THE LITTLE GOLD CROSS
Jessica left the jail with despair in her heart. The hope on which she
had fed these past days had failed her. What was there left for her to
do? Like a swift wind she went up the street to Felder's office.
A block beyond the court-house a crowd was enjoying the watery
discomfiture of Hallelujah Jones, and shrinking from recognition even in
the darkness--for the arc lights were still black--she crossed the
roadway and ran on to the unpretentious building where the lawyer had
his sanctum. She groped her way up the unlighted stair and tapped on the
door. There was no answer. She pushed it open and entered the empty
outer room, where a study lamp burned on the desk.
A pile of legal looking papers had been set beside it and with them lay
a torn page of a newspaper whose familiar caption gave her a stab of
pain. Perhaps the news of the trial had found its way across the ranges,
to where the names of Stires and Moreau had been known. Perhaps every
one at Aniston already knew of it, was reading about it, pitying her!
She picked it up and scanned it hastily. There was no hint of the trial,
but her eye caught the news which had played its role in the court-room,
and she read it to the end.
Even in her own trouble she read it with a shiver. Yet, awful as the
fate which Harry Sanderson had so narrowly missed, it was not to be
compared with that which awaited Hugh, for, awful as it was, it held no
shame!
In a gust of feeling she slipped to her knees by the one sofa the room
contained and prayed passionately. As she drew out her handkerchief to
stanch the tears that came, something fell with a musical tinkle at her
feet. It was the little cross she had found in front of the hillside
cabin, that had lain forgotten in her pocket during the past anxious
days. She picked it up now and held it tightly in her hand, as if the
tangible symbol brought her closer to the Infinite Sympathy to which she
turned in her misery. As she pressed it, the ring at the top turned and
the cross parted in halves. Words were engraved on the inside of the
arms--a date and the name _Henry Sanderson_.
The recurrence of the name jarred and surprised her. Hugh had dropped
it--an old keepsake of the friend who had been his _beau ideal_, his
exemplar, and whose ancient influence was still dominant. He had clung
loyally to the memento, blind in his constant liking, to the wrong that
friend had done him. She looked at the date--it was May 28th. She
shuddered, for that was the month and day on which Doctor Moreau had
been killed--the point had been clearly established to-day by the
prosecution. To the original owner of that cross, perhaps, the date that
had come into Hugh's life with such a sinister meaning, was a glad
anniversary!
Suddenly she caught her hand to her cheek. A weird idea had rushed
through her brain. The religious symbol had stood for Harry Sanderson
and the chance coincidence of date had irresistibly pointed to the
murder. To her excited senses the juxtaposition held a bizarre, uncanny
suggestion. This cross--the very emblem of vicarious sacrifice!--suppose
Harry Sanderson had never given it to Hugh! Suppose he had lost it on
the hillside himself!
She snatched up the paper again: "Who has been for some months on a
prolonged vacation"--the phrase stared sardonically at her. That might
carry far back--she said it under her breath, fearfully--beyond the
murder of Doctor Moreau! Her face burned, and her breath came sharp and
fast. Why, when she brought her warning to the cabin, had Hugh been so
anxious to get her away, unless to prevent her sight of the man who was
there--to whom he had taken her horse? Who was there in Smoky Mountain
whom he would protect at hazard of his own life? Yet in this crisis,
even, her appeal to his love had been fruitless. He had called Harry
Sanderson his closest friend, had said that in his place Harry would do
the same. She remembered his cry: "What you ask is the one thing I can
not do. It would make me a pitiful coward!" She had asked only that he
tell the truth. To protect a vulgar murderer was not courageous. But
what if they were bound by ties of old friendship and college
_camaraderie_? Men had their standards.
Jessica's veins were all afire. A rector-murderer? A double career? Was
it beyond possibility? At the sanatorium she had re-read _The Mystery of
Edwin Drood_; now she thought of John Jasper, the choir-master, stealing
away from the cathedral to the London opium den to plan the murder of
his nephew. The mad thought gripped her imagination. Harry Sanderson had
been wild and lawless in his university days, a gamester, a skeptic--the
Abbot of the Saints! To her his pretensions had never seemed more than a
graceful sham, the generalities of religion he spread for the
delectation of fashionable St. James only "as sounding brass and a
tinkling cymbal." He had been a hard drinker in those days. What if the
old desire had run on beneath the fair exterior, denied and repressed
till it had burst control--till he had fled from those who knew him, to
Hugh, in whose loyalty he trusted, to give it rein in a debauch? Say
that this had happened, and that in the midst of it Moreau, whom he had
known in Aniston, had come upon him. Anticipating recognition, to cover
his own shame and save his career, in drunken frenzy perhaps, he might
have fired the shot on the hillside--that Moreau, taken unawares, had
thought was Hugh's!
It came to her like an impinging ray of light--the old curious likeness
that had sometimes been made a jest of at the white house in the aspens.
Moreau and Prendergast had believed it to be Hugh! So had the town, for
the body had been found on his ground! But on the night when the real
murderer came again to the cabin--perhaps it was his coming that had
brought back the lost memory!--Hugh had known the truth. In the light of
this supposition his strained manner then, his present determination not
to speak, all stood plain.
What had he meant by a debt of his past that he had never paid? He could
owe no debt to Harry Sanderson. If he owed any debt, it was to his dead
father, a thousand times more than the draft he had repaid. Could he be
thinking in his remorse that his father had cast him off--counting
himself nothing, remembering only that Harry Sanderson had been David
Stires' favorite, and St. James, which must be smirched by the odium of
its rector, the apple of his eye?
Jessica had snatched at a straw, because it was the only buoyant thing
afloat in the dragging tide; now with a blind fatuousness she hugged it
tighter to her bosom. The joints of her reasoning seemed to dovetail
with fateful accuracy. She was swayed by instinct, and apparent
fallacies were glozed by old mistrust and terror of the outcome which
was driving her to any desperate expedient. Beside Hugh's salvation the
whole universe counted as nothing. She was in the grip of that fierce
passion of love's defense which feeds the romance of the world. One
purpose possessed her: to confront Harry Sanderson. What matter though
she missed the remainder of the trial? She could do nothing--her hands
were tied. If the truth lay at Aniston she would find it. She thought no
further than this. Once in Harry Sanderson's presence, what she should
say or do she scarcely imagined. The horrifying question filled her
thought to the exclusion of all that must follow its answer. It was
surety and self-conviction she craved--only to read in his eyes the
truth about the murder of Moreau.
She suddenly began to tremble. Would the doctors let her see him? What
excuse could she give? If he was the man who had been in Hugh's cabin
that night, he had heard her speak, had known she was there. He must not
know beforehand of her coming, lest he have suspicion of her errand.
Bishop Ludlow--he could gain her access to him. Injured, dying perhaps,
maybe he did not guess that Hugh was in jeopardy for his crime. Guilty
and dying, if he knew this, he would surely tell the truth. But if he
died before she could reach him? The paper was some days old; he might
be dead already. She took heart, however, from the statement of his
improved condition.
She sprang to her feet and looked at her chatelaine watch. The
east-bound express was overdue. There was no time to lose--minutes might
count. She examined her purse--she had money enough with her.
Five minutes later she was at the station, a scribbled note was on its
way to Mrs. Halloran, and before a swinging red lantern, the long
incoming train was shuddering to a stop.