The House of the Whispering Pines (5 page)

"Good!" left my companion's lips. "That's all straight. You recognise
these garments?"

I nodded, speechless. A thousand memories rushed upon me at the sight of
the long plush coat which I had so often buttoned about her, with a
troubled heart. How her eyes would seek mine as we stood thus close
together, searching, searching for the old love or the fancied love of
which the ashes only remained. Torment, all torment to remember now, as
Hexford must have seen, if the keenness of his intelligence equalled that
of his eye at this moment.

The window which stood open was a small one,-a mere slit in the wall;
but it let in a stream of zero air and I saw Hexford shiver as he stepped
towards it and looked out. But I felt hot rather than cold, and when I
instinctively put my hand to my forehead, it came away wet.

Look to the lady:—
And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet,
And question this most bloody piece of work,
To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us;
In the great hand of God I stand; and, thence,
Against the undivulg'd pretence I fight
Of treasonous malice.

Macbeth
.

Shortly after this, a fresh relay of police arrived and I could hear the
whole house being ransacked. I had found my shoes, and was sitting in my
own private room before a fire which had been lighted for me on the
hearth. I was in a state of stupor now, and if my body shook, as it did
from time to time, it was not from cold, nor do I think from any special
horror of mind or soul (I felt too dull for that), but in response to the
shuddering pines which pressed up close to the house at this point and
soughed and tapped at the walls and muttered among themselves with an
insistence which I could not ignore, notwithstanding my many reasons for
self-absorption.

The storm, which had been exceedingly fierce while it lasted, had quieted
down to a steady fall of snow. Had its mission been to serve as a blanket
to this crime by wiping out from the old snow all tell-tale footsteps
and such other records as simplify cases of this kind for the detectives,
it could not have happened more
apropos
to the event. From the
complaints which had already reached my ears from the two policemen, I
was quite aware that even as early as their first arrival, they had found
a clean page where possibly a few minutes before the whole secret of this
tragedy may have been written in unmistakable characters; and while this
tilled me with relief in one way, it added to my care in another, for the
storm which could accomplish so much in so short a time was a bitter one
for a young girl to meet, and Carmel must have met it at its worst, in
her lonesome struggle homeward.

Where was she? Living or dead, where was she now and where was
Adelaide—the two women who for the last six weeks had filled my life
with so many unhallowed and conflicting emotions? The conjecture
passed incessantly through my brain, but it passed idly also and was
not answered even in thought. Indeed, I seemed incapable of sustaining
any line of thought for more than an instant, and when after an
indefinite length of time the door behind me opened, the look I turned
upon the gentleman who entered must have been a strange and far from
encouraging one.

He brought a lantern with him. So far the room had had no other
illumination than such as came from the fire, and when he had set this
lantern down on the mantel and turned to face me, I perceived, with a
sort of sluggish hope, that he was Dr. Perry, once a practising physician
and my father's intimate friend, now a county official of no ordinary
intelligence and, what was better, of no ordinary feeling.

His attachment to my father had not descended to me and, for the moment,
he treated me like a stranger.

"I am the coroner of this district," said he. "I have left my bed to have
a few words with you and learn if your detention here is warranted. You
are the president of this club, and the lady whose violent death in this
place I have been called upon to investigate, is Miss Cumberland, your
affianced wife?"

My assent, though hardly audible, was not to be misunderstood. Drawing up
a chair, he sat down and something in his manner which was not wholly
without sympathy, heartened me still more, dispelling some of the
cloudiness which had hitherto befogged my faculties.

"They have told me what you had to say in explanation of your presence
here where a crime of some nature has taken place. But I should like to
hear the story from your own lips. I feel that I owe you this
consideration. At all events, I am disposed to show it. This is no common
case of violence and the parties to it are not of the common order. Miss
Cumberland's virtue and social standing no one can question, while you
are the son of a man who has deservedly been regarded as an honour to the
town. You have been intending to marry Miss Cumberland?"

"Yes." I looked the man directly in the eye. "Our wedding-day was set."

"Did you love her? Pardon me; if I am to be of any benefit to you at this
crisis I must strike at the root of things. If you do not wish to
answer, say so, Mr. Ranelagh."

