LOST IN THE MAZE
Durgan had still one strong emotion regarding his wife; he was able to
feel overwhelming shame on her account, and he dreaded any publicity
concerning her behavior. She had always lived so as to command the
consent of good society to her doings. He had perfectly trusted her
social instinct to do this as long as it lay in her power to tell her
own story; but he knew, with a sense of bitter degradation, that if
someone else had need to tell that story, it would sound very different.
His wife was the daughter of an uneducated hotel-keeper, and had married
him, as he afterward discovered, because he had the entrance into
certain drawing-rooms and clubs, which, if skilfully used, might have
proved the stepping-stone to almost any social eminence. At the time of
her marriage she had professed passionate love for him and sympathy for
the Southern cause; and her fortune, not small, was naturally to be used
in the difficult task of making part of his paternal acres productive
by the paid labor of the negroes reared and trained by his father, and
justly dear to the son. Disconsolate at the loss of friends and
fortune--for all near to him had died in the war, of wounds or
sorrow--Durgan repaid the love and sympathy of one who seemed a
warm-hearted and impulsive woman with tender gratitude.
A little later, when the wife found out that Durgan would not push
himself into the fashionable _milieu_ which was open to him in Europe
and America, he began to discover, tho slowly, that she would not bestow
affection or time upon any less fashionable pursuit. She needed her
whole fortune for the social adventures that she must make alone; and as
he would not open the door of Southern pride for her, she fell to
knocking at the door of Northern pride for herself. No doubt Providence
has a good reason for making men before marriage blind to female
character, but it was many years before Durgan bowed to the fate to
which defect, not fault, had brought him. Too proud to accept any bounty
from such a wife, he had sullenly shielded her from remark till she
reached a position of middle-class fashion in which she could stand
alone. Having attempted, in the meantime, to increase by speculation the
small patrimony left him, and losing much, he had retired from the
scene of her struggles some six years before the present time, proudly
thankful that any public reproach was directed only at himself. Since
then she had scaled social heights seemingly beyond her--he had often
wondered how.
That his wife was tricky and false, that the means she had used to
cajole or overawe the society she was determined to conquer bore no
necessary relation to the truth, he knew; but knowing her also to be
clever and cold-hearted, he had not feared that she would so transgress
any social law as to make her small or large meannesses known.
But the most surprising thing in his wife's career since he left her was
that she had not dropped the medium, Beardsley, as soon as his health
and popularity were lost. She had been wont to drop all her instruments
as soon as their use was over, and most of them had more attractions
than he. The man had been poor, plebeian, and sickly; and Durgan, who
had never suspected love as the cause of the odd relationship, had now
some cause to suppose it rooted in the unspeakable shame of the worst of
crimes. In what possible way this had come about he could not even begin
to imagine, but he continued to consider his maturing suspicion in
growing consternation.
If Miss Claxton had not told him the truth, she was a more finished
actress than the world had yet seen. If what she said of his wife were
true, the mulatto's words were corroborated--his wife was nearly
connected with this awful crime.
In Durgan's mind the telegraphic address--evidently suggestive to Miss
Claxton--had at last become significant. "Beard" suggested Beardsley;
"84" was the date of the Claxton murder; "B" might possibly stand for
Beardsley, and "D" for his wife. Then the help promised evidently
involved his wife's purse. Beardsley had nothing.
If this Beardsley was guilty, he must be a most extraordinary man. It
was clear that if it was he whom Hermione Claxton was shielding, she was
as much determined to keep his secret to-day as at first. She could not
speak of him save in tones of sorrow and tenderness. For him, too, the
wife whom Durgan knew to be cold and ambitious had apparently ventured
all. The extraordinary nature of a man who could on short acquaintance
so deeply involve two such different women, gave Durgan so much room for
astonished thought that some other things Miss Claxton had said for the
time escaped his memory.
