Bertha took no notice. "Then that night she did not know what she was saying. She thought she saw all sorts of strange things in the room, and she talked continually, as if seeing people who were not there. Her words were quite fantastic and related to nothing I could understand. But occasionally, when she seemed more coherent, she told me that the police would come for her, that she would be proved to be guilty, and begged me in the most touching terms to love her in spite of all. In the daytime she would get up and go about the house, and she appeared composed; but I knew her well enough to see that she was still strange. But she never said a word, except when we were alone, to lead anyone to suppose that she knewmore than she first told. On the third day Mr. Alden told us that she would be taken to prison. It was an awful shock to me, but it seemed to rouse her and bring back her faculties. We were alone together for about an hour. After she had tried to soothe and comfort me by speaking of duty, of God, and of heaven, she spoke to me very solemnly, and told me not to grieve for any hardship that befell her, for she had broken the law and must suffer if she was condemned; but that, short of doing or saying anything to inculpate anyone else, she would do all that could be done to convince the world of her innocence. She said: 'It would be worse for you, and for father's sake, if I were convicted. I will fight for my liberty unless someone else is accused; but remember, if anyone else is accused, I shall have to do what will bring disgrace. Remember that, Bertha. Remember that if any circumstance should come to your knowledge to tempt you to accuse anyone else,thatwill put an end to my hopes.' She said this very solemnly several times. Then she told me the lines on which Mr. Alden would probably have the case conducted; and that I must tell nothing but the truth, but refuse to tell about the boy, or what she had told me. I never heard anyone speak more clearly and collectedly. She foresaw almost everything.Our other lawyers and Mr. Alden said the same thing, that her intellect was almost like that of a trained lawyer in its prevision of the effect of evidence."
"And did you believe her guilty?"
"I did not know what to think. I was stunned. I dared not think, for it took all my mind to act the part she assigned to me. But afterwards, during the long time she was in prison and during the trial, I believed her innocent. When I thought of her goodness and the perfectly unforeseen and inexplicable manner of the way poor papa and mamma died, I could not think Hermione guilty, and I did not. As to the wild things she said in those nights, I supposed she had been in a fever, and put down all I could not understand to that.
"Then we formed the plan of going abroad and returning to some place like this, only not so lonely. We packed all our valuables to be put in a safe by Mr. Alden. When my sister had packed the family papers and her own jewelry and locked and sealed the box, she called me to look at it and gave me the key. When she was ill in Paris she told me of her confession, and that it lay at the bottom of this box. But she asked me most solemnly never to open it unless someone else was falsely accused. She told me that she had nofurther motive in life than to make up to me as far as possible for all that I had innocently suffered; but she begged me not to make life too hard for her by ever speaking of this matter again. I have never spoken to her again about it."
Bertha's voice had become very melancholy; now she ceased.
"This mulatto calling himself 'Dolphus is certainly the boy?"
"Yes—oh, yes; we both knew him the moment he turned up again."
"Have you never seen him between then and now?"
"No."
"Where has he been?"
"I don't know."
"How did he find you?"
"By bribing the porter in Mr. Alden's office to show him the letters he carried. He has a right to protection and support from us, for there is still a great reward offered for him. Mr. Alden offered it."
"And Alden does not guess that this is he?"
"How should he? He has no idea that we would hide him. But now we cannot conceive what will happen, for altho we are sure that he won't tell about us as long as he has a chance of escape,Hermie herself says that if he is condemned he may, in despair and revenge, tell all that he knows."
"Alden must be told this."
She sprang up with great energy. "He must not know. It is the one thing Hermie will not let him know if it is possible to help it. Oh, of course the worst catastrophe may come and overwhelm us; but while we have hope of escape, Hermie will not let Mr. Alden know that."
It had become dark. Hermione Claxton was looking for her sister, walking across the meadow and calling in motherly tones.
"Answer me just one thing. Did your sister tell you in plain words that she committed this deed?"
"No; she did not. But I have tried to make what she said mean anything else. In any case she would not have said a word she could help; such words are too terrible. Can you think I have not sought to believe otherwise?"
She said this in a tense, hurried voice, and standing at the barn door, called back: "I'm coming, I'm coming, dear."
"She never did it," said Durgan strongly. "She knows who did. She is shielding someone."
"That is very easy to say," said the girlscornfully. "Of one thing I am certain; there is no one on earth she would shield at my expense. Think what we have suffered while she fought through that terrible trial. She knows no one, loves no one on earth, but me and Mr. Alden."
"I'm coming, I'm coming, darling."
She took up her empty pail and ran.
Waking or sleeping, one figure stood forth in Durgan's imagination that night, and was the center of all his mental activity—it was Hermione Claxton.
He had been accustomed to regard her as the very incarnation of the commonplace, in so far as good sense and good feeling can be common.
Now he knew her as the chief actor in a story wherein the heights and depths of human passion had been so displayed that it might seem impossible for one mind to habitually hold so wide a gamut of experience in its conscious memory. This quiet little gray-haired housewife, who lived beside him, baking, sweeping, and sewing her placid days away, had stood in the criminal dock almost convicted of the most inhuman of crimes. Having passed through the awful white flame of public execration, she had accepted her blackened reputation with quiet dignity; for years she had lived ahidden life of perfect self-sacrifice, devoting herself to the purest service of sister-love. With character still uncleared, she had been urged to take her place as the wife of one of New York's best-known philanthropists, with whom, it seemed, she had long suffered the sorrows of mutual love and disappointment. Of more than this Durgan felt assured. As he reviewed all that had been told him that day, he was the more convinced that she had been no involuntary victim of false accusation, that she knew the secret that had puzzled the world, and had chosen to shield the criminal, to bear the odium, and also inflict it on the objects of her love. She had done all this for the sake of—what? What motive could have been strong enough to induce a wise and good woman to make such a sacrifice and endure the intolerable keeping of such a secret?
