The House of the Whispering Pines (23 page)

Chaos! However one looked at it, chaos! Only one fact was clear—that
Carmel knew the whole story and might communicate the same, if ever her
brain cleared and she could be brought to reveal the mysteries of that
hour. Did I desire such a consummation? Only God, who penetrates more
deeply than ourselves into the hidden regions of the human heart, could
tell. I only know that the fear and expectation of such an outcome made
my anguish for the next two weeks.

Would she live? Would she die? The question was on every tongue. The
crisis of her disease was approaching, and the next twenty-four hours
would decide her fate, and in consequence, my own, if not her brother
Arthur's. As I contemplated the suspense of these twenty-four hours, I
revolted madly for the first time against the restrictions of my prison.
I wanted air, movement, the rush into danger, which my horse or my
automobile might afford. Anything which would drag my thoughts from that
sick room, and the anticipated stir of that lovely form into conscious
life and suffering. Her eyes—I could see her eyes wakening upon the
world again, after her long wandering in the unknown and unimaginable
intricacies of ungoverned thought and delirious suggestion. Eyes of
violet colour and infinite expression; eyes which would make a man's joy
if they smiled on him in innocence; but which, as I well knew, had burned
more than once, in her short but strenuous life, with fiery passions; and
might, at the instant of waking, betray this same unholy gleam under the
curious gaze of the unsympathetic ones set in watch over her.

What would her first word be? Whither would her first thought fly? To
Adelaide or to me; to Arthur or to her own frightened and appalled self?
I maddened as I dwelt upon the possibilities of this moment. I envied
Arthur; I envied the attendants; I envied even the servants in the house.
They would all know sooner than I. Carmel! Carmel!

Sending for Clifton, I begged him to keep himself in communication with
the house, or with the authorities. He promised to do what he could;
then, perceiving the state I was in, he related all he knew of present
conditions. No one was allowed in the sick room but the nurse and the
doctor. Even Arthur was denied admission, and was wearing himself out in
his own room as I was wearing myself out here, in restless inactivity. He
expected her to sink and never to recover consciousness, and was loud in
his expressions of rebellion against the men who dared to keep him from
her bedside when her life was trembling in the balance. But the nurse had
hopes and so had the doctor. As for Carmel's looks, they were greatly
changed, but beautiful still in spite of the cruel scar left by her fall
against the burning bars of her sister's grate. No delirium disturbed the
rigid immobility in which she now lay. I could await her awakening with
quiet confidence in the justice of God.

Thus Clifton, in his ignorance.

The day was a bleak one, dispiriting in itself even to those who could go
about the streets and lose themselves in their tasks and round of duties.
To me it was a dead blank, marked by such interruptions as necessarily
took place under the prison routine. The evening hours which followed
them were no better. The hands on my watch crawled. When the door finally
opened, it came as a shock. I seemed to be prepared for anything but the
termination of my suspense. I knew that it was Clifton who entered, but I
could not meet his eye. I dug my nails into my palms, and waited for his
first word. When it came, I felt my spirits go down, down—I had thought
them at their lowest ebb before. He hesitated, and I started up:

"Tell me," I cried. "Carmel is dead!"

"Not dead," said he, "but silly. Her testimony is no more to be relied
upon than that of any other wandering mind."

This inundation of mistempered humour
Rests by you only to be qualified.

King John
.

It was some time before I learned the particulars of this awakening.

It had occurred at sunset. A level beam of light had shot across the
bed, and the nurse had moved to close the blind, when a low exclamation
from the doctor drew her back, to mark the first faint fluttering of the
snowy lids over the long-closed eyes. Afterwards she remembered what a
picture her youthful patient made, with the hue of renewed life creeping
into her cheeks, in faint reflection of the nest of roseate colour in
which she lay.

