Hand and Ring

"Was it to tell this story of the prisoner having fled from his aunt's house that you came here to-night?"

Recalled to the purpose of the hour, she answered, hurriedly:

"Not entirely; that story was what Mr. Ferris expected me to testify to in court this morning. You see for yourself in what a position it would have put the prisoner."

"And the revelation you have received?" the lawyer coldly urged.

"Was of a deception that has been practised upon me – a base deception by which I was led to think long ago that Craik Mansell had admitted his guilt and only trusted to the excellence of his defence to escape punishment."

"I do not understand," said Mr. Orcutt. "Who could have practised such deception upon you?"

"The detectives," she murmured; "that rough, heartless fellow they call Hickory." And, in a burst of indignation, she told how she had been practised upon, and what the results had been upon her belief, if not upon the testimony which grew out of that belief.

The lawyer listened with a strange apathy. What would once have aroused his fiercest indignation and fired him to an exertion of his keenest powers, fell on him now like the tedious repetition of an old and worn-out tale. He scarcely looked up when she was done; and despair – the first, perhaps, she had ever really felt – began to close in around her as she saw how deep a gulf she had dug between this man and herself by the inconsiderate act which had robbed him of all hope of ever making her his wife. Moved by this feeling, she suddenly asked:

"Have you lost all interest in your client, Mr. Orcutt? Have you no wish or hope remaining of seeing him acquitted of this crime?"

"My client," responded the lawyer, with bitter emphasis, "has taken his case into his own hands. It would be presumptuous in me to attempt any thing further in his favor."

"Mr. Orcutt!"

"Ah!" he scornfully laughed, with a quick yielding to his passion as startling as it was unexpected, "you thought you could play with me as you would; use my skill and ignore the love that prompted it. You are a clever woman, Imogene, but you went too far when you considered my forbearance unlimited."

"And you forsake Craik Mansell, in the hour of his extremity?"

"Craik Mansell has forsaken me."

This was true; for her sake her lover had thrown his defence to the winds and rendered the assistance of his counsel unavailable. Seeing her droop her head abashed, Mr. Orcutt dryly proceeded.

"I do not know what may take place in court to-morrow," said he. "It is difficult to determine what will be the outcome of so complicated a case. The District Attorney, in consideration of the deception which has been practised upon you, may refuse to prosecute any further; or, if the case goes on and the jury is called upon for a verdict, they may or may not be moved by its peculiar aspects to acquit a man of such generous dispositions. If they are, I shall do nothing to hinder an acquittal; but ask for no more active measures on my part. I cannot plead for the lover of the woman who has disgraced me."

This decision, from one she had trusted so implicitly, seemed to crush her.

"Ah," she murmured, "if you did not believe him guilty you would not leave him thus to his fate."

He gave her a short, side-long glance, half-mocking, half-pitiful.

"If," she pursued, "you had felt even a passing gleam of doubt, such as came to me when I discovered that he had never really admitted his guilt, you would let no mere mistake on the part of a woman turn you from your duty as counsellor for a man on trial for his life."

His glance lost its pity and became wholly mocking.

"And do you cherish but passing gleams?" he sarcastically asked.

She started back.

"I laugh at the inconsistency of women," he cried. "You have sacrificed every thing, even risked your life for a man you really believe guilty of crime; yet if another man similarly stained asked you for your compassion only, you would fly from him as from a pestilence."

But no words he could utter of this sort were able to raise any emotion in her now.

"Mr. Orcutt," she demanded, "do you believe Craik Mansell innocent?"

His old mocking smile came back.

"Have I conducted his case as if I believed him guilty?" he asked.

"No, no; but you are his lawyer; you are bound not to let your real thoughts appear. But in your secret heart you did not, could not, believe he was free from a crime to which he is linked by so many criminating circumstances?"

But his strange smile remaining unchanged, she seemed to waken to a sudden doubt, and leaping impetuously to his side, laid her hand on his arm and exclaimed:

"Oh, sir, if you have ever cherished one hope of his innocence, no matter how faint or small, tell me of it, even if this last disclosure has convinced you of its folly!"

