“There is a connection, then?”
“Undoubtedly. And, secondly, what is the cause of the unfriendly feeling which evidently exists between the cousins.”
I drew back and pondered the position offered me. A spy in a fair woman’s house! How could I reconcile it with my natural instincts as a gentleman?
“Cannot you find someone more suitable to learn these secrets for you!” I asked at length. “The part of a spy is anything but agreeable to my feelings, I assure you.”
Mr. Gryce’s brows fell.
“I will assist Mr. Harwell in his efforts to arrange Mr. Leavenworth’s manuscript for the press,” I said, “I will give Mr. Clavering an opportunity to form my acquaintance, and I will listen if Miss Leavenworth chooses to make me her confidant in any way. But any hearkening at doors, surprises, unworthy feints or ungentlemanly subterfuges I herewith disclaim as outside of my province; my task being to find out what I can in an open way, and yours to search into the nooks and corners of this most wretched business.”
“In other words, you are to play the hound and I the mole; just so, I know what belongs to a gentleman.”
“And now,” said I, “what news of Hannah.”
He shook both hands high in the air. “None,” cried he.
I cannot say I was greatly surprised that evening when, upon descending from an hour’s labor with Mr. Harwell, I encountered Miss Leavenworth standing at the foot of the stairs. There had been something in her bearing the night before which prepared me for another interview this evening, though her manner of commencing it was a surprise. “Mr. Raymond,” said she, looking down with an appearance of embarrassment, “I want to ask you a question. I believe that you are a good man and will answer it conscientiously—as a brother would,” she murmured, lifting her eyes for a moment to my face. “I know it will sound strange, but remember that I have no adviser but you, and I must ask someone. Mr. Raymond, do you think a person could do something that was very wrong and yet grow to be thoroughly good afterward?”
“Certainly,” I replied, “if he were truly sorry for his fault.”
“But say it was more than a fault, say it was an actual harm; would not the memory of that one evil hour cast a shadow over the life which the soul could never escape from?”
“That depends,” said I, “upon the nature of the harm and its effect upon others. If one had irreparably injured a fellow-being it would be hard, I should think, to live a happy life afterward, though the fact of not living a happy life ought to be no reason why one should not live a good one.”
“But to live a good life would it be necessary to reveal the evil you had done? Cannot one go on and do right without confessing to the world that he had once committed a great wrong?”
“Yes, unless by its confession he can in some way make reparation.”
My answer seemed to trouble her. Drawing back, she stood for one moment in a thoughtful attitude before me, her beauty shining with almost a statuesque splendor in the glow of the porcelain-shaded lamp at her side. Nor, though she presently roused herself, leading the way into the drawing room with a gesture that was allurement itself, did she recur to this topic again, but rather seemed to strive in the conversation that followed to make me forget what had already passed between us. That she did not succeed, was owing to my intense and unfailing interest in her cousin.
As I descended the stoop I saw Thomas, the butler, leaning over the area gate. Immediately I was seized with an impulse to interrogate him in regard to a matter which had more or less interested me ever since the inquest, and that was, who was the Mr. Robbins who had called upon Eleanore the night of the murder? But Thomas was decidedly uncommunicative. He remembered such a person called, but could not describe his looks any further than to say that he was not a small man.
I did not press the matter.
CHAPTER 4
The Beginning of Great Surprises
Vous regardez une étoile pour deux motifs, parce qu’elle est lumineuse et parce qu’elle est impénétrable. Vous avez auprès de vous un plus doux rayonnement et un plus grand mystère, la femme.
—LES MISÉRABLES.
And now followed days in which I seemed to make little or no progress. Mr. Clavering, disturbed perhaps by my presence, forsook his usual haunts, thus depriving me of all opportunity of making his acquaintance in any natural manner, while the evenings spent at Miss Leavenworth’s were productive of little else than constant suspense and uneasiness.
The manuscript required less revision than I supposed, Mr. Leavenworth being one of the men who believe in finishing as you go, but in the course of making such few changes as were necessary I had ample opportunity of studying the character of Mr. Harwell. I found him to be neither more nor less than an excellent amanuensis. Stiff, unbending and somber, but true to his duty and reliable in its performance, I learned to respect him, and even to like him, and this, too, though I saw the liking was not reciprocated, whatever the respect may have been. He never spoke of Eleanore Leavenworth or, indeed, mentioned the family or its trouble in any way, till I began to feel that all this reticence had a cause deeper than the nature of the man, and that if he did speak, it would be to some purpose. This suspicion, of course, kept me restlessly eager in his presence. I could not forbear giving him sly glances now and then, to see how he acted when he believed himself unobserved, but he was ever the same, a passive, diligent, unexcitable worker.
