Kitabı oku: «One of My Sons», sayfa 14

My own heart grew heavy as the gladness left hers, and I was nearly as desolate as she when I made this final remark:

"That is all, Miss Meredith. I as truly believe that Leighton Gillespie bought the bottle of poison from the girl he called Mille-fleurs as if I had seen him laying the money down before her. But Rosenthal's admissions you must take at your own valuation. He says he saw your uncle, with backward looks and signs of secret fear and disturbance, pour out something from a glass on to the grass-plot underneath his open window. Was it the wine which had been given him by Leighton, and did he do this because of the drug he had detected in it? – a drug, alas! so fatal, it was not necessary for him to drink the full glass in order to succumb to it? That is a question you must answer in your mind from the knowledge you have of your uncle and his family."

There was a hope held out in this last phrase which I expected to see her embrace. But she did not; on the contrary, her depression remained unchanged and she said:

"I knew my uncle well. He was a just man, and, in times of great danger, a cool one. He would never have written for my eyes those four words – 'one of my sons' – unless some new fact had added certainty to his former conviction. The drug was in the wine handed him by Leighton; we must accept that fact whatever it may cost us."

Her calmness amazed me. For the last few minutes she seemed upborne by some secret thought I could neither fathom nor understand.

But suddenly her old horror returned with the recurrence of some old memory. "Then it was his hand that stole towards my uncle's glass in the dark!" she cried; "that murderous, creeping hand, the vision of which has haunted me night and day since I heard of it. Oh, horrible! horrible! What a curse to fall upon a man! It is the work of the arch-fiend. Poor Leighton! poor Leighton!" she cried in her agony.

Bowing her head, she sobbed bitterly, while I surveyed her in amazement. I did not understand her. She seemed to be weeping for Leighton, not for herself; at all events she did not show the repulsion I expected from her in face of such monstrous depravity. Was the fascination he exerted over her so great that she could not weigh at their proper value characteristics so entirely evil? It did not seem possible. Yet there she sat mourning for him, instead of crushing the very thought of him out of her heart.

"I think I comprehend it all now," she finally whispered, half to herself and half to me. "I have had the thought before; it has come when that bewildering look of mad uneasiness has crossed his face and he has left us to be gone days, sometimes weeks, without notice or explanation. It is a strange idea, a secret, almost an uncanny, one; but it is the only one that can explain a crime for which one and all of my cousins seem to lack the inherent baseness. Dare I breathe it to you? It may be the saving of Leighton, if true; God knows it is my only excuse for clinging to him still."

"And you do cling to him still?" I asked, knowing what her answer would be, but hoping against hope.

The look she gave recalled all her old beauty. Would that I might have been the cause of it! or that a woman would love where she was loved and not where her heart must encounter disgrace and bitter suffering.

"I cannot help doing so," she murmured. "He will soon need my aid, if not my comfort; for I know what these horrible contradictions mean. I understand them, understand him, and even the revolting crime of which he may have been guilty. Hypocrisy does not explain it; depravity does not explain it; his good acts are too real, the nobility of his nature too unmistakable. Disease alone can account for it. He is the victim of double consciousness, and he leads two lives – your own expression – because the two hemispheres of his brain do not act in unison. Wickedness is not his normal condition. His normal condition is a noble one. By nature he is a God-fearing man, devoted to good works and high thoughts. When he goes astray it is because the balance of his faculties has been disturbed. This is no new thing to the psychologist. You yourself have heard of men so afflicted. Leighton Gillespie is one."

Was her own brain turned by her terror, anxiety, and wonder? Surely she was either mad or playing with my common sense. But the calm dignity of her manner proved that she had advanced this astonishing, this fantastic explanation of Leighton Gillespie's contradictory actions in good faith. Despair seized me at this proof of his tenacious hold upon her, and I could not quite restrain a touch of irony.

"You would make him out a sort of Jekyll and Hyde," I ventured. "Alas! I fear the courts do not take into account the theories of the romancer in their judgment of criminals."

