MEMORANDA.
"It is like and unlike what I have just related to you," began young
Adams. "In my previous confession I mixed truth and falsehood, and to
explain myself fully and to help you to a right understanding of my
wife's act, I shall have to start afresh and speak as if I had already
told you nothing."
"Wait!" cried Mr. Gryce, in an authoritative manner. "We will listen to
you presently;" and, leaning over the inspector, he whispered a few
words, after which he took out a pencil and jotted down certain
sentences, which he handed over to this gentleman.
As they had the appearance of a memorandum, and as the inspector glanced
more than once at them while Mr. Adams (or Cadwalader, as he should now
rightfully be called) was proceeding with his story, I will present them
to you as written.
Points to be made clear by Mr. Adams in his account of this crime:
1. Why a woman who was calm enough to stop and arrange her hair during
the beginning of an interview should be wrought up to such a pitch of
frenzy and exasperation before it was over as to kill with her own hand
a man against whom she had evidently no previous grudge. (Remember the
comb found on the floor of Mr. Adams's bedroom.)
2. What was the meaning of the following words, written just previous to
this interview by the man thus killed: "I return you your daughter.
Neither you nor she shall ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!"
3. Why was the pronoun "I" used in this communication? What position did
Mr. Felix Adams hold toward this young girl qualifying him to make use
of such language after her marriage to his brother?
4. And having used it, why did he, upon being attacked by her, attempt
to swallow the paper upon which he had written these words, actually
dying with it clinched between his teeth?
5. If he was killed in anger and died as monsters do (her own word), why
did his face show sorrow rather than hate, and a determination as far as
possible removed from the rush of over-whelming emotions likely to follow
the reception of a mortal blow from the hand of an unexpected
antagonist?
6. Why, if he had strength to seize the above-mentioned paper and convey
it to his lips, did he not use that strength in turning on a light
calculated to bring him assistance, instead of leaving blazing the
crimson glow which, according to the code of signals as now understood
by us, means: "Nothing more required just now. Keep away."
7. What was the meaning of the huge steel plate found between the
casings of the doorway, and why did it remain at rest within its socket
at this, the culminating moment of his life?
8. An explanation of how old Poindexter came to appear on the scene so
soon after the event. His words as overheard were: "It is Amos's son,
not Amos!" Did he not know whom he was to meet in this house? Was the
condition of the man lying before him with a cross on his bosom and a
dagger in his heart less of a surprise to him than the personality of
the victim?
9. Remember the conclusions we have drawn from Bartow's pantomime. Mr.
Adams was killed by a left-handed thrust. Watch for an acknowledgment
that the young woman is left-handed, and do not forget that an
explanation is due why for so long a time she held her other arm
stretched out behind her.
10. Why did the bird whose chief cry is "Remember Evelyn!" sometimes
vary it with "Poor Eva! Lovely Eva! Who would strike Eva?" The story of
this tragedy, to be true, must show that Mr. Adams knew his brother's
bride both long and well.
11. If Bartow is, as we think, innocent of all connection with this
crime save as witness, why does he show such joy at its result? This may
not reasonably be expected to fall within the scope of Thomas Adams's
confession, but it should not be ignored by us. This deaf-and-dumb
servitor was driven mad by a fact which caused him joy. Why?
12. Notice the following schedule. It has been drawn up after repeated
experiments with Bartow and the various slides of the strange lamp which
cause so many different lights to shine out in Mr. Adams's study:
White light--Water wanted.
Green light--Overcoat and hat to be brought.
Blue light--Put back books on shelves.
Violet light--Arrange study for the night.
Yellow light--Watch for next light.
Red light--Nothing wanted; stay away.
The last was on at the final scene. Note if this fact can be explained
by Mr. Adams's account of the same.
With these points in our mind, let us peruse the history of this crime
and of the remote and possibly complicated causes which led to it.
BOOK II
REMEMBER EVELYN
CHAPTER I.
THE SECRET OF THE CADWALADERS.
Thomas Cadwalader suggested rather than told his story. We dare not
imitate him in this, nor would it be just to your interest to relate
these facts with all the baldness and lack of detail imposed upon this
unhappy man by the hurry and anxiety of the occasion. Remarkable
tragedies have their birth in remarkable facts, and as such facts are
but the outcome of human passions, we must enter into those passions if
we would understand either the facts or their appalling consequences. In
this case, the first link of the chain which led to Felix Adams's
violent death was forged before the birth of the woman who struck him.
We must begin, then, with almost forgotten days, and tell the story, as
her pleader did, from the standpoint of Felix and Thomas Cadwalader.
Thomas Cadwalader--now called Adams--never knew his mother; she died in
his early infancy. Nor could he be said to have known his father, having
been brought up in France by an old Scotch lawyer, who, being related to
his mother, sometimes spoke of her, but never of his father, till Thomas
had reached his fifteenth year. Then he put certain books into his
hands, with this remarkable injunction:
"Here are romances, Thomas. Read them; but remember that none of them,
no matter how thrilling in matter or effect, will ever equal the story
of your father's bitterly wronged and suffering life."
"My father!" he cried; "tell me about him; I have never heard."
But his guardian, satisfied with an allusion which he knew must bear
fruit in the extremely susceptible nature of this isolated boy, said no
more that day, and Thomas turned to the books. But nothing after that
could ever take his mind away from his father. He had scarcely thought
of him for years, but now that that father had been placed before him in
the light of a wronged man, he found himself continually hunting back in
the deepest recesses of his memory for some long-forgotten recollection
of that father's features calculated to restore his image to his eyes.
Sometimes he succeeded in this, or thought he did; but this image, if
image it was, was so speedily lost in a sensation of something strange
and awe-compelling enveloping it, that he found himself more absorbed by
the intangible impressions associated with this memory than by the
memory itself. What were these impressions, and in what had they
originated? In vain he tried to determine. They were as vague as they
were persistent. A stretch of darkness--two bars of orange light, always
shining, always the same--black lines against these bars, like the tops
of distant gables--an inner thrill--a vague affright--a rush about him
as of a swooping wind--all this came with his father's image, only to
fade away with it, leaving him troubled, uneasy, and perplexed. Finding
these impressions persistent, and receiving no explanation of them in
his own mind, he finally asked his guardian what they meant. But that
guardian was as ignorant as himself on this topic; and satisfied with
having roused the boy's imagination, confined himself to hints, dropped
now and then with a judiciousness which proved the existence of a
deliberate purpose, of some duty which awaited him on the other side of
the water, a duty which would explain his long exile from his only
parent and for which he must fit himself by study and the acquirement of
such accomplishments as render a young man a positive power in society,
whether that society be of the Old World or the New. He showed his
shrewdness in thus dealing with this pliable and deeply affectionate
nature. From this time forth Thomas felt himself leading a life of
mystery and interest.
To feel himself appointed for a work whose unknown character only
heightened its importance gave point to every effort now made by this
young man, and lent to his studies that vague touch of romance which
made them a delight, and him an adept in many things he might otherwise
have cared little about. At eighteen he was a graduate from the
Sorbonne, and a musical virtuoso as well. He could fence, ride, and
carry off the prize in games requiring physical prowess as well as
mental fitness. He was, in fact, a prodigy in many ways, and was so
considered by his fellow-students. He, however, was not perfect; he
lacked social charm, and in so far failed of being the complete
gentleman. This he was made to realize in the following way:
One morning his guardian came to him with a letter from his father, in
which, together with some words of commendation for his present
attainments, that father expressed a certain dissatisfaction with his
general manner as being too abrupt and self-satisfied with those of his
own sex, and much too timid and deprecatory with those of the other.
Thomas felt the criticism and recognized its justice; but how had his
father, proved by his letter to be no longer a myth, become acquainted
with defects which Thomas instinctively felt could never have attracted
the attention of his far from polished guardian?
His questions on this point elicited a response that confounded him. He
was not the only son of his father; he had a brother living, and this
brother, older than himself by some twenty years or more, had just been
in Paris, where, in all probability, he had met him, talked with him,
and perhaps pressed his hand.
It was a discovery calculated to deepen the impression already made upon
Thomas's mind. Only a purpose of the greatest importance could account
for so much mystery. What could it be? What was he destined to do or say
or be? He was not told, but while awaiting enlightenment he was resolved
not to be a disappointment to the two anxious souls who watched his
career so eagerly and exacted from him such perfection. He consequently
moderated his manner, and during the following year acquired by constant
association with the gilded youth about him that indescribable charm of
the perfect gentleman which he was led to believe would alone meet with
the approval of those he now felt bound to please. At the end of the
year he found himself a finished man of the world. How truly so, he
began to realize when he noted the blush with which his presence was
hailed by women and the respect shown him by men of his own stamp. In
the midst of the satisfaction thus experienced his guardian paid him a
final visit.
"You are now ready," said he, "for your father's summons. It will come
in a few weeks. Be careful, then. Form no ties you cannot readily break;
for, once recalled from France, you are not likely to return here. What
your father's purpose concerning you may be I do not know, but it is no
ordinary one. You will have money, a well-appointed home, family
affection, all that you have hitherto craved in vain, and in return you
will carry solace to a heart which has awaited your healing touch for
twenty years. So much I am ordered to say; the rest you will hear from
your father's own lips."
Aroused, encouraged, animated by the wildest hopes, the most extravagant
anticipations, Thomas awaited his father's call with feverish
impatience, and when it came, hastened to respond to it by an immediate
voyage to America. This was some six months previous to the tragedy in
---- Street. On his arrival at the wharf in New York he was met, not by
his brother, as he had every reason to expect, but by a messenger in
whose face evil tidings were apparent before he spoke. Thomas was soon
made acquainted with them. His father, who he now learned was called
Cadwalader (he himself had always been called Adams), was ill, possibly
dying. He must therefore hasten, and, being provided with minute
instructions as to his way, took the train at once for a small village
in northern Pennsylvania.
All that followed was a dream to him. He was hurried through the night,
with the motion of the ship still in his blood, to meet--what? He dared
not think. He swam in a veritable nightmare. Then came a stop, a
hurrying from the train, a halt on a platform reeking with rain (for the
night was stormy), a call from some one to hurry, the sight of a panting
horse steaming under a lamp whose blowing flame he often woke in after
nights to see, a push from a persuasive hand, then a ride over a country
road the darkness of which seemed impenetrable, and, finally, the
startling vision of an open door, with a Meg Merrilies of a woman
standing in it, holding a flaming candle in her hand. The candle went
out while he looked at it, and left only a voice to guide him--a voice
which, in tones shaken by chill or feeling, he could not tell which,
cried eagerly:
"Is that you, laddie? Come awa in. Come awa in. Dinna heed the rain. The
maister's been crying on you a' day. I'm glad you're no ower late."
He got down, followed the voice, and, stumbling up a step or two,
entered a narrow door, which was with difficulty held open behind him,
and which swung to with a loud noise the minute he crossed the
threshold. This or the dreariness of the place in which he found himself
disturbed him greatly. Bare floors, stained walls, meagre doorways, and
a common pine staircase, lighted only by the miserable candle which the
old woman had relit--were these the appointments of the palatial home he
had been led to expect? These the surroundings, this the abode of him
who had exacted such perfection on his part, and to satisfy whose
standard he had devoted years of hourly, daily effort, in every
department of art and science? A sickening revolt seized him, aggravated
by the smiles of the old woman, who dipped and courtesied before him in
senile delight. She may have divined his feelings, for, drawing him
inside, she relieved him of his overcoat, crying all the while, with an
extravagant welcome more repulsive than all the rest:
"O the fine laddie! Wad your puir mither could see you the noo! Bonnie
and clever! No your faither's bairn ava! All mither, laddie, all
mither!"
The room was no better than the hall.
"Where is my father?" he asked, authoritatively, striving to keep down
his strong repugnance.
"Dinna ye hear him? He's crying on ye. Puir man, he's wearying to see
ye."
Hear him? He could scarcely hear her. The driving rain, the swish of
some great boughs against the house, the rattling of casements and
doors, and the shrieking of wind in the chimney made all other sounds
wellnigh inaudible. Yet as he listened he seemed to catch the accents of
a far-off voice calling, now wistfully, now imperatively, "Thomas!
