this question, and I am not a man to be balked nor frightened by you
when my life itself is at stake. What night was it on which you saw me
place Mr. Barrows in the vat? I command you to tell me, or----"
His hands closed on her arm, and--she did not scream, but I did; for
the look of the inquisitor was in his face, and I saw that she must
succumb, or be broken like a reed before our eyes.
She chose to succumb. Deadly pale and shaking with the terror with
which he evidently inspired her, she turned like a wild creature caught
in the toils, and gasped out:
"It was a night in August--the seventeenth, I think. I wish you and
your brother much joy of the acknowledgment."
He did not answer, only dropped her arm, and, looking at me, remarked:
"I think that puts a different face upon the matter."
It did indeed. For Mr. Barrows had only been dead four days, and to-day
was the twenty-eight of September.
* * * * *
I do not know how long it was before I allowed the wonder and
perplexity which this extraordinary disclosure aroused in me to express
itself in words. The shock which had been communicated to me was so
great, I had neither thought nor feeling left, and it was not till I
perceived every eye fixed upon me that I found the power to say:
"Then Mr. Barrows' death was not the result of that night's work. The
hand that plunged him into the vat drew him out again. But--but----"
Here my tongue failed me. I could only look the question with which my
mind was full.
Dwight Pollard immediately stepped forward.
"But whose were the hands that thrust him back four days ago? That is
what you would ask, is it not, Miss Sterling?" he inquired, with a
force and firmness he had not before displayed.
"Yes," I endeavored to say, though I doubt if a sound passed my lips.
His face took a more earnest cast, his voice a still deeper tone.
"Miss Sterling," he began, meeting my eye with what might have been the
bravado of despair, but which I was fain to believe the courage of
truth, "after what you have just heard, it would be strange, perhaps,
if you should place much belief in any thing we may say upon this
subject. And yet it is my business to declare, and that with all the
force and assurance of which I am capable, that we know no more than
you, how Mr. Barrows came to find himself again in that place; that we
had nothing to do with it, and that his death, occurring in the manner
and at the spot it did, was a surprise to us which cost my mother her
life, and me----well, almost my reason," he added, in a lower tone,
turning away his face.
"Can this be true?" I asked myself, unconsciously taking on an air of
determination, as I remembered I was prejudiced in his favor, and
wished to believe him innocent of this crime.
This movement on my part, slight as it was, was evidently seen and
misinterpreted by them all. For a look of disappointment came into
Dwight Pollard's face, while from his brother's eye flashed a dangerous
gleam that almost made me oblivious to the fact that Rhoda. Colwell was
speaking words full of meaning and venom.
"A specious declaration!" she exclaimed. "A jury would believe such
assertions, of course; so would the world at large, It is so easy to
credit that this simple and ordinary method of disposing of a valuable
life should enter the mind of another person!"
"It is as easy to credit that," answered Dwight Pollard, with an
emphasis which showed that he, if not I, felt the force of this
sarcasm, "as it would be to believe that Mr. Barrows would return to a
spot so fraught with hideous memories, except under the influence of a
purpose which made him blind to all but its accomplishment. The fact
that he died _there_, proves to my mind that no other will than his own
plunged him anew into that dreadful vat."
"Ah! and so you are going to ascribe his death to suicide?" she
inquired, with a curl of her lip that was full of disdain.
"Yes," he sternly responded with no signs of wavering now, though her
looks might well have stung the stoutest soul into some show of
weakness.
"It is a wise stroke," she laughed, with indescribable emphasis. "It
has so much in Mr. Barrows' life and character to back it. And may I
ask," she went on, with a look that included Guy Pollard's silent and
contemptuous figure in its scope, "whether you have anything but words
wherewith to impress your belief upon the public? I have heard that
judge and jury like facts, or, at the least, circumstantial proof that
a man's denial is a true one."
"And proofs we have!"
It was Guy Pollard who spoke this time, and with an icy self-possession
that made her shiver in spite of herself.
"Proofs?" she repeated.
"That we were not near the mill the night before Mr. Barrows was found.
