As father and I crossed the lower hall, "Do you believe all these stories about the Spanish Woman are true?" I asked.
He looked at me quickly. "What stories?"
"Why, I heard them talking in court to-day; and last night,—I didn't mean to,—I overheard you and Mr. Dingley as you came out of the study."
Father looked grim. "It is with those stories they will try to convict him." He took a few more strides before he added, "If they can prove that Montgomery wanted to cut out Rood they'll have a bad case against him." He didn't speak again until he put me in the carriage. Then he said, "I hope that you will get this matter out of your mind. I hate to have you think about it."
I said I would try. Indeed, after that last remark of father's about Montgomery wanting to cut out Rood it seemed to me that, if I didn't quickly get something else into my mind, I should go crazy. So while the carriage bounded over the cobblestones, I was busy planning—the menu for dinner to-morrow, where to leave my ear-rings to be mended, how to do over my blue silk gown, and where had been the error in the butcher's bill. My thoughts rushed from one little thing to another, afraid for an instant to let go.
Upon arriving home, Abby hanging over the banisters, wanted to hear about the court proceedings; but I called out to her that my testimony hadn't been required—and would she please get out the apricots, and after luncheon I would make that sauce she had been after me to do for the last week.
She seemed astonished, but gratified, at my unwonted energy. I had been an absolutely useless creature about the house for so long. Now I hurried through luncheon, and attacked the apricots as if my life were staked on getting them halved, stoned, and boiling.
"Good Heavens, child, how you rush!" Abby protested. "There's no such great haste." But she did not know that I was trying to run away from an idea.
In the intervals of preserving I dived into the cellar and brought up my rose and lilac plants; and the afternoon was spent in running hot-cheeked from the stove to the garden, digging, carefully sprinkling, while Abby lowered the roots; then packing the earth and patting with all my might; darting back to the kitchen again to ladle out the steaming stuff into jars and strenuously to screw on their covers.
But for all my wearing of myself out, through the steam of the cooking pots, between the leaves of the rose-bushes, the pursuing idea would lift its head. The picture of the Spanish Woman as she stood in the witness room, the golden glimmer of her hair, her wonderful white waxy face, and the way her eyes had sparkled at me through her lashes, returned to my memory, powerful as the odor of her flower. I compared her with that flower—luxurious and perfect looking, as if she had grown in a hothouse; and with that strange overwhelming characteristic which drew, in spite of all disliking. It was useless to cry, "I do not like you and I will not believe in you." There were two things I had to acknowledge—her will, and her power of seduction. Hadn't I felt the light of it as she had stood looking at me?
Finally, when wearied out, I lay in bed that night, the idea I had been fleeing overtook me; and I gave up and looked it in the face. "Well, yes, and suppose he does love her? Should that surprise me so much? How should he help it? She is so beautiful!"
Still that admission had been forced out of me in a moment of weakness, between my pillow and the dark; and I was determined it should not get hold of me with its swarm of attendant tormenting thoughts. I was resolved to go into court, thinking of nothing but just that small measure of evidence which was mine to give; and to come away again, turning my back upon the whole matter, and taking up again the round of my daily employments.
This heroic resolution was knocked on the head the next morning by father's announcing that I was not summoned for the opening of the court,—and he added parenthetically Lord knew when!—but might be called for any time that afternoon, so I was to hold myself in readiness. This left me in a miserable state of uncertainty, which was not improved by seeing my name in theAlta, as witness, just above an exhortation to the people of San Francisco to see that justice was done, even if the law failed in its work.
The best course seemed to be the immolation of myself in the long neglected house work. A vigorous sweeping of my room, the preparation of an elaborate luncheon salad, and the total rearrangement of the parlor furniture might help to get rid of that heart-beating expectation—soothing, and bulwarking me around with domesticity. But the excitement of the city kept invading my retreat, as if it were so full of that great matter that it had to spill over even into houses where it wasn't wanted. The first ripple had been the sight of my name in the paper that morning; but the wave went quite over me when, just before luncheon, Hallie rushed in. She had been at the trial all the morning, and had only just seen theAltawith my name.
She hugged me a number of times, with exclamations of how awful but fascinating it must be, to be a witness, and what was it I knew—why hadn't I told her—she would never have divulged one word of it—though of course if I was under oath! Still, couldn't I tell her all about it now?
I believe that Hallie's respect for me had taken a leap with the news of my position, and when I explained that I was still under oath, and couldn't tell anybody anything until I told it from the witness-stand, she looked at me with positive awe.
She stayed to luncheon, and it was a trying but most exciting meal. Alas for my elaborate salad! We might have been eating india-rubber for all we knew or cared. For Hallie poured forth all the history of the trial, from the time I left the court room, and I would not have stopped her had it been possible to do so.
