The Other Side of the Door Part 3

Dingley they had seen a man run down Was.h.i.+ngton Street, so they followed that trail, and finally they got him in a house down on the water front, in a bad part of the city. My father said it would have made things better for him if he had given himself up quietly; but he barricaded the house, and almost escaped out of a back window. They had a dreadful fight before they got him even then. He is so strong, father says, that he just threw the men right and left as if he had been a madman."

Hallie is wonderful when she is telling news. She never says unkind things about anybody, and she is always so excited over what has happened that she makes it sound like a romance. But now I was too anxious to enjoy it. I felt I had to ask one question more, though every word that came out of my mouth was a possible slip or lie. "But, if they found Mr. Rood in the street with n.o.body near him, what makes them think it was Mr. Montgomery who shot him?"

"That is the very queerest part of it," Hallie declared, nodding until her green feathers nodded again, "but he was suspected immediately.

What they say is--" she lowered her voice impressively--"that some one saw him do it."

I fairly cowered in my chair. "But he can't have meant to kill him," I urged. "Why, his family was one of the best in the city. Just think, Hallie, your mother knew his mother well, and he used to play with Estrella's brothers."

Estrella flushed. "He hasn't been in our house since he was a little boy," she said angrily. "I wouldn't think of bowing to him on the street. He hasn't been received in good society for a long time."

Hallie sagely shook her head. "Yes, but I guess it's because he didn't care to go, and lots of very nice girls have always been in love with Johnny Montgomery. Lily West kept his picture in a satin case hidden among her party clothes for ever so long. And do you know, when Laura Burnet heard about Johnny's arrest last night, she fainted flat on the floor."

Hallie's bolt upright impressiveness seemed to demand some comment, but I could not manage a sound; for at her words there rushed back to me, with humiliating clearness, my own hysterics of the night before. Was it possible that Hallie thought I was in love with him, too? My cheeks burned and burned.

"Were you ever introduced to him, Ellie?" Estrella asked, looking at me curiously.

"No, she has never met him," Hallie promptly took the response out of my mouth; "but she saw him once--don't you remember, Ellie, at my sister Adelaide's coming-out ball?"

I said, yes, I remembered it.

"He danced most of that evening with Laura Burnet," Hallie pursued, "and she was perfectly wild about him. My brother Tom saw him kiss her in the conservatory," Hallie chuckled at that memory, "and for a while it was said that they were engaged, though she was three years older than he was. But he was terribly in debt then, and of course she had lots of money." Hallie sighed, and added, "Isn't it awful he should have ended in this way? Adelaide always said there was no one who could put your shawl around you so beautifully as he."

It seemed terrible to me that they could sit there talking of how badly he had been thought of by society, and how beautifully he had put women's shawls around them, when he was in prison waiting to be tried for his life. I was glad when the girls went and I could think about it by myself.

I felt sick and bruised. All suggestions that Hallie had innocently let fall put such an ugly face upon his actions. I didn't want to believe that hateful gossip. His smile had been so charming and kind.

There was something about him that made him seem of so much greater importance than any one else I had known; that made every little look and motion of his memorable and eloquent. And when he had looked straight into my eyes I had felt the warm flowing of the blood in my veins. Had it been these strange qualities of his that had made nice girls fall in love with him? I peeped into my mirror to see if my face looked as queer as my feelings felt. I whispered the words again, "To fall in love." What could that be like? To make Laura Burnet faint away at just the news of his arrest--what a great and terrible feeling it must be! When I thought of him as a person who could inspire such emotions he gathered a halo of mystery and power; but when I remembered Hallie's saying how he had been engaged to Laura for the sake of her money, he seemed to me the merest wretch. I told myself there was no need of my worrying about it, as he was in prison and my part was done.

It couldn't possibly interest me any further. All the same I couldn't get it out of my head.

Father came home to luncheon that day, bringing Senora Mendez with him.

He looked worried and tired, but I had never seen her so sweet, and so very gay.

She said I had been in the house too much, looked pale, and that she was going to take me shopping. As we got up from the table she lingered a moment, saying something to father about taking some one's mind off something. And father said, yes until we can tell which way it will go. So I supposed they were talking business.

Senora Mendez is such a great grand sort of lady that usually one is a little in awe of her; but to-day she made me feel very much at home, as we drove down the street in her big open carriage. She never once mentioned the shooting, and I didn't have courage to speak of it myself. But we heard of it all around us. In the first shop we went into a woman just behind me said in a loud voice, "Do the rebels think they can shoot us all down as Wilkes Booth shot the president?" And then, again, at another shop where we were looking at lace, the clerk said, "This is a terrible thing for the city, Madam, the loss of such a valuable citizen." But Senora Mendez seemed not to hear him, and went on explaining to me the difference between honiton and thread, and showing me how beautiful embroidered net looked over pale blue silk, until I felt quite cheerful just through listening to her and looking at the pretty things. She wound up by buying me a lovely pair of thread lace sleeves, and swept me out in the wake of her train feeling almost happy again.

