[1] This story was written in collaboration with Miss Ina Lillian
Peterson, to whom is rightly due the credit for whatever merit it may
have.
I taught a little country school near Brownville, which, as every one
knows who has had the good luck to live there, is the capital of a
considerable expanse of the finest scenery in California. The town is
somewhat frequented in summer by a class of persons whom it is the habit
of the local journal to call "pleasure seekers," but who by a juster
classification would be known as "the sick and those in adversity."
Brownville itself might rightly enough be described, indeed, as a summer
place of last resort. It is fairly well endowed with boarding-houses, at
the least pernicious of which I performed twice a day (lunching at the
schoolhouse) the humble rite of cementing the alliance between soul and
body. From this "hostelry" (as the local journal preferred to call it
when it did not call it a "caravanserai") to the schoolhouse the
distance by the wagon road was about a mile and a half; but there was a
trail, very little used, which led over an intervening range of low,
heavily wooded hills, considerably shortening the distance. By this
trail I was returning one evening later than usual. It was the last day
of the term and I had been detained at the schoolhouse until almost
dark, preparing an account of my stewardship for the trustees--two of
whom, I proudly reflected, would be able to read it, and the third (an
instance of the dominion of mind over matter) would be overruled in his
customary antagonism to the schoolmaster of his own creation.
I had gone not more than a quarter of the way when, finding an interest
in the antics of a family of lizards which dwelt thereabout and seemed
full of reptilian joy for their immunity from the ills incident to life
at the Brownville House, I sat upon a fallen tree to observe them. As I
leaned wearily against a branch of the gnarled old trunk the twilight
deepened in the somber woods and the faint new moon began casting
visible shadows and gilding the leaves of the trees with a tender but
ghostly light.
I heard the sound of voices--a woman's, angry, impetuous, rising against
deep masculine tones, rich and musical. I strained my eyes, peering
through the dusky shadows of the wood, hoping to get a view of the
intruders on my solitude, but could see no one. For some yards in each
direction I had an uninterrupted view of the trail, and knowing of no
other within a half mile thought the persons heard must be approaching
from the wood at one side. There was no sound but that of the voices,
which were now so distinct that I could catch the words. That of the man
gave me an impression of anger, abundantly confirmed by the matter
spoken.
"I will have no threats; you are powerless, as you very well know. Let
things remain as they are or, by God! you shall both suffer for it."
"What do you mean?"--this was the voice of the woman, a cultivated
voice, the voice of a lady. "You would not--murder us."
There was no reply, at least none that was audible to me. During the
silence I peered into the wood in hope to get a glimpse of the speakers,
for I felt sure that this was an affair of gravity in which ordinary
scruples ought not to count. It seemed to me that the woman was in
peril; at any rate the man had not disavowed a willingness to murder.
When a man is enacting the rôle of potential assassin he has not the
right to choose his audience.
After some little time I saw them, indistinct in the moonlight among the
trees. The man, tall and slender, seemed clothed in black; the woman
wore, as nearly as I could make out, a gown of gray stuff. Evidently
they were still unaware of my presence in the shadow, though for some
reason when they renewed their conversation they spoke in lower tones
and I could no longer understand. As I looked the woman seemed to sink
to the ground and raise her hands in supplication, as is frequently done
on the stage and never, so far as I knew, anywhere else, and I am now
not altogether sure that it was done in this instance. The man fixed his
eyes upon her; they seemed to glitter bleakly in the moonlight with an
expression that made me apprehensive that he would turn them upon me. I
do not know by what impulse I was moved, but I sprang to my feet out of
the shadow. At that instant the figures vanished. I peered in vain
through the spaces among the trees and clumps of undergrowth. The night
wind rustled the leaves; the lizards had retired early, reptiles of
exemplary habits. The little moon was already slipping behind a black
hill in the west.
I went home, somewhat disturbed in mind, half doubting that I had heard
or seen any living thing excepting the lizards. It all seemed a trifle
odd and uncanny. It was as if among the several phenomena, objective and
subjective, that made the sum total of the incident there had been an
uncertain element which had diffused its dubious character over all--had
leavened the whole mass with unreality. I did not like it.