Thomas!" And, thrilled with an emotion almost superstitious in its
intensity, he moved hastily toward the staircase.
But the old woman was there before him. "Na! Na!" she cried. "Come in by
and eat something first."
But Thomas shook his head. It seemed to him at that moment as if he
never could eat or sleep again, the disillusion was so bitter, his
disappointment so keen.
"You will na? Then haste ye--haste ye. But it's a peety you wadna ha'e
eaten something. Ye'll need it, laddie; ye'll need it."
"Thomas! Thomas!" wailed the voice.
He tore himself away. He forced himself to go upstairs, following the
cry, which at every moment grew louder. At the top he cast a final
glance below. The old woman stood at the stair-foot, shading the candle
from the draught with a hand that shook with something more than age.
She was gazing after him in vague affright, and with the shadow of this
fear darkening her weazen face, formed a picture from which he was glad
to escape.
Plunging on, he found himself before a window whose small panes dripped
and groaned under a rain that was fast becoming a torrent. Chilled by
the sight, he turned toward the door faintly outlined beside it, and in
the semi-darkness seized an old-fashioned latch rattling in the wind
that permeated every passageway, and softly raised it.
Instantly the door fell back, and two eyes blazing with fever and that
fire of the soul of which fever is the mere physical symbol greeted him
from the midst of a huge bed drawn up against the opposite wall. Then
two arms rose, and the moaning cry of "Thomas! Thomas!" changed to a
shout, and he knew himself to be in the presence of his father.
Falling on his knees in speechless emotion, he grasped the wasted hands
held out to him. Such a face, rugged though it was and far from
fulfilling the promise held out to him in his dreams, could not but move
any man. As he gazed into it and pressed the hands in which the life
blood only seemed to linger for this last, this only embrace, all his
filial instincts were aroused and he forgot the common surroundings, the
depressing rain, his own fatigue and bitter disappointment, in his
lifelong craving for love and family recognition.
But the old man on whose breast he fell showed other emotions than those
by which he was himself actuated. It was not an embrace he craved, but
an opportunity to satisfy an almost frenzied curiosity as to the
appearance and attributes of the son who had grown to manhood under
other eyes. Pushing him gently back, he bade him stand in the light of
the lamp burning on a small pine table, and surveyed him, as it were,
from the verge of his own fast failing life, with moans of mingled pain
and weariness, amid which Thomas thought he heard the accents of a
supreme satisfaction.
Meanwhile in Thomas himself, as he stood there, the sense of complete
desolation filled his breast almost to bursting. To have come home for
this! To find a father only to be weighed in the scales of that father's
judgment! To be admired, instead of loved!
As he realized his position and listened to the shrieking of the wind
and rain, he felt that the wail of the elements but echoed the cry of
his own affections, thus strangled in their birth. Indeed the sensations
of that moment made so deep an impression upon him that he was never
afterward able to hear a furious gust of wind or rain without the
picture rising up before him of this great hollow room, with the
trembling figure of his father struggling in the grasp of death and
holding it at bay, while he gauged with worldly wisdom the physical,
mental, and moral advantages of the son so long banished and so lately
restored to his arms.
A rush of impetuous words followed by the collapse of his father's form
upon the pillow showed that the examination was over. Rushing forward,
he grasped again that father's hands, but soon shrank back, stunned by
what he heard and the prospect it opened before him. A few of his
father's words will interpret the rest. They came in a flood, and among
others Thomas caught these:
"The grace of God be thanked! Our efforts have not failed. Handsome,
strong, noble in look and character, we could ask nothing more, hope for
nothing more. My revenge will succeed! John Poindexter will find that he
has a heart, and that that heart can be wrung. I do not need to live to
see it. For me it exists now; it exists here!" And he struck his breast
with hands that seemed to have reserved their last strength for this
supreme gesture.
John Poindexter! Who was he? It was a new name to Thomas. Venturing to
say so, he reeled under the look he received from his father's eyes.
"You do not know who John Poindexter is, and what he has done to me and
mine? They have kept their promise well, too well, but God will accord
me strength to tell you what has been left unsaid by them. He would not
bring me up to this hour to let me perish before you have heard the
story destined to make you the avenger of innocence upon that enemy of
your race. Listen, Thomas. With the hand of death encircling my heart, I
speak, and if the story find you cold--But it will not. Your name is
Cadwalader, and it will not."
Constrained by passions such as he had never imagined even in dreams,
Thomas fell upon his knees. He could not listen otherwise. His father,
gasping for breath, fixed him with his hollow eyes, in which the last
flickering flames of life flared up in fitful brightness.
"Thomas"--the pause was brief--"you are not my only child."
"I know it," fell from Thomas's white lips. "I have a brother; his name
is Felix."
The father shook his head with a look suggestive of impatience.
"Not him! Not him!" he cried. "A sister! a sister, who died before you
were born--beautiful, good, with a voice like an angel's and a
heart--she should be standing by my side to-day, and she would have been
if--if he--but none of that. I have no breath to waste. Facts, facts,
just facts! Afterward may come emotions, hatred, denunciation, not now.
This is my story, Thomas.
"John Poindexter and I were friends. From boyhood we shared each other's
bed, food, and pleasures, and when he came to seek his fortune in
America I accompanied him. He was an able man, but cold. I was of an
affectionate nature, but without any business capacity. As proof of
this, in fifteen years he was rich, esteemed, the master of a fine
house, and the owner of half a dozen horses; while I was the same nobody
I had been at first, or would have been had not Providence given me two
beautiful children and blessed, or rather cursed, me with the friendship
of this prosperous man. When Felix was fourteen and Evelyn three years
older, their mother died. Soon after, the little money I had vanished in
an unfortunate enterprise, and life began to promise ill, both for
myself and for my growing children. John Poindexter, who was honest
enough then, or let me hope so, and who had no children of his own,
though he had been long married, offered to take one of mine to educate.
But I did not consent to this till the war of the rebellion broke out;
then I sent him both son and daughter, and went into the army. For four
years I fought for the flag, suffering all that a man can suffer and
live, and being at last released from Libby Prison, came home with a
heart full of gratitude and with every affection keyed up by a long
series of unspeakable experiences, to greet my son and clasp once more
within my wasted arms the idolized form of my deeply loved daughter.
What did I find? A funeral in the streets--hers--and Felix, your
brother, walking like a guard between her speechless corpse and the man
under whose protection I had placed her youth and innocence.
"Betrayed!" shrieked the now frenzied parent, rising on his pillow. "Her
innocence! Her sweetness! And he, cold as the stone we laid upon her
grave, had seen her perish with the anguish and shame of it, without a
sign of grief or a word of contrition."
"O God!" burst from lips the old man was watching with frenzied cunning.
"Ay, God!" repeated the father, shaking his head as if in defiance
before he fell back on his pillow. "He allowed it and I--But this does
not tell the story. I must keep to facts as Felix did--Felix, who was
but fifteen years old and yet found himself the only confidant and
solace of this young girl betrayed by her protector. It was after her
burial----"
"Cease!" cried a voice, smooth, fresh, and yet strangely commanding,
from over Thomas's shoulder. "Let me tell the rest. No man can tell the
rest as I can."
"Felix!" ejaculated Amos Cadwalader below his breath.
"Felix!" repeated Thomas, shaken to his very heart by this new presence.
But when he sought to rise, to turn, he felt the pressure of a hand on
his shoulder and heard that voice again, saying softly, but
peremptorily:
"Wait! Wait till you hear what I have to say. Think not of me, think
only of her. It is she you are called upon to avenge; your sister,
Evelyn."
Thomas yielded to him as he had to his father. He sank down beneath that
insistent hand, and his brother took up the tale.
"Evelyn had a voice like a bird. In those days before father's return,
she used to fill old John Poindexter's house with melody. I, who, as a
boy, was studious, rather than artistic, thought she sang too much for a
girl whose father was rotting away in a Southern prison. But when about
to rebuke her, I remembered Edward Kissam, and was silent. For it was
his love which made her glad, and to him I wished every happiness, for
he was good, and honest, and kind to me. She was eighteen then, and
beautiful, or so I was bound to believe, since every man looked at her,
even old John Poindexter, though he never looked at any other woman, not
even his own wife. And she was good, too, and pure, I swear, for her
blue eyes never faltered in looking into mine until one day when--my
God! how well I remember it!--they not only faltered, but shrank before
me in such terror, that, boy though I was, I knew that something
terrible, something unprecedented had happened, and thinking my one
thought, I asked if she had received bad news from father. Her answer
was a horrified moan, but it might have been a shriek. 'Our father! Pray
God we may never see him or hear from him again. If you love him, if you
love me, pray he may die in prison rather than return here to see me as
I am now.'
"I thought she had gone mad, and perhaps she had for a moment; for at my
look of startled distress a change took place in her. She remembered my
youth, and laughing, or trying to laugh away her frenzy, uttered some
hurried words I failed to understand, and then, sinking at my knee, laid
her head against my side, crying that she was not well; that she had
experienced for a long time secret pains and great inward distress, and
that she sometimes feared she was not going to live long, for all her
songs and merry ways and seeming health and spirits.
"'Not live, Evelyn?' It was an inconceivable thought to me, a boy. I
looked at her, and seeing how pale, how incomprehensibly pale she was,
my heart failed me, for nothing but mortal sickness could make such a
change in any one in a week, in a day. Yet how could death reach her,
loved as she was by Edward, by her father, and by me. Thinking to rouse
her, I spoke the former's name. But it was the last word I should have
uttered. Crouching as if I had given her a blow, she put her two hands
out, shrieking faintly: 'Not that! Never that! Do not speak his name.
Let me never hear of him or see him again. I am dead--do you not
understand me?--dead to all the world from this day--except to you!' she
suddenly sobbed, 'except to you!' And still I did not comprehend her.
But when I understood, as I soon did, that no mention was to be made of
her illness; that her door was to be shut and no one allowed to enter,
not even Mrs. Poindexter or her guardian--least of all, her guardian--I
began to catch the first intimation of that horror which was to end my
youth and fill my whole after life with but one thought--revenge. But I
said nothing, only watched and waited. Seeing that she was really ill, I
constituted myself her nurse, and sat by her night and day till her
symptoms became so alarming that the whole household was aroused and we
could no longer keep the doctor from her. Then I sat at her door, and
with one ear turned to catch her lightest moan, listened for the step
she most dreaded, but which, though it sometimes approached, never
passed the opening of the hall leading to her chamber. For one whole
week I sat there, watching her life go slowly out like a flame, with
nothing to feed it; then as the great shadow fell, and life seemed
breaking up within me, I dashed from the place, and confronting him
where I found him walking, pale and disturbed, in his own hall, told him
that my father was coming; that I had had a dream, and in that dream I
had seen my father with his face turned toward this place. Was he
prepared to meet him? Had he an answer ready when Amos Cadwalader should
ask him what had become of his child?
"I had meant to shock the truth from this man, and I did so. As I
mentioned my father's name, Poindexter blanched, and my fears became
certainty. Dropping my youthful manner, for I was a boy no longer, I
flung his crime in his face, and begged him to deny it if he could. He
could not, but he did what neither he nor any other man could do in my
presence now and live--he smiled. Then when he saw me crouching for a
spring--for, young as I was, I knew but one impulse, and that was to fly
at his throat--he put out his powerful hand, and pinning me to the
ground, uttered a few short sentences in my ear.
"They were terrible ones. They made me see that nothing I might then do
could obliterate the fact that she was lost if the world knew what I
knew, or even so much as suspected it; that any betrayal on my part or
act of contrition on his would only pile the earth on her innocent
breast and sink her deeper and deeper into the grave she was then
digging for herself; that all dreams were falsities; that Southern
prisons seldom gave up their victims alive; and that if my father should
escape the jaws of Libby and return, it was for me to be glad if he
found a quiet grave instead of a dishonored daughter. Further, that if I
crossed him, who was power itself, by any boyish exhibition of hate, I
would find that any odium I might invoke would fall on her and not on
him, making me an abhorrence, not only to the world at large, but to the
very father in whose interest I might pretend to act.
