The House of the Whispering Pines (26 page)

Meanwhile, Ella Fulton had become distracted by new fears. The sound of
sleigh-bells could be heard on the hill. It might be her father. Should
she try to reach the house, or hide her small body, like a trapped
animal's, on the dark side of the hedge? I was conscious of her thoughts,
shared her uncertainties, notwithstanding the struggle then going on in
my own mind. But I remained quiet and so did she, and the sleigh
ultimately flew past us up the road. The sigh which broke from her lips
as this terror subsided, brought my disordered thoughts to a focus. I
must not keep her longer. Something must be said at once. As soon as she
looked my way again, I spoke:

"Ella, this is no easy problem you have offered me. You are right in
thinking that this testimony of yours might be of benefit to Arthur, and
that you ought to give it in case of extremity. But I cannot advise you
to obtrude it yet. I understand what it would cost you, and the sacrifice
you would make is too great for the doubtful good which might follow.
Neither must you trust me to act for you in this matter. My own position
is too unstable for me to be of assistance to any one. I can sympathise
with you, possibly as no one else can; but I cannot reach Arthur, either
by word or by message. Your father is the man to appeal to in case
interference becomes necessary and you must speak. You have not quite the
same fear of him that you have of your mother. Take him into your
confidence—not now but later when things press and you must have a
friend. He's a just man. You may shock his fatherly susceptibilities, you
may even lose some of his regard, but he will do the right thing by you
and Arthur. Have confidence that this is so, and rest, little friend, in
the hope and help it gives you. Will you?"

"I will try. I could only tell father on my knees, but I will do it
if—if I must," she faltered out, unconsciously repeating her former
phrase. "Now, I must go. You have been good; only I asked too much." And
with no other farewell she left me and disappeared up the walk.

I lingered till I heard the faint click of her key in the door she had
secretly made her own; then I moved on. As I did so, I heard a rustle
somewhere about me on street or lawn. I never knew whence it came, but I
felt assured that neither her fears nor mine had been quite unfounded;
that a listener had been posted somewhere near us and that a part, if not
all, we had said had been overheard. I was furious for an instant, then
the soothing thought came that possibly Providence had ordained that the
Gordian knot should be cut in just this way.

But the event bore no ostensible fruit. The week ended, and the case of
the People
against
Arthur Cumberland was moved for trial.

It's fit this royal session do proceed;
And that, without delay, their arguments
Be now produc'd and heard

King Henry VIII
.

There was difficulty, as you will conceive, in selecting an unprejudiced
jury. But this once having been accomplished, the case went quickly and
smoothly on under the able guidance of the prosecuting attorney.

I shall spare you the opening details, also much of the preliminary
testimony. Enough that at the close of the sixth day, the outlook was a
serious one for Arthur Cumberland. The prosecution appeared to be making
good its claims. The quiet and unexpectedly dignified way in which, at
the beginning, the defendant had faced the whole antagonistic
court-room, with the simple plea of "Not Guilty," was being slowly but
surely forgotten in the accumulated proofs of his discontented life
under his sister's dominating influence, his desire for independence and
a free use of the money held in trust for him by this sister under their
father's will, the quarrels which such a situation would naturally evoke
between characters cast in such different moulds and actuated by such
opposing tastes and principles, and the final culmination of the same at
the dinner-table when Adelaide forced him, as it were, to subscribe to
her prohibition of all further use of liquor in their house. Following
this evidence of motive, came the still more damaging one of
opportunity. He was shown to have been in the club-house at or near the
time of Adelaide's death. The matter of the bottles was gone into and
the event in Cuthbert Road. Then I was called to the stand, and my
testimony asked for.

