Dark Hollow

by Anna Katharine Green

  XXV

  "WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIM NOW?"

  This was the document and these the words which Deborah, widow of theman thus doubly denounced, had been given to read by the father of thewriter, in the darkened room which had been and still was to her, anabode of brooding thought and unfathomable mystery.

  No wonder that during its reading more than one exclamation of terrorand dismay escaped her, as the once rehabilitated form of the dead andgone started into dreadful life again before her eyes. There were somany reasons for believing this record to be an absolute relation of thetruth.

  Incoherent phrases which had fallen from those long-closed lips took onnew meaning with this unveiling of an unknown past. Repugnances forwhich she could not account in those old days, she now saw explained. Hewould never, even in passing, give a look at the ruin on the bluff, soattractive to every eye but his own. As for entering its gates--she hadnever dared so much as to ask him to do so. He had never expressed hisantipathy for the place, but he had made her feel it. She doubted now ifhe would have climbed to it from the ravine even to save his child fromfalling over its verge. Indeed, she saw the reason now why he could notexplain the reason for the apathy he showed in his hunt for Reuther onthat fatal day, and his so marked avoidance of the height where she wasfound.

  Then the watch! Deborah knew well that watch. She had often asked him bywhat stroke of luck he had got so fine a timepiece. But he had nevertold her. Later, it had been stolen from him; and as he had a mania forwatches, that was why, perhaps--

  God! was her mind veering back to her old idea as to his responsibilityfor the crime committed in Dark Hollow? Yes; she could not help it.Denial from a monster like this--a man who with such memories and suchspoil, could return home to wife and child, with some gay and confusedstory of a great stroke in speculation which had brought him in theprice of the tavern it had long been his ambition to own--what wasdenial from such lips worth, though emphasised by the most sacred ofoaths, and uttered under the shadow of death. The judge was right.Oliver--whose ingenuous story had restored his image to her mind, withsome of its old graces--had been the victim of circumstances and notJohn Scoville. Henceforth, she would see him as such, and when she hadrecovered a little from the effect of this sudden insight into therevolting past, she would--

  Her thoughts had reached this stage and her hand, in obedience to thenew mood, was lightly ruffling up the pages before her, when she felt alight touch on her shoulder and turned with a start.

  The judge was at her back. How long he had stood there she did not know,nor did he say. The muttered exclamations which had escaped her, theirrepressible cry of despair she had given when she first recognised theidentity of the "stranger" may have reached him where he sat at theother end of the room, and drawn him insensibly forward till he couldoverlook her shoulder as she read, and taste with her the horror ofthese revelations which yet were working so beneficent a result for himand his. It may have been so, and it may have been that he had not madehis move till he saw her attitude change and her head droopdisconsolately at the reading of the last line. She did not ask, as Ihave said, nor did he tell her; but when upon feeling his hand upon hershoulder she turned, he was there; and while his lips failed to speak,his eyes were eloquent and their question single and imperative.

  "What do you think of him now?" they seemed to ask, and rising to herfeet, she met him with a smile, ghastly perhaps with the lividness ofthe shadows through which she had been groping, but encouraging withaland soothing beyond measure to his anxious and harassed soul.

  "Oliver is innocent," she declared, turning once more to lay her handupon the sheets containing his naive confession. "The dastard who couldshoot his host for plunder is capable of a second crime holding out asimilar inducement. Nothing now will ever make me connect Oliver withthe crime at the bridge. As you said, he was simply near enough theHollow to toss into it the stick he had been whittling on his way fromthe oak tree. I am his advocate from this minute."

  Her eyes were still resting mechanically upon that last page lyingspread out before her, and she did not observe in its full glory thefirst gleam of triumphant joy which, in all probability, JudgeOstrander's countenance had shown in years. Nor did he see, in the gladconfusion of the moment, the quick shudder with which she lifted hertrembling hand away from those papers and looked up, squarely at last,into his transfigured visage.

  "Oh, judge!" she murmured, bursting into a torrent of tears. "How youmust have suffered to feel so great a relief!" Then she was still, verystill, and waited for him to speak.

