CHAPTER XIX
As the men standing in the far aisle made way for the new witness,Kenwick sat with averted eyes. Through the open window he stared out atthe court-house palms which grew to gigantic size and then diminishedunder his blistering gaze. It was a monstrous thing, he told himself,for Clinton Morgan to allow this; to permit his sister to subjectherself to such a strain. What could he be thinking about? Butunderneath his miserable apprehension for her there was something else;something else that sent the fiery blood rioting through his veins. Forshe must have been willing. Over and over he repeated to himself thisassurance. She must have been willing to come to his defense, for hadshe not been, they could have found a way to avoid it.
Marcreta Morgan, in long fur-trimmed motor-coat and dark veil, took theplace which Granville Jarvis had vacated. She had none of MadeleineMarstan's calm self-assurance, but although she gave her testimony in alow voice, it was distinctly audible throughout the court-room. She satwith one gloved hand clasping the arm of the chair and her eyes restingupon Dayton. Only once, at the very end of the examination, did sheraise them to meet the argus-eyed spectators. Dayton put his questionsin an easy conversational tone as though he and the witness were alonein the room.
"Miss Morgan, how long have you known the prisoner?"
"About two years."
"Describe the occasion of your first meeting."
She did so in words that sounded carefully rehearsed.
"And after he left San Francisco to go East and visit his brother didyou ever hear from him?"
"Yes. He wrote frequently, telling me about his brother's recovery fromillness and other affairs, and then later that he had decided to enlistin the army."
"At that time, Miss Morgan, had you ever known the State's witness here,Richard Glover?"
"It was about that time that I first met him."
"Describe your first encounter with him."
Again the carefully prepared report. But she was gaining inself-possession now, and the veil seemed to annoy her. With steadyfingers she reached up and removed it. Clinton Morgan, watching herfrom the front row of seats, with a hawklike vigilance, was suddenlyreminded of that Sunday night in the old library when she had firstbroken her long silence concerning Roger Kenwick, and had seemed all atonce to come into a belated heritage.
The jurymen were leaning slightly forward in their seats, their eyesfixed upon the regal, fur-coated figure with delicately flushed profileshowing clear-cut as a cameo against the frosted window-pane. Daytonthought that he caught an elusive fragrance that reminded him ofsomething growing in his mother's garden.
"And how many times," he proceeded, "how many times have you seenRichard Glover during the past year?"
"I can't say exactly. For several months after our first meeting Ididn't see him at all. But during the last three months his calls havebeen more and more frequent."
"Has your brother known of these visits?"
"My brother was in government service in Washington until about twomonths ago. He didn't know of them until he returned."
"And has he approved of them?"
"No, I can't say that he has."
"Did he ever give any reason for his opposition?"
"He told me that he suspected Mr. Glover of being an adventurer who wasin need of----"
Here the district attorney interrupted. "We object. The suspicions ofanother person are irrelevant, incompetent, and have nothing to do withthe case."
"Sustained," the judge decreed. "Stick to the facts, Mr. Dayton."
"During those three months, Miss Morgan, has Richard Glover made aneffort to induce you to marry him?"
Her reply was given in a very low voice, but Dayton was sure that thejury caught it and he did not ask her to repeat. It was evident that theaudience heard it, too, for another murmur rose and trailed off intosilence before the lawyer went on. "Is it true that _you_ were the onewho discovered the clue which led you and your brother to seek theservices of Mr. Jarvis on this case?"
She acknowledged it with a single word.
"And what was that clue?"
The gloved fingers closed a little closer over the arm of the chair. Andthen followed a story which caused Roger Kenwick to tear his gaze awayfrom the fantastic palm-trees and fix it upon Richard Glover's face.There was no resentment in his eyes, but only the dawning of a greatlight. Granville Jarvis, watching him as a physician might watch besidethe bedside of an unconscious patient, knew by the leaping flame inthose somber eyes that the last lap of the long journey had beencovered, and that Roger Kenwick's memory had come home to him. But ifthat knowledge brought him a scientist's satisfaction, he gave no signof it. After that one intent moment, his eyes returned to thewitness-stand and fixed themselves upon Marcreta Morgan's face. Daytonwas proceeding relentlessly.
