from her hand, ‘I cannot read his words!’ she cried; ‘I do not need to;
we both know which of us he loves best. You cannot say that it is I,
his engaged wife.’ I was silent, and her face took on an awful pallor.
‘Carmel,’ said she, ‘do you know what this man’s love has been to me?
You are a child, a warm-hearted and passionate child; but you do not
know a woman’s heart. Certainly, you do not know mine. I doubt if any
one does--even he. Cares have warped my life. I do not quarrel with
these cares; I only say that they have robbed me of what makes girlhood
lovely. Duty is a stern task-master; and sternness, coming early into
one’s life, hardens its edges, but does not sap passion from the soul
or devotion from the heart. I was ready for joy when it came, but I
was no longer capable of bestowing it. I thought I was, but I soon saw
my mistake. You showed it to me--you with your beauty, your freshness,
your warm and untried heart. I have no charms to rival these; I have
only love, such love as you cannot dream of at your age. And _this_ is
no longer desirable to him!’
“You see that I remember every word she spoke. They burned more
fiercely than the iron. That did not burn at all, just then. I was cold
instead--bitterly, awfully cold. My very heart seemed frozen, and the
silence was dreadful. But I could not speak, I could not answer her.
“‘You have everything,’ she now went on. ‘Why did you rob me of my one
happiness? And you have robbed me. I have seen your smile when his head
turned your way. It was the smile which runs before a promise. I know
it; I have had that smile in my heart a long, long time--but it never
reached my lips. Carmel, do you know why I am here?’ I shook my head.
Was it her teeth that were chattering or mine? ‘I am here to end it
all,’ said she. ‘With my hope gone, my heart laid waste, life has no
prospect for me. I believe in God, and I know that my act is sinful;
but I can no more live than can a tree stricken at the root. To-morrow
he will not need to write notes; he can come and comfort you in our
home. But never let him look at me. As we are sisters, and I almost a
mother to you, shut my face away from his eyes--or I shall rise in my
casket and the tangle of our lives will be renewed.’
“I tell you this--I bare my sister’s broken heart to you, giving you
her very words, sacred as they are to me and--and to others, who are
present, and must listen to all I say--because it is right that you
should understand her frenzy, and know all that passed between us in
that awful hour.”
This was irregular, highly irregular--but District Attorney Fox sat
on, unmoved. Possibly he feared to prejudice the jury; possibly
he recognised the danger of an interruption now, not only to the
continuity of her testimony, but to the witness herself; or--what
is just as likely--possibly he cherished a hope that, in giving her
a free rein and allowing her to tell her story thus artlessly, she
would herself supply the clew he needed to reconstruct his case on the
new lines upon which it was being slowly forced by these unexpected
revelations. Whatever the cause, he let these expressions of feeling
pass.
At a gesture from Mr. Moffat, Carmel proceeded:
“I tottered at this threat; and she, a mother to me from my cradle,
started instinctively to catch me; but the feeling left her before
she had taken two steps, and she stopped still. ‘Drop your hand,’
she cried. ‘I want to see your whole face while I ask you one last
question. I could not read the note. Why did you come _here?_ I dropped
my hand, and she stood staring; then she uttered a cry and ran quickly
towards me. ‘What is it?’ she cried. ‘What has happened to you? Is it
the shadow or--’
“I caught her by the hand. I could speak now. ‘Adelaide,’ said I,
‘you are not the only one to love to the point of hurt. I love _you_.
Let this little scar be witness,’ Then, as her eyes opened and she
staggered, I caught her to my breast and hid my face on her shoulder.
‘You say that to-morrow I shall be free to receive notes. He will
not wish to write them, tomorrow. The beauty he liked is gone. If it
weighed overmuch with him, then you and I are on a plane again--or I am
on an inferior one. Your joy will be sweeter for this break!’
“She started, raised my head from her shoulder, looked at me and
shuddered--but no longer with hate. ‘Carmel!’ she whispered, ‘the
story--the story I read you of Francis the First and--’
“‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘that made me think,’ Her knees bent under her; she
sank at my feet, but her eyes never left my face. ‘And--and Elwood?’
‘He knows nothing. I did not make up my mind till to-night. Adelaide,
it had to be. I hadn’t the strength to--to leave you all, or--or to say
no, if he ever asked me to my face what he asked me in that note,’
“And then I tried to lift her; but she was kissing my feet, kissing my
dress, sobbing out her life on my hands. Oh, I was happy! My future
looked very simple to me. But my cheek began to burn, and instinctively
I put up my hand. This brought her to her feet. ‘You are suffering,’
she cried. ‘You must go home, at once, at once, while I telephone to
Dr. Carpenter,’ ‘We will go together,’ I said. ‘We can telephone from
there.’ But at this, the awful look came back into her face, and seeing
her forget my hurt, I forgot it, too, in dread of what she would say
when she found strength to speak.
“It was worse than anything I had imagined; she refused absolutely to
go back home. ‘Carmel,’ said she, ‘I have done injustice to your youth.
You love him, too--not like a child but a woman. The tangle is worse
than I thought; your heart is caught in it, as well as mine, and you
shall have your chance. My death will give it to you.’ I shook my head,
pointing to my cheek. She shook hers, and quietly, calmly said, ‘You
have never looked so beautiful. Should we go back together and take
up the old life, the struggle which has undermined my conscience and
my whole existence would only begin again. I cannot face that ordeal,
Carmel. The morning light would bring me daily torture, the evening
dusk a night of blasting dreams. We three cannot live in this world
together. I am the least loved and so I should be the one to die. I am
determined, Carmel. Life, with me, has come to this.’
“I tried to dissuade her. I urged every plea, even that of my own
sacrifice. But she was no more her natural self. She had taken up the
note and read it during my entreaties, and my words fell on deaf ears.
‘Why, these words have killed me,’ she cried crumpling the note in her
hand. ‘What will a little poison do? It can only finish what he has
begun.’
“Poison! I remembered how I had heard her pushing about bottles in
the medicine cabinet, and felt my legs grow weak and my head swim.
‘You will not!’ I cried, watching her hand, in terror of seeing it
rise to her breast. ‘You are crazed to-night; to-morrow you will feel
differently.’
“But the fixed set look of her bleak face gave me no hope. ‘I shall
never feel differently. If I do not end it to-night, I shall do so
soon. When a heart like mine goes down, it goes down forever,’ I could
only shudder. I did not know what to do, or which way to turn. She
stood between me and the door, and her presence was terrible. ‘When I
came here,’ she said, ‘I brought a bottle of cordial with me and three
glasses. I brought a little phial of poison too, once ordered for
sickness. I expected to find Elwood here. If I had, I meant to drop
the poison into one glass, and then fill them all up with the cordial.
We should have drunk, each one of us his glass, and one of us would
have fallen. I did not care which, you or Elwood or myself. But he is
not here, and the cast of the die is between us two, unless you wish
a certainty, Carmel,--in which case I will pour out but one glass and
drink that myself.’
“She was in a fever, now, and desperate. Death was in the room; I felt
it in my lifted hair, and in her strangely drawn face. If I screamed,
who would hear me? I never thought of the telephone, and I doubt if she
would have let me use it then. The power she had always exerted over me
was very strong in her at this moment; and not till afterwards did it
cross my mind that I had never asked her how she got to the house, or
whether we were as much alone in the building as I believed.
“‘Shall I drink alone?’ she repeated, and I cried out ‘No’; at which
her hand went to her breast, as I had so long expected, and I saw the
glitter of a little phial as she drew it forth.
“‘Oh, Adelaide!’ I began; but she heeded me no more than the dead.
“On leaving home, she had put on a long coat with pockets and this coat
was still on her, and the pockets gaping. Thrusting her other hand into
one of these, she drew out a little flask covered with wicker, and set
it on a stand beside her. Then she pulled out two small glasses, and
set them down also, and then she turned her back. I could hear the
drop, drop of the liquor; and, dark as the room was, it seemed to turn
darker, till I put out my hands like one groping in a sudden night. But
everything cleared before me when she turned around again. Features set
like hers force themselves to be seen.
“She advanced, a glass in either hand. As she came, the floor swayed,
and the walls seemed to bow together; but they did not sway her. Step
by step, she drew near, and when she reached my side she smiled in
my face once. Then she said: ‘Choose aright, dear heart. Leave the
poisoned one for me.’
“Fascinated, I stared at one glass, then at the other. Had either of
her hands trembled, I should have grasped at the glass it held; but not
a tremor shook those icy fingers, nor did her eyes wander to the right
hand or to the left. ‘Adelaide!’ I shrieked out. ‘Toss them behind you.
Let us live--live!’ But she only reiterated that awful word: ‘Choose!’
and I dare not hesitate longer, lest I lose my chance to save her.
Groping, I touched a glass--I never knew which one--and drawing it from
her fingers, I lifted it to my mouth. Instantly her other hand rose. ‘I
don’t know which is which, myself,’ she said, and drank. That made me
drink, also.
“The two glasses sent out a clicking sound as we set them back on the
stand. Then we waited, looking at each other. ‘Which?’ her lips seemed
to say. ‘Which?’ In another moment we knew. ‘Your choice was the right
one,’ said she, and she sank back into a chair. ‘Don’t leave me!’ she
called out, for I was about to run shrieking out into the night. ‘I--I
am happy now that it is all settled; but I do not want to die alone.
Oh, how hot I am!’ And leaping up, she flung off her coat, and went
gasping about the room for air. When she sank down again, it was on
the lounge; and again I tried to fly for help, and again she would not
let me. Suddenly she started up, and I saw a great change in her. The
heavy, leaden look was gone; tenderness had come back to her eyes,
and a human anxious expression to her whole face. ‘I have been mad!’
she cried. ‘Carmel, Carmel, what have I done to you, my more than
sister--my child, my child!’
“I tried to soothe her--to keep down my awful fear and soothe her. But
the nearness of death had calmed her poor heart into its old love and
habitual thoughtfulness. She was terrified at my position. She recalled
our mother, and the oath she had taken at that mother’s death-bed to
protect me and care for me and my brother. ‘And I have failed to do
either,’ she cried. ‘Arthur, I have alienated, and you I am leaving to
unknown trouble and danger,’
“She was not to be comforted. I saw her life ebbing and could do
nothing. She clung to me while she called up all her powers, and made
plans for me and showed me a way of escape. I was to burn the note,
fling two of the glasses from the window and leave the other and the
deadly phial near her hand. This, before I left the room. Then I was to
call up the police and say there was something wrong at the club-house,
but I was not to give my name or ever acknowledge I was there. ‘Nothing
can save trouble,’ she said, ‘but that trouble must not come near you.
Swear that you will heed my words--swear that you will do what I say,’
“I swore. All that she asked I promised. I was almost dying, too;
and had the light gone out and the rafters of the house fallen in
and buried us both, it would have been better. But the light burned
on, and the life in her eyes faded out, and the hands grasping mine
relaxed. I heard one little gasp; then a low prayer: ‘Tell Arthur
never--never--again to--’ Then--silence!”
Sobs--cries--veiled faces--then silence in the courtroom, too. It was
broken but by one sound, a heartrending sigh from the prisoner. But
nobody looked at him, and thank God!--nobody looked at me. Every eye
was on the face of this young girl, whose story bore such an impress
of truth, and yet was so contradictory of all former evidence. What
revelations were yet to follow. It would seem that she was speaking of
her sister’s death.
But her sister had not died that way; her sister had been strangled.
Could this dainty creature, with beauty scarred and yet powerfully
triumphant, be the victim of an hallucination as to the cause of that
scar and the awesome circumstances which attended its infliction?
Or, harder still to believe, were these soul-compelling tones, these
evidences of grief, this pathetic yielding to the rights of the law
in face of the heart’s natural shrinking from disclosures sacred as
they were tragic--were these the medium by which she sought to mislead
justice and to conceal truth?
Even I, with my memory of her looks as she faltered down the staircase
on that memorable night--pale, staring, her left hand to her cheek and
rocking from side to side in pain or terror--could not but ask if this
heart-rending story did not involve a still more terrible sequel. I
searched her face, and racked my very soul, in my effort to discern
what lay beneath this angelic surface--beneath this recital which if it
were true and the whole truth, would call not only for the devotion of
a lifetime, but a respect transcending love and elevating it to worship.
