Hand and Ring, Anna Katharine Green [reading strategies book txt] 📗

person held in so much regard by yourself, I would have given up my office with pleasure, so keenly do I feel the embarrassment of my position and the unhappiness of yours. But any mere resignation on my part would have availed nothing to save Miss Dare from appearing before the Grand Jury. The evidence she has to give in this matter makes the case against Mansell as strong as that against Hildreth, and it would be the duty of any public prosecutor to recognize the fact and act accordingly."

Mr. Orcutt, who had by the greatest effort succeeded in calming himself through this harangue, flashed sarcastically at this last remark, and surveyed Mr. Ferris with a peculiar look.

"Are you sure," he inquired in a slow, ironical tone, "that she has not succeeded in making it stronger?"

The look, the tone, were unexpected, and greatly startled Mr. Ferris. Drawing nearer to his friend, he returned his gaze with marked earnestness.

"What do you mean?" he asked, with secret anxiety.

But the wary lawyer had already repented this unwise betrayal of his own doubts. Meeting his companion's eye with a calmness that amazed himself, he remarked, instead of answering:

"It was through Miss Dare, then, that your attention was first drawn to Mrs. Clemmens' nephew?"

"No," disclaimed Mr. Ferris, hastily. "The detectives already had their eyes upon him. But a hint from her went far toward determining me upon pursuing the matter," he allowed, seeing that his friend was determined upon hearing the truth.

"So then," observed the other, with a stern dryness that recalled his manner at the bar, "she opened a communication with you herself?"

"Yes."

It was enough. Mr. Orcutt dropped the arm of Mr. Ferris, and, with his usual hasty bow, turned shortly away. The revelation which he believed himself to have received in this otherwise far from satisfactory interview, was one that he could not afford to share—that is, not yet; not while any hope remained that circumstances would so arrange themselves as to make it unnecessary for him to do so. If Imogene Dare, out of her insane desire to free Gouverneur Hildreth from the suspicion that oppressed him, had resorted to perjury and invented evidence tending to show the guilt of another party—and remembering her admissions at their last interview and the language she had used in her letter of farewell, no other conclusion offered itself,—what alternative was left him but to wait till he had seen her before he proceeded to an interference that would separate her from himself by a gulf still greater than that which already existed between them? To be sure, the jealousy which consumed him, the passionate rage that seized his whole being when he thought of all she dared do for the man she loved, or that he thought she loved, counselled him to nip this attempt of hers in the bud, and by means of a word to Mr. Ferris throw such a doubt upon her veracity as a witness against this new party as should greatly influence the action of the former in the critical business he had in hand. But Mr. Orcutt, while a prey to unwonted passions, had not yet lost control of his reason, and reason told him that impulse was an unsafe guide for him to follow at this time. Thought alone—deep and concentrated thought—would help him out of this crisis with honor and safety. But thought would not come at call. In all his quick walk home but one mad sentence formulated itself in his brain, and that was: "She loves him so, she is willing to perjure herself for his sake!" Nor, though he entered his door with his usual bustling air and went through all the customary observances of the hour with an appearance of no greater abstraction and gloom than had characterized him ever since the departure of Miss Dare, no other idea obtruded itself upon his mind than this: "She loves him so, she is willing to perjure herself for his sake!"

Even the sight of his books, his papers, and all that various paraphernalia of work and study which gives character to a lawyer's library, was insufficient to restore his mind to its usual condition of calm thought and accurate judgment. Not till the clock struck eight and he found himself almost without his own volition at Professor Darling's house, did he realize all the difficulties of his position and the almost intolerable nature of the undertaking which had been forced upon him by the exigencies of the situation.

Miss Dare, who had refused to see him at first, came into his presence with an expression that showed him with what reluctance she had finally responded to his peremptory message. But in the few heavy moments he had been obliged to wait, he had schooled himself to expect coldness if not absolute rebuff. He therefore took no heed of the haughty air of inquiry which she turned upon him, but came at once to the point, saying almost before she had closed the door:

"What is this you have been doing, Imogene?"

A flush, such as glints across the face of a marble statue, visited for a moment the still whiteness of her set features, then she replied:

"Mr. Orcutt, when I left your house I told you I had a wretched and unhappy duty to perform, that, when once accomplished, would separate us forever. I have done it, and the separation has come; why attempt to bridge it?"

There was a sad weariness in her tone, a sad weariness in her face, but he seemed to recognize neither. The demon jealousy—that hindrance to all unselfish feeling—had gripped him again, and the words that came to his lips were at once bitter and masterful.