It seemed that the afternoon of the opening day a man who was a waiter at the Poodle Dog was put on the stand. This was the new witness Mr. Dingley had spoken of. He told how Mr. Rood had been at supper in the restaurant at about midnight, how Mr. Montgomery had come in with another gentleman, and gone up to the table where Rood was sitting. While he did so the other gentleman sat at a table near the door. Mr. Rood and Mr. Montgomery did not have supper together, the waiter said; did not even drink together. They talked only for a few minutes, and he thought they were disagreeing because, though their voices were not loud, they sounded angry. Then Mr. Rood got up suddenly, overturning his chair, and said, "I won't hear anything from you," and though he had not finished supper, paid his bill and went out of the restaurant. Mr. Montgomery had waited a few moments before he followed him. The gentleman who had sat near the door had been the last to leave the restaurant.
"And then," said Hallie, warming to her narrative, "they called the man who had come into the Poodle Dog with Johnny, and what do you think! it was Willie Felton."
"Not the one who went to dancing-school with us, and had such red cheeks?" I wondered.
"His cheeks aren't red now," said Hallie; "and he has wrinkles all around his eyes, just like an old man. He has been awfully dissipated. And, oh Ellie, you should have seen him sitting up there looking at Mr. Dingley and looking at Mr. Jackson, and biting his nails, and never daring to look at Johnny Montgomery. He said he had met Johnny about twelve o'clock that night, by chance on Montgomery Street. They had walked a little way together, and Johnny had said, 'I am going away to-morrow,' and Willie Felton asked was he going to the races. Johnny laughed and said, 'No. I am going to some place I've never seen before, and I'm not coming back until everybody has forgotten me.' He behaved queerly, seemed to be very much excited; although, Willie said, he was sure he hadn't been drinking.
"As they came to the Poodle Dog Johnny said, 'There is some one here I want to speak to.' And after they were inside he said, 'Excuse me a moment,' so Willie Felton took a table near the door, saw Johnny talk with Rood, saw Rood upset his chair as he went out, and Johnny follow him out of the door. When he himself got outside, he said that Rood was nowhere in sight and that Johnny was standing looking up Montgomery Street. He seemed to be very angry. Willie said, 'Where are you going?' and Johnny turned on him and said, 'I'll tell you where I'm going—I am going about my business!' and then he walked quickly away up the street in the same direction that Rood had taken.
"While he was telling about it," Hallie went on, "Mr. Jackson kept interrupting, saying, 'Object, your Honor,' and making it awfully hard to follow the testimony. Then another young man was called, and he didn't tell any story. They had a hard time even making him answer questions. But he did tell that he knew the quarrel between Rood and Johnny began three years ago at the time of the California Bank shortage, when Johnny said that Rood had lied himself out of prison and an innocent man in.
"Oh," I cried, "I'm so glad!"
Hallie looked as if she thought I was crazy; but I explained that what I really was glad of was that the quarrel had been Rood's, and not Johnny's fault; indeed that it had shown Johnny to be in the right, at least that once.
"Well," Hallie declared, "he does need a good word, I must say!"
This morning, she informed me, had been awfully stupid,—just cross-examining, and interrupting; but finally they did call some one new—a Mexican woman. And she testified that for two years Carlotta Valencia's friends had known her as Mrs. Rood. "And then mother wouldn't let me stay any longer," Hallie lamented, "because she said the woman wasn't a proper person. But I wanted awfully to hear what else she said!"
Here Abby came in, and remarked that if we were going to talk all day we would better go somewhere else and give Lee a chance to clear off the table.
The garden has lovely places in which to sit, so we went out there and took the rustic bench in the shade of the cypress hedge.
"But what does Johnny Montgomery's lawyer say?" I asked, for that was really the point of interest for me.
"Why, he claims that Rood committed suicide, because he was despondent over something—business I guess; and of course they did find a discharged revolver in the bar. The weak spot in that, father says, is that the bullet Rood was shot with is much too small for that revolver."
I knew there was a far weaker point in the defense than that, and I wondered, in the face of it, how I was ever going to drag my unwilling spirit up into the witness-box. The summons might come at any moment,—might come now, while we sat talking with our feet in the sun and the cypress shadow cool upon our foreheads.
At four o'clock father came stepping out of the conservatory, calling out, "What young person will give a tired man a cup of tea?" Then, noticing my questioning look, "No summons for us to-day," he said; so I ran in to fetch the tea-table.
