الفصل الفصل 33 · UNEXPECTED TESTIMONY

. UNEXPECTED TESTIMONY

_Pol._ What do you read, my lord?

_Ham._ Words, words, words.

Hamlet.

Mrs. Belden paused, lost in the sombre shadow which these words

were calculated to evoke, and a short silence fell upon the room.

It was broken by my asking for some account of the occurrence she

had just mentioned, it being considered a mystery how Hannah could

have found entrance into her house without the knowledge of the

neighbors.

“Well,” said she, “it was a chilly night, and I had gone to bed

early (I was sleeping then in the room off this) when, at about a

quarter to one--the last train goes through R---- at 12.50--there

came a low knock on the window-pane at the head of my bed. Thinking

that some of the neighbors were sick, I hurriedly rose on my elbow

and asked who was there. The answer came in low, muffled tones,

‘Hannah, Miss Leavenworth’s girl! Please let me in at the kitchen

door.’ Startled at hearing the well-known voice, and fearing I knew

not what, I caught up a lamp and hurried round to the door. ‘Is

any one with you?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Then come in.’ But

no sooner had she done so than my strength failed me, and I had to

sit down, for I saw she looked very pale and strange, was without

baggage, and altogether had the appearance of some wandering

spirit. ‘Hannah!’ I gasped, ‘what is it? what has happened? what

brings you here in this condition and at this time of night?’ ‘Miss

Leavenworth has sent me,’ she replied, in the low, monotonous tone

of one repeating a lesson by rote. ‘She told me to come here;

said you would keep me. I am not to go out of the house, and no

one is to know I am here.’ ‘But why?’ I asked, trembling with a

thousand undefined fears; ‘what has occurred?’ ‘I dare not say,’

she whispered; ‘I am forbid; I am just to stay here, and keep

quiet.’ ‘But,’ I began, helping her to take off her shawl,--the

dingy blanket advertised for in the papers--‘you must tell me. She

surely did not forbid you to tell _me_?’ ‘Yes she did; every one,’

the girl replied, growing white in her persistence, ‘and I never

break my word; fire couldn’t draw it out of me.’ She looked so

determined, so utterly unlike herself, as I remembered her in the

meek, unobtrusive days of our old acquaintance, that I could do

nothing but stare at her. ‘You will keep me,’ she said; ‘you will

not turn me away?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I will not turn you away.’ ‘And

tell no one?’ she went on. ‘And tell no one,’ I repeated.

“This seemed to relieve her. Thanking me, she quietly followed me

up-stairs. I put her into the room in which you found her, because

it was the most secret one in the house; and there she has remained

ever since, satisfied and contented, as far as I could see, till

this very same horrible day.”

“And is that all?” I asked. “Did you have no explanation with her

afterwards? Did she never give you any information in regard to the

transactions which led to her flight?”

“No, sir. She kept a most persistent silence. Neither then nor

when, upon the next day, I confronted her with the papers in my

hand, and the awful question upon my lips as to whether her flight

had been occasioned by the murder which had taken place in Mr.

Leavenworth’s household, did she do more than acknowledge she had

run away on this account. Some one or something had sealed her

lips, and, as she said, ‘Fire and torture should never make her

speak.’”

Another short pause followed this; then, with my mind still

hovering about the one point of intensest interest to me, I said:

“This story, then, this account which you have just given me of

Mary Leavenworth’s secret marriage and the great strait it put

her into--a strait from which nothing but her uncle’s death could

relieve her--together with this acknowledgment of Hannah’s that

she had left home and taken refuge here on the insistence of Mary

Leavenworth, is the groundwork you have for the suspicions you have

mentioned?”

“Yes, sir; that and the proof of her interest in the matter which

is given by the letter I received from her yesterday, and which you

say you have now in your possession.”

Oh, that letter!

“I know,” Mrs. Belden went on in a broken voice, “that it is wrong,

in a serious case like this, to draw hasty conclusions; but, oh,

sir, how can I help it, knowing what I do?”

I did not answer; I was revolving in my mind the old question: was

it possible, in face of all these later developments, still to

believe Mary Leavenworth’s own hand guiltless of her uncle’s blood?

“It is dreadful to come to such conclusions,” proceeded Mrs.

Belden, “and nothing but her own words written in her own hand

would ever have driven me to them, but----”

“Pardon me,” I interrupted; “but you said in the beginning of this

interview that you did not believe Mary herself had any direct hand

in her uncle’s murder. Are you ready to repeat that assertion?”

