The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 40

"Sit there," she said, in a quick, sharp voice, and pointing to a chair by the window, "sit there so I can look at you." Elizabeth mechanically obeyed and threw back her veil. Amanda's eyes fastened eagerly upon her face.

"Why, you--you've lost your looks," she announced, abruptly. "Did you know it?" There was a note of involuntary satisfaction in her voice.

Elizabeth tried to smile. "Worse things have happened to me than that, Amanda," she said.

"I didn't think anything could be worse--to you," Amanda said, feebly.

Elizabeth was silent. She was thinking that suffering had not yet produced in Amanda any regenerating effect.

"Well, after all, I guess it don't matter," Amanda said, drearily, after a pause. "You're acquitted just the same, and Mr. Gerard is just as crazy about you as ever, they say. I guess you've got the best of me still." She sank into a gloomy silence.

Elizabeth dared not speak. She was wondering if she could not escape, since her cousin had nothing to say, beyond the old jealous complaint.

But suddenly Amanda turned to her.

"I've something I want to tell you," she said, speaking feebly and with difficulty. "Sister made me promise that I--would; she said that if there was any--any way in which I'd injured you, it would ease my mind to--tell you. But first you must promise"--she looked about her suspiciously--"you must swear to me on your oath that you won't repeat--anything I tell you."

She raised herself up on her pillows, her breath came in convulsive gasps, she fixed her eyes intently upon Elizabeth. "Promise," she said, in her weak, hoa.r.s.e voice, "swear to me on your oath that you won't--repeat what I tell you now."

Elizabeth trembled, her brain felt dazed. Those strained, eager eyes held her with a terrible insistence. "I--I promise," she repeated, hardly knowing what she said, conscious only of a wish to have them withdrawn.

Amanda sank back as if relieved, on the pillows, but still she questioned, with a look of doubt. "You won't break your word. You are sure?"

"Quite sure," said Elizabeth. Her brain still seemed dazed, her lips moved mechanically.

Amanda seemed satisfied. Still, she did not speak, she lay quiet, with half-closed eyes. At last, with a painful effort, she raised herself up, and fixed her eyes again intently upon Elizabeth. "I sent the poison," she said. The words came in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

Elizabeth stared at her without moving; only a slight shudder pa.s.sed through her. The words echoed in her ear, beat upon her brain. The odd part of it was that they did not surprise her. She seemed somehow to have heard, or thought them, before.

"Yes," Amanda repeated, after a moment, "I sent the poison. It was after I had left the sanitarium--no one knew that I had left it. I dressed as like you as I could, I copied your handwriting, I knew they would think it was you. But I didn't"--a slight undertone of contempt made itself felt in her voice--"I didn't know how easy it would be, for I didn't suppose you'd do all those stupid things that made them suspect you."

She was silent. Elizabeth still stared at her motionless, aghast. "But why--why," she faltered, "what object, Amanda, could you have?"

A look of intense bitterness crossed the sick girl's face. She seemed to flare up all at once into a red heat of anger, as dry, withered wood will sometimes give out the fiercest flames. "What object!" she repeated. "You ask what object!--and you know how he scorned me!

Didn't you wish him to die? You admitted it in court--because he stood in your way; and do you think that is anything to being humiliated--dragged in the dust, as I was?"

She leaned back panting on the pillows; the fierce flame of anger which pa.s.sed over her seemed to consume her feeble strength. When she spoke again it was much more feebly. "That time when I--I went to him at the studio," she said, "I thought maybe he'd come back to me again--seeing you didn't seem to want him. I thought--but there, I was a fool. Most women are, I guess, when they care about a man. He laughed at me and said that I'd deceived myself--that it was I who did the love-making. That was a lie, but it was what he said, I guess, about most girls--when he got tired of them. I got wild, it seemed as if my brain was on fire, and I--I threatened him. He only laughed. And then I taunted him--about you; that seemed to hurt him more. I said as how you had so many beaux, you didn't care any longer about him. He said then, I was mistaken, that you were just as fond of him as ever--really, that you would do anything he wanted"--

She paused, her breath seemed to fail her. Elizabeth sat listening, stupefied, incapable of speech or motion. Amanda went on presently, huddling one word upon another: "I didn't believe him, I thought it was only to make me feel worse. And then, when I went out, I met you--the thought came to me that I'd find out the truth. I came back, I'd left the door open, I saw you give him money--but there was a look on your face that made me think you didn't do it--for love."

She paused again and struggled for breath. Elizabeth spoke involuntarily. "But how did you know," she asked, "about the pearls?"

"What, that you'd sold them?" Amanda spoke quietly, with a slight smile, as at the simplicity of the question. "I knew it the moment I saw you--that evening, and you didn't have them on. Then when I spoke of them, I saw I was right--I saw how I'd frightened you. There was a secret--I didn't know what; but it was something you were ashamed of.

Then, when you got engaged to that other man, I understood--I knew you were afraid of his finding it out. I used to write to him, warning him. He never answered my letters, or paid any attention--I guess he thought I was crazy; but I had to keep on writing--I couldn't help it, somehow. I had to do everything I did. It seemed as if something urged me on. The only thing that kept me from--from having my revenge was that you might reap the benefit. And then this plan came to me, and I saw how I could--get even--with you both."