But, in her cold and quiet features, I could detect nothing beyond the
melancholy of grief; and the suspense from which all suffered, kept me
also on the rack, until at a question from Mr. Moffat she spoke again,
and we heard her say:
“Yes, she died that way, with her hands in mine. There was no one else
by; we were quite alone.”
That settled it, and for a moment the revulsion of feeling threatened
to throw the court into tumult. But one thing restrained them. Not the
look of astonishment on her face, not the startled uplift of Arthur’s
head, not the quiet complacency which in an instant replaced the
defeated aspect of the district attorney; but the gesture and attitude
of Mr. Moffat, the man who had put her on the stand, and who now from
the very force of his personality, kept the storm in abeyance, and by
his own composure, forced back attention to his witness and to his own
confidence in his case. This result reached, he turned again towards
Carmel, with renewed respect in his manner and a marked softening in
his aspect and voice.
“Can you fix the hour of this occurrence?” he asked. “In any way can
you locate the time?”
“No; for I did not move at once. I felt tied to that couch; I am very
young, and I had never seen death before. When I did get up, I hobbled
like an old woman and almost went distracted; but came to myself as I
saw the note on the floor--the note I was told to burn. Lifting it, I
moved towards the fireplace, but got a fright on the way, and stopped
in the middle of the floor and looked back. I thought I had heard my
sister speak!
“But the fancy passed as I saw how still she lay, and I went on, after
a while, and threw the note into the one small flame which was all that
was left of the fire. I saw it caught by a draught from the door behind
me, and go flaming up the chimney.
“Some of my trouble seemed to go with it, but a great one yet remained.
I didn’t know how I could ever turn around again and see my sister
lying there behind me, with her face fixed in death, for which I was,
in a way, responsible. I was abjectly frightened, and knelt there a
long time, praying and shuddering, before I could rise again to my
feet and move about as I had to, since God had not stricken me and I
must live my life and do what my sister had bidden me. Courage--such
courage as I had had--was all gone from me now; and while I knew there
was something else for me to do before I left the room, I could not
remember what it was, and stood hesitating, dreading to lift my eyes
and yet feeling that I ought to, if only to aid my memory by a look at
my sister’s face.
“Suddenly I did look up, but it did not aid my memory; and, realising
that I could never think with that lifeless figure before me, I lifted
a pillow from the window-seat near by and covered her face. I must
have done more; I must have covered the whole lounge with pillows and
cushions; for, presently my mind cleared again, and I recollected
that it was something about the poison. I was to put the phial in her
hand--or was I to throw it from the window? Something was to be thrown
from the window--it must be the phial. But I couldn’t lift the window,
so having found the phial standing on the table beside the little
flask, I carried it into the closet where there was a window opening
inward, and I dropped it out of that, and thought I had done all. But
when I came back and saw Adelaide’s coat lying in a heap where she had
thrown it, I recalled that she had said something about this but what,
I didn’t know. So I lifted it and put it in the closet--why, I cannot
say. Then I set my mind on going home.
“But there was something to do first--something not in that room. It
was a long time before it came to me; then the sight of the empty
hall recalled it. The door by which Adelaide had come in had never
been closed, and as I went towards it I remembered the telephone, and
that I was to call up the police. Lifting the candle, I went creeping
towards the front hall. Adelaide had commanded me, or I could never
have accomplished this task. I had to open a door; and when it swung to
behind me and latched, I turned around and looked at it, as if I never
expected it to open again. I almost think I fainted, if one can faint
standing, for when I knew anything, after the appalling latching of
that door, I was in quite another part of the room and the candle which
I still held, looked to my dazed eyes shorter than when I started with
it from the place where my sister lay.
“I was wasting time. The thought drove me to the table. I caught up
the receiver and when central answered, I said something about The
Whispering Pines and wanting help. This is all I remember about that.
“Some time afterward--I don’t know when--I was stumbling down the
stairs on my way out. I had gone to--to the room again for my little
bag; for the keys were in it, and I dared not leave them. But I didn’t
stay a minute, and I cast but one glance at the lounge. What happened
afterward is like a dream to me. I found the horse; the horse found the
road; and some time later I reached home. As I came within sight of the
house I grew suddenly strong again. The open stable door reminded me of
my duty, and driving in, I quickly unharnessed Jenny and put her away.
Then I dragged the cutter into place, and hung up the harness. Lastly,
I locked the door and carried the key with me into the house and hung
it up on its usual nail in the kitchen. I had obeyed Adelaide, and now
I would go to my room. That is what she would wish; but I don’t know
whether I did this or not. My mind was full of Adelaide till confusion
came--then darkness--and then a perfect blank.”
She had finished; she had done as she had been asked; she had told the
story of that evening as she knew it, from the family dinner till her
return home after midnight--and the mystery of Adelaide’s death was
as great as ever. Did she realise this? Had I wronged this lovely,
tempestuous nature by suspicions which this story put to blush? I
was happy to think so--madly, unreasonably happy. Whatever happened,
whatever the future threatening Arthur or myself, it was rapture to be
restored to right thinking as regards this captivating and youthful
spirit, who had suffered and must suffer always--and all through me,
who thought it a pleasant pastime to play with hearts, and awoke to
find I was playing with souls, and those of the two noblest women I had
ever known!
The cutting in of some half dozen questions from Mr. Moffat, which I
scarcely heard and which did not at all affect the status of the case
as it now stood, served to cool down the emotional element, which had
almost superseded the judicial, in more minds than those of the jury;
and having thus prepared his witness for an examination at other and
less careful hands, he testified his satisfaction at her replies, and
turned her over to the prosecution, with the time-worn phrase:
“Mr. District Attorney, the witness is yours.”
Mr. Fox at once arose; the moment was ripe for conquest. He put his
most vital question first:
“In all this interview with your sister, did you remark any
discoloration on her throat?”
The witness’s lips opened; surprise spoke from her every feature.
“Discoloration?” she repeated. “I do not know what you mean.”
“Any marks darker than the rest of her skin on her throat or neck?”
“No. Adelaide had a spotless skin. It looked like marble as she lay
there. No, I saw no marks.”
“Miss Cumberland, have you heard or read a full account of this trial?”
She was trembling, now. Was it from fear of the truth, or under that
terror of the unknown embodied in this question.
“I do not know,” said she. “What I heard was from my nurse and Mr.
Moffat. I read very little, and that was only about the first days of
the trial and the swearing in of jurors. This is the first time I have
heard any mention made of marks, and I do not understand yet what you
allude to.”
District Attorney Fox cast at Mr. Moffat an eloquent glance, which that
gentleman bore unmoved; then turning back to the witness, he addressed
her in milder and more considerate tones than were usually heard from
him in cross-examination, and asked: “Did you hold your sister’s hands
all the time she lay dying, as you thought, on the lounge?”
“Yes, yes.”
“And did not see her raise them once?”
“No, no.”
“How was it when you let go of them? Where did they fall then?”
“On her breast. I laid them down softly and crossed them. I did not
leave her till I had done this and closed her eyes.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I went for the note, to burn it.”
“Miss Cumberland, in your direct examination, you said that you stopped
still as you crossed the floor at the time, thinking that your sister
called, and that you looked back at her to see.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were her hands crossed then?”
“Yes, sir, just the same.”
“And afterward, when you came from the fire after waiting some little
time for courage?”
“Yes, yes. There were no signs of movement. Oh, she was dead--quite
dead.”
“No statements, Miss Cumberland. She looked the same, and you saw no
change in the position of her hands?”
“None; they were just as I left them.”
“Miss Cumberland, you have told us how, immediately after taking the
poison, she staggered about the room, and sank first on a chair and
then on the lounge. Were you watching her then?”
“Oh, yes--every moment.”
“Her hands as well as her face?”
“I don’t know about her hands. I should have observed it if she had
done anything strange with them.”
“Can you say she did not clutch or grip her throat during any of this
time?”
“Yes, yes. I couldn’t have forgotten it, if she had done that. I
remember every move she made so well. She didn’t do that.”
Mr. Fox’s eye stole towards the jury. To a man, they were alert,
anxious for the next question, and serious, as the arbitrators of a
man’s life ought to be.
Satisfied, he put the question: “When, after telephoning, you returned
to the room where your sister lay, you glanced at the lounge?”
“Yes, I could not help it.”
“Was it in the same condition as when you left--the pillows, I mean?”
“I--I think so. I cannot say; I only half looked; I was terrified by
it.”
“Can you say they had not been disturbed?”
“No. I can say nothing. But what does--”
“Only the answer, Miss Cumberland. Can you tell us how those pillows
were arranged?”
“I’m afraid not. I threw them down quickly, madly, just as I collected
them. I only know that I put the window cushion down first. The rest
fell anyhow; but they quite covered her--quite.”
“Hands and face?”
“Her whole body.”
“And did they cover her quite when you came back?”
“They must have--Wait--wait! I know I have no right to say that, but I
cannot swear that I saw any change.”
“Can you swear that there was no change--that the pillows and the
window cushion lay just as they did when you left the room?”
She did not answer. Horror seemed to have seized hold of her. Her
eyes, fixed on the attorney’s face, wavered and, had they followed
their natural impulse, would have turned towards her brother, but her
fear--possibly her love--was her counsellor and she brought them back
to Mr. Fox. Resolutely, but with a shuddering insight of the importance
of her reply, she answered with that one weighty monosyllable which can
crush so many hopes, and even wreck a life:
“No.”
At the next moment she was in Dr. Carpenter’s arms. Her strength had
given way for the time, and the court was hastily adjourned, to give
her opportunity for rest and recuperation.
XXXI
“WERE HER HANDS CROSSED THEN?”
Threescore and ten I can remember well:
Within the volume of which time, I have seen
Hours dreadful, and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowledge.
_Macbeth_.
I shall say nothing about myself at this juncture. That will come
later. I have something of quite different purport to relate.
When I left the court-room with the other witnesses, I noticed a man
standing near the district attorney. He was a very plain man--with no
especial claims to attention, that I could see, yet I looked at him
longer than I did at any one else, and turned and looked at him again
as I passed through the doorway.
Afterward I heard that he was Sweetwater, the detective from New
York who had had so much to do in unearthing the testimony against
Arthur,--testimony which in the light of this morning’s revelations,
had taken on quite a new aspect, as he was doubtless the first to
acknowledge. It was the curious blending of professional disappointment
and a personal and characteristic appreciation of the surprising
situation, which made me observe him, I suppose. Certainly my heart
and mind were full enough not to waste looks on a commonplace stranger
unless there had been some such overpowering reason.
I left him still talking to Mr. Fox, and later received this account of
the interview which followed between them and Dr. Perry.
“Is this girl telling the truth?” asked District Attorney Fox, as soon
as the three were closeted and each could speak his own mind. “Doctor,
what do you think?”
“I do not question her veracity in the least. A woman who for purely
moral reasons could defy pain and risk the loss of a beauty universally
acknowledged as transcendent, would never stoop to falsehood even in
her desire to save a brother’s life. I have every confidence in her.
Fox, and I think you may safely have the same.”
“You believe that she burnt herself--intentionally?”
“I wouldn’t disbelieve it--you may think me sentimental; I knew and
loved her father--for any fortune you might name.”
“Say that you never knew her father; say that you had no more interest
in the girl or the case, than the jurors have? What then---?
“I should believe her for humanity’s sake; for the sake of the
happiness it gives one to find something true and strong in this sordid
work-a-day world--a jewel in a dust-heap. Oh, I’m a sentimentalist, I
acknowledge.”
Mr. Fox turned to Sweetwater. “And you?”
“Mr. Fox, have you those tongs?”
“Yes, I forgot; they were brought to my office, with the other
exhibits. I attached no importance to them, and you will probably find
them just where I thrust them into the box marked ‘Cumb.’”
They were in the district attorney’s office, and Sweetwater at once
rose and brought forward the tongs.