At the breakfast table the next morning there was a new face; opposite
me sat a young woman at whom I merely glanced as I took my seat. In
speaking to the high and mighty female personage who condescended to
seem to wait upon us, this girl soon invited my attention by the sound
of her voice, which was like, yet not altogether like, the one still
murmuring in my memory of the previous evening's adventure. A moment
later another girl, a few years older, entered the room and sat at the
left of the other, speaking to her a gentle "good morning." By _her_
voice I was startled: it was without doubt the one of which the first
girl's had reminded me. Here was the lady of the sylvan incident sitting
bodily before me, "in her habit as she lived."
Evidently enough the two were sisters.
With a nebulous kind of apprehension that I might be recognized as the
mute inglorious hero of an adventure which had in my consciousness and
conscience something of the character of eavesdropping, I allowed myself
only a hasty cup of the lukewarm coffee thoughtfully provided by the
prescient waitress for the emergency, and left the table. As I passed
out of the house into the grounds I heard a rich, strong male voice
singing an aria from "Rigoletto." I am bound to say that it was
exquisitely sung, too, but there was something in the performance that
displeased me, I could say neither what nor why, and I walked rapidly
away.
Returning later in the day I saw the elder of the two young women
standing on the porch and near her a tall man in black clothing--the man
whom I had expected to see. All day the desire to know something of
these persons had been uppermost in my mind and I now resolved to learn
what I could of them in any way that was neither dishonorable nor low.
The man was talking easily and affably to his companion, but at the
sound of my footsteps on the gravel walk he ceased, and turning about
looked me full in the face. He was apparently of middle age, dark and
uncommonly handsome. His attire was faultless, his bearing easy and
graceful, the look which he turned upon me open, free, and devoid of any
suggestion of rudeness. Nevertheless it affected me with a distinct
emotion which on subsequent analysis in memory appeared to be compounded
of hatred and dread--I am unwilling to call it fear. A second later the
man and woman had disappeared. They seemed to have a trick of
disappearing. On entering the house, however, I saw them through the
open doorway of the parlor as I passed; they had merely stepped through
a window which opened down to the floor.
Cautiously "approached" on the subject of her new guests my landlady
proved not ungracious. Restated with, I hope, some small reverence for
English grammar the facts were these: the two girls were Pauline and Eva
Maynard of San Francisco; the elder was Pauline. The man was Richard
Benning, their guardian, who had been the most intimate friend of their
father, now deceased. Mr. Benning had brought them to Brownville in the
hope that the mountain climate might benefit Eva, who was thought to be
in danger of consumption.
Upon these short and simple annals the landlady wrought an embroidery of
eulogium which abundantly attested her faith in Mr. Benning's will and
ability to pay for the best that her house afforded. That he had a good
heart was evident to her from his devotion to his two beautiful wards
and his really touching solicitude for their comfort. The evidence
impressed me as insufficient and I silently found the Scotch verdict,
"Not proven."
Certainly Mr. Benning was most attentive to his wards. In my strolls
about the country I frequently encountered them--sometimes in company
with other guests of the hotel--exploring the gulches, fishing, rifle
shooting, and otherwise wiling away the monotony of country life; and
although I watched them as closely as good manners would permit I saw
nothing that would in any way explain the strange words that I had
overheard in the wood. I had grown tolerably well acquainted with the
young ladies and could exchange looks and even greetings with their
guardian without actual repugnance.
A month went by and I had almost ceased to interest myself in their
affairs when one night our entire little community was thrown into
excitement by an event which vividly recalled my experience in the
forest.
This was the death of the elder girl, Pauline.
The sisters had occupied the same bedroom on the third floor of the
house. Waking in the gray of the morning Eva had found Pauline dead
beside her. Later, when the poor girl was weeping beside the body amid a
throng of sympathetic if not very considerate persons, Mr. Benning
entered the room and appeared to be about to take her hand. She drew
away from the side of the dead and moved slowly toward the door.
"It is you," she said--"you who have done this. You--you--you!"
"She is raving," he said in a low voice. He followed her, step by step,
as she retreated, his eyes fixed upon hers with a steady gaze in which
there was nothing of tenderness nor of compassion. She stopped; the hand
that she had raised in accusation fell to her side, her dilated eyes
contracted visibly, the lids slowly dropped over them, veiling their
strange wild beauty, and she stood motionless and almost as white as the
dead girl lying near. The man took her hand and put his arm gently about
her shoulders, as if to support her. Suddenly she burst into a passion
of tears and clung to him as a child to its mother. He smiled with a
smile that affected me most disagreeably--perhaps any kind of smile
would have done so--and led her silently out of the room.