Tea in the garden was a rare event. The few warm spring days gave the opportunity, and nothing was prettier than the scarlet lacquer tray with the Nankin cups set out under the heliotrope vines. I asked whether this was any special celebration, and father said yes; it was a farewell complimentary to him. He had to go out of town to-night. He hated to be away over Sunday, he explained, but there was business at Alma which he must look into sometime during the next five days; and week days for the present would be out of the question—by which I knew he meant he must stay on account of the trial. Then he stopped being sensible, and began teasing Hallie about her latest beau. He loves to do that, because she takes it all so seriously, and never sees that he is joking her. Just as she was protesting that she had no serious intentions toward the person in question, two young men came around the path from the front of the house. Hallie's beau and Jack Tracy, who had fluttered my sentiment a short time before by asking me to marry him. But now he was too bubbling over with importance to remember to look sentimental.
Had we heard the latest sensation, they wanted to know? Montgomery had tried to break jail. Came mighty near doing it, too!
I had been holding a cup and saucer when he began speaking, and when he stopped it was on the brick path in a hundred pieces.
"Poppycock," father said, "the town is full of rumors."
But, no, they said, it was true enough. They had it from good authority. It seemed that the sheriff had been bribed. Just how and by whom I couldn't make out, because every one was talking at once. But the sheriff had been removed, "pending trial," said Jack Tracy, and the deputy was acting in his place.
"But," I said, "if it wasn't Mr. Montgomery who bribed the sheriff, how can you tell he really wanted to escape?"
Then every one laughed, and I stooped over and began picking up the pieces of the Nankin cup, so that no one should see how I was blushing, but my hands shook so that it was all I could do to hold the pieces. What in the world was the matter with me lately? There was no reason in my behaving like this, as if Johnny Montgomery had been an old friend. I excused myself on the pretext of having father's bag to pack, and escaped into the house. "All the same," I said to myself, "I don't believe he tried to get out, or even really wanted to. From the way he looked in the court I am sure he doesn't care what happens to him."
But oh, I did wish he cared a little more; how I wished that some one could show, in his behalf, one contradictory piece of evidence; so that all the testimony wouldn't seem to be narrowing down to one point where there would be room for but one thing I could believe him to be!
Sunday, which found me sole mistress of the place, was beautiful, warm, and beguiling. That lovely locked-in feeling, which comes only when the streets are quiet, and no tradesmen, not even the postman, comes knocking, soothed me after the days of tension and expectancy.
Abby went off early to church, and I took a book out to the rustic seat by the heliotrope. At about half-past ten Mr. Dingley came through the conservatory; but he was used to coming in and out of the house so much that his joining me in the garden was no more of an invasion than if he had been one of the family. He said father had told him he was to be out of town, and he had come around to see how the household was getting on. We sat there very comfortably in the warm sun, aimlessly talking, hearing the sweet notes of church bells. I was just about to resume my book when Lee put his head out of the conservatory door.
"Some one to see you, Miss Ellie," he announced, and disappeared abruptly before I could ask who.
I went in, fearing it would prove to be some girl whom I did not know well, who had called out of mere curiosity. I was surprised to find, awaiting me in the hall, a person whom I did not know at all—whom I had never even seen before. It was a half-grown shuffling Mexican, with a blank and stupid face, looking as if he might be some one's stable-boy. But as soon as he saw me, he produced from some pocket and presented to me with remarkable swiftness and dexterity, a small immaculate white note. It was addressed to me, and the writing was not Estrella Mendez's small copper-plate script, but a larger, bolder, more dashing hand, scarcely like a woman's.
"To the Señorita Elenora:" it began,—and I wondered whether it could be from one of mother's old friends, for she had had several among the great Spanish families of the north. "I am asking if you will honor me with your presence for a short hour this morning," the letter ran. "It is impossible that I come to you, for I am ill. But there is a very great reason why I must see you. It is a matter touching justice. You will not fail." It was signed "Carlotta Valencia."
I read the signature twice over, and then the letter. No, my eyes were not playing tricks. But still, could it be some practical joke? I put the envelope to my face. Ah, it was she, it was the perfume of that flower! She had really written; she had summoned me.
The very fact that she had communicated with me, this being who was not as I was, whose life seemed as irrevocably separated from mine, as if she inhabited another planet, was amazing. And as for those expressions in her letter, "a very great matter," "touching justice," I dared not think what I wanted to believe.
I carried the note out into the garden. "I don't know how to answer this," I said, handing it to Mr. Dingley.
He read it, and whistled. "Well!" he said; and then, "there's one thing sure; you will not go alone!"
"Why, you don't mean to say I'm to go!" I cried.
He looked inquiringly. "Why not?"
"Oh, but father doesn't even like me to speak her name."
Mr. Dingley coughed. "Quite right, quite right! That is, of course, under ordinary circumstances. But in affairs of this sort, where state's evidence is concerned, we are obliged to lay personal feeling aside. Now from this letter," and Mr. Dingley tapped the little sheet which he held before him, "I gather that the Señora Valencia may have some information concerning this case of ours now going forward. Of course if it's incriminating, the state must have it. On the other hand, if it should tend to exonerate the defendant, of course we shall be very glad."