“There is my answer,” he said pointing significantly at one of the legs.
The district attorney turned pale, and motioned Sweetwater to carry
them back. He sat silent for a moment, and then showed that he was a
man.
“Miss Cumberland has my respect,” said he.
Sweetwater came back to his place.
Dr. Perry waited.
Finally Mr. Fox turned to him and put the anticipated question:
“You are satisfied with your autopsy? Miss Cumberland’s death was due
to strangulation and not to the poison she took?”
“That was what I swore to, and what I should have to swear to again
if you placed me back on the stand. The poison, taken with her great
excitement, robbed her of consciousness, but there was too little of
it, or it was too old and weakened to cause death. She would probably
have revived, in time; possibly did revive. But the clutch of those
fingers was fatal; she could not survive it. It costs me more than
you can ever understand to say this, but questions like yours must be
answered. I should not be an honest man otherwise.”
Sweetwater made a movement. Mr. Fox turned and looked at him critically.
“Speak out,” said he.
But Sweetwater had nothing to say.
Neither had Dr. Perry. The oppression of an unsolved problem, involving
lives of whose value each formed a different estimate, was upon them
all; possibly heaviest upon the district attorney, the most serious
portion of whose work lay still before him.
To the relief of all, Carmel was physically stronger than we expected
when she came to retake the stand in the afternoon. But she had lost
a little of her courage. Her expectation of clearing her brother at
a word had left her, and with it the excitation of hope. Yet she
made a noble picture as she sat there, meeting, without a blush, but
with an air of sweet humility impossible to describe, the curious,
all-devouring glances of the multitude, some of them anxious to repeat
the experience of the morning; some of them new to the court, to her,
and the cause for which she stood.
Mr. Fox kept nobody waiting. With a gentleness such as he seldom showed
to any witness for the defence, he resumed his cross-examination by
propounding the following question:
“Miss Cumberland, in your account of the final interview you had with
your sister, you alluded to a story you had once read together. Will
you tell us the name of this story?”
“It was called ‘A Legend of Francis the First.’ It was not a novel, but
a little tale she found in some old magazine. It had a great effect
upon us; I have never forgotten it.”
“Can you relate this tale to us in a few words?”
“I will try. It was very simple; it merely told how a young girl marred
her beauty to escape the attentions of the great king, and what respect
he always showed her after that, even calling her sister.”
Was the thrill in her voice or in my own heart, or in the
story--emphasised as it was by her undeniable attempt upon her own
beauty? As that last word fell so softly, yet with such tender
suggestion, a sensation of sympathy passed between us for the first
time; and I knew, from the purity of her look and the fearlessness of
this covert appeal to one she could not address openly, that the doubts
I had cherished of her up to this very moment were an outrage and that
were it possible or seemly, I should be bowed down in the dust at her
feet--in reality, as I was in spirit.
Others may have shared my feeling; for the glances which flew from her
face to mine were laden with an appreciation of the situation, which
for the moment drove the prisoner from the minds of all, and centred
attention on this tragedy of souls, bared in so cruel a way to the
curiosity of the crowd. I could not bear it. The triumph of my heart
battled with the shame of my fault, and I might have been tempted into
some act of manifest imprudence, if Mr. Fox had not cut my misery short
by recalling attention to the witness, with a question of the most
vital importance.
“While you were holding your sister’s hands in what you supposed to be
her final moments, did you observe whether or not she still wore on her
finger the curious ring given her by Mr. Ranelagh, and known as her
engagement ring?”
“Yes--I not only saw it, but felt it. It was the only one she wore on
her left hand.”
The district attorney paused. This was an admission unexpected,
perhaps, by himself, which it was desirable to have sink into the minds
of the jury. The ring had not been removed by Adelaide herself; it
was still on her finger as the last hour drew nigh. An awful fact, if
established--telling seriously against Arthur. Involuntarily I glanced
his way. He was looking at me. The mutual glance struck fire. What I
thought, he thought--but possibly with a difference. The moment was
surcharged with emotion for all but the witness herself. She was calm;
perhaps she did not understand the significance of the occasion.
Mr. Fox pressed his advantage.
“And when you rose from the lounge and crossed your sister’s hands?”
“It was still there; I put that hand uppermost.”
“And left the ring on?”
“Oh, yes--oh, yes.” Her whole attitude and face were full of protest.
“So that, to the best of your belief, it was still on your sister’s
finger when you left the room?”
“Certainly, sir, certainly.”
There was alarm in her tone now, she was beginning to see that her
testimony was not as entirely helpful to Arthur as she had been led
to expect. In her helplessness, she cast a glance of entreaty at her
brother’s counsel. But he was busily occupied with pencil and paper,
and she received no encouragement unless it was from his studiously
composed manner and general air of unconcern. She did not know--nor did
I know then--what uneasiness such an air may cover.
Mr. Fox had followed her glances, and perhaps understood his adversary
better than she did; for he drew himself up with an appearance of
satisfaction as he asked very quietly:
“What material did you use in lighting the fire on the club-house
hearth?”
“Wood from the box, and a little kindling I found there.”
“How large was this kindling?”
“Not very large; some few stray pieces of finer wood I picked out from
she rest.”
“And how did you light these?”
“With some scraps of paper I brought in my bag?”
“Oh--you brought scraps?”
“Yes. I had seen the box, seen the wood, but knew the wood would not
kindle without paper. So I brought some.”
“Did the fire light quickly?”
“Not very quickly.”
“You had trouble with it?”
“Yes, sir. But I made it burn at last.”
“Are you in the habit of kindling fires in your own home?”
“Yes, on the hearth.”
“You understand them?”
“I have always found it a very simple matter, if you have paper and
enough kindling.”
“And the draught is good.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wasn’t the draught good at the club-house?”
“Not at first.”
“Oh--not at first. When did you see a change?”
“When the note I was trying to burn flew up the chimney.”
“I see. Was that after or before the door opened?”
“After.”
“Did the opening of this door alter the temperature of the room?”
“I cannot say; I felt neither heat nor cold at any time.”
“Didn’t you feel the icy cold when you opened the dressing-closet
window to throw out the phial?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Wouldn’t you remember if you had?”
“I cannot say.”
“Can you say whether you noticed any especial chill in the hall when
you went out to telephone?”
“My teeth were chattering but--”
“Had they chattered before?”
“They may have. I only noticed it then; but--”
“The facts, Miss Cumberland. Your teeth chattered while you were
passing through the hall. Did this keep up after you entered the room
where you found the telephone?”
“I don’t remember; I was almost insensible.”
“You don’t remember that they did?”
“No, sir.”
“But you do remember having shut the door behind you?”
“Yes.”
An open window in the hall! That was what he was trying to prove--open
at this time. From the expression of such faces of the jury as I could
see, I think he had proved it. The next point he made was in the same
line. Had she, in all the time she was in the building, heard any
noises she could not account for?
“Yes, many times.”
“Can you describe these noises?”
“No; they were of all kinds. The pines sighed continually; I knew it
was the pines, but I had to listen. Once I heard a rushing sound--it
was when the pines stopped swaying for an instant--but I don’t know
what it was. It was all very dreadful.”
“Was this rushing sound such as a window might make on being opened?”
“Possibly. I didn’t think of it at the time, but it might have been.”
“From what direction did it come?”
“Back of me, for I turned my head about.”
“Where were you at the time?”
“At the hearth. It was before Adelaide came in.”
“A near sound, or a far?”
“Far, but I cannot locate it--indeed, I cannot. I forgot it in a
moment.”
“But you remember it now?”
“Yes.”
“And cannot you remember _now_ any other noises than those you speak
of? That time you stepped into the hall--when your teeth chattered, you
know--did you hear nothing then but the sighing of the pines?”
She looked startled. Her hands went up and one of them clutched at her
throat, then they fell, and slowly--carefully--like one feeling his
way--she answered:
“I had forgotten. I did hear something--a sound in one of the doorways.
It was very faint--a sigh--a--a--I don’t know what. It conveyed nothing
to me then, and not much now. But you asked, and I have answered.”
“You have done right, Miss Cumberland. The jury ought to know these
facts. Was it a human sigh?”
“It wasn’t the sigh of the pines.”
“And you heard it in one of the doorways? Which doorway?”
“The one opposite the room in which I left my sister.”
“The doorway to the large hall?”
“Yes, sir.”
Oh, the sinister memories! The moments which I myself had spent
there--after this time of her passing through the hall, thank God!--but
not long after. And some one had been there before me! Was it Arthur? I
hardly had the courage to interrogate his face, but when I did, I, like
every one else who looked that way, met nothing but the quietude of a
fully composed man. There was nothing to be learned from him now; the
hour for self-betrayal was past. I began to have a hideous doubt.
Carmel being innocent, who could be guilty but he. I knew of no one.
The misery under which I had suffered was only lightened, not removed.
We were still to see evil days. The prosecution would prove its case,
and--But there was Mr. Moffat. I must not reckon without Moffat. He had
sprung one surprise. Was he not capable of springing another? Relieved,
I fixed my mind again upon the proceedings. What was Mr. Fox asking her
now?
“Miss Cumberland, are you ready to swear that you did not hear a step
at that time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or see a face?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That you only heard a sigh?”
“A sigh, or something like one.”
“Which made you stop--”
“No, I did not stop.”
“You went right on?”
“Immediately.”
“Entering the telephone room?”
“Yes.”
“The door of which you shut?”
“Yes.”
“Intentionally?”
“No, not intentionally.”
“Did you shut that door yourself?”
“I do not know. I must have but I--”
“Never mind explanations. You do not know whether you shut it, or
whether some one else shut it?”
“I do not.”
The words fell weightily. They seemed to strike every heart.
“Miss Cumberland, you have said that you telephoned for the police.”
“I telephoned to central.”
“For help?”
“Yes, for help.”
“You were some minutes doing this, you say?”
“I have reason to think so, but I don’t know definitely. The candle
seemed shorter when I went out than when I came in.”
“Are you sure you telephoned for help?”
“Help was what I wanted--help for my sister. I do not remember my
words.”
“And then you left the building?”
“After going for my little bag.”
“Did you see any one then?”
“No, sir.”
“Hear any one?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you see your sister again?”
“I have said that I just glanced at the couch.”
“Were the pillows there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just as you had left them?”
“I have said that I could not tell.”
“Wouldn’t you know if they had been disturbed?”
“No, sir--not from the look I gave them.”
“Then they might have been disturbed--might even have been
rearranged---without your knowing it?”
“They might.”
“Miss Cumberland, when you left the building, did you leave it alone?”
“I did.”
“Was the moon shining?”
“No, it was snowing.”
“Did the moon shine when you went to throw the phial out of the window?”
“Yes, very brightly.”
“Bright enough for you to see the links?”
“I didn’t look at the links.”
“Where were you looking?”
“Behind me.”
“When you threw the phial out?”
“Yes.”
“What was there behind you?”
“A dead sister.” Oh, the indescribable tone!
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Forgive me, Miss Cumberland, I do not want to trouble you, but was
there not something or some one in the adjoining room besides your dead
sister, to make you look back?”
“I saw no one. But I looked back--I do not know why.”
“And didn’t you turn at all?”
“I do not think so.”
“You threw the phial out without looking?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know you threw it out?”
“I felt it slip from my hand.”
“Where?”
“Over the window ledge. I had pulled the window open before I turned
my head. I had only to feel for the sill. When I touched its edge, I
opened my fingers.”
Triumph for the defence. Cross-examination on this point had only
served to elucidate a mysterious fact. The position of the phial,
caught in the vines, was accounted for in a very natural manner.
Mr. Fox shifted his inquiries.
“You have said that you wore a hat and coat of your brother’s in coming
to the club-house? Did you keep these articles on?”
“No; I left them in the lower hall.”
“Where in the lower hall?”
“On the rack there.”
“Was your candle lit?”
“Not then, sir.”
“Yet you found the rack?”
“I felt for it. I knew where it was.”
“When did you light the candle?”
“After I hung up the coat.”
“And when you came down? Did you have the candle then?”
