The House of the Whispering Pines (31 page)

It was my death warrant. I realised this even while I held Ella's eye
with mine and smoothed my countenance to meet the anguish in hers, in the
effort to hold her back for a few minutes longer till I could quite
satisfy myself that Arthur's case was really lost and that I must speak
or feel myself his murderer.

The gloom which followed this recognition of his inability, real or
fancied, to explain away the most damning feature of the case against
him, taken with his own contradictions and growing despondency, could not
escape my eye, accustomed as I was to the habitual expression of most
every person there. But it was not yet the impenetrable gloom presaging
conviction; and directing Ella's gaze towards Mr. Moffat, who seemed but
little disturbed either by Mr. Fox's satisfaction or the prisoner's open
despair, I took heart of grace and waited for the district attorney's
next move. It was a fatal one. I began to recognise this very soon,
simple as was the subject he now introduced.

"When you went into the kitchen, Mr. Cumberland, to get the stable-door
key, was the gas lit, or did you have to light it?"

"It—it was lit, I think."

"Don't you know?"

"It was lit, but turned low. I could see well enough."

"Why, then, didn't you take both keys?"

"Both keys?"

"You have said you went down town by the short cut through your
neighbour's yard. That cut is guarded by a door, which was locked that
night. You needed the key to that door more than the one to the stable.
Why didn't you take it?"

"I—I did."

"You haven't said so."

"I—I took it when I took the other."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes; they both hung on one nail. I grabbed them both at the same time."

"It does not appear so in your testimony. You mentioned a key, not keys,
in all your answers to my questions."

"There were two; I didn't weigh my words. I needed both and I took both."

"Which of the two hung foremost?"

"I didn't notice."

"You took both?"

"Yes, I took both."

"And went straight out with them?"

"Yes, to the stable."

"And then where?"

"Through the adjoining grounds downtown."

"You are sure you went through Mr. Fulton's grounds at this early hour in
the evening?"

"I am positive."

"Was it not at a later hour, much later, a little before eleven instead
of a little before nine?"

"No, sir. I was on the golf-links then."

"But some one drove into the stable."

"So you say."

"Unharnessed the horse, drew up the cutter, locked the stable-door, and,
entering the house, hung up the key where it belonged."

No answer this time.

"Mr. Cumberland, you admitted in your direct examination that you took
with you out of the clubhouse only one bottle of the especial brand you
favoured, although you carried up two into the kitchen?"

"No, I said that I only had one when I got to Cuthbert Road. I don't
remember anything about the other."

"But you know where the other—or rather remnants of the other,
was found?"

"In my own stable, taken there by my man Zadok Brown, who says he picked
it out of one of our waste barrels."

"This is the part of bottle referred to. Do you recognise the label still
adhering to it as similar to the one to be found on the bottle you
emptied in Cuthbert Road?"

"It is like that one."

"Had you carried that other bottle off, and had it been broken as this
has been broken would it not have presented an exactly similar
appearance to this?"

"Possibly."

"Only possibly?"

"It would have looked the same. I cannot deny it. What's the use
fooling?"

"Mr. Cumberland, the only two bottles known to contain this especial
brand of wine were in the clubhouse at ten o'clock that night. How came
one of them to get into the barrel outside your stable before your return
the next day?"

"I cannot say."

"This barrel stood where?"

"In the passage behind the stable."

"The passage you pass through on your way to the door leading into your
neighbour's grounds?"

"Yes."

The dreaded moment had come. This "Yes" had no sooner left Arthur's lips
than I saw Ella throw out her innocent arms, and leap impetuously to her
feet, with a loud "No, no, I can tell—"

She did not say what, for at the hubbub roused by this outbreak in open
court, she fainted dead away and was carried out in her dismayed
father's arms.

This necessarily caused a break in the proceedings. Mr. Fox suspended his
cross-examination and in a few minutes more, the judge adjourned the
court. As the prisoner rose and turned to pass out, I cast him a hurried
glance to see what effect had been made upon him by this ingenuous
outburst from one he had possibly just a little depreciated. A great one,
evidently. His features were transformed, and he seemed almost as
oblivious of the countless eyes upon him as she had been when she rose to
testify for him in her self-forgetful enthusiasm. As I observed this and
the satisfaction with which Mr. Moffat scented this new witness,—a
satisfaction which promised little consideration for her if she ever came
upon the stand—I surrendered to fate.

Inwardly committing Carmel's future to the God who made her and who knew
better than we the story of her life and what her fiery temper had cost
her, I drew a piece of paper from my pocket, and, while the courtroom was
slowly emptying, hastily addressed the following lines to Mr. Moffat who
had lingered to have a few words with his colleague:

"There is a witness in this building who can testify more clearly and
definitely than Miss Fulton, that Arthur Cumberland, for all we have
heard in seeming contradiction to the same, might have been on the
golf-links at the time he swears to. That witness is myself.

"ELWOOD RANELAGH."

The time which elapsed between my passing over this note and his
receiving and reading it, was to me like the last few moments of a
condemned criminal. How gladly would I have changed places with Arthur,
and with what sensations of despair I saw flitting before me in my mind's
eye, the various visions of Carmel's loveliness which had charmed me out
of myself. But the die had been cast, and I was ready to meet the
surprised lawyer's look when his eve rose from the words I had written
and settled steadily on my face. Next minute he was writing busily and in
a second later I was reading these words:

"Do you absolutely wish to be recalled as a witness, and by the
defence? M."

My answer was brief:

"I do. Not to make a confession of crime. I have no such confession to
make. But I know who drove that horse. R."

I had sacrificed Carmel to my sense of right. Never had I loved her as I
did at that moment.

I see your end,
'T is my undoing.

