The Leavenworth Case Part 53

"You have shown yourself more interested in my fate than I had any reason to expect. Will you continue to display this concern all the way to F--, or may I hope for a few moments of peace in which to dream upon the step which, according to you, is about to hurl upon me such dreadful consequences?"

"If I go with you to F--," Eleanore returned, "it is as a witness, no more. My sisterly duty is done."

"Very well, then," Mary said, dimpling with sudden gayety; "I suppose I shall have to accept the situation. Mamma Hubbard, I am so sorry to disappoint you, but the buggy won't hold three. If you are good you shall be the first to congratulate me when I come home to-night." And, almost before I knew it, the two had taken their seats in the buggy that was waiting at the door. "Good-by," cried Mary, waving her hand from the back; "wish me much joy-of my ride."

I tried to do so, but the words wouldn't come. I could only wave my hand in response, and rush sobbing into the house.

Of that day, and its long hours of alternate remorse and anxiety, I cannot trust myself to speak. Let me come at once to the time when, seated alone in my lamp-lighted room, I waited and watched for the token of their return which Mary had promised me. It came in the shape of Mary herself, who, wrapped in her long cloak, and with her beautiful face aglow with blushes, came stealing into the house just as I was beginning to despair.

A strain of wild music from the hotel porch, where they were having a dance, entered with her, producing such a weird effect upon my fancy that I was not at all surprised when, in flinging off her cloak, she displayed garments of bridal white and a head crowned with snowy roses.

"Oh, Mary!" I cried, bursting into tears; "you are then--"

"Mrs. Henry Clavering, at your service. I'm a bride, Auntie."

"Without a bridal," I murmured, taking her pa.s.sionately into my embrace.

She was not insensible to my emotion. Nestling close to me, she gave herself up for one wild moment to a genuine burst of tears, saying between her sobs all manner of tender things; telling me how she loved me, and how I was the only one in all the world to whom she dared come on this, her wedding night, for comfort or congratulation, and of how frightened she felt now it was all over, as if with her name she had parted with something of inestimable value.

"And does not the thought of having made some one the proudest of men solace you?" I asked, more than dismayed at this failure of mine to make these lovers happy.

"I don't know," she sobbed. "What satisfaction can it be for him to feel himself tied for life to a girl who, sooner than lose a prospective fortune, subjected him to such a parting?"

"Tell me about it," said I.

But she was not in the mood at that moment. The excitement of the day had been too much for her. A thousand fears seemed to beset her mind. Crouching down on the stool at my feet, she sat with her hands folded and a glare on her face that lent an aspect of strange unreality to her brilliant attire. "How shall I keep it secret! The thought haunts me every moment; how can I keep it secret!"

"Why, is there any danger of its being known?" I inquired. "Were you seen or followed?"

"No," she murmured. "It all went off well, but--"

"Where is the danger, then?"

"I cannot say; but some deeds are like ghosts. They will not be laid; they reappear; they gibber; they make themselves known whether we will or not. I did not think of this before. I was mad, reckless, what you will. But ever since the night has come, I have felt it crus.h.i.+ng upon me like a pall that smothers life and youth and love out of my heart. While the sunlight remained I could endure it; but now-oh, Auntie, I have done something that will keep me in constant fear. I have allied myself to a living apprehension. I have destroyed my happiness."

I was too aghast to speak.

"For two hours I have played at being gay. Dressed in my bridal white, and crowned with roses, I have greeted my friends as if they were wedding-guests, and made believe to myself that all the compliments bestowed upon me-and they are only too numerous-were just so many congratulations upon my marriage. But it was no use; Eleanore knew it was no use. She has gone to her room to pray, while I-I have come here for the first time, perhaps for the last, to fall at some one's feet and cry,-' G.o.d have mercy upon me!'"

I looked at her in uncontrollable emotion. "Oh, Mary, have I only succeeded, then, in making you miserable?"

She did not answer; she was engaged in picking up the crown of roses which had fallen from her hair to the floor.