There was an inquest--and the customary verdict: the deceased, it
appeared, came to her death through "heart disease." It was before the
invention of heart _failure_, though the heart of poor Pauline had
indubitably failed. The body was embalmed and taken to San Francisco by
some one summoned thence for the purpose, neither Eva nor Benning
accompanying it. Some of the hotel gossips ventured to think that very
strange, and a few hardy spirits went so far as to think it very strange
indeed; but the good landlady generously threw herself into the breach,
saying it was owing to the precarious nature of the girl's health. It is
not of record that either of the two persons most affected and
apparently least concerned made any explanation.
One evening about a week after the death I went out upon the veranda of
the hotel to get a book that I had left there. Under some vines shutting
out the moonlight from a part of the space I saw Richard Benning, for
whose apparition I was prepared by having previously heard the low,
sweet voice of Eva Maynard, whom also I now discerned, standing before
him with one hand raised to his shoulder and her eyes, as nearly as I
could judge, gazing upward into his. He held her disengaged hand and his
head was bent with a singular dignity and grace. Their attitude was that
of lovers, and as I stood in deep shadow to observe I felt even guiltier
than on that memorable night in the wood. I was about to retire, when
the girl spoke, and the contrast between her words and her attitude was
so surprising that I remained, because I had merely forgotten to go
away.
"You will take my life," she said, "as you did Pauline's. I know your
intention as well as I know your power, and I ask nothing, only that you
finish your work without needless delay and let me be at peace."
He made no reply--merely let go the hand that he was holding, removed
the other from his shoulder, and turning away descended the steps
leading to the garden and disappeared in the shrubbery. But a moment
later I heard, seemingly from a great distance, his fine clear voice in
a barbaric chant, which as I listened brought before some inner
spiritual sense a consciousness of some far, strange land peopled with
beings having forbidden powers. The song held me in a kind of spell, but
when it had died away I recovered and instantly perceived what I thought
an opportunity. I walked out of my shadow to where the girl stood. She
turned and stared at me with something of the look, it seemed to me, of
a hunted hare. Possibly my intrusion had frightened her.
"Miss Maynard," I said, "I beg you to tell me who that man is and the
nature of his power over you. Perhaps this is rude in me, but it is not
a matter for idle civilities. When a woman is in danger any man has a
right to act."
She listened without visible emotion--almost I thought without interest,
and when I had finished she closed her big blue eyes as if unspeakably
weary.
"You can do nothing," she said.
I took hold of her arm, gently shaking her as one shakes a person
falling into a dangerous sleep.
"You must rouse yourself," I said; "something must be done and you must
give me leave to act. You have said that that man killed your sister,
and I believe it--that he will kill you, and I believe that."
She merely raised her eyes to mine.
"Will you not tell me all?" I added.
"There is nothing to be done, I tell you--nothing. And if I could do
anything I would not. It does not matter in the least. We shall be here
only two days more; we go away then, oh, so far! If you have observed
anything, I beg you to be silent."
"But this is madness, girl." I was trying by rough speech to break the
deadly repose of her manner. "You have accused him of murder. Unless you
explain these things to me I shall lay the matter before the
authorities."
This roused her, but in a way that I did not like. She lifted her head
proudly and said: "Do not meddle, sir, in what does not concern you.
This is my affair, Mr. Moran, not yours."
"It concerns every person in the country--in the world," I answered,
with equal coldness. "If you had no love for your sister I, at least, am
concerned for you."
"Listen," she interrupted, leaning toward me. "I loved her, yes, God
knows! But more than that--beyond all, beyond expression, I love _him_.
You have overheard a secret, but you shall not make use of it to harm
him. I shall deny all. Your word against mine--it will be that. Do you
think your 'authorities' will believe you?"
She was now smiling like an angel and, God help me! I was heels over
head in love with her! Did she, by some of the many methods of
divination known to her sex, read my feelings? Her whole manner had
altered.
"Come," she said, almost coaxingly, "promise that you will not be
impolite again." She took my arm in the most friendly way. "Come, I will
walk with you. He will not know--he will remain away all night."
Up and down the veranda we paced in the moonlight, she seemingly
forgetting her recent bereavement, cooing and murmuring girl-wise of
every kind of nothing in all Brownville; I silent, consciously awkward
and with something of the feeling of being concerned in an intrigue. It
was a revelation--this most charming and apparently blameless creature
coolly and confessedly deceiving the man for whom a moment before she
had acknowledged and shown the supreme love which finds even death an
acceptable endearment.
