THE LUGGER
As he disappeared the desire to run after him, to cry out to him, to
cry out to all the ears of the court the story he had told me, rushed
over me, an insane impulse. "What would that do but make everything
worse, even harder for him to bear? Haven't I made things hard enough
for him already?" I who had said I loved him, that I believed in his
innocence, had yet virtuously urged him to go back and give himself
up--to what? Why, my poor little coward mind was even afraid to name
what that thing was!
The Spanish Woman had not been afraid, no, not of anything! She had
risked everything that she had to save him in the best way that she
knew. Was I, as she had so bitterly told me, only a creature of words
with no deeds to make them good? It was all very well to say things
would turn out right; but now I saw that they would not unless I made
them; and how was that to be managed if he wouldn't speak, and I was in
his confidence and couldn't?
I puzzled it over as my carriage rattled slowly back up Montgomery
Avenue. Suddenly from what had been absolutely sterile cogitation,
there sprang up the full flower of an idea. All that he had said that
evening had carried the same perplexing undercurrent of a thing that he
could not speak of, and always it seemed to point to the Spanish Woman.
"She knows!" I thought triumphantly, "and if she knows, why, she must
not go away until she has told me." The whole thing opened before me
complete, unexpected, a deliverance.
I looked out of the window. Faintest, earliest dawn was already
beginning. There was but one thing to do. Johnny had told me that the
Spanish Woman was going aboard the lugger at dawn. I directed the
driver to drive to the Black Point wharf.
He peered at me as if he thought me crazy. "That feller gave me a gold
piece, ye know," he said, "or I wouldn't have taken ye as far as this."
"Go on," I said, and queerly enough I didn't feel at all afraid of the
man. "Go on, and my father, Mr. Fenwick, will give you more when you
take me home; and besides you are doing a service for the city."
Muttering that it was the weirdest go that he had ever struck, he
clucked to the weary horses, and after a little more of cobblestones,
began the struggle through the sand.
Those terrible sand-hills! We labored in them like a snail. They
seemed to hang on the wheels, and to heap themselves in front of us;
but the increasing light came on wings and what exact moment in all
this long, gray and golden approach of the sun was to be considered
dawn? At last we were over the hilltop, and floundering down the other
side, the trees and gardens of houses overlooking the water front upon
my left-hand, upon the other, sand and sea. Straight below, running
out from the shore, was the little disused wharf. One or two Italian
fishing-boats rocked in its shadow, but no vessel was in sight.
Could it be that I was too late? I thought, in an agony of
uncertainty, as the carriage drew up at the pier. Thrusting my head
and as much of my body as possible out of the carriage window I looked
out the gray, winding channel toward the Heads. Not a sail in sight!
This was encouraging, for I knew, that even starting with the grayest
light, there would not have been time for the vessel to have vanished
out at sea. Through the other window Chestnut Street Hill, a great
rounding mass, rose bluffly out of the water, shouldering the city out
of sight. Near its base tall eucalyptus trees swayed against the blue
bay; and through their shifting leaves and branches I was able to make
out the masts and sails of the lugger lying close under the hill. It
was so well hidden that had I not been expecting to see it, I must
certainly have passed it over altogether, taking the masts for tree
boles, and the furled canvas for the light acacia bark.
I drew my cloak closer around my shoulders, pulled up the carriage
blinds on each side, allowing only a crack wide enough for me to look
through, and settled myself to the hard task of waiting, of being at
once patient and vigilant. There was not an instant when I dared relax
my watch, first at this window, now at that, for who could tell by
which way the Spanish Woman would approach--through the sand-hills,
driven up in her carriage, or, what was more probable, on foot over the
tree-guarded slopes of the hill. The blink of an eyelash might lose
her!
The dull gray light that had chilled shore and sea began to take on a
warmer glint. I knew the east was growing rosy. And still she did not
come. The fishing-boats began to go out, and at my back I heard the
first murmur of the city stirring out of sleep. Two of the fishermen,
Italians, stood on the wharf and stared at my carriage curiously, but I
hardly noticed them. I felt as if I were outside of all the world, and
everything usual that could happen.