His strongest impulse after the last interview was to take Miss Claxton
at her word and make no further move in the matter--at least, not now
and on her account. Ultimately he must find out if his wife was in any
plot to conceal a criminal, and if so, put a stop to her connivance. At
present he had certainly no desire to make such action on his wife's
part public, or break Bertha's heart by filling the air with a public
scandal in which her sister's name would be linked with a lover who was
a common charlatan and brutal criminal. If for this man's sake Hermione
had left her father's death unavenged and ruined her sister's life,
Bertha's wrath and sorrow might well be a thing to dread, and such
knowledge a disaster that might well crush her. The mulatto might work
to bring truth to light; he must work alone.
But at this point Durgan again shifted his ground of suspicion; for he
still believed in Hermione Claxton's singular purity of mind and
gentleness of disposition, and in his wife's callousness and shrewd
selfishness. Was it possible that Beardsley had some mysterious power
over both women such as a magician or modern hypnotist is said to use?
But then, was not such influence in such a man too strange to be
possible, too like a cheap novel to be true? A terrible thought struck
cold at Durgan's heart; the man, as he knew him, was more likely to be a
cat's-paw than the mover in any momentous deed. The surprise of
ascertaining that his wife had had some connection with the Claxtons
forced him to realize how little he knew about her life, how totally
ignorant he was as to any cause she might have to hate Mr. and Mrs.
Claxton. His heart failed him.
He drew in his breath in quick terror, trying to persuade himself that
he could not have arrived at the bottom of a secret over which Alden had
brooded so long in vain.
"Well, I understand that your visit to Hilyard was most satisfactory.
You are assured of your good Adam's safety; and I find the mulatto sent
a message to our friends that he would not drag their name into the
business. So far so good. Do you suppose that the money and advice he
expects to receive are all in the air, or how?" Alden, dandified and
chirpy, his little gray beard wagging in the morning sunlight, was
standing on the mountain road. There was a sharpness as of autumn in the
sunshine, which made the New Yorker fresh. Durgan, who had taken to his
pick and spade very early that morning, already warm, dirty, and tired,
looked like some grim demiurge. Called from his work to this colloquy,
he was not in good humor.
"These fellows are always boasting," continued Alden. "The peculiarity
in this case is that he would not take the cost of his own defence from
us."
"And _I_ offered him what I had in my pocket. He would not look at it,"
said Durgan, dully.
"Odd."
"Do you think so?"
"Well, of course, when a flimsy, tawdry creature of that sort refuses a
bird in the hand, one wonders what he sees in the bush, especially when,
as in this case, the bird in the hand could hardly prevent his robbing
the bush also."
"I reckon it's beyond me," said Durgan, stupidly. Alden's simile
reminded him afresh of the hole in the forked tree, which had not ceased
to haunt his mind.
"You have a headache this morning, my dear sir."
"Thanks; I'm all right."
A boy, a slovenly country lout, came up the hill. He was whistling a
merry air attuned to the snap of the morning. He was looking about him
in the trees for birds and squirrels. His hands hung in the delicious
idleness of his pockets. There was a spring in his legs to match his
tone. Durgan envied him unfeignedly. He thought of his own gallant,
cheerful purpose of the day before, and wished that he dare form any
fresh resolve. Alden was evidently alarmed by what he had heard.
"As you know, being widely known as counsel for the Claxtons, I
preferred not to appear to take any interest in this prisoner. A
possible inference might have been drawn by someone. We of the law, my
dear sir----"
Durgan perceived that it would be a vast relief to his conscience if
Alden could visit 'Dolphus himself.
"They are lax," continued Alden; "there would be no difficulty in my
seeing the man."
"Why do you want to see him?"
"I hear he wrote to New York and got a telegram back. He may, for all we
know, be a member of a gang of thieves or blackmailers. They may bribe
judge and jury with a thousand dollars if he threatens to round on them.
A little money would go a long way in Hilyard. Then, if it is proved, so
to say, that both prisoners are innocent, the authorities might arrest
someone else."
"Me, for instance? I was there."
