"AN ALL-CONQUERING BEAUTY"
I was one of the first to procure and read a New York paper next
morning. Would I discover in the columns any hint of the preceding day's
events in Yonkers, which, if known, must for ever upset the wagon
theory? No, that secret was still my secret, only shared by the doctor,
who, so far as I understood him, had no intention of breaking his
self-imposed silence till his fears of some disaster to the little one
had received confirmation. I had therefore several hours before me yet
for free work.
The first thing I did was to hunt up Miss Graham.
She met me with eagerness; an eagerness I found it difficult to dispel
with my disappointing news in regard to Doctor Pool.
"He is not the man," said I. "Can you think of any other?"
She shook her head, her large gray eyes showing astonishment and what I
felt bound to regard as an honest bewilderment.
"I wish to mention a name," said I.
"One I know?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I know of no other person capable of wronging that child."
"You are probably right. But there is a gentleman--one interested in the
family--a man with something to gain--"
"Mr. Rathbone? You must not mention him in any such connection. He is
one of the best men I know--kind, good, and oh, so sensitive! A dozen
fortunes wouldn't tempt a man of his stamp to do any one living a wrong,
let alone a little innocent child."
"I know; but there are other temptations greater than money to some men;
infinitely greater to one as sensitive as you say he is. What if he
loved a woman! What if his only hope of winning her--"
"You must not think that of him," she again interposed. "Nothing could
make a villain of _him_. I have seen him too many times in circumstances
which show a man's character. He is good through and through, and in all
that concerns Gwendolen, honorable to the core. I once saw him save her
life at the risk of his own."
"You did? When? Years ago?"
"No, lately; within the last year."
"Tell me the circumstances."
She did. They were convincing. As I listened, the phantasm of the night
before assumed fainter and fainter proportions. When she had finished I
warmly remarked that I was glad to hear the story of so heroic an act.
And I was. Not that I ascribed too deep a significance to the word which
had escaped Mr. Rathbone on the dock, but because I was glad to have my
instinctive confidence in the man verified by facts.
It seemed to clear the way before me.
"Ellie," said I (it seemed both natural and proper to call her by that
name now), "what explanation would you give if, under any circumstances
(all circumstances are possible, you know), you heard this gentleman
speak of feeling guilty in connection with Gwendolen Ocumpaugh?"
"I should have to know the circumstances," was her quiet answer.
"Let me imagine some. Say that it was night, late night, at an hour when
the most hardened amongst us are in a peculiarly responsive condition;
say that he had been spending hours near the house of the woman he had
long loved but had quite despaired of winning in his greatly hampered
condition, and with the fever of this longing upon him, but restrained
by emotions the nature of which we can not surmise, had now found his
way down to the river--to the spot where boats have clustered and men
crouched in the gruesome and unavailing search we know of; say that he
hung there long over the water, gazing down in silence, in solitude,
alone, as he thought, with his own conscience and the suggestions
offered by that running stream where some still think, despite facts,
despite all the probabilities, that Gwendolen has found rest, and when
his heart was full, should be seen to strike his breast and utter, with
a quick turn of his face up the hill, this one word, 'Guilty'?"
"What would I think? This: That being overwrought by the struggle you
mention (a struggle we can possibly understand when we consider the
unavoidable consciousness which must be his of the great change which
would be effected in all his prospects if Gwendolen should not be
found), he gave the name of guilt to feelings which some would call
simply human."
"Ellie, you are an oracle." This thought of hers had been my thought
ever since I had had time really to reflect upon the matter. "I wonder
if you will have an equally wise reply to give to my next question?"
"I can not say. I speak from intuition; I am not really wise."
"Intuition is above wisdom. Does your intuition tell you that Mrs. Carew
is the true friend she professes to be to Mrs. Ocumpaugh?"
"Ah, that is a different thing!"
The clear brow I loved--there! how words escape a man!--lost its
smoothness and her eyes took on a troubled aspect, while her words came
slowly.