I murmured, "Oh, yes!" The hope of a possible means of clearing Johnny Montgomery went flushing through me.
If the Spanish Woman had anything to say I knew it would be in his favor. Still, there was something strange about it. "But if she has this information," I asked, "why doesn't she tell it in the court?"
"My dear Miss Ellie, why indeed? We never know why women do things. But it has been my experience in legal cases, and especially in criminal ones, that women will often give evidence in some such high-fantastic way as this, which could never be got out of them through the proper channel,—that is by means of cross-examination, in court. Now she's evidently taken a fancy to tell you something, and I feel it is our duty to see just how much is in it."
"Oh, yes," I said again, but this time more faintly, for when I thought of whom I was to face, some cowardly thing in me wavered, "But are you sure it's—safe?"
Mr. Dingley laughed. "My dear Miss Ellie, we don't live in the dark ages!"
He made me feel ashamed of my hesitations. I went back into the hall, told the Mexican in Spanish, yes, that I would come quickly. He seemed satisfied with this verbal message, and I watched him shuffle down the steps, in spite of his loose-hung gait, with admirable quickness. Then I told Lee that I was going out; dinner at half-past two, all as simply and usually as if I had been intending merely to stroll over to the beach. But there the usualness of things ended.
Mr. Dingley did not at all take the way I expected, the most direct and open way by the broad easy streets, where at this hour of Sunday the church-goers were promenading; but we went roundabout, through unexpected short cuts, and then across the empty stretches of the sand-lots toward where the long gray façade of the convent stretched; and close beside it the high fence with the latticed top which surrounded the Spanish Woman's house. Above the fence the roof and the small windows beneath the eaves were just visible. As we drew near my heart beat quickly, and still I felt that, as when I was a child, I was only going to pass it. But we turned, and I realized I was actually stopping at the gate.
This was so high it was merely a door cut in the fence, allowing no glimpse of what was within, and instead of immediately opening it, Mr. Dingley rapped upon it with the iron knocker, whose lion head had been wont to snarl at me years ago. I heard a sharp clicking as of something being unlocked, and the gate opened. But after we were inside I got an uncanny shock, for excepting ourselves there was not a soul to be seen.
"Clever contrivance that," said Mr. Dingley, glancing up. And then I noticed a wire which ran from the fastening of the gate to its top, and from there in a straight line to the house. But even this discovery didn't remove my uneasy sense of being in an enchantment.
Around us were weedy grass plots, bushes smothering in vines, broken flower urns, a dry and weather-stained fountain; and to and fro across the neglect of it all moved the shadows of the restless eucalyptus trees. A brick path, very mossy and giving uncertain foothold, ran straight to the front of the house—a blank-looking façade, all the shutters closed over the windows, and a deeply hooded door.
Mr. Dingley gave the bell handle a vigorous pull, but not the faintest tinkle reëchoed through the interior. We waited. There wasn't a sound of any one inside approaching through the hall. I was fully prepared to be admitted by the same unseen agency that had moved the gate. But when, quite suddenly, the door opened, I was aware of a figure, very dimly seen in the gloom of the hall. We were allowed to enter without a question, without a word; and as quickly the door closed upon us. After the broad sunlight the hall seemed so dark, I could but sense high ceilings and hanging draperies above my head, and feel beneath my feet the soft depth of a carpet. All that my eyes could distinguish was the little white glimmer of Mr. Dingley's card as he handed it to the person who had opened the door.
We were led through several rooms; but either they were interior rooms without windows, or else the windows were closely muffled, for they were so dark I could hardly find my way. But when at last our conductor drew back a curtain, a tempered light streamed upon us, and showed me that the cornices of the anteroom where we were standing were gilded, that the carpet which I was crushing under my feet, was the color of wine, and every fold of the velvet curtain where it took the light like a ruby. The servant, holding it back, was a strange creature, with a tightly closed mouth, and eyes that looked as if he kept them open only a crack to see out of, but not on any account to let any one peep in. He waved at the room in front of us, and then, still silent as an apparition, returned, disappearing into the gloom through which we had come, carrying Mr. Dingley's card with him. I followed Mr. Dingley into the great apartment, which I thought must be thesalaof the house, and sat down in the midst of its magnificence.
It was in strange contrast to the neglect of the garden without; and to my eyes it was novel in character. There were dark portraits in old gold frames on the wall; curtains shutting out all light, but the faintest and most colored; mirrors multiplying the tapestries and marble statues, and seeming to extend the very walls of the room itself. I kept catching glimpses of figures standing in these delusive vistas, and then, with a start, realizing they were but myself. Presently the servant returned. I saw multiple images of him advancing upon me from all sides as if to surround me. They flitted, disappeared, and the real presence bowed.