I had prepared myself for the ordeal and faced it unflinchingly. That I
might keep intact the one point necessary to Carmel's safety, I met my
inquisitors, now as before, with the utmost candour in all other
respects. Indeed, in one particular I was even more exact in my details
than at any previous examination. Anxious to explain my agitated and
hesitating advance through the club-house, prior to my discovery of the
crime which had been committed there, I acknowledged what I had hitherto
concealed, that in my first entrance into the building, I had come upon a
man's derby hat and coat hanging in the lower hall, and when questioned
more minutely on the subject, allowed it to appear that it was owing to
the disappearance of these articles during my stay upstairs, that I had
been led into saying that some one had driven away from The Whispering
Pines before the coming of the police.

This, as you will see, was in open contradiction of my former statements
that I had
seen
an unknown party, thus attired, driving away through
the upper gateway just as I entered by the lower. But it was a
contradiction which while noted by Mr. Moffat, failed to injure me with
the jury, and much less with the spectators. The impression had become so
firmly fixed in the public mind and in that of certain officials as well,
that my early hesitations and misstatements were owing to a brotherly
anxiety to distract attention from Arthur whose clothing they believed me
to have recognised in these articles I have mentioned—that I rather
gained than lost by what, under other circumstances would have seriously
damaged my testimony. That I should prevaricate even to my own detriment,
at a preliminary examination, only to tell the truth openly and like a
man when in court and under the sanctity of an oath was, in the popular
estimation, something to my credit; and Mr. Moffat, whose chief
recommendation as counsel lay in his quick appreciation of the exigencies
of the moment, did not press me too sharply on this point when he came to
his cross-examination.

But in other respects he drove me hard. An effort was made by him, first
of all, to discredit me as a witness. My lack of appreciation for
Adelaide and my secret but absorbing love for Carmel were inexorably
brought out: also the easy, happy-go-lucky tenor of my life, and my
dogged persistence in any course I thought consistent with my happiness.
My character was well known in this town of my birth, and it would have
been folly for me to attempt to gloss it over. I had not even the desire
to do so. If my sins exacted penance, I would pay it here and now and to
the full. Only Carmel should not suffer. I refused to admit that she had
given any evidences of returning my reckless passion. My tongue would not
speak the necessary words, and it was not made to. It was not her
character but mine which Mr. Moffat was endeavouring to assail.

But though I was thus shown up for what I was, in a manner most public
and undesirable, neither the rulings of the court, nor the attitude of
the jury betrayed any loss of confidence in me as a credible witness, and
seeing this, the wily lawyer shifted his ground and confined himself to
an endeavour to shake me on certain definite and important points. How
were the pillows heaped upon the couch? What ones at top, what ones at
bottom? Which did I remove first, and why did I remove any of them? What
had I expected to find? These questions answered, the still
more-to-be-dreaded ones followed of just how my betrothed looked at the
moment I uncovered her face. Were the marks very plain upon her throat?
How plain; and what did I mean by saying that I felt forced to lay my
thumbs upon them? Was that a natural thing to do? Where was the candle at
that moment? How many feet away? A candle does not give much light at
that distance, was I sure that I saw those marks immediately; that they
were dark enough and visible enough to draw my eyes from her face which
would naturally attract my gaze first? It was horrible, devilish, but I
won through, only to meet the still more disturbing question as to
whether I saw any other evidences of strangulation besides the marks. I
could only mention the appearance of the eyes; and when Mr. Moffat found
that he could not shake me on this point, he branched off into a less
harrowing topic and cross-examined me in regard to the ring. I had said
that it was on her hand when I bade good-bye to her in her own house, and
that it was not there when I came upon her dead. Had the fact made me
curious to examine her hand? No. Then I could not tell whether the finger
on which she wore it gave any evidence of this ring having been pulled
off with violence? No. I could not swear that in my opinion it was? I
could not.