The sarcasm passed unheeded. Growing more and more beautiful as her earnestness increased, she said with simple confidence:

"Talk to Dr. Bennett; he has known my cousin almost from his birth. Ask what these sudden changes mean in a man whose primal instincts have always been good. Ask why this devoted father, this kind son, suddenly loses himself, it may be at table, it may be while sitting with his own child by the fire, and, deaf to all remonstrance, blind to the most touching appeals of those about him, goes suddenly out and does not come back till he can be himself again in the presence of his family and under the eye of his friends. Previous to that awful morning when my uncle unsealed to my eyes the horrible secret that rested like a cloud over the household, I used to give another explanation to these varying moods, and see in them a promise of more personal hopes and an augury of my own future happiness; so easy is it for a woman to deceive herself when she worships a man without fully comprehending him. I thought – " Here her calm candour grew almost heroic in the effort she made to impress me with the reasons she cherished for her belief, "I thought he was jealous of George or angry with Alfred, and was driven away by his fears of self-betrayal or his dread of being led into making unworthy reprisals. But now I see that it was his abnormal nature which had come into play, a nature of which he may be ignorant when in full health, and for the manifestations of which he may be no more responsible than we are for the vagaries we commit in dreams."

"You have not read the latest discoveries in hypnotism," I rejoined. "A man can be driven into no act for which he lacks the natural instinct. But I do not want to be cruel, Miss Meredith. I am too sincere in my desire to save you unnecessary pain and heartache. Since you wish it, I will see Dr. Bennett, but – "

My smile seemed to unnerve her.

"But you do not think he will agree with me in my interpretation of this crime and Leighton's connection with it?"

"I do not, Miss Meredith."

"Then," she cried, with a high look and a gleam of quiet resolve that made me realise how small was my influence in face of her overpowering love for this man, "God's will be done! I shall believe in what I have said till he whom I have trusted is proved the heinous malefactor you consider him. When that hour comes, I perish, killed by the greatest shame that can overwhelm a woman. To love one who has never sought your affection may cause the cheek to burn and the heart to recoil upon itself; but to have given all one's youth and the most cherished impulses of the heart to a man who is no more than a whited sepulchre of deceit and revolting crime – that would be to sap life at its spring and tear up the heart by its roots. Oh, Mr. Outhwaite, forgetting all womanly delicacy, forgetting everything but your forbearance and the confidence with which you inspire me, I have poured out my soul before you. Prove to me that this man is good – moral in his instincts, I mean, except when the evil spirit has a grip upon him – and I will bless you as the saviour of my self-respect. But if you cannot, – " here she turned pale and tottered, – "then do not expect me to survive. I – I – could not."

The alternative was a bitter one. I did not see at that moment how she could expect, still less how I could perform, such a miracle. But I could not see her depart without some gleam of encouragement, and so I told her that if the tide turned so as to free Alfred from suspicion and land Leighton in the courts, I would embrace the opportunity thus offered to do all that lay in my power to prove her theory a true one.

And with this understanding between us she went away, leaving me to take up, with what courage I could, my own broken and disjointed life.

XXIV
AN OLD CATASTROPHE IS RECALLED

This idea as advanced by Hope was fantastical to a degree; yet it made its impression upon me and was still in my mind when I opened the evening paper for the latest news concerning the Gillespie murder. The first paragraph I encountered proved that I had not warned her an hour too soon of Leighton Gillespie's position.

"Fresh disclosures in the Gillespie Poisoning Case. Leighton Gillespie, long regarded as the most respectable and hitherto best-esteemed son of the murdered man, discovered to have been for years the owner, and at times the occupant, of a little house in one of the Oranges, where, unknown to the world at large – "

Here followed some open allusions to Mille-fleurs.

Other statements were added to this, among them a résumé of the facts advanced to me the evening before by Rosenthal. At the end were these lines:

"The District Attorney has the whole matter in charge, and the public is promised some decided action to-morrow."

I folded the paper, put it in my pocket, and went directly to Dr. Bennett's office.

