CURRAN’S CRUELTY
PAULINE FULLER was both listless and restless. The quiet, secluded
home of Mary Malden was sanctuary indeed, and Pauline ran little or no
chance of being discovered there.
But now that she had had time to think matters over, she was not quite
sure she had been wise in coming. She had told kind-hearted Mary her
whole story, and Mary had sympathized and had coddled her and petted
her, all of which was balm to Pauline’s tortured heart.
Now three or four days had passed and the monotony of the place, though
restful and soothing, had begun to get on her nerves.
She wondered what Val was doing. What he was thinking of her. How
matters were progressing at Valhalla.
“Do you know,” she said to Mary, “sometimes I feel as if I must rush
right back there,--I’m so anxious about Val.”
“Better stay where you are,” said the practical Mary. “From what you’ve
told me of his ideas about divorce, I should think you’d never dare see
him again.”
“Perhaps he’d forgive it all,” said Pauline, hopefully.
“Perhaps he wouldn’t,” returned Mary. “No, my child, you did the most
scandalous thing I ever heard of,--to pass yourself off as a girl, when
you were a married and divorced woman. I wouldn’t have believed it of
you, Polly.”
“I know it was dreadful, but oh, Mary,--I was so young, and I was urged
into that marriage against my will. Almost nobody knew anything about
it. I was out in California two years, you see, and the whole courtship,
engagement, marriage and divorce all occurred within the first year.
So, when I did come back to New York, I tried to forget it,--I told no
one, not even Auntie,--she would have been so upset. And, you see, the
courts gave me back my maiden name,--so I just put that whole year out
of my mind,--and strove to forget it. And I did forget it, practically.
I know it was wrong to deceive Val, but--he is so dear,--and he is
so terribly opposed to divorce. I meant to tell him before we were
married, though,--” she broke off, and bowing her head in her hands,
she wept silently.
“There, there, dearie,” said the kindly Mary, “never mind
now, we’ll think out what’s best to do. But don’t go back to
Valhalla,--you’d--you’d be arrested for--for--you know--”
“For the murder of Hugh Curran? But I didn’t kill him, Mary.”
“Thank Heaven for that! Do you know, Polly, this is the first time
you’ve said that definitely. Can I believe you, dear?”
“Oh, yes, indeed you can. No, Mary, I was in his room that night, I did
take the watch, but I didn’t poison him.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I can’t, dear,--the mere thought of it all upsets me so. Just think,
I hadn’t thought of that man for nearly six years,--I mean, thought
of him coherently. If ever a suggestion of him came in my mind I
resolutely put it away from me. You know, I had no idea that Hugh
Curran was Hugh Dwyer.”
“You hadn’t?”
“Oh, no, indeed. I had never heard from or of Hugh Dwyer since I left
him at the time of the divorce--”
“Was he very dreadful to you, dear?”
“Awful! Horrible! Don’t ask me about that! The divorce was granted at
once,--an absolute decree and all that. Mary, _don’t_!”
“No, I’ll never mention it again. Go on, about this later time.”
“Well, I heard them talking about this author of detective stories,--I
never read them myself,--and I heard them say that Hugh Curran had
been a Moving Picture actor. But it all meant nothing to me. I never
connected that name with the name of Hugh Dwyer,--why should I?”
“Of course not, dearie. And then, Val invited him to the house?”
“Yes,--and it happened that when somebody asked Val what the man looked
like, just out of foolishness, Val described him as quite different
from the truth.”
“Why did he do that?”
“No reason but as a bit of fooling. Anyway, that made me think of
the coming guest as a total stranger, of course, and, Mary, when
he came,--and I saw him,--I almost fainted. Truly I did. I was
pouring coffee, and let the cup overflow while I struggled to keep my
composure. I think I only did keep up because I knew Hugh’s eye was on
me, and he would be rejoiced to see me collapse.”
“What a fiend he was!”
“Oh, yes, all of that. He had a diabolical way of tormenting any one,
under cover of utmost friendliness. So, first of all, he asked me to
walk in the garden with him,--alone. I shouldn’t have gone, but anyway,
Val forbade it, and Hugh subsided. Then later, he took a fiendish
delight in flinging out allusions that only I could understand. Why, he
even asked me straight out if I kept my bureau drawers in order,--that
had been a source of disagreement between us when we lived together. He
was a most untidy sort of person,--I mean about keeping things in their
places. And then,--when I wouldn’t seem to notice anything he said of
that sort, he asked if the name ‘Rosalie’ meant anything to anybody
present! He thought I’d betray myself then, but I didn’t. Rosalie or
Rosy is what he always called me because of my pink cheeks--which I
always had then.”