The small flask of cordial and the three glasses, one clean and the
others showing signs of having been used, were next taken up, but with no
result for the defence. I had told all I knew about these in my direct
examination; also about such matters as the bottles found on the kitchen
table, the leaving of my keys at the Cumberland house, and the fact, well
known, that the two bottles of wine left in the wine-vault and tabulated
by the steward as so left in the list found in my apartments, were of an
exclusive brand unlikely to be found anywhere else in town. I could add
nothing more, and, having spoken the exact truth concerning them, from
the very first, I ran no chance of contradicting myself even under the
close fire of the opposing counsel.

But there was a matter I dreaded to see him approach, and, which, I was
equally sure, with an insight unshared I believe by any one else in the
whole courtroom, was equally dreaded by the prisoner.

This was the presence in the club-house chimney of the half-burned letter
I had long ago been compelled, in my own defence, to acknowledge having
written to the victim's young sister, Carmel Cumberland. As I saw
District Attorney Fox about to enter upon this topic, I gathered myself
together to meet the onslaught, for in this matter I could not be
strictly truthful, since the least slip on my part might awaken the whole
world to the fact that it could only have come there through the agency
of Carmel herself.

What Mr. Moffat thought of it—what he hoped to prove in the prisoner's
behalf by raking this subject over—it was left for me to discover
later. The prisoner was an innocent man, in his eyes. I was not; and,
while the time had not come for him to make this openly apparent, he was
not above showing even now that the case contained a factor which
weakened the prosecution—a factor totally dissociated with the openly
accepted theory that the crime was simply the result of personal
cupidity and drunken spite.

And in this he was right. It did weaken it—weakened it to the point of
collapse, if the counsel for the defence had fully acted up to his
opportunity. But something withheld him. Just at the moment when I feared
the truth must come out, he hesitated and veered gradually away from this
subject. In his nervous pacings to and fro before the witness stand, his
eye had rested for a moment on Arthur's, and with this result. The
situation was saved, but at a great loss to the defendant.

I began to cherish softened feelings towards Arthur Cumberland, from this
moment. Was it then, or later, that he began in his turn to cherish new
and less hostile feelings towards myself? He had hated me and vowed my
death if I escaped the fate he could now dimly see opening out before
himself; yet I could see that he was glad to see me slip from my
tormentor's hands with my story unimpeached, and that he drew his breath
more deeply and with much more evidence of freedom, now that my testimony
had been thoroughly sifted and nothing had come to light implicating
Carmel. I even thought I caught a kindly gleam in his eye as it met mine
at this critical juncture, and by its light I understood my man and what
he hoped from me. He wished me at any risk to himself, to unite with him
in saving Carmel's good name. That I should accede to this; that I should
respect his generous wishes and let him go to unmerited destruction for
even so imperative an obligation as we both lay under, was a question for
the morrow. I could not decide upon it to-day—not while the smallest
hope remained that he would yet escape conviction by other means than the
one which would wreck the life we were both intent on saving.

Several short examinations followed mine, all telling in their nature,
all calculated to fix in the minds of the jury the following facts:

(Pray pardon the repetition. It is necessary to present the case to you
just as it stood at this period of my greatest struggle.)

1.—That Arthur, swayed by cupidity and moved to rage by the scene at the
dinner-table, had, by some unknown means of a more or less violent
character, prevailed upon Adelaide to accompany him to The Whispering
Pines, in the small cutter, to which, in the absence of every servant
about the place, he himself had harnessed the grey mare.

2.—That in preparation for this visit to a spot remote from observation
and closed against all visitors, they, still for some unknown reason, had
carried between them a candlestick and candle, a flask of cordial, three
glasses, and a small bottle marked "Poison"; also some papers, letters,
or scraps of correspondence, among them the compromising line I had
written to Carmel.

3.—That, while in this building, at an hour not yet settled, a second
altercation had arisen between them, or some attempt been made by the
brother which had alarmed Adelaide and sent her flying to the telephone,
in great agitation, with an appeal to the police for help. This telephone
was in a front room and the jury was led to judge that she had gained
access to it while her companion ransacked the wine-vault and brought the
six bottles of spirit up from the cellar.