This continual beating against a stone wall, for thus I felt it to be, became at last almost unendurable. Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable—how was I to gain anything? The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters. Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once and never twice the same, I learned to dread, even while I coveted an interview. She appeared to be passing through some crisis which occasioned her the keenest suffering. I have seen her when she thought herself alone throw up her hands with the gesture which we use to ward off a coming evil, or shut out some hideous vision. I have likewise beheld her standing with her proud head abased, her nervous hands drooping, her whole form sinking and inert, as if the pressure of a weight she could neither upbear nor cast aside had robbed her even of the show of resistance. But that was only once. Ordinarily she was at least stately in her trouble. Even when the softest appeal came into her eyes, she stood erect, and retained her expression of conscious power. Even, the night she met me in the hall with feverish cheeks, and lips trembling with eagerness, only to turn and fly again without giving utterance to what she had to say, she comported herself with a fiery dignity that was well-nigh imposing.
That all this meant something I was sure, and so I kept my patience alive with the hope that some day she would make a revelation. Those quivering lips would not always remain closed, the secret involving Eleanore’s honor and happiness would be divulged by this restless being, if by no one else. Nor was the memory of that extraordinary, if not cruel, accusation I had heard her make enough to destroy this hope—for hope it had grown to be—so that I found myself insensibly shortening my time with Mr. Harwell in the library, and extending my tête-à-tête visits with Mary in the reception-room, till the imperturbable secretary was forced to complain that he was often left for hours without work.
But as I say, days passed and a second Monday evening came round without seeing me any further advanced upon the problem I had set myself to solve than I was two weeks before. The subject of the murder had not even been broached; nor was Hannah spoken of, though I observed the papers were not allowed to languish an instant upon the stoop; mistress and servants betraying equal interest in their contents. All this was strange to me. It was as if you saw a group of human beings eating, drinking and sleeping upon the sides of a volcano hot with a late eruption and trembling with the birth of a new one. I longed to break this silence as we shiver glass, by shouting the name of Eleanore through those gilded rooms and satin-draped vestibules. I felt an insane impulse to tear up the very floors
, and rend the walls, as if they could tell me, if they would, what I so yearned to know. But this Monday evening I was in a calmer mood. The day before, I had passed her house, and caught a glimpse of a face at a window, that was sweet and sad enough to nerve me for more than one week of disappointment. I determined to expect nothing from my visits to Mary Leavenworth’s house, and entered it upon the eve in question with an equanimity such as I had not experienced since the first day I passed under its unhappy portals.
But when upon nearing the reception-room I saw Mary pacing the floor with the air of one who is restlessly awaiting something or somebody, I took a sudden resolution, and, advancing toward her, said: “Do I see you alone, Miss Leavenworth?”
She paused in her hurried action, blushed and bowed, but contrary to her usual custom did not bid me enter.
“Will it be too great an intrusion on my part if I venture to come in?” I asked.
Her glance flashed uneasily to the clock, and she seemed about to excuse herself, but suddenly yielded, and drawing up a chair before the fire, motioned me toward it. Though she endeavored to appear calm, I vaguely felt that I had chanced upon her in one of her most agitated moods, and that I had only to broach the subject I had in mind to behold that haughty aspect disappear before me like melting snow. I also felt that I had but few moments in which to do it. I accordingly plunged immediately into the subject.
“Miss Leavenworth,” said I, “in obtruding upon you tonight, I have a purpose other than that of giving myself a pleasure. I have come to make an appeal.”
Instantly I saw that in some way I had started wrong. “An appeal to make to me?” she asked, breathing coldness from every feature of her face.
“Yes,” I went on with passionate recklessness. “Balked in every other endeavor to learn the truth, I have come to you whom I believe to be noble at the core for that help which seems likely to fail us in every other direction; for the word which, if it does not absolutely save your cousin, will at least put us upon the track of what will.”
“I do not understand what you mean,” returned she, slightly shrinking.
“Miss Leavenworth,” pursued I, “it is needless for me to tell you in what position your cousin stands. You who remember both the form and drift of the questions put to her at the inquest, comprehend it all without any explanation from me. But what you may not know is this, that unless she is speedily relieved from the suspicion which justly or not has attached itself to her name, the consequences which such suspicion entails must fall upon her, and——”
“Good God!” she cried, “you do not mean that she will be——”
“Subject to arrest? Yes.”
It was a blow. Shame, anguish and horror were in every line of her white face. “And all because of that key!” she murmured.
“Key? How did you know anything about a key?”
“Why,” said she, flushing painfully, “I cannot say; didn’t you tell me?”
“No,” returned I.
“The papers, then.”
“The papers have never mentioned it.”
She grew more and more agitated. “I thought everyone knew. No, I did not, either,” exclaimed she, in a sudden burst of shame and penitence. “I knew it was a secret but—oh, Mr. Raymond, it was Eleanore herself who told me.”
“Eleanore?”
“Yes, that last evening she was here we were together in the drawing room.”
“What did she tell?”
“That the key to the library had been seen in her possession.”
I could scarcely conceal my incredulity. Eleanore, conscious of the suspicion with which her cousin regarded her, informed that cousin of a fact which seemed to give weight to her suspicion! I could not believe this.
“But you knew it?” Mary went on. “I have revealed nothing that I should have kept secret?”
