The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics)

by Anna Katharine Green

  While listening to this story, I found myself yielding to feelings greatly in contrast to those with which I greeted the relator but a moment before. I became so interested in his “friend’s” case as to quite forget for the time being that I had ever seen or heard of Henry Clavering; and, after learning that the marriage ceremony took place in the State of New York, I replied to him, as near as I can remember, in the following words:

  “In this State, and I believe it to be American law, marriage is a civil contract, requiring neither license, priest, ceremony nor certificate—and in some cases witnesses are not even necessary to give it validity. Of old, the modes of getting a wife were the same as those of acquiring any other species of property, and they are not materially changed at the present time. It is enough that the man and woman say to each other, ‘From this time we are married,’ or, ‘You are now my wife,’ or, ‘my husband,’ as the case may be. The mutual consent is all that is necessary. In fact, you may contract marriage as you contract to lend a sum of money, or to buy the merest trifle.”

  “Then your opinion is——”

  “That, upon your statement, your friend is the lawful husband of the lady in question, presuming, of course, that no legal disabilities of either party existed to prevent such a union. As to the young lady’s age, I will merely say that any fourteen-year-old girl can be a party to a marriage contract.”

  Mr. Clavering bowed, his countenance assuming a look of great satisfaction. “I am very glad to hear this,” said he; “my friend’s happiness is entirely involved in the establishment of his marriage.”

  He appeared so relieved, my curiosity was yet further aroused. I therefore said: “I have given you my opinion as to the legality of this marriage, but it may be quite another thing to prove it, should the same be contested.”

  He started, cast me an inquiring look, and murmured:

  “True.”

  “Allow me to ask you a few questions. Was the lady married under her own name?”

  “She was.”

  “The gentleman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did the lady receive a certificate?”

  “She did.”

  “Properly signed by the minister and witnesses?”

  He bowed his head in assent.

  “Did she keep this?”

  “I cannot say; but I presume she did.”

  “The witnesses were——?”

  “A hired man of the minister——”

  “Who can be found?”

  “Who cannot be found.”

  “Dead or disappeared?”

  “The minister is dead, the man has disappeared.”

  “The minister dead!”

  “Three months since.”

  “And the marriage took place when?”

  “Last July.”

  “The other witness, the lady friend, where is she?”

  “She can be found, but her action is not to be depended upon.”

  “Has the gentleman himself no proofs of this marriage?”

  Mr. Clavering shook his head. “He cannot even prove he was in the town where it took place on that particular day.”

  “The marriage certificate was, however, filed with the clerk of the town?” said I.

  “It was not, sir.”

  “How was that?”

  “I cannot say; I only know that my friend has made inquiry, and that no such paper is to be found.”

  I leaned slowly back and looked at him. “I do not wonder that your friend is concerned in regard to his position if what you hint is true and the lady seems disposed to deny that any such ceremony ever took place. Still, if he wishes to go to law, the court may decide in his favor, though I doubt it. His sworn word is all he would have to go upon, and if she contradicts his testimony under oath, why, the sympathy of a jury is, as a rule, with the woman.”

  Mr. Clavering rose, looked at me with some earnestness, and finally asked in a tone which, though somewhat changed, lacked nothing of its former suavity, if I would be kind enough to give him, in writing, that portion of my opinion which directly bore upon the legality of the marriage; that such a paper would go far toward satisfying his friend that his case had been properly presented, as he was aware that no respectable lawyer would put his name to a legal opinion without first having carefully arrived at his conclusions by a thorough examination of the law bearing upon the facts submitted.

  This request seeming so reasonable, I unhesitatingly complied with it, and handed him the opinion. He took it and, after reading it carefully over, deliberately copied it into his memorandum book. This done, he turned toward me, a strong though hitherto subdued emotion showing itself in his countenance.

  “Now, sir,” said he, rising upon me to the full height of his majestic figure, “I have but one more request to make; and that is, that you will receive back this opinion into your own possession, and in the day you think to lead a beautiful woman to the altar, pause, and ask yourself, ‘Am I sure that the hand I clasp with such impassioned fervor is free? Have I any certainty for knowing that it has not already been given away like that of the lady whom, in this opinion of mine, I have declared to be a wedded wife according to the law of my country?’”

  “Mr. Clavering!”

  But he, with an urbane bow, laid his hand upon the knob of the door. “I thank you for your courtesy, Mr. Raymond, and I bid you good day. I hope you will have no need of consulting that paper before I see you again.” And with another bow he passed out.

  It was the most vital shock I had yet experienced, and for a moment I stood paralyzed. Me! Me! Why should he mix me up with the affair unless—but I would not contemplate that possibility. Eleanore married, and to this man? No, no; anything but that; and yet I found myself continually turning the supposition over in my mind until, to escape the torment of my own conjectures, I seized my hat and rushed into the street in the hope of finding him again and extorting from him an explanation of his mysterious conduct. But by the time I reached the sidewalk, he was nowhere to be seen. A thousand busy men with their various cares and purposes had pushed themselves between us, and I was obliged to return to my office with my doubts unsolved.