"If you knew from the first that Richard Glover had stolen this storywhich he read to you as his own, why didn't you relate the circumstanceto Mr. Kenwick when you saw him on the night that he was arrested formurder?"
The reply came haltingly, as though the witness were feeling her wayover uneven ground. "My brother and I had consulted Mr. Jarvis aboutthat and he had advised against it. He didn't wish to arouse anysuspicions in--in the prisoner's mind just then. And--well, you see, Mr.Kenwick and I had not seen each other since his--illness and duringthat first meeting we both avoided everything connected with--with thetragedy as much as possible. Of course if we had known that this chargeof--of crime was to be preferred against him, I suppose we would haveacted differently."
This was no carefully rehearsed response, but nothing that she couldhave said would have disclosed more clearly the inside workings of theopposition's conspiracy. The web that had been woven around the prisonerhad enmeshed with him every one who had ever been intimately associatedwith his past.
And now that romance had entered upon the sordid scene the whole aspectof the case was changed. The air became charged all at once with anelectric current of sympathy. To every man and woman in the room RichardGlover now appeared in the guise of a baffled adventurer, and RogerKenwick as a man who had loved, and because of cruel circumstance hadlost. But had he really lost? The crux of public interest shifted withthe abruptness of a weathercock, from mystery to romance.
"You assert, Miss Morgan, that you knew this story, 'A Brother ofBluebeard,' to be the one which the prisoner had read to you before heleft for the East almost two years ago. What proof could you furnish ofthis?"
"At the time that Mr. Glover read the story to me I had in my possessionthe sequel to it, which Mr. Kenwick had sent me in manuscript for mycriticism, just before he left for training-camp. It used many of thesame characters and was rooted in the same plot."
"Could you produce that manuscript?"
"Mr. Jarvis can produce it. I turned it over to him."
The former witness leaned forward and laid a heap of pencil-writtenmanuscript upon the table. But Dayton scarcely glanced at it. With onehand he pushed it aside, and then shifted the current of his interestinto another channel. "When, and by what means, Miss Morgan, did youdiscover that Roger Kenwick had returned from France mentally disabled?"
Her reply to this question came in a voice that was struggling againstheavy odds for composure. "It was exactly one year ago to-day that Ireceived that news. Several letters of mine to--the prisoner werereturned to me unopened. And with them came a communication from Mr.Everett Kenwick telling me that--that it had become necessary for themto send his brother to a private asylum."
"Did you know where that asylum was?"
"Not then. He told me that he was debating over several different placesbut that he had almost decided upon a friend's home in southernCalifornia. He didn't tell me where this home was. I think he realizedthat--that I would rather not know."
"And when did you discover that that place was Mont-Mer?"
"On the night that Mr. Kenwick was reported dead."
A murmur that was distinctly a wave of sympathy filled the chamber. Buteag
erness to catch the next question quieted it.
"After that first letter telling you about the prisoner's misfortune,did you ever hear from Mr. Everett Kenwick again?"
"Only once. Just a week before he died, he wrote again. He had just losthis wife and he seemed to have a premonition that he was not going tolive very long."
She was feeling for her handkerchief in the pocket of the fur-trimmedcoat. Some of the men in the court-room averted their eyes. The face ofmore than one woman softened. Clinton Morgan sat regarding his sisterwith a curious composure. In his eyes was that mixture of compassion andawe that he had worn on the night when the gold and ivory book hadbetrayed to him her secret.
"Yes?" Dayton went on gently, but with the same relentless persistence."He wrote to you again? And what did he say?"
"He said that he wanted me to have something that had belonged--to hisbrother. He told me that he felt that Roger Kenwick would have wished meto have it. And with the letter there came a box in which I found----"
She had finished her search in the pocket of the motor-coat, and now sheheld something between her gloved fingers. "Mr. Everett Kenwick himselfhad only received it a short time before. There had been some delay andconfusion about it, owing I suppose to his brother having been senthome--in just the way that he was. He himself never knew that he had wonit. But it was such a wonderful display of courage----And the Frenchofficer whose life he had saved sent a letter, too, saying that Francewas grateful and wanted to express her appreciation in some way so----"
And then she held it up before them; before the lawyers and the juryand the crowd of spectators--a bit of metal on its patch of ribbon.Holding it out before them, she sat there like a sovereign waiting toconfer a peerage. And not the judge's gavel nor the commanding voice ofthe district attorney could still the tumult that rose and swelled intotumultuous applause.
