The Hollow of Her Hand Part 53

"But she is not going to marry Leslie."

"I know it--I knew it yesterday," he cried triumphantly. "She loves me, Sara. Didn't she say as much to you?"

"Yes, Brandon, she loves you. But she will not be your wife."

"What is all this mystery? Why can't she be my wife? What is there to prevent?"

She regarded him with dark, inscrutable eyes. Many seconds pa.s.sed before she spoke.

"Would you want her for your wife if you knew she had belonged to another man?"

He turned very cold. The palms of his hands were wet, as with ice-water. Something dark seemed to flit before his eyes.

"I will not believe that of her," he said, shaking his head with an air of finality.

"That is not an answer to my question."

"Yes, I would still want her," he declared steadily.

"I merely meant to put you to the harshest test," she said, and there was relief in her voice. "She is a good girl, she is pure.

I asked my question because until yesterday I had reason to doubt her."

"Good heavens, how could you doubt those honest, guiltless eyes of--"

She shook her head sadly. "To answer you I would have to reveal the secret that makes it impossible for her to become your wife, and that I cannot, will not do."

"Is it fair to me?"

"Perhaps not, but it is fair to her, and that is why I must remain silent."

"Before G.o.d, I shall know the truth,--from her, if not from you,--and--"

"If you love her, if you will be kind to her, you will let her go her way in peace."

He was struck by the somewhat sinister earnestness of her words.

"Tell me where I may find her," he said, setting his jaw.

"It will not be difficult for you to find her," she said, frowning, "if you insist on pursuing her."

"You drive her away from your house, Sara Wrandall, and yet expect me to believe that your motives are friendly. Why should I accept your word as final?"

"I did not drive her away, nor did I ask her to stay."

He stared hard at her.

"Good Lord, what is the meaning of all this?" he cried in perplexity.

"What am I to understand?"

The car had come to a stop under the porte cochere. She laid her hand on his arm.

"If you will come in with me, Brandon, I will try to make some things clear to you."

He left in half-an-hour, walking rapidly down the drive, his coat b.u.t.toned closely, although the morning was hot and breathless. He held in his hand a small sc.r.a.p of paper on which was written: "If I loved you less, I would come to you now and lie to you. If you love me, Brandon, you will let me go my way. It is the only course.

Sara is my friend, and she is yours. Be guided by her, and believe in my love for you. Hetty."

And now, as things go in fairy stories, we should prepare ourselves to see Hetty pa.s.s through a season in drudgery and hards.h.i.+p, with the ultimate quintessence of joy as the reward for her trials and tribulations. Happily, this is not a fairy tale. There are some things more fantastic than fairy tales, if they are not spoiled in the telling. Hetty did not go forth to encounter drudgery, disdain and obloquy. By no manner of means! She went with a well-filled purse, a definite purpose ahead and a determined factor behind.

In a manner befitting her station as the intimate friend of Mrs.

Challis Wrandall, as the cousin of the Murgatroyds, as the daughter of Colonel Castleton of the Indian Corps, as a person supposed to be possessed of independent means withal, she went, with none to question, none to cavil.

Sara had insisted on this, as much for her own sake as for Hetty's; she argued, and she had prevailed in the end. What would the world think, what would their acquaintances think, and above all what would the high and mighty Wrandalls think if she went with meek and lowly mien?

Why should they make it possible for any one to look askance?

And so it was that she departed in state, with a dozen trunks and boxes; an obsequiously attended seat in the parlour-car was hers; a telegram in her bag a.s.sured her that rooms were being reserved for herself and maid at the Ritz-Carlton; alongside it reposed a letter to Mr. Carroll, instructing him to provide her with sufficient funds to carry out the plan agreed upon; and in the seat behind sat the lady's maid who had served her for a twelve-month and more.

The timely demise of the venerable Lord Murgatroyd afforded the most natural excuse for her trip to England. The old n.o.bleman gave up the ghost, allowing for difference in time, at the very moment when Mrs. Redmond Wrandall was undoing a certain package from London, which turned out to be a complete history of what his forebears had done in the way of propagation since the fourteenth century.