“Yes, for a while. But I didn’t have any light when I went for the coat
and hat. I remember feeling all along the wall. I don’t know what I did
with the candlestick or the candle. I had them on the stairs; I didn’t
have them when I put on the coat and hat.”
I knew what she did with them. She flung them out of her hand upon the
marble floor. Should I ever forget the darkness swallowing up that face
of mental horror and physical suffering.
“Miss Cumberland, you are sure about having telephoned for help, and
that you mentioned The Whispering Pines in doing so?”
“Quite sure.” Oh, what weariness was creeping into her voice!
“Then, of course, you left the door unlocked when you went out of the
building?”
“No--no, I didn’t. I had the key and I locked it. But I didn’t realise
this till I went to untie my horse; then I found the keys in my hand.
But I didn’t go back.”
“Do you mean that you didn’t know you locked the door?”
“I don’t remember whether I knew or not at the time. I do remember
being surprised and a little frightened when I saw the keys. But I
didn’t go back.”
“Yet you had telephoned for the police?”
“Yes.”
“And then locked them out?”
“I didn’t care--I didn’t care.”
An infinite number of questions followed. The poor child was near
fainting, but bore up wonderfully notwithstanding, contradicting
herself but seldom; and then only from lack of understanding the
question, or from sheer fatigue. Mr. Fox was considerate, and Mr.
Moffat interrupted but seldom. All could see that this noble-hearted
girl, this heroine of all hearts was trying to tell the truth, and
sympathy was with her, even that of the prosecution. But certain facts
had to be brought out, among them the blowing off of her hat on that
hurried drive home through the ever thickening snow-storm--a fact
easily accounted for, when one considered the thick coils of hair over
which it had been drawn.
The circumstances connected with her arrival at the house were all
carefully sifted, but nothing new came up, nor was her credibility as
a witness shaken. The prosecution had lost much by this witness, but
it had also gained. No doubt now remained that the ring was still on
the victim’s hand when she succumbed to the effects of the poison; and
the possibility of another presence in the house during the fateful
interview just recorded, had been strengthened, rather than lessened,
by Carmel’ s hesitating admissions. And so the question hung poised,
and I was expecting to see her dismissed from the stand, when the
district attorney settled himself again into his accustomed attitude of
inquiry, and launched this new question:
“When you went into the stable to unharness your horse, what did you do
with the little bag you carried?”
“I took it out of the cutter.”
“What, then?”
“Set it down somewhere.”
“Was there anything in the bag?”
“Not now. I had left the tongs at the club-house, and the paper I had
burned. I took nothing else.”
“How about the candlestick?”
“That I carried in one of the pockets of my coat. That I left, too.”
“Was that all you carried in your pockets?”
“Yes--the candlestick and the candle. The candlestick on one side and
the candle on the other.”
“And these you did not have on your return?”
“No, I left both.”
“So that your pockets were empty--entirely empty--when you drove into
your own gate?”
“Yes, sir, so far as I know. I never looked into them.”
“And felt nothing there?”
“No, sir.”
“Took nothing out?”
“No, sir.”
“Then or when you unharnessed your horse, or afterward, as you passed
back to the house?”
“No, sir.”
“What path did you take in returning to the house?”
“There is only one.”
“Did you walk straight through it?”
“As straight as I could. It was snowing heavily, and I was dizzy and
felt strange, I may have zigzagged a little.”
“Did you zigzag enough to go back of the stable?”
“Oh, no.”
“You are sure that you did not wander in back of the stable?”
“As sure as I can be of anything.”
“Miss Cumberland, I have but a few more questions to ask. Will you look
at this portion of a broken bottle?”
“I see it, sir.”
“Will you take it in your hand and examine it carefully?”
She reached out her hand; it was trembling visibly and her face
expressed a deep distress, but she took the piece of broken bottle and
looked at it before passing it back.
“Miss Cumberland, did you ever see that bit of broken glass before?”
She shook her head. Then she cast a quick look at her brother, and
seemed to gain an instantaneous courage.
“No,” said she. “I may have seen a whole bottle like that, at some time
in the club-house, but I have no memory of this broken end--none at
all.”
“I am obliged to you, Miss Cumberland. I will trouble you no more
to-day.”
Then he threw up his head and smiled a slow, sarcastic smile at Mr.
Moffat.
XXXII
AND I HAD SAID NOTHING!
O my soul’s joy!
If after every tempest come such calms
May the winds blow till they have wakened death!
_Othello_.
I had always loved her; that I knew even in the hour of my darkest
suspicion--but now I felt free to worship her. As the thought
penetrated my whole being, it made the night gladsome. Whatever awaited
her, whatever awaited Arthur, whatever awaited me, she had regenerated
me. A change took place that night in my whole nature, in my aspect of
life and my view of women. One fact rode triumphant above all other
considerations and possible distresses. Fate--I was more inclined now
to call it Providence--had shown me the heart of a great and true
woman; and I was free to expend all my best impulses in honouring her
and loving her, whether she ever looked my way again, received or even
acknowledged a homage growing out of such wrong as I had done her
and her unfortunate sister. It set a star in my firmament. It turned
down all the ill-written and besmirched leaves in my book of life and
opened up a new page on which her name, written in letters of gold,
demanded clean work in the future and a record which should not shame
the aura surrounding that pure name. Sorrow for the past, dread of the
future--both were lost in the glad rebound of my distracted soul. The
night was dedicated to joy, and to joy alone.
The next day being Sunday, I had ample time for the reaction bound to
follow hours of such exaltation. I had no wish for company. I even
denied myself to Clifton. The sight of a human face was more than I
could bear unless it were the one face; and that I could not hope
for. But the desire to see her, to hear from her--if only to learn
how she had endured the bitter ordeal of the day before--soon became
unbearable. I must know this much at any cost to her feelings or to
mine.
After many a struggle with myself, I called up Dr. Carpenter on the
telephone. From him I learned that she was physically prostrated, but
still clear in mind and satisfied of her brother’s innocence. This
latter statement might mean anything; but imparted by him to me, it
seemed to be capable of but one interpretation. I must be prepared for
whatever distrust of myself this confidence carried with it.
This was intolerable. I had to speak; I had to inquire if she had yet
heard the real reason why I was the first to be arrested.
A decided “No,” cut short that agony. I could breathe again and proffer
a humble request.
“Doctor, I cannot approach her; I cannot even write,--it would seem too
presumptuous. But tell her, as you find the opportunity, how I honour
her. Do not let her remain under the impression that I am not capable
of truly feeling what she has borne and must still bear.”
“I will do what I can,” was his reply, and he mercifully cut short the
conversation.
This was the event of the morning.
In the afternoon I sat in my window thinking. My powers of reasoning
had returned, and the insoluble problem of Adelaide’s murder occupied
my whole mind. With Carmel innocent, who was there left to suspect?
Not Arthur. His fingers were as guiltless as my own of those marks on
her throat. Of this I was convinced, difficult as it made my future.
My mind refused to see guilt in a man who could meet my eye with just
the look he gave me on leaving the courtroom, at the conclusion of his
sister’s triumphant examination. It was a momentary glance, but I read
it, I am sure, quite truthfully.
“You are the man,” it said; but not in the old, bitter, and revengeful
way voiced by his tongue before we came together in the one effort to
save Carmel from what, in our short-sightedness and misunderstanding
of her character, we had looked upon as the worst of humiliations and
the most desperate of perils. There was sadness in his conviction and
an honest man’s regret--which, if noted by those about us--was far more
dangerous to my good name than the loudest of denunciations or the most
acrimonious of assaults. It put me in the worst of positions. But one
chance remained for me now.
The secret man of guilt might yet come to light; but how or through
whose agency, I found myself unable to conceive. I had neither the wit
nor the experience to untangle this confused web. Should I find the law
in shape to deal with it? A few days would show. With the termination
of Arthur’s trial, the story of my future would begin. Meanwhile, I
must have patience and such strength as could be got from the present.
And so the afternoon passed.
With the coming on of night, my mood changed. I wanted air, movement.
The closeness of my rooms had become unbearable. As soon as the lamps
were lit in the street, I started out and I went--toward the cemetery.
I had no motive in choosing this direction for my walk. The road was an
open one, and I should neither avoid people nor escape the chilly blast
blowing directly in my face from the northeast. Whim, or shall I not
say, true feeling, carried me there though I was quite conscious, all
the time, of a strong desire to see Ella Fulton and learn from her the
condition of affairs--whether she was at peace, or in utter disgrace,
with her parents.
It was a cold night, as I have said, and there were but few people in
the streets. On the boulevard I met nobody. As I neared the cemetery,
I passed one man; otherwise I was, to all appearance, alone on this
remote avenue. The effect was sinister, or my mood made it so; yet
I did not hasten my steps; the hours till midnight had to be lived
through in some way, and why not in this? No companion would have been
welcome, and had the solitude been less perfect, I should have murmured
at the prospect of intrusion.
The cemetery gates were shut. This I had expected, but I did not
need to enter the grounds to have a view of Adelaide’s grave. The
Cumberland lot occupied a knoll in close proximity to the fence, and
my only intention had been to pass this spot and cast one look within,
in memory of Adelaide. To reach the place, however, I had to turn
a corner, and on doing so I saw good reason, as I thought, for not
carrying out my intention at this especial time.
Some man--I could not recognise him from where I stood--had forestalled
me. Though the night was a dark one, sufficient light shone from the
scattered lamps on the opposite side of the way for me to discern his
intent figure, crouching against the iron bars and gazing, with an
intentness which made him entirely oblivious of my presence, at the
very plot--and on the very grave--which had been the end of my own
pilgrimage. So motionless he stood, and so motionless I myself became
at this unexpected and significant sight, that I presently imagined I
could hear his sighs in the dread quiet into which the whole scene had
sunk.
Grief, deeper than mine, spoke in those labouring breaths. Adelaide was
mourned by some one as I, for all my remorse, could never mourn her.
_And I did not know the man_.
Was not this strange enough to rouse my wonder?
I thought so, and was on the point of satisfying this wonder by a quick
advance upon this stranger, when there happened an uncanny thing,
which held me in check from sheer astonishment. I was so placed, in
reference to one of the street lamps I have already mentioned, that my
shadow fell before me plainly along the snow. This had not attracted my
attention until, at the point of moving, I cast my eyes down and saw
two shadows where only one should be.
As I had heard no one behind me, and had supposed myself entirely
alone with the man absorbed in contemplation of Adelaide’s grave, I
experienced a curious sensation which, without being fear, held me
still for a moment, with my eyes on this second shadow. It did not
move, any more than mine did. This was significant, and I turned.
A man stood at my back--not looking at me but at the fellow in front
of us. A quiet “hush!” sounded in my ear, and again I stood still. But
only for an instant.
The man at the fence--aroused by my movement, perhaps--had turned,
and, seeing our two figures, started to fly in the opposite direction.
Instinctively I darted forward in pursuit, but was soon passed by the
man behind me. This caused me to slacken; for I had recognised this
latter, as he flew by, as Sweetwater, the detective, and knew that he
would do this work better than myself.
But I reckoned without my host. He went only as far as the spot where
the man had been standing. When, in my astonishment, I advanced upon
him there, he wheeled about quite naturally in my direction and,
accosting me by name, remarked, in his genial off-hand manner:
“There is no need for us to tire our legs in a chase after that man. I
know him well enough.”
“And who--” I began.
A quizzical smile answered me. The light was now in our faces, and I
had a perfect view of his. Its expression quite disarmed me; but I
knew, as well as if he had spoken, that I should receive no other reply
to my half-formed question.
“Are you going back into town?” he asked, as I paused and looked down
at the umbrella swinging in his hand. I was sure that he had not held
this umbrella when he started by me on the run. “If so, will you allow
me to walk beside you for a little way?”
I could not refuse him; besides, I was not sure that I wanted to.
Homely as any man I had ever seen, there was a magnetic quality in his
voice and manner that affected even one so fastidious as myself. I felt
that I had rather talk to him, at that moment, than to any other person
I knew. Of course, curiosity had something to do with it, and that
community of interest which is the strongest bond that can link two
people together.
