listening at the door."

The announcement brought Willem around with a gasp toward the door. He stared at its panels, quaking, aghast.

"I won't say any more!" he whimpered, pointing at the door. "_He's_ there!"

"Who was the man, Willem?" entreated McPherson. "Come, lad! Out with it!"

"Quick, Willem!" supplemented Peter Grimm.

Kathrien, acting on an unexplained impulse as Willem stared terror-stricken at the door, hastened toward the vestibule.

"No! No!" shrieked the boy in anguished falsetto as he divined what she was about to do. "Please, _please_ don't! _Don't!_ _Don't_ let him in. I'm afraid of him. He made Anne Marie cry."

But Kathrien's hand was already at the latch. She threw the outer door wide open. Frederik Grimm stood on the threshold, his head still a little forward. His ear had evidently been pressed close to the panel.

"You're sure Frederik's the man?" almost shouted McPherson.

"I won't tell! I won't tell! _I won't tell!_" screamed the boy, taking one look at Frederik, then tearing loose from McPherson's restraining hand and dashing up the stairs.

"I must go to bed now," sobbed Willem from the gallery above. "_He_ told me to."

He ran into his own room and shut the door quickly behind him.

"You're a good boy, Willem!" Peter Grimm called approvingly after him.

The cloud of grief was gone from the Dead Man's face, leaving it wondrously bright and young. With no trace of anxiety, he turned to witness the consummation of his labours.

Frederik Grimm was standing, nerveless, dazed, where Kathrien's impulsive opening of the door had disclosed him. Dully, he stared from one to another of the three who confronted him. It was Kathrien who first spoke. Pointing toward the photograph that still lay on the desk, she said:

"Frederik, you have heard from Anne Marie."

His lips parted in denial. Then he saw the picture, started slightly, and lapsed into a sullen silence.

"You have had a letter from her," pursued Kathrien. "You burned it. And you tore that picture so that we would not recognise it. Why did you tell Marta that you had had no message--no news? You told her so, _since_ that letter and photograph came. You went to Anne Marie's home, too. Why did you tell me you had never seen her since she left here? Why did you lie to me? _Why do you hate her child?_"

Frederik made one dogged effort to regain what he had so bewilderingly lost.

"Are--are you going to believe what that brat says?" he muttered.

"No," retorted Kathrien. "But I'm going to find out for myself. I am going to find out where Anne Marie is before I marry you. And I am going to learn the truth from her. Willem may be right or wrong in what he thinks he remembers. But _I_ am going to find out, past all doubt, what Anne Marie was to you. And, if what I think is true----"

"It is true," interposed McPherson. "It is true, Kathrien. I believe we got that message direct."

"Andrew is right, Katje," prompted the Dead Man. "Believe him."

"Yes!" cried Kathrien, as if in reply. "It is true. I believe Oom Peter was in this room to-night!"

"What?" blurted Frederik. "_You_ saw him, too?"

His unguarded query was lost in Mrs. Batholommey's gasp of:

"Oh, Kathrien, that's quite impossible. It was only a coincidence that----"

"I don't care what any one else may think," rushed on Kathrien, swept along upon the wave of a strange exultation that bore her far out of her wonted timid self. "People have the right to think for themselves. I believe Oom Peter has been here, to-night!"

"I _am_ here, Katje," breathed the Dead Man.

"I believe he is here, _now_!" declared Kathrien, her eyes aglow, and her face flushed. "He is here. Oh, Oom Peter!" she cried, her arms stretched wide in appeal, her face alight, her voice rising like that of a prophetess of old. "Oom Peter, if you can hear me now, give me back my promise! Give it back to me--_or I'll take it back_!"

"I did give it back to you, dear," answered Peter Grimm happily. "But, oh, what a time I've had putting it across!"


CHAPTER XVII


MR. BATHOLOMMEY TESTIFIES

To Whom It May Concern:

I am Henry Batholommey, rector of the Protestant Episcopal church at Grimm Manor, New York State. My neighbour, Andrew McPherson, M.D., has asked me to substantiate, so far as lies in my power, certain statements in a paper he is preparing for the Society of Psychical Research, concerning certain recent happenings in the house of my former parishioner, the late Peter Grimm of this place.

I refuse.

I understand, also, that in telling the story broadcast, as he has done, he has made free use of my name and that of my wife, as witnesses to these happenings. Wherefore, I am daily in receipt of fully a dozen letters of enquiry. Reporters, so-called scientists, mystics with long hair and unclean nails, and cranks and practical jokers of every sort and description have taken to calling at the rectory, at inconvenient hours, to cross-question me.

For example: one disreputable man, reeking of cheap liquor, came to me yesterday with the information that the story of Peter Grimm's return had converted him and that (with some slight temporary financial assistance from me) he was prepared to renounce liquor and mend his ways. He looked like a penitent. He talked like a penitent. But he most assuredly did not _smell_ like a penitent. And I sent him about his business.

This was but one of many irritating interruptions upon my parish work to which Dr. McPherson's use of my name has subjected me.

In view of all this, I deem it advisable to save myself from further annoyance and to stop the rumour that a minister of the Gospel has turned Spiritualist, by issuing the following brief statement:

Dr. McPherson is desirous that my wife and myself endorse his belief that the occurrences at the home of the late Peter Grimm were of a supernatural nature.

We shall do no such thing.

For the single reason that neither Mrs. Batholommey nor myself, after mature reflection and dispassionate discussion, can find one atom of the Supernatural in any of the events that transpired there. Perhaps I can best make clear my point of view by rehearsing the case and my own very small connection therewith.

The fact that Dr. McPherson is of a different denomination from myself in no way biases my feelings in this case. I am an Episcopalian. And I am of liberal views toward those who are not;--with the possible exception of Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and members of a few other denominations outside the direct Apostolic Succession. Yet I confess I