XIII. THE PROBLEM
“But who would force the soul, tilts with a straw Against a champion cased in adamant.” Wordsworth.
WHEN we re-entered the parlor below, the first sight that met our eyeswas Mary, standing wrapped in her long cloak in the centre of the room.She had arrived during our absence, and now awaited us with lifted headand countenance fixed in its proudest expression. Looking in her face, Irealized what the embarrassment of this meeting must be to thesewomen, and would have retreated, but something in the attitude of MaryLeavenworth seemed to forbid my doing so. At the same time, determinedthat the opportunity should not pass without some sort of reconcilementbetween them, I stepped forward, and, bowing to Mary, said:
“Your cousin has just succeeded in convincing me of her entireinnocence, Miss Leavenworth. I am now ready to join Mr. Gryce, heart andsoul, in finding out the true culprit.”
“I should have thought one look into Eleanore Leavenworth’s face wouldhave been enough to satisfy you that she is incapable of crime,” washer unexpected answer; and, lifting her head with a proud gesture, MaryLeavenworth fixed her eyes steadfastly on mine.
I felt the blood flash to my brow, but before I could speak, her voicerose again still more coldly than before.
“It is hard for a delicate girl, unused to aught but the most flatteringexpressions of regard, to be obliged to assure the world of herinnocence in respect to the committal of a great crime. Eleanore hasmy sympathy.” And sweeping her cloak from her shoulders with a quickgesture, she turned her gaze for the first time upon her cousin.
Instantly Eleanore advanced, as if to meet it; and I could not but feelthat, for some reason, this moment possessed an importance for themwhich I was scarcely competent to measure. But if I found myself unableto realize its significance, I at least responded to its intensity. Andindeed it was an occasion to remember. To behold two such women, eitherof whom might be considered the model of her time, face to faceand drawn up in evident antagonism, was a sight to move the dullestsensibilities. But there was something more in this scene than that. Itwas the shock of all the most passionate emotions of the human soul;the meeting of waters of whose depth and force I could only guess by theeffect. Eleanore was the first to recover. Drawing back with the coldhaughtiness which, alas, I had almost forgotten in the display of laterand softer emotions, she exclaimed:
“There is something better than sympathy, and that is justice”; andturned, as if to go. “I will confer with you in the reception room, Mr.Raymond.”
But Mary, springing forward, caught her back with one powerful hand.“No,” she cried, “you shall confer with _me!_ I have something to say toyou, Eleanore Leavenworth.” And, taking her stand in the centre of theroom, she waited.
I glanced at Eleanore, saw this was no place for me, and hastilywithdrew. For ten long minutes I paced the floor of the reception room,a prey to a thousand doubts and conjectures. What was the secret of thishome? What had given rise to the deadly mistrust continually manifestedbetween these cousins, fitted by nature for the completest companionshipand the most cordial friendship? It was not a thing of to-day oryesterday. No sudden flame could awake such concentrated heat of emotionas that of which I had just been the unwilling witness. One must gofarther back than this murder to find the root of a mistrust so greatthat the struggle it caused made itself felt even where I stood, thoughnothing but the faintest murmur came to my ears through the closeddoors.
Presently the drawing-room curtain was raised, and Mary’s voice washeard in distinct articulation.
“The same roof can never shelter us both after this. To-morrow, you or Ifind another home.” And, blushing and panting, she stepped into thehall and advanced to where I stood. But at the first sight of my face,a change came over her; all her pride seemed to dissolve, and, flingingout her hands, as if to ward off scrutiny, she fled from my side, andrushed weeping up-stairs.
I was yet laboring under the oppression caused by this painfultermination of the strange scene when the parlor curtain was againlifted, and Eleanore entered the room where I was. Pale but calm,showing no evidences of the struggle she had just been through, unlessby a little extra weariness about the eyes, she sat down by my side,and, meeting my gaze with one unfathomable in its courage, said aftera pause: “Tell me where I stand; let me know the worst at once; I fearthat I have not indeed comprehended my own position.”
Rejoiced to hear this acknowledgment from her lips, I hastened tocomply. I began by placing before her the whole case as it appearedto an unprejudiced person; enlarged upon the causes of suspicion, andpointed out in what regard some things looked dark against her, whichperhaps to her own mind were easily explainable and of small account;tried to make her see the importance of her decision, and finally woundup with an appeal. Would she not confide in me?
“But I thought you were satisfied?” she tremblingly remarked.
“And so I am; but I want the world to be so, too.”
“Ah; now you ask too much! The finger of suspicion never forgets the wayit has once pointed,” she sadly answered. “My name is tainted forever.”
“And you will submit to this, when a word--”
“I am thinking that any word of mine now would make very littledifference,” she murmured.
I looked away, the vision of Mr. Fobbs, in hiding behind the curtains ofthe opposite house, recurring painfully to my mind.
“If the affair looks as bad as you say it does,” she pursued, “it isscarcely probable that Mr. Gryce will care much for any interpretationof mine in regard to the matter.”
“Mr. Gryce would be glad to know where you procured that key, if only toassist him in turning his inquiries in the right direction.”
She did not reply, and my spirits sank in renewed depression.