Durgan very naturally sought again the bundle of criminal reports which had fallen into his hands after the fire. Packed in the pile which fed the miners' stove, they had not, as yet, been burned. He reconsidered them, supposing now that they had been collected by Miss Claxton herself. A motley band of prisoners was thus evoked. They passed in procession before Durgan, beginning with Hermione Claxton, and ending with thatcurious figure of the dilettante priest who had beaten a sister to death in fear that she was an apparition. The well-born woman who, without temptation, had stolen jewels; the French peasant who had killed a loved wife to save her from the sufferings of a painful disease, and all the other members of this strange procession, represented the eccentricities of the respectable, rather than the characteristics of the degraded class. From a fresh scrutiny of each Durgan gained no information, only a strong suspicion that the criminal for whom Miss Claxton had so bravely stood scapegoat belonged to the same respectable class. He assumed that while her lawyers had been hunting for some inconsequent housebreaker who had taken a maniacal delight in dealing death, she had covered the guilt of someone whose reputation defied suspicion. Love, blind love, could have been the only motive strong enough to initiate and sustain such a course of action. The only way to discover the villain to whom she had sacrificed herself was to discover the man to whom she had given her heart. No doubt, since the crime and cowardice had betrayed his true value, such a woman would turn with some affection to a man like Alden. But Durgan's surmise required that before the crime she should have had another lover. Such a lover, if at enmity withthe father and in need of money, would have had all the motive that the prosecution had attributed to Miss Claxton. She was supposed to have sent all witnesses out of the house before the crime; if her lover was demanding a private interview with her father, and her engagement was as yet private, such action on her part—— But Durgan paused, vexed at the nimbleness of his fancy. He derided himself for assuming that so obvious a suspicion had not long ago been probed to the bottom by acuter minds than his.
When he came to question more soberly what clues he held by which he might himself seek for any truth in his new suspicion, more unquiet suggestions came thick and fast.
More than once lately he had had the unpleasant sensation of hearing his wife's name very unexpectedly. Bertha had more than once referred to her; and what was it the raving mulatto had said? It took him some time to recollect words that had fallen on his astonished ears only to convince him of their nonsense. The mulatto had implied that his wife had concealed something for years which put her in some rivalry or enmity with Miss Claxton. His advice that Durgan should look into his wife's conduct and take Miss Claxton's part could, if it meant anything, only point to some mutual interestboth women had with the spiritualist, Charlton Beardsley.
Durgan was amazed at such an idea. He remained for some time, as he said to himself, "convinced" that the mulatto was raving; and yet he went as far as to reflect that there had never been any visible reason for his wife's devotion to this man; furthermore, that Bertha had said that Mr. Claxton, an hour before his sad death, had received a message from Charlton Beardsley, that the mulatto had come from Beardsley, and was it not likely that he had sought shelter with his employer? The mulatto evidently knew Hermione to be innocent; in that case Beardsley would know it, and perhaps Durgan's own wife knew it. They had come forward with no evidence. What possible motive could they have had for concealment?
Durgan broke from his camp bed and from his hut, hot and stifled by the disagreeable rush of indignant and puzzled thoughts. He stood in the free air and dark starlight, trying to shake off his growing suspicions. Details gathered from different sources were darting into his mind, and it seemed to him that fancy, not reason, was rapidly constructing a dark story of which he could conceive no explanation, but which involved even himself—through tolerance of his wife's conduct—in the guilt of Miss Claxton's unmerited sufferings.
Alarmed at the trend of these memories and hasty inferences, he controlled himself, to reflect only on the more instant question of Eve's death, and the evidence he must give at the trial. It would appear that until 'Dolphus was condemned, even the Claxtons did not fear his tongue. To give evidence against him, and at the same time to seal his tongue, appeared to be Durgan's immediate duty, but the performance seemed difficult. What bribe, what threat could move a condemned man who was but a waif in the world, and need care for none but himself?
Yet if rational meaning was to be granted at all to his raving on the night of Eve's death, it would appear that even this creature had a reverence for Miss Claxton, and a desire to be the object of her prayers. Was this motive strong enough to be worked upon? It would be better, no doubt, to gain an interview with the prisoner and try to discover if he had any tenacity of purpose, but to this Durgan felt strong repugnance.
In avoiding this issue, his mind began to torment him regarding the evidence against Miss Claxton, which he alone knew, and which he might not have a right to conceal. His ardent belief in hergoodness, his firm belief that he had heard Eve die, rested only on intuitive insight, common in men of solitary habit and unscholarly minds; he knew that this was no basis on which to found legal evidence.
With these uneasy and unfinished thoughts he at last fell asleep in the faint light of the dawn, and waked again soon with a vivid and bad dream.
He dreamed that he was again on the lonely mountain on the night of Eve's death, groping under the stunted thicket of old oak. Again he saw Miss Claxton come to the forked tree. She climbed as before, and reached up one thin arm to deposit something in the highest cleft of the trunk. The moon rose as before; Durgan saw in his dream that the thing she hid there was a knife, and the blade was red. Rousing himself from a sleep that brought so odious a vision, he woke to find the rays of a red sunrise in his face.
One of his laborers brought up the borrowed horse which he had arranged to ride to Hilyard. Before he started he went up the trail to the summit house, hoping that Alden might be about. He had nothing definite to ask, and yet he would have been glad to have some parting advice from him. No one was up. The very house was drowsy under the folded petals of its climbing flowers. Durgan went down through the stunted oak wood, andlooked up as he passed the forked tree. It was the first time he had been close to it in daylight. In one branch of the fork, close to the notch, there was a round hole, such as squirrels choose for their nests. Better hiding-place for a small object could not be. To act the spy so far as to look into the hole without Miss Claxton's permission would have been what Durgan called "a nigger's trick." Like all the better class of slave-owners, he habitually sought to justify his own assumption of superiority by holding himself high above all mean actions or superstitious ideas. As he went down the hill he was vexed with himself for having been so far influenced by a dream as to have even looked for the hole in the tree.
Yet as he rode out into the glorious morning, he found himself arguing that if money for the mulatto had been put in the tree, it was odd that the mulatto had made no effort to get it before his arrest or to send for it after. The thing which had really been put there, if not meant for 'Dolphus, was probably intended to be long hidden. But a dream, of course, meant nothing, and his could easily be accounted for by the tenor of his waking thoughts and the color of the sunrise.