* * * * *
On the day following the notorious Kenwick murder trial, the Mont-Merpapers carried little other news. A special representative from the "SanFrancisco Clarion" and several Los Angeles journalists fed their copyover the wires and had extras out in both cities by eight o'clock.
"Kenwick Acquitted" was the head-line which his own paper ran, with hispicture and one of Richard Glover sharing prominence upon the frontpage. And because of Kenwick's previous connection with this daily andthe fact that the two star witnesses for the defense were well known inthe Bay region, the "Clarion's" story was the most comprehensive andcolorful.
It opened with a report of Dayton's speech which, it appeared, hadelectrified every one in the court-room, including the prisoner himself.But it had been unnecessary for the attorney to make a plea for hisclient, after the quietly dramatic testimony of the last witness forthe defense. In thrilling terms the "Clarion" described Kenwick's finalservice at the front, when he had made his way alone acrossNo-Man's-Land and saved for France one of her most gallant officers, andhad given in exchange that thing which is more precious than lifeitself. Only through an accident, which had killed the man who had meantto batten upon his misery, had he been released from a pitiable bondage.
Having thus sketched in his "human interest," the reporter proceeded totell the story which had proved so overwhelmingly convincing to the juryand audience. How, in his skilfully planned narrative, Richard Gloverhad transposed the identities of the two dead men. How, upon receivinghis commission from Everett Kenwick, he had first turned over his chargeto Ralph Regan, admitted by his own sister to be an addict to drugs anda ne'er-do-well whom she was helping, in a surreptitious way, tosupport. How the accounts, forwarded from the Kenwick lawyer in NewYork, showed that Regan must have received out of the arrangement onlyhis living and enough of the drug to keep him satisfied but not whollyirresponsible. How, upon his own infrequent visits to the patient (whomhe himself had conducted across the continent instead of the mythicalBailey) Glover had foreseen two months before the tragedy that Regancould no longer be relied upon and had told him that he was about to bedismissed.
How he had then secured the services of one Edward Marstan, whom hebelieved to be without family, and who represented himself as aphysician in good standing but heavily in debt. How the arrangement hadbeen made that he assume charge of the patient at the Mont-Mer depot,whither Kenwick was to be brought up from a day's sojourn in Los Angelesby Regan. How the physician, accompanied by his wife, had arrived fromSan Francisco that very day; how Marstan had quarreled with his wife,and leaving her unconscious in a room at Rest Hollow, had gone into townto get his charge. How, on the way out from town he had been killed inan accident while driving his own car, and how, by a curious fate,Kenwick had been restored to sanity and had found his way back alone tohis former asylum.
The story then went on to relate how Ralph Regan, evidently desperateover his loss of a home and drug supplies, had returned to Rest Hollowby stealth the following night, either to make a plea to the newcaretaker or to search for drugs, and of how, finding the house dark andapparently deserted, he had forsaken all hope of reinstatement and hadended his life with the revolver which he had brought either for murderof Marstan or for suicide. The shot which he fired, the paper stated,had evidently been used to test his own nerve or the cartridges; and ithad done its work. Letters written to his sister a few weeks before thetragedy, and produced by her in court, indicated a depression amountingto acute melancholia.
Recalled to the witness-stand and subjected to crucialcross-examination, the gardener at Rest Hollow had broken down in histestimony, admitted that he was afraid of Glover, and that although hehad been in too dazed a condition on the fatal night to examine the bodyof the dead man, he knew Ralph Regan to have been the former attendantand had frequently talked to him about the patient's symptoms, aboutwhich Regan appeared to know little and care less.