“You are quite welcome,” said I; and again cast my eye at the umbrella.
“You are wondering where I got this,” he remarked, looking down at it
in his turn. “I found it leaning against the fence. It gives me all the
clue I need to our fleet-footed friend. Mr. Ranelagh, will you credit
me with good intentions if I ask a question or two which you may or may
not be willing to answer?”
“You may ask what you will,” said I. “I have nothing to conceal, since
hearing Miss Cumberland’s explanation of her presence at The Whispering
Pines.”
“Ah!”
The ejaculation was eloquent. So was the silence which followed it.
Without good reason, perhaps, I felt the strain upon my heart loosen a
little. Was it possible that I should find a friend in this man?
“The question I am going to ask,” he continued presently, “is one which
you may consider unpardonable. Let me first express an opinion. You
have not told all that you know of that evening’s doings.”
This called for no reply and I made none.
“I can understand your reticence, if your knowledge included the fact
of Miss Cumberland’s heroic act and her sister’s manner of death at the
club-house.”
“But it did not,” I asserted, with deliberate emphasis. “I knew nothing
of either. My arrival happened later. Miss Cumberland’s testimony gave
me my first enlightenment on these points. But I did know that the two
sisters were there together, for I had a glimpse of the younger as she
was leaving the house.”
“You had. And are willing to state it now?”
“Assuredly. But any testimony of that kind is for the defence, and
your interests are all with the prosecution. Mr. Moffat is the man who
should talk to me.”
“Does he know it?”
“Yes.”
“Who told him?”
“I did.”
“You?”
“Yes, it was my duty.”
“You are interested then in seeing young Cumberland freed?”
“I must be; he is innocent.”
The man at my side turned, shot at me one glance which I met quite
calmly, then, regulating his step by mine, moved on silently for a
moment--thinking, as it appeared to me, some very serious thoughts.
It was not until we had traversed a whole block in this way that he
finally put his question. Whether it was the one he had first had in
mind, I cannot say.
“Mr. Ranelagh, will you tell me why, when you found yourself in such
a dire extremity as to be arrested for this crime, on evidence as
startling as to call for all and every possible testimony to your
innocence, you preserved silence in regard to a fact which you must
have then felt would have secured you a most invaluable witness? I can
understand why Mr. Cumberland has been loth to speak of his younger
sister’s presence in the club-house on that night; but his reason was
not your reason. Yet you have been as hard to move on this point as he.”
Then it was I regretted my thoughtless promise to be candid with this
man. To answer were impossible, yet silence has its confidences, too.
In my dilemma, I turned towards him and just then we stepped within the
glare of an electric light pouring from some open doorway. I caught his
eye, and was astonished at the change which took place in him.
“Don’t answer,” he muttered, volubly. “It isn’t necessary. I understand
the situation, now, and you shall never regret that you met Caleb
Sweetwater on your walk this evening. Will you trust me, sir? A
detective who loves his profession is no gabbler. Your secret is as
safe with me as if you had buried it in the grave.”
And I had said nothing!
He started to go, then he stopped suddenly and observed, with one of
his wise smiles:
“I once spent several minutes in Miss Carmel Cumberland’s room, and I
saw a cabinet there which I found it very hard to understand. But its
meaning came to me later. I could not rest till it did.”
At the next moment he was half way around a corner, and in another, out
of sight.
This was the evening’s event.
XXXIII
THE ARROW OF DEATH
O if you rear this house against this house,
It will the wofulest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.
_Prometheus Unbound_.
In my first glance around the court-room the next morning, I sought
first for Carmel and then for the detective Sweetwater. Neither was
visible. But this was not true of Ella. She had come in on her father’s
arm, closely followed by the erect figure of her domineering mother.
As I scrutinised the latter’s bearing, I seemed to penetrate the
mystery of her nature. Whatever humiliation she may have felt at the
public revelation of her daughter’s weakness, it had been absorbed by
her love for that daughter, or had been forced, through the agency
of her indomitable will, to become a ministrant to her pride which
was unassailable. She had accepted the position exacted from her by
the situation, and she looked for no loss of prestige, either on her
daughter’s or her own account. Such was the language of her eyes; and
it was a language which should have assured Ella that she had a better
friend in her mother than she had ever dreamed of. The entrance of the
defendant cut short my contemplation of any mere spectator. The change
in him was so marked that I was conscious of it before I really saw
him. Every eye had reflected it, and it was no surprise to me when I
noted the relieved, almost cheerful aspect of his countenance as he
took his place and met his counsel’s greeting with a smile--the first,
I believe, which had been seen on his face since his sister’s death.
That counsel I had already noted. He was cheerful also, but with a
restrained cheerfulness. His task was not yet over, and the grimness of
Mr. Fox, and the non-committal aspect of the jurymen, proved that it
was not to be made too easy for him.
The crier announced the opening of the court, and the defence proceeded
by the calling of Ella Fulton to the witness stand.
I need not linger over her testimony. It was very short and contained
but one surprise. She had stated under direct examination that she
had waited and watched for Arthur’s return that whole night, and was
positive that he had not passed through their grounds again after that
first time in the early evening. This was just what I had expected
from her. But the prosecution remembered the snowfall, and in her
cross-examination on this point, she acknowledged that it was very
thick, much too thick for her to see her own gate distinctly; but
added, that this only made her surer of the fact she had stated; for
finding that she could not see, she had dressed herself for the storm
and gone out into the driveway to watch there, and had so watched until
the town clock struck three.
This did not help the prosecution. Sympathy could not fail to be
with this young and tremulous girl, heroic in her love, if weak in
other respects, and when on her departure from the stand, she cast
one deprecatory glance at the man for whom she had thus sacrificed
her pride, and, meeting his eye fixed upon her with anything but
ingratitude, flushed and faltered till she with difficulty found
her way, the sentiments of the onlookers became so apparent that
the judge’s gavel was called into requisition before order could be
restored and the next witness summoned to testify.
This witness was no less a person than Arthur himself. Recalled by his
counsel, he was reminded of his former statement that he had left the
club-house in a hurry because he heard his sister Adelaide’s voice, and
was now asked if hers was the only voice he had heard.
His answer revealed much of his mind.
“No, I heard Carmel’s answering her.”
This satisfying Mr. Moffat, he was passed over to Mr. Fox, and a short
cross-examination ensued on this point.
“You heard both your sisters speaking?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any of their words, or only their voices?”
“I heard one word.”
“What word?”
“The word, ‘Elwood.’”
“In which voice?”
“In that of my sister Adelaide.”
“And you fled?”
“Immediately.”
“Leaving your two sisters alone in this cold and out-of-the-way house?”
“I did not think they were alone.”
“Who did you think was with them?”
“I have already mentioned the name.”
“Yet you left them?”
“Yes, I’ve already explained that. I was engaged in a mean act. I was
ashamed to be caught at it by Adelaide. I preferred flight. I had no
premonition of tragedy--any such tragedy as afterwards occurred. I
understood neither of my sisters and my thoughts were only for myself.”
“Didn’t you so much as try to account for their both being there?”
“Not then.”
“Had you expected Adelaide to accompany your younger sister when you
harnessed the horse for her?”
“No, sir.”
“Had not this younger sister even enjoined secrecy upon you in asking
you to harness the horse?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yet you heard the two together in this remote building without
surprise?”
“No, I must have felt surprise, but I didn’t stop to analyse my
feelings. Afterward, I turned it over in my mind and tried to make
something out of the whole thing. But that was when I was far out on
the links.”
A losing game thus far. This the district attorney seemed to feel;
but he was not an ungenerous man though cursed (perhaps, I should say
blessed, considering the position he held) by a tenacity which never
let him lose his hold until the jury gave their verdict.
“You have a right to explain yourself fully,” said he, after a
momentary struggle in which his generosity triumphed over his pride.
“When you did think of your sisters, what explanation did you give
yourself of the facts we have just been considering?”
“I could not imagine the truth, so I just satisfied myself that
Adelaide had discovered Carmel’s intentions to ride into town and had
insisted on accompanying her. They were having it out, I thought, in
the presence of the man who had made all this trouble between them.”
“And you left them to the task?”
“Yes, sir, but not without a struggle. I was minded several times to
return. This I have testified to before.”
“Did this struggle consume forty minutes?”
“It must have and more, if I entered the hold in Cuthbert Road at the
hour they state.”
Mr. Fox gave up the game, and I looked to be the next person called.
But it was not a part of Mr. Moffat’s plan to weaken the effect
of Carmel’s testimony by offering any weak corroboration of facts
which nobody showed the least inclination to dispute. Satisfied with
having given the jury an opportunity to contrast his client’s present
cheerfulness and manly aspect with the sullenness he had maintained
while in doubt of Carmel’s real connection with this crime, Mr. Moffat
rested his case.
There was no testimony offered in rebuttal and the court took a recess.
When it reassembled I cast another anxious glance around. Still no
Carmel, nor any signs of Sweetwater. I could understand her absence,
but not his, and it was in a confusion of feeling which was fast
getting the upper hand of me, that I turned my attention to Mr. Moffat
and the plea he was about to make for his youthful client.
I do not wish to obtrude myself too much into this trial of another man
for the murder of my betrothed. But when, after a wait during which
the prisoner had a chance to show his mettle under the concentrated
gaze of an expectant crowd, the senior counsel for the defence slowly
rose, and, lifting his ungainly length till his shoulders lost their
stoop and his whole presence acquired a dignity which had been entirely
absent from it up to this decisive moment, I felt a sudden slow and
creeping chill seize and shake me, as I have heard people say they
experienced when uttering the common expression, “Some one is walking
over my grave.”
It was not that he glanced my way, for this he did not do; yet I
received a subtle message from him, by some telepathic means I could
neither understand nor respond to--a message of warning, or, possibly
of simple preparation for what his coming speech might convey.
It laid my spirits low for a moment; then they rose as those of a
better man might rise at the scent of danger. If he could warn, he
could also withhold. I would trust him, or I would, at least, trust
my fate. And so, good-bye to self. Arthur’s life and Carmel’s future
peace were trembling in the balance. Surely these were worth the full
attention of the man who loved the woman, who pitied the man.
At the next moment I heard these words, delivered in the slow and
but slightly raised tones with which Mr. Moffat invariably began his
address:
“May it please the court and gentlemen of the jury, my learned friend
of the prosecution has shown great discretion in that, so far as
appears from the trend of his examinations, he is planning no attempt
to explain the many silences and the often forbidding attitude of my
young client by any theory save the obvious one--the natural desire of
a brother to hide his only remaining sister’s connection with a tragedy
of whose details he was ignorant, and concerning which he had formed a
theory derogatory to her position as a young and well-bred woman.
“I am, therefore, spared the task of pressing upon your consideration
these very natural and, I may add, laudable grounds for my client’s
many hesitations and suppressions--which, under other circumstances,
would militate so deeply against him in the eyes of an upright and
impartial jury. Any man with a heart in his breast, and a sense of
honour in his soul, can understand why this man--whatever his record,
and however impervious he may have seemed in the days of his prosperity
and the wilfulness of his youth--should recoil from revelations which
would attack the honour, if not the life, of a young and beautiful
sister, sole remnant of a family eminent in station, and in all those
moral and civic attributes which make for the honour of a town and lend
distinction to its history.
“Fear for a loved one, even in one whom you will probably hear
described as a dissipated man, of selfish tendencies and hitherto
unbrotherly qualities, is a great miracle-worker. No sacrifice
seems impossible which serves as a guard for one so situated and so
threatened.
“Let us review his history. Let us disentangle, if we can, our
knowledge of what occurred in the clubhouse, from his knowledge of
it at the time he showed these unexpected traits of self-control and
brotherly anxiety, which you will yet hear so severely scored by my
able opponent. His was a nature in which honourable instincts had
forever battled with the secret predilections of youth for independence
and free living. He rebelled at all monition; but this did not make
him altogether insensible to the secret ties of kinship, or the
claims upon his protection of two highly gifted sisters. Consciously
or unconsciously, he kept watch upon the two; and when he saw that
an extraneous influence was undermining their mutual confidence, he
rebelled in his heart, whatever restraint he may have put upon his
tongue and actions. Then came an evening, when, with heart already
rasped by a personal humiliation, he saw a letter passed. You have
heard the letter and listened to its answer; but he knew nothing beyond
the fact--a fact which soon received a terrible significance from the
events which so speedily followed.”