"If I had not been taught to love money so!" she said at length. "If, like Eleanore, I could look upon the splendor which has been ours from childhood as a mere accessory of life, easy to be dropped at the call of duty or affection! If prestige, adulation, and elegant belongings were not so much to me; or love, friends.h.i.+p, and domestic happiness more! If only I could walk a step without dragging the chain of a thousand luxurious longings after me. Eleanore can. Imperious as she often is in her beautiful womanhood, haughty as she can be when the delicate quick of her personality is touched too rudely, I have known her to sit by the hour in a low, chilly, ill-lighted and ill-smelling garret, cradling a dirty child on her knee, and feeding with her own hand an impatient old woman whom no one else would consent to touch. Oh, oh! they talk about repentance and a change of heart! If some one or something would only change mine! But there is no hope of that! no hope of my ever being anything else than what I am: a selfish, wilful, mercenary girl."

Nor was this mood a mere transitory one. That same night she made a discovery which increased her apprehension almost to terror. This was nothing less than the fact that Eleanore had been keeping a diary of the last few weeks. "Oh," she cried in relating this to me the next day, "what security shall I ever feel as long as this diary of hers remains to confront me every time I go into her room? And she will not consent to destroy it, though I have done my best to show her that it is a betrayal of the trust I reposed in her. She says it is all she has to show in the way of defence, if uncle should ever accuse her of treachery to him and his happiness. She promises to keep it locked up; but what good will that do! A thousand accidents might happen, any of them sufficient to throw it into uncle's hands. I shall never feel safe for a moment while it exists."

I endeavored to calm her by saying that if Eleanore was without malice, such fears were groundless. But she would not be comforted, and seeing her so wrought up, I suggested that Eleanore should be asked to trust it into my keeping till such time as she should feel the necessity of using it. The idea struck Mary favorably. "O yes," she cried; "and I will put my certificate with it, and so get rid of all my care at once." And before the afternoon was over, she had seen Eleanore and made her request.

It was acceded to with this proviso, that I was neither to destroy nor give up all or any of the papers except upon their united demand. A small tin box was accordingly procured, into which were put all the proofs of Mary's marriage then existing, viz.: the certificate, Mr. Clavering's letters, and such leaves from Eleanore's diary as referred to this matter. It was then handed over to me with the stipulation I have already mentioned, and I stowed it away in a certain closet upstairs, where it has lain undisturbed till last night.

Here Mrs. Belden paused, and, blus.h.i.+ng painfully, raised her eyes to mine with a look in which anxiety and entreaty were curiously blended.

"I don't know what you will say," she began, "but, led away by my fears, I took that box out of its hiding-place last evening and, notwithstanding your advice, carried it from the house, and it is now--"

"In my possession," I quietly finished.

I don't think I ever saw her look more astounded, not even when I told her of Hannah's death. "Impossible!" she exclaimed. "I left it last night in the old barn that was burned down. I merely meant to hide it for the present, and could think of no better place in my hurry; for the barn is said to be haunted-a man hung himself there once-and no one ever goes there. I-I-you cannot have it!" she cried, "unless--"

"Unless I found and brought it away before the barn was destroyed," I suggested.

Her face flushed deeper. "Then you followed me?"

"Yes," said I. Then, as I felt my own countenance redden, hastened to add: "We have been playing strange and unaccustomed parts, you and I. Some time, when all these dreadful events shall be a mere dream of the past, we will ask each other's pardon. But never mind all this now. The box is safe, and I am anxious to hear the rest of your story."

This seemed to compose her, and after a minute she continued:

Mary seemed more like herself after this. And though, on account of Mr. Leavenworth's return and their subsequent preparations for departure, I saw but little more of her, what I did see was enough to make me fear that, with the locking up of the proofs of her marriage, she was indulging the idea that the marriage itself had become void. But I may have wronged her in this.

The story of those few weeks is almost finished. On the eve of the day before she left, Mary came to my house to bid me good-by. She had a present in her hand the value of which I will not state, as I did not take it, though she coaxed me with all her prettiest wiles. But she said something that night that I have never been able to forget. It was this. I had been speaking of my hope that before two months had elapsed she would find herself in a position to send for Mr. Clavering, and that when that day came I should wish to be advised of it; when she suddenly interrupted me by saying:

"Uncle will never be won upon, as you call it, while he lives. If I was convinced of it before, I am sure of it now. Nothing but his death will ever make it possible for me to send for Mr. Clavering." Then, seeing me look aghast at the long period of separation which this seemed to betoken, blushed a little and whispered: "The prospect looks somewhat dubious, doesn't it? But if Mr. Clavering loves me, he can wait."