When he reached the saw-mill he turned by the long, wooden mill-race and set his horse at a gentlegallop for Hilyard. Even at that speed he began to wonder whether if, by such evidence as had convinced Bertha, he were induced to hold the erroneous opinion of Miss Claxton's guilt, he would be also forced into Bertha's conclusion, that fits of mania were the only explanation. Since last night he had called Bertha a fool; now, while most unwelcome suspicions followed him like tormenting demons, he was driven into greater sympathy with the younger sister.
He galloped gently down the slope of the valley, tree and shrub and flower rushing past him in the freshness of the morning. Suddenly he checked his horse to look up. He was beneath his own precipice. The mine was on a ledge about three hundred feet above him. The rock rose sheer some hundred and fifty feet above that. He could trace the opening of the trail, but even the smoke of the hidden dwelling-house could not be seen here. As Durgan listened for the faint chink of his workmen's tools, and sought from this unfamiliar point of view to trace each well-known spot, he began, for the first time, to realize fully the dreadfulness of the story which only yesterday had revealed.
Involuntarily he drew rein. The memory that had transfixed him was the description of the Claxton murder. While the step-mother had been killedby only one well-aimed shot, the father had been beaten with such brutal rage that no likeness of the living man appeared in the horrid shape of the dead.
He spoke aloud in the sunny solitude, and his words were of Bertha and her sister. "My God! She has lived alone with her there for two years believing this."
He had very often of late thought slightingly of Bertha's excitability. Last night he had thought scorn of her conclusions. Now, when he perceived how the terrible form of death which had befallen her loved father must have wrought upon her nerves, and how much more reason she had to believe her sister guilty than the most bigoted member of the public who had tried to condemn her, he felt only reverence for the courage and devotion of such a life. No doubt her womanly proneness to nervous fears, and the undisciplined activity of her imagination, had sometimes pictured scenes of impossible distress, and resulted in words and looks inconsistent with her resolution of secrecy; but, also, how much did this timorous and excitable disposition heighten the heroism of the office she had so perseveringly filled.
Yet while he remained in deep admiration of this heroism, he thought that he himself couldnever forgive Bertha's suspicion of her sister. How much less could Alden forgive? And if it ever reached the trustful mind of that loving sister that the child of her delight had thought her prone to madness, the word "forgiveness" would have no meaning between them. A wound would be made that no earthly love could ever heal.
Bertha's beauty came vividly before him—her kind, honest, impulsive girlhood. "God help her," he said slowly. "She has cheerfully borne worse than hell for love's sake, and such is the extreme tragedy of love, that if she is mistaken, all this loyalty and suffering can never atone for her mistake."
Durgan left the breeze of the sunrise and the mountains behind him, and after that one first gallop, rode slowly down into the stillness of the lower country and the heat of the midday hours. The smoke of some distant forest fire filled the air, diffusing the sunlight in a golden glow. Who can tell the sweetness that the flame of distant pine-woods lends? It is not smoke after it has floated many hundred miles; it is a faint and delicious aroma and a tint in the air—that is all.
On the lower side of the road now the hill dropped, in ragged harvest fields and half-cultivated vineyards, towards the wide hot cotton plains of the sea-board. On the other side were enclosed pastures where tame cattle were straying among young growths of trees, which were everywhere again conquering the once smooth clearings.
In the long, central street of Hilyard, behind the weathered palings, garden flowers brimmed over.Great heads of phlox, white and crimson, sent forth the sweetest and most subtle fragrance. Petunias, large as ladies' bonnets, soft and purple, breathed of honey. Rose and poppy, love-in-a-mist and lovelies-bleeding, marigold and prince's feather, all fought for room in tangles of delight. Over the old wooden houses the morning-glory held its gorgeous cups still open under the mellow veil of smoke. No house in the town was newly painted, or bore to the world the sharp, firm outline of good repair; but there was not one which nature had not adorned with flower or vine or moss. Everywhere there was the trace of poverty and languor after war; everywhere there was beauty, sweetness, and warmth, and the gracious outline of repose.
Hilyard lay on the way from the mountains to the broad plantations which still bore Durgan's name. It was soothing to him to find himself again in a country where he had lost so much for the Federal cause that he had gained proportionate respect. The mountain whites knew nothing but their own hills; but here, to everyone, high or low, it was enough that he was Neil Durgan, however shabby his clothes and empty his pocket; and he felt afresh the responsibility and self-confidence which an honorable ancestry and personal sacrifice have power to give.
The interview with the magistrate was a short one. The trial of the two negroes was put off because the mulatto had asked for ten days in which to obtain money and advice from his friends in the North. A few days before Durgan would have been enraged at the delay on Adam's account; now he was only too thankful. He took his resolution, and obtained leave to visit both prisoners.
The prison was a square house, differing from others only in having bars in the windows and standing nakedly to the street without fence or garden. Outside and in it was dirty and slovenly. Adam's cell was in bright contrast, well furnished, clean and neat as its inmate. Adam's skin shone with soap; his shirt was spotless; he sat on a rocking-chair, large-print Bible in hand; and when Durgan came he wept.
"There, there," said Durgan, patting him. "Reckon you'd better cheer up. The folks all speak well of you, you big nigger."
The jailer stood in the doorway grinning with delight at the novel juxtaposition of a good prisoner and a local hero.
"Oh, Adam," went on Durgan, "you look like a man in a tract. I'm proud of you, Adam. How's this for a good Durgan nigger?" he asked, turning to the hard-featured jailer.
The excellence of Adam's behavior, which might have been art, had evidently been accepted as artless; for the callous and indolent authorities knew well enough the broad difference between good and bad in the unsophisticated blacks.
"Adam—he does you credit, Mr. Durgan, sir," said the jailer. "Reckon Hilyard always had a good word for your pa's niggers, sir. Adam—he's all right. General Durgan Blount said as how you said he was to have his comforts."
When Durgan stepped again into the dirty passage way, and recalled the turnkey to open the mulatto's cell, all the easy, brutal injustice of it weighed upon his sense of honor; he felt ashamed for his country. 'Dolphus, backed by no local influence, too weak to wash his cell, was confined amid dirt and vermin. The crusted window-glass let in little light. The wretch sat on the edge of a straw bed, almost his only furniture, his silken hair long and matted, his smart clothes crushed, his linen filthy. Durgan was shocked; in such case it was but evident that his disease, already advanced, would make rapid progress. It was with a new sensation of pity that he took the chair that the jailer thrust in before he withdrew.