I had not seen the good physician since the inquest, and naturally the sight of his face recalled the strange and moving incidents which had first brought us together. But I made no allusion to these past experiences, and his first remark was wholly professional.

"I hope it is not as a patient I see you, Mr. Outhwaite?"

With a shake of the head I took out the newspaper I had been careful to bring with me, and pointed out the paragraph concerning Leighton and Mille-fleurs.

"Is this news to you?" I asked. "I make the inquiry solely in the interests of Miss Meredith, who has hitherto had unbounded confidence in this cousin."

He glanced at the lines, frowned, and then with a pained look, replied:

"I do not believe this of Leighton. He of all Mr. Gillespie's sons is the furthest removed from the suspicion connecting them with the crime which has wrecked their good name. He is incapable of any serious wrong-doing; incapable even of what these lines suggest. I have known him from his birth."

I would gladly have left this kind-hearted physician in undisturbed possession of this confidence, but the situation was too serious to trifle with.

"He enjoys a good name," I allowed, "and has even been known to exert himself in many acts of benevolence towards the unfortunate and the suffering. But some natures, and they are frequently those from which most is to be expected, have a reverse side, which will not bear the scrutiny either of their friends or the world at large. Leighton Gillespie has one of these natures. This story of the little house is true."

The doctor, who was evidently heart and soul with this family, showed a distress at this avowal which spoke well for the hold which this especial member of it had upon his affections.

Seeing that, while not ready to question my word, he was anxious to know the sources of my information, I was about to enter upon the necessary explanations, when he forestalled me by saying:

"There have always been unexplained traits in this man. He stands alone among the other members of the family. He has neither the social qualities of George nor the luxurious tastes of Alfred. Nor is he like his father. I, who knew his mother well, have no difficulty in attributing to their correct source the religious tendencies which form so distinct a part of his character. But the melancholy which pervades his life is not an inheritance, but the result of nervous shock incident upon an extreme grief in early life, and while I do not profess to understand him or the many peculiarities to which his father rightfully raised objection, I am positive that he will never be found guilty of a depraved act. I am ready to stake my reputation on it."

"You should talk with Miss Meredith," I suggested. "She believes, or endeavours to believe, in him also. But even she finds herself forced to accept the truth of this report. The facts favouring it are too unmistakable. I can myself supply evidence enough to make his guilt in this regard quite sure."

And, without preamble, I entered upon a detailed account of the discoveries made by me at Mother Merry's. They were, as you well know, convincing in their nature, and allowed but two conclusions to be drawn. Either Leighton Gillespie was a monster of hypocrisy or he was the victim of the mental derangement so fondly suggested by Hope.

This last explanation I left to the perspicacity of the trained physician. Would he seize upon it as she did? Or would he fail to see in these results any symptoms of the strange mental malady alluded to by Hope? I watched him anxiously. Evidently no such explanation was likely to suggest itself to him unaided. Indeed, his next words proved how far any such conclusion was from his mind.

"You overwhelm me," said he. "It was hard enough to look upon George or Alfred as capable of a crime so despicable, but Leighton! – I shall have to readjust all my memories and all my fancied relations with this family if he is to be looked upon with suspicion. Then there is Claire!"

"Pardon me," I ventured, in vague apology for an interruption which seemed out of place from a stranger. "Have you looked upon Leighton as a well man? You speak of a great grief – "

"The loss of his wife."

"I supposed so. Now, could this grief have disturbed the even balance of his mind so as to make these abnormal developments possible? Did he show the inconsistencies you mention prior to the event you speak of? It might be well to inquire."

"Insanity?" he intimated. "Will that be the plea?"

"Do you think it can be advanced? He has not yet been arrested or even openly accused, but I am confident he will be, and soon, and it is well for his friends to be prepared."

"That is a question I cannot answer without serious thought," rejoined the doctor, restlessly pacing the room. "Intimately as I have been associated with him I have never for a moment felt myself called upon to doubt his perfect sanity. Does Miss Meredith regard his eccentricities in this light?"

"Miss Meredith's inherent belief in the goodness of this favourite cousin leads her to give him the benefit of her doubts. She regards him as a man cursed by recurrent aberrations of mind; in other words, a victim of double consciousness."