  I think I never experienced a longer day; but it passed, and at five o’clock I had the satisfaction of inquiring for Mr. Clavering at the Hoffman House. Judge of my surprise when I learned that his visit to my office was his last action before taking passage upon the steamer leaving that day for Liverpool; that he was now on the high seas and all chance of another interview with him was at an end. I could scarcely believe the fact at first, but after a talk with the cabman who had driven him to my office and thence to the steamer, I became convinced. My first feeling was one of shame. I had been brought face to face with an accused man, had received an intimation from him that he was not expecting to see me again for some time, and had weakly gone on attending to my own affairs and allowed him to escape, like the simple tyro that I was; my next, the necessity of notifying Mr. Gryce of this man’s departure. But it was now six o’clock, the hour set apart for my interview with Mr. Harwell. I could not afford to miss that, so, merely stopping to dispatch a line to Mr. Gryce, in which I promised to visit him that evening, I turned my steps toward home. I found Mr. Harwell there before me.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Trueman! Trueman! Trueman!”

  Often do the spirits

  Of great events stride on before the events,

  And in today, already walks tomorrow.

  —COLERIDGE.

  Instantly a great dread seized me. What revelations might not this man be going to make? But I subdued the feeling and, greeting him with what cordiality I could, settled myself to listen to his explanations.

  But Trueman Harwell had no explanations to give, it seemed; on the contrary, he had come to apologize for the very violent words he had used the evening before: words which, whatever their effect may have been upon me, he now felt bound to declare had been used without sufficient basis in fact to
make their utterance of the least importance.

  “But,” cried I, “you must have thought you had grounds for so tremendous an accusation, or your act was that of a madman.”

  His brow wrinkled heavily, and his eyes assumed a very gloomy expression. “It does not follow,” returned he. “Under the pressure of surprise, I have known men utter convictions no better founded than mine, without running the risk of being called mad.”

  “Surprise? Mr. Clavering’s face or form must, then, have been known to you. The mere fact of seeing a strange gentleman in the hall would have been insufficient to cause you astonishment, Mr. Harwell.”

  He uneasily fingered the back of the chair before which he stood, but made no reply.

  “Sit down,” I again urged, this time with a touch of command in my voice. “This is a serious matter, and I intend to deal with it as it deserves. You have said before that if you knew anything which might serve to exonerate Eleanore Leavenworth from the suspicion under which she stands, you would be ready to impart it.”

  “I said,” he interrupted coldly, “that if I had known of anything which might serve to release her from her unhappy position, I should have spoken.”

  “Do not quibble,” I returned. “You do know something, Mr. Harwell, and I ask you in the name of justice to tell me what it is.”

  “You are mistaken,” he returned doggedly. “I know nothing. I have reasons, perhaps, for thinking certain things, but my conscience will not allow me in cold blood to give utterance to suspicions which may not only damage the reputation of an honest man, but place me in the unpleasant position of an accuser without substantial foundation for my accusations.”

  “You are there already,” I retorted, with equal coldness. “Nothing can make me forget that in my presence you have denounced Henry Clavering as the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth. You had better explain yourself, Mr. Harwell.”

  He gave me a short look, but moved around and took the chair. “You have me at a disadvantage,” he said in a lighter tone. “If you choose to profit by your position and press me to disclose the little I know, I can only regret the necessity under which I lie, and speak.”

  “Then you are deterred by conscientious scruples alone?”

  “Yes, and by the meagerness of the facts at my command.”

  “I will judge of the facts when I have heard them.”

  He raised his eyes to mine, and I was astonished to observe a strange eagerness in their depths; evidently his convictions were stronger than his scruples. “Mr. Raymond,” he began, “you are a lawyer and undoubtedly a practical man, but you may know what it is to scent danger before you see it, to feel influences working in the air over and about you, and yet be in ignorance of what it is that affects you so powerfully, till chance reveals that an enemy has been at your side, or a friend passed your window, or the shadow of death crossed your book as you read, or mingled with your breath as you slept?”

  I shook my head, fascinated by the intensity of his gaze into some sort of response.

  “Then you cannot understand me or what I have suffered these last three weeks.” And he drew back with an icy reserve that seemed to promise but little to my now thoroughly awakened curiosity.

  “I beg your pardon,” I hastened to say, “but the fact of my never having experienced such sensations does not hinder me from comprehending the emotions of others more affected by spiritual influences than myself.”

  He drew himself slowly forward. “Then you will not ridicule me if I say, that upon the eve of Mr. Leavenworth’s murder I experienced in a dream all that afterward occurred; saw him murdered; saw”—and he clasped his hands before him in an attitude inexpressibly convincing, while his voice sank to a horrified whisper—“saw the face of his murderer!”

  I started, looked at him in amazement, a thrill as at the touch of a ghost running through me.

  “And was that——” I began.

  “My reason for denouncing the man I beheld before me in the hall of Miss Leavenworth’s house last night? It was.” And taking out his handkerchief he wiped his forehead, on which the perspiration was standing in large drops.