"I was young and without worldly experience. I yielded to these
arguments, but I cursed him where he stood. With his hand pressing
heavily upon me, I cursed him to his face; then I went back to my
sister.
"Had she, by some supernatural power, listened to our talk, or had she
really been visited by some dream, that she looked so changed? There was
a feverish light in her eye, and something like the shadow of a smile on
her lips. Mrs. Poindexter was with her; Mrs. Poindexter, whose face was
a mask we never tried to penetrate. But when she had left us alone
again, then Evelyn spoke, and I saw what her dream had been.
"'Felix,' she cried as I approached her trembling with my own emotions
and half afraid of hers, 'there is still one hope for me. It has come to
me while you have been away. Edward--he loves me--did--perhaps he would
forgive. If he would take me into his protection (I see you know it all,
Felix) then I might grow happy again--well--strong--good. Do you
think--oh, you are a child, what do you know?--but--but before I turn my
face forever to the wall try if he will see me--try, try--with your
boy's wit--your clever schemes, to get him here unknown to--to--the one
I fear, I hate--and then, then, if he bids me live, I will live, and if
he bids me die, I will die; and all will be ended.'
"I was an ignorant boy. I knew men no more than I knew women, and
yielding to her importunities, I promised to see Edward and plan for an
interview without her guardian's knowledge. I was, as Evelyn had said,
keen in those days and full of resources, and I easily managed it.
Edward, who had watched from the garden as I had from the door, was
easily persuaded to climb her lattice in search of what he had every
reason to believe would be his last earthly interview with his darling.
As his eager form bounded into the room I tottered forth, carrying with
me a vision of her face as she rose to meet--what? I dared not think or
attempt to foresee. Falling on my knees I waited the issue. Alas! It was
a speedy one. A stifled moan from her, the sound of a hoarse farewell
from him, told me that his love had failed her, and that her doom was
sealed. Creeping back to her side as quickly as my failing courage
admitted, I found her face turned to the wall, from which it never again
looked back; while presently, before the hour was passed, shouts ringing
through the town proclaimed that young Kissam had shot himself. She
heard, and died that night. In her last hour she had fancies. She
thought she saw her father, and her prayers for mercy were
heart-rending. Then she thought she saw him, that demon, her
executioner, and cringed and moaned against the wall.
"But enough of this. Two days after, I walked between him and her silent
figure outstretched for burial. I had promised that no eye but mine
should look upon her, no other hand touch her, and I kept my word, even
when the impossible happened and her father rose up in the street before
us. Quietly, and in honor, she was carried to her grave, and then--then,
in the solitude of the retreat I had found for him, I told our father
all, and why I had denied him the only comfort which seemed left to
him--a last look at his darling daughter's face."
CHAPTER II.
THE OATH.
A sigh from the panting breast of Amos Cadwalader followed these words.
Plainer than speech it told of a grief still fresh and an agony still
unappeased, though thirty years had passed away since the unhappy hour
of which Felix spoke.
Felix, echoing it, went quickly on:
"It was dusk when I told my story, and from dark to dawn we sat with
eyes fixed on each other's face, without sleep and without rest. Then we
sought John Poindexter.
"Had he shunned us we might have had mercy, but he met us openly,
quietly, and with all the indifference of one who cannot measure
feeling, because he is incapable of experiencing it himself. His first
sentence evinced this. 'Spare yourselves, spare me all useless
recriminations. The girl is dead; I cannot call her back again. Enjoy
your life, your eating and your drinking, your getting and your
spending; it is but for a few more years at best. Why harp on old
'griefs?' His last word was a triumph. 'When a man cares for nothing or
nobody, it is useless to curse him.'
"Ah, that was it! That was the secret of his power. He cared for nothing
and for no one, not even for himself. We felt the blow, and bent under
it. But before leaving him and the town, we swore, your father and I,
that we would yet make that cold heart feel; that some day, in some way,
we would cause that impassive nature to suffer as he had made us suffer,
however happy he might seem or however closely his prosperity might
cling to him. That was thirty years ago, and that oath has not yet been
fulfilled."
Felix paused. Thomas lifted his head, but the old man would not let him
speak. "There are men who forget in a month, others who forget in a
year. I have never forgotten, nor has Felix here. When you were born (I
had married again, in the hope of renewed joy) I felt, I know not why,
that Evelyn's avenger was come. And when, a year or so after this event,
we heard that God had forgotten John Poindexter's sins, or, perhaps,
remembered them, and that a child was given him also, after eighteen
years of married life, I looked upon your bonny face and saw--or thought
I saw--a possible means of bringing about the vengeance to which Felix
and I had dedicated our lives.
"You grew; your ardent nature, generous temper, and facile mind promised
an abundant manhood, and when your mother died, leaving me for a second
time a widower, I no longer hesitated to devote you to the purpose for
which you seemed born. Thomas, do you remember the beginning of that
journey which finally led you far from me? How I bore you on my shoulder
along a dusty road, till arrived within sight of his home, I raised you
from among the tombs and, showing you those distant gables looming black
against the twilight's gold, dedicated you to the destruction of
whatever happiness might hereafter develop under his infant's smile? You
do? I did not think you could forget; and now that the time has come for
the promise of that hour to be fulfilled, I call on you again, Thomas.
Avenge our griefs, avenge your sister. _Poindexter's girl has grown to
womanhood._"
At the suggestion conveyed in these words Thomas recoiled in horror. But
the old man failed to read his emotion rightly. Clutching his arm, he
proceeded passionately:
"Woo her! Win her! They do not know you. You will be Thomas Adams to
them, not Thomas Cadwalader. Gather this budding flower into your bosom,
and then--Oh, he must love his child! Through her we have our hand on
his heart. Make her suffer--she's but a country girl, and you have lived
in Paris--make her suffer, and if, in doing so, you cause him to blench,
then believe I am looking upon you from the grave I go to, and be happy;
for you will not have lived, nor will I have died, in vain."
He paused to catch his failing breath, but his indomitable will
triumphed over death and held Thomas under a spell that confounded his
instincts and made him the puppet of feelings which had accumulated
their force to fill him, in one hour, with a hate which it had taken his
father and brother a quarter of a century to bring to the point of
active vengeance.
"I shall die; I am dying now," the old man panted on. "I shall never
live to see your triumph; I shall never behold John Poindexter's eye
glaze with those sufferings which rend the entrails and make a man
question if there is a God in heaven. But I shall know it where I am. No
mounded earth can keep my spirit down when John Poindexter feels his
doom. I shall be conscious of his anguish and shall rejoice; and when in
the depths of darkness to which I go he comes faltering along my way----
"Boy, boy, you have been reared for this. God made you handsome; man has
made you strong; you have made yourself intelligent and accomplished.
You have only to show yourself to this country girl to become the master
of her will and affection, and these once yours, remember _me_!
_Remember Evelyn!_"
Never had Thomas been witness to such passion. It swept him along in a
burning stream against which he sought to contend and could not. Raising
his hand in what he meant as a response to that appeal, he endeavored to
speak, but failed. His father misinterpreted his silence, and bitterly
cried:
"You are dumb! You do not like the task; are virtuous, perhaps--you who
have lived for years alone and unhampered in Paris. Or you have
instincts of honor, habits of generosity that blind you to wrongs that
for a longer space than your lifetime have cried aloud to heaven for
vengeance. Thomas, Thomas, if you should fail me now----"
"He will not fail you," broke in the voice of Felix, calm, suave, and
insinuating. "I have watched him; I know him; he will not fail you."
Thomas shuddered; he had forgotten Felix, but as he heard these words he
could no longer delay looking at the man who had offered to stand his
surety for the performance of the unholy deed his father exacted from
him. Turning, he saw a man who in any place and under any roof would
attract attention, awake admiration and--yes, fear. He was not a large
man, not so large as himself, but the will that expressed itself in
frenzy on his father's lips showed quiet and inflexible in the gray eye
resting upon his own with a power he could never hope to evade. As he
looked and comprehended, a steel band seemed to compress his heart; yet
he was conscious at the same time that the personality before which he
thus succumbed was as elegant as his own and as perfectly trained in all
the ways of men and of life. Even the air of poverty which had shocked
him in his father's person and surroundings was not visible here. Felix
was both well and handsomely clad, and could hold his own as the elder
brother in every respect most insisted upon by the Parisian gentleman.
The long and, to Thomas, mysterious curtain of dark-green serge which
stretched behind him from floor to ceiling threw out his pale features
with a remarkable distinctness, and for an instant Thomas wondered if it
had been hung there for the purpose of producing this effect. But the
demand in his brother's face drew his attention, and, bowing his head,
he stammered:
"I am at your command, Felix. I am at your command, father. I cannot say
more. Only remember that I never saw Evelyn, that she died before I was
born, and that I----"
But here Felix's voice broke in, kind, but measured:
"Perhaps there is some obstacle we have not reckoned upon. You may
already love some woman and desire to marry her. If so, it need be no
impediment----"
But here Thomas's indignation found voice.
"No," said he; "I am heart-whole save for a few lingering fancies which
are fast becoming vanishing dreams."
He seemed to have lived years since entering this room.
"Your heart will not be disturbed now," commented Felix. "I have seen
the girl. I went there on purpose a year ago. She's as pale as a
snow-drop and as listless. You will not be obliged to recall to mind the
gay smiles of Parisian ladies to be proof against her charms."
Thomas shrugged his shoulders.
"She must be made to know the full intoxication of hope," Felix
proceeded in his clear and cutting voice. "To realize despair she must
first experience every delight that comes with satisfied love. Have you
the skill as well as heart to play to the end a rôle which will take
patience as well as dissimulation, courage as well as subtlety, and that
union of will and implacability which finds its food in tears and is
strengthened, rather than lessened, by the suffering of its victim?"
"I have the skill," murmured Thomas, "but----"
"You lack the incentive," finished Felix. "Well, well, we must have
patience with your doubts and hesitations. Our hate has been fostered by
memories of her whom, as you say, you have never seen. Look, then,
Thomas. Look at your sister as she was, as she is for us. Look at her,
and think of her as despoiled, killed, forgotten by Poindexter. Have you
ever gazed upon a more moving countenance, or one in which beauty
contends with a keener prophecy of woe?"
Not knowing what to expect, anticipating almost to be met by her shade,
Thomas followed the direction of his brother's lifted hand, and beheld,
where but a minute before that dismal curtain had hung, a blaze of
light, in the midst of which he saw a charming, but tragic, figure, such
as no gallery in all Europe had ever shown him, possibly because no
other limned face or form had ever appealed to his heart. It did not
seem a picture, it seemed her very self, a gentle, loving self that
breathed forth all the tenderness he had vainly sought for in his living
relatives; and falling at her feet, he cried out:
"Do not look at me so reproachfully, sweet Evelyn. I was born to avenge
you, and I will. John Poindexter shall never go down in peace to his
tomb."
A sigh of utter contentment came from the direction of the bed.
"Swear it!" cried his father, holding out his arms before him in the
form of a cross.
"Yes, swear it!" repeated Felix, laying his own hand on those crossed
arms.
Thomas drew near, and laid his hand beside that of Felix.
"I swear," he began, raising his voice above the tempest, which poured
gust after gust against the house. "I swear to win the affections of Eva
Poindexter, and then, when her heart is all mine, to cast her back in
anguish and contumely on the breast of John Poindexter."
"Good!" came from what seemed to him an immeasurable distance. Then the
darkness, which since the taking of this oath had settled over his
senses, fell, and he sank insensible at the feet of his dying father.
* * * * *
Amos Cadwalader died that night; but not without one awful scene more.
About midnight he roused from the sleep which had followed the exciting
incidents I have just related, and glancing from Thomas to Felix,
sitting on either side of the bed, fixed his eyes with a strange gleam
upon the door.
"Ah!" he ejaculated, "a visitor! John Poindexter! He comes to ask my
forgiveness before I set out on my dismal journey."