  "I suffered," he presently proceeded to state, "because of the knowledgewhich had come to me of the scandal with which circumstances threatenedus. Oliver had confided to me (after the trial, mind, not before) theunfortunate fact of his having been in possession of the stick duringthose few odd minutes preceding the murder. He had also told me how hehad boasted once, and in a big crowd, too, of his intention to doEtheridge. He had meant nothing by the phrase, beyond what any bodymeans who mingles boasting with temper, but it was a nasty point ofcorroborative evidence; and heart-breaking as it was for me to part withhim, I felt that his future career would be furthered by a fresh startin another town. You see," he continued, a faint blush dyeing his oldcheek ... old in sorrow not in years ... "I am revealing mysteries of mypast life which I have hitherto kept strictly within my own breast. Icannot do this without shame, because while in the many seriousconversations we have had on this subject, I have always insisted uponJohn Scoville's guilt. I have never allowed myself to admit the leastfact which would in any way compromise Oliver. A cowardly attitude for ajudge you will say, and you are right; but for a father--Mrs. Scoville,I love my boy. I--What's that?"

  The front door-bell was ringing.

  In a flash Deborah was out of the room. It was as if she had flown withunnecessary eagerness to answer a bidding which, after all, Reuthercould easily have attended to. It struck him aghast for the instant,then he began slowly to gather up the papers before him and carry themback into the other room. Had he, instead, made straight for the doorwayleading to the front of the house, he would have come upon the figure ofDeborah standing alone and with her face pressed in anguish andunspeakable despair against the lintel. Something had struck her heartand darkened her soul since that exalted moment in which she cried:

  "Henceforth I will be Oliver's advocate."

  When the judge at last came forth, it was at Reuther's bidding.

  A gentleman wished to see him in the parlour.

  This was so unprecedented,--even of late when the ladies did receivesome callers, that he stopped short after his first instinctive step, toask her if the gentleman had given his name.

  She said no; but added that he was not alone; that he had a very strangeand not very nice-looking person with him whom mother insisted shouldremain in the hall. "Mother requests you to see the gentleman, JudgeOstrander. She said you would wish to, if you once saw the personaccompanying him."

  With a dark glance, not directed against her, however, the judge badeher run away to the kitchen and as far from all these troubles as shecould, then, locking his door behind him, as he always did, he strodetowards the front.

  He found Deborah standing guard over an ill-conditioned fellow whoseslouching figure slouched still more under his eye, but gave no otheracknowledgment of his presence. Passing him without a second look, JudgeOstrander entered the parlour where he found no less a person than Mr.Black awaiting him.

  There was no bad blood between these two whatever their past relationsor present suspicions, and they were soon shaking hands with everyappearance of mutual cordiality.

  The judge was especially courteous.

  "I am glad," said he, "of any occasion which brings you again under myroof, though from the appearance of your companion I judge the presentone to be of no very agreeable character."

  "He's honest enough," muttered Black, with a glance towards Deborah, forthe understanding of which the judge held no key. Th
en, changing thesubject, "You had a very unfortunate experience this afternoon. Allow meto express my regret at an outbreak so totally unwarranted."

  A grumble came from the hall without. Evidently his charge, if we may sodesignate the fellow he had brought there, had his own ideas on thissubject.

  "Quiet out there!" shouted Mr. Black. "Mrs. Scoville, you need nottrouble yourself to stand over Mr. Flannagan any longer. I'll look afterhim."

  She bowed and was turning away when the judge intervened.

  "Is there any objection," he asked, "to Mrs. Scoville's remainingpresent at this interview?"

  "None whatever," answered the lawyer.

  "Then, Mrs. Scoville, may I request you to come in?"

  If she hesitated, it was but natural. Exhaustion is the obvious resultof so many excitements, and that she was utterly exhausted was veryapparent. Mr. Black cast her a commiserating smile, but the judge onlynoticed that she entered the room at his bidding and sat down by thewindow. He was keying himself up to sustain a fresh excitement. He wasas exhausted as she, possibly more so. He had a greater number ofwearing years to his credit.

  "Judge, I'm your friend;" thus Mr. Black began. "Thinking you must wishto know who started the riotous procedure which disgraced our townto-day, I have brought the ringleader here to answer for himself--thatis, if you wish to question him."

  Judge Ostrander wheeled about, gave the man a searching look, andfailing to recognise him as any one he had ever seen before, beckonedhim in.

  "I suppose," said he, when the lounging and insolent figure was fairlybefore their eyes, "that this is not the first time you have been askedto explain your enmity to my long absent son."