Giving her an icy look, he drew his arm slowly from her grasp and replied:

"Mr. Mansell has never been considered guilty by me."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Not even now?"

"Not even now."

It seemed as if she could not believe his words.

"And yet you know all there is against him; all that I do now!"

"I know he visited his aunt's house at or after the time she was murdered, but that is no proof he killed her, Miss Dare."

"No," she admitted with slow conviction, "no. But why did he fly in that wild way when he left it? Why did he go straight to Buffalo and not wait to give me the interview he promised?"

"Shall I tell you?" Mr. Orcutt inquired, with a dangerous sneer on his lips. "Do you wish to know why this man – the man you have so loved – the man for whom you would die this moment, has conducted himself with such marked discretion?"

"Yes," came like a breath from between Imogene's parted lips.

"Well," said the lawyer, dropping his words with cruel clearness, "Mr. Mansell has a great faith in women. He has such faith in you, Imogene Dare, he thinks you are all you declare yourself to be; that in the hour you stood up before the court and called yourself a murderer, you spoke but the truth; that – " He stopped; even his scornful aplomb would not allow him to go on in the face of the look she wore.

"Say – say those words again!" she gasped. "Let me hear them once more. He thinks what?"

"That you are what you proclaimed yourself to be this day, the actual assailant and murderer of Mrs. Clemmens. He has thought so all along, Miss Dare, why, I do not know. Whether he saw any thing or heard any thing in that house from which you saw him fly so abruptly, or whether he relied solely upon the testimony of the ring, which you must remember he never acknowledged having received back from you, I only know that from the minute he heard of his aunt's death, his suspicions flew to you, and that, in despite of such suggestions as I felt it judicious to make, they have never suffered shock or been turned from their course from that day to this. Such honor," concluded Mr. Orcutt, with dry sarcasm, "does the man you love show to the woman who has sacrificed for his sake all that the world holds dear."

"I – I cannot believe it. You are mocking me," came inarticulately from her lips, while she drew back, step by step, till half the room lay between them.

"Mocking you? Miss Dare, he has shown his feelings so palpably, I have often trembled lest the whole court should see and understand them."

"You have trembled" – she could scarcely speak, the rush of her emotion was so great – "you have trembled lest the whole court should see he suspected me of this crime?"

"Yes."

"Then," she cried, "you must have been convinced, – Ah!" she hurriedly interposed, with a sudden look of distrust, "you are not amusing yourself with me, are you, Mr. Orcutt? So many traps have been laid for me from time to time, I dare not trust the truth of my best friend. Swear you believe Craik Mansell to have thought this of me! Swear you have seen this dark thing lying in his soul, or I – "

"What?"

"Will confront him myself with the question, if I have to tear down the walls of the prison to reach him. His mind I must and will know."

"Very well, then, you do. I have told you," declared Mr. Orcutt. "Swearing would not make it any more true."

Lifting her face to heaven, she suddenly fell on her knees.

"O God!" she murmured, "help me to bear this great joy!"

"Joy!"

The icy tone, the fierce surprise it expressed, started her at once to her feet.

"Yes," she murmured, "joy! Don't you see that if he thinks me guilty, he must be innocent? I am willing to perish and fall from the ranks of good men and honorable women to be sure of a fact like this!"

"Imogene, Imogene, would you drive me mad?"

She did not seem to hear.

"Craik, are you guiltless, then?" she was saying. "Is the past all a dream! Are we two nothing but victims of dread and awful circumstances? Oh, we will see; life is not ended yet!" And with a burst of hope that seemed to transfigure her into another woman, she turned toward the lawyer with the cry: "If he is innocent, he can be saved. Nothing that has been done by him or me can hurt him if this be so. God who watches over this crime has His eye on the guilty one. Though his sin be hidden under a mountain of deceit, it will yet come forth. Guilt like his cannot remain hidden."

"You did not think this when you faced the court this morning with perjury on your lips," came in slow, ironical tones from her companion.

"Heaven sometimes accepts a sacrifice," she returned. "But who will sacrifice himself for a man who could let the trial of one he knew to be innocent go on unhindered?"