"Hope does? What does she know about the nice distinctions governing this peculiar condition? She must have brought all her imagination to bear on the subject, to find such an excuse for his contradictory actions. This argues a great partiality for him on her part. She must be in love with Leighton."

I was silent.

The doctor's amazement was very genuine.

"Well, I never suspected her of any such preference. I have had an idea at times that she favoured Alfred rather than George, but I never thought of her being caught by Leighton's melancholy countenance and eccentric ways. Well! women are an incomprehensible lot! The only widower amongst the three! The only one not likely to be affected by her partiality. But that's neither here nor there. It's her theory we are interested in. A strange one! A very strange one!"

Suddenly he grew thoughtful. "But not an impossible one," was his final comment. "The shock he sustained might account for almost anything. Such restrained natures have great depths and are subject to great reactions! I must study the case; I can give no offhand opinion upon it. The contradictions observable in his conduct are not normal and certainly show disease. What was the question you asked me?" he suddenly inquired. "Whether he showed his present peculiarities prior to the death of his wife? I don't think he did; really, I don't think he did. He was reserved in his ways, unhappy, out of tune with his father because that father failed to appreciate the daughter-in-law he had foisted upon him, but he showed these feelings naturally and not at all as he showed them later. Have you heard the current gossip concerning his marriage?"

"Not at all, save that it was an unfortunate one and created, as you say, a certain barrier between him and his father."

"Yes, it was an unfortunate one; the whole thing was unfortunate. So much so that his friends felt a decided relief when young Mrs. Gillespie died. But her husband regarded this loss as an irreparable one; he was wrapped up in her when she was alive, and, as you now call to mind, has never been the same man since her death. Perhaps it was because he had no outlet for his grief. His father would not hear her name mentioned, and little Claire was too young to even remember her mother. Fortunately, perhaps."

The last words were said in his throat, and opened up a wide abyss of possibilities into which I had not the curiosity to penetrate. I only felt impelled to ask:

"Was her death attended with any unusual circumstance that you speak of his sorrow as a shock?"

For reply he went to his desk, and after some fumbling brought out several slips of paper, from among which he chose one which he passed over to me.

"I have kept this account of a very tragic occurrence, for reasons you will appreciate on reading it."

I took the slip and perused it. With no apology for its length, I introduce it here. As you will see, it is an engineer's account of the extraordinary accident which took place on the B., F. and D. road some half-dozen years ago. It begins abruptly, the extract having been closely clipped from the columns of the paper containing it:

Big Hill is only twelve miles long and has a grade averaging 140 feet to the mile, and the principal part of the grade is in spots. Six loaded cars made a train up this hill, and the train of six cars was hauled and pushed up the grade by two engines. My engine was stationed permanently on the hill, and its duty was to couple to the back end of one of these trains and help it up the grade.

At the top of the hill was a side-track called Acton, but no telegraph operator was stationed there. At the foot of the grade was Buckley, a telegraph office in the centre of a big side-track system used for breaking up trains before sending them up the grade in sections. Eight miles below Buckley was an abandoned mining town named Campton. Here was a set of side-tracks and switches and a dozen unoccupied miners' shanties, while the disused telegraph office was occupied by a one-legged pensioner of the company – a flagman – and his nineteen-year-old daughter. Twelve miles further down the line was Mountain Springs, now one of the foremost summer resorts in the mountains, and even twenty years ago much frequented by Eastern health-seekers. I explain this so that you will readily understand what happened.

We had run No. 17 up the hill and were ordered on to the side-track at Acton to get out of the way of No. 11, the through train from the South that was coming North as a double-header, and with a third big engine pushing her. No. 11 was a regular, but was making this trip as an excursion train, and was made up of eight coaches, crowded with people from Mountain Springs.

As the freight we were shoving came to a stand-still, my fireman leaped to the ground and uncoupled the engine from the last car, and I backed down over the switch and then ran ahead on the side-track. While this was being done, a brakeman had cut the train in front of the last two cars, and the regular engine in front had started ahead with the other cars towards the north switch to back the four cars in on the spur.