The sarcasm of his tone, the courtesy of his manner, caused the hair to
stir on the heads of his two sons. That he saw his enemy as plainly as
he saw them, neither could doubt.
"Does he dread my meeting with Evelyn? Does he wish to placate me before
I am joined to that pathetic shade? He shall not be disappointed. I
forgive you, John Poindexter! I forgive you my daughter's shame, my
blighted life. I am dying; but I leave one behind who will not forgive
you. I have a son, an avenger of the dead, who yet lives to--to----"
He fell back. With these words, which seemed to seal Thomas to his task,
Amos Cadwalader died.
CHAPTER III.
EVA.
Felix had not inherited his father's incapacity for making money. In the
twenty years that had passed since Thomas had been abroad he had built
up a fortune, which he could not induce his father to share, but which
that father was perfectly willing to see devoted to their mutual
revenge. There was meaning, therefore, in the injunction Felix gave his
brother on his departure for Montgomery:
"I have money; spend it; spend what you will, and when your task is
completed, there will still be some left for your amusement."
Thomas bowed. "The laborer is worthy of his hire," was his thought. "And
you?" he asked, looking about the scanty walls, which seemed to have
lost their very excuse for being now that his father had died. "Will you
remain here?"
Felix's answer was abrupt, but positive. "No; I go to New York
to-morrow. I have rented a house there, which you may one day wish to
share. The name under which I have leased it is Adams, Felix Adams. As
such you will address me. Cadwalader is a name that must not leave your
lips in Montgomery, nor must you forget that my person is known there,
otherwise we might not have been dependent on you for the success of our
revenge." And he smiled, fully conscious of being the handsomer man of
the two. "And now how about those introductions we enjoined you to bring
from Paris?"
* * * * *
The history of the next few weeks can best be understood by reading
certain letters sent by Thomas to Felix, by examining a diary drawn up
by the same writer for his own relief and satisfaction. The letters will
be found on the left, and the diary on the right, of the double columns
hereby submitted. The former are a summary of facts; the latter is a
summary of feelings. Both are necessary to a right comprehension of the
situation.
* * * * *
FIRST LETTER.
DEAR FELIX:
I am here; I have seen her. She is, as you have said, a pale blonde.
To-morrow I present my credentials to John Poindexter. From what I have
already experienced I anticipate a favorable reception.
Yours aff., THOMAS.
FIRST ENTRY.
I could not write Felix the true story of this day. Why? And why must I
write it here? To turn my mind from dwelling on it? Perhaps. I do not
seem to understand my own feelings, or why I begin to dread my task,
while ardently pressing forward to accomplish it.
I have seen her. This much I wrote to Felix, but I did not say where our
meeting took place or how. How could I? Would he understand how one of
Poindexter's blood could be employed in a gracious act, or how I, filled
with a purpose that has made my heart dark as hell ever since I embraced
it, could find that heart swell and that purpose sink at my first
glimpse of the face whose beauty I have sworn to devote to agony and
tears? Surely, surely Felix would have been stronger, and yet----
I went from the cars to the cemetery. Before entering the town or seeing
to my own comfort, I sought Evelyn's grave, there to renew my oath in
the place where, nineteen years ago, my father held me up, a
four-year-old child, in threat, toward John Poindexter's home. I had
succeeded in finding the old and neglected stone which marked her
resting-place, and was bending in the sunset light to examine it, when
the rustle of a woman's skirts attracted my attention, and I perceived
advancing toward me a young girl in a nimbus of rosy light which seemed
to lift her from the ground and give to her delicate figure and
strangely illumined head an ethereal aspect which her pure features and
tender bearing did not belie. In her arms she carried a huge cluster of
snow-white lilies, and when I observed that her eyes were directed not
on me, but on the grave beside which I stood, I moved aside into the
shadow of some bushes and watched her while she strewed these
flowers--emblems of innocence--over the grave I had just left.
What did it mean, and who was this young girl who honored with such
gracious memorials the grave of my long-buried sister? As she rose from
her task I could no longer restrain either my emotion or the curiosity
with which her act had inspired me. Advancing, I greeted her with all
the respect her appearance called for, and noting that her face was even
more beautiful when lifted in speech than when bent in gravity over her
flowers, I asked her, in the indifferent tone of a stranger, who was
buried in this spot, and why she, a mere girl, dropped flowers upon a
grave the mosses of whose stone proved it to have been dug long before
she was born.
Her answer caused me a shock, full as my life has lately been of
startling experiences. "I strew flowers here," said she, "because the
girl who lies buried under this stone had the same birthday as myself. I
never saw her, it's true, but she died in my father's house when she was
no older than I am to-day, and since I have become a woman and realize
what loss there is in dying young, I have made it a custom to share with
her my birthday flowers. She was a lily, they say, in appearance and
character, and so I bring her lilies."
It was Eva Poindexter, the girl I--And she was strewing flowers on
Evelyn's grave.
* * * * *
LETTER II.
DEAR FELIX:
I have touched the hand of John Poindexter. In order to win a place in
the good graces of the daughter I must please the father, or at least
attract his favorable notice. I have reason to think I have done this.
Very truly, THOMAS.
ENTRY II.
I no longer feel myself a true man. John Poindexter is cold in
appearance, hard in manner, and inflexible in opinion, but he does not
inspire the abhorrence I anticipated nor awaken in me the one thought
due to the memory of my sister. Is it because he is Eva's father? Has
the loveliness of the daughter cast a halo about the parent? If so,
Felix has a right to execrate me and my father to----
* * * * *
LETTER III.
DEAR FELIX:
The introductions furnished me have made me received everywhere. There
is considerable wealth here and many fine houses. Consequently I find
myself in a congenial society, of which she is the star. Did I say that
he was, as of old, the chief man of the town?
Yours truly, THOMAS.
ENTRY III.
She is beautiful. She has the daintiness of the lily and the flush of
the rose. But it is not her beauty that moves me; it is the strange
sweetness of her nature, which, nevertheless, has no weakness in it; on
the contrary, it possesses peculiar strength, which becomes instantly
apparent at the call of duty. Could Felix have imagined such a
Poindexter? I cannot contemplate such loveliness and associate it with
the execrable sin which calls down vengeance upon this house. I cannot
even dwell upon my past life. All that is dark, threatening, secret, and
revengeful slips from me under her eye, and I dream of what is pure,
true, satisfying, and ennobling. And this by the influence of her smile,
rather than of her words. Have I been given an angel to degrade? Or am I
so blind as to behold a saint where others (Felix, let us say) would see
only a pretty woman with unexpected attractions?
* * * * *
LETTER IV.
DEAR FELIX:
Rides, dances, games, nonsense generally. My interest in this young girl
is beginning to be publicly recognized. She alone seems ignorant of it.
Sometimes I wonder if our scheme will fail through her impassibility and
more than conventional innocence. I am sometimes afraid she will never
love me. Yet I have exerted myself to please her. Indeed, I could not
have exerted myself more. To-day I went twenty-five miles on horseback
to procure her a trifle she fancied.
Yours aff., THOMAS.
ENTRY IV.
All will not go as easily as Felix imagines. Eva Poindexter may be a
country girl, but she has her standards, too, and mere grace and
attainment are not sufficient to win her. Have I the other qualities she
demands? That remains to be seen. I have one she never dreams of. Will
its shadow so overwhelm the rest that her naturally pure spirit will
shrink from me just at the moment when I think her mine? I cannot tell,
and the doubt creates a hell within me. Something deeper, stronger, more
imperious than my revenge makes the winning of this girl's heart a
necessity to me. I have forgotten my purpose in this desire. I have
forgotten everything except that she is the one woman of my life, and
that I can never rest till her heart is wholly mine. Good God! Have I
become a slave where I hoped to be master? Have I, Thomas Cadwalader,
given my soul into the keeping of this innocent girl? I do not even stop
to inquire. To win her--that is all for which I now live.
* * * * *
LETTER V.
DEAR FELIX:
She may not care for me, but she is interested in no one else. Of this I
am assured by John Poindexter, who seems very desirous of aiding me in
my attempt to win his daughter's heart. Hard won, close bound. If she
ever comes to love me it will be with the force of a very strong nature.
The pale blonde has a heart.
Yours aff., THOMAS.
ENTRY V.
If it were passion only that I feel, I might have some hope of
restraining it. But it is something more, something deeper, something
which constrains me to look with her eyes, hear with her ears, and throb
with her heart. My soul, rather than my senses, is enthralled. I want to
win her, not for my own satisfaction, but to make her happy. I want to
prove to her that goodness exists in this world--I, who came here to
corrode and destroy; I, who am still pledged to do so. Ah, Felix, Felix,
you should have chosen an older man for your purpose, or remembered that
he who could be influenced as I was by family affections possesses a
heart too soft for such infamy.
* * * * *
ENTRY VI.
The name of Evelyn is never mentioned in this house. Sometimes I think
that he has forgotten her, and find in this thought the one remaining
spur to my revenge. Forgotten her! Strange, that his child, born long
after his victim's death, should remember this poor girl, and he forget!
Yet on the daughter the blow is planned to fall--if it does fall. Should
I not pray that it never may? That she should loathe instead of love me?
Distrust, instead of confide in my honor and affection? But who can pray
against himself? Eva Poindexter must love me, even if I am driven to
self-destruction by my own remorse, after she has confided her heart to
my keeping.
* * * * *
LETTER VI.
DEAR FELIX:
Will you send me a few exquisite articles from Tiffany's? I see that her
father expects me to give her presents. I think she will accept them. If
she does, we may both rest easy as to the state of her affections.
Very truly, THOMAS.
ENTRY VII.
I cannot bring myself to pass a whole day away from her side. If Felix
were here and could witness my assiduity, he would commend me in his
cold and inflexible heart for the singleness with which I pursue my
purpose. He would say to me, in the language of one of his letters: "You
are not disappointing us." Us! As if our father still hovered near,
sharing our purposes and hope. Alas! if he does, he must penetrate more
deeply than Felix into the heart of this matter; must see that with
every day's advantage--and I now think each day brings its advantage--I
shrink further and further from the end they planned for me; the end
which can alone justify my advance in her affections. I am a traitor to
my oath, for I now know I shall never disappoint Eva's faith in me. I
could not. Rather would I meet my father's accusing eyes on the verge of
that strange world to which he has gone, or Felix's recriminations here,
or my own contempt for the weakness which has made it possible for me to
draw back from the brink of this wicked revenge to which I have devoted
myself.
* * * * *
LETTER VII.
DEAR FELIX:
This morning I passed under the window you have described to me as
Evelyn's. I did it with a purpose. I wanted to test my own emotions and
to see how much feeling it would arouse in me. Enough.
Eva accepted the brooch. It was the simplest thing you sent.
Aff., THOMAS.
ENTRY VIII.
I hate John Poindexter, yes, I hate him, but I can never hate his
daughter. Only Felix could so confound the father with the child as to
visit his anger upon this gentle embodiment of all that is gracious, all
that is trustworthy, all that is fascinating in woman. But am I called
upon to hate her? Am I not in a way required to love her? I will ask
Felix. No, I cannot ask Felix. He would never comprehend her charm or
its influence over me. He would have doubts and come at once to
Montgomery. Good God! Am I proving such a traitor to my own flesh and
blood that I cannot bear to think of Felix contemplating even in secret
the unsuspicious form of his enemy's daughter?
* * * * *
LETTER VIII.
DEAR FELIX:
A picnic on the mountains. It fell to me to escort Miss Poindexter down
a dangerous slope. Though no words of affection passed between us (she
is not yet ready for them), I feel that I have made a decided advance in
her good graces.
Yours, THOMAS.
ENTRY IX.
I have touched her hand! I have felt her sweet form thrilling against
mine as we descended the mountain ledges together! No man was near, no
eye--there were moments in which we were as much alone in the wide
paradise of these wooded slopes as if the world held no other breathing
soul. Yet I no more dared to press her hand, or pour forth the mad
worship of my heart into her innocent ears, than if the eyes of all
Paris had been upon us. How I love her! How far off and faint seem the
years of that dead crime my brother would invoke for the punishment of
this sweet soul! Yes, and how remote that awful hour in which I knelt
beneath the hand of my dying father and swore--Ah, that oath! That oath!
