The Other Side of the Door Part 8

A joyful feeling went through me at her words--the first really kind, saving words I had heard spoken of him. I almost loved her for them; and the expectation that the next moment I was to hear the explanation of them held me, leaning forward in my chair, breathless.

She made a little imploring movement toward me with her open hands.

"It would be cruel, cruel for a gentle, tender-hearted girl like you to speak such words against him!" A faint color was beginning to s.h.i.+ne in her cheeks, and her eyes had opened wide their wonderful blacks.

"But," I cried, "if you know something in his favor why don't you go into court and tell them about it? If only you would speak to them as you do to me, I know they would believe you! They couldn't help it!"

She shot a quick glance at me, half suspicious, half fierce; but immediately it softened into a rather sad smile. "That is very gracious of you, to speak so; but about the court do not make a mistake! The words I have, the things I know, are not those that speak to the mind but to the heart. All that the lawyers take count of are the facts; and for the jury, they would be more swayed by one word a little innocent-eyed girl will say, than by the most eloquent plea I could offer. It is you who will sway this balance of justice. Do not try to escape from that responsibility. Think, think, of how, when you saw him come out of the door, he looked at you, and with his eyes implored you to be silent!"

I stared at her, terribly wrought upon by the memory she had called up of that look; astounded that she had known of it, had even been able to translate its meaning for me.

"Yes," she said, smiling, "I know all about it. And then you ran home and told them." Her voice grew very caressing. "But that was in the moment when you had lost your head. Now that you have had time to think it all over, now that you know how much it means--oh, surely, you will not speak again! I beg you, in human mercy, not that you plead for him, not that you tell a false story, but only as you are a woman, keep silence, keep silence!"

I listened with increasing dismay, as the hot words poured from her lips; and, with the end, a revulsion of feeling took me, a lost and bewildered sense of being completely astray. It was not to tell me anything she had called me hither--oh, quite the opposite!--it was to try to close my lips. If I hadn't been so blinded by my obstinate hopes I might have thought of this before! I might have saved myself the ordeal; for I had felt the very heart in me weaken at the picture of him her words called up.

"If I could make myself believe as you do," I said, "that what I have to tell will condemn him, even though he is innocent, I should want, myself, to die. But I can't believe, I can't think, that G.o.d can be so unjust as to let him be condemned when he is innocent!"

She let her head drop back, and laughed a little. "You will find, my child, that it is men who control the affairs of the earth; and that if you believe any such fine things of them you will be disappointed. As for the lawyers, they will convict an innocent man as merrily as they will eat their dinner, if only the popular cry is loud enough, and they can get enough of what they call their evidence against him. Do not expect any miraculous intervention on his behalf."

"I don't," I cried stoutly. "But some one must know the truth of what has really happened; and that person surely will come forward and tell what he knows before he will let Mr. Montgomery be condemned. Oh, if only I knew, nothing should keep me from saying it!"

She had drawn herself upright in her chair, her face whiter than her flower, her clenched hands resting on either arm; and now she slowly rose to her feet. Standing there she seemed fairly to tower above me, and looking down with her eyes glimmering upon me through her lashes.

"What if he is guilty?" she said slowly.

The room around me grew dreamy. My head felt light. All the things I had ever believed in seemed to have fallen far, far below me, tiny and inconsequent. I closed my hands hard around the arms of my chair. I clung to it as if it had been my last principle of faith. "I have given my word," I said, "and even if I had not, I should have to tell the truth. It is a question of honor."

She stood a moment longer with her hands still clenched and slightly raised, as if she were going to strike a blow--myself, or her own breast. Then she let them fall limp, and, lifting her shoulders with a superb little scornful motion, "Ah, I thought you were only a fool,"

she said. "I see, you are cold."

She turned sharply about, and crossed the room to where something which looked like a large bench stood against the wall, covered with gold-colored velvet. I saw her fling back the covering and kneel beside it, fumbling with the lid. I heard the clicking of what seemed a series of locks. At last she turned her head and spoke, "Come here!"

I rose and went slowly over to where she knelt in the shadow.

"Sit down."