"Who, indeed!" came in almost stifled tones from the lawyer's lips.

"If a stranger and not Craik Mansell slew Mrs. Clemmens," she went on, "and nothing but an incomprehensible train of coincidences unites him and me to this act of violence, then may God remember the words of the widow, and in His almighty power call down such a doom – "

She ended with a gasp. Mr. Orcutt, with a sudden movement, had laid his hand upon her lips.

"Hush!" he said, "let no curses issue from your mouth. The guilty can perish without that."

Releasing herself from him in alarm, she drew back, her eyes slowly dilating as she noted the dead whiteness that had settled over his face, and taken even the hue of life from his nervously trembling lip.

"Mr. Orcutt," she whispered, with a solemnity which made them heedless that the lamp which had been burning lower and lower in its socket was giving out its last fitful rays, "if Craik Mansell did not kill the Widow Clemmens who then did?"

Her question – or was it her look and tone? – seemed to transfix Mr. Orcutt. But it was only for a moment. Turning with a slight gesture to the table at his side, he fumbled with his papers, still oblivious of the flaring lamp, saying slowly:

"I have always supposed Gouverneur Hildreth to be the true author of this crime."

"Gouverneur Hildreth?"

Mr. Orcutt bowed.

"I do not agree with you," she returned, moving slowly toward the window. "I am no reader of human hearts, as all my past history shows, but something – is it the voice of God in my breast? – tells me that Gouverneur Hildreth is as innocent as Craik Mansell, and that the true murderer of Mrs. Clemmens – " Her words ended in a shriek. The light, which for so long a time had been flickering to its end, had given one startling flare in which the face of the man before her had flashed on her view in a ghastly flame that seemed to separate it from all surrounding objects, then as suddenly gone out, leaving the room in total darkness.

In the silence that followed, a quick sound as of rushing feet was heard, then the window was pushed up and the night air came moaning in. Imogene had fled.

Horace Byrd had not followed Hickory in his rush toward the house. He had preferred to await results under the great tree which, standing just inside the gate, cast its mysterious and far-reaching shadow widely over the wintry lawn. He was, therefore, alone during most of the interview which Miss Dare held with Mr. Orcutt in the library, and, being alone, felt himself a prey to his sensations and the weirdness of the situation in which he found himself.

Though no longer a victim to the passion with which Miss Dare had at first inspired him, he was by no means without feeling for this grand if somewhat misguided woman, and his emotions, as he stood there awaiting the issue of her last desperate attempt to aid the prisoner, were strong enough to make any solitude welcome, though this solitude for some reason held an influence which was any thing but enlivening, if it was not actually depressing, to one of his ready sensibilities.

The tree under which he had taken his stand was, as I have intimated, an old one. It had stood there from time immemorial, and was, as I have heard it since said, at once the pride of Mr. Orcutt's heart and the chief ornament of his grounds. Though devoid of foliage at the time, its vast and symmetrical canopy of interlacing branches had caught Mr. Byrd's attention from the first moment of his entrance beneath it, and, preoccupied as he was, he could not prevent his thoughts from reverting now and then with a curious sensation of awe to the immensity of those great limbs which branched above him. His imagination was so powerfully affected at last, he had a notion of leaving the spot and seeking a nearer look-out in the belt of evergreens that hid the crouching form of Hickory; but a spell seemed to emanate from the huge trunk against which he leaned that restrained him when he sought to go, and noticing almost at the same moment that the path which Miss Dare would have to take in her departure ran directly under this tree, he yielded to the apathy of the moment and remained where he was.

Soon after he was visited by Hickory.

"I can see nothing and hear nothing," was that individual's hurried salutation. "She and Mr. Orcutt are evidently still in the library, but I cannot get a clue to what is going on. I shall keep up my watch, however, for I want to catch a glimpse of her face as she steps from the window." And he was off again before Byrd could reply.

But the next instant he was back, panting and breathless.

"The light is out in the library," he cried; "we shall see her no more to-night."

But scarcely had the words left his lips when a faint sound was heard from the region of the piazza, and looking eagerly up the path, they saw the form of Miss Dare coming hurriedly toward them.