“And which you’ve never had since, you poor darling. Pauline, how you
have suffered! Surely you’ve atoned for anything you have ever done.”
“Oh, I hope so,--but Mary, I haven’t done anything wrong--except to
keep from Val the knowledge of my former marriage,--and I did that more
for his sake than for my own. Truly I did.”
“It was wrong, Pauline,--very wrong. But, go on, tell me the rest of
your story.”
“Then, he flashed his watch open once or twice, in such a way that I
couldn’t help seeing that my picture was in it. He used to have it
there,--I don’t know whether he carried it all these years or not.
And,--Mary, the worst of all, was the look of admiration he gave me
every chance he could get to do so, unobserved. I could have stood
better his hate, his fury, his revenge, even, than those glances of
admiration and apparent affection. As we said good-night, he managed to
whisper to me, ‘Come to my room at two o’clock.’ Mary, I didn’t dare
disobey,--and, too, I felt I had to see him alone,--and learn what
his intentions were. If he meant to expose me, I wanted it done all
at once,--not by that slow torture. If I could persuade him to keep
my secret, I meant to do so. Anyway my relations to Val, my hope of
happiness with him, all depended on that man’s attitude in the matter.
So,--I went to his room--at two o’clock.”
“I don’t blame you, dear. You had to do it.”
“Yes, I had to. And Mary, the whole trouble was that he had become
infatuated with me all over again! He was engaged to another girl, but
he told me he didn’t love her,--and he did love me,--and he begged me
to come back to him,--said I had grown more beautiful, more dear and
sweet, and he wanted me. He said, if he couldn’t have me,--no one else
should. He said he would tell Val the whole story, and as he well knew
Val’s feelings about divorce, he knew--and I knew,--that would break
off our engagement.
“He upbraided me fearfully for deceiving Val,--called me terrible
names, and then he would change to a wheedling love-making on his own
account. Finally, he threatened that unless I would promise to break
with Val and remarry him, he would not only tell the whole story of
our marriage, but would compromise me by saying I had come to his room
that night without invitation. Oh, he was a devil incarnate. And all
the time, suave and urbane as if he were proposing some casual plan.
Then he would suddenly break into protestations of passion and love for
me,--all of which I knew by heart, and they brought back the old days
that I have tried so hard to forget. Mary,--I was ready to kill either
him or myself,--and I didn’t care much which.”
“You didn’t do either?”
“I see you can’t believe me,--and I don’t wonder,--now that you know
what happened. No, I didn’t kill him,--though I confess there was
murder in my heart. And if I had had a weapon, I could have easily
brought myself to do it--oh, no, I don’t think I could, either. I’ve
crime enough on my shoulders, without adding murder to it.”
“No, Polly, if you didn’t kill him, you’ve no crime to regret. Your
deception of Val is wrong,--very wrong,--but not a crime. But Val knows
the truth of that, now,--and Pauline, don’t you suppose Val thinks you
killed Curran?”
“Maybe he does,--but, Mary, how could I kill him? What with?”
“Why, with the poison,--your choice of a method, as you’ve told me
yourself.”
“But I didn’t,” Pauline reiterated. “I became frightened at his wild
protestations of love and passion, and I simply ran out of the room.
I felt sure that for all his threats he wouldn’t follow me, and so, I
grabbed his watch as I fled, with a half-conscious idea of destroying
that picture. But when I reached my room, I was trembling so, and
so faint from nervous reaction, I hid the watch and fell on the bed
where I lay for hours just as I was. It was daybreak before I got up
and undressed and really went to bed. Then, Mary,--then imagine next
morning, learning that Hugh Dwyer was dead!”
“You were glad?”
“Glad faintly expresses it! I was freed from a dreadful danger, saved
from an awful fate. I was so glad I could have sung for very joy. I
daresay it was a sort of nervous hysteria, but it was all I could do to
preserve a decent calm. I tried not to lie to Val. He asked me straight
out if I had ever seen Hugh Curran before he came to the house. And I
said ‘No,’ for surely I had never met Hugh Curran before. Hugh Dwyer
was my persecutor. And, now, as you say, Mary, Val knows my story, and
others know it. I heard enough to know they were going to send a man
to Reno to learn the details of Dwyer’s marriage and divorce, and the
name of his wife. I knew, too, that that Detective Kinney had found the
watch in my room,--with my picture in it--oh, Mary, I couldn’t face
Val! Now, I almost wish I had,--maybe he would have stood by me,--maybe
I could have convinced him that I didn’t kill Curran.”
