“I don’t want her watched here; take her below. I cannot leave while she remains.”
“Are you not assuming a trifle the master?”
“I don’t know, perhaps. If I am, it is because I have something in my possession which excuses my conduct.”
“What is that, the letter?”
“Yes.”
Agitated now in my turn, I held out my hand. “Let me see,” I said.
“Not while that woman remains in the room.”
Seeing him implacable, I returned to Mrs. Belden.
“I must entreat you to come with me,” said I. “This is not a common death; we shall be obliged to have the coroner here, and other. You had better leave the room and go below.”
“I don’t mind the coroner; he is a neighbor of mine; his coming won’t prevent my watching over the poor girl until he arrives.”
“Mrs. Belden,” I said, “your position as the only one conscious of the presence of this girl in your house makes it wiser for you not to invite suspicion by lingering any longer than is necessary in the room where her dead body lies.”
“As if my neglect of her now were the best surety of my good intentions toward her in time past!”
“It will not be neglect for you to go below with me at my earnest request. You can do no good here by staying; will, in fact, be doing harm. So listen to me, or I shall be obliged to leave you in charge of this man and go myself to inform the authorities.”
This last argument seemed to affect her, for with one look of shuddering abhorrence at Q, she rose, saying: “You have me in your power,” and then, without another word, threw her handkerchief over the girl’s face and left the room. In two minutes more I had the letter of which Q had spoken in my hands.
“It is the only one I could find, sir. It was in the pocket of the dress Mrs. Belden had on last night. The other must be lying around somewhere, but I haven’t had time to find it. This will do though, I think. You will not ask for the other.”
Scarcely noticing at the time with what deep significance he spoke, I opened the letter. It was the smaller of the two I had seen her draw under her shawl the day before at the post office, and read as follows:
DEAR, DEAR FRIEND,
I am in awful trouble. You who love me must know it. I cannot explain, I can only make one prayer. Destroy what you have, today, instantly, without question or hesitation. The consent of anyone else has nothing to do with it. You must obey. I am lost if you refuse. Do then what I ask and save
ONE WHO LOVES YOU.
It was addressed to Mrs. Belden; there was no signature or date, only the post-mark New York; but I knew the handwriting. It was Mary Leavenworth’s.
“A damning letter!” came in the dry tones which Q seemed to think fit to adopt on this occasion. “And a damning bit of evidence against the one who wrote it, and the woman who received it!”
“A terrible piece of evidence indeed!” said I, “if I did not happen to know that this letter refers to the destruction of something radically different from what you suspect. It alludes to some papers in Mrs. Belden’s charge; nothing else.”
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Quite; but we will talk of this hereafter. It is time you sent your telegram and went for the coroner.”
“Very well, sir.” And with that we parted, he to perform his role and I mine.
I found Mrs. Belden walking the floor below, bewailing her situation and uttering wild sentences as to what the neighbors would say of her, what the minister would think, what Clara, whoever that was, would do, and how she wished she had died before ever she had meddled with the affair.
Succeeding in calming her after a while, I induced her to sit down and listen to what I had to say. “You will only injure yourself by this display of feeling,” I remarked, “besides unfitting yourself for what you will presently be called upon to go through.” And laying myself out to comfort the unhappy woman, I first explained the necessities of the case, and next inquired if she had no friend upon whom she could call in this emergency.
To my great surprise she replied no; that while she had kind neighbors and good friends, there was no one upon whom she could call in a case like this, either for assistance or sympathy, and that unless I would take pity on her, she would have to meet it alone. “As I have met everything,” she said, “from Mr. Belden’s death to the loss of most of my little savings in a town fire last year.”
I was touched by this; that she who, in spite of her weakness and inconsistencies of character, possessed at least the one virtue of sympathy with her kind should feel any lack of friends. Unhesitatingly I offered to do what I could for her, providing she would treat me with the perfect frankness which the case demanded. To my great relief she expressed not only her willingness but her strong desire to tell all she knew. “I have had,” said she, “enough of secrecy for my whole life.” And indeed I do believe she was so thoroughly frightened, that if a police-officer had come into the house and asked her to reveal secrets compromising the good name of her own son, she would have done so without cavil or question. “I feel as if I wanted to take my stand out on the common, and in the face of the whole world declare what I have done for Mary Leavenworth. But first,” she whispered, “tell me for God’s sake how those girls are situated. I have not dared to ask or write. The papers say a good deal about Eleanore, but nothing about Mary; and yet Mary herself writes only of her own peril, and of the danger she would be in if certain facts were known. What is the truth? I don’t want to injure them, only to take care of myself.”
“Mrs. Belden,” I said, “Eleanore Leavenworth has got into her present difficulty by not telling all that was required of her. Mary Leavenworth—but I cannot speak of her till I know what you have to divulge. Her position, as well as that of her cousin, is too anomalous for either you or me to discuss. What we want to learn from you is how you became connected with this affair, and what it was that Hannah knew which caused her to leave New York and take refuge here.”