I seemed involuntarily to obey those imperious words. I took the seat she indicated, a carved stool, drawn near the chest, and saw her just lifting out a long string of blue flas.h.i.+ng stars. It was like a toy, like one of those strings you hang upon a Christmas tree, only a hundred times more brilliant. "See how pretty!" she said, and ran it through her fingers in a little blue stream; then, with an easy motion of her wrist, she tossed it around my shoulders. She put her hand down into the chest and brought out a long, long string of pearls--if pearls had ever been so large--long as the rosaries I used to string of oak b.a.l.l.s, and dropped it over my head. I felt the great weight of it upon my neck.

"Look," she said, and taking up a velvet case, opened it, and showed me, lying on the crimson satin bed, a necklace like a wreath of light.

There was no misunderstanding the preciousness of that. The shock of the realization of what they were sent the blood into my face. Her eyes laughed at me with a gleam that seemed devilish. She threw the box into my lap. She took out rings and covered my fingers with them, drops of blood, red, and brilliant green, and rainbow colors. I couldn't seem to speak or move. I thought she must be mad.

"Here," she said, and leaning toward me, deftly pulled out the pins and took off my hat. Then in both her hands she lifted something from the chest, and, before I could stop her she had pressed it down upon my head. Then she rose. Her face was flushed; her lips parted eagerly on her gleaming teeth. She caught my hand and pulled me in front of a great mirror that hung upon the wall.

I saw reflected there a small, shrinking figure, with a white face, in a white dress, crowned with a circlet of gold, and hung with necklaces that made brightness in the shadow. I heard the Spanish Woman's voice speaking excitedly close beside my cheek.

"There is not their like in this state, in this country. Some of those have come out of the greatest houses in Spain. They will make you rich, they will make you beautiful! They are nothing to me; I will give them to you, every one, to keep for ever! Take them--take them all! And go away! Just for three little days; until the trial is over!"

I shrank from her in mere amazement. In the first moment I did not take in what she meant.

"No, but listen," she cried, catching at me, "I can make it easy for you to go. I have influence--I will help you--I will hide you! We will arrange the story."

I raised my hands to my head. Now I was choking with anger, with tears. "Do you think I would do for these, what I would not do for him?" I lifted the circlet off my head, but my hands shook so that it fell, and rolled on the floor between us, and I believe we both forgot it. "Do you suppose I don't care as much as you do? I would do anything in the world to clear him of this charge. But you don't understand--to clear him! I can't hush it and hide it. It wouldn't make it come right, and I don't believe he wants me to. I don't believe that is what he meant. I know he would hate me if I saved him with such a lie!"

She grew white. A small sharp shadow came on each side of her mouth.

Her lips parted with a sort of gasp. "What do you know about saving or dying; what do you know about hating or loving? You would not lie--oh, no! You would save him--if he were innocent! Why, you child, I would save him the same if he had killed fifty! You are so precious of your little self, and your little virtue! Virtue? Pah! I love him--and that is my virtue!"

Something in the triumphant ring of her voice, in the very strength of her pa.s.sion itself, for the moment made her n.o.ble. Beside her I felt myself small, mean and wretched.

It seemed to me I was in a nightmare and never should awake. I pulled the necklaces, the bracelets, the rings, off me, struggling with the tangled chains and stubborn clasps. I shook my hand free of the last jewel, and then s.n.a.t.c.hing up my turban, pinned it on with trembling fingers, and all the while she stood looking silently at me. One could not tell what was behind her face. But when, at last, I had taken up the little ball of my gloves and stood before her, she spoke in a very soft voice:

"Pardon me, I have lost my wits. But you are made of a material--I do not know it--but it is not flesh and blood. Nevertheless we must not part bad friends."

She turned to the table and, pus.h.i.+ng aside the jewels as if they had been colored gla.s.s, pulled toward her a tray, and took up a gla.s.s decanter. She poured two gla.s.ses of wine, and taking one, gracefully held it out to me. "Will you not drink to his acquittal?" she asked.

"Forgive me," I said, "if I do not drink to it. I will wish for it with all my heart. That will be the same."