The wind was freshening, picking up whitecaps on the bay, and presently
I noticed that the lugger had shifted her position, had moved out a
little from under the lea of the hill, and I saw they were running up
sail on board. One large flapping white wing, and then another, rose
and spread beyond the trees. I could even hear the piping sound of the
sailors' voices; and then, with a veering and a tilting, and finally
with a graceful bowing motion, she stood away from the hill and began
to go out to sea.
Beautiful sight that it was I looked at it with despair. I could not
believe it. How had the Spanish Woman got on board without my seeing
her? Could she have slipped along through the bewildering shadows and
so evaded me; or had she gone on board even before I had come? but, no,
that couldn't be, for then the lugger could have sailed immediately, I
thought, as I stood on the step of the carriage and watched the ship
carrying my last hope swing round and dip her nose deep in the channel
tide.
"There is only one chance," I said to myself. "Perhaps she will have
left some word for him behind her at the house."
The thought had no sooner come into my mind than it possessed me with
the conviction that this must be so. For when I remembered her looks
and her words to me as she talked of him I felt sure that nothing could
make her quite desert him, even though he had disappointed her. The
idea of her house which a little while ago had terrified me, came now
like an inspiration. I did not know what I should do or say when I
reached it, "But something will tell me what to do when I am there," I
thought, as we retraced our way over the floundering track of the hills.
When, for the second time that morning, I found myself in front of the
Spanish Woman's gate, I sprang out of the carriage without a moment's
hesitation. I told the man to drive back to our house on Washington
Street and tell Mr. Fenwick there that I wanted him.
There I stood in the chill daylight, shivering in my pale blue cloak,
impetuously clanging the brazen lion's head upon its clapper. The
outer door opened to me noiselessly as it had done before, shutting as
silently after. But the garden, which had seemed picturesque and
dreamy under the kind sunlight, now looked ghastly, disheveled,
crumbling, as if it had been deserted for at least a hundred years.
The inner door was a long time in opening. Just as I was beginning to
despair it swung a cautious crack. I saw the glimmer of eyes, then
immediately it was opened wide by a woman, the same maid whom I had
seen brushing out the Spanish Woman's hair.
"The Senora Valencia?" I asked, feeling the mockery of my question, but
pressing forward in terror lest she should not let me in. Her face had
a set appearance. She looked as if she hated me, but she admitted me
readily enough, closing the door quickly upon me. There, just within
the threshold of the house, she held out to me a white envelope.
The outside was blank, enigmatic as the servant's face, but from it I
pulled a folded sheet of paper scrawled in that bold hand, which, like
all other attributes of that woman, was unforgettable. Within the
paper was a card. Upon the card I read:
"You see, he understands me perfectly. He wishes to be rid of me and
he has chosen the one way possible. I give you back his words."
No signature, and the card was my dance program still with its little
pencil. On the back I read the farewell Johnny Montgomery had made
her. It was in Spanish. "I am in love with another woman. Go away
without me. I am going back."
I stood crumpling the thing in my clenched hand and the first thought
came trembling in words: "Oh, cruel, cruel! How could he say it!"
When I remembered her passionate face and wild will I wondered what
love had done with her when first she had read that card. If a girl
like Laura Burnet had fainted at a lesser shock, what had a creature
like the Spanish Woman done? And then the next thought came, wiping
out the memory of the first. "But there is nothing here to help Johnny
Montgomery--nothing at all!"
The maid's voice broke upon my bewilderment, harsh and grating. "Will
the Senorita walk up-stairs?"
I turned to her in increasing amazement. What might this mean? Was I
after all to find my mystery's clew?
"The Senora's room," the woman explained, going before, and I followed
up the stair.