To slip around into the deepest shadow cast by the tree was but the work of a moment. Meantime, the moon shone brightly on the walk down which she was speeding, and as, in the agitation of her departure, she had forgotten to draw down her veil, they succeeded in obtaining a view of her face. It was pale, and wore an expression of fear, while her feet hasted as though she were only filled with thoughts of escape.

Seeing this, the two detectives held their breaths, preparing to follow her as soon as she had passed the tree. But she did not pass the tree. Just as she got within reach of its shadow, a commanding voice was heard calling upon her to stop, and Mr. Orcutt came hurrying, in his turn, down the path.

"I cannot let you go thus," he cried, pausing beside her on the walk directly under the tree. "If you command me to save Craik Mansell I must do it. What you wish must be done, Imogene."

"My wishes should not be needed to lead you to do your duty by the man you believe to be innocent of the charge for which he is being tried," was her earnest and strangely cold reply.

"Perhaps not," he muttered, bitterly; "but – ah, Imogene," he suddenly broke forth, in a way to startle these two detectives, who, however suspicious they had been of his passion, had never before had the opportunity of seeing him under its control, "what have you made of me with your bewildering graces and indomitable soul? Before I knew you, life was a round of honorable duties and serene pleasures. I lived in my profession, and found my greatest delight in its exercise. But now – "

"What now?" she asked.

"I seem" – he said, and the hard, cold selfishness that underlay all his actions, however generous they may have been in appearance, was apparent in his words and tones, – "I seem to forget every thing, even my standing and fame as a lawyer, in the one fear that, although lost to me, you will yet live to give yourself to another."

"If you fear that I shall ever be so weak as to give myself to Craik Mansell," was her steady reply, "you have only to recall the promise I made you when you undertook his case."

"Yes," said he, "but that was when you yourself believed him guilty."

"I know," she returned; "but if he were not good enough for me then, I am not good enough for him now. Do you forget that I am blotted with a stain that can never be effaced? When I stood up in court to-day and denounced myself as guilty of crime, I signed away all my chances of future happiness."

There was a pause; Mr. Orcutt seemed to be thinking. From the position occupied by the two detectives his shadow could be seen oscillating to and fro on the lawn, then, amid the hush of night – a deathly hush – undisturbed, as Mr. Byrd afterward remarked, by so much as the cracking of a twig, his voice rose quiet, yet vaguely sinister, in the words:

"You have conquered. If any man suffers for this crime it shall not be Craik Mansell, but – "

The sentence was never finished. Before the words could leave his mouth a sudden strange and splitting sound was heard above their heads, then a terrifying rush took place, and a great limb lay upon the walk where but a moment before the beautiful form of Imogene Dare lifted itself by the side of the eminent lawyer.

When a full sense of the terrible nature of the calamity which had just occurred swept across the minds of the benumbed detectives, Mr. Byrd, recalling the words and attitude of Imogene in face of a similar, if less fatal, catastrophe at the hut, exclaimed under his breath:

"It is the vengeance of Heaven! Imogene Dare must have been more guilty than we believed."

But when, after a superhuman exertion of strength, and the assistance of many hands, the limb was at length raised, it was found that, although both had been prostrated by its weight, only one remained stretched and senseless upon the ground, and that was not Imogene Dare, but the great lawyer, Mr. Orcutt.

XXXVIII.

UNEXPECTED WORDS

It will have blood: they say, blood will have blood.Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;Augurs and understood relations have,By magot-pies and choughs and rooks, brought forthThe secret'st man of blood.        *        *        *        *        *Foul whisperings are abroad; unnatural deedsDo breed unnatural troubles; infected mindsTo their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.       – Macbeth.

"MR. ORCUTT dead?"

"Dying, sir."

"How, when, where?"

"In his own house, sir. He has been struck down by a falling limb."

The District Attorney, who had been roused from his bed to hear these evil tidings, looked at the perturbed face of the messenger before him – who was none other than Mr. Byrd – and with difficulty restrained his emotion.

