The Other Side of the Door Part 14

"But it is because you are only looking at a little string of wrong things, that the last one of them looks right, because it's like the others," I said. "If you go back to the big wrong that started them all and straighten it out, you will see that everything that follows will straighten itself."

He threw back his head, looking down at me with an expression I could not make out, astonished, incredulous, and half ashamed. "Out of the mouths of babes--" I thought that was what he said very softly. Then, "And this great wrong, Miss Fenwick?"

I was conscious that somehow I had gained an advantage, and I kept my eyes upon him as if in such a fas.h.i.+on I could hold it tight. "You must tell them how Martin Rood really died."

"Ah, never!" The word rang with such unexpected finality that all my hope went tumbling at the sound.

"Oh, he loves her, he loves her!" I thought and my pleading became the pleading of despair. "Yes, yes, you will go back, if not for my sake then for your own, and tell them what you have told me, and the rest of it; and I know everything will come out right."

He still kept gazing at me with that puzzling expression, only now there seemed to be more of tenderness than of incredulity in it. "You seem to have great faith in things coming out right."

"Oh, but it's true," I urged. "They will, if only you will go back and face the thing."

Slowly he shook his head. "Yes, it may be true. It may even be workable in some cases, but I have got too far away from what is right ever to get back. If I should try I would only succeed in doing some one else still greater wrong--a wrong that even you, with all your awful sense of justice, could not ask me to do."

He turned from me, and sat for a little while gazing straight before him, and I looked at his stern profile set against the window gla.s.s, saw the s.h.i.+ft of expression upon it, and knew that he was thinking. At last, turning to me again, as if there had been no interval between his words, "But this much I can do," he said. "Even if I can not quite get back to the great wrong, I will go back as far as I can in honor to set this thing right. I will give myself up--" He waited a moment, then added: "On one condition; that you will promise never to say a word of what I have told you to-night."

"But," I protested, "then how will they ever know you are innocent?"

"They won't."

"Oh, but then you will be--" I began, with a wail.

"Wait, don't speak, don't answer until I have asked you another question," and the strong touch of his hand held me quiet. "Suppose I can't make it come out right--don't you think it is better to make a strike to get as near to the right as I can, instead of going on, getting deeper and deeper into the wrong?"

"Yes," I whispered. "Don't you?"

"I don't know," he said slowly. "I only know that since I have seen you I can't go on. After being with you only for this little while, after what you have told me, I can't go to her."

We faced each other in silence. My hands were clasped tightly in my lap but my heart went out to him in grat.i.tude and thankfulness.

Then, bending a little toward me, "Now, have I your word?" he gently asked.

I could have promised him more than my word in that moment.

He smiled. "I know that I can trust you. I have seen that you have a loyal heart; but this promise shan't cost you anything. I shall answer no questions. Now, I shall have to send a message to Senora Valencia."

"Oh, do not," I begged. "She will stop you from going back. You don't know what she is capable of; she can do anything!"

"No one can undo what you have done," he said. "She will not stop me.

I must send her a word to tell her she is to go away on the lugger without me."

"But why?" I cried. "I am afraid to have you go near the house. I know I shall never see you again."

"Come, you must be brave. I am only going to write a line and slip it under the gate. We must not be cruel if we are righteous, you know."

I hardly understood his scruple, but the determination of his voice made me feel that it was right. Thus rea.s.sured the practical question rose as to what there was he could write with or upon. We should have to be quick, for already, the first pale change, which is scarcely dawn but only that fading of the deepest blue of night, was in the sky. He fumbled in all his pockets, and in the folds of his sash. We explored the seat and the floor of the carriage. In my eagerness my cloak slipped from my shoulders, and as he drew it up around me again, with nervous fingers fastening the clasps across the bosom, "What is that?"

he asked suddenly.

I put my hand down and it touched a stiff little edge of paper thrusting from my girdle. I drew it out. It was my dance program. I had quite forgotten about it. One side of it was scrawled thickly with names, but most of the other side was clear, and the little white pencil was still fastened to it.

He took it from me, and holding it on the palm of his hand, "I wonder if you have any idea what thing you are asking me to do?" he said.