* * * * *
ENTRY X.
The thing I dreaded, the thing I might have foreseen, has occurred.
Felix has made his appearance in Montgomery. I received a communication
to that effect from him to-day; a communication in which he commands me
to meet him to-night, at Evelyn's grave, at the witching hour of twelve.
I do not enjoy the summons. I have a dread of Felix, and begin to think
he calculates upon stage devices to control me. But the day has passed
for that. I will show him that I can be no more influenced in that place
and at that hour than I could be in this hotel room, with the sight of
her little glove--is there sin in such thefts?--lying on the table
before us. Evelyn! She is a sacred memory. But the dead must not
interfere with the living. Eva shall never be sacrificed to Evelyn's
manes, not if John Poindexter lives out his life to his last hour in
peace; not if Felix--well; I need to play the man; Felix is a formidable
antagonist to meet, alone, in a spot of such rancorous memories, at an
hour when spirits--if there be spirits--haunt the precincts of the tomb.
* * * * *
ENTRY XI.
I should not have known Felix had I met him in the street. How much of a
stranger he appeared, then, in the faint moonlight which poured upon
that shaded spot! His very voice seemed altered, and in his manner I
remarked a hesitation I had not supposed him capable of showing under
any circumstances. Nor were his words such as I expected. The questions
I dreaded most he did not ask. The recriminations I looked for he did
not utter. He only told me coldly that my courtship must be shortened;
that the end for which we were both prepared must be hastened, and gave
me two weeks in which to bring matters to a climax. Then he turned to
Evelyn's grave, and bending down, tried to read her name on the mossy
stone. He was so long in doing this that I leaned down beside him and
laid my hand on his shoulder. He was trembling, and his body was as cold
as the stone he threw himself against. Was it the memory of her whom
that stone covered which had aroused this emotion? If so, it was but
natural. To all appearance he has never in all his life loved any one as
he did this unhappy sister; and struck with a respect for the grief
which has outlived many a man's lifetime, I was shrinking back when he
caught my hand, and with a convulsive strain, contrasting strongly with
his tone, which was strangely measured, he cried, "Do not forget the
end! Do not forget John Poindexter! his sin, his indifference to my
father's grief; the accumulated sufferings of years which made Amos
Cadwalader a hermit amongst men. I have seen the girl; she has
changed--women do change at her age--and some men, I do not say you, but
some men might think her beautiful. But beauty, if she has it, must not
blind your eyes, which are fixed upon another goal. Overlook it;
overlook her--you have done so, have you not? Pale beauties cannot move
one who has sat at the feet of the most dazzling of Parisian women. Keep
your eyes on John Poindexter, the debt he owes us, and the suffering we
have promised him. That she is sweet, gentle, different from all we
thought her, only makes the chances of reaching his heart the greater.
The worthier she may be of affections not indigenous to that hard soul,
the surer will be our grip upon his nature and the heavier his
downfall."
The old spell was upon me. I could neither answer nor assert myself.
Letting go my hand, he rose, and with his back to the village--I noticed
he had not turned his face to it since coming to this spot--he said: "I
shall return to New York to-morrow. In two weeks you will telegraph your
readiness to take up your abode with me. I have a home that will satisfy
you; and it will soon be all your own."
Here he gripped his heart; and, dark as it was, I detected a strange
convulsion cross his features as he turned into the moonlight. But it
was gone before we could descend.
"You may hear from me again," he remarked somewhat faintly as he grasped
my hand, and turned away in his own direction. I had not spoken a word
during the whole interview.
* * * * *
LETTER IX.
DEAR FELIX:
I do not hear from you. Are you well, or did your journey affect your
health? I have no especial advance to report. John Poindexter seems
greatly interested in my courtship. Sometimes he gives me very good
advice. How does that strike you, Felix?
Aff., THOMAS.
ENTRY XII.
I shall never understand Felix. He has not left the town, but is staying
here in hiding, watching me, no doubt, to see if the signs of weakening
he doubtless suspects in me have a significance deep enough to overthrow
his planned revenge. I know this, because I have seen him more than once
during the last week, when he thought himself completely invisible. I
have caught sight of him in Mr. Poindexter's grounds when Eva and I
stood talking together in the window. I even saw him once in church, in
a dark corner, to be sure, but where he could keep his eye upon us,
sitting together in Mr. Poindexter's pew. He seemed to me thin that day.
The suspense he is under is wearing upon him. Is it my duty to cut it
short by proclaiming my infidelity to my oath and my determination to
marry the girl who has made me forget it?
* * * * *
LETTER X.
DEAR FELIX:
Miss Poindexter has told me unreservedly that she cares for me. Are you
satisfied with me now?
In haste, THOMAS.
ENTRY XIII.
She loves me. Oh, ecstasy of life! Eva Poindexter loves me. I forced it
from her lips to-day. With my arms around her and her head on my
shoulder, I urged her to confession, and it came. Now let Felix do what
he will! What is old John Poindexter to me? Her father. What are Amos
Cadwalader's hatred and the mortal wrong that called so loudly for
revenge? Dead issues, long buried sorrows, which God may remember, but
which men are bound to forget. Life, life with her! That is the future
toward which I look; that is the only vengeance I will take, the only
vengeance Evelyn can demand if she is the angel we believe her. I will
write to Felix to-morrow.
* * * * *
ENTRY XIV.
I have not written Felix. I had not the courage.
* * * * *
ENTRY XV.
I have had a dream. I thought I saw the meeting of my father with the
white shade of Evelyn in the unimaginable recesses of that world to
which both have gone. Strange horrors, stranger glories met as their
separate paths crossed, and when the two forms had greeted and parted, a
line of light followed the footsteps of the one and a trail of gloom
those of the other. As their ways divided, I heard my father cry:
"There is no spot on your garments, Evelyn. Can it be that the wrongs of
earth are forgotten here? That mortals remember what the angels forget,
and that our revenge is late for one so blessed?"
I did not hear the answer, for I woke; but the echo of those words has
rung in my ears all day. "Is our revenge late for one so blessed?"
* * * * *
ENTRY XVI.
I have summoned up courage. Felix has been here again, and the truth has
at last been spoken between us. I had been pressing Eva to name our
wedding day, and we were all standing--that is, John Poindexter, my dear
girl, and myself--in the glare of the drawing-room lights, when I heard
a groan, too faint for other ears to catch, followed by a light fall
from the window overlooking the garden. It was Felix. He had been
watching us, had seen my love, heard me talk of marriage, and must now
be in the grounds in open frenzy, or secret satisfaction, it was hard to
tell which. Determined to know, determined to speak, I excused myself on
some hurried plea, and searched the paths he knew as well as I. At last
I came upon him. He was standing near an old dial, where he had more
than once seen Eva and me together. He was very pale, deathly pale, it
seemed to me, in the faint starlight shining upon that open place; but
he greeted me as usual very quietly and with no surprise, almost, in
fact, as if he knew I would recognize his presence and follow him.
"You are playing your rôle well," said he; "too well. What was that I
heard about your marrying?"
The time had come. I was determined to meet it with a man's courage. But
I found it hard. Felix is no easy man to cross, even in small things,
and this thing is his life, nay, more--his past, present, and future
existence.
I do not know who spoke first. There was some stammering, a few broken
words; then I heard myself saying distinctly, and with a certain hard
emphasis born of the restraint I put upon myself:
"I love her! I want to marry her. You must allow this. Then----"
I could not proceed. I felt the shock he had received almost as if it
had been communicated to me by contact. Something that was not of the
earth seemed to pass between us, and I remember raising my hand as if to
shield my face. And then, whether it was the blowing aside of some
branches which kept the moonlight from us, or because my eyesight was
made clearer by my emotion, I caught one glimpse of his face and became
conscious of a great suffering, which at first seemed the wrenching of
my own heart, but in another moment impressed itself upon me as that of
his, Felix's.
I stood appalled.
My weakness had uprooted the one hope of his life, or so I thought; and
that he expressed this by silence made my heart yearn toward him for the
first time since I recognized him as my brother. I tried to stammer some
excuse. I was glad when the darkness fell again, for the sight of his
bowed head and set features was insupportable to me. It seemed to make
it easier for me to talk; for me to dilate upon the purity, the goodness
which had robbed me of my heart in spite of myself. My heart! It seemed
a strange word to pass between us two in reference to a Poindexter, but
it was the only one capable of expressing the feeling I had for this
young girl. At last, driven to frenzy by his continued silence, which
had something strangely moving in it, I cried:
"You have never loved a woman, Felix. You do not know what the passion
is when it seizes upon a man jaded with the hollow pleasures of an
irresponsible life. You cannot judge; therefore you cannot excuse. You
are made of iron----"
"Hush!" It was the first word he had spoken since I had opened my heart
to him. "You do not know what you are saying, Thomas. Like all egotists,
you think yourself alone in experience and suffering. Will you think so
when I tell you that there was a time in my life when I did not sleep
for weeks; when the earth, the air, yes, and the heavens were full of
nothing but her name, her face, her voice? When to have held her in my
arms, to have breathed into her ear one word of love, to have felt her
cheek fall against mine in confidence, in passion, in hope, would have
been to me the heaven which would have driven the devils from my soul
forever? Thomas, will you believe I do not know the uttermost of all you
are experiencing, when I here declare to you that there has been an hour
in my life when, if I had felt she could have been brought to love me, I
would have sacrificed Evelyn, my own soul, our father's hope, John
Poindexter's punishment, and become the weak thing you are to-day, and
gloried in it, I, Felix Cadwalader, the man of iron, who has never been
known to falter? But, Thomas, I overcame that feeling. I crushed down
that love, and I call upon you to do the same. You may marry her,
but----"
What stopped him? His own heart or my own impetuosity? Both, perhaps,
for at that moment I fell at his feet, and seizing his hand, kissed it
as I might a woman's. He seemed to grow cold and stiff under this
embrace, which showed both the delirium I was laboring under and the
relief I had gotten from his words. When he withdrew his hand, I feel
that my doom was about to be spoken, and I was not wrong. It came in
these words:
"Thomas, I have yielded to your importunity and granted you the
satisfaction which under the same circumstances I would have denied
myself. But it has not made me less hard toward you; indeed, the steel
with which you say my heart is bound seems tightening about it, as if
the momentary weakness in which I have indulged called for revenge.
Thomas, go on your way; make the girl your wife--I had rather you would,
since she is--what she is--but after she has taken your name, after she
believes herself secure in her honorable position and your love, then
you are to remember our compact and your oath--back upon John
Poindexter's care she is to be thrown, shortly, curtly, without
explanation or excuse; and if it costs you your life, you are to stand
firm in this attitude, using but one weapon in the struggle which may
open between you and her father, and that is, your name of Cadwalader.
You will not need any other. Thomas, do you swear to this? Or must I
direct my own power against Eva Poindexter, and, by telling her your
motive in courting her, make her hate you forever?"
"I will swear," I cried, overpowered by the alternative with which he
threatened me. "Give me the bliss of calling her mine, and I will follow
your wishes in all that concerns us thereafter."
"You will?" There was a sinister tone in this ejaculation that gave a
shock to my momentary complacency. But we are so made that an
anticipated evil affects us less than an immediate one; and remembering
that weeks must yet elapse, during which he or John Poindexter or even
myself might die, I said nothing, and he went icily on:
"I give you two months, alone and untrammelled. Then you are to bring
your bride to my house, there to hear my final decision. There is to be
no departure from this course. I shall expect you, Thomas; you and her.
You can say that you are going to make her acquainted with your
brother."
"I will be there," I murmured, feeling a greater oppression than when I
took the oath at my father's death-bed. "I will be there."
There was no answer. While I was repeating those four words, Felix
vanished.
* * * * *
LETTER XI.
DEAR FELIX:
Have a fresh draft made. I need cigars, clothes, and--a wedding ring.
But no, let me stop short there. We will be married without one, unless
you force it upon us. Eva's color is blue.
Very truly, Thomas.
ENTRY XVII.