"Truly," I thought in my inexperience, "here is something new under the
moon."
And the moon must have smiled.
Before we parted I had exacted a promise that she would walk with me the
next afternoon--before going away forever--to the Old Mill, one of
Brownville's revered antiquities, erected in 1860.
"If he is not about," she added gravely, as I let go the hand she had
given me at parting, and of which, may the good saints forgive me, I
strove vainly to repossess myself when she had said it--so charming, as
the wise Frenchman has pointed out, do we find woman's infidelity when
we are its objects, not its victims. In apportioning his benefactions
that night the Angel of Sleep overlooked me.
The Brownville House dined early, and after dinner the next day Miss
Maynard, who had not been at table, came to me on the veranda, attired
in the demurest of walking costumes, saying not a word. "He" was
evidently "not about." We went slowly up the road that led to the Old
Mill. She was apparently not strong and at times took my arm,
relinquishing it and taking it again rather capriciously, I thought. Her
mood, or rather her succession of moods, was as mutable as skylight in a
rippling sea. She jested as if she had never heard of such a thing as
death, and laughed on the lightest incitement, and directly afterward
would sing a few bars of some grave melody with such tenderness of
expression that I had to turn away my eyes lest she should see the
evidence of her success in art, if art it was, not artlessness, as then
I was compelled to think it. And she said the oddest things in the most
unconventional way, skirting sometimes unfathomable abysms of thought,
where I had hardly the courage to set foot. In short, she was
fascinating in a thousand and fifty different ways, and at every step I
executed a new and profounder emotional folly, a hardier spiritual
indiscretion, incurring fresh liability to arrest by the constabulary of
conscience for infractions of my own peace.
Arriving at the mill, she made no pretense of stopping, but turned into
a trail leading through a field of stubble toward a creek. Crossing by a
rustic bridge we continued on the trail, which now led uphill to one of
the most picturesque spots in the country. The Eagle's Nest, it was
called--the summit of a cliff that rose sheer into the air to a height
of hundreds of feet above the forest at its base. From this elevated
point we had a noble view of another valley and of the opposite hills
flushed with the last rays of the setting sun.
As we watched the light escaping to higher and higher planes from the
encroaching flood of shadow filling the valley we heard footsteps, and
in another moment were joined by Richard Benning.
"I saw you from the road," he said carelessly; "so I came up."
Being a fool, I neglected to take him by the throat and pitch him into
the treetops below, but muttered some polite lie instead. On the girl
the effect of his coming was immediate and unmistakable. Her face was
suffused with the glory of love's transfiguration: the red light of the
sunset had not been more obvious in her eyes than was now the lovelight
that replaced it.
"I am so glad you came!" she said, giving him both her hands; and, God
help me! it was manifestly true.
Seating himself upon the ground he began a lively dissertation upon the
wild flowers of the region, a number of which he had with him. In the
middle of a facetious sentence he suddenly ceased speaking and fixed his
eyes upon Eva, who leaned against the stump of a tree, absently plaiting
grasses. She lifted her eyes in a startled way to his, as if she had
_felt_ his look. She then rose, cast away her grasses, and moved slowly
away from him. He also rose, continuing to look at her. He had still in
his hand the bunch of flowers. The girl turned, as if to speak, but said
nothing. I recall clearly now something of which I was but
half-conscious then--the dreadful contrast between the smile upon her
lips and the terrified expression in her eyes as she met his steady and
imperative gaze. I know nothing of how it happened, nor how it was that
I did not sooner understand; I only know that with the smile of an angel
upon her lips and that look of terror in her beautiful eyes Eva Maynard
sprang from the cliff and shot crashing into the tops of the pines
below!
How and how long afterward I reached the place I cannot say, but Richard
Benning was already there, kneeling beside the dreadful thing that had
been a woman.
"She is dead--quite dead," he said coldly. "I will go to town for
assistance. Please do me the favor to remain."
He rose to his feet and moved away, but in a moment had stopped and
turned about.
"You have doubtless observed, my friend," he said, "that this was
entirely her own act. I did not rise in time to prevent it, and you, not
knowing her mental condition--you could not, of course, have suspected."
His manner maddened me.
"You are as much her assassin," I said, "as if your damnable hands had
cut her throat." He shrugged his shoulders without reply and, turning,
walked away. A moment later I heard, through the deepening shadows of
the wood into which he had disappeared, a rich, strong, baritone voice
singing "_La donna e mobile_," from "Rigoletto."