"The Señora wishes to say she is too ill to descend to thesala. Will the Señorita graciously come up-stairs?"
Mr. Dingley turned to me. "That's about as I expected. Then I will wait for you here."
Involuntarily I took hold of his coat, "But you said I shouldn't go alone!"
"Oh, of course, of course," he smiled. "I meant I'd come with you to the house. That's one matter. But to go up-stairs, that's hardly possible! Don't you see, Miss Ellie," he lowered his voice, "it's quite probable this is just a ruse to get rid of me? She would hardly want to speak before a third party."
The reminder that the Spanish Woman was going to speak, and the probability of what that speech might mean was enough to make me relinquish Mr. Dingley's coat, and send me in the wake of the serving-man with almost a light heart.
He led me out of thesala, not by the curtained way through which we had come, but by a door opening on a little entry, and from that up a stair, which was not at all like the stairway I had seen in the large entrance hall. I had never been in a house so bewilderingly built. I followed down halls that dwindled into passageways and so quickly did my guide move, so far he kept in front of me that even when my blue bow dropped from my hair pat upon the floor I dared not stoop to pick it up for fear of losing sight of him. I kept on ascending unexpected little steps; entered doors that opened abruptly as panels in the wall, branched off into yet narrower halls, and finally was ushered into what seemed a sort of anteroom, with only a few chairs furnishing it, and a great extent of polished floor stretching out in front of me to a curtain which hung across one whole side of it. There was a sweet though rather close odor, which wrought powerfully upon my imagination. Walking cautiously, since the floor seemed as slippery as glass, I followed my conductor. He drew the curtain aside a little—enough to let me slip through—said something in Spanish, some one musical word which I did not understand, and the curtain closed behind me. I stood there feeling like a doll, absurd, small and lost.
I was aware of a greater sense of air and sun than I had had since I entered the house, of a farther extent of that shining floor, broken by great opaque oblongs which absorbed light and gave out colors beautiful and dim; of a uniform even interplay of color upon all sides of me, as if the walls were hung with tapestry of one pattern; but all I was really intensely conscious of was a seated figure. She was sitting almost profile to me, with her back to the light, which fell splendidly upon the full length of her hair, hanging quite to the floor. She was wrapped in something silk, of two shifting colors, green and copper, uncovering the neck and leaving a most beautiful arm bare to the shoulder. A maid was brushing her hair, bending low with each measured stroke. At my appearance she straightened, stopped, and stepped back. It looked really as if she sank away into the shadow; and the Spanish Woman rose and came toward me, holding out her hand. The colors in her gown seemed fairly alive, and whether it was really a woven pattern of copper serpents rushing through green water, or only an accident of my fancy and the twisted lights, I couldn't determine. But, looking in her face, I thought, "Oh, surely Mr. Dingley is right. It isn't that she is ill, but only that she wants to talk with me alone." Like her hand, her voice was soft and warm.
"You are very kind," she said. There was hardly a trace of accent in her speech, only a delicate precision that made it delightful. "You see, I have been sick, and am yet too weak to go out upon the street. It is why I have given you the trouble to come to me." And still keeping my hand she led me to a chair and gently, prettily pushed me into it. There was something persuasive in her very touch. Then, taking her seat again, "Maria,prondo!" she cried; and the maid coming forward gathered up the mass of hair, twisted it deftly into a sort of crown around her head, filling it with gold-colored hair-pins, tucked into its coil a single tuberose; then collecting the combs and brushes went softly out of the room.
The Spanish Woman sat there, resting her chin in her hand, looking at me with a pleasant rather smiling expression; and I thought she was a great deal less overwhelming than I had expected, though she was even more beautiful. "You have seen Mr. Montgomery?" she began. I thought it was only a question in form.
I said, "Oh, yes, I first saw him several years ago, dancing at a ball."
She gave me a keen glance. "Yes, and later than that?"
"Then, then," I stammered, for I was at a loss to know whether she knew what my evidence was to be, "then once or twice on the street, and yesterday in court."
"Well, and what do you think of him?"
"Why I—I don't know him."
She made an amused little sound in her throat. "Yet you have seen him three times. Once would have been enough. Surely you can tell me at least one thing—do you think he looks like a murderer?"
"Oh, no!" I murmured.
Her eyes never left me. "But you do not think well of him; he is perhaps repulsive to you?"
"Oh, no!" I whispered. There was a painful tightness around my heart, and my head felt on fire. It was not the Spanish Woman but I who seemed to be telling the story.
She gave a quick nod, as if my answers thus far had satisfied her. "You do not believe him to be a murderer, you do not even think him unpleasant, and yet you will go into the court and swear away his freedom—perhaps his life?"