To-day I wrote again to Felix. He is at home, must be, for I have
neither seen nor felt his presence since that fateful night. What did I
write? I don't remember. I seem to be living in a dream. Everything is
confused about me but Eva's face, Eva's smile. They are blissfully
clear. Sometimes I wish they were not. Were they confused amid these
shadows, I might have stronger hope of keeping my word to Felix. Now, I
shall never keep it. Eva once my wife, separation between us will become
impossible. John Poindexter is ill.
* * * * *
LETTER XII.
DEAR FELIX:
Congratulations: visits from my neighbors; all the éclat we could wish
or a true lover hate. The ring you sent fits as if made for her. I am
called in all directions by a thousand duties. I am on exhibition, and
every one's curiosity must be satisfied.
In haste, THOMAS.
ENTRY XVIII.
The wedding is postponed. John Poindexter is very ill. Pray God, Felix
hears nothing of this. He would come here; he would confront his enemy
on his bed of sickness. He would denounce him, and Eva would be lost to
me.
* * * * *
LETTER XIII.
DEAR FELIX:
Eva is not pleased with the arrangements which have been made for our
wedding. John Poindexter likes show; she does not. Which will carry the
day?
Yours aff., THOMAS.
ENTRY XIX.
Mr. Poindexter is better, but our plans will have to be altered. We now
think we will be married quietly, possibly in New York.
* * * * *
LETTER XIV.
DEAR FELIX:
A compromise has been effected. The wedding will be a quiet one, but not
celebrated here. As you cannot wish to attend it, I will not mention the
place or hour of my marriage, only say that on September 27th at 4
P. M. you may expect my wife and myself at your house.
Aff., THOMAS.
ENTRY XX.
We have decided to be married in New York. Mr. Poindexter needs the
change, and Eva and I are delighted at the prospect of a private
wedding. Then we will be near Felix, but not to subject ourselves to his
will. Oh, no!
* * * * *
ENTRY XXI.
Married! She is mine. And now to confront Felix with my determination to
hold on to my happiness. How I love her, and how I pity him! John
Poindexter's wickedness is forgotten, Evelyn but a fading memory. The
whole world seems to hold but three persons--Eva, Felix, and myself. How
will it end? We meet at his home to-morrow.
CHAPTER IV.
FELIX.
Meanwhile there was another secret struggle going on in the depth of a
nature from which all sympathy was excluded both by the temperament of
the person concerned and the circumstances surrounding him.
I can but hint at it. Some tragedies lie beyond the ken of man, and this
one we can but gather from stray scraps of torn-up letters addressed to
no one and betraying their authorship only through the writer's hand.
They were found long after the mystery of Felix Cadwalader's death had
been fully accounted for, tucked away under the flooring of Bartow's
room. Where or how procured by him, who can tell?
* * * * *
"Madness!
"I have seen Eva Poindexter again, and heaven and hell have contended
for me ever since. Eva! Eva! the girl I thought of only as our prey. The
girl I have given to my brother. She is too lovely for him: she is too
lovely for any man unless it be one who has never before thrilled to any
woman's voice, or seen a face that could move his passions or awaken his
affection. Is it love I feel? Can I, Felix, who have had but one
thought, known but one enthusiasm, retain in this breast of iron a spot
however secret, however small, which any woman, least of all his
daughter, could reach? Never! I am the prey of frenzy or the butt of
devils. Yet only the inhabitants of a more celestial sphere brighten
around me when I think of those half-raised eyes, those delicately
parted lips, so devoid of guile, that innocent bearing, and the divine
tenderness, mingled with strength, by which she commands admiration and
awakens love. I must fly. I must never see her again. Thomas's purpose
is steady. He must never see that mine rocks like an idol smitten by a
thunderbolt.
"If Thomas had not been reared in Paris, he too--But I am the only weak
one. Curses on my----
"Did I say I would fly? I cannot, not yet. One more glimpse of her face,
if only to satisfy myself that I have reason for this madness. Perhaps I
was but startled yesterday to find a celestial loveliness where I
expected to encounter pallid inanity. If my emotion is due to my own
weakness rather than to her superiority, I had better recognize my folly
before it proves my destruction.
I will stay and----
Thomas will not, shall not----
dexter's daughter----
hate, hate for Thom----
"My self-esteem is restored. I have seen her again--him--they were
together--there was true love in his eye--how could I expect him not to
love her--and I was able to hide my anguish and impose his duty on him.
She loves him--or he thinks so--and the work goes on. But I will not
stay to watch its accomplishment. No, no.
"I told him my story to-night, under the guise of a past experience. Oh,
the devils must laugh at us men! They have reason to. Sometimes I wonder
if my father in the clearness of his new vision does not join them in
their mirth.
"Home with my unhappy secret! Home, where nothing comes to distract me
from my gnawing griefs and almost intolerable thoughts. I walk the
floors. I cry aloud her name. I cry it even under the portrait of
Evelyn. There are moments when I am tempted to write to Thomas--to
forbid him----
"Eva! Eva! Eva! Every fibre in my miserable body utters the one word.
But no man shall ever know. Thomas shall never know how the thought of
her fills my days and nights, making my life a torment and the
future----
"I wait for his letters (scanty they are and cold) as the doomed
criminal awaits his executioner. Does she really love him? Or will that
exquisite, that soulful nature call for a stronger mate, a more
concentrated temperament, a--a----
"I thought I saw in one of my dark hours my father rising up from his
grave to curse me. Oh! he might curse on if----
"What have I said about no man knowing? Bartow knows. In his dumbness,
his deafness, he has surprised my secret, and shows that he has done so
by his peering looks, his dissatisfied ways, and a jealousy at which I
could shout aloud in mirth, if I were not more tempted to shriek aloud
in torment. A dumb serving-man, picked up I have almost forgotten where,
jealous of my weakness for John Poindexter's daughter! He was never
jealous of my feeling for Evelyn. Yet till the day I dared fate by
seeking out and looking for the second time upon the woman whose charms
I had scorned, her name often resounded through these rooms, and my eyes
dwelt upon but one spot, and that was where her picture hangs in the
woeful beauty which has become my reproach.
"I have had a great surprise. The starling, which has been taught to
murmur Evelyn's name, to-day shrieked out, 'Eva! Eva!' My first impulse
was to wring its neck, my next to take it from its cage and hide it in
my bosom. But I did neither. I am still a man.
"Bartow will wring that bird's neck if I do not. This morning I caught
him with his hand on the cage and a murderous light in his eye, which I
had no difficulty in understanding. Yet he cannot hear the word the
wretched starling murmurs. He only knows it is a word, a name, and he is
determined to suppress it. Shall I string the cage up out of this old
fellow's reach? His deafness, his inability to communicate with others,
the exactness with which he obeys my commands as given him by my colored
slides, his attention to my every wish, consequent upon his almost
animal love for my person, are necessary to me now, while the bird--Ah!
there it goes again, 'Eva! Eva!'
"Is it hate or love I feel, abhorrence or passion? Love would seek to
save, but I have no thought of saving her, since she has acknowledged
her love for Thomas, and since he--Oh, it is not now for Evelyn's sake I
plan revenge, but for my own! These nights and days of torture--the
revelation I have had of my own nature--the consent I was forced to give
to a marriage which means bliss to them and anguish beyond measure to
me--all this calls for vengeance, and they will not escape, these two. I
have laid my plans deep. I have provided for every contingency. It has
taken time, thought, money. But the result is good. If they cross the
threshold of my circular study, they must consent to my will or perish
here, and I with them. Oh, they shall never live and be happy! Thomas
need not think it. John Poindexter need not think it! I might have
forgotten the oath made on my father's crossed arms, but I will never
forget the immeasurable griefs of these past months or the humiliation
they have brought me. My own weakness is to be avenged--my unheard-of,
my intolerable weakness. Remember Evelyn? Remember Felix! Ah, again!
Eva! Eva! Eva!"
CHAPTER V.
WHY THE IRON SLIDE REMAINED STATIONARY.
The rest must be told in Thomas's own words, as it forms the chief part
of the confession he made before the detectives:
According to my promise, I took my young wife to Felix's house on the
day and at the hour proposed. We went on foot, for it was not far from
the hotel where we were then staying, and were received at the door by
an old servant who I had been warned could neither speak nor hear. At
sight of him and the dim, old-fashioned hall stretching out in
aristocratic gloom before us, Eva turned pale and cast me an inquiring
look. But I reassured her with a smile that most certainly contradicted
my own secret dread of the interview before us, and taking her on my
arm, followed the old man down the hall, past the open drawing-room door
(where I certainly thought we should pause), into a room whose plain
appearance made me frown, till Bartow, as I have since heard him called,
threw aside the portière at one end and introduced us into my brother's
study, which at that moment looked like fairyland, or would have, if
Felix, who was its sole occupant, had not immediately drawn our
attention to himself by the remarkable force of his personality, never
so impressive as at that moment.
Eva, to whom I had said little of this brother, certainly nothing which
would lead her to anticipate seeing either so handsome a man or one of
such mental poise and imposing character, looked frightened and a trifle
awe-struck. But she advanced quite bravely toward him, and at my
introduction smiled with such an inviting grace that I secretly expected
to see him more or less disarmed by it.
And perhaps he was, for his already pale features turned waxy in the
yellow glare cast by the odd lantern over our heads, and the hand he had
raised in mechanical greeting fell heavily, and he could barely stammer
out some words of welcome. These would have seemed quite inadequate to
the occasion if his eyes which were fixed on her face, had not betrayed
the fact that he was not without feeling, though she little realized the
nature of that feeling or how her very life (for happiness is life) was
trembling in the balance under that indomitable will.
I who did know--or thought I did--cast him an imploring glance, and,
saying that I had some explanations to make, asked if Mrs. Adams might
not rest here while we had a few words apart.
He answered me with a strange look. Did he feel the revolt in my tone
and understand then as well as afterward what the nature of my
compliance had been? I shall never know. I only know that he stopped
fumbling with some small object on the table before him, and, bowing
with a sarcastic grace that made me for the first time in my intercourse
with him feel myself his inferior, even in size, led the way to a small
door I had failed to notice up to this moment.
"Your wife will find it more comfortable here," he observed, with slow
pauses in his speech that showed great, but repressed, excitement. And
he opened the door into what had the appearance of a small but elegant
sleeping-apartment. "What we have to say cannot take long. Mrs. Adams
will not find the wait tedious."
"No," she smiled, with a natural laugh, born, as I dare hope, of her
perfect happiness. Yet she could not but have considered the proceeding
strange, and my manner, as well as his, scarcely what might be expected
from a bridegroom introducing his bride to his only relative.
"I will call you--" I began, but the vision of her dimpled face above
the great cluster of roses she carried made me forget to complete my
sentence, and the door closed, and I found myself face to face with
Felix.
He was breathing easier, and his manner seemed more natural now that we
were alone, yet he did not speak, but cast a strange, if not inquiring,
glance about the room (the weirdest of apartments, as you all well
know), and seeming satisfied with what he saw, why I could not tell, led
the way up to the large table which from the first had appeared to exert
a sort of uncanny magnetism upon him, saying:
"Come further away. I need air, breathing place in this close room, and
so must you. Besides, why should she hear what we have to say? She will
know the worst soon enough. She seems a gentle-hearted woman."
"An angel!" I began, but he stopped me with an imperious gesture.
"We will not discuss your wi--Mrs. Adams," he protested. "Where is John
Poindexter?"
"At the hotel," I rejoined. "Or possibly he has returned home. I no
longer take account of his existence. Felix, I shall never leave my
wife. I had rather prove recreant to the oath I took before I realized
the worth of the woman whose happiness I vowed to destroy. This is what
I have come to tell you. Make it easy for me, Felix. You are a man who
has loved and suffered. Let us bury the past; let us----"
Had I hoped I could move him? Perhaps some such child's notion had
influenced me up to this moment. But as these words left my lips, nay,
before I had stumbled through them, I perceived by the set look of his
features, which were as if cast in bronze, that I might falter, but that
he was firm as ever, firmer, it seemed to me, and less easy to be
entreated.
