THE REFUGE
I could not tell how long a time had passed, but gradually out of
complete consciousness, grew up the sense of a wretched throbbing. I
thought it was my head. I opened my eyes and found I was looking
straight up into the sky. I lay staring at it, it was so wonderfully
soft and blue. Presently the wind swayed a green branch into my line
of vision; at sight of that the query of where I was came into my mind.
I moved my head and felt the crackle of twigs at my cheek. I was lying
in a mass of ivy and lemon verbena bushes, and at one side of me rose
the great face of a wall. The memory of what had happened returned. I
scrambled to a sitting posture. My head was so dizzy that I had to
catch at the bushes to hold myself upright, and my body felt sore and
shaken, but the impulse to get away from the house, whose windows
overlooking the convent wall still spied upon me, carried me to my feet.
Through the shrubbery I peered at the garden beyond. There was a level
green lawn, with sedate paths marching around it, but no black hooded
figures were moving there in ones or twos or in solemn file, as I had
been wont to see them. I walked rather uncertainly forward across the
grass, across the dank and mossy paths, and into the shadowy length of
the corridor. This, too, was empty, and at one end of it a little
door, with a grill across it, seemed as effectually to bar me out as
the Spanish Woman's house had shut me in. In my dazed state the only
thing I could think of doing, to call the attention of the place to my
presence, was to seize the grill in both hands and shake it with all my
weakened strength. It made quite a rattling, and then I heard hurrying
feet, and presently the small, startled face of a nun peered through
the grating.
"I want to see the Mother Superior," I said in a trembling voice.
She looked at me sharply, and, I thought, a little as if she were
frightened. "Why didn't you ring the bell?" she asked.
"The bell? What bell?" I stammered, for the only bell I could call to
mind was the bell the Spanish Woman had rung. Then, as the sister
appeared to be about to draw back, "Oh, please, please," I cried, "take
me to the Mother Superior! I am in great trouble!"
There was a pause; then a little rustling, then a whispering of voices
behind the grating, and another face, rounder and larger than the
first, peered out; and a more sympathetic voice said: "Poor little
creature! and her hat is all on one side!"
Then, after some further deliberation, in which one of the voices
seemed to be protesting that it was afraid of something, the nun who
had come first disappeared,--I could hear the sound of her feet
hastening away,--and the second opened the grating and drew me in. She
led me down a narrow, musty-smelling hall and into a dull little room
where she made me sit down, and put my hat straight, and smoothed my
hair very kindly but rather clumsily with hands like white pincushions.
At last, with the timid nun following furtively at her heels, the
Mother Superior came. She was a thin woman in flowing robes, with a
great white sheer coif around her delicate face; and she looked at me
very kindly and benevolently while I stammered out the essentials of my
story--how the Spanish Woman had tried to keep me in her house, and how
I got out of the window and through a hole in the wall and so down into
the garden. When I came to this point in my tale, "But those windows
are closed up!" cried one of the nuns. "And the wall is eight feet!"
cried the other, "and there is no hole in it! It would be impossible!"
The Mother Superior shook her head at them, and said to me: "Can you
tell me where you live, my child?"
I thought it odd that there should be any doubt in her mind as to that,
but I eagerly gave her the number and the street. "And if you will
only send for a carriage," I said, "because I am afraid I am too tired
to walk, I should like to go home."
"It will be best to notify your parents," she said in a soothing voice,
"and they will fetch you away."
"But there is no one there now, except Abby, and she is lame and very
old. Father is not in town. He will not be back until night, and I
can perfectly well go home alone!" I was beginning to feel desperate,
as I thought I never should get out of the place.
She smiled and said, "Well, we will see! Give me your father's name."
She looked surprised when she heard it and not quite as if she believed
me, but all she said was, "Now you must lie down and rest a little
while before you go out."
