i never saw the “young gentlemen” again. i suppose most men are cowards about calamities of that sort, the irremediable kind that have to be faced anew every morning. it takes a woman to shoulder such a lasting tragedy, and hug it to her . . . as i had seen catherine doing; as i saw mrs. durant yearning to do . . .

it was about that very matter that i interviewed the old housekeeper the day after the funeral. among the papers which the police found on poor cranch’s desk was a letter addressed to me. like his message to mrs. durant it was of the briefest. “i have appointed no one to care for my sons; i expected to outlive them. their mother would have wished catherine to stay with them. will you try to settle all this mercifully? there is plenty of money, but my brain won’t work. good-bye.”

it was a matter, first of all, for the law; but before we entered on that phase i wanted to have a talk with old catherine. she came to me, very decent in her new black; i hadn’t the heart to go to that dreadful house again, and i think perhaps it was easier for her to speak out under another roof. at any rate, i soon saw that, after all the years of silence, speech was a relief; as it might have been to him too, poor fellow, if only he had dared! but he couldn’t; there was that pride of his, his “spanish pride” as she called it.

“not but what he would have hated me to say so, sir; for the spanish blood in him, and all that went with it, was what he most abominated . . . but there it was, closer to him than his marrow . . . oh, what that old woman done to us! he told me why, once, long ago — it was about the time when he began to understand that our little boys were never going to grow up like other young gentlemen. ‘it’s her doing, the devil,’ he said to me; and then he told me how she’d been a great spanish heiress, a rich merchant’s daughter, and had been promised, in that foreign way they have, to a young nobleman who’d never set eyes on her; and when the bridegroom came to the city where she lived, and saw her sitting in her father’s box across the theatre, he turned about and mounted his horse and rode off the same night; and never a word came from him — the shame of it! it nigh killed her, i believe, and she swore then and there she’d marry a foreigner and leave spain; and that was how she took up with young mr. cranch that was in her father’s bank; and the old gentleman put a big sum into the cranch shipping business, and packed off the young couple to harpledon . . . but the poor misbuilt thing, it seems, couldn’t ever rightly get over the hurt to her pride, nor get used to the cold climate, and the snow and the strange faces; she would go about pining for the orange-flowers and the sunshine; and though she brought her husband a son, i do believe she hated him, and was glad to die and get out of harpledon . . . that was my mr. cranch’s story . . .

“well, sir, he despised his great-grandfather more than he hated the spanish woman. ‘marry that twisted stick for her money, and put her poisoned blood in us i’ he used to put it that way, sir, in his bad moments. and when he was twenty-one, and travelling abroad, he met the young english lady i was maid to, the loveliest soundest young creature you ever set eyes on. they loved and married, and the next year — oh, the pity — the next year she brought him our young gentlemen . . . twins, they were . . . when she died, a few weeks after, he was desperate . . . more desperate than i’ve ever seen him till the other day. but as the years passed, and he began to understand about our little boys — well, then he was thankful she was gone. and that thankfulness was the bitterest part of his grief.

“it was when they was about nine or ten that he first saw it; though i’d been certain long before that. we were living in italy then. and one day — oh, what a day, sir! — he got a letter, mr. cranch did, from a circus-man who’d heard somehow of our poor little children . . . oh, sir! . . . then it was that he decided to leave europe, and come back to harpledon to live. it was a lonely lost place at that time; and there was all the big wing for our little gentlemen. we were happy in the old house, in our way; but it was a solitary life for so young a man as mr. cranch was then, and when the summer folk began to settle here i was glad of it, and i said to him: ‘you go out, sir, now, and make friends, and invite your friends here. i’ll see to it that our secret is kept.’ and so i did, sir, so i did . . . and he always trusted me. he needed life and company himself; but he would never separate himself from the little boys. he was so proud — and yet so soft-hearted! and where could he have put the little things? they never grew past their toys — there’s the worst of it. heaps and heaps of them he brought home to them, year after year. pets he tried too . . . but animals were afraid of them — just as i expect you were, sir, when you saw them,” she added suddenly, “but with no reason; there were never gentler beings. little waldo especially — it’s as if they were trying to make up for being a burden . . . oh, for pity’s sake, let them stay on in their father’s house, and me with them, won’t you, sir?”

as she wished it, so it was. the legal side of the matter did not take long to settle, for the cranches were almost extinct; there were only some distant cousins, long since gone from harpledon. old catherine was suffered to remain on with her charges in the cranch house, and one of the guardians appointed by the courts was mrs. durant.

would you have believed it? she wanted it — the horror, the responsibility and all. after that she lived all the year round at harpledon; i believe she saw cranch’s sons every day. i never went back there; but she used sometimes to come up and see me in boston. the first time she appeared — it must have been about a year after the events i have related — i scarcely knew her when she walked into my library. she was an old bent woman; her white hair now seemed an attribute of age, not a form of coquetry. after that, each time i saw her she seemed older and more bowed. but she told me once she was not unhappy — “not as unhappy as i used to be,” she added, qualifying the phrase.

on the same occasion — it was only a few months ago — she also told me that one of the twins was ill. she did not think he would last long, she said; and old catherine did not think so either. “it’s little waldo; he was the one who felt his father’s death the most; the dark one; i really think he understands. and when he goes, donald won’t last long either.” her eyes filled with tears. “presently i shall be alone again,” she added.

i asked her then how old they were; and she thought for a moment, murmuring the years over slowly under her breath. “only forty-one,” she said at length — as if she had said “only four.”

women are strange. i am their other guardian; and i have never yet had the courage to go down to harpledon and see them.