Yet what of that? At the worst, what had I to fear? A struggle which
might involve Eva in bitter unpleasantness and me in the loss of a
fortune I had come to regard almost as my own. But these were petty
considerations. Eva must know sooner or later my real name and the story
of her father's guilt. Why not now? And if we must start life poor, it
was yet life, while a separation from her----
Meanwhile Felix had spoken, and in language I was least prepared to
hear.
"I anticipated this. From the moment you pleaded with me for the
privilege of marrying her, I have looked forward to this outcome and
provided against it. Weakness on the part of her bridegroom was to be
expected; I have, therefore, steeled myself to meet the emergency; for
your oath must be kept!"
Crushed by the tone in which these words were uttered, a tone that
evinced power against which any ordinary struggle would end in failure,
I cast my eyes about the room in imitation of what I had seen him do a
few minutes before. There was nothing within sight calculated to awaken
distrust, and yet a feeling of distrust (the first I had really felt)
had come with the look he had thrown above and around the mosque-like
interior of the room he called his study. Was it the calm confidence he
showed, or the weirdness of finding myself amid Oriental splendors and
under the influence of night effects in high day and within sound of the
clanging street cars and all the accompanying bustle of every-day
traffic? It is hard to say; but from this moment on I found myself
affected by a vague affright, not on my own account, but on hers whose
voice we could plainly hear humming a gay tune in the adjoining
apartment. But I was resolved to suppress all betrayal of uneasiness. I
even smiled, though I felt the eyes of Evelyn's pictured countenance
upon me; Evelyn's, whose portrait I had never lost sight of from the
moment of entering the room, though I had not given it a direct look and
now stood with my back to it. Felix, who faced it, but who did not raise
his eyes to it, waited a moment for my response, and finding that my
words halted, said again:
"That oath must be kept!"
This time I found words with which to answer. "Impossible!" I burst out,
flinging doubt, fear, hesitancy, everything I had hitherto trembled at
to the winds. "It was in my nature to take it, worked upon as I was by
family affection, the awfulness of our father's approaching death, and a
thousand uncanny influences all carefully measured and prepared for this
end. But it is not in my nature to keep it after four months of natural
living in the companionship of a man thirty years removed from his
guilt, and of his guileless and wholly innocent daughter. And you cannot
drive me to it, Felix. No man can force another to abandon his own wife
because of a wicked oath taken long before he knew her. If you think
your money----"
"Money?" he cried, with a contempt that did justice to my
disinterestedness as well as his own. "I had forgotten I had it. No,
Thomas, I should never weigh money against the happiness of living with
such a woman as your wife appears to be. But her life I might. Carry out
your threat; forget to pay John Poindexter the debt we owe him, and the
matter will assume a seriousness for which you are doubtless poorly
prepared. A daughter dead in her honeymoon will be almost as great a
grief to him as a dishonored one. And either dead or dishonored he must
find her, when he comes here in search of the child he cannot long
forget. Which shall it be? Speak!"
Was I dreaming? Was this Felix? Was this myself? And was it in my ears
these words were poured?
With a spring I reached his side where he stood close against the table,
and groaned rather than shrieked the words:
"You would not kill her! You do not meditate a crime of blood--here--on
her--the innocent--the good----"
"No," he said; "it will be you who will do that. You who will not wish
to see her languish--suffer--go mad--Thomas, I am not the raving being
you take me for. I am merely a keeper of oaths. Nay, I am more. I have
talents, skill. The house in which you find yourself is proof of this.
This room--see, it has no outlet save those windows, scarcely if at all
perceptible to you, above our heads, and that opening shielded now by a
simple curtain, but which in an instant, without my moving from this
place, I can so hermetically seal that no man, save he be armed with
crowbar and pickaxe, could enter here, even if man could know of our
imprisonment, in a house soon to be closed from top to bottom by my
departing servant."
"May God protect us!" fell from my lips, as, stiff with horror, I let my
eyes travel from his determined face, first to the windows high over my
head and then to the opening of the door, which, though but a few steps
from where I stood, was as far as possible from the room into which my
darling had been induced to enter.
Felix, watching me, uttered his explanations as calmly as if the matter
were one of every-day significance. "You are looking for the windows,"
he remarked. "They are behind those goblin faces you see outlined on the
tapestries under the ceiling. As for the door, if you had looked to the
left when you entered, you would have detected the edge of a huge steel
plate hanging flush with the casing. This plate can be made to slide
across that opening in an instant just by the touch of my hand on this
button. This done, no power save such as I have mentioned can move it
back again, not even my own. I have forces at my command for sending it
forward, but none for returning it to its place. Do you doubt my
mechanical skill or the perfection of the electrical apparatus I have
caused to be placed here? You need not, Thomas; nor need you doubt the
will that has only to exert itself for an instant to--Shall I press the
button, brother?"
"No, no!" I shouted in a frenzy, caused rather by my knowledge of the
nature of this man than any especial threat apparent in his voice or
gesture. "Let me think; let me know more fully what your requirements
are--what she must suffer if I consent--and what I."
He let his hand slip back, that smooth white hand which I had more than
once surveyed in admiration. Then he smiled.
"I knew you would not be foolish," he said. "Life has its charms even
for hermits like me; and for a _beau garçon_ such as you are----"
"Hush!" I interposed, maddened into daring his full anger. "It is not my
life I am buying, but hers, possibly yours; for it seems you have
planned to perish with us. Is it not so?"
"Certainly," was his cold reply. "Am I an assassin? Would you expect me
to live, knowing you to be perishing?"
I stared aghast. Such resolve, such sacrifice of self to an idea was
beyond my comprehension.
"Why--what?" I stammered. "Why kill us, why kill yourself----"
The answer overwhelmed me.
"Remember Evelyn!" shrilled a voice, and I paused, struck dumb with a
superstitious horror I had never believed myself capable of
experiencing. For it was not Felix who spoke, neither was it any
utterance of my own aroused conscience. Muffled, strange, and startling
it came from above, from the hollow spaces of that high vault lit with
the golden glow that henceforth can have but one meaning for me--death.
"What is it?" I asked. "Another of your mechanical contrivances?"
He smiled; I had rather he had frowned.
"Not exactly. A favorite bird, a starling. Alas! he but repeats what he
has heard echoed through the solitude of these rooms. I thought I had
smothered him up sufficiently to insure his silence during this
interview. But he is a self-willed bird, and seems disposed to defy the
wrappings I have bound around him; which fact warns me to be speedy and
hasten our explanations. Thomas, this is what I require: John
Poindexter--you do not know where he is at this hour, but I do--received
a telegram but now, which, if he is a man at all, will bring him to this
house in a half-hour or so from the present moment. It was sent in your
name, and in it you informed him that matters had arisen which demanded
his immediate attention; that you were on your way to your brother's
(giving him this address), where, if you found entrance, you would await
his presence in a room called the study; but that--and here you will see
how his coming will not aid us if that steel plate is once started on
its course--if the possible should occur and your brother should be
absent from home, then he was to await a message from you at the Plaza.
The appearance of the house would inform him whether he would find you
and Eva within; or so I telegraphed him in your name.
"Thomas, if Bartow fulfils my instructions--and I have never know him to
fail me--he will pass down these stairs and out of this house in just
five minutes. As he is bound on a long-promised journey, and as he
expects me to leave the house immediately after him, he has drawn every
shade and fastened every lock. Consequently, on his exit, the house will
become a tomb, to which, just two weeks from to-day, John Poindexter
will be called again, and in words which will lead to a demolition which
will disclose--what? Let us not forestall the future, our horrible
future, by inquiring. But Thomas, shall Bartow go? Shall I not by signs
he comprehends more readily than other men comprehend speech indicate to
him on his downward passage to the street that I wish him to wait and
open the door to the man whom we have promised to overwhelm in his hour
of satisfaction and pride? You have only to write a line--see! I have
made a copy of the words you must use, lest your self-command should be
too severely taxed. These words left on this table for his
inspection--for you must go and Eva remain--will tell him all he needs
to know from you. The rest can come from my lips after he has read the
signature, which in itself will confound him and prepare the way for
what I have to add. Have you anything to say against this plan?
Anything, I mean, beyond what you have hitherto urged? Anything that I
will consider or which will prevent my finger from pressing the button
on which it rests?"
I took up the paper. It was lying on the table, where it had evidently
been inscribed simultaneously with or just before our entrance into the
house, and slowly read the few lines I saw written upon it. You know
them, but they will acquire a new significance from your present
understanding of their purpose and intent:
I return you back your daughter. Neither she nor you will ever see
me again. Remember Evelyn!
AMOS'S SON.
"You wish me to sign these words, to put them into my own handwriting,
and so to make them mine? Mine!" I repeated.
"Yes, and to leave them here on this table for him to see when he
enters. He might not believe any mere statement from me in regard to
your intentions."
I was filled with horror. Love, life, human hopes, the world's
friendships--all the possibilities of existence, swept in one
concentrated flood of thought and feeling through my outraged
consciousness, and I knew I could never put my name to such a blasphemy
of all that was sacred to man's soul. Tossing the paper in his face, I
cried:
"You have gone too far! Better her death, better mine, better the
destruction of us all, than such dishonor to the purest thing heaven
ever made. I refuse, Felix--I refuse. And may God have mercy on us all!"
The moment was ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where
it hovered above the fatal button; saw--though only in imagination as
yet--the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the
lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man,
when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in
terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from
the room in which we had placed her.
That moment a blood-red glow took the place of the sickly yellow which
had hitherto filled every recess of this weird apartment. But I scarcely
noticed the change, save as it affected her pallor and gave to her
cheeks the color that was lacking in the roses at her belt.
Fearless and sweet as in the hour when she first told me that she loved
me, she approached and stood before us.
"What is this?" she cried. "I have heard words that sound more like the
utterances of some horrid dream than the talk of men and brothers. What
does it mean, Thomas? What does it mean, Mr. ----"
"Cadwalader," announced Felix, dropping his eyes from her face, but
changing not a whit his features or posture.
"Cadwalader?" The name was not to her what it was to her father.
"Cadwalader? I have heard that name in my father's house; it was
Evelyn's name, the Evelyn who----"
"Whom you see painted there over your head," finished Felix, "my sister,
Thomas's sister--the girl whom your father--but I spare you, child
though you be of a man who spared nothing. From your husband you may
learn why a Cadwalader can never find his happiness with a Poindexter.
Why thirty or more years after that young girl's death, you who were not
then born are given at this hour the choice between death and dishonor.
I allow you just five minutes in which to listen. After that you will
let me know your joint decision. Only you must make your talk where you
stand. A step taken by either of you to right or left, and Thomas knows
what will follow."
Five minutes, with such a justification to make, and such a decision to
arrive at! I felt my head swim, my tongue refuse its office, and stood
dumb and helpless before her till the sight of her dear eyes raised in
speechless trust to mine flooded me with a sense of triumph amid all the
ghastly terrors of the moment, and I broke out in a tumult of speech, in
excuses, explanations, all that comes to one in a more than mortal
crisis.
She listened, catching my meaning rather from my looks than my words.
Then as the minutes fled and my brother raised a warning hand, she
turned toward him, and said:
"You are in earnest? We must separate in shame or perish in this
prison-house with you?"
His answer was mere repetition, mechanical, but firm:
"You have said it. You have but one minute more, madam."
She shrank, and all her powers seemed leaving her, then a reaction came,
and a flaming angel stood where but a moment before the most delicate of
women weakly faltered; and giving me a look to see if I had the courage
or the will to lift my hand against my own flesh and blood (alas for us
both! I did not understand her) caught up an old Turkish dagger lying
only too ready to her hand, and plunged it with one sideways thrust into
his side, crying:
"We cannot part, we cannot die, we are too young, too happy!"
It was sudden; the birth of purpose in her so unexpected and so rapid
that Felix, the ready, who was prepared for all contingencies, for the
least movement or suggestion of escape, faltered and pressed, not the
fatal button, but his heart.
One impulsive act on the part of a woman had overthrown all the
fine-spun plans of the subtlest spirit that ever attempted to work its
will in the face of God and man.