"I said I thought he did not look like a murderer," I desperately insisted, "but I can't help—"
"I know, my child, just what you are going to say," she interrupted. "You are going to say the words they have taught you—that it is your duty, and all that! And do you not know that the law is just a great machine of rules, and that this is one of them: that you must tell whatever you have seen, no matter how unjust, no matter what harm it does? It is for that reason I do not go to the law. I come to you, who are a woman like me, and have compassion. You say you do not know this man, but you have seen him. You can not be quite blind to what he is. He has been rash and foolish, and it is true that he has made angry some very virtuous citizens"—she rolled out the last two words with a curl of her handsome lip—"but he is a most lovable and charming boy, and the most brave! Can't you see by his face that he could not do an evil thing? He was dragged into this affair as a matter of honor; the quarrel was a fair and open one."
A joyful feeling went through me at her words—the first really kind, saving words I had heard spoken of him. I almost loved her for them; and the expectation that the next moment I was to hear the explanation of them held me, leaning forward in my chair, breathless.
She made a little imploring movement toward me with her open hands. "It would be cruel, cruel for a gentle, tender-hearted girl like you to speak such words against him!" A faint color was beginning to shine in her cheeks, and her eyes had opened wide their wonderful blacks.
"But," I cried, "if you know something in his favor why don't you go into court and tell them about it? If only you would speak to them as you do to me, I know they would believe you! They couldn't help it!"
She shot a quick glance at me, half suspicious, half fierce; but immediately it softened into a rather sad smile. "That is very gracious of you, to speak so; but about the court do not make a mistake! The words I have, the things I know, are not those that speak to the mind but to the heart. All that the lawyers take count of are the facts; and for the jury, they would be more swayed by one word a little innocent-eyed girl will say, than by the most eloquent plea I could offer. It is you who will sway this balance of justice. Do not try to escape from that responsibility. Think, think, of how, when you saw him come out of the door, he looked at you, and with his eyes implored you to be silent!"
I stared at her, terribly wrought upon by the memory she had called up of that look; astounded that she had known of it, had even been able to translate its meaning for me.
"Yes," she said, smiling, "I know all about it. And then you ran home and told them." Her voice grew very caressing. "But that was in the moment when you had lost your head. Now that you have had time to think it all over, now that you know how much it means—oh, surely, you will not speak again! I beg you, in human mercy, not that you plead for him, not that you tell a false story, but only as you are a woman, keep silence, keep silence!"
I listened with increasing dismay, as the hot words poured from her lips; and, with the end, a revulsion of feeling took me, a lost and bewildered sense of being completely astray. It was not to tell me anything she had called me hither—oh, quite the opposite!—it was to try to close my lips. If I hadn't been so blinded by my obstinate hopes I might have thought of this before! I might have saved myself the ordeal; for I had felt the very heart in me weaken at the picture of him her words called up.
"If I could make myself believe as you do," I said, "that what I have to tell will condemn him, even though he is innocent, I should want, myself, to die. But I can't believe, I can't think, that God can be so unjust as to let him be condemned when he is innocent!"
She let her head drop back, and laughed a little. "You will find, my child, that it is men who control the affairs of the earth; and that if you believe any such fine things of them you will be disappointed. As for the lawyers, they will convict an innocent man as merrily as they will eat their dinner, if only the popular cry is loud enough, and they can get enough of what they call their evidence against him. Do not expect any miraculous intervention on his behalf."
"I don't," I cried stoutly. "But some one must know the truth of what has really happened; and that person surely will come forward and tell what he knows before he will let Mr. Montgomery be condemned. Oh, if only I knew, nothing should keep me from saying it!"
She had drawn herself upright in her chair, her face whiter than her flower, her clenched hands resting on either arm; and now she slowly rose to her feet. Standing there she seemed fairly to tower above me, and looking down with her eyes glimmering upon me through her lashes. "What if he is guilty?" she said slowly.
The room around me grew dreamy. My head felt light. All the things I had ever believed in seemed to have fallen far, far below me, tiny and inconsequent. I closed my hands hard around the arms of my chair. I clung to it as if it had been my last principle of faith. "I have given my word," I said, "and even if I had not, I should have to tell the truth. It is a question of honor."
She stood a moment longer with her hands still clenched and slightly raised, as if she were going to strike a blow—myself, or her own breast. Then she let them fall limp, and, lifting her shoulders with a superb little scornful motion, "Ah, I thought you were only a fool," she said. "I see, you are cold."
She turned sharply about, and crossed the room to where something which looked like a large bench stood against the wall, covered with gold-colored velvet. I saw her fling back the covering and kneel beside it, fumbling with the lid. I heard the clicking of what seemed a series of locks. At last she turned her head and spoke, "Come here!"
I rose and went slowly over to where she knelt in the shadow.
"Sit down."
