I HASTENED at once home, and knocked at Miss Calhoun’s door. While
waiting for a response, the mockery of my return without the token I had
undertaken to restore to her, impressed itself upon me in full force. It
seemed to me that in that instant my face must have taken on a haggard
look. I could not summon up the necessary will to make it otherwise.
Any effort in that direction would have made my failure at cheerfulness
pitiable.
The door opened. There she stood. Whatever expectancy of success she may
have had fled at once. Our eyes met and her countenance changed. My face
must have told the whole story, for she exclaimed:
“You have failed!”
I was obliged to acknowledge it in a whisper, but hastened to assure her
that the ring had not yet been placed upon the bronze hand, and was not
likely to be till the lock had been cleaned, out. This interested her,
and called out a hurried but complete recital of my adventure. She hung
upon it breathlessly, and when I reached the point where Madame and her
prophetic voice entered the tale, she showed so much excitement that any
doubts I may have cherished as to the importance of the communication
Madame had made us vanished in a cold horror I with difficulty hid from
my companion. But the end agitated her more than the beginning, and when
she heard that I had taken upon myself a direct connection with this
mysterious matter, she grew so pale that I felt forced to inquire if the
folly I had committed was likely to result badly, at which she shuddered
and replied:
“You have brought death upon yourself. I see nothing but destruction
before us both. This woman--this horrible woman--has seen your face,
and, if she is what you describe, she will never forget it. The man, who
is her guardian or agent, no doubt, must have tracked you, and finding
you here with me, from whose hand he himself may have torn the ring
last night, will record it as treason against a cause which punishes all
treason with death.
“Pshaw!” I ejaculated, with a jocular effort at indifference, which I
acknowledge I did not feel. “You seem to forget the law. We live in the
city of Baltimore. Charlatans such as I have just left behind me do not
make away with good citizens with impunity. We have only to seek the
protection of the police.”
She met my looks with a slowly increasing intentness, which stilled this
protest on my lips.
“I am under no oath,” she ruminated. “I can tell this man what I will.
Mr. Abbott, there has been formed in this city an organization against
which the police are powerless. I am an involuntary member of it, and I
know its power. It has constrained me and it has constrained others, and
no one who has opposed it once has lived to do so twice. Yet it has
no recognized head (though there is a chief to whom we may address
ourselves), and it has no oaths of secrecy. All is left to the
discretion of its members, and _to their fears_. The object of this
society is the breaking of the power of the North, and the means by
which it works is _death_. I joined it under a stress of feeling I
called patriotism, and I believed myself right till the sword was
directed against my own breast. Then I quailed; then I began to ask
by what right we poor mortals constitute ourselves into instruments of
destruction to our kind, and having once stopped to question, I saw
the whole matter in such a different light that I knowingly put a
stumbling-block in the path of so-called avenging justice, and thus
courted the doom that at any moment may fall upon my head.” And she
actually looked up, as if expecting to see it fall then and there.
“This Madame,” she went on in breathless haste, “is doubtless one of the
members. How so grotesque and yet redoubtable an individuality should
have become identified with a cause demanding the coolest judgment as
well as the most acute political acumen, I cannot stop to conjecture.
But that she is a member of our organization, and an important one, too,
her prophecies, which have so strangely become facts, are sufficient
proof, even had you not seen my ring on her finger. Perhaps, incredible
as it may appear, she is the _chief_. If so--But I do not make myself
intelligible,” she continued, meeting my eyes. “I will be more explicit.