But I did not think of this then; I did not even bestow a thought upon
the narrowness of our escape, or the price which the darling of my heart
might be called upon to pay for this supreme act of self-defence. My
mind, my heart, my interest were with Felix, in whom the nearness of
death had called up all that was strongest and most commanding in his
strong and commanding spirit.
Though struck to the heart, he had not fallen. It was as if the will
which had sustained him through thirty years of mental torture held him
erect still, that he might give her, Eva, one look, the like of which I
had never seen on mortal face, and which will never leave my heart or
hers until we die. Then as he saw her sink shudderingly down and the
delicate woman reappear in her pallid and shrunken figure, he turned his
eyes on me and I saw,--good God!--a tear well up from those orbs of
stone and fall slowly down his cheek, fast growing hollow under the
stroke of death.
"Eva! Eva! I love Eva!" shrilled the voice which once before had
startled me from the hollow vault above.
Felix heard, and a smile faint as the failing rush of blood through his
veins moved his lips and brought a revelation to my soul. He, too, loved
Eva!
When he saw I knew, the will which had kept him on his feet gave way,
and he sank to the floor murmuring:
"Take her away! I forgive. Save! Save! She did not know I loved her."
Eva, aghast, staring with set eyes at her work, had not moved from her
crouching posture. But when she saw that speaking head fall back, the
fine limbs settle into the repose of death, a shock went through her
which I thought would never leave her reason unimpaired.
"I've killed him!" she murmured. "I've killed him!" and looking wildly
about, her eyes fell on the cross that hung behind us on the wall. It
seemed to remind her that Felix was a Catholic. "Bring it!" she gasped.
"Let him feel it on his breast. It may bring him peace--hope."
As I rushed to do her bidding, she fell in a heap on the floor.
"Save!" came again from the lips we thought closed forever in death. And
realizing at the words both her danger and the necessity of her not
opening her eyes again upon this scene, I laid the cross in his arms,
and catching her up from the floor, ran with her out of the house. But
no sooner had I caught sight of the busy street and the stream of
humanity passing before us, than I awoke to an instant recognition of
our peril. Setting my wife down, I commanded life back into her limbs by
the force of my own energy, and then dragging her down the steps,
mingled with the crowd, encouraging her, breathing for her, living in
her till I got her into a carriage and we drove away.
For the silence we have maintained from that time to this you must not
blame Mrs. Adams. When she came to herself--which was not for days--she
manifested the greatest desire to proclaim her act and assume its
responsibility. But I would not have it. I loved her too dearly to see
her name bandied about in the papers; and when her father was taken into
our confidence, he was equally peremptory in enjoining silence, and
shared with me the watch I now felt bound to keep over her movements.
But alas! His was the peremptoriness of pride rather than love. John
Poindexter has no more heart for his daughter than he had for his wife
or that long-forgotten child from whose grave this tragedy has sprung.
Had Felix triumphed he would never have wrung the heart of this man. As
he once said, when a man cares for nothing and nobody, not even for
himself, it is useless to curse him.
As for Felix himself, judge him not, when you realize, as you now must,
that his last conscious act was to reach for and put in his mouth the
paper which connected Eva with his death. At the moment of death his
thought was to save, not to avenge. And this after her hand had struck
him.
CHAPTER VI.
ANSWERED.
A silence more or less surcharged with emotion followed this final
appeal. Then, while the various auditors of this remarkable history
whispered together and Thomas Adams turned in love and anxiety toward
his wife, the inspector handed back to Mr. Gryce the memorandum he had
received from him.
It presented the following appearance:
[Sidenote: Answered]
1. Why a woman who was calm enough to stop and arrange her hair during
the beginning of an interview should be wrought up to such a pitch of
frenzy and exasperation before it was over as to kill with her own hand
a man she had evidently had no previous grudge against. (Remember the
comb found on the floor of Mr. Adams's bedroom.)
[Sidenote: Answered]
2. What was the meaning of the following words, written just previous to
this interview by the man thus killed: "I return you your daughter.
Neither you nor she will ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!"
[Sidenote: Answered]
3. Why was the pronoun "I" used in this communication? What position did
Mr. Felix Adams hold toward this young girl qualifying him to make use
of such language after her marriage to his brother?
[Sidenote: Answered]
4. And having used it, why did he, upon being attacked by her, attempt
to swallow the paper upon which he had written these words, actually
dying with it clinched between his teeth?
[Sidenote: Answered]
5. If he was killed in anger and died as monsters do (her own word), why
did his face show sorrow rather than hate, and a determination as far as
possible removed from the rush of over-whelming emotions likely to
follow the reception of a mortal blow from the hand of an unexpected
antagonist?
[Sidenote: Answered]
6. Why, if he had strength to seize the above-mentioned paper and convey
it to his lips, did he not use that strength in turning on a light
calculated to bring him assistance, instead of leaving blazing the
crimson glow which, according to the code of signals as now understood
by us, means: "Nothing more required just now. Keep away?"
[Sidenote: Answered]
7. What was the meaning of the huge steel plate found between the
casings of the doorway, and why did it remain at rest within its socket
at this, the culminating, moment of his life?
[Sidenote: Answered]
8. An explanation of how old Poindexter came to appear on the scene so
soon after the event. His words as overheard were: "It is Amos' son, not
Amos!" Did he not know whom he was to meet in this house? Was the
condition of the man lying before him with a cross on his bosom and a
dagger in his heart less of a surprise to him than the personality of
the victim?
[Sidenote: Not Answered]
9. Remember the conclusions we have drawn from Bartow's pantomime. Mr.
Adams was killed by a left-handed thrust. Watch for an acknowledgment
that the young woman is left-handed, and do not forget that an
explanation is due why for so long a time she held her other arm
stretched out behind her.
[Sidenote: Answered]
10. Why did the bird whose chief cry is "Remember Evelyn!" sometimes
vary it with "Poor Eva! Lovely Eva! Who would strike Eva?" The story of
this tragedy, to be true, must show that Mr. Adams knew his brother's
bride both long and well.
[Sidenote: Answered]
11. If Bartow is, as we think, innocent of all connection with this
crime save as witness, why does he show such joy at its result? This may
not reasonably be expected to fall within the scope of Thomas Adams's
confession, but it should not be ignored by us. This deaf-and-dumb
servitor was driven mad by the fact which caused him joy. Why?[2]
[Footnote 2: It must be remembered that the scraps of writing in Felix's
hand had not yet been found by the police. The allusions in them to
Bartow show him to have been possessed by a jealousy which probably
turned to delight when he saw his master smitten down by the object of
that master's love and his own hatred. How he came to recognize in the
bride of another man the owner of the name he so often saw hovering on
the lips of his master, is a question to be answered by more astute
students of the laws of perception than myself. Probably he spent much
of his time at the loophole on the stairway, studying his master till he
understood his every gesture and expression.]
[Sidenote: Answered]
12. Notice the following schedule. It has been drawn up after repeated
experiments with Bartow and the various slides of the strange lamp which
cause so many different lights to shine out in Mr. Adams's study:
White light--Water wanted.
Green light--Overcoat and hat to be brought.
Blue light--Put back books on shelves.
Violet light--Arrange study for the night.
Yellow light--Watch for next light.
Red light--Nothing wanted; stay away.
The last was on at the final scene. Note if this fact can be explained
by Mr. Adams's account of the same.
* * * * *
Two paragraphs alone lacked complete explanation. The first, No. 9, was
important. The description of the stroke dealt by Mr. Adams's wife did
not account for this peculiar feature in Bartow's pantomime. Consulting
with the inspector, Mr. Gryce finally approached Mr. Adams and inquired
if he had strength to enact before them the blow as he had seen it dealt
by his wife.
The startled young man looked the question he dared not ask. In common
with others, he knew that Bartow had made some characteristic gestures
in endeavoring to describe this crime, but he did not know what they
were, as this especial bit of information had been carefully held back
by the police. He, therefore, did not respond hastily to the suggestion
made him, but thought intently for a moment before he thrust out his
left hand and caught up some article or other from the inspector's table
and made a lunge with it across his body into an imaginary victim at his
right. Then he consulted the faces about him with inexpressible anxiety.
He found little encouragement in their aspect.
"You would make your wife out left-handed," suggested Mr. Gryce. "Now I
have been watching her ever since she came into this place, and I have
seen no evidence of this."
"She is not left-handed, but she thrust with her left hand, because her
right was fast held in mine. I had seized her instinctively as she
bounded forward for the weapon, and the convulsive clutch of our two
hands was not loosed till the horror of her act made her faint, and she
fell away from me to the floor crying: 'Tear down the cross and lay it
on your brother's breast. I would at least see him die the death of a
Christian.'"
Mr. Gryce glanced at the inspector with an air of great relief. The
mystery of the constrained attitude of the right hand which made
Bartow's pantomime so remarkable was now naturally explained, and taking
up the blue pencil which the inspector had laid down, he wrote, with a
smile, a very decided "answered" across paragraph No. 9.
CHAPTER VII.
LAST WORDS.
A few minutes later Mr. Gryce was to be seen in the outer room, gazing
curiously at the various persons there collected. He was seeking an
answer to a question that was still disturbing his mind, and hoped to
find it there. He was not disappointed. For in a quiet corner he
encountered the amiable form of Miss Butterworth, calmly awaiting the
result of an interference which she in all probability had been an
active agent in bringing about.
He approached and smilingly accused her of this. But she disclaimed the
fact with some heat.
"I was simply there," she explained. "When the crisis came, when this
young creature learned that her husband had left suddenly for New York
in the company of two men, then--why then, it became apparent to every
one that a woman should be at her side who understood her case and the
extremity in which she found herself. And I was that woman."
"You are always that woman," he gallantly replied, "if by the phrase you
mean being in the right place at the right time. So you are already
acquainted with Mrs. Adams's story?"
"Yes; the ravings of a moment told me she was the one who had handled
the dagger that slew Mr. Adams. Afterward, she was able to explain the
cause of what has seemed to us such a horrible crime. When I heard her
story, Mr. Gryce, I no longer hesitated either as to her duty or mine.
Do you think she will be called upon to answer for this blow? Will she
be tried, convicted?"
"Madam, there are not twelve men in the city so devoid of intelligence
as to apply the name of crime to an act which was so evidently one of
self-defence. No true bill will be found against young Mrs. Adams. Rest
easy."
The look of gloom disappeared from Miss Butterworth's eyes.
"Then I may return home in peace," she cried. "It has been a desperate
five hours for me, and I feel well shaken up. Will you escort me to my
carriage?"
Miss Butterworth did not look shaken up. Indeed, in Mr. Gryce's
judgment, she had never appeared more serene or more comfortable. But
she was certainly the best judge of her own condition; and after
satisfying herself that the object of her care was reviving under the
solicitous ministrations of her husband, she took the arm which Mr.
Gryce held out to her and proceeded to her carriage.
As he assisted her in, he asked a few questions about Mr. Poindexter.
"Why is not Mrs. Adams's father here? Did he allow his daughter to leave
him on such an errand as this without offering to accompany her?"
The answer was curtness itself:
"Mr. Poindexter is a man without heart. He came with us to New York, but
refused to follow us to Police Headquarters. Sir, you will find that the
united passions of three burning souls, and a revenge the most deeply
cherished of any I ever knew or heard of, have been thrown away on a man
who is positively unable to suffer. Do not mention old John Poindexter
to me. And now, if you will be so good, tell the coachman to drive me to
my home in Gramercy Park. I have put my finger in the police pie for the
last time, Mr. Gryce--positively for the last time." And she sank back
on the carriage cushions with an inexorable look, which, nevertheless,
did not quite conceal a quiet complacency which argued that she was not
altogether dissatisfied with herself or the result of her interference
in matters usually considered at variance with a refined woman's natural
instincts.
Mr. Gryce, in repressing a smile, bowed lower even than his wont, and,
under the shadow of this bow, the carriage drove off. As he walked
slowly back, he sighed. Was he wondering if a case of similar interest
would ever bring them together again in consultation?
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Circular Study, by Anna Katharine Green