"Have you no money to get yourself comforts?" Durgan asked.
"Yes, sir. Miss—that lady, you know, sir—has given me as much as I can spend on food and drink. I ain't got much appetite, sir." He seemed entirely frank as to Miss Claxton's kindness.
"I have come to see if I can do anything for you."
"I thought, sir, you was only the friend of your own niggers like Adam."
"Whom did your father belong to?"
"General Courthope, of Louisiana. No, sir, he isn't dead; but my father ran away when the 'mancipation came, and left the ole Gen'ral, and pulled up in New York; so the fam'ly might as well be dead for all they'll do for me."
"Have you no folks?"
"Not now, sir. I got called for up North, for something I hadn't done; so I had to lie low, and lost any folks I had. But there's one gen'leman I've written to; he'll play up to get me out of this." A curious look came over the face of the speaker. He chuckled.
Durgan felt puzzled at the look and the laugh. "Are you sure he got the letter?"
'Dolphus pulled a well-worn bit of paper out of his pocket. It was a telegram dated only a few days before. He regarded it with an intense expression which might have been hatred, and aftergloating over it for a few moments, he showed it to Durgan. It was dated, "Corner of Beard and 84th Street." It said only, "Received letter; you may depend on me." It was signed "B. D." It had been handed in at a New York office two days before.
"And if this friend should fail you?"
"He says, sir, that I can depend upon him; an' I wrote to him that if he didn't come up to the scratch he could depend on me." Another chuckle ended this speech.
"Oh, I see; you have some threat to hold over his head."
'Dolphus did not answer.
Durgan, looking at the lustrous eyes and clever, sickly face, became exceedingly interested in the object of his contemplation. How strange to sit thus face to face, with perhaps nothing between him and the Claxton secret but this dying mulatto's flimsy will, and yet go away unsatisfied.
Almost in spite of himself, he bent forward and said, "You were in a certain house when a murder was committed. I do not believe you guilty or wish to harm you, but I believe you know whoisguilty."
A look of caution came over the other's face; he listened and looked intently. "Look here, sir; Iwasn't never at no house where there was such things done. I wasn't never at no place such as you say."
Durgan had no argument to meet this obvious lie. He could not quote his authority. He was, however, more interested than angry, because the prisoner was so evidently enjoying the momentous question raised, and with lips parted, sat expectant, as if he did not intend his denial to be believed.
"I only desire to see justice done," said Durgan coldly.
'Dolphus looked at him with eyes half-shut, and, to Durgan's astonishment, a sensation of fear found room in his consciousness. "Are you sure of that, sir?"
"Of what?"
"That you'd like to see justice done—all round, sir?"
"Justice—yes. And what else could I desire but justice?" Then he added, hardly knowing why, "But unless you have evidence, no one will believe anything you choose to say."
'Dolphus chuckled aloud. "I've got evidence all right enough, sir; an' I know where one witness is to be found—a truthful lady, sir, who is so queer made that she'd die rather than hurt a gen'lemanshe cared for, sir; but she'd sooner hurt him than swear what was false. I'm agoin' to clear her in spite of herself."
"Do you wish to hurt this good lady by making her real name known here, where she wishes it to be concealed?"
"Look you here, sir. You're a mighty fine gen'leman; I'm a poor yaller nigger; you wouldn't trust me with a ten-cent bit. Well, sir, one of us has got to give a good deal to save that lady. Which 'ull it be, sir?"
Durgan received this astonishing challenge in amazement. He began to believe the fellow was in terrible earnest under his mocking tone and light manner. He was too proud to answer.
"Look here, sir; you can go an' tell that pious little lady I won't harm her—not if I die for it; but I ain't goin' to die till I've done better than that. I'm turnin' ill now, sir. You'd better send for the man outside to bring me something to drink. I'll pay him, sir."
He actually refused the greenbacks his visitor offered. Before Durgan had summoned the turnkey, 'Dolphus had curled himself up on the pallet in all the appearance of a swoon.
Durgan went to the "hotel" where he had left his horse. It was a wooden house with scantyfurniture, all its many doors and windows open to the street. Two old women sat in one doorway, ceaselessly rubbing their gums with snuff—a local vice. Three rickety children were playing in the barroom. The landlord was exercising his thoroughbred horses in the yard. The horses were beautiful creatures, neither rickety nor vicious.
A valuable microscope and a case of surgical instruments stood on a table, surrounded by the ash of cigars. They were the property of the country doctor, a noted surgeon, who was satisfied to make his home in this fantastic inn. The wife of the hotel-keeper, who always wore a blue sun-bonnet whether in or out of the house, brought Durgan a glass of the worst beer he had ever tasted, and delicious gingerbread hot from the oven.
When Durgan had found the doctor and made sure that he would go at once and better the mulatto's condition, he set out on his homeward journey. He had said to the medical man, "Whatever happens, you must not let the fellow die till I come back."
The answer had been, "I won't do that."
Durgan had ridden down the hills in rather leisurely fashion; now he urged his horse to speed. He had come uncertain how to meet the issue of the day; now he was eager to forestall the issue of the next.
He had brought from his interview with the dying prisoner a strong impression that the poor fellow had more mind and purpose than he had supposed, and that he certainly had some scheme on hand from the development of which he expected excitement and some lively satisfaction.
The hints thrown out sounded madder than the supposed raving of his last night of freedom. He had control over some unknown person, or persons, of wealth in New York, who would send to save him, and he would sacrifice something—perhaps his salvation—to Miss Claxton; further, he threatened Durgan with discomfiture.
What could seem more mad than all this? Butto-day Durgan was not at all sure that the poor creature did not mean all he said and could not do all he promised. The development of the mulatto's purpose might be left to time, but Durgan's purpose was to follow up the clues he had obtained, and two facts had to be dealt with now. 'Dolphus had freely expressed the belief that Miss Claxton had shielded an unknown criminal of the male sex whom she loved. Durgan had been so astonished, and even shocked, at hearing his own bold surmise so quickly and fully corroborated, that he knew now for the first time how little confidence he had had in his own detective powers. Further, it was probably this guilty person over whom 'Dolphus had power. He was rich, and could not be unknown; he was within reach, for he had recently telegraphed, and the address given must be meant to find him. Durgan felt that it would be criminal to lose a moment in putting this clue in Alden's hand.