“It is worth your while to satisfy him,” I pursued; “and though it maycompromise some one you desire to shield----”
She rose impetuously. “I shall never divulge to any one how I came inpossession of that key.” And sitting again, she locked her hands infixed resolve before her.
I rose in my turn and paced the floor, the fang of an unreasoningjealousy striking deep into my heart.
“Mr. Raymond, if the worst should come, and all who love me should pleadon bended knees for me to tell, I will never do it.”
“Then,” said I, determined not to disclose my secret thought, butequally resolved to find out if possible her motive for this silence,“you desire to defeat the cause of justice.”
She neither spoke nor moved.
“Miss Leavenworth,” I now said, “this determined shielding of another atthe expense of your own good name is no doubt generous of you; butyour friends and the lovers of truth and justice cannot accept such asacrifice.”
She started haughtily. “Sir!” she said.
“If you will not assist us,” I went on calmly, but determinedly, “wemust do without your aid. After the scene I have just witnessed above;after the triumphant conviction which you have forced upon me, not onlyof your innocence, but your horror of the crime and its consequences, Ishould feel myself less than a man if I did not sacrifice even your owngood opinion, in urging your cause, and clearing your character fromthis foul aspersion.”
Again that heavy silence.
“What do you propose to do?” she asked, at last.
Crossing the room, I stood before her. “I propose to relieve you utterlyand forever from suspicion, by finding out and revealing to the worldthe true culprit.”
I expected to see her recoil, so positive had I become by this timeas to who that culprit was. But instead of that, she merely folded herhands still more tightly and exclaimed:
“I doubt if you will be able to do that, Mr. Raymond.”
“Doubt if I will be able to put my finger upon the guilty man, or doubtif I will be able to bring him to justice?”
“I doubt,” she said with strong effort, “if any one ever knows who isthe guilty person in this case.”
“There is one who knows,” I said with a desire to test her.
“One?”
“The girl Hannah is acquainted with the mystery of that night’s evildoings, Miss Leavenworth. Find Hannah, and we find one who can point outto us the assassin of your uncle.”
“That is mere supposition,” she said; but I saw the blow had told.
“Your cousin has offered a large reward for the girl, and the wholecountry is on the lookout. Within a week we shall see her in our midst.”
A change took place in her expression and bearing.
“The girl cannot help me,” she said.
Baffled by her manner, I drew back. “Is there anything or anybody thatcan?”
She slowly looked away.
“Miss Leavenworth,” I continued with renewed earnestness, “you have nobrother to plead with you, you have no mother to guide you; let me thenentreat, in default of nearer and dearer friends, that you will relysufficiently upon me to tell me one thing.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Whether you took the paper imputed to you from the library table?”
She did not instantly respond, but sat looking earnestly before her withan intentness which seemed to argue that she was weighing the questionas well as her reply. Finally, turning toward me, she said:
“In answering you, I speak in confidence. Mr. Raymond, I did.”
Crushing back the sigh of despair that arose to my lips, I went on.
“I will not inquire what the paper was,”--she waved her handdeprecatingly,--“but this much more you will tell me. Is that paperstill in existence?”
She looked me steadily in the face.
“It is not.”
I could with difficulty forbear showing my disappointment. “MissLeavenworth,” I now said, “it may seem cruel for me to press you at thistime; nothing less than my strong realization of the peril in which youstand would induce me to run the risk of incurring your displeasure byasking what under other circumstances would seem puerile and insultingquestions. You have told me one thing which I strongly desired to know;will you also inform me what it was you heard that night while sittingin your room, between the time of Mr. Harwell’s going up-stairs and theclosing of the library door, of which you made mention at the inquest?”
I had pushed my inquiries too far, and I saw it immediately.
“Mr. Raymond,” she returned, “influenced by my desire not to appearutterly ungrateful to you, I have been led to reply in confidence to oneof your urgent appeals; but I can go no further. Do not ask me to.”
Stricken to the heart by her look of reproach, I answered with somesadness that her wishes should be respected. “Not but what I intend tomake every effort in my power to discover the true author of this crime.That is a sacred duty which I feel myself called upon to perform; but Iwill ask you no more questions, nor distress you with further appeals.What is done shall be done without your assistance, and with no otherhope than that in the event of my success you will acknowledge mymotives to have been pure and my action disinterested.”
“I am ready to acknowledge that now,” she began, but paused and lookedwith almost agonized entreaty in my face. “Mr. Raymond, cannot you leavethings as they are? Won’t you? I don’t ask for assistance, nor do I wantit; I would rather----”
But I would not listen. “Guilt has no right to profit by the generosityof the guiltless. The hand that struck this blow shall not beaccountable for the loss of a noble woman’s honor and happiness as well.
“I shall do what I can, Miss Leavenworth.”
As I walked down the avenue that night, feeling like an adventuroustraveller that in a moment of desperation has set his foot upon a plankstretching in narrow perspective over a chasm of immeasurable depth,this problem evolved itself from the shadows before me: How, with noother clue than the persuasion that Eleanore Leavenworth was engaged inshielding another at the expense of her own good name, I was tocombat the prejudices of Mr. Gryce, find out the real assassin of Mr.Leavenworth, and free an innocent woman from the suspicion that had, notwithout some show of reason, fallen upon her?
BOOK II. HENRY CLAVERING
The Leavenworth Case Page 13