  "Naw; I've had my talk wherever and whenever I took the notion. OliverOstrander hit me once. I was jest a little chap then and meanin' no harmto any one. I kept a-pesterin' of 'im and he hit me. He'd a better havehit a feller who hadn't my memory. I've never forgiven that hit, and Inever will. That's why I'm hittin' him now. It's just my turn; that'sall."

  "Your turn! YOUR turn! And what do you think has given YOU anopportunity to turn on HIM?"

  "I'm not in the talkin' mood just now," the fellow drawled, franklyinsolent, not only in his tone but in his bearing to all present. "Norcan you make it worth my while, you gents. I'll not take money. I'm anhonest hard-workin' man who can earn his own livin', and you can't payme to keep still, or to go away from Shelby a day sooner than I want to.I was goin' away, but I gave it up when they told me that things werebeginnin' to look black against Ol Ostrander;--that a woman had comeinto town who was a-stirrin' up things generally about that old murderfor which a feller had already been 'lectrocuted, and knowin' somethin'myself about that murder and Ol Ostrander, I--well, I stayed."

  The quiet threat, the suggested possibility, the attack which wrapsitself in vague uncertainty, are ever the most effective. As his raucousvoice, dry with sinister purpose which no man could shake, died out inan offensive drawl, Mr. Black edged a step nearer the judge, before hesprang and caught the young fellow by the coat-collar and gave him avery vigorous shake.

  "See here!" he threatened. "Behave yourself and treat the judge like agentleman or--"

  "Or what?" the bulldog mouth sneered. "See here yourself," he nowshouted, as the lawyer's hands unloosed and he stood panting; "I'm notafeard o' you, sir, nor of the jedge, nor of the lady nuther. I KNOWSsomethin', I do; and when I gets ready to tell it, we'll just see whosecoat-collar they'll be handlin'. I came 'cause I wanted to see theinside o' the house Ol Ostrander's father doesn't think him good enoughto live in. It's grand; but this part here isn't the whole of it.There's a door somewhere which nobody never opens unless it's the jedgethere. I'd like to see what's behind that 'ere door. If it's somethin'to make a good story out of, I might be got to keep quiet about thisother thing. I don't know, but I MIGHT."

  The swagger with which he said this, the confidence in himself which heshowed and the reliance he so openly put in the something he knew butcould not be induced to tell, acted so strongly upon Mr. Black's nerves,that he leaped towards him again, evidently with the intention ofdragging him from the house.

  But the judge was not ready for this. The judge had gained a new leaseof life in the last half-hour and he felt no fear of this sullenbill-poster for all his sly innuendoes. He, therefore, hindered thelawyer from his purpose, by a quick gesture of so much dignity andresolve that even the lout himself was impressed and dropped some of hissullen bravado.

  "I have something to say to this fellow," he announced, looking anywherebut at the drooping figure in the window which ought, above all thingsin the world, to have engaged his attention. "Perhaps he does not knowhis folly. Perhaps he thinks because I was thrown aback to-day by thosepublic charges against my son and a string of insults for which nofather could be prepared, that I am seriously disturbed over theposition into which such unthinking men as himself have pushed Mr.Oliver Ostrander. I might be if there were truth in these charges or anyserious reason for connecting my upright and honourable son with the lowcrime of a highwayman. BUT THERE IS NOT. I aver it and so will this ladyhere whom you have doubtless recognised for the one who has stirred thismatter up. You can bring no evidence to show guilt on my son'spart,"--these words he directed straight at the discomfited poster ofbills--"BECAUSE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO BRING."

  Mr. Black's eyes sparkled with admiration. He could not have used thismethod with the lad, but he recognised the insight of the man who could.Bribes were a sign of weakness, so were suggested force andcounter-attack; but scorn--a calm ignoring of the power of any one toseriously shake Oliver Ostrander's established position--that mightrouse wrath and bring avowal; certainly it had shaken the man; he lookedmuch less aggressive and self-confident than before.

  However, though impressed, he was not yet ready to give in. Shufflingabout with his feet but not yet shrinking from an encounter few men ofhis stamp would have cared to subject themselves to, he answered with aremark delivered with a little more civility than any of his previousones:

  "What you call evidence may not be the same as I calls evidence. Ifyou're satisfied at thinkin' my word's no good, that's your business. Iknow how I should feel if I was Ol Ostrander's father and knew what Iknow."