Bertha had desired that Alden should be left in ignorance of the mulatto's identity because she feared it might lead to her sister's condemnation; now that 'Dolphus himself had implied that he could clear the sister's reputation, Bertha could not, must not, hesitate. Miss Claxton's desire to hide from Alden who the mulatto was and what heknew must be part of her desire to hide the miscreant; but with time, Durgan was ready to believe, this desire must have lessened or almost failed, as love must have cooled. In any case, Miss Claxton held all her desires as subordinate to the will of God; persuasion, reason, pressure, must move her. Durgan urged on his horse.
All the way home he passed over shady roads flecked with pink sunlight. The heaviest foliage of summer mantled the valleys. The birds were almost still, resting in the deep shadows of the mature season.
When Durgan was almost within hearing of the waterfall and the hum of the saw-mill at Deer Cove, he met three riders. Mr. Alden and Bertha, in company with young Blount, were descending for a gallop in the cool of the evening. They all stopped to say they had heard by post that the trial was deferred, and to inquire after Adam's welfare.
Durgan could reply cheerfully as to Adam, that he was spending his time in ablutions and pious exercises, and that the authorities were bent upon having him acquitted.
"Reckon they are," said young Blount. "My father saw to that when he went over."
Durgan saw that neither Bertha nor Mr. Alden would ask about the other prisoner in his cousin'spresence. He said in a casual tone, "The yellow fellow seems assured that he will have money and influence behind him, too, by next week."
"Yes," cried Blount, interested always in minutiæ, "he sent a letter and received a telegram."
Durgan rode on. He must wait now an hour or two for an opportunity to speak to Alden or Bertha, and he began to wonder whether it would not be more honorable to approach Miss Claxton direct, confess what he had chanced to see of her secret actions, and tell her frankly what the mulatto had let fall that day. His borrowed horse had been offered the hospitality of her stable for the night, so he must, perforce, reach the summit.
The horse rubbed down and fed in the spacious stable, Durgan sought the front of the low house, now richly decorated by the scarlet trumpet-flower, which had conquered the other creepers of earlier summer, and had thrown out its triumphal flag from the very chimneys.
He found the lady, as he had expected, sitting quietly busy at some woman's work in the front porch. The house mastiff lay at her feet, and round the corner came the low, sweet song of the colored maid who had taken Eve's place in the kitchen. The rich crimson plant called "love-lies-bleeding," now in full flower, trailed its tassels onthe earth on either side of the low doorway. It seemed, indeed, a fit emblem of the tragedy of the life beside it.
Miss Claxton welcomed Durgan with her usual self-effacing gentleness. "Bertha and Mr. Alden have ridden out with Mr. Blount. Thought likely you would have met them."
Durgan's avowal of the meeting caused her to expect an explanation of his visit; but for some minutes he dallied, glad to rest in her gentle presence, and feeling now the extreme difficulty of saying things he thought it only honorable to say.
He had hitherto blamed Bertha and Alden for not addressing themselves to Miss Claxton more openly. He now realized to what degree she had the power which many of the meekest people possess, of hiding from the strife of tongues behind their own gentle, inapproachable dignity.
Durgan rested in pacific mood while she uttered gentle words of sympathy for his fatigue, and fell into a muse of astonishment that she should be the center of such pressing and tragic interests. So strong was his silent thought that it would have forced him into questions had she been less strong. He longed to ask, "Why do you assume that this 'Dolphus will not expose the criminal you have suffered so much to hide?"
Instead, he only began to describe his visits to the prisoners, taking Adam first, and coming naturally to 'Dolphus.
"It was real kind of you, Mr. Durgan, to see after him; and it was very mean of the jail folks not to wash up for him. He had money to pay them."
"The doctor will make them stand round. But I wanted to tell you that I have been wondering upon what or whom 'Dolphus relies for his defence. Adam has such a strong backing, there seems to be no doubt of his acquittal. I did not know this till I went to-day, or how little difference the emancipation has really made as to the justice or injustice meted out to niggers. I supposed—I have been absent since the close of the war—that the evidence given at the trial would be all-important. Now I think the conclusion is foregone; judge and jury, whoever the jurors may be, have already fallen into the belief that I and my cousins have insisted on."
She had dropped her work; she was absorbed in his every word. "It's a bad principle, of course," she said; "but as to Adam, it is working out all right. I suppose—I suppose, Mr. Durgan, that 'Dolphus did kill poor Eve? I'd feel pretty mean if he's being punished for nothing."
"I believe he did; but I have no proof."
"I don't mind telling you, Mr. Durgan, that I got Mr. Alden to get a lawyer—quite privately, of course—to offer his services to 'Dolphus—to tell him we would pay the costs, because Adam and Eve were our 'help,' and of course we wanted to see only justice done. 'Dolphus wouldn't accept it. He refused; we don't know why. He told the lawyer he knew 'a game worth two of that.' Of course, if there is miscarriage of justice, we can't feel quite so badly as if we hadn't made the offer."
"What do you think he meant by 'knowing a better game'?"
"It wasn't just fooling, was it, Mr. Durgan?" Underneath her quiet there was now a tremulous eagerness; her faded eyes looked to his with sorrowful appeal.
"No; after seeing him to-day, I am inclined to think more of him than I did; but I think he's up to tricks of some sort. May I tell you what he said to me, Miss Claxton?"
"I'm just praying to the Lord all the time, Mr. Durgan, and trying to leave it all in His hands. He won't let us suffer more than is right; and I hope He'll give us grace to bear what He sends, if it isn't the full deliverance I pray for."
Durgan was nonplused. "Do you mean to say you would rather not hear what the man said? because I must tell Alden, and as it concerns you most, I thought——"
"Yes, I guess perhaps I ought to hear it. And if you tell me you don't need to tell Mr. Alden, because I know better than you what he ought to hear—that is, if it concerns me."
This seemed a simple and self-evident view of the case; Durgan hardly knew how he could have thought of interfering. Nor did he find it at all easy to put significance into the prisoner's words apart from his own foreknowledge and prejudgment of the case.