But Mrs. Belden, clasping and unclasping her hands, met my gaze with one full of the most apprehensive doubt. “You will never believe me,” she cried, “but I don’t know what Hannah knew. I am in utter ignorance of what she saw or heard on that fatal night; she never told and I never asked. She merely said that Miss Leavenworth wished me to secrete her for a short time, and I, because I loved Mary Leavenworth and admired her beyond anyone I ever saw, weakly consented, and——”
“Do you mean to say,” I interrupted, “that after you knew of the murder, you at the mere expression of Miss Leavenworth’s wishes, continued to keep this girl concealed, without asking her any questions or demanding any explanations?”
“Yes, sir; you will never believe me, but it is so. I thought that since Mary had sent her here, she must have her reasons, and—and—I cannot explain it now, it all looks so differently, but I did do as I have said.”
“But that was very strange conduct. You must have had strong reasons for obeying Mary Leavenworth so blindly.”
“Oh, sir,” she gasped, “I thought I understood it all; that Mary, the bright young creature, who had stooped from her lofty position to make use of me and to love me, was in some way linked to the criminal, and that it would be better for me not to know any more, only to do what I was bid, and trust it would prove all right. I did not reason about it; I only followed my impulse. I couldn’t do otherwise, it isn’t my nature. When I am requested to do anything by a person I love, I cannot refuse.”
“And you love Mary Leavenworth, a woman whom you yourself seem to consider capable of a great crime?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that; I don’t know as I thought that. She might be in some way connected with it, without being the actual perpetrator. She could never be that, she is too dainty.”
“Mrs. Belden,” I said, “what do you know of Mary Leavenworth which makes even that supposition possible?”
The white face of the woman before me flushed. “I scarcely know what to re
ply,” she cried. “It is a long story, and——”
“Never mind the long story,” I interrupted. “Let me hear the one vital reason.”
“Well,” said she, “it is this, that Mary was in an emergency from which nothing but her uncle’s death could release her.”
“Ah, how’s that?”
But here we were interrupted by the sound of steps on the porch, and looking out, I saw Q entering the house alone. Leaving Mrs. Belden where she was, I stepped into the hall. “Well!” said I, “what is the matter? Haven’t you found the coroner? Isn’t he at home?”
“No, gone away; off in a buggy to look after a man that was found some ten miles from here, lying in a ditch beside a yoke of oxen.” Then, as he saw my look of relief, for I was glad of this temporary delay, said with an expressive wink: “It would take a fellow a long time to go to him—if he wasn’t in a hurry—hours, I think.”
“Indeed!” I returned, amused at his manner. “Rough road?”
“Very; no horse I could get would travel it faster than a walk.”
“Well,” said I, “so much the better for us. Mrs. Belden has a long story to tell, and——”
“Doesn’t wish to be interrupted. I understand.”
I nodded and he turned toward the door.
“Have you telegraphed to Mr. Gryce?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think he will come?”
“Yes, sir, if he has to hobble on two sticks.”
“At what time do you look for him?”
“You will look for him as early as three o’clock. I shall be among the mountains, ruefully eyeing a broken-down team or some such thing.” And leisurely donning his hat, he strolled away down the street, like one who has the whole day on his hands and doesn’t know what to do with it.
Going back to Mrs. Belden, I explained that the coroner was out of town, and would not be back for some time; that we had, therefore, some hours before us which could not be better employed than by her giving me some account of what she knew concerning the matter in hand. She expressed herself as willing to do so, and immediately composed herself to her task. As what she told involves a long story, I will devote a chapter to it and christen it Mrs. Belden’s narrative.
CHAPTER 6
Mrs. Belden’s Narrative
Cursed, destructive Avarice,
Thou everlasting foe to Love and Honor.
—TRAP’S ABRAM.
——Mischief never thrives Without the help of Woman.
—THE SAME.
It will be a year next July since I first saw Mary Leavenworth. I was living at that time a most monotonous existence. Loving what was beautiful, hating what was sordid, drawn by Nature toward all that was romantic and uncommon, but doomed by my straitened position and the loneliness of my widowhood to spend my days in the weary round of plain sewing, I had begun to think that the shadow of a humdrum old age was settling down upon me, when one morning, in the full tide of my dissatisfaction, Mary Leavenworth stepped across the threshold of my door, and with one smile, changed the whole tenor of my life.
This may seem exaggeration to you, especially when I tell you that her errand was simply one of business, she having heard I was handy with my needle; but if you could have seen her as she appeared that day, marked the look with which she approached me, and the smile with which she left, you would pardon the folly of a romantic old woman who beheld a fairy queen, where others saw a lovely young lady. The fact is, I was dazzled by her beauty and her charms. And when a few days after she came again and, crouching down on the stool at my feet, asked leave to sit with me awhile and rest, saying she was so tired of the gossip and tumult down at the hotel, and so longed at times to run away and hide with someone who would let her act like the child she was, I experienced for the moment, I believe, the truest happiness of my life. Feeling so, it was impossible for me not to show it. Something of all that which I had kept repressed till now awoke in response to her persuasive glance, and before long I found her looking up into my face with manifest pleasure, listening eagerly while I told her, almost without my own volition, the story of my past life in the form of a tender allegory.
