FACE TO FACE
To stand face to face with Harry Sanderson--that had been Jessica's sole
thought. The news that the bishop, with the man she suspected, was
speeding toward her--to pass the very town wherein Hugh stood for his
life--seemed a prearrangement of eternal justice. When the telegram
reached her, she had already gone by Twin Peaks. To proceed would be to
pass the coming train. At a farther station, however, she was able to
take a night train back, arriving again at Twin Peaks in the gray dawn
of the next morning. At the dingy station hotel there she undressed and
lay down, but her nerves were quivering and she could not close her
eyes. Toward noon she dressed and forced herself to breakfast, realizing
the need of strength. She spent the rest of the time of waiting walking
up and down in the crisp air, which steadied her nerves and gave her a
measure of control.
When the train for which she waited came in, the curtained car at its
end, she did not wait for the bishop to find her on the platform, but
stepped aboard and made her way slowly back. It started again as she
threaded the last Pullman, to find the bishop on its rear platform
peering out anxiously at the receding station.
He took both her hands and drew her into the empty drawing-room. He was
startled at her pallor. "I know," he said pityingly. "I have heard."
She winced. "Does Aniston know?"
"Yes," he answered. "Yesterday's newspapers told it."
She put her hand on his arm. "Can you guess why I was coming home?" she
asked. "It was to tell Harry Sanderson! I know of the fire," she went on
quickly, "and of his injury. I can guess you want to spare him strain or
excitement, but I must tell him!"
"It is a matter of physical strength, Jessica," he said. "He has been a
sick man. Forgive my saying it, child, but--what good could it do?"
"Believe, oh, you must believe," she pleaded, "that I do not ask this
lightly, that I have a purpose that makes it necessary. It means so
much--more than my life to me! Why, I have waited here at Twin Peaks all
through the night, till now, when this very day and hour they are trying
him there at Smoky Mountain! You must let me tell him!"
He reflected a moment. He thought he guessed what was in her mind. If
there was any one who had ever had an influence over Hugh for good, it
was Harry Sanderson. He himself, he thought, had none. Perhaps,
remembering their old comradeship, she was longing now to have this
influence exerted, to bring Hugh to a better mind--thinking of his
eternal welfare, of his making his peace with his Maker. Beneath his
prosy churchmanship and somewhat elaborate piety, the bishop had a
spirituality almost medieval in its simplicity. Perhaps this was God's
way. His eyes lighted.
"Very well," he said. "Come," and led the way into the car.
Jessica followed, her hands clenched tightly. She saw the couch, the
profile on its cushions turned toward the window where forest and stream
slipped past--a face curiously like Hugh's! Yet it was different,
lacking the other's strength, even its refinement. And this man had
molded Hugh! These vague thoughts lost themselves instantly in the
momentous surmise that filled her imagination. The bishop put out his
hand and touched the relaxed arm.
The trepidation that darted into the bandaged face as it turned upon the
girlish figure, the frosty fear that blanched the haggard countenance,
spoke Hugh's surprise and dread. It was she, and she knew the real
Harry Sanderson was in Smoky Mountain. Had she heard of the chapel fire,
guessed the imposture, and come to denounce him, the guilty husband she
had such reason to hate? The twitching limbs stiffened. "Jessica!" he
said in a hoarse whisper.
For an instant a fierce sense of triumph flamed through her every nerve.
But a cold doubt chilled it. Her suspicion might be the veriest chimera.
It seemed suddenly too wild for belief. She sat down abruptly and for a
fleeting moment hid her face. The bishop touched the bowed, brown head.
"Harry," he said, "Jessica is in great trouble. She has come with sad
news. Hugh, her husband, your old college mate, is in a terrible
position. He is accused of murder. I kept the newspapers from you to-day
because they told of it."
She had caught the meaning of the pity in his tone--for her, not for
Hugh! "Ah," she cried passionately, lifting her head, "but they did not
tell it all! Did they tell you that he is unjustly, wickedly accused by
an enemy? That, though they may convict him, he is innocent--innocent?"
The bishop looked at her in surprise. In spite of all the past--the
shameful, conscienceless past and her own wrong--she loved and believed
in her husband!