"'Dolphus suggested to me that I would not wish to see justice done in—to say the truth—in your own case, Miss Claxton. He challenged me, asking if I were willing to make a sacrifice to prove your innocence."
She looked at him straight. Her eyes were not faded now; he was amazed at the flash and flush of energy and youth he had brought to her face. He thought he had never in his life seen so honest, so spiritual a face as that which confronted him; but whether her present expression was one of astonishment or dismay he could not tell.
"You could not have expected him to speak onthis subject; and you never had any connection with our trouble? What more did he say?"
"He never really mentioned your name; I only assumed that his reference was to you. He said that he knew a lady who would die to save a—well, hesaid, a gentleman she loved, but would let evenhimdie rather than swear falsely."
She never flinched. "Was that all?" she asked.
But Durgan was already cut with remorse to think how impertinent his words must sound. "No, that was not all. He asked me to give you a message, to tell you that he would not harm you—that he would rather die than harm you. This was in answer to my suggestion that you would not wish your real name to be known in these parts."
She looked relieved. "I have always believed that he had more good in him than you thought. But tell me all. I'd liefer hear every word, if you please."
"I hope I remember all that he said. I think that was all that I took to be a direct reference to you, Miss Claxton; but what I thought most needful to tell Alden——"
"Yes?" The little word pulsed with restrained excitement.
"I asked the fellow on what defence he relied, and he said what made me think he had the pull ofsome threat over the person he relied on. He had had a telegram."
"I don't exactly understand, Mr. Durgan."
"Neither do I, I assure you."
"But I mean, what has that to do with Mr. Alden?"
"Oh, I think I assumed that 'Dolphus believed this person to be the criminal, and his address was on the telegram."
"May I ask why you made this assumption?"
"It may have been unwarranted, but taken in connection with his boast that he could establish your entire freedom from blame——" Durgan was floundering in his effort to find words for the very painful subject. He paused, with face red and dew on his brow.
"I guess, Mr. Durgan, if you'll speak quite plainly what you mean, it will be better for us both."
"Why do you include me? Do you know why this boy threatens me, reproaches me, challenges me?"
"Tell me first, Mr. Durgan, what you made out, and what you think this telegram has to do with it?"
"To be plain, I suspect that this man knows who was guilty of the crime for which you weretried, that he is now in communication with him, and I saw an address in the telegram he had received."
"What was the address?"
"'Corner of Beard and 84th Street,' and it was signed 'B. D.'" He told her its contents.
She went into the house and brought out a New York directory a year or two old. "I guess there isn't any such corner," she said, and in a moment she showed him there was not.
"Do you know of anyone who has these initials?"
"I do not."
"If Alden sent a detective to the office where it was received, I wonder if he could find out who sent it?"
"Is it likely that if anyone took the trouble to give a wrong address, they would leave any clew to their whereabouts?"
"Could 'Dolphus give Alden any information of moment?"
"He could give him none that would do anyone any good."
"Might that not be a matter of opinion?"
"I don't see that folks who don't know what they are doing can have a right to an opinion about the results."
There was then a silence. The sun had long set on the valley, but from this eminence its last rays were still seen mingling with a foam of crimson cloud in a vista of the western hills. Both the man and the woman had their faces turned to the great red cloud-flower in which the light of day was declining. The mountains were solemn and tender; the valleys dim and wide. It was not a scene on which the sober mind could gaze without gaining for the hour some reflection of the greatness and earnestness of God.
But the world about could only be environment to their thought, not for a moment its object. Durgan was roused in spirit. The quiescent temper which he had sought to obtain in compensation for a stormy and disappointed youth was lost for the time. This woman, who bore the odium of a cruel and dastardly deed, was still intent on shielding the real doer. Durgan looked at the splendid arena of the mountains and the manifest struggle of light and darkness therein; the many tracks of suspicion in which his thoughts had all day been moving gathered together.
"Miss Claxton, are you willing to tell me all you know about Charlton Beardsley?"
She looked at him for a moment as if trying to read his thoughts, then looked back at the outerworld, as if moved by his question only to profound and regretful reverie.
"About Charlton Beardsley I know very little," she said, in a voice touched as with compassion; "very, very little, Mr. Durgan; but I had once occasion to ask your wife something about him, and she told me, I believe truly, that he had been brought up, an orphan, in an English charity school, that he had no relatives that he knew of and no near friends. That was all she could tell me. He was by taste a somewhat solitary mystic, I believe, only sought after by those who had discovered his delusions and wished to be deluded by them. You see, I can easily tell you all I know; it is not much."
Durgan sat watching her, too entirely amazed at both words and manner to find speech. Just so a good woman, treading the violets of some neglected graveyard, might speak of the innocent dead who lay beneath.
There was silence.
Miss Claxton said, "I always like the time just after the sun goes down, Mr. Durgan; I have a fancy it is the time one feels nearest God. I suppose it's only fancy, but it does say in Genesis, you know, that God walked in the garden in the cool of the day."
Then, as darkness grew, and finding that he made no response, she exerted herself and rose to light the lamp.
In the full light she faced him. "Mr. Durgan, I don't wonder you feel the responsibility of the suspicions the negro has put into your mind. I don't blame you, and it's only natural he should like the excitement of talking. It would not be right for me to tell you exactly what I believe he was referring to; but there are some things I can tell you, and I can only pray God to help you believe what I say. I believe it was your wife who sent that telegram; it was, at least, paid for with her money, and it will be her money that will be used freely to get 'Dolphus acquitted. If you pursue the suspicions he has started for you, I don't believe you will make any discovery. But even if you did, what would happen? You would drag your wife's name in the mire; you would"—she paused, and tried to steady her voice. "Oh, Mr. Durgan, think of Bertha; you would break Bertha's heart and mine. You think you understand justice, and that there is someone whom you ought to bring to justice. Justice belongs to God. He alone can mete it out in this world so as to save the soul that has sinned. Are you afraid to leave it to Him? I am not. I have left it to Him for five years, and I am notsorry, but glad. And I entreat you to consider that if you interfere you don't know what you are doing; you may make the worst mistakes. 'Dolphus thinks he knows the name of the person who should be brought to justice; I assure you he does not. I spoke to him on the night Eve died, and found out that he did not. Believe me, Mr. Durgan, I am making no romantic and fantastic sacrifice of myself, as this negro supposes. The truth, were it made public, would be the worst thing for me, as for Bertha, and would bring yourself shame and pain. And it could never be the real, whole truth, for that you could not understand, nor could anyone. I hear their horses on the hill. Please go. Do not let them find you here, as if you had had news of some strange thing. You know nothing, for the thing you think you know is not true. Do nothing, for fear you do harm. You cannot do any good."