I protested that I did not feel tired, and indeed my anxiety to get
away had wiped out all memory of my bruises. But in the end I had to
follow the round-faced nun up the bare, cement stairway to another
small room. It seemed strange after the luxurious glooms of the
Spanish Woman's house, to be in this bare, whitewashed place, where all
the light fell unobstructed through little, narrow windows placed high
up in the walls. There were no mirrors here, not one, to reflect one's
figure; and it was only when I had taken off my hat that I discovered
what a wreck it was, crushed absurdly out of shape; and my hair was
half down. The nun helped me to unwind and brush it out, and I heard
her murmuring at my back, "When I was young my hair was as long as
this."
And then she coaxed me to lie down on a little bed. I felt her cover
me up; but when she tried to make me drink something from a glass a
hideous memory sprang in my mind, and I had struck and knocked the
glass out of her hand before I could think what I was doing. I heard
her muttering anxiously to herself as she picked the pieces up, and
then I was left alone.
With confused puzzles moving through my mind I lay there, tense,
feverish, tossing, each moment expecting some one to come and tell me I
could go home. Finally, I seemed at last really to be going. The only
trouble was that the nuns told me I could not leave unless I left as a
bride, and they had no satin and no orange flowers.
I was startled out of this fancy by voices sounding loud upon the edge
of my dream. One said angrily, "In the first place you ought never to
have taken her to that infernal house, either for the sake of getting
evidence or any other thing." The second retorted, "Well, I wanted to
keep her out of the whole business. It was you who insisted on
dragging her in; and once you get into this sort of thing difficult
situations often present themselves."
My eyes opened wide, and in the faint light of the floating candle
flames, just above me, I saw Mr. Dingley's face. "You weren't there!
Why weren't you there?" I said, sitting up.
"You see," a woman's voice that I thought was the Mother Superior's,
put in, "she says and does such strange things that I dared not let her
go out into the street alone."
Then, with an unutterable sense of relief, I recognized father's voice.
"Yes, that was quite right. She was better here." And he sat down on
the edge of the bed.
"Oh, take me home!" I cried.
He smiled, and said, with that same exasperating sort of reassurance
which the Mother Superior had used, "Yes, we are going immediately."
They all made me feel as if they thought that I didn't know what I was
talking about.
"Either every one is crazy," I thought, "or the whole world is in some
plot against me, and they have deceived father, too." Of course my
mind knew that to be ridiculous, but everything conspired to make
familiar people strange. What was it Mr. Dingley had been telling
father just before I returned to consciousness? "Perhaps after I am
alone with father at home I can get him to listen to what I want to
say," I thought.
But there were many reasons why this undertaking was much more
difficult than I had supposed.
In the first place, it was Mr. Dingley who began by asking me where I
had gone. He had been waiting in the front hall for me all the while,
he said, and how had I got out without his seeing me? He had hunted
all through the rooms on the lower floor, and not finding me, had gone
back to our house, supposing I had returned; and from there had set out
in search of me.
It sounded very reasonable, and I was at a loss to understand why it
didn't seem probable to me. Then, when we reached home, we found a
person waiting--a detective Mr. Dingley had sent for--and to him and to
Mr. Dingley as well as to father, I had to tell my story. It came out
in bits and snatches, with questions and answers, Mr. Dingley's all
mixed in with mine; and when they did let me speak uninterruptedly I
was so excited that the words came tumbling out, all confused. It
seemed to me, too, that father was much more anxious over the fact that
I was feverish and had a lump on my forehead, than the fact that the
Spanish Woman had offered me that glass of wine, and then said I should
never leave the house. But he said the thing should be investigated;
and Mr. Dingley said something about making inquiries to-night; and
finally all three went out together, leaving me in a wretched state of
anxiety and doubt.