Carmel's hair was dark; so were her exquisitely pencilled eye-brows, and
the long lashes which curled upward from her cheek. In her surroundings
of pink—warm pink, such as lives in the heart of the sea-shell—their
duskiness took on an added beauty; and nothing, not even the long, dark
scar running from eye to chin could rob the face of its individuality and
suggestion of charm. She was lovely; but it was the loveliness of line
and tint, just as a child is lovely. Soul and mind were still asleep, but
momentarily rousing, as all thought, to conscious being—and, if to
conscious being, then to conscious suffering as well.

It was a solemn moment. If the man who loved her had been present—or
even her brother, who, sullen as he was, must have felt the tie of close
relationship rise superior even to his fears at an instant so
critical,—it would have been more solemn yet. But with the exception of
the doctor and possibly the nurse, only those interested in her as a
witness in the most perplexing case on the police annals, were grouped
in silent watchfulness about the room, waiting for the word or look
which might cut the Gordian knot which none of them, as yet, had been
able to untangle.

It came suddenly, as all great changes come. One moment her lids were
down, her face calm, her whole figure quiet in its statue-like repose;
the next, her big violet eyes had flashed open upon the world, and lips
and limbs were moving feebly, but certainly, in their suddenly recovered
freedom. It was then—and not at a later moment when consciousness had
fully regained its seat—that her face, to those who stood nearest wore
the aspect of an angel's. What she saw, or what vision remained to her
from the mysterious world of which she had so long been a part, none ever
knew—nor could she, perhaps, have told. But the rapture which informed
her features and elevated her whole expression but poorly prepared them
for the change which followed her first glance around on nurse and
doctor. The beam which lay across the bed had been no brighter than her
eye during that first tremulous instant of renewed life. But the clouds
fell speedily and very human feelings peered from between those lids as
she murmured, half petulantly:

"Why do you look at me so? Oh, I remember, I remember!"

And a flush, of which they little thought her weakened heart capable,
spread over her features, hiding the scar and shaming her white lips.
"What's the matter?" she complained again, as she tried to raise her
hands, possibly to hide her face. "I cannot move as I used to do, and I
feel—I feel—"

"You have been ill," came soothingly from the doctor. "You have been in
bed many days; now you are better and will soon be well. This is your
nurse." He said nothing of the others, who were so placed behind screens
as to be invisible to her.

She continued to gaze, first at one, then at the other; confidently at
the doctor, doubtfully at the nurse. As she did so, the flush faded and
gave way to an anxious, troubled expression. Not just the expression
anticipated by those who believed that, with returning consciousness,
would come returning memory of the mysterious scene which had taken place
between herself and sister, or between her sister and her brother, prior
to Adelaide's departure for The Whispering Pines. Had they shared my
knowledge—had they even so much as dreamed that their patient had been
the companion of one or both of the others in this tragic escapade—how
much greater would have been their wonder at the character of this
awakening.

"You have the same kind look for me as always," were her next words, as
her glance finally settled on the doctor. "But hers—Bring me the
mirror," she cried. "Let me see with my own eyes what I have now to
expect from every one who looks at me. I want to know before Lila comes
in. Why isn't she here? Is she with—with—" She was breaking down, but
caught herself back with surprising courage, and almost smiled, I was
told. Then in the shrill tones which will not be denied, she demanded
again, "The mirror!"

Nurse Unwin brought it. Her patient evidently remembered the fall she had
had in her sister's room, and possibly the smart to her cheek when it
touched the hot iron.

"I see only my forehead," she complained, as the nurse held the mirror
before her. "Move it a little. Lower—lower," she commanded. Then
suddenly "Oh!"

She was still for a long time, during which the nurse carried off
the glass.

"I—I don't like it," she acknowledged quaintly to the doctor, as he
leaned over her with compassionate words. "I shall have to get
acquainted with myself all over again. And so I have been ill! I
shouldn't have thought a little burn like that would make me ill. How
Adelaide must have worried."

"Adelaide is—is not well herself. It distressed her to have been out
when you fell. Don't you remember that she went out that night?"