"But it is not," she said, advancing, with her bright eyes fixed upon me. "To drink--that is a deed which shows the good will. The rest is but words. Come, you have spoken of great things you would do for him if only you could. Well, here is one small thing. Let me see you make good your words!" Her voice was so sweetly coaxing my hand hesitated toward the gla.s.s. Then, as she thought I was going to take it, something in the expectant, intense look of her caught me; and a dreadful thought flashed into my mind.

I shrank back. "No," I said, "I can not!"

But she was fairly upon me with it. She was leaning over me. "Drink, yes, drink!" She thrust it upon me.

"No, no!" I cried in terror. "I will not!" I flung up my hand with the impulse to keep it off me, and struck the gla.s.s, and overturned it.

She stepped backward and set down the tray with a clang. There was no perceptible change in her face, but suddenly she had become terrible.

"You shall never go out of my house," she said.

My ears wouldn't believe, my senses rejected the meaning of those words. "You would not do such a thing--you would not dare!"

She threw back her head until I could see the great column of her white throat swell, and laughed. "I tell you, my pretty little girl, I would fling away a dozen such as you for only the chance of saving him!"

I saw that she meant it--I understood how well!--I felt like a little dry stick in a river, like a leaf in the wind. I looked behind me.

The windows did not open into the outer air but into a tightly closed conservatory. The sound that was struggling in my throat was a scream, but suppose it would only call in some of her creatures before Mr.

Dingley should hear! I looked squarely into her face, and I am sure, in that moment, that I understood what death might mean. "I am going,"

I said, very quietly, and walked across the room toward the curtains.

She did not try to stop me, and every un.o.bstructed step I took forward I thought, with increasing terror, "What is it that she means to do?"

When I reached the closed curtain the grasp of her hands, which I had dreaded; was the least of my fears. The anteroom was empty, but as I pa.s.sed its threshold I heard her move across the inner room, and then a bell rang, away down in the lower part of the house. There is no describing the feeling that was in me when, with the sound of that uncanny signal in my ears, I opened the door into the grizzly maze of pa.s.sageways.

I remembered that I had turned to the right in coming in, so now I turned to the left, and hurried down that narrow, unlighted way that led me directly to another door. But I remembered that and opened it and stepped through into another hall. Here were three branching ways, and it was only one of these, of course, which would bring me to the _sala_ door. The others might plunge me into Heaven knew what places of the house, or what hands! There was no time to hesitate, I must choose and chance it! There was not one thing--window, furniture or color--to distinguish them. Yet in my agony of mind I gave a glance down one and two of them; and on the floor of the second, a few yards from me some small, light-colored object was lying. I ran forward and stooped. It was the blue bow that had fallen from my hair.

I picked it up with a rush of thankfulness. This was an incident in a fairy tale! It seemed an omen of safety, and as I held it in my hand I fairly ran along the pa.s.sage and came at last triumphantly out into the hall, which I remembered, broad and carpeted with red.

Down the stairs I hastened, my heart going quick with the alarms of my escape, opened the door at the foot of it and came into the little entry. As I entered it I fancied a sound. It was like a step, very soft, so soft as to be hardly audible, not behind me, not on the other side of the door in front of me, but somewhere beyond the entry part.i.tion on my right. It was there, I reckoned, that one of those dark anterooms, through which we had approached the _sala_, must be.

The flesh of my back was p.r.i.c.king, but I was almost safe. Once let me reach Mr. Dingley and I knew that somehow he would get us out. With a great effort I pulled open the heavy door into the _sala_.

"Oh, I--" I began; but then I stopped. The room was so large that it took me some moments to make sure it was empty. Mr. Dingley was not there.

I stood perfectly still in that stupendous place. Everything in me seemed to have stopped moving, too--my blood and my heart. And, in the listening pause, there came again unmistakably, soft, stealthy footsteps, sounding beyond the heavy curtain of the door--sounding as if creatures were gathering in those dark rooms that lay between me and the outer hall.

I didn't scream. I didn't want to. I walked quite quietly across the room to one of the heavily curtained windows at the back, and pulled the hangings aside.