We were both out of town, and did not return till about the time the
accident was discovered."
"Ah!" was her single sarcastic rejoinder; but I saw--we all saw--that
the blow had told, bravely as she tried to hide it.
"You, can make nothing by accusing us of this crime," he continued;
"and if I might play the part of a friend to you, I would advise you
not to attempt it." And his cold eye rested for a moment on hers before
he turned and walked away to the other end of the room.
The look, the action, was full of contempt, but she did not seem to
feel it. Following him with her gaze for a minute, she murmured,
quietly: "We will see"; then turning her look upon Dwight and myself,
added slowly: "I think _you_ are effectually separated at all events,"
and was gone almost without our realizing how or where.
I did not linger long behind. What I said or what they said I cannot
remember. I only know that in a few minutes I too was flying along the
highway, eager for the refuge which my solitary home offered me. Events
had rushed upon me too thickly and too fast. I felt ill as I passed the
threshold of my room, and was barely conscious when a few hours later
the landlady came in to see why I had not made my appearance at the
supper-table.
XIV.
CORRESPONDENCE.
Letters, my Lord.
--HAMLET.
My illness, though severe, was not of long continuance. In a week I was
able to be about my room; and in a fortnight I was allowed to read the
letters that had come to me. There were two, either of them calculated
to awaken dangerous emotions; and, taken together, making a draft on my
powers which my newly gained health found it hard to sustain. The one
was signed Rhoda Colwell, and the other Dwight Pollard. I read Rhoda
Colwell's first.
It opened without preamble:
I sought revenge and I have found it. Not in the way I anticipated,
perhaps, but still in a way good enough to satisfy both myself and the
spirit of justice. You will never trust Dwight Pollard again. You will
never come any nearer to him than you have to-day. You have an upright
soul, and whether you believe his declarations or not, can be safely
relied upon to hold yourself aloof from a man who could lend his
countenance to such a cowardly deed as I saw perpetrated in the old
cellar a month or so ago. Honor does not wed with dishonor, nor truth
with treachery. Constance Sterling may marry whom she may; it will
never be Dwight Pollard.
Convinced of this, I have decided to push my vengeance no further. Not
that I believe Mr. Barrows committed suicide, any more than I believe
that Dwight and Guy Pollard could be saved by any mere alibi, if I
chose to speak. Men like them can find ready tools to do their work,
and if they had been an hundred miles away instead of some six, I
should still think that the will which plunged Mr. Barrows into his
dreadful grave was the same which once before had made him taste the
horrors of his threatened doom. But public disgrace and execration are
not what I seek for my recreant lover. The inner anguish which no eye
can see is what I have been forced to endure and what he shall be made
to suffer. Guilty or not he can never escape that now; and it is a
future which I gloat upon and from which I would not have him escape,
no, not at the cost of his life, if that life were mine, and I could
shorten it at a stroke.
And yet since human nature is human nature, and good hearts as well as
bad yield sometimes to a fatal weakness, I would add that the facts
which I suppress are always facts, and that if I see in you or him any
forgetfulness of the gulf that separates you, I shall not think it too
late to speak, though months have been added to months, and years to
years, and I am no longer any thing but old
RHODA COLWELL.
Close upon these words I read these others:
MISS STERLING:--Pardon me that I presume to address you. Pardon the
folly, the weakness of a man who, having known you for less than a
week, finds the loss of your esteem the hardest of the many miseries he
is called upon to bear.
I know that I can never recover this esteem--if, indeed, I ever
possessed it. The revelation of the secret which disgraced our family
has been fatal; the secret which our mother commanded us on her
death-bed to preserve, foreseeing that, if it should become known that
we had been guilty of the occurrence of the seventeenth of August,
nothing could save us from the suspicion that we were guilty of the
real catastrophe of the twenty-fourth of September. Alas! my mother was
a keen woman, but she did not reckon upon Rhoda Colwell; she did not
reckon upon you. She thought if we kept silence, hell and heaven would
find no tongue. But hell and heaven have both spoken, and we stand
suspected of crime, if not absolutely accused of it.