"Did she? She was right. Adelaide must have every pleasure. She had
earned her good times. I must be the one to stay home now, and look after
things, and learn to be useful. I don't expect anything different. Call
Adelaide, and let me tell her how—how satisfied I am."

"But she's ill. She cannot come. Wait till tomorrow, dear child. Rest is
what you need now. Take these few drops and go to sleep again, and you'll
not know yourself to-morrow."

"I don't know myself now," she repeated, glancing with slowly dilating
eyes at the medicine glass he proffered. "I can't take it," she
protested. "I forget now why, but I can't take anything more from a
glass. I've promised not to, I think. Take it away; it makes me feel
queer. Where is Adelaide?"

Her memory was defective. She could not seem to take in what the doctor
told her. But he tried her again. Once more he spoke of illness as the
cause of Adelaide's absence. Her attention wandered while he spoke of it.

"How it did hurt!" she cried. "But I didn't think much about it. I
thought only of—" Next moment her voice rose in a shriek, thin but
impetuous, and imbued with a note of excited feeling which made every
person there start. "There should be
two
," she cried. "
Two
! Why is
there only one?"

This sounded like raving. The doctor's face took on a look of concern,
and the nurse stirred uneasily.

"One is not enough! That is why Adelaide is not satisfied; why she does
not come and love and comfort me, as I expected her to. Tell her it is
not too late yet, not too late yet, not too late—"

The doctor's hand was on her forehead. This "not too late," whatever she
meant by it, was indescribably painful to the listeners, oppressed as
they were by the knowledge that Adelaide lay in her grave, and that all
fancies, all hopes, all meditated actions between these two were now, so
far as this world goes, forever at an end.

"Rest," came in Dr. Carpenter's most soothing tones. "Rest, my little
Carmel; forget everything and rest." He thought he knew the significance
of her revolt from the glass he had offered her. She remembered the scene
at the Cumberland dinner-table on that fatal night and shrank from
anything that reminded her of it. Ordering the medicine put in a cup, he
offered it to her again, and she drank it without question. As she
quieted under its influence, the disappointed listeners, now tip-toeing
carefully from the room, heard her murmur in final appeal:

"Cannot Adelaide spare one minute from—from her company downstairs, to
wish me health and kiss me good night?"

Was it weakness, or a settled inability to remember anything but that
which filled her own mind?

It proved to be a settled inability to take in any new ideas or even to
remember much beyond the completion of that dinner. As the days passed
and news of her condition came to me from time to time, I found that she
had not only forgotten what had passed between herself and the rest of
the family previous to their departure for the club-house, but all that
had afterwards occurred at The Whispering Pines, even to her own
presence there and the ride home. She could not even retain in her mind
for any appreciable length of time the idea of Adelaide's death. Even
after Dr. Carpenter, with infinite precautions, revealed to her the
truth—not that Adelaide had been murdered, but that Adelaide had passed
away during the period of her own illness, Carmel gave but one cry of
grief, then immediately burst forth in her old complaint that Adelaide
neglected her. She had lost her happiness and hope, and Adelaide would
not spare her an hour.

This expression, when I heard of it, convinced me, as I believe it did
some others, that her act of self-denial in not humouring my whim and
flying from home and duty that night, had made a stronger impression on
her mind than all that came after.

She never asked for Arthur. This may have grieved him; but, according to
my faithful friend and attorney, it appeared to have the contrary effect,
and to bring him positive relief. When it was borne in on him, as it was
soon to be borne in on all, that her mind was not what it was, and that
the beautiful Carmel had lost something besides her physical perfection
in the awful calamity which had made shipwreck of the whole family, he
grew noticeably more cheerful and less suspicious in his manner. Was it
because the impending inquiry must go on without her, and proceedings,
which had halted till now, be pushed with all possible speed to a finish?
So those who watched him interpreted his changed mood, with a result not
favourable to him.