Hugh's hand lifted, wavered an instant before his brow. Did she say he
was innocent? "I don't--understand," he said hoarsely.
Jessica's wide eyes fastened on his as though to search his secret soul.
"I will tell it all," she said, "then you will understand." The bishop
drew a chair close, but her gaze did not waver from the face on the
cushions--the face which she must read!
As she told the broken tale the car was still, save for the labored,
irregular breathing of the prostrate man, and the muffled roar that
penetrated the walls, a multitudinous, elfin din. Once the swinging
canary broke forth into liquid warbling, as though in all the world were
no throe of body or dolor of mind. In that telling Jessica's mind
traversed wastes of alternate certainty and doubt, as she hung upon the
look of the man who listened--a look that merged slowly into a fearful
understanding. Hugh understood now!
Jessica had believed him to be her husband, and she believed so still.
And Harry did not intend to tell. He was safe ... safe! In the reaction
from his fear, Hugh felt sick and faint.
The bishop had been listening in some anxiety, both for her and for his
charge. There was a strained intensity in her manner now that betokened
almost unbalance--so it seemed to him. The side-lights he had had of
Hugh's career led him to believe him incapable of such a self-sacrifice
as her tale recited. A strange power there was in woman's love!
"You see," she ended, "that is why I know he is innocent. _You_ can
not"--her eyes held Hugh's--"_you_ can not doubt it, can you?"
Hugh's tongue wet his parched lips. A tremor ran through him. He did not
answer.
Jessica started to her feet. Self-possession was falling from her; she
was fighting to seize the vital knowledge that evaded her. She held out
her hand--in the palm lay a small emblem of gold.
"By this cross," she cried with desperate earnestness, "I ask you for
the truth. It is his life or death--Hugh's life or death! He did not
kill Doctor Moreau. _Who did?_"
Hugh had shrunk back on the couch, his face ghastly. "I know
nothing--nothing!" he stammered. "Do not ask me!"
The bishop had risen in alarm; he thought her hysterical. "Jessica!
Jessica!" he exclaimed. He threw his arm about her and led her from the
couch. "You don't know what you are saying. You are beside yourself." He
forced her into the drawing-room and made her sit down. She was tense
and quivering. The cross fell from her hand and he stooped and picked it
up.
"Try to calm yourself," he said, "to think of other things for a few
moments. This little cross--I wonder how you come to have it? I gave it
to Sanderson last May to commemorate his ordination." He twisted it
open. "See, here is the date, May twenty-eighth--that was the day I gave
it to him."
She gave a quick gasp and the last vestige of color faded from her
cheek. She looked at him in a stricken way. "_Last_ May!" she said
faintly. Harry Sanderson had been in Aniston, then, on the day Doctor
Moreau had been murdered. Her house of cards fell. She had been
mistaken! She leaned her head back against the cushion and closed her
eyes.
Presently she felt a cold glass touch her lips. "Here is some water,"
the bishop's voice said. "You are better, are you not? Poor child! You
have been through a terrible strain. I would give the world to help you
if I could!"
He left her, and she sat dully trying to think. The regular jar of the
trucks had set itself to a rhythm--no hope, no hope, no hope! She knew
now that there was none. When the bishop reentered she did not turn her
head. He sat beside her a while and she was aware again of his voice,
speaking soothingly. At moments thereafter he was there, at others she
knew that she was alone, but she was unconscious of the flight of time.
She knew only that the day was fading. On the chilly whirling landscape
she saw only a crowded room, a jury-box, a judge's bench, and Hugh
before it, listening to the sentence that would take him from her for
ever. The bright sunlight was mercilessly, satanically cruel, and God a
sneering monster turning a crank.
Into her conscious view grew distant snowy ranges, hills unrolling at
their feet, a straggling town, a staring white court-house and a grim
low building beside it. She rose stumblingly, the train quivering to the
brakes, as the bishop entered.
"This is Smoky Mountain," she said with numb lips. "That is the building
where he is being tried. I am going there now."
The bishop opened the door. "We stop here twenty minutes," he said. "I
will walk a little way with you."