"I do not know how to answer that offhand. Sometimes I have felt that
her very soul was knit to that of Mrs. Ocumpaugh, and again I have had
my doubts. But never deep ones; never any such as would make it easy
for me to answer the question you have just put me."
"Was her love for Gwendolen sincere?" I asked.
"Oh, yes; oh, yes. That is, I always thought so, and with no
qualification, till something in her conduct when she first heard of
Gwendolen's disappearance--I can not describe it--gave me a sense of
disappointment. She was shocked, of course, and she was grieved, but not
hopelessly so. There was something lacking in her manner--we all felt
it; Mrs. Ocumpaugh felt it, and let her dear friend go the moment she
showed the slightest inclination to do so."
"There were excuses for Mrs. Carew, just at that time," said I. "You
forget the new interest which had come into her life. It was natural
that she should be preoccupied."
"With thoughts of her little nephew?" replied Miss Graham. "True, true;
but she had been so fond of Gwendolen! You would have thought-- But why
all this talk about Mrs. Carew? You don't believe--you surely can not
believe--"
"That Mrs. Carew is a charming woman? Oh, yes, but I do. Mr. Rathbone
shows good taste."
"Ah, is she the one?"
"Did you not know it?"
"No; yet I have seen them together many times. Now I understand much
that has always been a mystery to me. He never pressed his suit; he
loved, but never harassed her. Oh, he is a good man!" This with
emphasis.
"Is she a good woman?"
Miss Graham's eyes suddenly fell, then rose again until they met mine
fully and frankly.
"I have no reason," said she, "to believe her otherwise. I have never
seen anything in her to hinder my esteem; only--"
"Finish that 'only.'"
"She does not appeal to me as many less gifted women do. Perhaps I am
secretly jealous of the extreme fondness Gwendolen has always shown for
her. If so, the fault is in me, not in her."
What I said in reply is not germane to this story.
After being assured by a few more discreet inquiries in some other
perfectly safe quarters that Miss Graham's opinion of Mr. Rathbone was
shared by those who best knew him, I returned to the one spot most
likely to afford me a clue to, if no explanation of, this elusive
mystery.
What did I propose to myself? First, to revisit Mrs. Carew and make the
acquaintance of the boy Harry. I no longer doubted his being just what
she called him, but she had asked me to call for this purpose and I had
no excuse for declining the invitation, even if I had desired to do so.
Afterward--but first let us finish with Mrs. Carew.
As she entered her reception-room that morning she looked so
bright--that is, with the instinctive brightness of a naturally
vivacious temperament--that I wondered if I had been mistaken in my
thought that she had had no sleep all that night, simply because many of
the lights in her house had not been put out till morning. But an
inspection of her face revealed lines of care, which only her smile
could efface, and she was not quite ready for smiles, affable and
gracious as she showed herself.
Her first words, just as I expected, were:
"There is nothing in the papers about the child in the wagon."
"No; everything does not get into the papers."
"Will what we saw and what we found in the bungalow last night?"
"I hardly think so. That is our own special clue, Mrs. Carew--if it is a
clue."
"You seem to regard it as such."
With a shrug I declared that we had come upon a mystery of some kind.
"But the child is not dead? That you feel demonstrated--or don't you?"
"As I said last night, I do not know what to think. Ah; is that the
little boy?"
"Yes," she gaily responded, as the glad step of a child was heard
descending the stairs. "Harry! come here, Harry!" she cried, with that
joyous accent which a child's presence seems to call out in some women.
"Here is a gentleman who would like to shake hands with you."
A sprite of a child entered; a perfect sunbeam irradiating the whole
room. If, under the confidence induced by the vision I had had of him on
his knees the night before, any suspicion remained in my mind of his
being Gwendolen Ocumpaugh in disguise, it vanished at sight of the
fearless head, lifted high in boyish freedom, and the gay swish, swish
of the whip in his nervous little hand.
"Harry is playing horse," he cried, galloping toward me in what he
evidently considered true jockey style.