Just as we had got into the carriage two gentlemen with silk hats, very elegant indeed, came up and talked over the carriage door with her.

The one with yellow gloves said, "This is a bad business. It's a good thing poor old lady Montgomery never lived to see this day." And the other said, "I wonder what the effect on the city will be?"

Senora Mendez said she hoped the effect would be a law requiring our young men to settle disputes with their fists instead of firearms, and that it was a shame nice boys would brawl in gambling-houses. She smiled and looked most easy and pleasant over it, and all the way up the street she chatted right along as if nothing serious had ever happened. But when we stopped at the house, just as I was leaving the carriage, she quickly took my face between her hands and kissed me hard on the forehead. "You poor little motherless duck," she said, and left me with the impression there had been tears in her eyes.

I wondered why she should feel so suddenly sorry for me; nevertheless I felt cheered and consoled--hadn't she spoken kindly of Johnny Montgomery as a nice boy? But it was the last good word I was to hear of him for a week. I needed the memory of that cheer and consolation through the next hard days.

For now that I was recovered from the shock of the first day I began to realize that the shooting of Martin Rood was not at all an ordinary shooting. It had stirred up great excitement. Only one month had pa.s.sed since the president's a.s.sa.s.sination; the feeling against the Southerners was still very bitter, and not only were all the Montgomerys dyed-in-the-wool Alabamians, but some of the relatives had fought on the Southern side. Rumors flew about the city of a mob attacking the prison. There was a guard of soldiers around it the first night, and when they took him from there to the jail on Broadway, it was in the middle of an armed escort. All sorts of stories as to what had caused the shooting were abroad, but the one thing the reports agreed upon was the fact that the quarrel had been of long standing.

This was very exciting to hear about, yet I didn't enjoy talking of it as the other girls did.

Only when I was alone, with hot cheeks and anxious eyes, I read through the long accounts that filled the papers, hoping to find some word in his favor. It seemed to me that the whole city was against Johnny Montgomery. The _Bulletin_ had stories of another shooting down South, though it appeared that that time he had been the one who was shot at; and of how he had lost his money in land speculations of a doubtful character. The _Alta California_ called him a rebel, and said that his career had been "a demoralizing influence to the youth of the city."

Though, on the other hand, it called Mr. Rood our esteemed and lamented citizen, which was puzzling to me, for he was only a gambling-house keeper whom none of the best men in town was friendly with. But the papers spoke very warmly of him; called Mrs. Rood, Senior, his sorrowing mother, and then they mentioned the Spanish Woman. They said she had been in love with Rood, and that he had expected to marry her.

That recalled a memory of what father had told me when I first asked him about the Spanish Woman--that she had money, and influence in high places--and I wondered what that influence could do to Johnny Montgomery's case. Altogether I was much disturbed. I hated to ask questions of father, he had been so distressed over my part in the affair; and besides he had been very busy that week, so many men interviewing him when he was at home--Mr. Dingley, and others who were not elegant, but very businesslike--that I hardly saw him except at meals. Once or twice I had caught him, when he thought I wasn't looking, watching me with an anxious and hara.s.sed expression; but most of the time he was preoccupied.

On the morning of the fourth day after the shooting, as I sat at breakfast, I took up the paper and read that the trial of the People Versus John Montgomery was set for the last week of May. I glanced down the column and a sentence caught my eye. "It is said the prosecution is in possession of sensational evidence which will materially affect the aspect of the case." I sat for some minutes with the paper in my hand, listening to it rustle, gathering my courage.

"Father," I finally said, "do you think that Mr. Montgomery is really wicked?"

He looked over at me with that smile of his which is most serious. "My dear child, I am not Almighty G.o.d."

"But you know what I mean," I protested. "The papers have been saying such nice things about Mr. Rood, but you yourself once said he was an 'insidious and pernicious influence in the community'; and the papers are printing such dreadful things about Johnny Montgomery! They are telling all sorts of stories about him--that he has been in shooting sc.r.a.pes and dishonorable business deals, and--and horrible things," I ended rather uncertainly.

"Oh, no doubt he hasn't been such a bad fellow," father said, pa.s.sing his cup for coffee. "As far as his land operations are concerned, I know for a fact that the 'dishonorable dealing' the _Bulletin_ talks about was all on the side of the men who got his money. But you see he would go into the deal in spite of the advice of the executor of the estate, antagonized all his father's friends--plucked the Roman senators by the beards, as it were;--so of course they were ready to believe the worst of him. Then he went badly into debt, and acc.u.mulated too many creditors to be popular. But Rood, you see, always had money, always kept his escapades quiet, and was very liberal to the city. He has given a deal to different public inst.i.tutions.