  "Let him go," spoke up a wavering voice. It was Deborah's.

  But the judge was deaf to the warning. Deborah's voice had but remindedhim of Deborah's presence. Its tone had escaped him. He was tooengrossed in the purpose he had in mind to notice shades of inflection.

  But Mr. Black had, and quick as thought he echoed her request:

  "He is forgetting himself. Let him go, Judge Ostrander."

  But that astute magistrate, wise in all other causes but his own, was nomore ready now than before to do this.

  "In a moment," he conceded. "Let me first make sure that this manunderstands me. I have said that there exists no evidence against myson. I did not mean that there may not be supposed evidence. That ismore than probable. No suspicion could have been felt and none of theseoutrageous charges made, without that. He was unfortunate enough notonly to have been in the ravine that night but to have picked upScoville's stick and carried it towards the bridge, whittling it as hewent. But his connection with the crime ends there. He dropped thisstick before he came to where the wood path joins Factory Road; andanother hand than his raised it against Etheridge. This I aver; and thisthe lady here will aver. You have probably already recognised her. Ifnot, allow me to tell you that she is the lady whose efforts havebrought back this case to the public mind: Mrs. Scoville, the wife ofJohn Scoville and the one of all others who has the greatest interest inproving her husband's innocence. If she says, that after the mostcareful inquiry and a conscientious reconsideration of this case, shehas found herself forced to come to the conclusion that justice hasalready been satisfied in this matter, you will believe her, won't you?"

  "I don't know," drawled the man, a low and cunning expression lightingup his ugly countenance. "She wants to marry her daughter to your son.Any
live dog is better than a dead one; I guess her opinion don't go formuch."

  Recoiling before a cynicism that pierced with unerring skill the onejoint in his armour he knew to be vulnerable, the judge took a minute inwhich to control his rage and then addressing the half-averted figure inthe window said:

  "Mrs. Scoville, will you assure this man that you have no expectationsof marrying your daughter to Oliver Ostrander?"

  With a slow movement more suggestive of despair than any she had beenseen to make since the hour of her indecision had first struck, sheshifted in her seat and finally faced them, with the assertion:

  "Reuther Scoville will never marry Oliver Ostrander. Whatever my wishesor willingness in the matter, she herself is so determined. Not becauseshe does not believe in his integrity, for she does; but because shewill not unite herself to one whose prospects in life are more to herthan her own happiness."

  The fellow stared, then laughed:

  "She's a goodun," he sneered. "And you believe that bosh?"

  Mr. Black could no longer contain himself.

  "I believe you to be the biggest rascal in town," he shouted. "Get out,or I won't answer for myself. Ladies are not to be treated in thismanner."

  Did he remember his own rough handling of the sex on the witness stand?

  "_I_ didn't ask to see the ladies," protested Flannagan, turning with aslinking gait towards the door.

  If they only had let him go! If the judge in his new self-confidence hadnot been so anxious to deepen the effect and make any future repetitionof the situation impossible!

  "You understand the lady," he interposed, with the quiet dignity whichwas so imposing on the bench. "She has no sympathy with your ideas andno faith in your conclusions. She believes absolutely in my son'sinnocence."

  "Do you, ma'am?" The man had turned and was surveying her with thedogged impudence of his class. "I'd like to hear you say it, if youdon't mind, ma'am. Perhaps, then, I'll believe it."

  "I--" she began, trembling so, that she failed to reach her feet,although she made one spasmodic effort to do so. "I believe--Oh, I feelill! It's been too much--I--" her head fell forward and she turnedherself quite away from them all.

  "You see she ain't so eager, jedge, as you thought," laughed thebill-poster, with a clumsy bow he evidently meant to be sarcastic.

  "Oh, what have I done!" moaned Deborah, starting up as though she wouldfling herself after the retreating figure, now half way down the hall.

  She saw in the look of the judge as he forcibly stopped her, and heardin the lawyer's whisper as he bounded past them both to see the fellowout: "Useless; nothing will bridle him now"; and finding no support forher despairing spirit either on earth or, as she thought, in heaven, shecollapsed where she sat and fell unnoticed to the floor, where she layprone at the feet of the equally unconscious figure of the judge, fixedin another attack of his peculiar complaint.

  And thus the lawyer found them when he returned from closing the gatebehind Flannagan.