The next day saw her in the same place, and the next; always with the eager, laughing eyes, and the fluttering, uneasy hands, that grasped everything they touched, and broke everything they grasped.
But the fourth day she was not there, nor the fifth, nor the sixth, and I was beginning to feel the old shadow settling back upon me, when one night, just as the dusk of twilight was merging into evening gloom, she came stealing in at the front door, and creeping up to my side, put her hands over my eyes with such a low, ringing laugh, that I started.
“You don’t know what to make of me!” cried she, throwing aside her cloak, and revealing herself in the full splendor of evening attire. “I don’t know what to make of myself; only,” she whispered, “I felt that I must run away and tell someone that, for the first time in my life, I am fully alive; that a certain pair of eyes have been looking into mine, and that not Mary of Scots, with all her beauty and queenliness, ever felt herself more of the sovereign or more the woman than I do tonight.”
And with a turn of her head, that must have rivaled any gesture of that beautiful queen, she gathered up her cloak around her, and laughingly cried:
“Have you had a visit from a flying sprite? Has one little ray of moonlight found its way into your prison for a wee moment, with Mary’s laugh and Mary’s snowy silk and flashing diamonds? Say!” and she patted my cheek and smiled so bewilderingly, that even now with all the dull horror of these after-events crowding upon me, I cannot but feel something like tears spring to my eyes at the thought of it.
“And so the Prince has come for you?” I whispered, alluding to a story I had told her the last time she had visited me; a story in which a girl, who had waited all her life in rags and degradation for the lordly knight who was to raise her from a hovel to a throne, died just as her one lover, an honest peasant-lad whom she had discarded in her pride, arrived at her door with the fortune in his hand he had spent all his days in amassing for her sake.
But at that she flushed and drew back toward the door.
“I don’t know, I am afraid not. I—I don’t think anything about that. Princes are not so easily won,” she murmured.
“What, are you going?” I said, “and alone? Let me accompany you.”
But she only shook her fairy head, and replied: “No, no, that would be spoiling the romance indeed. I have come upon you like a sprite and like a sprite will I go.” And flashing like the moonbeam she was, she glided out into the night, and floated away down the street.
When she next came, I observed a feverish excitement in her manner that assured me even plainer than the coy sweetness displayed in our last interview that her heart had been touched by her lover’s attentions. Indeed, she hinted as much before she left, saying in a melancholy tone, when I had ended my story in the usual happy way with kisses and marriage—“I shall never marry!” finishing the exclamation with a long-drawn sigh, that somehow emboldened me to say, perhaps because I knew she had no mother:
“And why? What reason can there be for such rosy lips saying their possessor will never marry?”
She gave me one quick look, and then dropped her eyes. I feared I had offended her, and was feeling very humble, when she suddenly replied in an even but low tone, “I said I should never marry, because the one man who pleases me is the last whom Fate will allow me for a husband.”
“Fate?” repeated I, all the hidden romance of my nature starting into sudden life.
“Yes.”
“What do you mean? Tell me.”
“There is nothing to tell,” said she, “only I have been so weak as to”—she would not say fall in love, she was a proud woman—“admire a man whom my uncle will never allow me to marry.”
And she rose as if to go, but I drew her back. “Whom your uncle will not allow you to marry?” I repeated. “Why,
because he is poor?”
“No; uncle loves money, but not to such an extent as that. Besides, Mr. Clavering is not poor. He is the owner of a beautiful place in his own country——”
“Own country,” I interrupted. “Is he not an American?”
“No,” she returned, “he is an Englishman.”
I did not see why she need say that in just the way she did, but supposing she was aggravated by some secret memory, went on to inquire—“Then what difficulty can there be? Isn’t he——” I was going to say steady, but refrained.
“He is an Englishman,” cried she, in the same bitter tone as before. “In saying that, I say it all. Uncle will never let me marry an Englishman.”
I looked at her in amazement. Such a puerile reason as that had never entered my mind.
“He has an absolute mania on the subject,” resumed she. “I might as well ask him to allow me to drown myself as to marry an Englishman.”
A woman of truer judgment than myself would have said: “Then if that is so, why not discard from your breast all thought of him? Why dance with him, and talk to him, and let your admiration develop into love?” But I was all romance then, and angry at a prejudice I could neither understand nor appreciate. I said:
“But that is mere tyranny! Why should he hate the English so? And why, if he does, should you feel yourself obliged to gratify him in a whim so unreasonable?”
“Why? Shall I tell you, Auntie?” she said, flushing and looking away.
“Yes,” I returned; “tell me everything.”
“Well, then, if you want to know the worst of me, as you already know the best, I hate to incur my uncle’s displeasure, because—because—I have always been brought up to regard myself as his heiress, and I know that if I should marry contrary to his wishes, he would instantly change his mind, and leave me penniless.”
The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics) Page 27