The narrative then went on to tell how Richard Glover had discoveredamong the possessions of his charge certain manuscripts which he deemedsuitable for publication, and how he had, after the death of the elderKenwick, sold one of them under the name of Ralph Regan, choosing areal rather than a fictitious name in order that he might shift thetheft to helpless shoulders if it were ever discovered. How he had, withthe Kenwick capital entrusted to him, invested in large realty holdingswhich had completely absorbed his attention. How he had padded hisaccounts in order to wring extra money from Everett Kenwick under theguise of "special treatments" for the patient and so on. How on thenight of the fatality he had driven to Rest Hollow from Los Angeles togive some final instructions to the new employee, and how, stumblingupon the dead body of Regan, he had been shocked to find himselfinvolved in a tragedy. How he had then cold-bloodedly decided to havethe body identified as Kenwick, partly to save himself from the chargeof criminal neglect and partly because he knew that Everett Kenwick hadleft in his will a bequest that was to come to him "for faithfulservice" upon the death or recovery of his brother. How, not dreamingthat his charge would ever recover, he had thus used his death as ameans of gaining extra funds which he badly needed just at that time.
How he had accordingly selected certain of the patient's personalpossessions with which he had been entrusted, to deceive the coroner.How all the subsequent action had seemed to play into his hands: thecoroner's easy acquiescence in the suicide theory and the identity ofthe body; the chance discovery, through Arnold Rogers, that the story ofKenwick's self-destruction had already been accepted by the community.
How, preceding the coroner's inquest, Glover had spent the morningtracing the antecedent action of the tragedy and had heard of theaccident which had killed Marstan. How he had erred in suspecting thatthe real victim of the tragedy was Kenwick and that the attendant hadhad the body identified as his own and then made his escape, fearing tocommunicate the news of the disaster to his employer. How he, Glover,had been startled to discover later that Kenwick was not only alive buthad apparently recovered his mental health.
The remainder of the story was given as the testimony of MadeleineMarsta
n, well-known favorite in the former Alcazar stock company, andGranville Jarvis, expert psychologist, whose skilful work was a strongplea for the admission of that newest of the sciences into court-roomprocedure.
During this latter testimony, the "Clarion" asserted, interest had beendivided between the ultimate fate of the accused and the valuablecontributions which the laboratory experiments of the witness had giventhe case. The word-tests which he had provided to the medium were, hehad explained, one of the surest means of discovering the train ofassociations which lodge in the guilty mind. He had never been convincedthat Glover himself had committed a murder, but suspected that his crimelay in trying to fasten it upon a man whom he knew to be both innocentand helpless. The cards, containing a mixture of irrelevant and relevantwords, had been shown him and then he had been instructed to turn hishead in the opposite direction. These instructions he had carefullyobserved except in the cases of terms which held evil associations. Insuch cases his eyes almost invariably turned back to the card with theprinted word. Such terms as "gravel" and "oleander" had produced thisattraction. But they had also aroused his suspicions. And from the dayof his first call upon "Madame Rosalie" the situation between them hadbeen a succession of clever manoeuvers. Neither one of them had daredto let the other go. But in this encounter Mrs. Marstan had had theadvantage. What he was able to find out about her was little comparedwith what she had discovered concerning him.
That she possessed unmistakable psychic powers could not be disputed. Bya means of communication, which she could not herself explain, she hadreceived at the time of Roger Kenwick's interview with her a messagefrom the spirit of Isabel Kenwick, confessing that it was she who hadunwittingly brought Richard Glover into his life, and entreating hisforgiveness.
As to the concluding story of the actress, it was concerned with herdescription of how she had identified the body of her husband at themorgue on the evening of her flight from Rest Hollow; of how she hadturned all arrangements for its shipment and burial over to the Mont-Merand San Francisco undertakers, desiring to figure as little as possiblein connection with the death of the man who had ruined her life. Of howshe had succeeded in paying the debts against his name and had recentlysigned a stage contract with an eastern theatrical company.
When the trial was ended the crowd that jammed the room rose and surgedtoward the man in the prisoner's box, like a human tidal wave. "Keepthem back, Dayton," Kenwick implored. "I don't want to talk to them."
Somehow his attorney managed to check the onrush, and the throng ofcongratulatory spectators was headed toward the exits. The room wasalmost empty when some one touched the prisoner's arm.
"Can you give me a few words?" It was one of the local reporters."You're a newspaper man yourself, Mr. Kenwick, and you know how it isabout these things."
Kenwick shook him off. "Come around later, to the hotel, if you like,"he said, and turned to take a hand that was timidly held out to him.
"I didn't know whether you'd be willing to speak to me or not, Mr.Kenwick. But I just wanted to tell you that I'm satisfied, more thansatisfied with--the way it has all come out."