I thought I could have told without previous knowledge that the house
had been deserted by its mistress. The rooms which had been warm as
with the heat of life were now deathly cold, as if they had been closed
for a long time. The sweet, thick perfume which had pervaded them had
failed, leaving only a dank smell of old weighty hangings; the very
mysteriousness seemed to have disappeared out of the passageways and
doors, every turn and unexpected opening and winding of which I
remembered through sheer terror.
At the door of the private _sala_ there was no pause; the maid did not
knock. No need, was there, at the door of an empty room? She led me
straight across the anteroom and there in front of the curtain stood
the impassive major-domo, the man who had led me there the first time.
He was as still as a bronze. He did not even seem to see me, but
stretching out his hand gathered up the velvet folds and drew the
curtain a little to one side.
There breathed upon me across the threshold, wonderfully fresh and
living, like a human presence, that strong perfume of the Spanish
Woman's flower. I stood fixed in astonishment. There at the far end
of the room she was, the Spanish Woman herself.
She was seated, yet not as she had been the first time I had seen her,
in her low combing chair; but full facing me on a great high-backed
seat like a throne, her feet on a footstool, a table at her right on
which her hand rested over some white thing, like a folded paper. Her
gown, too dull for gold, too shining for anything else, streamed down
on each side to the floor. Her whole look was as if she had dressed
and seated herself and made ready for some great thing. Her head was
flung back, resting against the cushion and she was looking straight at
me. She did not speak. I felt she was waiting, and that I must begin.
I walked slowly across the room, not knowing what to say to her, but
when I had covered half the distance some shaft of sunrise slanting
into the room lighted her face with its pale reflection and I saw her
eyes. They were half closed, and behind her thick, long lashes they
gleamed mistily like silver. My knees doubled up under me and I went
down on them in sheer weakness, for I knew that she was dead.
For a moment I could think of nothing and the room like a wheel went
around me; but I kept saying, "No, no! I will not, I must not faint!"
and after a few moments I moved forward, still, I think, on my knees,
and looked at the paper under her hand. I was too weak to get to my
feet. I reached up and took it. I looked at the Spanish Woman. I
looked at the fine, firm, foreign handwriting.
"On the day of May the seventh, 1865, in the presence of John
Montgomery and my peon, Victor Perez, I, Carlotta Valencia, shot and
killed Martin Rood in his gambling-house on Dupont and Washington
Streets. Signed, Carlotta Valencia. Victor Perez."
On the table, almost hidden by her hand, I saw the thing which I had
seen once before lying in the gutter on Dupont Street--the
pearl-handled revolver.
I sat there at her feet, and, looking up at her, I felt as if she had
won, though now I knew it was quite the other way. But she looked so
calm, so mighty, so indifferent, sitting up there above me, that she
made death seem a little thing, and she herself not even wicked. Then
the room swam away from me as in a dream.
The next thing I was conscious of was a broken foreign voice speaking;
and I found myself covered up with a great coat lying on a sofa in the
down-stairs _sala_; and there, strangely seen among its velvet and
gilding, was father with his hair tossed on end and his clothes huddled
upon him, and Mr. Dingley, very white and drawn, and the peon Perez,
who was talking. I listened to his voice going on as if it were part
of a dream.
Yes, he said, it was true there had been bad blood between the two men.
First it had been the young man's debts, and then it had been the
Senora. The Senora had told the young man she would give up Rood; but
of course that was impossible, Perez said, with a shrug, as where was
the money to come from he should like to know? But she was constantly
afraid lest young Montgomery might find it out. Therefore, Perez said,
when he had seen Montgomery going into Rood's place at two o'clock on
the morning of the shooting he went at once to his mistress and told
her. Taking Perez with her, she had hurried to the gambling-house with
the purpose of somehow separating the two, and there in the bar the
quarrel had taken place.
It seemed that the truth of Rood's position as "protector" to the
Senora had reached Montgomery, and he had come to tax Rood with it, and
Rood had told him. He told him even before the Senora's face, and
Montgomery had said he was done with the whole crew of them. He was
going to get out of it, he was going away. Then the Senora had clung
to Montgomery, telling him she would do anything to keep him with her;
and Rood had turned upon him. It was then that the Senora had shot
Rood. He had been standing so near the swinging door that at the shot,
to their horror, he had fallen backward through it.