Here Mr. Moffat recapitulated those events, but always from the
standpoint of the defendant--a standpoint which necessarily brought
before the jury the many excellent reasons which his client had for
supposing this crime to have resulted solely from the conflicting
interests represented by that furtively passed note, and the visit
of two girls instead of one to The Whispering Pines. It was very
convincing, especially his picture of Arthur’s impulsive flight from
the club-house at the first sound of his sisters’ voices.
“The learned counsel for the people may call this unnatural,” he
cried. “He may say that no brother would leave the place under such
circumstances, whether sober or not sober, alive to duty or dead to
it--that curiosity would hold him there, if nothing else. But he
forgets, if thus he thinks and thus would have you think, that the
man who now confronts you from the bar is separated by an immense
experience from the boy he was at that hour of surprise and selfish
preoccupation.
“You who have heard the defendant tell how he could not remember if
he carried up one or two bottles from the kitchen, can imagine the
blank condition of this untutored mind at the moment when those voices
fell upon his ear, calling him to responsibilities he had never before
shouldered, and which he saw no way of shouldering now. In that first
instant of inconsiderate escape, he was alarmed for himself,--afraid of
the discovery of the sneaking act of which he had just been guilty--not
fearful for his sisters. _You_ would have done differently; but you are
all men disciplined to forget yourselves and think first of others,
taught, in the school of life to face responsibility rather than shirk
it. But discipline had not yet reached this unhappy boy--the slave, so
far, of his unfortunate habits. It began its work later; yet not much
later. Before he had half crossed the golf-links, the sense of what he
had done stopped him in middle course, and, reckless of the oncoming
storm, he turned his back upon the place he was making for, only to
switch around again, as craving got the better of his curiosity, or of
that deeper feeling to which my experienced opponent will, no doubt,
touchingly allude when he comes to survey this situation with you.
“The storm, continuing, obliterated his steps as fast as the ever
whitening spaces beneath received them; but if it had stopped then
and there, leaving those wandering imprints to tell their story,
what a tale we might have read of the first secret conflict in this
awakening soul! I leave you to imagine this history, and pass to the
bitter hour when, racked by a night of dissipation, he was aroused,
indeed, to the magnitude of his fault and the awful consequences of his
self-indulgence, by the news of his elder sister’s violent death and
the hardly less pitiful condition of the younger.
“The younger!” The pause he here made was more eloquent than any words.
“Is it for me to laud her virtues, or to seek to impress upon you in
this connection, the overwhelming nature of the events which in reality
had laid her mind and body low? You have seen her; you have heard her;
and the memory of the tale she has here told will never leave you, or
lose its hold upon your sympathies or your admiration. If everything
else connected with this case is forgotten, the recollection of that
will remain. You, and I, and all who wait upon your verdict, will in
due time pass from among the living, and leave small print behind us
on the sands of time. But her act will not die, and to it I now offer
the homage of silence, since that would best please her heroic soul,
which broke the bonds of womanly reserve only to save from an unmerited
charge a falsely arraigned brother.”
The restraint and yet the fire with which Mr. Moffat uttered these
simple words, lifted all hearts and surcharged the atmosphere with
an emotion rarely awakened in a court of law. Not in my pulses
alone was started the electric current of renewed life. The jury,
to a man, glowed with enthusiasm, and from the audience rose one
long and suppressed sigh of answering feeling, which was all the
tribute he needed for his eloquence--or Carmel for her uncalculating,
self-sacrificing deed. I could have called upon the mountains to cover
_me_; but--God be praised--no one thought of me in that hour. Every
throb, every thought was for her.
At the proper moment of subsiding feeling, Mr. Moffat again raised his
voice:
“Gentlemen of the jury, you have seen point after point of the
prosecution’s case demolished before your eyes by testimony which
no one has had the temerity to attempt to controvert. What is left?
Mr. Fox will tell you--three strong and unassailable facts. The ring
found in the murdered woman’s casket, the remnants of the tell-tale
bottle discovered in the Cumberland stable, and the opportunity for
crime given by the acknowledged presence of the defendant on or near
the scene of death. He will harp on these facts; he will make much of
them; and he will be justified in doing so, for they are the only links
remaining of the strong chain forged so carefully against my client.
“But are these points so vital as they seem? Let us consider them, and
see. My client has denied that he dropped anything into his sister’s
casket, much less the ring missing from that sister’s finger. Dare you,
then, convict on this point when, according to count, ten other persons
were seen to drop flowers into this very place--any one of which might
have carried this object with it?
“And the bit of broken bottle found in or near the defendant’s own
stable! Is he to be convicted on the similarity it offers to the one
known to have come from the club-house wine-vault, while a reasonable
doubt remains of his having been the hand which carried it there? No!
Where there is a reasonable doubt, no high-minded jury will convict;
and I claim that my client has made it plain that there is such a
reasonable doubt.”
All this and more did Mr. Moffat dilate upon. But I could no longer fix
my mind on details, and much of this portion of his address escaped me.
But I do remember the startling picture with which he closed. His
argument so far, had been based on the assumption of Arthur’s ignorance
of Carmers purpose in visiting the club-house, or of Adelaide’s attempt
at suicide. His client had left the building when he said he did,
and knew no more of what happened there afterward than circumstances
showed, or his own imagination conceived. But now the advocate took
a sudden turn, and calmly asked the jury to consider with him the
alternative outlined by the prosecution in the evidence set before them.
“My distinguished opponent,” said he, “would have you believe that the
defendant did not fly at the moment declared, but that he waited to
fulfil the foul deed which is the only serious matter in dispute in
his so nearly destroyed case. I hear as though he were now speaking,
the attack which he will make upon my client when he comes to review
this matter with you. Let me see if I cannot make you hear those words,
too.” And with a daring smile at his discomforted adversary, Alonzo
Moffat launched forth into the following sarcasm:
“Arthur Cumberland, coming up the kitchen stairs, hears voices
where he had expected total silence--sees light where he had left
total darkness. He has two bottles in his hands, or in his large
coat-pockets. If they are in his hands, he sets them down and steals
forward to listen. He has recognised the voices. They are those of
his two sisters, one of whom had ordered him to hitch up the cutter
for her to escape, as he had every reason to believe, the other.
Curiosity--or is it some nobler feeling--causes him to draw nearer
and nearer to the room in which they have taken up their stand. He
can hear their words now and what are the words he hears? Words that
would thrill the most impervious heart, call for the interference of
the most indifferent. But _he_ is made of ice, welded together with
steel. He sees--for no place save one from which he can watch and see,
_viz_.: the dark dancing hall, would satisfy any man of such gigantic
curiosity--Adelaide fall at Carmel’s feet, in recognition of the great
sacrifice she has made for her. But he does not move; he falls at no
one’s feet; he recognises no nobility, responds to no higher appeal.
Stony and unmoved, he crouches there, and watches and watches--still
curious, or still feeding his hate on the sufferings of the elder, the
forbearance of the younger.
“And on what does he look? You have already heard, but consider it.
Adelaide, despairing of happiness, decides on death for herself or
sister. Both loving one man, one of the two must give way to the other.
Carmel has done her part; she must now do hers. She has brought poison;
she has brought glasses--three glasses, for three persons, but only two
are on the scene, and so she fills but two. One has only cordial in
it, but the other is, as she believes, deadly. Carmel is to have her
choice; but who believes that Adelaide would ever have let her drink
the poisoned glass?
“And this man looks on, as the two faces confront each other--one white
with the overthrow of every earthly hope, the other under the stress
of suffering and a fascination of horror sufficient to have laid her
dead, without poison, at the other one’s feet. This is what he sees--_a
brother!_--and he makes no move, then or afterwards, when, the die
cast, Adelaide succumbs to her fear and falls into a seemingly dying
state on the couch.
“Does he go now? Is his hate or his cupidity satisfied? No! He remains
and listens to the tender interchange of final words, and all the
late precautions of the elder to guard the younger woman’s good name.
Still he is not softened; and when, the critical moment passed, Carmel
rises and totters about the room in her endeavour to fulfil the tasks
enjoined upon her by her sister, he gloats over a death which will give
him independence and gluts himself with every evil thought which could
blind him to the pitiful aspects of a tragedy such as few men in this
world could see unmoved. _A brother_!
“But this is not the worst. The awful cup of human greed and hatred
is but filled to the brim; it has not yet overflowed. Carmel leaves
the room; she has a telephonic message to deliver. She may be gone a
minute; she may be gone many. Little does he care which; he must see
the dead, look down on the woman who has been like a mother to him, and
see if her influence is forever removed, if his wealth is his, and his
independence forever assured.
“Safe in the darkness of the gloomy recesses of the dancing hall, he
steals slowly forward. Drawn as by a magnet, he enters the room of
seeming death, draws up to the pillow-laden couch, pulls off first one
cushion, and then another, till face and hands are bare and--
“Ah!--there is a movement! death has not, then, done its work. She
lives--the hated one--_lives_! And he is no longer rich, no longer
independent. With a clutch, he seizes her at the feeble seat of life;
and as the breath ceases and her whole body becomes again inert, he
stoops to pull off the ring, which can have no especial value or
meaning for him--and then, repiling the cushions over her, creeps forth
again, takes up the bottles, and disappears from the house.
“Gentlemen of the jury, this is what my opponent would have you
believe. This will be his explanation of this extraordinary murder. But
when his eloquence meets your ears--when you hear this arraignment, and
the emphasis he will place upon the few points remaining to his broken
case, then ask yourself if you see such a monster in the prisoner now
confronting you from the bar. I do not believe it. I do not believe
that such a monster lives.
“But you say, _some one_ entered that room--_some one_ stilled the
fluttering life still remaining in that feeble breast. Some one may
have, but that some one was not my client, and it is his guilt or
innocence we are considering now, and it is his life and freedom for
which you are responsible. No brother did that deed; no witness of the
scene which hallowed this tragedy ever lifted hand against the fainting
Adelaide, or choked back a life which kindly fate had spared.
“Go further for the guilty perpetrator of this most inhuman act; he
stands not in the dock. Guilt shows no such relief as you see in him
to-day. Guilt would remember that his sister’s testimony, under the
cross-examination of the people’s prosecutor, left the charge of murder
still hanging over the defendant’s head. But the brother has forgotten
this. His restored confidence in one who now represents to him father,
mother, and sister has thrown his own fate into the background. Will
you dim that joy--sustain this charge of murder?
“If in your sense of justice you do so, you forever place this
degenerate son of a noble father, on the list of the most unimaginative
and hate-driven criminals of all time. Is he such a demon? Is he such a
madman? Look in his face to-day, and decide. I am willing to leave his
cause in your hands. It could be placed in no better.
“May it please your Honour, and gentlemen of the jury, I am done.”
If any one at that moment felt the arrow of death descending into his
heart, it was not Arthur Cumberland.
XXXIV
“STEADY!”
I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me.
You cannot better be employ’d, Bassanio,
Than to live still, and write my epitaph.
_Merchant of Venice_.
Why linger over the result. Arthur Cumberland’s case was won before
Mr. Fox arose to his feet. The usual routine was gone through. The
district attorney made the most of the three facts which he declared
inconsistent with the prisoner’s innocence, just as Mr. Moffat said
he would; but the life was gone from his work, and the result was
necessarily unsatisfactory.
The judge’s charge was short, but studiously impartial. When the jury
filed out, I said to myself, “They will return in fifteen minutes.”
They returned in ten, with a verdict of acquittal.
The demonstrations of joy which followed filled my ears, and doubtless
left their impression upon my other senses; but my mind took in
nothing but the apparition of my own form taking his place at the bar,
under circumstances less favourable to acquittal than those which
had exonerated him. It was a picture which set my brain whirling. A
phantom judge, a phantom jury, a phantom circle of faces, lacking
the consideration and confidence of those I saw before me; but not a
phantom prisoner, or any mere dream of outrageous shame and suffering.