“Who do you suppose did, Pauline?”
“I can’t imagine,--nor can I see how it was done. I’ve thought over
it so much. How could any one have poisoned that man after I left his
room?”
“How long after?”
“A couple of hours, I should judge. The doctors calculated that he
died between four and five o’clock in the morning. I should think it
a suicide, but that I know he was too eager to live to--to punish
me,--or,--to marry me again. Nor can I think of any one who had any
motive to kill him. I feel sure now, it must have been some intruder
from outside,--maybe through the window,--though they say that was
impossible. Oh, dear, I wish you’d believe, Mary, that I didn’t kill
him.”
“I do believe it, Pauline,--at least, I’m trying to believe it. But if
you had done it, I’d think you were justified,--”
“No, not justified. You may say you could understand my doing it,--as
I confess I had the will to do it--oh, Mary, does that make me a
murderess? Am I all bad?”
“No, no, dearie, there, there, don’t cry so.... You’re just a normal,
true woman,--you love Val, and all these feelings toward that brute
who ruined your life are only natural. How did you come to marry him,
Pauline?”
“Oh, I was very young,--only seventeen, but younger even than that in
my innocence and ignorance. He was a handsome, beguiling chap, and one
night he made desperate love to me, and urged me to elope with him. I
thought it all very romantic, and I thought I loved him,--and I went.
“We were married at once, by some clergyman friend of his, and all of
the honeymoon he was angelic. But soon after, he began to be careless
and worthless, and from that on, as I soon found I didn’t really love
him, he became cruel, brutal and unbearable. I went to stay with a
friend, a nice elderly lady, and she advised me to get a divorce at
once. She helped me put it through, and inside of eight months I had
been wooed, wedded and divorced. Oh, but I was glad to be free again.
Then when I returned to New York, a year later, I kept it a secret,
to save myself the gossip that it would have caused. And when I met
Val,--and when we came to love each other,--I should have told him all,
but for his strange, almost insane hatred of divorce. I meant to tell
him, even then, but I’ve put it off because I couldn’t bear to hurt
him. And, I’ve worried myself sick over the question of whether to tell
him at all or not. One day I would decide to make a clean breast of it
all, and then he’d say something about divorce, and I’d find myself
utterly unable to open the subject. But I never should have married him
without telling.”
“Well, Pauline, I’m your friend, whatever happens. I’m ready to believe
you didn’t kill that man, but I couldn’t blame anybody who thinks you
did. And, I may as well say that I think if you had killed him, you’d
deny it just as you have done.”
Pauline smiled. She felt such a relief at having unburdened her, whole
heart to her friend, that she was able to see the absurdity of Mary’s
attitude.
Yet was it so absurd? Could friendship go further than to pledge
continued friendship even in the face of such uncertainty as was surely
in Mary’s mind?
Pauline appreciated this, and flung her arms round Mary while she
thanked her for her goodness and love.
“And now,” Mary said, with her usual good sense, “put it all out of
your mind for the moment. Go and lie in the hammock and read a foolish
novel or go out and pick flowers or get out some sewing,--no, don’t do
anything conducive to thought. Go and listen in on the radio.”
“I hate those radio things,” Pauline said, laughing. “To me, they’re
the monotonous lingo of a metal mind.”
“Oh, come, now, some of it is real interesting,--and instructive, too.
Go and try it, anyway.”
Pauline drifted about, lounged in the hammock, picked some flowers, and
honestly endeavored to put her troubles away from her for a time.
“I’m going to the village, in the Ford,” Mary said, later. “Want to go?”
“No,” said Pauline, promptly, “somebody might see me.”
“Fiddlesticks! You can’t live all your life shut up on this farm. Well,
all right, but you’ve got to go with me tomorrow, or soon.”
“Very well, we’ll see,” and Pauline waved a good-by after the departing
car, and returned to her listless idleness.
At last, in sheer desperation, she turned to the radio outfit, and took
up the receivers.
As she had anticipated, she was bored by a soprano solo by a
high-strung young girl, and an accordion obbligato by a clever young
man.
She was about to disconnect, when she heard the announcement of a
lecture on “European Countries Little Known.” The day’s subject turned
out to be Portugal. Slightly interested, she listened to the lecturer’s
trite and ready-made phrases. And then, he said, in especially clear
accents, “The Portuguese are the people!”
Pauline smiled to herself, for that was a phrase she and Val had often
used, and to them it meant an appreciation of certain “Sonnets from the
Portuguese,” with which Elizabeth Barrett Browning charmed all lovers.
The lecture proceeded, and three times the speaker repeated the short
phrase, “The Portuguese are the people.”