I seemed involuntarily to obey those imperious words. I took the seat she indicated, a carved stool, drawn near the chest, and saw her just lifting out a long string of blue flashing stars. It was like a toy, like one of those strings you hang upon a Christmas tree, only a hundred times more brilliant. "See how pretty!" she said, and ran it through her fingers in a little blue stream; then, with an easy motion of her wrist, she tossed it around my shoulders. She put her hand down into the chest and brought out a long, long string of pearls—if pearls had ever been so large—long as the rosaries I used to string of oak balls, and dropped it over my head. I felt the great weight of it upon my neck.
"Look," she said, and taking up a velvet case, opened it, and showed me, lying on the crimson satin bed, a necklace like a wreath of light. There was no misunderstanding the preciousness of that. The shock of the realization of what they were sent the blood into my face. Her eyes laughed at me with a gleam that seemed devilish. She threw the box into my lap. She took out rings and covered my fingers with them, drops of blood, red, and brilliant green, and rainbow colors. I couldn't seem to speak or move. I thought she must be mad.
"Here," she said, and leaning toward me, deftly pulled out the pins and took off my hat. Then in both her hands she lifted something from the chest, and, before I could stop her she had pressed it down upon my head. Then she rose. Her face was flushed; her lips parted eagerly on her gleaming teeth. She caught my hand and pulled me in front of a great mirror that hung upon the wall.
I saw reflected there a small, shrinking figure, with a white face, in a white dress, crowned with a circlet of gold, and hung with necklaces that made brightness in the shadow. I heard the Spanish Woman's voice speaking excitedly close beside my cheek.
"There is not their like in this state, in this country. Some of those have come out of the greatest houses in Spain. They will make you rich, they will make you beautiful! They are nothing to me; I will give them to you, every one, to keep for ever! Take them—take them all! And go away! Just for three little days; until the trial is over!"
I shrank from her in mere amazement. In the first moment I did not take in what she meant.
"No, but listen," she cried, catching at me, "I can make it easy for you to go. I have influence—I will help you—I will hide you! We will arrange the story."
I raised my hands to my head. Now I was choking with anger, with tears. "Do you think I would do for these, what I would not do for him?" I lifted the circlet off my head, but my hands shook so that it fell, and rolled on the floor between us, and I believe we both forgot it. "Do you suppose I don't care as much as you do? I would do anything in the world to clear him of this charge. But you don't understand—to clear him! I can't hush it and hide it. It wouldn't make it come right, and I don't believe he wants me to. I don't believe that is what he meant. I know he would hate me if I saved him with such a lie!"
She grew white. A small sharp shadow came on each side of her mouth. Her lips parted with a sort of gasp. "What do you know about saving or dying; what do you know about hating or loving? You would not lie—oh, no! You would save him—if he were innocent! Why, you child, I would save him the same if he had killed fifty! You are so precious of your little self, and your little virtue! Virtue? Pah! I love him—and that is my virtue!"
Something in the triumphant ring of her voice, in the very strength of her passion itself, for the moment made her noble. Beside her I felt myself small, mean and wretched.
It seemed to me I was in a nightmare and never should awake. I pulled the necklaces, the bracelets, the rings, off me, struggling with the tangled chains and stubborn clasps. I shook my hand free of the last jewel, and then snatching up my turban, pinned it on with trembling fingers, and all the while she stood looking silently at me. One could not tell what was behind her face. But when, at last, I had taken up the little ball of my gloves and stood before her, she spoke in a very soft voice:
"Pardon me, I have lost my wits. But you are made of a material—I do not know it—but it is not flesh and blood. Nevertheless we must not part bad friends."
She turned to the table and, pushing aside the jewels as if they had been colored glass, pulled toward her a tray, and took up a glass decanter. She poured two glasses of wine, and taking one, gracefully held it out to me. "Will you not drink to his acquittal?" she asked.
"Forgive me," I said, "if I do not drink to it. I will wish for it with all my heart. That will be the same."
"But it is not," she said, advancing, with her bright eyes fixed upon me. "To drink—that is a deed which shows the good will. The rest is but words. Come, you have spoken of great things you would do for him if only you could. Well, here is one small thing. Let me see you make good your words!" Her voice was so sweetly coaxing my hand hesitated toward the glass. Then, as she thought I was going to take it, something in the expectant, intense look of her caught me; and a dreadful thought flashed into my mind.
I shrank back. "No," I said, "I can not!"
But she was fairly upon me with it. She was leaning over me. "Drink, yes, drink!" She thrust it upon me.
"No, no!" I cried in terror. "I will not!" I flung up my hand with the impulse to keep it off me, and struck the glass, and overturned it.
She stepped backward and set down the tray with a clang. There was no perceptible change in her face, but suddenly she had become terrible. "You shall never go out of my house," she said.
My ears wouldn't believe, my senses rejected the meaning of those words. "You would not do such a thing—you would not dare!"