"I do wish." This was a lie, but what was I to do, knowing how dangerous
it would be for Carmel to have it publicly known where my affections were
really centred and what a secret tragedy of heart-struggle and jealous
passion underlay this open one of foul and murderous death. "I am in no
position to conceal anything from you. I did love Miss Cumberland. We
have been engaged for a year. She was a woman of fortune but I am not
without means of my own and could have chosen a penniless girl and still
been called prosperous."

"I see, and she returned your love?"

"Sincerely." Was the room light enough to reveal my guilty flush? She
had loved me only too well, too jealously, too absorbingly for her
happiness or mine.

"And the sister?"

It was gently but gravely put, and instantly I knew that our secret was
out, however safe we had considered it. This man was cognisant of it,
and if he, why not others! Why not the whole town! A danger which up to
this moment I had heard whispered only by the pines, was opening in a
gulf beneath our feet. Its imminence steadied me. I had kept my glance
on Coroner Perry, and I do not think it changed. My tone, I am quite
assured, was almost as quiet and grave as his as I made my reply in
these words:

"Her sister is her sister. I hardly think that either of us would be apt
to forget that. Have you heard otherwise, sir?"

He was prepared for equivocation, possibly for denial, but not for
attack. His manner changed and showed distrust and I saw that I had lost
rather than made by this venturous move.

"Is this your writing?" he suddenly asked, showing me a morsel of paper
which he had drawn from his vest pocket.

I looked, and felt that I now understood what the pines had been trying
to tell me for the last few hours. That compromising scrap of writing had
not been destroyed. It existed for her and my undoing! Then doubt came.
Fate could not juggle thus with human souls and purposes. I had simply
imagined myself to have recognised the words lengthening and losing
themselves in a blur before my eyes. Carmel was no fool even if she had
wild and demoniacal moments. This could not be my note to her,—that
fatal note which would make all denial of our mutual passion unavailing.

"Is it your writing?" my watchful inquisitor repeated.

I looked again. The scrap was smaller than my note had been when it left
my hands. If it were the same, then some of the words were gone. Were
they the first ones or the last? It would make a difference in the
reading, or rather, in the conclusions to be drawn from what remained. If
only the mist would clear from before my eyes, or he would hold the slip
of paper nearer! The room was very dark. The—the—

"Is it your writing?" Coroner Perry asked for the third time.

There was no denying it. My writing was peculiar and quite unmistakable.
I should gain nothing by saying no.

"It looks like it," I admitted reluctantly. "But I cannot be sure in this
light. May I ask what this bit of paper is and where you found it?"

"Its contents I think you know. As for the last question I think you can
answer that also if you will."

Saying which, he quietly replaced the scrap of paper in his pocket-book.

I followed the action with my eyes. I caught a fresh glimpse of a
darkened edge, and realised the cause of the faint odour which I had
hitherto experienced without being conscious of it. The scrap had been
plucked out of the chimney. She had tried to burn it. I remembered the
fire and the smouldering bits of paper which crumbled at my touch. And
this one, this, the most important—the only important one of them
all, had flown, half-scorched, up the chimney and clung there within
easy reach.

The whole incident was plain to me, and I could even fix upon the moment
when Hexford or Clarke discovered this invaluable bit of evidence. It was
just before I burst in upon them from the ballroom, and it was the
undoubted occasion of the remark I then overheard:

"
This settles it. He cannot escape us now
."

During the momentary silence which now ensued, I tried to remember the
exact words which had composed this note. They were few—sparks from my
very heart—I ought to be able to recollect them.

"To-night—10:30 train—we will be married at P—. Come, come, my
darling, my life. She will forgive when all is done. Hesitation will
only undo us. To-night at 10 30. Do not fail me. I shall never marry any
one but you."

Was that all? I had an indistinct remembrance of having added some wild
and incoherent words of passionate affection affixed to her name.
Her
name
! But it may be that in the hurry and flurry of the moment, these
terms of endearment simply passed through my mind and found no expression
on paper. I could not be sure, any more than I could be positive from the
half glimpse I got of these lines, which portion had been burned
off,—the top in which the word
train
occurred, or the final words,
emphasising a time of meeting and my determination to marry no one but
the person addressed. The first gone, the latter might take on any
sinister meaning. The latter gone, the first might prove a safeguard,
corroborating my statement that an errand had taken me into town.