That shame and that suffering had already seized hold of me. With the
relief of young Arthur’s acquittal my faculties had cleared to the
desperate position in which this very acquittal had placed me.
I saw, as never before, how the testimony which had reinstated Carmel
in my heart and won for her and through her the sympathies of the
whole people, had overthrown every specious reason which I and those
interested in me had been able to advance in contradiction of the
natural conclusion to be drawn from the damning fact of my having been
seen with my fingers on Adelaide’s throat.
Mr. Moffat’s words rang in my ears: “Some one entered that room; some
one stilled the fluttering life still remaining in that feeble breast;
but that some one was not her brother. You must look further for the
guilty perpetrator of this most inhuman act; some one who had not been
a witness to the scene preceding this tragedy, some one--” he had not
said this but every mind had supplied the omission,--“some one who had
come in later, who came in after Carmel had gone, some one who knew
nothing of the telephone message which was even then hastening the
police to the spot; some one who had every reason for lifting those
cushions and, on meeting _life_--”
The horror stifled me; I was reeling in my place on the edge of the
crowd, when I heard a quiet voice in my ear:
“Steady! Their eyes will soon be off of Arthur, and then they will look
at you.”
It was Clifton, and his word came none too soon. I stiffened under its
quiet force, and, taking his arm, let him lead me out of a side door,
where the crowd was smaller and its attention even more absorbed.
I soon saw its cause--Carmel was entering the doorway from the street.
She had come to greet her brother; and her face, quite unveiled, was
beaming with beauty and joy. In an instant I forgot myself, forgot
everything but her and the effect she produced upon those about her. No
noisy demonstration here; admiration and love were shown in looks and
the low-breathed prayer for her welfare which escaped from more than
one pair of lips. She smiled and their hearts were hers; she essayed to
move forward and the people crowded back as if at a queen’s passage;
but there was no noise.
When she reappeared, it was on Arthur’s arm. I had not been able to
move from the place in which we were hemmed; nor had I wished to. I
was hungry for a glance of her eye. Would it turn my way, and, if it
did, would it leave a curse or a blessing behind it? In anxiety for the
blessing, I was willing to risk the curse; and I followed her every
step with hungry glances, until she reached the doorway and turned to
give another shake of the hand to Mr. Moffat, who had followed them.
But she did not see me.
“I cannot miss it! I must catch her eye!” I whispered to Clifton. “Get
me out of this; it will be several minutes before they can reach the
sleigh. Let me see her, for one instant, face to face.”
Clifton disapproved, and made me aware of it; but he did my bidding,
nevertheless. In a few moments we were on the sidewalk, and quite by
ourselves; so that, if she turned again she could not fail to observe
me. I had small hope, however, that she would so turn. She and Arthur
were within a few feet of the curb and their own sleigh.
I had just time to see this sleigh, and note the rejoicing face of
Zadok leaning sideways from the box, when I beheld her pause and slowly
turn her head around and peer eagerly--and with what divine anxiety in
her eyes--back over the heads of those thronging about her, until her
gaze rested fully and sweetly on mine. My heart leaped, then sank down,
down into unutterable depths; for in that instant her face changed,
horror seized upon her beauty, and shook her frantic hold on Arthur’s
arm.
I heard words uttered very near me, but I did not catch them. I did
feel, however, the hand which was laid strongly and with authority
upon my shoulder; and, tearing my eyes from her face only long enough
to perceive that it was Sweetwater who had thus arrested me, I looked
back at her, in time to see the questions leap from her lips to Arthur,
whose answers I could well understand from the pitying movement in
the crowd and the low hum of restrained voices which ran between her
sinking figure and the spot where I stood apart, with the detective’s
hand on my shoulder.
She had never been told of the incriminating position in which I had
been seen in the club-house. It had been carefully kept from her, and
she had supposed that my acquittal in the public mind was as certain as
Arthur’s. Now she saw herself undeceived, and the reaction into doubt
and misery was too much for her, and I saw her sinking under my eyes.
“Let me go to her!” I shrieked, utterly unconcerned with anything in
the world but this tottering, fainting girl.
But Sweetwater’s hand only tightened on my shoulder, while Arthur, with
an awful look at me, caught his sister in his arms, just as she fell to
the ground before the swaying multitude.
But he was not the only one to kneel there. With a sound of love and
misery impossible to describe, Zadok had leaped from the box and had
grovelled at those dear feet, kissing the insensible hands and praying
for those shut eyes to open. Even after Arthur had lifted her into
the sleigh, the man remained crouching where she had fallen, with his
eyes roaming back and forth in a sightless stare from her to myself,
muttering and groaning, and totally unheedful of Arthur’s commands to
mount the box and drive home. Finally some one else stepped from the
crowd and mercifully took the reins. I caught one more glimpse of her
face, with Arthur’s bent tenderly over it; then the sleigh slipped away.
An officer shook Zadok by the arm and he got up and began to move
aside. Then I had mind to face my own fate, and, looking up, I met
Sweetwater’s eye.
It was quietly apologetic.
“I only wished to congratulate you,” said he, “on the conclusion of a
case in which I know you are highly interested.” Lifting his hat, he
nodded affably and was gone before I could recover from my stupor.
It was for Clifton to show his indignation. I was past all feeling.
Farce as an after-piece never appealed to me.
Would I have considered it farce if I could have heard the words
which this detective was at that moment whispering into the district
attorney’s ears:
“Do you want to know who throttled Adelaide Cumberland? It was not her
brother; it was not her lover; it was her old and trusted coachman.”
XXXV
“AS IF IT WERE A MECCA”
--I have within my mind
A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks
Which I will practise.
_Merchant of Venice_.
“Give me your reasons. They must be excellent ones, Sweetwater, or you
would not risk making a second mistake in a case of this magnitude and
publicity.”
“Mr. Fox, they are excellent. But you shall judge of them. From the
moment Miss Carmel Cumberland overthrew the very foundations of our
case by her remarkable testimony, I have felt that my work was only
half done. It was a strain on credulity to believe Arthur guilty of
a crime so prefaced, and the alternative which Mr. Moffat believed
in, which you were beginning to believe in, and perhaps are allowing
yourself to believe in even now, never appealed to me.
“I allude to the very natural suspicion that the act beheld by your
man Clarke was a criminal act, and that Ranelagh is the man really
responsible for Miss Cumberland’s death. Some instinct held me back
from this conclusion, as well as the incontrovertible fact that he
could have had no hand in carrying that piece of broken bottle into the
Cumberland stable, or of dropping his engagement ring in the suggestive
place where it was found. Where, then, should I look for the unknown,
the unsuspected third party? Among the ten other persons who dropped
something into that casket.
“Most of these were children, but I made the acquaintance of every one.
I spent most of my Sunday that way; then, finding no clouded eye among
them, I began a study of the Cumberland servants, naturally starting
with Zadok. For two hours I sat at his stable fire, talking and turning
him inside out, as only we detectives know how. I found him actually
overwhelmed with grief; not the grief of a sane man, but of one in whom
the very springs of life are poisoned by some dreadful remorse.
“He did not know he revealed this; he expressed himself as full of hope
that his young master would be acquitted the next day; but I could see
that this prospect could never still the worm working at his heart, and
resolved to understand why. I left him ostensibly alone, but in reality
shadowed him. The consequence was that, in the evening dusk, he led me
to the cemetery, where he took up his watch at Miss Cumberland’s grave,
as if it were a Mecca and he a passionate devotee. I could hear his
groans as he hung to the fence and spoke softly to the dead; and though
I was too far away to catch a single word, I felt confident that I had
at last struck the right track, and should soon see my way more clearly
than at any time since this baffling case opened.
“But before I allowed my fancy to run away with me, I put in an evening
of inquiry. If this man had an absolute alibi, what was the use of
wasting effort upon him. But I could not find that he had, Mr. Fox. He
went with the rest of the servants to the ball--which, you know, was
held in Tibbitt’s Hall, on Ford Street and he was seen there later,
dancing and making merry in a way not usual to him. But there was a
space of time dangerously tallying with that of the tragic scene at the
club-house, when he was not seen by any one there, so far as I can make
out; and this fact gave me courage to consider a certain point which
had struck me, and of which I thought something might be made.
“Mr. Fox, after the fiasco I have made of this affair, it costs me
something to go into petty details which must suggest my former
failures and may not strike you with the force they did me. That broken
bottle-- or rather, that piece of broken bottle! Where was the rest of
it? Sought for almost immediately after the tragedy, it had not been
found at the Cumberland place or on the golf-links. It had been looked
for carefully when the first thaw came; but, though glass was picked
up, it was not the same glass. The task had become hopeless and ere
long was abandoned.
“But with this idea of Zadok being the means of its transfer from The
Whispering Pines to the house on the Hill, I felt the desire to look
once more, and while court was in session this morning, I started
a fresh search--this time not on the golf-links. Tibbitt’s Hall
communicates more quickly with The Whispering Pines by the club-house
road than by the market one. So I directed my attention to the ground
in front, and on the further side of the driveways. _And I found the
neck of that bottle_!
“Yes, sir, I will show it to you later. I picked it up at some distance
from the northern driveway, under a small tree, against the trunk of
which it had evidently been struck off. This meant that the lower part
had been carried away, broken.
“Now, who would do this but Zadok, who saw in it, he has said, a
receptacle for some varnish which he had; and if Zadok, how had he
carried it, if not in some pocket of his greatcoat. But glass edges
make quick work with pockets; and if this piece of bottle had gone from
The Whispering Pines to Tibbitt’s Hall, and from there to the Hill,
there should be some token of its work in Zadok’s overcoat pocket.
“This led me to look for those tokens; and as I had by this time
insinuated my way into his confidence by a free and cheerful manner
which gave him a rest from his gloomy thoughts, I soon had a chance
to see for myself the condition of those pockets. The result was
quite satisfactory. In one of them I found a frayed lining, easily
explainable on the theory I had advanced. That pocket can be seen by
you.
“But Mr. Fox, I wanted some real proof. I wasn’t willing to embarrass
another man, or to risk my own reputation on a hazard so blind as this,
without something really definite. A confession was what I wanted, or
such a breakdown of the man as would warrant police action. How could I
get this?
“I am a pupil of Mr. Gryce, and I remembered some of his methods.
“This man, guilty though he might be, loved this family, and was
broken-hearted over the trouble in which he saw it plunged. Excused
to-day from attendance at court, he was in constant telephonic
communication with some friend of his, who kept him posted as to the
conduct of the trial and the probabilities of a favourable verdict.
“If the case had gone against Arthur, we should have heard from his
coachman--that I verily believe, but when we all saw that he was likely
to be acquitted, I realised that some other course must be taken to
shake Zadok from his new won complacency, and I chose the most obvious
one.
“Just when everything looked most favourable to their restored peace
and happiness, I shocked Miss Carmel and, through her, this Zadok,
into the belief that the whole agony was to be gone over again, in the
rearrest and consequent trial of the man she still loves, in spite of
all that has happened to separate them.
“He was not proof against this new responsibility. As she fainted, he
leaped from the box; and, could I have heard the words he muttered in
her ear, I am sure that I should have that to give you which would
settle this matter for all time. As it is, I can only say that my own
convictions are absolute; the rest remains with you.”
“We will go see the man,” said District Attorney Fox.
XXXVI
THE SURCHARGED MOMENT
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
_Prometheus Unbound_.
The moment I felt Sweetwater’s hand lifted from my shoulder I sprang
into the first hack I could find, and bade the driver follow the
Cumberland sleigh post-haste. I was determined to see Carmel and have
Carmel see me. Whatever cold judgment might say against the meeting,
I could not live in my present anxiety. If the thunderbolt which had
struck her had spared her life and reason she must know from my own
lips that I was not only a free man, but as innocent of the awful
charge conveyed in Sweetwater’s action as was the brother, who had just
been acquitted of it by the verdict of his peers.