I did not speak, because I felt that if I opened my mouth it would be to say something weak and foolish, and when I had put the card into his hand I had seen him hesitate; so I knew that he needed all my strength.

He bent his head and began to write slowly and laboriously because of the swinging of the carriage; and, letting down the window, I put my head out and addressed the driver who was hunched up like a s.h.i.+vering bird on his high seat.

"Drive to the Senora Valencia's house." For perhaps an hour he had been jogging us around and around the Square, and one would have thought that this order would have come upon him as a surprise. But he only turned his head slowly toward me, and then as slowly back again, with a movement that made me think of a mechanical toy, then he guided the horses' heads from Was.h.i.+ngton Square into Lombard Street.

I had sunk back into my corner and covered my eyes with my hand. "Do you want to read what I have written?" I heard Johnny ask.

I shook my head. I felt that I had made him do something terrible, as he said, I did not know how terrible. I did not even look when the carriage stopped, when I heard him getting out. But even from where I sat I could hear the beat of the bra.s.s knocker. A moment pa.s.sed, with fear thick at my heart; then he was back again. He gave the direction to the driver before he got in, and the cab turned and was rattling down the street, with a speed that suggested that the hackman was at last stirred to excitement by the name of our final destination. We two looked into each other's face.

"You would better drop me at Montgomery," Johnny said.

"No," I answered, "I am going to take you all the way." He frowned. I thought he was going to object. "Let me stay with you as long as I can," I begged. "It will make it easier for me."

Still with his eyes on me his lips moved with some word. Not a sound came through but I thought he had said my name. And all the while through the cold, gray twilight we were driving downward through the city. The farther we went the more a strange and calm feeling settled upon me, and the more I forgot everything in the world but him. It seemed as if for ever we would continue to drive on together with this wonderful quietness between us.

But the carriage was drawing up. I looked at him anxiously. "What is the matter? Why are we stopping?"

His face was strange. "Don't you know? It is the prison."

He half rose, his hand was on the door, he had turned his back on me.

A sudden anguish went through me, keen as physical pain. Something that was not my mind at all seemed to be acting for me. I caught hold of his arm with I don't know what impulse to pull him back.

He turned, looking at me with smiling eyes, gently unclasped my fingers, bent his head and touched them with his lips. "Don't spoil it," he said, "and remember your word."

I watched him walking down the half block to the prison door, a figure tall and solitary, and in spite of his gay Mexican trappings, with an air of somber resolution. So I saw him pa.s.s the lone, gray house fronts, and be swallowed up in the great entrance of the prison.

CHAPTER XI

THE LUGGER

As he disappeared the desire to run after him, to cry out to him, to cry out to all the ears of the court the story he had told me, rushed over me, an insane impulse. "What would that do but make everything worse, even harder for him to bear? Haven't I made things hard enough for him already?" I who had said I loved him, that I believed in his innocence, had yet virtuously urged him to go back and give himself up--to what? Why, my poor little coward mind was even afraid to name what that thing was!

The Spanish Woman had not been afraid, no, not of anything! She had risked everything that she had to save him in the best way that she knew. Was I, as she had so bitterly told me, only a creature of words with no deeds to make them good? It was all very well to say things would turn out right; but now I saw that they would not unless I made them; and how was that to be managed if he wouldn't speak, and I was in his confidence and couldn't?

I puzzled it over as my carriage rattled slowly back up Montgomery Avenue. Suddenly from what had been absolutely sterile cogitation, there sprang up the full flower of an idea. All that he had said that evening had carried the same perplexing undercurrent of a thing that he could not speak of, and always it seemed to point to the Spanish Woman.

"She knows!" I thought triumphantly, "and if she knows, why, she must not go away until she has told me." The whole thing opened before me complete, unexpected, a deliverance.

I looked out of the window. Faintest, earliest dawn was already beginning. There was but one thing to do. Johnny had told me that the Spanish Woman was going aboard the lugger at dawn. I directed the driver to drive to the Black Point wharf.

He peered at me as if he thought me crazy. "That feller gave me a gold piece, ye know," he said, "or I wouldn't have taken ye as far as this."

"Go on," I said, and queerly enough I didn't feel at all afraid of the man. "Go on, and my father, Mr. Fenwick, will give you more when you take me home; and besides you are doing a service for the city."