They can't do otherwise than praise him."

He took up his letters and began to open them with a paper-knife.

"But," I said, "they say Mr. Montgomery has been engaged to a girl for her money."

Father threw back his head and laughed--I can never tell when I am going to amuse him.

"Engaged to a girl for her money? That's the worst thing on his list, I suppose, eh, Ellie?" Before he finished the sentence he was almost grave again. "I know where you got that information." He shook the paper-knife at me. "Women's gossip is an invention of the devil!

Don't listen to it! The poor fellow has enough real counts to be accused on, G.o.d knows!"

He said the last words with such an emphasis as did away with all the comfort his explanation had brought me. I did not dare to press him further; I was afraid I might hear worse.

He sat a moment frowning down at the tablecloth; then, "How would you like to go down to the ranch for a week or so?" he inquired.

"Alone?" I asked.

"Well, I will go down with you, and stay as long as I can. Abby, of course, will be there all the while. The colts are to be broken in next week--that will be worth seeing; and no doubt the flowers will be beautiful."

I said I would like to--though indeed I did not at all care. I was not thinking of flowers. After father had left the house I went up-stairs to my room; and, first locking the door and drawing the curtains close because I did not want even my climbing white rose to see me, I took out my new bracelet, and clasped it--one gold band around each wrist with its chain swinging between--and closed my eyes and, holding my wrists out, drew them apart until the chain jerked and stopped them--to see just how it felt!

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST DAY IN COURT

As father had said, the breaking of the colts was well worth seeing.

The first day I arrived at the ranch, clinging to the top rail of the corral, I watched the glossy huddled flanks and shoulders and tossing heads of the youngsters crowding together in the middle of the inclosure, quivering with apprehension of the man approaching with his rope; until, the man being unendurably near, one and another would break and wheel, and trot with high head, whinnying, around the corral close to the fence. Then, when Perez had one fast, one end of his rope around the glossy neck, and slowly working toward him, hand over hand, finally touched the velvety head, how the creature started, swerved, tried to back, and felt the jerk of the halter. It made me think of the way the prisoner had started when the policeman touched his arm.

At first their nervous, proud, restive airs reminded me constantly of that strange person; and not only the colts, but some times it was some drifting shadow of cloud, some color or some sound, that inexplicably brought him up to mind; and I would plague myself with wondering what was going on in the city, and what was to become of him. But as the days pa.s.sed and no newspapers came from the city--at least I saw none--and no letters to remind me of what was happening there, I recalled him less and less distinctly. He remained in my mind but as a sort of dream; things about me reminded me only of themselves, and I became absorbed in picking out a new saddle-horse, and searching the meadows over to see if the Mariposa lilies were coming up this year in their accustomed places.

Splendid fields, in early spring filled with wild flowers, stretched down toward the bay, but close around the house were the somber and, to me, more beautiful groves of oaks. To wander away until I had lost sight of the house in their olive glooms and saw nothing around me but dark trunks, crooked elbows of boughs and sweeping leaves, was my delight. I loved to crown myself with their white beards of moss, and fancy I was walking through a cathedral aisle, a princess going to be married. But, whereas I had never needed to imagine a bride-groom before--myself and the crown had been enough--now my imagination insistently placed a figure walking beside me, or coming to meet me under the solemn roof of branches. I had to abandon my crown, and run races with myself before I could leave the figure behind.

On the whole it was safer, I found, just now not to imagine too much, but instead, while father was there, to take long rides with him into the San Mateo Hills; and, after he had gone, shorter excursions in the vicinity of the town. Or else to walk with Abby in the morning down the broad Embarcadero Road to the little wharf on the bay. It was charming enough there when all was idle, with white adobe huts, and dark faces sleeping in the sun, and the lap of the tide on the breakwater. But when a s.h.i.+p was coming in, or was loading to get out, the Embarcadero filled the eye,--carts backing up with vegetables; casks being rolled out on the wharf with a hollow and reverberating sound; hallooings from the boat; and then round she would swing, with a tremendous snapping of canvas, while the shadow of her brown sails, patched with red, floated over all.

The country, and especially the country in spring, seems to have a way of making the place where one has lived before very unreal and far distant. Two weeks of such dreamy living drifted the city, and the violent things that had been done there, so far behind me that I could think of them without a tremor. I could even think of my own part in them as if it had happened in a play.

Then one evening, just before dark, a boy on a heavily lathered horse rode up to the piazza steps, and, like the messenger in a novel, handed me a letter. It was from father. "Have everything in readiness to start to-morrow morning," he wrote. "I shall expect you at the house at six-thirty to-morrow night without fail." This letter threw me into a flutter of excitement. I was accustomed to short-notice orders from father, orders that carried no explanations; but they had always been sent through the mails. A messenger meant great need of haste. I recognized him as father's office-boy. Was my father ill, I asked.

No, he was in excellent health.