Hard as this is to bear--and it is harder than you might think for one
in whom the base and cowardly action into which he was betrayed a month
ago has not entirely obliterated the sense of honor--I neither dare to
complain of it nor of the possible consequences which may follow if
Rhoda Colwell slights my brother's warning and carries out her revenge
to the full. Deeds of treachery and shame must bear their natural
fruit, and we are but reaping what we sowed on that dreadful night when
we allowed David Barrows to taste the horrors of his future grave. But
though I do not complain, I would fain say a final word to one whose
truth and candor have stood in such conspicuous relief to my own
secrecy and repression. Not in way of hope, not in way of explanation
even. What we have done we have done, and it would little become me to
assign motives and reasons for what in your eyes--and, I must now
allow, in my own--no motive or reason can justify or even excuse. I can
only place myself before you as one who abhors his own past; regarding
it, indeed, with such remorse and detestation that I would esteem
myself blessed if it had been my body, instead of that of Mr. Barrows,
which had been drawn from the fatal pit. Not that any repentance can
rid me of the stain which has fallen upon my manhood, or make me worthy
of the honor of your faintest glance; but it may make me a less debased
object in your eyes, and I would secure that much grace for myself even
at the expense of what many might consider an unnecessary humiliation.
For you have made upon my mind in the short time I have known you a
deep, and, as I earnestly believe, a most lasting and salutary
impression. Truth, candor, integrity, and a genuine loyalty to all that
is noblest and best in human nature no longer seem to me like mere
names since I have met you. The selfishness that makes dark deeds
possible has revealed itself to me in all its hideous deformity since
the light of your pure ideal fell upon it; and while naught on earth
can restore me to happiness, or even to that equanimity of mind which
my careless boyhood enjoyed, it would still afford me something like
relief to know that you recognize the beginning of a new life in me,
which, if not all you could desire, still has that gleam of light upon
it which redeems it from being what it was before I knew you. I will,
therefore, ask not a word from you, but a look. If, when I pass your
house to-morrow afternoon at six o'clock, I see you standing in the
window, I shall know you grant me the encouragement of your sympathy, a
sympathy which will help me to endure the worst of all my thoughts,
that indirectly, if not directly, Guy and myself may be guilty of Mr.
Barrows' death; that our action may have given him an impetus to
destroy himself, or at least have shown him the way to end his life in
a seemingly secret manner; though why a man so respected and manifestly
happy as he should wish to close his career so suddenly, is as great a
mystery to me as it can possibly be to you.
One other word and I am done. If, in the mercy of your gentle and
upright nature, you accord me this favor, do not fear that I shall take
advantage of it, even in my thoughts. Nor need you think that by so
doing you may hamper yourself in the performance of a future duty;
since it would be as impossible for me to ask, as for you to grant, the
least suppression of the truth on your part; your candor being the
charm of all others which has most attracted my admiration and secured
my regard.
DWIGHT POLLARD.
Of the emotions produced in me by these, two letters I will say
nothing; I will only mention some of my thoughts. The first naturally
was, that owing to my illness I had not received the latter letter till
a week after it was written; consequently Dwight Pollard had failed to
obtain the slight token of encouragement which he had requested. This
was a source of deep regret to me, all the more that I did not know how
to rectify the evil without running the risk of rousing suspicion in
the breast of Rhoda Colwell. For, unreasonable as it may seem, her
words had roused in me a dread similar to that which one might feel of
a scorpion in the dark. I did not know how near she might be to me, or
when she might strike. The least stir, the least turn of my head
towards the forbidden object, might reveal her to be close at my side.