King Henry VIII
.

A turning-point had been reached in the defence. That every one knew
after the first glance at Mr. Moffat, on the opening of the next
morning's session. As I noted the excitement which this occasioned even
in quarters where self-control is usually most marked and such emotions
suppressed, I marvelled at the subtle influence of one man's expectancy,
and the powerful effect which can be produced on a feverish crowd by a
well-ordered silence suggestive of coming action.

I, who knew the basis of this expectancy and the nature of the action
with which Mr. Moffat anticipated startling the court, was the quietest
person present. Since it was my hand and none other which must give this
fresh turn to the wheel of justice, it were well for me to do it calmly
and without any of the old maddening throb of heart. But the time seemed
long before Arthur was released from further cross-examination, and the
opportunity given Mr. Moffat to call his next witness.

Something in the attitude he now took, something in the way he bent over
his client and whispered a few admonitory words, and still more the
emotion with which these words were received and answered by some
extraordinary protest, aroused expectation to a still greater pitch, and
made my course seem even more painful to myself than I had foreseen when
dreaming over and weighing the possibilities of this hour. With something
like terror, I awaited the calling of my name; and, when it was delayed,
it was with emotions inexplicable to myself that I looked up and saw Mr.
Moffat holding open a door at the left of the judge, with that attitude
of respect, which a man only assumes in the presence and under the
dominating influence of woman.

"Ella!" thought I. "Instead of saving her by my contemplated sacrifice of
Carmel, I have only added one sacrifice to another."

But when the timid faltering step we could faintly hear crossing the room
beyond, had brought its possessor within sight, and I perceived the tall,
black-robed, heavily veiled woman who reached for Mr. Moffat's sustaining
arm, I did not need the startling picture of the prisoner, standing
upright, with outheld and repellant hands, to realise that the impossible
had happened, and that all which he, as well as I, had done and left
undone, suffered and suppressed, had been in vain.

Mr. Moffat, with no eye for him or for me, conducted his witness to a
chair; then, as she loosened her veil and let it drop in her lap, he
cried in tones which rang from end to end of the court-room: "I summon
Carmel Cumberland to the stand, to witness in her brother's defence."

The surprise was complete. It was a great moment for Mr. Moffat; but for
me all was confusion, dread, a veil of misty darkness, through which
shone her face, marred by its ineffaceable scar, but calm as I had never
expected to see it again in this life, and beautiful with a smile under
which her deeply shaken and hardly conscious brother sank slowly back
into his seat, amid a silence as profound as the hold she had immediately
taken upon all hearts.

Let me see the writing.
My lord, 't is nothing.
No matter, then, who sees it;
I will be satisfied, let me see the writing.

Richard II
.

What is the explanation of Carmel's reappearance in town and of this
sensational introduction of her into the court-room, in a restored
state of health of which no one, so far as known, had had any
intimation save the man who was responsible for her appearance? The
particulars are due you.

She had passed some weeks at Lakewood, under the eye of the nurse who was
detailed to watch, as well as tend her. During these weeks she gave no
sign of improvement mentally, though she constantly gained strength
otherwise, and impressed everybody with the clear light in her eye and
the absence of everything suggestive of gloom in her expression and
language. There was the same complete loss of memory up to the time of
the tragic occurrence which had desolated her home; the same harping at
odd moments on Adelaide's happiness and her own prospect of seeing this
dear sister very soon which had marked the opening days of her
convalescence. But beyond and back of all this was some secret joy,
unintelligible to the nurse, which helped rather than retarded the sick
girl's recovery, and made Carmel appear at times as if she walked on air
and breathed the very breath of Paradise—an anomaly which not only
roused Miss Unwin's curiosity, but led her to regard with something like
apprehension, any change in her patient's state of mind which would rob
her of the strange and unseen delights which fed her secret soul and made
her oblivious of the awful facts awaiting a restored memory.

Meanwhile Carmel was allowed such liberty as her condition required; but
was never left alone for a moment after a certain day when her eye
suddenly took on a strange look of confused inquiry, totally dissociated
with anything she saw or heard. A stir had taken place in her brain, and
her nurse wanted to take her back home. But this awakening—if such it
could be called, was so short in its duration and was followed so
immediately by a string of innocent questions about Adelaide, that Nurse
Unwin concluded to remain a few days longer before risking this
delicately balanced mind amid old scenes and the curious glances of her
townspeople.

Alas! the awakening was to take place in Lakewood and under
circumstances of the most ordinary nature. Carmel had been out and was
just crossing the hall of her hotel to the elevator, when she stopped
with a violent start and clutching the air, was caught by her nurse who
had hurried up at the first intimation of anything unusual in the
condition of her patient.

The cause of this agitation was immediately apparent. Near them sat two
ladies, each with a small wine-glass in her hand. One was drinking, the
other waiting and watching, but with every apparent intention of drinking
when the other had ceased. A common sight enough, but it worked a
revolution in Carmel's darkened mind. The light of youthful joyousness
fled from her face; and the cheek, just pulsing softly with new life,
blanched to the death-like hue of mortal suffering. Dropping her eyes
from the women, who saw nothing and continued to sip their wine in happy
ignorance of the soul-tragedy going on within ten feet of them, she
looked down at her dress, then up at the walls about her; and then
slowly, anxiously, and with unmistakable terror, at the woman in whose
arms she felt herself supported.

"Explain," she murmured. "Where am I?"

"At Lakewood, in a hotel. You have been ill, and are only just
recovering."

Her hand went up to her cheek, the one that had been burned, and still
showed the deep traces of that accident.

"I remember," said she. Then with another glance at her dress, which had
studiously been kept cheerful, she remarked, with deep reproach: "My
sister is dead; why am I not in black?"