I must declare this, and she must believe me. Nothing else
mattered--nothing else in all the world. That Arthur might stop me,
that anything could stop me, did not disturb my mind for a minute. All
that I dreaded was that I might find myself too late; that this second
blow might have proved to be too much for her, and that I should find
my darling dead or passed from me into that living death which were the
harder punishment of the two. But I was spared this killing grief. When
our two conveyances stopped, it was in the driveway of her old home;
and as I bounded upon the walk, it was to see her again in Arthur’s
arms, but this time with open eyes and horror-drawn features.
“Carmel!” rushed in a cry from my lips. “Don’t believe what they say. I
cannot bear it--I cannot bear it!”
She roused; she looked my way, and struggling to her feet, held back
Arthur with one hand while she searched my face--and possibly searched
her own soul--for answer to my plea. Never was moment more surcharged.
Further word I could not speak; I could only meet her eyes with the
steady, demanding look of a despairing heart, while Arthur moved in
every fibre of his awakened manhood, waited--thinking, perhaps, how
few minutes had passed since he hung upon the words of a fellow being
for his condemnation to death, or release to the freedom which he now
enjoyed.
A moment! But what an eternity before I saw the rigid lines of her
white, set face relax--before I marked the play of human, if not
womanly, emotion break up the misery of her look and soften her
youthful lips into some semblance of their old expression. Love
might be dead--friendship, even, be a thing of the far past--but
consideration was still alive and in another instant it spoke in these
trembling sentences, uttered across a threshold made sacred by a
tragedy involving our three lives:
“Come in and explain yourself. No man should go unheard. I know you
will not come where Adelaide’s spirit yet lingers, if you cannot bring
hands clean from all actual violence.”
I motioned my driver away, and as Carmel drew back out of sight, I
caught at Arthur’s arm and faced him with the query:
“Are you willing that I should enter? I only wish to declare to her,
and to you, an innocence I have no means of proving, but which you
cannot disbelieve if I swear it, here and now, by your sister Carmel’s
sacred disfigurement. Such depravity could not exist, as such a vow
from the lips guilty of the crime you charge me with. Look at me,
Arthur. I considered you--now consider me.”
Quickly he stepped back. “Enter,” said he.
It was some minutes later--I cannot say how many--that one of the
servants disturbed us by asking if we knew anything about Zadok.
“He has not come home,” said he, “and here is a man who wants him.”
“What man?” asked Arthur.
“Oh, that detective chap. He never will leave us alone.”
I arose. In an instant enlightenment had come to me. “It’s nothing,”
said I with my eyes on Carmel; but the gesture I furtively made Arthur,
said otherwise.
A few minutes later we were both in the driveway. “We are on the brink
of a surprise,” I whispered. “I think I understand this Sweetwater now.”
Arthur looked bewildered, but he took the lead in the interview which
followed with the man who had made him so much trouble and was now
doing his best to make us all amends.
Zadok could not be found; he was wanted by the district attorney, who
wished to put some questions to him. Were there any objections to his
searching the stable-loft for indications of his whereabouts?
Arthur made none; and the detective, after sending the Cumberlands’
second man before him to light up the stable, disappeared beneath the
great door, whither we more slowly followed him.
“Not here!” came in a shout from above, as we stepped in from the night
air; and in a few minutes the detective came running down the stairs,
baffled and very ill at ease. Suddenly he encountered my eye. “Oh--I
know!” he cried, and started for the gate.
“I am going to follow him,” I confided to Arthur. “Look for me again
to-night; or, at least, expect a message. If fortune favours us, as
I now expect, we two shall sleep to-night as we have not slept for
months.” And waiting for no answer, not even to see if he comprehended
my meaning, I made a run for the gate, and soon came up with Sweetwater.
“To the cemetery?” I asked.
“Yes, to the cemetery.”
And there we found him, in the same place where we had seen him before,
but not in the same position. He was sunken now to the ground; but his
face was pressed against the rails, and in his stiff, cold hand was
clutched a letter which afterwards we read.
Let it be read by you here. It will explain the mystery which came near
destroying the lives of more than Adelaide.
* * * * *
No more unhappy wretch than I goes to his account. I killed her who had
shown me only goodness, and will be the death of others if I do not
confess my dreadful, my unsuspected secret. This is how it happened. I
cannot give reasons; I cannot even ask for pardon.
That night, just as I was preparing to leave the stable to join the
other servants on their ride to Tibbitt’s Hall, the telephone rang and
I heard Miss Cumberland’s voice. “Zadok,” she said--and at first I
could hardly understand her,--“I am in trouble; I want help, and you
are the only one who can aid me. Answer; do you hear me and are you
quite alone in the stable?” I told her yes, and that I was listening to
all she said. I suspected her trouble, and was ready to stand by her,
if a man like me could do anything.
I had been with her many years, and I loved her as well as I could love
anybody; though you won’t think it when I tell you my whole story. What
she wanted was this: I was to go to the ball just as if nothing had
happened, but I was not to stay there. As soon as I could, I was to
slip out, get a carriage from some near-by stable, and hurry back up
the road to meet her and take her where she would tell me; or, if I did
not meet her, to wait two houses below hers, till she came along. She
would not want me long, and very soon I could go back and have as good
a time as I pleased. But she would like me to be secret, for her errand
was not one for gossip, even among her own servants.
It was the first time she had ever asked me to do anything for her
which any one else might not have done, and I was proud of her
confidence, and happy to do just what she asked. I even tried to do
better, and be even more secret about it than she expected. Instead of
going to a stable, I took one of the rigs which I found fastened up
in the big shed alongside the hall; and being so fortunate as not to
attract anybody’s attention by this business, I was out on the road and
half way to The Whispering Pines, before Helen and Maggie could wonder
why I had not asked them to dance.
A few minutes later I was on the Hill, for the horse I had chosen was a
fast one; and I was just turning into our street when I was passed by
Mr. Arthur’s grey mare and cutter. This made me pull up for a minute,
for I hadn’t expected this; but on looking ahead and seeing Miss
Cumberland peering from our own gateway, I drove quickly on and took
her up.
I was not so much astonished as you would think, to be ordered to
follow fast after the mare and cutter, and to stop where it stopped.
That was all she wanted--to follow that cutter, and to stop where it
stopped. Well, it stopped at the club-house; and when she saw it turn
in there, I heard her give a little gasp.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Wait till she has had time to get out and go
in; then drive in, too, and help me to find my way into the building
after her.”
And then I knew it was Miss Carmel we had been following. Before, I
thought it was Mr. Arthur.
Presently, she pulled me by the sleeve. “I heard the door shut,” said
she--and I was a little frightened at her voice, but I was full of my
importance, and went on doing just as she bade me. Driving in after the
cutter, I drew up into the shadows where the grey mare was hid, and
then, reaching out my hand to Miss Cumberland, I helped her out, and
went with her as far as the door. “You may go back now,” said she. “If
I survive the night, I shall never forget this service, my good Zadok.”
And I saw her lift her hand to the door, then fall back white and
trembling in the moonlight. “I can’t,” she whispered, over and over; “I
can’t--I can’t.”
“Shall I knock?” I asked.
“No, no,” she whispered back. “I want to go in quietly; let’s see if
there’s no other way. Run about the house, Zadok; I will submit to
any humiliation; only find me some entrance other than this.” She was
shaking so and her face looked so ghastly in the moonlight that I was
afraid to leave her; but she made me a gesture of such command that I
ran quickly down the steps, and so round the house till I came to a
shed over the top of which I saw a window partly open.
Could I get her up on to the shed? I thought I could, and went hurrying
back to the big entrance where I had left her. She was still there,
shivering with the cold, but just as determined as ever. “Come,” I
whispered; “I have found a way.”
She gave me her hand and I led her around to the shed. She was like
a snow woman and her touch was ice itself. “Wait till I get a box or
board or something,” I said. Hunting about, I found a box leaning
against the kitchen side, and, bringing it, I helped her up and soon
had her on a level with the window.
As she made her way in, she turned and whispered to me: “Go back now.
Carmel has a horse, and will see me home. You have served me well,
Zadok.”
I nodded, and she vanished into the darkness. Then I should have gone;
but my curiosity was too great. I wanted to know just a little more.
Two women in this desolate and bitterly cold club-house! What did it
mean?
I could not restrain myself from following her in and listening, for a
few minutes, to what they had to say. But I did not catch much of it;
and when I heard other sounds from some place below, and recognised
these sounds as a man’s heavy footsteps coming up the rear stairs, I
got a fright at being where I should not be, and slipped into the first
door I found, expecting this man to come out and join the ladies.
But he did not; he just lingered for a moment in the hall I had left,
then I heard him clamber out of the window and go. I now know that this
was Mr. Arthur. But I did not know it then, and I was frightened for
the horse I had run off with, and so got out of the building as quickly
as I could.
And all might yet have been well if I had not found, lying on the snow
at the foot of the shed, a bottle of whiskey such as I had never drunk
and did not know how to resist. Catching it up, I ran about the house
to where I had left my rig. It was safe, and in my relief at finding
it, I knocked off the head of the bottle and took a long drink.
Then I drank again; then I sat down in the snow and drank again. In
short, I nearly finished it; then I became confused; I looked at the
piece of broken bottle in my hand, took a fancy to its shape, and
breaking off a bit more, thrust it into one of my big pockets. Then I
staggered up to the horse; but I did not untie him.
Curiosity seized me again, and I thought I would take another look at
the ladies--perhaps they might want me--perhaps--I was pretty well
confused, but I went back and crawled once more into the window.
This time the place was silent--not a sound, not a breath,--but I could
see a faint glimmer of light. I followed this glimmer. Still there was
no sound.
I came to an open door. A couch was before me, heaped with cushions. A
long ray of moonlight had shot in through a communicating door, and I
could see everything by it. This was where the ladies had been when I
listened before, but they were not here now.
Weren’t they? Why did I tremble so, then, and stare and stare at those
cushions? Why did I feel I must pull them away, as I presently did? I
was mad with liquor and might easily have imagined what I there saw;
but I did not think of this then. I believed what I saw instantly. Miss
Cumberland was dead, and I had discovered the crime. She had killed
herself--no, she had been killed!
Should I yell out murder? No, no; I could be sorry without that. I
would not yell--mistresses were plenty. I had liked her, but I need not
yell. There was something else I could do.
She had a ring on her finger--a ring that for months I had gloated
over and watched, as I had never watched and gloated over any other
beautiful thing in my life. I wanted it--I had always wanted it. It was
before me, for the taking now--I should be a fool to leave it there for
some other wretch to pilfer. I had loved her--I would love the ring.
Reaching down, I took it. I drew it from her finger; I put it in my
pocket; I--God in heaven! The eyes I had seen glassed in death were
looking at me.
She was not dead--she had been witness of the theft. Without a
thought of what I was doing, my hands closed round her throat. It was
drink--fright--terror at the look she gave me--which made me kill her;
not my real self. My real self could have shrieked when, in another
instant, I saw my work.
But shrieking would not bring her back and it would quite ruin me. Miss
Carmel was somewhere near. I heard her now at the telephone; in another
minute she would come out and meet me. I dared not linger.
Tossing back the pillows, I stumbled from the place. Why I was not
heard by my young mistress, I do not know; her ears were deaf, just as
my eyes were half-blind. In a half hour I was dancing with the maids,
telling them of the pretty stranger with whom I had been sitting out an
hour of fun in a quiet corner. They believed me, and not a particle of
suspicion has any man ever had of me since.
But others have had to suffer, and that has made hell of my nights.
I restored the ring to my poor mistress; but even that brought harm
to one I had no quarrel with. But he has escaped conviction; and if I
thought Mr. Ranelagh would also escape, I might have courage to live
out my miserable life, and seek to make amends in the way she would
have me.
But I fear for him; I fear for Miss Carmel. Never could I testify in
another trial which threatened her peace of mind. I see that, instead
of being the selfish stealer of her sister’s happiness, as I had
thought, she is an angel from whom all future suffering should be kept.
This is my way of sparing her. Perhaps it will help her sister to
forgive me when we meet in the world to which I am now going.