I neither dared trust the silence nor the fact that all seemed well
with me at present. A woman who could disguise herself as she could,
and whom no difficulty deterred from gaining her purpose, was not one
to brave with impunity, however clear might seem the outlook. I felt as
if my very thoughts were in danger from her intuition, and scarcely
dared breathe my intentions to the walls, lest the treacherous breeze
should carry them to her ears and awaken that formidable antagonism
which in her case was barbed with a power which might easily make the
most daring quail. And yet she must be braved; for not to save his life
could I let such an appeal as he had made me go unanswered; no, though
I knew the possibility remained of its being simply the offspring of a
keen and calculating mind driven to its last resource. It was enough
that I felt him to be true, however much my reason might recognize the
possibility of his falsehood. Rather than slight a noble spirit
struggling with a great distress, I would incur any penalty which a
possible lapse of judgment might bring; my temperament being such that
I found less shame in the thought that I might be deceived, than that,
out of a spirit of too great caution and self-love, I should fail an
unhappy soul at the moment when my sympathy might be of inestimable
benefit to its welfare.
The venomous threats and extreme show of power displayed in Rhoda
Colwell's letter had overreached themselves. They roused my pride. They
made me question whether it was necessary for us to live under such a
dominion of suspense as she had prepared for us. If Dwight Pollard's
asseverations were true, it would be a cruel waste of peace and
happiness for him or me to rest under such a subjection, when by a
little bravery at the outset her hold upon us might be annihilated and
her potency destroyed.
The emotions which I have agreed to ignore came in to give weight to
this thought. To save myself it was necessary to prove Dwight Pollard
true. Not only my sense of justice, but the very life and soul of my
being, demanded the settling of all suspicion and the establishment of
my trust upon a sure foundation. While a single doubt remained in my
mind I was liable to shame before my best self, and shame and Constance
Sterling did not mix easily or well, especially with that leaven of
self-interest added, to which I have alluded only a few paragraphs back.
But how, with my lack of resources and the apparent dearth of all means
for attaining the end I had in view, I was to prove Rhoda Colwell's
insinuations false, and Dwight Pollard's assertion true, was a question
to which an answer did not come with very satisfactory readiness. Even
the simple query as to how I was to explain my late neglect to Dwight
Pollard occasioned me an hour of anxious thought; and it was not till I
remembered that the simplest course was always the best, and that with
a snake in the grass like Rhoda Colwell, the most fearless foot trod
with the greatest safety, that I felt my difficulties on that score
melt away. I would write to Dwight Pollard, and I would tell Rhoda
Colwell I had done so, thus proving to her that I meditated nothing
underhanded, and could be trusted to say what I would do, and do what I
should say.
This decision taken, I sat down immediately and penned the following
two notes:
MISS RHODA COLWELL:--Owing to illness, your letter has just been read
by me. To it I will simply reply that you are right in believing my
regard could never be given to a guilty man. As long as the faintest
doubt of Mr. Pollard remains in my mind we are indeed separated by a
gulf. But let that doubt in any way be removed, and I say to you
frankly that nothing you could threaten or the world perform, would
prevent my yielding to him the fullest sympathy and the most hearty
encouragement.
I send him to-day, in the same mail which carries this, a few lines, a
copy of which I inclose for your perusal.
Yours, CONSTANCE STERLING.
MR. DWIGHT POLLARD:--For two weeks I have been too ill to cross my
room, which must account both for this note and the tardiness I have
displayed in writing it.
You assert that you know nothing of the causes or manner of a certain
catastrophe. I believe you, and hope some day to have more than a
belief, viz., a surety of its truth founded on absolute evidence.
Till that time comes we go our several ways, secure in the thought that
to the steadfast mind calumny itself loses its sting when met by an
earnest purpose to be and do only what is honest and upright.
CONSTANCE STERLING.
If you have any further communication to make to me, let me request
that it be allowed to pass through the hands of Miss Colwell. My
reasons for this are well founded.
XV.
A GOSSIP.
This something settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating, puts him thus
From fashion of himself.
--HAMLET.
I had not taken this tone with both my correspondents without a secret
hope of being able to do something myself towards the establishment of
Mr. Pollard's innocence. How, I could not very plainly perceive that
day or the next, but as time elapsed and my brain cleared and my
judgment returned, I at last saw the way to an effort which might not
be without consequences of a satisfactory nature. What that effort was
you may perhaps conjecture from the fact that the first walk that I
took was in the direction of the cottage where Mr. Barrows had formerly
lived. The rooms which he had occupied were for rent, and my ostensible
errand was to hire them. The real motive of my visit, however, was to
learn something more of the deceased clergyman's life and ways than I
then knew; if happily out of some hitherto unnoticed event in his late
history I might receive a hint which should ultimately lead me to the
solution of the mystery which was involving my happiness.