"I sympathize with your horror and surprise," exclaimed the detective, respectfully. Then, with a strange mixture of embarrassment and agitation, added: "It is considered absolutely necessary that you come to the house. He may yet speak – and – and – you will find Miss Dare there," he concluded, with a peculiarly hesitating glance and a rapid movement toward the door.

Mr. Ferris, who, as we know, cherished a strong feeling of friendship for Mr. Orcutt, stared uneasily at the departing form of the detective.

"What do you say?" he repeated. "Miss Dare there, in Mr. Orcutt's house?"

The short "Yes," and the celerity with which Mr. Byrd vanished, gave him the appearance of one anxious to escape further inquiries.

Astonished, as well as greatly distressed, the District Attorney made speedy preparations for following him, and soon was in the street. He found it all alive with eager citizens, who, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, were rushing hither and thither in search of particulars concerning this sudden calamity; and upon reaching the house itself, found it wellnigh surrounded by an agitated throng of neighbors and friends.

Simply pausing at the gate to cast one glance at the tree and its fallen limb, he made his way to the front door. It was immediately opened. Dr. Tredwell, whose face it was a shock to encounter in this place, stood before him, and farther back a group of such favored friends as had been allowed to enter the house. Something in the look of the coroner, as he silently reached forth his hand in salutation, added to the mysterious impression which had been made upon Mr. Ferris by the manner, if not words, of Mr. Byrd. Feeling that he was losing his self-command, the District Attorney grasped the hand that was held out to him, and huskily inquired if Mr. Orcutt was still alive.

The coroner, who had been standing before him with a troubled brow and lowered eyes, gravely bowed, and quietly leading the way, ushered him forward to Mr. Orcutt's bedroom door. There he paused and looked as if he would like to speak, but hastily changing his mind, opened the door and motioned the District Attorney in. As he did so, he cast a meaning and solemn look toward the bed, then drew back, watching with evident anxiety what the effect of the scene before him would have upon this new witness.

A stupefying one it seemed, for Mr. Ferris, pausing in his approach, looked at the cluster of persons about the bed, and then drew his hand across his eyes like a man in a maze. Suddenly he turned upon Dr. Tredwell with the same strange look he had himself seen in the eyes of Byrd, and said, almost as if the words were forced from his lips:

"This is no new sight to us, doctor; we have been spectators of a scene like this before."

That was it. As nearly as the alteration in circumstances and surroundings would allow, the spectacle before him was the same as that which he had encountered months before in a small cottage at the other end of the town. On the bed a pallid, senseless, but slowly breathing form, whose features, stamped with the approach of death, stared at them with marble-like rigidity from beneath the heavy bandages which proclaimed the injury to be one to the head. At his side the doctor – the same one who had been called in to attend Mrs. Clemmens – wearing, as he did then, a look of sombre anticipation which Mr. Ferris expected every instant to see culminate in the solemn gesture which he had used at the widow's bedside before she spoke. Even the group of women who clustered about the foot of the couch wore much the same expression as those who waited for movement on the part of Mrs. Clemmens; and had it not been for the sight of Imogene Dare sitting immovable and watchful on the farther side of the bed, he might almost have imagined he was transported back to the old scene, and that all this new horror under which he was laboring was a dream from which he would speedily be awakened.

But Imogene's face, her look, her air of patient waiting, were not to be mistaken. Attention once really attracted to her, it was not possible for it to wander elsewhere. Even the face of the dying man and the countenance of the watchful physician paled in interest before that fixed look which, never wavering, never altering, studied the marble visage before her, for the first faint signs of reawakening consciousness. Even his sister, who, if weak of mind, was most certainly of a loving disposition, seemed to feel the force of the tie that bound Imogene to that pillow; and, though she hovered nearer and nearer the beloved form as the weariful moments sped by, did not presume to interpose her grief or her assistance between the burning eye of Imogene and the immovable form of her stricken brother.

The hush that lay upon the room was unbroken save by the agitated breaths of all present.

"Is there no hope?" whispered Mr. Ferris to Dr. Tredwell, as, seeing no immediate prospect of change, they sought for seats at the other side of the room.

"No; the wound is strangely like that which Mrs. Clemmens received. He will rouse, probably, but he will not live. Our only comfort is that in this case it is not a murder."