The hoa.r.s.e, feeble voice grew fainter and died away, as if from sheer exhaustion. Elizabeth interposed an indignant protest. "And so," she said, "you wanted me to suffer--for your crime? You would have been glad if they had found me guilty?"

Amanda did not answer for a moment. "No," she said at last, "I didn't want you to die. I knew you'd get off--every one said so--because you were so pretty and so swell. They wouldn't"--the bitter smile again hovered about her white lips--"they wouldn't have said that about me.

But--if they had found you guilty"--she paused--"I had quite made up my mind to confess. It was horrible lying here, thinking it over--I don't believe death can be worse. You couldn't have suffered--anything like it; for you were innocent."

She looked at Elizabeth with a strange horror in her eyes. Her face was ghastly, beads of perspiration stood on her forehead, and on the little rings of dark red hair, which clung about her temples. "Oh, you don't know what it is," she said, "you don't know what it is. It's the thought of that that's killing me inch by inch; it's not the disease. And yet I'm afraid--I'm afraid to confess"--her voice broke piteously. "You don't want me to--do you?--now that you've got off. It won't do you any good--any longer, and as for me, though I don't want to live, I'm afraid--to die." The feeble voice again faltered and died away.

Elizabeth sat silent, her brain in a whirl. Before her there rose the thought of the long months of torture, the prison cell, the terrible, unnecessary suspicion that still clouded her life.... If Amanda would confess, it would be something. People would never again believe her guilty. And yet!----

Mechanically, her eyes wandered about the room, the incongruous setting for this strange scene--bright, calm and peaceful; filled with the pictures of martyred saints. Her gaze lingered fascinated on the face of Christ in the engraving. It might have been the effect of the light, or the over-wrought state of her nerves which made it appear so real, instinct with mysterious life and power. Almost it seemed as if the lips moved, the sorrowful eyes rested, with a look of infinite pity, on Amanda ... ... "You won't betray me?" the feeble voice pleaded. "I trusted you--you promised? You won't break your word?"

"No"--Elizabeth spoke slowly and thoughtfully--"I won't break my word.

I did break a promise I made you once, and repented it, ever since; but this time I shall keep it. If you confess, it must be for your own sake, not for mine. No one I care about believes me guilty. Let it go."

Amanda drew a sigh of relief. Her head fell back, her att.i.tude of tension relaxed insensibly.

"You are very generous," she said, faintly. "I--I won't be ungrateful." And then a silence fell upon them. Amanda's eyes closed, she seemed exhausted. Elizabeth, seeing this, got up.

"I had better go. You're very tired." No answer came. But as she reached the door Amanda's eyes unclosed, she turned her face towards her.

"Good-bye," she said. "I'm sorry you've--lost your looks. Perhaps you'll--get them back." The words came out with a great effort. And then she turned her face away and said no more.

The Sister was waiting outside in the corridor. She accompanied Elizabeth to the door of the hospital.

As they parted she laid her hand for an instant on the girl's arm, her grave, clear eyes scanned the white, exhausted face.

"My dear," she said, "did your cousin tell you--what she sent for you to say?"

Elizabeth met her gaze firmly, with eyes as clear as her own. "It is a secret," she said, quietly. "I promised--not to repeat it."

A cloud pa.s.sed over the Sister's face; her hand rested for a moment tenderly on Elizabeth's arm. "Poor child!" was all she said. It would have been hard to tell to whom she referred--Elizabeth or Amanda.

An instant later the great hospital door swung to, and Elizabeth found herself again in the outside world.

Amanda lay absolutely still. She was conscious, for the moment, of nothing but the utter vacuity of exhaustion. It was only little by little that her strength revived, her brain began to work, those thoughts weighed upon her again, which were killing her inch by inch.

It is hard to understand the processes of a mind like Amanda's, diseased perhaps from the first, made more so, as life went on, by illness and adverse circ.u.mstances. As to how far she was accountable, who can decide?...

One thing is certain, that some sort of moral struggle now took place within her. Her brow was contracted, her lips moved, now and then she stirred uneasily. Her piteous gaze fastened half unconsciously, as Elizabeth's had done, on the face of the Christ in the engraving. For her as for Elizabeth, the pictured eyes held a curious fascination.

But we read into inanimate objects, above all the symbols of our faith, our own thoughts and convictions. It was not pity which Amanda saw in the sorrowful eyes which to her, too, seemed alive with a singular power.

When the Sister came in, a little later, she asked her a question.

"Isn't it enough if we confess our sins?" she asked, feebly. "You said that would be enough to have them forgiven."

The Sister looked down at her gravely. "Repentance is not enough," she said, "unless we do what we can to make amends."

Amanda turned away with a feeble moan.

It was late in the afternoon when she nerved herself, as for a great effort. She called the Sister to her and whispered. What she said did not seem to cause surprise. The Sister's face brightened, she left the room quickly. It was evident that she was prepared for an emergency like this. An hour later the small room was filled--there was a lawyer, witnesses.... Amanda's weak voice spoke steadily, without a pause....

When it was over, she sank back exhausted, and her eyes again sought the face in the engraving. She found there what she expected. With a long sigh of relief she turned her face to the wall and slept. The Sister quietly pulled down the blind.

"She will rest now," she said softly, and it was true. Amanda never awoke.