"But how can you be sure this sick man will not do the thing you dread?"
"I begged him not to do anything, just as I've begged you. I don't think, anyway, that he will get the chance he reckons on. If he did, I think that when he has to choose between accepting the help that will get him acquitted, if anything will, of the present charge against him, and, as hethinks, righting me, the love of life will be too strong. He will not die on my behalf, even though his intentions are good, as I believe yours are, Mr. Durgan."
Durgan had turned to the door the moment she had asked him to go. He was tarrying on the threshold to ask his last question, to hear her response. When he heard himself, with no unkind intent, naturally linked with the wretched mulatto, his pace was accelerated. With a word of farewell he disappeared into the dusk, hearing the horses arrive at the stables as he went his fugitive way down the familiar trail.
Durgan had still one strong emotion regarding his wife; he was able to feel overwhelming shame on her account, and he dreaded any publicity concerning her behavior. She had always lived so as to command the consent of good society to her doings. He had perfectly trusted her social instinct to do this as long as it lay in her power to tell her own story; but he knew, with a sense of bitter degradation, that if someone else had need to tell that story, it would sound very different.
His wife was the daughter of an uneducated hotel-keeper, and had married him, as he afterward discovered, because he had the entrance into certain drawing-rooms and clubs, which, if skilfully used, might have proved the stepping-stone to almost any social eminence. At the time of her marriage she had professed passionate love for him and sympathy for the Southern cause; and her fortune, not small, was naturally to be used in the difficult taskof making part of his paternal acres productive by the paid labor of the negroes reared and trained by his father, and justly dear to the son. Disconsolate at the loss of friends and fortune—for all near to him had died in the war, of wounds or sorrow—Durgan repaid the love and sympathy of one who seemed a warm-hearted and impulsive woman with tender gratitude.
A little later, when the wife found out that Durgan would not push himself into the fashionablemilieuwhich was open to him in Europe and America, he began to discover, tho slowly, that she would not bestow affection or time upon any less fashionable pursuit. She needed her whole fortune for the social adventures that she must make alone; and as he would not open the door of Southern pride for her, she fell to knocking at the door of Northern pride for herself. No doubt Providence has a good reason for making men before marriage blind to female character, but it was many years before Durgan bowed to the fate to which defect, not fault, had brought him. Too proud to accept any bounty from such a wife, he had sullenly shielded her from remark till she reached a position of middle-class fashion in which she could stand alone. Having attempted, in the meantime, to increase by speculation the small patrimony left him,and losing much, he had retired from the scene of her struggles some six years before the present time, proudly thankful that any public reproach was directed only at himself. Since then she had scaled social heights seemingly beyond her—he had often wondered how.
That his wife was tricky and false, that the means she had used to cajole or overawe the society she was determined to conquer bore no necessary relation to the truth, he knew; but knowing her also to be clever and cold-hearted, he had not feared that she would so transgress any social law as to make her small or large meannesses known.
But the most surprising thing in his wife's career since he left her was that she had not dropped the medium, Beardsley, as soon as his health and popularity were lost. She had been wont to drop all her instruments as soon as their use was over, and most of them had more attractions than he. The man had been poor, plebeian, and sickly; and Durgan, who had never suspected love as the cause of the odd relationship, had now some cause to suppose it rooted in the unspeakable shame of the worst of crimes. In what possible way this had come about he could not even begin to imagine, but he continued to consider his maturing suspicion in growing consternation.
If Miss Claxton had not told him the truth, she was a more finished actress than the world had yet seen. If what she said of his wife were true, the mulatto's words were corroborated—his wife was nearly connected with this awful crime.
In Durgan's mind the telegraphic address—evidently suggestive to Miss Claxton—had at last become significant. "Beard" suggested Beardsley; "84" was the date of the Claxton murder; "B" might possibly stand for Beardsley, and "D" for his wife. Then the help promised evidently involved his wife's purse. Beardsley had nothing.
If this Beardsley was guilty, he must be a most extraordinary man. It was clear that if it was he whom Hermione Claxton was shielding, she was as much determined to keep his secret to-day as at first. She could not speak of him save in tones of sorrow and tenderness. For him, too, the wife whom Durgan knew to be cold and ambitious had apparently ventured all. The extraordinary nature of a man who could on short acquaintance so deeply involve two such different women, gave Durgan so much room for astonished thought that some other things Miss Claxton had said for the time escaped his memory.
His strongest impulse after the last interview was to take Miss Claxton at her word and makeno further move in the matter—at least, not now and on her account. Ultimately he must find out if his wife was in any plot to conceal a criminal, and if so, put a stop to her connivance. At present he had certainly no desire to make such action on his wife's part public, or break Bertha's heart by filling the air with a public scandal in which her sister's name would be linked with a lover who was a common charlatan and brutal criminal. If for this man's sake Hermione had left her father's death unavenged and ruined her sister's life, Bertha's wrath and sorrow might well be a thing to dread, and such knowledge a disaster that might well crush her. The mulatto might work to bring truth to light; he must work alone.
But at this point Durgan again shifted his ground of suspicion; for he still believed in Hermione Claxton's singular purity of mind and gentleness of disposition, and in his wife's callousness and shrewd selfishness. Was it possible that Beardsley had some mysterious power over both women such as a magician or modern hypnotist is said to use? But then, was not such influence in such a man too strange to be possible, too like a cheap novel to be true? A terrible thought struck cold at Durgan's heart; the man, as he knew him, was more likely to be a cat's-paw than the moverin any momentous deed. The surprise of ascertaining that his wife had had some connection with the Claxtons forced him to realize how little he knew about her life, how totally ignorant he was as to any cause she might have to hate Mr. and Mrs. Claxton. His heart failed him.
He drew in his breath in quick terror, trying to persuade himself that he could not have arrived at the bottom of a secret over which Alden had brooded so long in vain.