Pauline pondered long, after the lecture was over.
Could it be a sort of an omen,--a hint from Fate that Valentine was
thinking of her,--perhaps still loving her?
And then, realizing the absurdity of her own thoughts, she put it
from her mind. She had no leanings toward the occult, or even toward
telepathy or thought transference. And, too, as she said to herself, it
wasn’t Val who was doing the lecturing.
But the result of the episode was that Pauline spent many hours at
the radio apparatus the next few days. She let herself be bored by
the lectures on science, by the children’s stories, by the far from
first-class music, and by the rehash of current events. She listened
even to the talk on home-making and culinary doings, hoping against
hope that something would again remind her of Valentine.
At last she was rewarded. On the second day of her radio interest,
there was a talk by one of New York’s most celebrated detectives. Among
other things he spoke of the work of the Bureau of Missing Persons.
And, she could scarcely believe her ears, but she certainly heard him
say, “For example, if an advertisement were worded, ‘Pearline, come
back and all will be forgiven,’ it might not succeed in its purpose.
But if it said, ‘Pearline, come back, I love you,’ then maybe she would
come.”
The lecture, though of serious intent, was in a popular style, and
Pauline gasped.
For Pearline was a foolish nickname that Val used in his gayest
moments. It had seemed to him a great joke to call the dignified and
beautiful Pauline by the silly name.
And as she continued to listen, the lecturer referred again to the
supposed advertisement and repeated the whole idea.
Pauline waited till the lecture was over and then went away to her own
room to think it out.
She knew little of the way in which radio stuff was “broadcasted,”
but she felt almost certain that that bit in an otherwise impersonal
lecture couldn’t be mere chance.
If Val had wanted to send her a message, what could he have said more
perfect, more poignant, than “Come back,--I love you.”
How it was done, she didn’t know,--but her heart claimed the message,
even though her mind refused to believe it was from Valentine Loft.
Though tempted to tell Mary about it, she couldn’t bring herself to
do so, but she continued to haunt the radio at every number of its
programmes.
“Well, for any one who scorned that thing, you’ve certainly become
addicted to it,” Mary said, as Pauline refused to leave the instrument
to go for a short drive.
“I’ve learned to like it,” Pauline said, and waved Mary to silence.
Yet only once again did she get anything from it that might have been
meant for her.
It was twilight, their early supper was over, for Pauline had insisted
that Mary retain her simple ways of living, and though her hostess
called to her from the veranda, Pauline replied that she would come out
as soon as she had heard the evening concert.
And after two or three uninteresting numbers, a fairly good baritone
voice sang a ballad with a simple air, the refrain of which was:
“There’s a Valentine a waiting for Pauline.”
No mistake this time! Pauline’s eyes filled with tears and her
heart beat fast as she listened to words, homely, but loving and
sincere,--each stanza closing with the refrain, “There’s a Valentine a
waiting for Pauline.”
Not Pearline this time,--but Pauline, her own name, and Valentine, her
waiting lover.
Now, she knew it was intentional, now she knew it was meant for her,
and she believed the references to Portuguese and to Pearline were also
meant for her.
How it had been done she didn’t know,--but, she assumed Valentine had
somehow managed to get in on the radio programmes.
What should she do? She couldn’t doubt that it was his method of trying
to find her. She couldn’t doubt that it was his wish that she should
return to him, and that he still wanted and loved her.
She went out to the porch and told Mary Malden all about it.
“H’m,” said that astute individual. “Tricky, if you ask me. And I don’t
believe your Val did it at all,--I believe it’s the work of those
smarty detectives,--they’re trying to find you, and they are tricking
you with that stuff. For, Valentine Loft couldn’t get those things into
a radio programme himself,--they won’t touch anything personal. But
the police could do it, of course.”
Pauline was crestfallen. Suppose it should be the police, pretending
to send a message from Val, so that she would by chance hear it, and
divulge her hiding place!
The more she thought it over, the more it seemed that Mary must be
right, and she would better not follow it up at all.
But after she went to bed that night, she lay long awake thinking. And
the more she thought the more she felt she must speak to Val, let the
result be what it might.
Hastily donning kimono and slippers, she went noiselessly downstairs to
the telephone. She called up Long Distance, and finally succeeded in
getting connection with Valhalla. The servant who answered her, went
immediately to call Loft.
“Is that you, Val?” she said, timidly.
“Yes, Pauline, darling. I am coming to you. Where are you?”
Now that she had succeeded, she was panic-stricken, but his dear voice
reassured her, and she whispered Mary Malden’s name before the receiver
fell from her trembling fingers.