"But," said I, "your uncle is only little past the prime of life and appears to be in robust health; it will be years of waiting, Mary."

"I don't know," she muttered, "I think not. Uncle is not as strong as he looks and-" She did not say any more, horrified perhaps at the turn the conversation was taking. But there was an expression on her countenance that set me thinking at the time, and has kept me thinking ever since.

Not that any actual dread of such an occurrence as has since happened came to oppress my solitude during the long months which now intervened. I was as yet too much under the spell of her charm to allow anything calculated to throw a shadow over her image to remain long in my thoughts. But when, some time in the fall, a letter came to me personally from Mr. Clavering, filled with a vivid appeal to tell him something of the woman who, in spite of her vows, doomed him to a suspense so cruel, and when, on the evening of the same day, a friend of mine who had just returned from New York spoke of meeting Mary Leavenworth at some gathering, surrounded by manifest admirers, I began to realize the alarming features of the affair, and, sitting down, I wrote her a letter. Not in the strain in which I had been accustomed to talk to her,-I had not her pleading eyes and trembling, caressing hands ever before me to beguile my judgment from its proper exercise,-but honestly and earnestly, telling her how Mr. Clavering felt, and what a risk she ran in keeping so ardent a lover from his rights. The reply she sent rather startled me.

"I have put Mr. Robbins out of my calculations for the present, and advise you to do the same. As for the gentleman himself, I have told him that when I could receive him I would be careful to notify him. That day has not yet come.

"But do not let him be discouraged," she added in a postscript. "When he does receive his happiness, it will be a satisfying one."

When, I thought. Ah, it is that when which is likely to ruin all! But, intent only upon fulfilling her will, I sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. Clavering, in which I stated what she had said, and begged him to have patience, adding that I would surely let him know if any change took place in Mary or her circ.u.mstances. And, having despatched it to his address in London, awaited the development of events.

They were not slow in transpiring. In two weeks I heard of the sudden death of Mr. Stebbins, the minister who had married them; and while yet laboring under the agitation produced by this shock, was further startled by seeing in a New York paper the name of Mr. Clavering among the list of arrivals at the Hoffman House; showing that my letter to him had failed in its intended effect, and that the patience Mary had calculated upon so blindly was verging to its end. I was consequently far from being surprised when, in a couple of weeks or so afterwards, a letter came from him to my address, which, owing to the careless omission of the private mark upon the envelope, I opened, and read enough to learn that, driven to desperation by the constant failures which he had experienced in all his endeavors to gain access to her in public or private, a failure which he was not backward in ascribing to her indisposition to see him, he had made up his mind to risk everything, even her displeasure; and, by making an appeal to her uncle, end the suspense under which he was laboring, definitely and at once. "I want you," he wrote; "dowered or dowerless, it makes little difference to me. If you will not come of yourself, then I must follow the example of the brave knights, my ancestors; storm the castle that holds you, and carry you off by force of arms."

Neither can I say I was much surprised, knowing Mary as I did, when, in a few days from this, she forwarded to me for copying, this reply: "If Mr. Robbins ever expects to be happy with Amy Belden, let him reconsider the determination of which he speaks. Not only would he by such an action succeed in destroying the happiness of her he professes to love, but run the greater risk of effectually annulling the affection which makes the tie between them endurable."

To this there was neither date nor signature. It was the cry of warning which a spirited, self-contained creature gives when brought to bay. It made even me recoil, though I had known from the first that her pretty wilfulness was but the tossing foam floating above the soundless depths of cold resolve and most deliberate purpose.

What its real effect was upon him and her fate I can only conjecture. All I know is that in two weeks thereafter Mr. Leavenworth was found murdered in his room, and Hannah Chester, coming direct to my door from the scene of violence, begged me to take her in and secrete her from public inquiry, as I loved and desired to serve Mary Leavenworth.

x.x.xIII. UNEXPECTED TESTIMONY