Hetty did not find it easy to accommodate her pride to the plan which was to give her a fresh and rather imposing start in the world. She was to have a full year in which to determine whether she should accept toil and poverty as her lot, or emulate the symbolic example of d.i.c.ky the canary bird. At the end of the year, unless she did as d.i.c.ky had done, her source of supplies would be automatically cut off and she would be entirely dependent upon her own wits and resources. In the interim, she was a probationary person of leisure.

It had required hours of persuasion on the part of Sara Wrandall to bring her into line with these arrangements.

"But I am able and willing to work for my living," had been Hetty's stubborn retort to all the arguments brought to bear upon her.

"Then let me put it in another light. It is vital to me, of course, that you should keep up the show of affluence for a while at least.

I think I have made that clear to you. But here is another side to the matter; the question of recompense."

"Recompense?" cried Hetty sharply.

"Without your knowing it, I have virtually held you a prisoner all these months, condemned in my own judgment if not in the sight of the law. I have taken the law unto myself. You were not convicted of murder in this Unitarian court of mine, but of another sin. For fifteen months you have been living under the shadow of a crime you did not commit. I was reserving complete punishment for you in the shape of an ign.o.ble marriage, which was to have served two bitter ends. Well, I have had the truth from you. I believe you to be absolutely innocent of the charge I held over you, for which I condemned you without a hearing. Then, why should I not employ my own means of making rest.i.tution?"

"You have condescended to believe in me. That is all I ask."

"True, that is all you ask. But is it altogether the fair way out of it? To ill.u.s.trate: our criminal laws are less kind to the innocent than to the guilty. Our law courts find a man guilty and he is sent to prison. Later on, he is found to be innocent--absolutely innocent. What does the State do in the premises? It issues a formal pardon,--a mockery, pure and simple,--and the man is set free. It all comes to a curt, belated apology for an error on the part of justice. No substantial recompense is offered. He is merely pardoned for something he didn't do. The State, which has wronged him, condescends to pardon him! Think of it! It is the same as if a man knocked another down and then said, before he removed his foot from the victim's neck: 'I pardon you freely.' My father was opposed to the system we have--that all countries have--of pardoning men who have been unjustly condemned. The innocent victim is pardoned in the same manner as the guilty one who comes in for clemency. I accept my father's contention that an innocent man should not be shamed and humiliated by a PARDON. The court which tried him should re-open the case and honourably ACQUIT him of the crime. Then the State should pay to this innocent man, dollar for dollar, all that he might have earned during his term of imprisonment, with an additional amount for the suffering he has endured. Not long ago in an adjoining State a man, who had served seventeen years of a life sentence for murder, was found to be wholly innocent. What happened?

A PARDON was handed to him and he walked out of prison, broken in spirit, health and purse. His small fortune had been wiped out in the futile effort to prove his innocence. He gave up seventeen years of his life and then WAS PARDONED for the sacrifice. He should have been paid for every day spent in prison. That was the very least they could have done."

"I see now what you mean," mused Hetty. "I have never thought of it in that way before."

"Well, it comes to this in our case, Hetty: I have tried you all over again in my own little court and I have acquitted you of the charge I had against you. I do not offer you a silly pardon. You must allow me to have my way in this matter, to choose my own means of compensating you for--"

"You saved my life," protested Hetty, shaking her head obstinately.

"My dear, I appreciate the fact that you are English," said Sara, with a weary smile, "but won't you PLEASE see the point?"

Then Hetty smiled too, and the way was easier after that for Sara.

She gained her quixotic point, and Hetty went away from Southlook feeling that no woman in all the world was so bewildering as Sara Wrandall.

When she sailed for England, two days later, the newspapers announced that the beautiful and attractive Miss Castleton was returning to her native land on account of the death of Lord Murgatroyd, and would spend the year on the Continent, where probably she would be joined later on by Mrs. Wrandall, whose period of mourning and distress had been softened by the constant and loyal friends.h.i.+p of "this exquisite Englishwoman."