“Yes, yes, indeed. Whatever I may think of her influence in

inducing it, I never could imagine her as having anything to do

with its actual performance. Oh, no! oh, no! whatever was done on

that dreadful night, Mary Leavenworth never put hand to pistol

or ball, or even stood by while they were used; that you may be

sure of. Only the man who loved her, longed for her, and felt the

impossibility of obtaining her by any other means, could have found

nerve for an act so horrible.”

“Then you think----”

“Mr. Clavering is the man? I do: and oh, sir, when you consider

that he is her husband, is it not dreadful enough?”

“It is, indeed,” said I, rising to conceal how much I was affected

by this conclusion of hers.

Something in my tone or appearance seemed to startle her. “I hope

and trust I have not been indiscreet,” she cried, eying me with

something like an incipient distrust. “With this dead girl lying in

my house, I ought to be very careful, I know, but----”

“You have said nothing,” was my earnest assurance as I edged

towards the door in my anxiety to escape, if but for a moment,

from an atmosphere that was stifling me. “No one can blame you

for anything you have either said or done to-day. But”--and here

I paused and walked hurriedly back,--“I wish to ask one question

more. Have you any reason, beyond that of natural repugnance to

believing a young and beautiful woman guilty of a great crime,

for saying what you have of Henry Clavering, a gentleman who has

hitherto been mentioned by you with respect?”

“No,” she whispered, with a touch of her old agitation.

I felt the reason insufficient, and turned away with something

of the same sense of suffocation with which I had heard that the

missing key had been found in Eleanore Leavenworth’s possession.

“You must excuse me,” I said; “I want to be a moment by myself, in

order to ponder over the facts which I have just heard; I will soon

return “; and without further ceremony, hurried from the room.

By some indefinable impulse, I went immediately up-stairs, and took

my stand at the western window of the large room directly over Mrs.

Belden. The blinds were closed; the room was shrouded in funereal

gloom, but its sombreness and horror were for the moment unfelt; I

was engaged in a fearful debate with myself. Was Mary Leavenworth

the principal, or merely the accessory, in this crime? Did the

determined prejudice of Mr. Gryce, the convictions of Eleanore,

the circumstantial evidence even of such facts as had come to our

knowledge, preclude the possibility that Mrs. Belden’s conclusions

were correct? That all the detectives interested in the affair

would regard the question as settled, I did not doubt; but need

it be? Was it utterly impossible to find evidence yet that Henry

Clavering was, after all, the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth?

Filled with the thought, I looked across the room to the closet

where lay the body of the girl who, according to all probability,

had known the truth of the matter, and a great longing seized me.

Oh, why could not the dead be made to speak? Why should she lie

there so silent, so pulseless, so inert, when a word from her were

enough to decide the awful question? Was there no power to compel

those pallid lips to move?

Carried away by the fervor of the moment, I made my way to her

side. Ah, God, how still! With what a mockery the closed lips and

lids confronted my demanding gaze! A stone could not have been more

unresponsive.

With a feeling that was almost like anger, I stood there,

when--what was it I saw protruding from beneath her shoulders where

they crushed against the bed? An envelope? a letter? Yes.

Dizzy with the sudden surprise, overcome with the wild hopes this

discovery awakened, I stooped in great agitation and drew the

letter out. It was sealed but not directed. Breaking it hastily

open, I took a glance at its contents. Good heavens! it was the

work of the girl herself!--its very appearance was enough to make

that evident! Feeling as if a miracle had happened, I hastened with

it into the other room, and set myself to decipher the awkward

scrawl.

This is what I saw, rudely printed in lead pencil on the inside of

a sheet of common writing-paper:

“I am a wicked girl. I have knone things all the time which

I had ought to have told but I didn’t dare to he said he

would kill me if I did I mene the tall splendud looking

gentulman with the black mustash who I met coming out of

Mister Levenworth’s room with a key in his hand the night

Mr. Levenworth was murdered. He was so scared he gave me

money and made me go away and come here and keep every

thing secret but I can’t do so no longer. I seem to see

Miss Elenor all the time crying and asking me if I want her

sent to prisun. God knows I’d rathur die. And this is the

truth and my last words and I pray every body’s forgivness

and hope nobody will blame me and that they wont bother

Miss Elenor any more but go and look after the handsome

gentulman with the black mushtash.”

BOOK IV. THE PROBLEM SOLVED