I was oppressed by the uncertainty of my position. Even if I carried off
this detail successfully, others of equal importance might be awaiting
explanation. My poor, maddened, guilt-haunted girl had made the
irreparable mistake of letting this note of mine fly unconsumed up the
chimney, and she might have made others equally incriminating. It would
be hard to find an alibi for her if suspicion once turned her way. She
had not met me at the train. The unknown but doubtless easily-to-be-found
man who had handed me her note could swear to that fact.

Then the note itself! I had destroyed it, it is true, but its phrases
were so present to my mind—had been so branded into it by the terrors of
the tragedy which they appeared to foreshadow, that I had a dreadful
feeling that this man's eye could read them there. I remember that under
the compelling power of this fancy, my hand rose to my brow outspread and
concealing, as if to interpose a barrier between him and them. Is my
folly past belief? Possibly. But then I have not told you the words of
this fatal communication. They were these—innocent, if she were
innocent, but how suggestive in the light of her probable guilt:

"I cannot. Wait till to-morrow. Then you will see the depth of my love
for you—what I owe you—what I owe Adelaide."

I should see!

I was seeing.

Suddenly I dropped my hand; a new thought had come to me. Had Carmel been
discovered on the road leading from this place?

You perceive that by this time I had become the prey of every threatening
possibility; even of that which made the present a nightmare from which I
should yet wake to old conditions and old struggles, bad enough, God
knows, but not like this—not like this.

Meantime I was conscious that not a look or movement of mine had escaped
the considerate but watchful eye of the man before me.

"You do not relish my questions," he dryly observed. "Perhaps you would
rather tell your story without interruption. If so, I beg you to be as
explicit as possible. The circumstances are serious enough for perfect
candour on your part."

He was wrong. They were too serious for that. Perfect candour would
involve Carmel. Seeming candour was all I could indulge in. I took a
quick resolve. I would appear to throw discretion to the winds; to
confide to him what men usually hold sacred; to risk my reputation as a
gentleman, rather than incur a suspicion which might involve others
more than it did myself. Perhaps I should yet win through and save her
from an ignominy she possibly deserved but which she must never receive
at my hands.

"I will give you an account of my evening," said I. "It will not aid you
much, but will prove my good faith. You asked me a short time ago if I
loved the lady whom I was engaged to marry and whose dead body I most
unexpectedly came upon in this house some time before midnight. I
answered yes, and you showed that you doubted me. You were justified in
your doubts. I did love her once, or thought so, but my feelings changed.
A great temptation came into my life. Carmel returned from school
and—you know her beauty, her fascination. A week in her presence, and
marriage with Adelaide became impossible. But how evade it? I only knew
the coward's way; to lure this inexperienced young girl, fresh from
school, into a runaway match. A change which now became perceptible in
Miss Cumberland's manner, only egged me on. It was not sufficiently
marked in character to call for open explanation, yet it was unmistakable
to one on the watch as I was, and betokened a day of speedy reckoning for
which I was little prepared. I know what the manly course would have
been, but I preferred to skulk. I acknowledge it now; it is the only
retribution I have to offer for a past I am ashamed of. Without losing
one particle of my intention, I governed more carefully my looks and
actions, and thought I had succeeded in blinding Adelaide to my real
feelings and purpose. Whether I did or not, I cannot say. I have no means
of knowing now. She has not been her natural self for these last few
days, but she had other causes for worry, and I have been willing enough
to think that these were the occasion of her restless ways and short,
sharp speech and the blankness with which she met all my attempts to
soothe and encourage her. This evening"—I choked at the word. The day
had been one string of extraordinary experiences, accumulating in
intensity to the one ghastly discovery which had overtopped and
overwhelmed all the rest. "This evening," I falteringly continued, "I had
set as the limit to my endurance of the intolerable situation. During a
minute of solitude preceding the dinner at Miss Cumberland's house on the
Hill, I wrote a few lines to her sister, urging her to trust me with her
fate and meet me at the station in time for the ten-thirty train. I meant
to carry her at once to P—, where I had a friend in the ministry who
would at once unite us in marriage. I was very peremptory, for my nerves
were giving way under the secret strain to which they had been subjected
for so long, and she herself was looking worn with her own silent and
uncommunicated conflict.