"Well, I understand that your visit to Hilyard was most satisfactory. You are assured of your good Adam's safety; and I find the mulatto sent a message to our friends that he would not drag their name into the business. So far so good. Do you suppose that the money and advice he expects to receive are all in the air, or how?" Alden, dandified and chirpy, his little gray beard wagging in the morning sunlight, was standing on the mountain road. There was a sharpness as of autumn in the sunshine, which made the New Yorker fresh. Durgan, who had taken to his pick and spade very early that morning, already warm, dirty, and tired, looked like some grim demiurge. Called from his work to this colloquy, he was not in good humor.
"These fellows are always boasting," continued Alden. "The peculiarity in this case is that hewould not take the cost of his own defence from us."
"AndIoffered him what I had in my pocket. He would not look at it," said Durgan, dully.
"Odd."
"Do you think so?"
"Well, of course, when a flimsy, tawdry creature of that sort refuses a bird in the hand, one wonders what he sees in the bush, especially when, as in this case, the bird in the hand could hardly prevent his robbing the bush also."
"I reckon it's beyond me," said Durgan, stupidly. Alden's simile reminded him afresh of the hole in the forked tree, which had not ceased to haunt his mind.
"You have a headache this morning, my dear sir."
"Thanks; I'm all right."
A boy, a slovenly country lout, came up the hill. He was whistling a merry air attuned to the snap of the morning. He was looking about him in the trees for birds and squirrels. His hands hung in the delicious idleness of his pockets. There was a spring in his legs to match his tone. Durgan envied him unfeignedly. He thought of his own gallant, cheerful purpose of the day before, and wished that he dare form any fresh resolve.Alden was evidently alarmed by what he had heard.
"As you know, being widely known as counsel for the Claxtons, I preferred not to appear to take any interest in this prisoner. A possible inference might have been drawn by someone. We of the law, my dear sir——"
Durgan perceived that it would be a vast relief to his conscience if Alden could visit 'Dolphus himself.
"They are lax," continued Alden; "there would be no difficulty in my seeing the man."
"Why do you want to see him?"
"I hear he wrote to New York and got a telegram back. He may, for all we know, be a member of a gang of thieves or blackmailers. They may bribe judge and jury with a thousand dollars if he threatens to round on them. A little money would go a long way in Hilyard. Then, if it is proved, so to say, that both prisoners are innocent, the authorities might arrest someone else."
"Me, for instance? I was there."
"Probably not you!" Then after a pause he added, "Miss Claxton is disposed to think that we have done all we can honestly do, and must now leave the matter in the hand of Providence; but, under Providence, I myself feel that I amresponsible for leaving no effort untried to gain further light as to the basis of this fellow's hopes."
The boy, bobbing his head, explained to Durgan that he had been sent to fetch the borrowed horse.
When he had gone on, Durgan said, "'Dolphus may die before anything happens; that would be the simplest solution, perhaps." He remembered how yesterday it had seemed all-important to extract all the knowledge this man had before life went from him.
"Ah; you spoke to the doctor, I hear. It is always right, in any case, to preserve life as long as possible."
Durgan looked toward his mine. The triteness to which the dialog had descended was the more irksome because he suspected that Alden read beneath his own sudden dullness and inertia.
"When the boy brings along the horse you can ride it as far as my cousins'. He will find you a buggy, and will give you a letter which will open things at Hilyard without giving much publicity to your name and position. But you, of course, can best judge whether it's worth while to go."
"Miss Claxton has seemed averse to my going," said Alden; and because Durgan made no answer to this, he sat down on a rock, with brows knit, and determined to go.
Some twenty minutes later Durgan was called again into the road. The lout of a boy refused to give Alden the horse. He said very little; he even blubbered; but he hung on to the bridle and tried to pass.
It was soon discovered that he had been commissioned by Miss Claxton to take a telegram to Hilyard, for which service he had been promised excessive pay.
Wrath rose in Durgan. "Fool that I was to warn her," he thought. "She has wired to the man she shields to be on his guard." At that moment his wife's welfare was not in his thought, and he felt he would rather have suffered the last penalty of crime himself than allow this coil of secrets to exist longer. He inwardly cursed all women, and was very sorry for Alden.
Alden, meanwhile, unconscious of need for passion, was explaining that he knew what the telegram must be, as he had heard Miss Claxton mention that some supplies on which she was depending were delayed. As he was going he would assume the responsibility of sending it. He would pay the boy.
Durgan was afraid to speak. He picked up the boy, took a letter addressed to the telegraph clerk out of his pocket, and sent him running down theroad at a forced pace. He put the sealed message in Alden's hands, and returned to his work before a word could escape his lips.
As he toiled all day with spade and mattock, he wondered incessantly whether or not Alden would open the message to see it correctly transmitted.
When the long work-day had calmed his pulse he was still too impatient to await Alden's time; sauntered down the hill, and finally reached Deer Cove.
There he saw Alden looking very tired and haggard, but in no haste to return.
The saw-mill was silent for the night. The quiet plash of the water over the dam made a pleasing accompaniment to a banjo played by a negro. The musician sat on the steps of the general store and post-office; he wore a red handkerchief on his head. Some of his kind were dancing in leisurely burlesque in an open space between the steps and the mill-race. A circle of white men looked on, exchanging foolish jokes and puffing strong tobacco. Many a bright necktie or broad-brimmed hat gave picturesqueness to the group. The quiet of the sylvan evening was over and around them all.
Alden, standing on the verandah of the post-office, looking upon this scene as if he were anhabitual lounger, struck Durgan as presenting one of the saddest figures he had ever seen. No sign that could be controlled of any grief was there; but the incongruity between what the man was doing, and what in a better state of mind he would have liked to do, seemed to betoken a depression so deep that normal action was inhibited for the time.
Durgan thought one of the Blounts was perhaps with Alden. He accordingly went straight inside the store; but the place was empty. No one of gentle birth was to be seen near or far. When he came out on the verandah Alden explained that he had insisted on leaving the trap at the Blounts' and walking. "I was stiff with the drive and felt the walk would do me good. You found me resting by the way."
Durgan remarked that there was nothing like a leisurely walk when cramped with sitting long.
After a while the two were beginning the ascent of Deer together, still uttering trivial words.