As I shut off steam and centred the reverse lever I saw that the two cars were moving slowly down the hill, and I watched them only long enough to see the rear brakeman clamber up the side-ladder and seize the brake-wheel. Then I tried the water in the boiler, started the injector, and again glanced at the cars. Evidently the brake on the first car was out of order, as the cars were moving more rapidly, and the brakeman was hastening towards the brake on the second car. He grasped it and swung around, and nearly fell to the ground. The brake-chain was broken, and there was nothing to hold the cars.

In an instant the picture of an awful horror flashed before my eyes. No. 11, crowded with passengers, was coming, and those cars, running at terrific speed, would crash into the train, carrying death and destruction to scores, if not hundreds. The scene at the moment the realisation of the impending disaster came over me is before me now as plainly as on that day, nearly five years ago, – the moving cars, the brakeman stumbling towards the side-ladder to descend, the fireman, who was more than a little deaf, walking away without seeing or hearing what had occurred, and, in his place, a man (I had almost said a gentleman) standing by the switch-staff and gazing towards the cars with eyes that reflected the horror in my own; while thirty miles below, on the line of the twisted, winding track, a faint blur of smoke that told me No. 11 had left Mountain Springs.

Before the moving cars crossed the switch we all knew what must be done. The man, who for all his good clothes, must have been some fireman off duty, had thrown the switch, and then, seeing that my own man was too far off to meet this emergency, had swung himself on to the foot-board back of the tank; and old 105 was in pursuit of the runaways.

The brakeman remained to close the switch and the stranger was bracing himself to couple the engine to the swift-moving cars when we should approach them.

No steam is ever used going down that hill; at the top of the incline the throttle-valve is closed and the speed of the train is controlled by the air-brake. But, as the stranger who had boarded the engine took his stand on the foot-board, I opened the throttle wide to give her a start, then put on the air until I had her under control, and then away we went. The runaway cars were fully one hundred yards ahead as we crossed the switch, and were moving apparently at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour with rapidly increasing momentum. In sixty seconds old 105 was running fifty miles an hour, and in thirty seconds more we were close to the cars. I heard the voice of the man in front shouting something, and knowing that it was to slow down in order to approach the cars without a crash, I applied the air. A slight jolt told me that the engine and car had come together, and after waiting an instant to give my unknown assistant time to drop the pin in place, I pulled the air-valve to lessen the speed. As the engine slowed under the pressure of the brake, I saw the cars glide away from us. He had missed the coupling. Again engine and cars came together and again I applied the air, with the same result.

We were running now at a speed of sixty or seventy miles an hour, and when you consider that the track on the hill is the crookedest ever surveyed by an engineer, cut up by deep ravines and canyons, and leading along high precipices, you can appreciate the danger of the run. Down the hill we thundered, swinging through deep cuts and around sharp curves, the engine swaying and swinging on her springs as if struggling in an effort to dash herself into one of the gorges lining the track. The engine was surrounded by rolling clouds of dust, through which at times I caught glimpses of the cars pitching and tossing like some dismantled vessel in a storm at sea. I knew the cars might jump the track at any moment and ditch the locomotive, sending the fireman and myself to quick death; but we must take the chances so long as there was a possibility of stopping the runaways.

Again and again we tried to make the coupling, but failed each time. I did not know, until all was over, the difficulties which the stranger was experiencing. The drawhead in the car was the old-fashioned single-link bumper, – a man-killer we call it now, – and was so loose in its socket that it had to be raised six or eight inches and held in position while the link was being put in place. This required two hands, and as he could not maintain his position on the swaying foot-board without using one hand to cling to the handrail, he could not get the link in place and drop the pin through it.

By this time we were within three miles of Buckley. As the locomotive and fleeting cars dashed across a trestle one hundred feet high, I caught a glimpse of the little telegraph shanty down in the valley, surrounded by a network of rails. I opened the whistle and kept it shrieking until we were within two hundred yards of Buckley, but no one appeared on the station platform; and as we flashed past the telegraph office the white face of the operator, his eyes wide open with alarm and horror, appeared at the window for the fraction of an instant.