One peculiar feature of this organization is the complete ignorance
which we all have concerning our fellow-members. We can reveal nothing,
for we know nothing. I know that I am allied to a cause which has for
its end the destruction of all who oppose the supremacy of the South,
but I cannot give you the name of another person attached to this
organization, though I feel the pressure of their combined power upon
every act of my life. _You_ may be a member without my knowing it--a
secret and fearful thought, which forms one of the greatest safeguards
to the institution, though it has failed in this instance, owing”--here
her voice fell--“to my devotion to the man I love. What?”--(I had not
spoken; my heart was dying within me, but I had given no evidence of
a wish to interrupt her; she, however, feared a check, and rushed
vehemently on.) “I shall have to tell you more. When, through pamphlets
and unsigned letters--dangerous communications, which have long since
become ashes--I was drawn into this society (and only those of the most
radical and impressionable natures are approached) a ring and a key were
sent me with this injunction: ‘When the man or woman whose name will
be forwarded to you in an otherwise empty envelope, shall have, in your
honest judgment, proved himself or herself sufficiently dangerous to
the cause we love, to merit removal, you are to place this ring on the
middle finger of the bronze hand locked up in the box openly displayed
in the office of a Dr. Merriam on ------ Street. With the pressure of
the whole five rings on the fingers of this piece of mechanism, the
guardian of our rights will be notified by a bell, that a victim awaits
justice, and the end to be accomplished will be begun. As there are five
fingers, and each one of these must feel the pressure of its own ring
before connection can be made between this hand and the bell mentioned,
no injustice can be done and no really innocent person destroyed. For,
when five totally disconnected persons devoted to the cause agree that
a certain individual is worthy of death, mistake is impossible. You
are now one of the five. Use the key and the ring according to
your conscience.’ This was well, if I had been allowed to follow my
conscience; but when, six weeks ago, they sent me the name of a man of
lofty character and unquestioned loyalty, I recoiled, scarcely believing
my eyes. Yet, fearing that my own judgment was warped, or that some
hidden hypocrisy was latent in a man thus given over to our attention,
I made it my business to learn this man’s inner life. I found it so
beautiful----” She choked, turned away for a moment, controlled herself,
and went on rapidly and with increased earnestness: “I learned to love
this man, and as I learned to love him I grew more and more satisfied of
the dangerous character of the organization I was pledged to. But I had
one comfort. He could not be doomed without my ring, and that was safe
on my finger. Safe! You know how safe it was. The monster whom you have
just seen, and who may have been the person to subject this noble man to
suspicion, must have discovered my love and the safeguard it offered to
this man. The ring, as you know, was stolen, and as you have failed to
recover it, and I to get any reply from the chief to whom I forwarded my
protest, to-morrow will without doubt see it placed upon the finger of
the bronze hand. The result you know. Fantastic as this may strike you,
it is the dreadful truth.”
Love, had I ever felt this holy passion for her, had no longer a place
in my breast; but awe, terror and commiseration for her, for him, and
also perhaps for myself, were still active passions within me, and at
this decided statement of the case, I laughed in the excitement of the
moment, and the relief I felt at knowing just what there was to dread in
the adventure.
“Absurd!” I cried. “With Madame’s address in my mind and the Baltimore
police at my command, this man is as safe from assault as you or I are.
Give me five minutes’ talk with Chief----”
Her hand on my arm stopped me; the look in her eye made me dumb.
“What could you do without _me?_” she said; “and my evidence you cannot
have. For what would give it weight can never pass my lips. The lives
that have fallen with my connivance stand between me and confession. I
do not wish to subject myself to the law.”
This placed her in another light before me, and I started back.
“You have----” I stammered.
“Placed that ring three times on the hand in Dr. Merriam’s office.”
“And each time?”
“A man somewhere in this nation has died suddenly. I do not know by what
means or by whose hand, but he died.”
This beautiful creature guilty of---- I tried not to show my horror.
“It is, then, a question of choice between you and him?” said I. “Either
you or he must perish. Both cannot be saved.”
She recoiled, turning very pale, and for several minutes stood surveying
me with a fixed gaze as if overcome by an idea which threw so immense
a responsibility upon her. As she stood thus, I seemed not only to look
into her nature, but her life. I saw the fanaticism that that had
once held every good impulse in check, the mistaken devotion, the
unreasoning hatred, and, underneath all, a spirit of truth and
rectitude which brightened and brightened as I watched her, till it
dominated every evil passion and made her next words come easily, and
with a natural burst of conviction which showed the innate generosity of
her soul.
“You have shown me my duty, sir. There can be no question as to where
the choice should fall, I am not worth one hair of his noble head. Save
him, sir; I will help you by every means in my power.”
Seizing the opportunity she thus gave me, I asked her the name of the
man who was threatened.
In a low voice she told me.