Fashion and Famine Part 58

"What have you done, Jacob Strong! Can you ask that question of William Leicester's wife, so soon after your own act has made her a widow?"

"But how?--how did I make you a widow?" said he, turning pale with suppressed feeling.

"How?" cried Ada, almost with a shriek, for the pa.s.sion of her nature had been gathering force all day, and now it burst forth with a degree of violence that shook her whole frame. "Who sat like a great, hideous spider in his web, watching him as he wove and entangled the meshes of crime around him? Who stung my pride, spurred on all that was unforgiving and haughty in my nature, till I too--unnatural wretch--who had wronged and sinned against him--turned in my unholy pride, and drove him into deeper evil? It was you, Jacob Strong, who did this. It was you who urged him into the fearful strait, that admitted of no escape but death. The guilt of this self-murder rests with you, and with me. My heart is black with his blood; my brain reels when the thought presses on it. I hate you--and oh! a thousand times more do I hate myself--the pitiful tool of my own menial!"

"Your menial, Ada Wilc.o.x--have I ever been that?"

"No," was the pa.s.sionate answer, "I have been _your_ menial, your dupe.

You have made me his murderer. I loved him, oh! Father of mercies, how I loved him!"

The wretched woman wrung her hands, and waved them up and down in the firelight so rapidly, that the restless brilliants upon them seemed shooting out sparks of lightning.

"I thought he would come back. He was cruel--he was insolent--but what was that? We might have known his haughty spirit would never bend. If he had died any other death--oh! anything, anything but this rankling knowledge, that I, his wife, drove him to self-murder!"

Jacob Strong left his position at the door, and coming close up to his mistress, took both her hands in his. He could not endure her reproaches. Her words stung his honest heart to the core.

"Sit down," he said, with gentle firmness--"sit down, Ada Wilc.o.x, and listen to me. There is yet something that I have to say. If it will remove any of the bitterness that you harbor against me, if it can reconcile you to yourself, I can tell you that there is great doubt if your--if Mr. Leicester did commit suicide. Thinking it might grieve you more deeply, I kept the papers away that said anything of the matter; but even now a man lies in prison charged with his murder!"

"Charged with his murder!" repeated Ada, starting. "How?--when? She--his mother--said it was self-destruction!"

"She believes it, perhaps believes it yet, but others think differently. He was found dead in a miserable bas.e.m.e.nt, alone with the old man they have imprisoned. Why he went there no one can guess; but it is known that he was in that bas.e.m.e.nt the night before, but a little earlier than the time when he appeared at your ball. If he had any portion of the money obtained from us about him, that may have tempted the old man, who is miserably poor."

Jacob was going on, but his mistress, who had listened with breathless attention, interrupted him.

"Do you believe this? Do you believe that he was murdered?"

"Very strong proofs exist against the old man," replied Jacob--"the public think him guilty."

Ada drew a deep breath.

"You have taken a terrible load from my heart," she said, pressing one hand to her bosom, and sinking down upon the couch with a low, hysterical laugh. "He is dead, but there is a chance that I did not kill him. I begin to loathe myself less."

"And me!--_me_ you will never cease to hate?"

"You have been a good friend to me, Jacob Strong, better than I deserved," answered Ada, reaching forth her hand, which the servant wrung rather than pressed.

"And this last act," he said, "when I tried to free you from the grasp of a vile man, was the most kind, the most friendly thing I ever did!"

Ada started up and drew her hand from his grasp.

"Hush, not a word more," she said, "if we are to be anything to each other hereafter. He was my husband--he is dead!"

She sunk back to the cushions of her couch a moment after, and veiling her eyes with one hand, fell into thought. Jacob stood humbly before her; for though they spoke and acted as friends, nay, almost as brother and sister, he never lost the respectful demeanor befitting his position in Ada's household.

She sat up, at length, with a calmer and more resolute expression of countenance.

"Now tell me all that relates to his death," she said. "Who is charged with it? What is the evidence?"

Jacob related all that he knew regarding the arrest of old Mr. Warren.

In his own heart he did not believe the poor man guilty, but he abstained from expressing this, for it was an intuition rather than a belief, and Jacob could not but see that his own exculpation in the eyes of the fair creature to whom he spoke, would depend upon her belief in another's guilt. Jacob had no courage to express more than known facts as they appeared in the case. The vague impressions that haunted him were, in truth, too indefinite for words.

Ada listened with profound attention. She had not been so still or so firm before, since her husband's death. It required time for feelings strong as hers to turn into a new channel, and the pa.s.sage from self-hatred to revenge was still as it was terrible.

She remained silent for some minutes after Jacob had told her all, and when she did speak, the whole character of her face was changed.

"If this man is guilty, Leicester's death lies not here!" she said, pressing one hand hard upon her heart, as she walked slowly up and down the boudoir. "When he is arraigned for trial, I am acquitted or convicted. You also, Jacob Strong; for if this old man is not Leicester's murderer, you and I drove him to suicide."

Jacob did not reply. In his soul he believed every step that he had taken against William Leicester to be right, and he felt guiltless of his death, no matter in what form it came; but he knew that argument would never remove the belief that had fixed like a monomania upon that unhappy woman, and wisely, therefore, he attempted none.

"I have told you all," he said, moving toward the door. "In any case my conscience is at rest!"

She did not appear to heed his words, but asked abruptly,

"Are the laws of America strict and searching? Do murderers ever escape here?"

"Sometimes they do, no doubt," answered Jacob, with a grim smile, "but then probably quite as many innocent men are hung, so that the balance is kept about equal."

"And how do the guilty escape?"

"Oh, by any of the thousand ways that a smart lawyer can invent. With money enough it is easy to evade the law, or tire it out with exceptions and appeals."

"Then money can do this?"

"What is there that money _cannot_ do?"

A wan smile flitted over Ada's face.

"Oh! who should know its power better than myself?" she said. Then she resumed. "But this man, this grey-headed murderer--has he this power?--can he control money enough to screen the blood he has shed?"

"He is miserably poor!"

"Then the trial will be an unprejudiced one. If proven guilty he must atone for the guilt. If acquitted fairly, openly, without the aid of money or influence, then are we guilty, Jacob Strong, guilty as those who hurl a man to the brink of a precipice, which he is sure to plunge down."

"No man who simply pursues his duty should reproach himself for the crime of another," was the grave reply.

"But have _I_ done my duty? Can I be guiltless of my husband's desperate act?"

Jacob was silent.

"You cannot answer me, my friend," said Ada mournfully.

"Yes! I can. William Leicester's death, if he in fact fell by his own hand, was the natural end of a vicious life."

Ada waved her hand sharply, thus forbidding him to proceed with the subject, and entering her dressing-room, closed the door.

Jacob stood for a time gazing vacantly at the door through which she had disappeared, then heaving a deep sigh, the strange being left the boudoir, but a vague feeling of self-reproach at his heart, rendered him more than usually sad all the next day. True, he had changed the current of Ada's grief, had lifted a burden of self-reproach from her heart; but had he not filled it with other and not less bitter pa.s.sions?