As we dashed past the telegraph office the long arm of the signal-board pointed down, and I thanked God that the next block was still open, and that we had another chance for life. We had eight miles of clear track and might yet prevent a disaster. The only hope, however, was in catching the runaway cars, as there was no telegraph office at Campton and No. 11 had left Mountain Springs and was booming towards us as fast as three big engines could send her, and without a stop ahead.

We crossed the half-mile of side-tracks at Buckley so fast that there was an unbroken rattle of clanking rails, and swung around the point of the mountain and down the winding track towards Campton. Over swaying bridges, through cuts, old 105 jolted us along at the rate of seventy or eighty miles an hour. In two minutes after crossing the yards at Buckley we were within sight of Campton, nestling below us in the valley. The man on the foot-board had been silent seemingly for hours, and whether he was still at his post or had fallen on the rails and been ground to pieces, I did not know. I realised now that there was no longer a possibility of stopping the cars by coupling to them, and what my hope was, if I had any at all, I do not know; there was only a mad determination to follow those runaway cars to the end and die with the rest.

As the roofs of Campton came into view the whistle began to sound again. Three miles below lay the half-deserted mining camp; now I could see the rough board station, the red and white switch targets, and the dark spots on the mountain-side that marked the abandoned test-shafts. Then I distinguished a form on the station platform, a slender form in dark calico and wearing a sun-bonnet. The woman's back was towards me, but I knew her to be Nettie Bascom, the daughter of the one-legged flagman. It was ten seconds, perhaps, before the girl heard the whistle; then she turned slowly, looking an instant towards us, and, with a quick spring, was at a switch-stand and had thrown the lever, and the white of the target turned to red and we were safe. But not so the passenger train. The cars had passed over the switch before it could be turned, and in another moment the sound of its bounding wheels, our own cries, and all the other noises of the dreadful moment, were drowned by an explosion that lifted old 105 off the rails and laid everyone within sight insensible on the road. Those cars which we had chased unavailingly for thirty miles or more were laden with dynamite, and when they crashed into that train —

Do you ask about the man who shared my peril, and all to so little purpose? I can tell you nothing about him. Whether my former conclusion was correct and he had been shaken from his narrow hold into some ditch or gully, or whether he was hurled to destruction at the time of the explosion, I cannot say. I only know that I never saw him again alive or dead.

Below was added a line by the editor:

This is an offhand relation of the catastrophe in which Mrs. Leighton Gillespie lost her life. She will be remembered by New York aristocracy as the brilliant, if eccentric, daughter-in-law of Archibald Gillespie, the multi-millionaire.

I returned the slip to Dr. Bennett. The excitement of that wild ride was upon me, and I seemed to have been present at the catastrophe it was intended to avert.

"Mountain Springs is in the West, I judge. How came the Gillespies there, and why was she the sole sufferer? Was he not on the train with her?"

"That is one of the peculiar features of the affair. He was not on the train, but he turned up at the wreck. Those who saw him there say that he worked like a giant, nay, like a Titan, amongst those ghastly ruins. Finally he found her. She was quite dead. After that he worked no more. It is a story of unmitigated horror, and the agonies of that awful finding might well leave an indelible impression on his brain."

"I am glad you recognise this possibility. The effect of such a scene, even where no personal interests are involved, often leaves a man's nerves in a shaken condition for years. Besides – forgive me if I press my theory beyond all reason – another possibility has been suggested to me by this engineer's tale. I will not broach it just yet, but inquire first how Leighton Gillespie was able to reach the scene of the wreck so quickly. Did he hasten down from the Springs, which seem to have been some miles away, or was he in the vicinity of the accident when it occurred?"

"That is a question I have never heard answered. But I long ago concluded that he was not far from the place where the collision occurred, for he was seen there as soon as the smoke lifted. Why, what now? You seem moved – excited. Has any new idea been suggested to you?"