It seemed to me that none of them at all understood the situation, and
it was so wonderfully clear, in my own mind, so enormous and astounding
in its menace, that I was woefully puzzled to see how they could have
missed it. But I was to learn no more until the following day, when,
lying in bed, stiff and sore, with every muscle in my arms and
shoulders aching, father came in with that unwontedly grave and puzzled
face that the poor dear had worn so often since the beginning of the
whole miserable experience.
The detective and police had been to the Spanish Woman's house, he
said, and had interviewed her. She had told them quite frankly that
she had indeed sent for me to come to her, and had implored me not to
give the evidence which I was expected to give; because she said she
fully believed it to be false--that the pistol I had thought I had seen
in Johnny Montgomery's hand must have been a fancy of mine, and that
she could not bear to have such damaging testimony given so recklessly.
She had thought, so she said, that being a woman she might perhaps know
better how to elicit the real facts of the case from me, since the
men,--lawyers, police officers and even my father,--might very well
have frightened away my memory by their manner of going about it. But
when I had been so obstinate, she said, she had lost her head and
become angry, and that had frightened me. She said she had tried in
every way to reassure me; but I had resisted all her offers of
hospitality, and finally, becoming hysterical, had struck a glass of
wine which she had offered me, out of her hand, and rushed out of the
room, before she could stop me or even discover why I had so suddenly
fled.
Mr. Dingley, father went on, had explained that he had been waiting for
me, as he had said he would, down-stairs; but at the moment when I had
come he had not been in the _sala_.
I could only stare at father. These didn't seem to be at all the same
experiences which I had been through so short a time before; and yet,
when I considered, I couldn't contradict a thing. The incidents were
there, but somehow they all sounded perfectly harmless. I felt
bewildered. Beside these mild-looking facts my actions seemed those of
a madwoman.
Furthermore, father went on, Mr. Dingley had said that when he went
through the _sala_ afterward, searching for me, the windows had been
closed and locked fast and the police had declared there was no hole in
the convent wall, and that the wall itself would have been a difficult
drop even for a man.
I pounced upon this as a tangible fact. "Then some one in the house
must have closed and locked the window again; and there was a hole in
the wall, or how could I have gone through it? The drop was very bad
indeed, for my hat was crushed out of shape."
Poor father looked very much puzzled. "But about the wine--I don't
understand. Why did you do that?"
The answer was ready at my amazed lips, but I stopped it, for now at
last I began to see. I began to see how, without that peculiar intent
look with which the Spanish Woman had handed me the wine-glass, nor the
menacing gesture with which she had thrust it upon me, the episode of
the wine that had seemed to me so threatening became a mere empty
courtesy; and indeed, separated from the sinister appearance of the
moment, not one episode that had taken place in that extraordinary
house which could not be explained away! I knew past any doubting,
that the Spanish Woman had tried to bribe me, had tried to poison me,
and failing that would have detained me by force, if I had not got out
of the window. And, if I should tell him the whole adventure now while
it was so burning fresh in my own mind, with all its suggestive
atmosphere, its eloquent details, couldn't I make him see it as I saw
it? No. The Spanish Woman had blown the magic breath of her
plausibility, her ingenuity, upon the poor little substance of my true
story, and had scattered it like ash. It was too much of an
undertaking, even supposing it to be possible, to bring together the
pieces again. And a vaguer but even more insistent voice, prompted,
"Then suppose he does believe me? What will it mean to Johnny
Montgomery?" It seemed to me that I had been enough of a Spartan as
far as that man was considered.
I looked up at father and said, "She frightened me--the Spanish Woman
frightened me, and so I ran away."
How readily he took this up, showed me it was the explanation he
expected. "Yes, I know. It would be quite natural," he said
soothingly. "You have been much over-wrought, and this infernal
performance has thrown you into hysterics. But that wall, child--an
awful drop!" He laughed a little, but I could see how much moved he
was. "I hope to see that courage displayed in a worthier cause some
time."
I did not tell him how worthy the cause this time had been, how were it
not for that bold leap of mine there would have been no star witness
for the people to-morrow.