“No,” said I, “and, Miss Leavenworth, it is this thing which makes your cousin’s position absolutely dangerous. It is a fact that, left unexplained, must ever link her name with infamy, a bit of circumstantial evidence no sophistry can smother, and no denial obliterate. Only her hitherto spotless reputation, and the efforts of one who, notwithstanding appearances, believes in her innocence, keeps her so long from the clutch of the officers of justice. That key and the silence preserved by her in regard to it is sinking her slowly into a pit from which the utmost endeavors of her best friends will soon be inadequate to extricate her.”
“And you tell me this——”
“That you may have pity on the poor girl, who will not have pity on herself, and by the explanation of a few circumstances which cannot be mysteries to you, assist in bringing her from under the dreadful shadow that threatens to overwhelm her.”
“And would you insinuate, sir,” cried she, turning upon me with a look of great anger, “that I know any more than you do of this matter? that I possess any knowledge which I have not already made public, concerning the dreadful tragedy which has transformed our home into a desert, our existence into a lasting horror? Has the blight of suspicion fallen upon me, too, and have you come to accuse me in my own house——”
“Miss Leavenworth,” I entreated, “calm yourself. I accuse you of nothing. I only desire you to enlighten me as to your cousin’s probable motive for this criminating silence. You cannot be in ignorance of it. You are her cousin, almost her sister, have been at all events her daily companion for years, and must know for whom or for what she seals her lips, and conceals facts which, if known, would direct suspicion to the real criminal—that is, if you really believe what you have hitherto stated, that your cousin is an innocent woman.”
She not making any answer to this, I rose and confronted her. “Miss Leavenworth, do you believe your cousin guiltless of this crime, or not?”
“Guiltless? Eleanore? Oh, my God, if all the world were only as innocent as she!”
“Then,” said I, “you must likewise believe that if she refrains from speaking in regard to matters which to ordinary observers ought to be explained, she does it only from motives of kindness toward one less guiltless than herself.”
“What? No, no, I do not say that. What made you think of any such explanation?”
“The action itself. With one of Eleanore’s character, such conduct as hers admits of no other construction. Either she is mad, or she is shielding another at the expense of herself.”
Mary’s lip, which had trembled, slowly steadied itself. “And whom have you settled upon, as the person for whom Eleanore thus sacrifices herself?”
“Ah,” said I, “there is where I seek assistance from you. With your knowledge of her history——”
But Mary Leavenworth, sinking haughtily back into her chair, stopped me with a quiet gesture. “I beg your pardon,” said she, “but you make a mistake. I know little or nothing of Eleanore’s personal feelings. The mystery must be solved by someone besides me.”
I changed my tactics.
“When Eleanore confessed to you that the missing key had been seen in her possession, did she likewise inform you where she obtained it, and for what reason she was hiding it?”
“No.”
“Merely told you the fact without any explanation?”
“Yes.”
“Was not that a strange piece of gratuitous information for her to give one who, but a few hours before, had accused her to the face of committing a deadly crime?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice suddenly sinking.
“You will not deny that you were once not only ready to believe her guilty, but that you actually charged her with having perpetrated this crime.”
“Explain yourself,” she cried.
“Miss Leavenworth, do you not remember what was said in that room upstairs, when you were alone with your cousin on the morning of the inquest, just before Mr. Gryce and myself entered your presence?”
Her eyes did not fall, but they filled with sudden terror. “You heard?” she whispered.
“I could n
ot help it. I was just outside the door, and——”
“What did you hear?”
I told her.
“And Mr. Gryce?”
“He was at my side.”
It seemed as if her eyes would devour my face. “Yet nothing was said when you came in?”
“No.”
“You, however, have never forgotten it?”
“How could we, Miss Leavenworth?”
Her head fell forward in her hands, she seemed lost for one wild moment in a gulf of darkness. “And that is why you come here tonight,” she suddenly exclaimed, desperately rousing herself and flashing full of indignation upon me. “With that sentence written upon your heart, you invade my presence, torture me with questions——”
“Pardon me,” I broke in, “are my questions such as you, with reasonable regard for the honor of one you are accustomed to associate with, should hesitate to answer? Do I derogate from my manhood in asking you how and why you came to make an accusation of so grave a nature, at a time when all the circumstances of the case were freshly before you, only to insist fully as strongly upon your cousin’s innocence when you found there was even more cause for your imputation than you had supposed?”
She did not seem to hear me. “Oh, my cruel fate!” she murmured. “Oh, my cruel fate!”
“Miss Leavenworth,” said I, rising and taking my stand before her, “although there is a temporary estrangement between you and your cousin, you cannot wish to seem her enemy. Speak, then; let me at least know the name of him for whom she thus immolates herself. A hint from you——”
But rising, with a strange look, to her feet, she interrupted me with the stern remark: “If you do not know, I cannot inform you; do not ask me, Mr. Raymond.” And she glanced at the clock for the second time.
I took another turn.
“Miss Leavenworth, you once asked me if a person who had committed a wrong ought necessarily to confess it; and I replied no, unless by the confession reparation could be made. Do you remember?”
The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics) Page 15