"I am glad to hear that, Mrs. Fanwell," Kenwick told her gravely. "Iwould never have been quite satisfied myself unless I had heard you saythat. I wish you would leave your address with Dayton, for, you see, Ifeel a little bit responsible for you, and I would like to put you inthe way of getting a new hold on life."
The only other person in the room with whom he stopped to talk wasMadeleine Marstan, who stood in conversation with Dayton near the door.To her his words of thanks were the more eloquent perhaps because theycame haltingly, impeded by an emotion which he could not master.
"It was nothing," she told him. "Nothing that I didn't owe you, Mr.Kenwick."
"I don't see that you owed me anything," he objected. "As the affair hasdeveloped, we were both the victims of an ugly plot. It certainly wasnot your fault. And once out of that accursed house, _you_ were free."
"Not my fault--no," she repeated, "but my responsibility afterward." Shegazed past him out of the window where, at the curb, Arnold Rogers wasassisting a fur-coated figure into the Paddington limousine. "You see,Edward Marstan was my husband and----Well, some day you may come torealize, Mr. Kenwick, that when a woman has loved, there is no such wordas 'free.'"
At the foot of the stairway Kenwick spoke with an almost curtsuppression to Granville Jarvis. "I'm going over to the hotel withMorgan. Come over there."
The other man made no reply save a slight inclination of his head, andthere was in his eyes an expression which haunted and mystified thereleased prisoner.
"Jarvis is a wizard," he said to Clinton Morgan as they walked the fewshort blocks to Mont-Mer's leading hostelry. "If they ever let down thebars of the court-room to men like that, they'll revolutionize legalprocedure. He seems to have seen this case from every angle."
"From more angles than you imagine," his friend replied. "And he had letme in on some of the most interesting of his findings that were notrevealed in court. For instance, he examined that gardener this morning,just for his own satisfaction. The boy was willing, even flattered bythe attention. Jarvis told me afterward that a witness like that oughtto be ruled out of court. And he is typical of the mass of men and womenwho assist in acquitting the guilty and sending the innocent to thegallows. The average physician examining him would pronounce him normal.He can hear a sound distinctly, for instance, but he is afflicted withthat common defect, the equivalent, Jarvis says, of color-blindness inthe visual realm, which makes it impossible for him to tell whether thesound comes from behind or in front of him. And he lacks completely avisual memory. He could recall the exact words that Gifford said to himon the night of the suicide but he couldn't remember whether the bodywas covered or uncovered when he saw it. And as for the tests withGlover----By the way, what are you going to do with Glover?"
"I don't know yet. I haven't got that far. I think I can forgive himeverything except that infamous story about Everett being close with mewhile I was under age. Why, I had too much money while I was in college,Morgan. That's the chief reason why I didn't push my literary work withgreater zeal. The creative temperament is naturally indolent. Itrequires a spur, not necessarily a financial one, but so much the betterif it is. Of course Glover and I will have to have a financialreckoning. I can see now why my frantic messages to our family lawyerwere never answered. I suppose he's had dozens of communications frompeople purporting to be connected by blood or marriage with the Kenwickestate. Yes, Glover has got some things to answer to me for, but----"His mind flew back to that last evening that he had spent in thefire-lit living-room on Pine Street. "He brought hell into my life for atime," he ended slowly. "But he brought--something else into it, too."
It was half an hour later, after Kenwick had bathed and dressed fordinner, that Granville Jarvis came up to his room. Kenwick admitted himwith an inarticulate word of greeting. Then while with fumbling fingershe put on a fresh collar, he made an attempt at normal conversation.
"Been expecting you," he said. "Morgan is down in the lobby. We'll allhave dinner here first and then----"
"Can't do it," Jarvis cut in. "I have another engagement for dinner, andI'm leaving town on the eight-forty northbound. I just ran up to saygood-by and--good luck."
"Where are you going?"
Jarvis smiled. "To Argentina, so far as you are concerned. But you cancall it Columbia if you like. I'm returning to my work there. You see,I've been away on leave."
"You've got to stay long enough for me to tell you something," Kenwick'svoice cut in authoritatively. "But you couldn't stay long enough,Jarvis, for me to thank you for what you've done."