I was not as unsuccessful in this attempt as one might anticipate. The
lady of the house was a gossip, and the subject of Mr. Barrows' death
was an inexhaustible topic of interest to her. I had but to mention his
name, and straightway a tide of words flowed from her lips, which, if
mostly words, contained here and there intimations of certain facts
which I felt it was well enough for me to know, even if they did not
amount to any thing like an explanation of the tragedy. Among these was
one which only my fear of showing myself too much interested in her
theme prevented me from probing to the bottom. This was, that for a
month at least before his death Mr. Barrows had seemed to her like a
changed man. A month--that was about the interval which had elapsed
between his first visit to the mill and his last; and the evidence that
he showed an alteration of demeanor in that time might have its value
and might hot. I resolved to cultivate Mrs. Simpson's acquaintance, and
sometime put her a question or two that would satisfy me upon this
point.
This determination was all the easier to make in that I found the rooms
I had come to see sufficiently to my liking to warrant me in taking
them. Not that I should have hesitated to do this had they been as
unattractive as they were pleasant. It was not their agreeableness that
won me, but the fact that Mr. Barrows personal belongings had not yet
been moved, and that for a short time at least I should find myself in
possession of his library, and face to face with the same articles of
taste and study which had surrounded him in his lifetime, and helped to
mould, if not to make, the man. I should thus obtain a knowledge of his
character, and some day, who knows, might flash upon his secret. For
that he possessed one, and was by no means the plain and simple
character I had been led to believe was apparent to me from the first
glimpse I had of these rooms; there being in every little object that
marked his taste a certain individuality and purpose that betrayed a
stern and mystic soul; one that could hide itself, perhaps, beneath a
practical exterior, but which, in ways like this, must speak, and speak
loudly too, of its own inward promptings and tendency.
The evening when I first brought these objects under a close and
conscientious scrutiny, was a memorable one to me. I had moved in early
that day, and with a woman's unreasoning caprice had forborne to cast
more than the most cursory glance around, being content to see that all
was as I left it at my first visit, and that neither desk nor library
had been disturbed. But when supper was over, and I could set myself
with a free mind to a contemplation of my new surroundings, I found
that my curiosity could no longer delay the careful tour of inspection
to which I felt myself invited by the freshness and beauty of the
pictures, and one or two of the statuettes which adorned the walls
about me. One painting in especial attracted me, and made me choose for
my first contemplation that side of the room on which it hung. It was a
copy of some French painting, and represented the temptation of a
certain saint. A curious choice of subject, you may think, to adorn a
Protestant clergyman's wall, but if you could have seen it, and marked
the extreme expression of mortal struggle on the face of the tempted
one, who, with eyes shut, and hands clutching till it bent the cross of
twigs stuck in the crevices of the rocks beneath which he writhed,
waited for the victory over self that was just beginning to cast its
light upon his brow, you would have felt that it was good to hang
before the eyes of any one in whom conflict of any kind was waging.
Upon me the effect was instantaneous, and so real that I have never
been able to think of that moment without a sense of awe and rending of
the heart. Human passion assumed a new significance in my mind, and the
will and faith of a strong man suffering from its power, yet
withstanding it to the very last gasp by the help of his trust in God,
rose to such an exalted position in my mind, that I felt then, as I
feel now whenever I remember this picture, that my whole moral nature
had received, from its contemplation, an impetus towards religion and
self-denial. While I was still absorbed in gazing at it, my landlady
entered the room, and seeing me posed before the picture, quite
sympathizingly exclaimed:
"Isn't that a dreadful painting, Miss Sterling, to have in any one's
room? I don't wonder Mr. Barrows wanted to cover it up."
"Cover it up?" I repeated, turning hastily in my surprise.