"Probably not you!" Then after a pause he added, "Miss Claxton is
disposed to think that we have done all we can honestly do, and must now
leave the matter in the hand of Providence; but, under Providence, I
myself feel that I am responsible for leaving no effort untried to gain
further light as to the basis of this fellow's hopes."
The boy, bobbing his head, explained to Durgan that he had been sent to
fetch the borrowed horse.
When he had gone on, Durgan said, "'Dolphus may die before anything
happens; that would be the simplest solution, perhaps." He remembered
how yesterday it had seemed all-important to extract all the knowledge
this man had before life went from him.
"Ah; you spoke to the doctor, I hear. It is always right, in any case,
to preserve life as long as possible."
Durgan looked toward his mine. The triteness to which the dialog had
descended was the more irksome because he suspected that Alden read
beneath his own sudden dullness and inertia.
"When the boy brings along the horse you can ride it as far as my
cousins'. He will find you a buggy, and will give you a letter which
will open things at Hilyard without giving much publicity to your name
and position. But you, of course, can best judge whether it's worth
while to go."
"Miss Claxton has seemed averse to my going," said Alden; and because
Durgan made no answer to this, he sat down on a rock, with brows knit,
and determined to go.
Some twenty minutes later Durgan was called again into the road. The
lout of a boy refused to give Alden the horse. He said very little; he
even blubbered; but he hung on to the bridle and tried to pass.
It was soon discovered that he had been commissioned by Miss Claxton to
take a telegram to Hilyard, for which service he had been promised
excessive pay.
Wrath rose in Durgan. "Fool that I was to warn her," he thought. "She
has wired to the man she shields to be on his guard." At that moment his
wife's welfare was not in his thought, and he felt he would rather have
suffered the last penalty of crime himself than allow this coil of
secrets to exist longer. He inwardly cursed all women, and was very
sorry for Alden.
Alden, meanwhile, unconscious of need for passion, was explaining that
he knew what the telegram must be, as he had heard Miss Claxton mention
that some supplies on which she was depending were delayed. As he was
going he would assume the responsibility of sending it. He would pay the
boy.
Durgan was afraid to speak. He picked up the boy, took a letter
addressed to the telegraph clerk out of his pocket, and sent him running
down the road at a forced pace. He put the sealed message in Alden's
hands, and returned to his work before a word could escape his lips.
As he toiled all day with spade and mattock, he wondered incessantly
whether or not Alden would open the message to see it correctly
transmitted.
When the long work-day had calmed his pulse he was still too impatient
to await Alden's time; sauntered down the hill, and finally reached Deer
Cove.
There he saw Alden looking very tired and haggard, but in no haste to
return.
The saw-mill was silent for the night. The quiet plash of the water over
the dam made a pleasing accompaniment to a banjo played by a negro. The
musician sat on the steps of the general store and post-office; he wore
a red handkerchief on his head. Some of his kind were dancing in
leisurely burlesque in an open space between the steps and the
mill-race. A circle of white men looked on, exchanging foolish jokes and
puffing strong tobacco. Many a bright necktie or broad-brimmed hat gave
picturesqueness to the group. The quiet of the sylvan evening was over
and around them all.
Alden, standing on the verandah of the post-office, looking upon this
scene as if he were an habitual lounger, struck Durgan as presenting
one of the saddest figures he had ever seen. No sign that could be
controlled of any grief was there; but the incongruity between what the
man was doing, and what in a better state of mind he would have liked to
do, seemed to betoken a depression so deep that normal action was
inhibited for the time.
Durgan thought one of the Blounts was perhaps with Alden. He accordingly
went straight inside the store; but the place was empty. No one of
gentle birth was to be seen near or far. When he came out on the
verandah Alden explained that he had insisted on leaving the trap at the
Blounts' and walking. "I was stiff with the drive and felt the walk
would do me good. You found me resting by the way."
Durgan remarked that there was nothing like a leisurely walk when
cramped with sitting long.
After a while the two were beginning the ascent of Deer together, still
uttering trivial words.