Something in my noncommittal air seemed to touch father, and make him
still look anxiously at me. "Of course, Dingley is going to have the
matter investigated further. The woman will probably be arrested, if
only on suspicion."
But that evening he told me that Mr. Dingley had said nothing had been
elicited from her that would warrant such a thing; and though father
seemed vexed and dissatisfied, he argued what could one do if there was
no evidence to fasten upon?
I did not answer; I knew it would be of no use, Mr. Dingley's
explanations were so reasonable. But since I had talked with father
that morning a piece of news had come to me which had only succeeded in
strengthening my belief in the meaning of the Spanish Woman's actions.
This was brought me by Hallie, my envoy extraordinary, who had wormed
it out of her mother who had got it from Mr. Ferguson.
It seemed that on Saturday, just after Hallie had left the court, the
Spanish Woman had taken the witness-stand and testified that she had
been Rood's wife. Mr. Ferguson said this was ridiculous to suppose,
yet no one, not even Mr. Dingley, had challenged her statement. She
denied there had ever been any trouble between the two men. She said
she had been interested in Mr. Montgomery as a woman might be who was
old enough to be his mother, but that Rood had been her husband and
that she had loved and been faithful to him. She was wonderfully calm
and convincing, Mr. Ferguson had said, and it looked at first as if her
testimony would help the defense very much, but when Mr. Dingley's
associate began cross-examining her, he seemed to turn her testimony
inside out, and then it appeared that her evidence had been the worst
thing possible for the prisoner. For if Rood had stood so firmly in
Montgomery's way, the lawyer argued, that would give the very strongest
motive for the shooting.
"Wasn't it dreadful!" Hallie exclaimed. "When she wanted so much to
help him, to find she had only made things worse. Father said that
when she realized how the evidence had been turned against him she grew
as white as death."
From this I was able to understand better why the Spanish Woman had
been willing to take the terrible chance involved in sending for me to
come to her house. She must have been desperate. But, what I could
not understand was, why had not Mr. Dingley challenged any of her
testimony in the court? Why was it always his associate?
I had a sense of things going on under the surface which even my father
did not suspect. There was plenty of news flying about in plain
hearing and sight--news of mob law preached from the custom-house
steps; news of the double guard at the jail so there would be no second
chance of escape--all these things I heard without their being able to
rouse in me any special interest. My mind was fixed on the
under-currents. I couldn't explain them to father because I didn't
understand them myself, only felt them. I felt as if I and all the
rest had been handled, were being handled now, by a baffling and subtle
power which one could not lay hands upon, because it seemed, as if by
magic, to be able to erase the evidence of its action.
There was no telling, I thought, what the Spanish Woman might not
manage to do. Yes, even though I seemed to be safe; for hadn't she, in
a fashion, conjured me out of Mr. Dingley's protection? Her power of
persuasion--it was that which was her magic! Thus far father was the
only one who seemed untouched by it. Even I had felt the pressure of
it. Those appeals she had made when she had begged me to remember how
Johnny Montgomery had implored me, as she said, with his look, to be
silent--they had nearly undone me, and still they haunted me.
"But I don't believe he wanted it, I don't believe he would want
anything so cowardly! and I know I do not want him at that price."
This last reflection of mine astonished myself. What could I have
meant by that? Oh, of course, that I did not want him released at that
price! But was it probable that whether he were released or convicted
it would be in any way for my happiness? Suppose, with her dark power,
she was going to be the enchantress to-morrow. Was she again going to
scatter, in some unforeseen and uncombatible way, all my testimony, and
triumphantly see the prisoner acquitted? Oughtn't I to be glad that he
would be free? Ah, that was the strange part of it! For it appeared
to me that in such an acquittal there would be something doubly guilty;
something that would send him out of the court under a deeper shadow
than ever he had found in prison; something that would pledge him to
her for ever. It was that last thought of all I could least endure.