"Imogene," he cried, with as much wrath in his tone as he had ever betrayed in her presence, "you do not answer my question. I ask you what you have been doing, and you reply, your duty. Now, what do you mean by duty? Tell me at once and distinctly, for I will no longer be put off by any roundabout phrases concerning a matter of such vital importance."

"Tell you?" This repetition of his words had a world of secret anguish in it which he could not help but notice. She did not succumb to it, however, but continued in another moment: "You said to me, in the last conversation we held together, that Gouverneur Hildreth could not be released from his terrible position without a distinct proof of innocence or the advancement of such evidence against another as should turn suspicion aside from him into a new and more justifiable quarter. I could not, any more than he, give a distinct proof of his innocence; but I could furnish the authorities with testimony calculated to arouse suspicion in a fresh direction, and I did it. For Gouverneur Hildreth had to be saved at any price—at any price."

The despairing emphasis she laid upon the last phrase went like hot steel to Mr. Orcutt's heart, and made his eyes blaze with almost uncontrollable passion.

"Je ne vois pas la necessité," said he, in that low, restrained tone of bitter sarcasm which made his invective so dreaded by opposing counsel. "If Gouverneur Hildreth finds himself in an unfortunate position, he has only his own follies and inordinate desire for this woman's death to thank for it. Because you love him and compassionate him beyond all measure, that is no reason why you should perjure yourself, and throw the burden of his shame upon a man as innocent as Mr. Mansell."

But this tone, though it had made many a witness quail before it, neither awed nor intimidated her.

"You—you do not understand," came from her white lips. "It is Mr. Hildreth who is perfectly innocent, and not——" But here she paused. "You will excuse me from saying more," she said. "You, as a lawyer, ought to know that I should not be compelled to speak on a subject like this except under oath."

"Imogene!" A change had passed over Mr. Orcutt. "Imogene, do you mean to affirm that you really have charges to make against Craik Mansell; that this evidence you propose to give is real, and not manufactured for the purpose of leading suspicion aside from Hildreth?"

It was an insinuation against her veracity he never could have made, or she have listened to, a few weeks before; but the shield of her pride was broken between them, and neither he nor she seemed to give any thought to the reproach conveyed in these words.

"What I have to say is the truth," she murmured. "I have not manufactured any thing."

With an astonishment he took no pains to conceal, Mr. Orcutt anxiously surveyed her. He could not believe this was so, yet how could he convict her of falsehood in face of that suffering expression of resolve which she wore. His methods as a lawyer came to his relief.

"Imogene," he slowly responded, "if, as you say, you are in possession of positive evidence against this Mansell, how comes it that you jeopardized the interests of the man you loved by so long withholding your testimony?"

But instead of the flush of confusion which he expected, she flashed upon him with a sudden revelation of feeling that made him involuntarily start.

"Shall I tell you?" she replied. "You will have to know some time, and why not now? I kept back the truth," she replied, advancing a step, but without raising her eyes to his, "because it is not the aspersed Hildreth that I love, but——"

Why did she pause? What was it she found so hard to speak? Mr. Orcutt's expression became terrible.

"But the other," she murmured at last.

"The other!"

It was now her turn to start and look at him in surprise, if not in some fear.

"What other?" he cried, seizing her by the hand. "Name him. I will have no further misunderstanding between us."

"Is it necessary?" she asked, with bitterness. "Will Heaven spare me nothing?" Then, as she saw no relenting in the fixed gaze that held her own, whispered, in a hollow tone: "You have just spoken the name yourself—Craik Mansell."

"Ah!"

Incredulity, anger, perplexity, all the emotions that were seething in this man's troubled soul, spoke in that simple exclamation. Then silence settled upon the room, during which she gained control over herself, and he the semblance of it if no more. She was the first to speak.

"I know," said she, "that this avowal on my part seems almost incredible to you; but it is no more so than that which you so readily received from me the other day in reference to Gouverneur Hildreth. A woman who spends a month away from home makes acquaintances which she does not always mention when she comes back. I saw Mr. Mansell in Buffalo, and——" turning, she confronted the lawyer with her large gray eyes, in which a fire burned such as he had never seen there before—"and grew to esteem him," she went on. "For the first time in my life I found myself in the presence of a man whose nature commanded mine. His ambition, his determination, his unconventional and forcible character woke aspirations within me such as I had never known myself capable of before. Life, which had stretched out before me with a somewhat monotonous outlook, changed to a panorama of varied and wonderful experiences, as I listened to his voice and met the glance of his eye; and soon, before he knew it, and certainly before I realized it, words of love passed between us, and the agony of that struggle began which has ended—— Ah, let me not think how, or I shall go mad!"

Mr. Orcutt, who had watched her with a lover's fascination during all this attempted explanation, shivered for a moment at this last bitter cry of love and despair, but spoke