His caller held up a hand. "Please don't. Not that--please."
"But," Kenwick went on, "you've got to hear an apology. I was just abouton the verge of a collapse over there, and when you got up in court asthe representative of Glover----Well, I didn't know the game, you seeand I thought----"
"I know; Brutus."
It was Jarvis who finished the sentence. "And in asense, you were right," he went on slowly. "For what I did, I did--notfor you."
"You did it for science, of course; because to you I was an interestingcase. But what can I ever do to repay you? How can----"
"I have been paid." The same haunting, baffling expression was in thescientist's eyes, and he was not looking at the man whom his testimonyhad freed.
"Oh, I don't mean money!" Kenwick cried hotly. "I know you have that!"
"I don't mean money, either." He forced his gaze back to his host. Andthen that sixth sense which is in the soul of every creative artistawoke in Kenwick's being and made his eyes luminous with understanding.
Jarvis picked up his hat from the chair into which it had dropped. "I'mgoing out to the Paddingtons' for dinner," he said casually. "I'll haveabout----" He snapped open the cover of his watch, then closed it again."The most devilish thing about life on this planet, Kenwick, is that wecan't do very much for each other. The game is largely solitaire. Butfor any good that I ever did I've been well repaid. Any man ought to besatisfied, I think, when the gods allow him two full hours--in Utopia."
CHAPTER XX
It was the morning after his acquittal that Kenwick and Marcreta Morgandrove out of the Paddington gateway in one of the Utopia machines. Theyturned to the left and took the stretch of perfect asphalt road that ledto the old Raeburn house.
The mystery of its destruction had never been explained. Richard Glover,and every one else who was connected with the case of Ralph Regan, hadproved a satisfactory alibi. The owner of Rest Hollow had been notifiedby wire of its destruction and he had replied with orders that thegrounds were to be kept locked and admission denied to all callers. Ithad undoubtedly been one of the handsomest homes in a community ofhandsome homes, but since the first days of its existence fate haddestined it for tragedy. And perhaps its owner was relieved to know thatonly a pile of whitening ashes marked the grave of his own romance andthe prison of another man's hope. At all events, the mystery of itspassing never has been solved, and conjecture concerning it is still afavorite topic around the tea-tables of Mont-Mer's fashionable suburbandistrict.
"But I want to _see_ it in ruins," Kenwick had told Marcreta after theirfirst radiant hour together. "I want to know that it is really gone offthe face of the earth, so that when it comes to me in memory I canassure myself that it is only a dream."
They turned the last corner and came suddenly in sight of the tall irongate. Across it a sinister chain swung ominously, warning the world awayfrom communication with that most dreadful affliction that can befall ahuman soul. The ruins of Rest Hollow loomed somber and shapeless beforethem, and Roger Kenwick brought his car to a stop in the very spot whereArnold Rogers had once halted, hesitated, and then gone on his way.Guarding the pile like a battered but relentless sentinel was the tall,charred chimney of the dining-room. As he looked at it, Kenwick's handsought instinctively for that of the woman beside him, as though toassure himself of her reality. And then he heard himself ask thequestion that for so long had beaten against his brain.
"How could you do it? How could you send me away that night, dear, intothe horrors of war and--this, without hope?"
"I couldn't know," she told him desperately. "I couldn't foresee what wascoming. And I wanted you to win a place in the world. I wanted you towin, as I knew you could if you were unhampered by----"
"Unhampered!" He echoed the word incredulously, as though it were quitenew and its meaning not clear. "Is any one ever hampered by love andinspiration and all that----"
"You don't understand," she said. "Nobody can understand physicaldisability except those who have suffered it. My mother had a sister whowas a bed-ridden invalid. She helped her husband to find his place inthe world and keep it. But he never seemed to realize that she hadhelped him. He always thought, though I suppose he never said, that hismarriage had held him back. And she died at last of a broken heart.Through all my youth I had her tragedy before me."
There was a moment of silence between them. And then Kenwick spokeslowly. "You hadn't much faith in me, Marcreta. You admit now that youloved me, yet you hadn't much faith--in my character or my----"
"But love comes a long time before faith, Roger. It always does. And Iwas younger then. I didn't know so much about life and--and character.But, oh, when they wrote me about this! I would have given anything onearth to have lived over again our last night together!"