  “You would, then, intimate that the face you saw in your dream and the face you saw in the hall last night were the same?”

  He gravely nodded his head.

  I drew my chair nearer to his. “Tell me your dream,” said I.

  “Well,” replied he, in a low, awestruck tone, “it was the night before Mr. Leavenworth’s murder. I had gone to bed feeling especially contented with myself and the world at large, for though my life is anything but a happy one”—and he heaved a short sigh—“some pleasant words had been said to me that day, and I was revelling in the happiness they had conferred, when suddenly a chill struck my heart, and the darkness which a moment before had appeared to me as the abode of peace thrilled to the sound of a supernatural cry, and I heard my name, ‘Trueman! Trueman! Trueman!’ repeated three times in a voice I did not recognize, and starting from my pillow beheld at my bedside a woman. Her face was strange to me,” he went on solemnly, “but I can give you each and every detail of it, as bending above me, she stared into my eyes with a growing terror that seemed to implore help, though her lips were quiet and only the memory of that cry echoed in my ears.”

  “Describe the face,” I interposed.

  “It was a round, fair, lady’s face. Very lovely in contour, but devoid of coloring; not beautiful, but winning from its childlike look of trust. The hair, banded upon the low, broad forehead, was brown; the eyes, which were very far apart, gray; the mouth, which was its most charming feature, delicate of make and very expressive. There was a dimple in the chin, but none in the cheeks. It was a face to be remembered.”

  “Go on,” said I.

  “Meeting the gaze of those imploring eyes, I started up. Instantly the face and all vanished, and I became conscious, as we do sometimes in dreams, of a certain movement in the hall below, and the next instant the gliding figure of a man of imposing size entered the library. I remember experiencing a certain thrill at this, half terror, half curiosity, though I seemed to know as if by intuition what he was going to do. Strange to say, I now seemed to change my personality and to be no longer a third party watching these proceedings, but Mr. Leavenworth himself, sitting at his library table and feeling his doom crawling upon him without capacity for speech or power of movement to avert it. Though my back was toward the man, I could feel his stealthy form traverse the passage, enter the room beyond, pass to that stand where the pistol was, try the drawer, find it locked, turn the key, procure the pistol, weigh it in an accustomed hand, and advance again. I could feel each footstep he took as though his feet were in truth upon my heart, and I remember staring at the table before me, as if I expected every moment to see it run with my own blood. I can see now how the letters I had been writing danced upon the paper before me, appearing to my eyes to take the phantom shapes of persons and things long ago forgotten as I had thought; crowding my last moments with regrets and dead shames, wild longings and unspeakable agonies, through all of which that face, the face of my former dream, mingled, pale, sweet, and searching, while closer and closer behind me crept that noiseless foot till I could feel the glaring of the assassin’s eyes across the narrow threshold separating me from death, and hear the click of his teeth as he set his lips for the final act. Ah!”—and the secretary’s livid face showed the touch of awful horror—“what words can describe such an experience as that! In one moment all the agonies of hell in the heart and brain, the next a blank through which I seemed to see afar and, as if suddenly removed from all this, a crouching figure looking at its work with staring eyes and pallid back-drawn lips, and seeming to recognize no face that I had ever known, but one so handsome, so remarkable, so unique in its formation and character, that it would be as easy for me to mistake the countenance of my father as the look and figure of the man revealed to me in my dream.”

  “And this face,” said I, in a voice I failed to re
cognize as my own——

  “Was that of him whom we saw leave Mary Leavenworth’s presence last night and go down the hall to the front door.”

  CHAPTER 8

  A Prejudice

  True, I talk of dreams,

  Which are the children of an idle brain

  Begot of nothing but vain phantasy.

  —ROMEO AND JULIET.

  For one moment I sat a prey to superstitious horror, then my natural incredulity asserting itself, I looked up, and remarked:

  “You say that all this took place the night previous to that of the actual occurrence?”

  He bowed his head.

  “For a warning,” murmured he.

  “But you did not seem to take it as such?”

  “No; I am subject to horrible dreams; I thought but little of it in a superstitious way till I looked next day upon Mr. Leavenworth’s dead body.”

  “I do not wonder you behaved strangely at the inquest; I should have thought you would.”

  “Ah, sir,” returned he with a slow, sad smile, “no one knows what I suffered in my endeavors not to tell more than I actually knew, irrespective of my dream, of this murder and the manner of its accomplishment.”

  “You believe, then,” said I, “that your dream foreshadowed the manner of the murder as well as the fact?”

  “I do.”

  “It is a pity it did not go a little further, then, and tell us how the assassin escaped from, if not how he entered, a house secured as the Leavenworths’ was.”

  His face flushed. “That would have been convenient,” he said. “Also if I had been informed where Hannah was, and why a stranger and a gentleman should have stooped to the committal of such a crime.”

  Seeing that he was nettled, I dropped my bantering vein. “Why do you say a stranger?” I asked. “Are you so well acquainted with all who visit that house as to be able to say who are and who are not strangers to the family?”