She threw back her head until I could see the great column of her white throat swell, and laughed. "I tell you, my pretty little girl, I would fling away a dozen such as you for only the chance of saving him!"
I saw that she meant it—I understood how well!—I felt like a little dry stick in a river, like a leaf in the wind. I looked behind me. The windows did not open into the outer air but into a tightly closed conservatory. The sound that was struggling in my throat was a scream, but suppose it would only call in some of her creatures before Mr. Dingley should hear! I looked squarely into her face, and I am sure, in that moment, that I understood what death might mean. "I am going," I said, very quietly, and walked across the room toward the curtains.
She did not try to stop me, and every unobstructed step I took forward I thought, with increasing terror, "What is it that she means to do?" When I reached the closed curtain the grasp of her hands, which I had dreaded; was the least of my fears. The anteroom was empty, but as I passed its threshold I heard her move across the inner room, and then a bell rang, away down in the lower part of the house. There is no describing the feeling that was in me when, with the sound of that uncanny signal in my ears, I opened the door into the grizzly maze of passageways.
I remembered that I had turned to the right in coming in, so now I turned to the left, and hurried down that narrow, unlighted way that led me directly to another door. But I remembered that and opened it and stepped through into another hall. Here were three branching ways, and it was only one of these, of course, which would bring me to thesaladoor. The others might plunge me into Heaven knew what places of the house, or what hands! There was no time to hesitate, I must choose and chance it! There was not one thing—window, furniture or color—to distinguish them. Yet in my agony of mind I gave a glance down one and two of them; and on the floor of the second, a few yards from me some small, light-colored object was lying. I ran forward and stooped. It was the blue bow that had fallen from my hair.
I picked it up with a rush of thankfulness. This was an incident in a fairy tale! It seemed an omen of safety, and as I held it in my hand I fairly ran along the passage and came at last triumphantly out into the hall, which I remembered, broad and carpeted with red.
Down the stairs I hastened, my heart going quick with the alarms of my escape, opened the door at the foot of it and came into the little entry. As I entered it I fancied a sound. It was like a step, very soft, so soft as to be hardly audible, not behind me, not on the other side of the door in front of me, but somewhere beyond the entry partition on my right. It was there, I reckoned, that one of those dark anterooms, through which we had approached thesala, must be. The flesh of my back was pricking, but I was almost safe. Once let me reach Mr. Dingley and I knew that somehow he would get us out. With a great effort I pulled open the heavy door into thesala.
"Oh, I—" I began; but then I stopped. The room was so large that it took me some moments to make sure it was empty. Mr. Dingley was not there.
I stood perfectly still in that stupendous place. Everything in me seemed to have stopped moving, too—my blood and my heart. And, in the listening pause, there came again unmistakably, soft, stealthy footsteps, sounding beyond the heavy curtain of the door—sounding as if creatures were gathering in those dark rooms that lay between me and the outer hall.
I didn't scream. I didn't want to. I walked quite quietly across the room to one of the heavily curtained windows at the back, and pulled the hangings aside.
In front of me, not three feet from the window was the blank face of the convent wall rising straight up, higher than I could see. I looked downward. The stone pavement, which I could just make out in the gloom, must have been ten feet below. Nevertheless I had a wild thought that, if the worst came, I could at least fling myself down the narrow cleft; and in that mind I took hold of the window-frame. I had no hope that I could move it, even after I had stirred the heavy locks; but, with the pressure of all my weight against it, slowly the two sides of the casement opened out. As the dusty panes of glass swung away from before me my eye caught a singular irregularity in the surface of the wall. About on a level with the window-sill was a niche in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark substance—darker than the bricks—through which shone twinkling glimpses of daylight.
I climbed upon the window-sill, and, taking hold of the upper edge of one of the casements, swung myself by this. I felt myself hovering an instant in mid-air. Then my feet had found the niche. I crouched, and, groping forward with one hand, grasped a stout tangle of vines. Releasing the casement I half-dragged, half-swung myself into the opening in the wall. I clung there a moment trembling, catching my breath, before I realized that the dark mass at the back of the niche was merely ivy, some of which I had grasped, tearing quite a little opening, and through this I could see a blessed glimpse of blue sky.
Putting my eyes close to this peep-hole I looked downward and saw below me the grass plots of the convent garden. A great tangle of bushes was at the foot of the wall, but in spite of that it looked a dreadful drop. I glanced over my shoulder into the room behind me, and thought I saw a shadow moving down the floor. I do not know how I turned myself in the cramped space where I knelt. All I could remember afterward was the feel of the edge of the rough masonry under my fingers; the tearing of the ivy as my body crushed through it; the straining of my arms as I swung downward. I gave one horrified glance into the depths of the garden; then closed my eyes and let go.