"I know! I know!" His voice was vibrant with self-reproach.
"Your brother must have been splendid," she went on. "He wrote me such awonderful letter. But he couldn't soften it; nobody can ever dilute thebig tragedies of life. We must drink them unstrained. I knew that youwere somewhere in this county, and when I came down here, just that onetime, I liked to feel that I was near you. I couldn't have endured tosee you, but I wanted to be near you for a little while before--I didanything else. And then that night when you came back, I couldn't besure----Everything was so changed. You were so different from thecarefree boy who had gone away. I knew, of course, that you would be; ina sense, I wanted you to be. But I didn't want you to feel bound byanything that had gone before. I was afraid you might feel that way. Oh,a woman is at such a disadvantage, Roger. She is always at adisadvantage if the man she loves is honorable and chivalrous."
"I had work to do," he reminded her gently. "I had to quiet the title tomy name. For when a woman marries a man, Marcreta, she marries his past,every bit of it. Before I could offer my life to you again, I had to becertain that every minute of it was clean and decent and above reproach.I was not willing to let any of it go on the grounds ofirresponsibility. I never would have been satisfied. And you never wouldhave been satisfied. There would always have been for both of usterrible moments of doubt. The bramble-bush lay between us. I had totear it away first; I had to tear it away and look bravely at whateverlay underneath."
A shaft of golden sunlight suddenly broke through the January clouds andslanted across the road. Roger Kenwick's eyes followed it as thoughseeking for the treasure that might lie revealed at last at the end of arainbow. A sharp exclamation escaped him. And he felt the quick responseof the hand that still lay in his.
Drawing the heavy motor-cloak closer about her, he helped MarcretaMorgan out of the car and guided her to a spot about a hundred yards onthe other side of the iron gate. "I remember now!" His words came in thelow, awed voice of one who suddenly encounters in broad daylight someobject that has played conspicuous part in an evil and oft-recurringdream.
"At last!" he said, and stood rooted to the roadside gazing at the thingfor which, during the last two months, he had been so desperatelygroping. "This one thing," he went on, "this one thing about thoseimpenetrable months here I do remember. I believe that if I had chancedto see it on that afternoon of my recovery, if I had only chanced tocome this way instead of around by the other road, it might haverestored to me some memory of this place."
They stood now on the edge of the strip of pavement, where dead leavesspread a spongy carpet between the asphalt and the barbed-wire fencethat bordered the opposite estate. And what they looked upon was a hugeboulder, half embedded in the earth. By some mighty and persistent forceit had been rent asunder, and now, up through the cleft which tore itssurface with a long jagged scar, a sapling eucalyptus-tree, perfectlyshaped and beautifully proportioned, had pushed its way. A zephyr orperhaps a bird had sown the seed in this rock-bound prison. And with avitality that appeared incredible it had taken root and grown there,stretching vigorous, red-tipped leaves heavenward. In some miraculousmanner its tap-root had found the sustaining soil, and its flame-coloredcrown the sunlight. There it stood, on the lonely road to Rest Hollow, aliving torch of liberty, flaunting its heroic triumph above theshattered body of its foe.
"On the day that Glover first brought me here, I saw that tree."Kenwick's voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "I remember lookingout at it from an opening in the fence. I didn't know just why I washere, but I had a sense
of--I can't describe it to you--but it was asense of _imprisonment_. I knew that if I wanted to get out of thatplace I couldn't do it, and there's no feeling on earth like that. Andthen I saw--this, and it thrilled me. In a curious, unexplainable way itgave me hope. I don't recall anything else about the place, and I don'tremember whether I ever saw this again. But during these last two monthsI have been looking for something that I knew I had lost out of my life,and here it is."
Marcreta Morgan reached over and touched the sapling's damp bark withreverent fingers. From a cleft in the conquered boulder came the pungentodor of the crushed leaves that were sustaining this new life. Sheturned to the man beside her with shining eyes.
"The resurrection!" she cried.
He drew her close to him beneath the tender branches of the valiantlittle sapling.
"An imprisoned soul," he whispered, "liberated at last--by the miracleof love."
The Rest Hollow Mystery Page 19