Before any one could think, the peon went on, Montgomery had snatched
the revolver from her, saying: "I shot him," and had rushed out into
the street, and after a moment's waiting the Senora had run out, and
seeing the revolver picked it up. Yes, he said, she had worn a white
dress and undoubtedly it was she and not the Senorita Fenwick that the
woman who had looked out the window had seen. But she had not run down
the street, as this witness had said, who, like all women, only
remembered what she wished to believe, but back into the
gambling-house, and through there into an alley at the rear, from which
they entered a house the Senora was familiar with, and remained there
until the afternoon when the excitement had somewhat subsided. Then
they had gone quietly back to the Senora's house.
Yes, the pistol was the Senora's. Mr. Montgomery had bought it for her
a little while before. Yes, the Senora had made sure to save Mr.
Montgomery and but for the Senorita Fenwick it would have been. For
she had many friends, friends of power, he said. At that Mr. Dingley
grew paler, and started to speak, but then he seemed to change his
mind. Father looked at him, and I wondered then had the trouble been
that Mr. Dingley had been one of those friends of hers. When the
police came and we left the place, Mr. Dingley and father separated
without a word, and father took me home alone in the carriage.
EPILOGUE
TWO YEARS
All the experiences which I had gone through with, with such apparent
lack of feeling, seemed to take their revenge on me at once. For a
while I was very ill, delirious with fever; and when I was myself again
and the doctor would let me be talked to, the new trial was all over,
and Johnny Montgomery had been acquitted a week ago. It was Hallie,
all smiles, with her hands full of roses, who brought this news in to
me; and in a few days, she said, Jack Tracy had told her, Montgomery
was going to leave the city. This set me wondering whether that night
in the carriage and everything we had told each other then had been no
more than part of my fever visions.
At last I gathered courage enough to ask father if Johnny Montgomery
had inquired about me. Father looked annoyed, and said, "Yes," that he
had been sending every day, and that he had asked if he might see me
when I was able, but, father said, he had thought it best to refuse.
That made me so miserable I began to be ill again, and the doctor was
afraid I would have a relapse; so finally father gave his permission
for me to see Johnny.
It was strange and unreal to think that it was actually he, gaunt and
white and serious-looking, standing beside my bed and gazing down at me
with timid eyes. We were both so glad to see each other we were a
little afraid. The shadow of things that had happened was over us
still and made us grave.
I must have looked very thin, for he took my hand as if he thought it
would break and his voice was hardly above a whisper. He said whatever
good came of him and whatever happiness he had hereafter he would owe
to me, and that would be more than owing me his life; but father was
right in saying that a man with the reputation he held in this city had
no right to see or speak with me. He had only come to thank me and to
say good-by. He was going away to South America.
"But father does not know you," I said, "and I am sure you are quite a
different man from what any one here thinks you. And if you go away it
will break my heart."
At that he looked happier and said if I felt that way he would go just
the same, but it would make him want to come back again. And then,
perhaps, he might be more the sort of man my father would give his
daughter to. A friend of his father's, he said, had offered him an
overseer's place in his mine in South America; and would I forget all
about him in two years, he wanted to know?
"Two years will seem a very long time," I said, "but I shall remember
you and wait for you for ever."
He smiled and said, "Those two years will be almost for ever to me, but
I have bought my chance dear, and even the hope of such happiness is
more than I deserve."
And then I called father and told him. He was very grave, and said to
Johnny, "It depends on you; if you can show yourself a different sort
of man and wipe out the record you have made for yourself, well, then,
I suppose she will be of age, and it will be your own affair--but I
hope she will forget you." That was absurd!
So I kissed Johnny good-by--though father didn't like that at all--for
it would help to make the two years shorter.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Other Side of the Door, by Lucia Chamberlain