It was the morning after his acquittal that Kenwick and Marcreta Morgan
drove out of the Paddington gateway in one of the Utopia machines. They
turned to the left and took the stretch of perfect asphalt road that led
to the old Raeburn house.
The mystery of its destruction had never been explained. Richard Glover,
and every one else who was connected with the case of Ralph Regan, had
proved a satisfactory alibi. The owner of Rest Hollow had been notified
by wire of its destruction and he had replied with orders that the
grounds were to be kept locked and admission denied to all callers. It
had undoubtedly been one of the handsomest homes in a community of
handsome homes, but since the first days of its existence fate had
destined it for tragedy. And perhaps its owner was relieved to know that
only a pile of whitening ashes marked the grave of his own romance and
the prison of another man's hope. At all events, the mystery of its
passing never has been solved, and conjecture concerning it is still a
favorite topic around the tea-tables of Mont-Mer's fashionable suburban
district.
"But I want to _see_ it in ruins," Kenwick had told Marcreta after their
first radiant hour together. "I want to know that it is really gone off
the face of the earth, so that when it comes to me in memory I can
assure myself that it is only a dream."
They turned the last corner and came suddenly in sight of the tall iron
gate. Across it a sinister chain swung ominously, warning the world away
from communication with that most dreadful affliction that can befall a
human soul. The ruins of Rest Hollow loomed somber and shapeless before
them, and Roger Kenwick brought his car to a stop in the very spot where
Arnold Rogers had once halted, hesitated, and then gone on his way.
Guarding the pile like a battered but relentless sentinel was the tall,
charred chimney of the dining-room. As he looked at it, Kenwick's hand
sought instinctively for that of the woman beside him, as though to
assure himself of her reality. And then he heard himself ask the
question that for so long had beaten against his brain.
"How could you do it? How could you send me away that night, dear, into
the horrors of war and--this, without hope?"
"I couldn't know," she told him desperately. "I couldn't foresee what was
coming. And I wanted you to win a place in the world. I wanted you to
win, as I knew you could if you were unhampered by----"
"Unhampered!" He echoed the word incredulously, as though it were quite
new and its meaning not clear. "Is any one ever hampered by love and
inspiration and all that----"
"You don't understand," she said. "Nobody can understand physical
disability except those who have suffered it. My mother had a sister who
was a bed-ridden invalid. She helped her husband to find his place in
the world and keep it. But he never seemed to realize that she had
helped him. He always thought, though I suppose he never said, that his
marriage had held him back. And she died at last of a broken heart.
Through all my youth I had her tragedy before me."
There was a moment of silence between them. And then Kenwick spoke
slowly. "You hadn't much faith in me, Marcreta. You admit now that you
loved me, yet you hadn't much faith--in my character or my----"
"But love comes a long time before faith, Roger. It always does. And I
was younger then. I didn't know so much about life and--and character.
But, oh, when they wrote me about this! I would have given anything on
earth to have lived over again our last night together!"
"I know! I know!" His voice was vibrant with self-reproach.
"Your brother must have been splendid," she went on. "He wrote me such a
wonderful letter. But he couldn't soften it; nobody can ever dilute the
big tragedies of life. We must drink them unstrained. I knew that you
were somewhere in this county, and when I came down here, just that one
time, I liked to feel that I was near you. I couldn't have endured to
see you, but I wanted to be near you for a little while before--I did
anything else. And then that night when you came back, I couldn't be
sure----Everything was so changed. You were so different from the
carefree boy who had gone away. I knew, of course, that you would be; in
a sense, I wanted you to be. But I didn't want you to feel bound by
anything that had gone before. I was afraid you might feel that way. Oh,
a woman is at such a disadvantage, Roger. She is always at a
disadvantage if the man she loves is honorable and chivalrous."
"I had work to do," he reminded her gently. "I had to quiet the title to
my name. For when a woman marries a man, Marcreta, she marries his past,
every bit of it. Before I could offer my life to you again, I had to be
certain that every minute of it was clean and decent and above reproach.
I was not willing to let any of it go on the grounds of
irresponsibility. I never would have been satisfied. And you never would
have been satisfied. There would always have been for both of us
terrible moments of doubt. The bramble-bush lay between us. I had to
tear it away first; I had to tear it away and look bravely at whatever
lay underneath."
A shaft of golden sunlight suddenly broke through the January clouds and
slanted across the road. Roger Kenwick's eyes followed it as though
seeking for the treasure that might lie revealed at last at the end of a
rainbow. A sharp exclamation escaped him. And he felt the quick response
of the hand that still lay in his.
Drawing the heavy motor-cloak closer about her, he helped Marcreta
Morgan out of the car and guided her to a spot about a hundred yards on
the other side of the iron gate. "I remember now!" His words came in the
low, awed voice of one who suddenly encounters in broad daylight some
object that has played conspicuous part in an evil and oft-recurring
dream.
"At last!" he said, and stood rooted to the roadside gazing at the thing
for which, during the last two months, he had been so desperately
groping. "This one thing," he went on, "this one thing about those
impenetrable months here I do remember. I believe that if I had chanced
to see it on that afternoon of my recovery, if I had only chanced to
come this way instead of around by the other road, it might have
restored to me some memory of this place."
They stood now on the edge of the strip of pavement, where dead leaves
spread a spongy carpet between the asphalt and the barbed-wire fence
that bordered the opposite estate. And what they looked upon was a huge
boulder, half embedded in the earth. By some mighty and persistent force
it had been rent asunder, and now, up through the cleft which tore its
surface with a long jagged scar, a sapling eucalyptus-tree, perfectly
shaped and beautifully proportioned, had pushed its way. A zephyr or
perhaps a bird had sown the seed in this rock-bound prison. And with a
vitality that appeared incredible it had taken root and grown there,
stretching vigorous, red-tipped leaves heavenward. In some miraculous
manner its tap-root had found the sustaining soil, and its flame-colored
crown the sunlight. There it stood, on the lonely road to Rest Hollow, a
living torch of liberty, flaunting its heroic triumph above the
shattered body of its foe.
"On the day that Glover first brought me here, I saw that tree."
Kenwick's voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "I remember looking
out at it from an opening in the fence. I didn't know just why I was
here, but I had a sense of--I can't describe it to you--but it was a
sense of _imprisonment_. I knew that if I wanted to get out of that
place I couldn't do it, and there's no feeling on earth like that. And
then I saw--this, and it thrilled me. In a curious, unexplainable way it
gave me hope. I don't recall anything else about the place, and I don't
remember whether I ever saw this again. But during these last two months
I have been looking for something that I knew I had lost out of my life,
and here it is."
Marcreta Morgan reached over and touched the sapling's damp bark with
reverent fingers. From a cleft in the conquered boulder came the pungent
odor of the crushed leaves that were sustaining this new life. She
turned to the man beside her with shining eyes.
"The resurrection!" she cried.
He drew her close to him beneath the tender branches of the valiant
little sapling.
"An imprisoned soul," he whispered, "liberated at last--by the miracle
of love."
End of Project Gutenberg's The Rest Hollow Mystery, by Rebecca N. Porter