The Other Side of the Door Part 12

The word had been that, of course, he would be retaken immediately.

But the hours slipped away, and the days, and still there was no trace of him. The whole city was searched, and I discovered then that the Spanish Woman was far from escaping public suspicion. Detectives went in and out of her house, ransacking its remotest, most cunningly concealed places. She herself was closely questioned, but nothing could be elicited.

If I had needed any rea.s.surance that she alone was responsible for Johnny's disappearance, this effacement of the means by which she had accomplished her object would have convinced me. Whatever creatures they were who had effected her purpose for her, they were apt pupils in her art of disappearance, and even those who had failed here, were still completely hers. The Mexican who had been wounded by the guard had closed his teeth and died without a word, not even a confession to the priest. The hors.e.m.e.n, it was said, had swept straight through the city in the direction of the Mission, and it was supposed they had disbanded there and scattered through the ranches, where it was impossible to trace them. But the belief was general that the prisoner had not gone with them, that the sortie had only been a blind for his escape in some less obvious direction, abetted by the half darkness.

That week the city was under strict surveillance and I went seldom upon the street. For after my first relief at his escape was over, I was in constant dread lest he be retaken or shot; and when I did have to be out I went shrinkingly, dreading lest I see his face, haggard and ghostly, gazing down at me from some window, or glimpse him retreating up some evil alley.

"Oh, you are too good for this!" my heart accused him. "To think of you slinking and hiding! I could forgive you anything, even killing him--yes or even wanting to kill him--but not this running away! What power is it that this woman has over you, when a little while before you seemed so brave?"

The fear that it was because he loved her went through me, the bitterest thought of all. Against it I treasured the one sentence he had spoken to me, the only words I had ever heard him speak, and the looks he had given--the gentleness which had consorted oddly with his dark face and great strength, and that first shocked, reproachful gaze which so haunted me; and then the way he had helped me, smilingly, over the hard places in my testimony against him! How that had moved me!

Yet what were a few, frail glances beside the thing he had done for the Spanish Woman? I saw her once driving upon the street. The glint of her splendid hair made a crown around her head. She leaned back in the carriage, smiling, looking happy and triumphant; and it was a strange thought that these days so dreadful for me were good days for some one else.

By the end of the week the theory that Johnny was hidden in the city was abandoned, and search was directed toward the mining-camps, whence from time to time came reports that he had been seen. But all of these turned out to be false leads, and the idle talk about it swung into just the channel that I had feared--how that of course he had been guilty since he had tried to escape and had succeeded.

Whatever chance there had been for him before, chance of appeal or chance of pardon, was gone now. It was as if he had sunk into a deep pit, out of which he would never rise. I told myself that I must not think about it, that surely he could not be anything to me any more; and yet my mind turned to nothing else but the memory of him, and seemed to fix and fasten upon the thought. I knew that father saw I brooded. Whether he knew why, I did not like to think; but he used to take me out upon long drives, among the hills across the bay, and out to the Presidio to see the military maneuvers; so that he kept me with him much of the time. And he would urge me to go about to see the girls I knew; but Hallie was the only one I went to see at all.

She had been very tactful after the first outburst of enthusiasm over me upon the witness-stand; and as soon as she understood how I hated and couldn't endure any allusions to it, had never mentioned it to me again, though I used sometimes to catch her looking at me in a way which made me know she was sympathetic and curious; and that made a bond between us.

I was fond of the Fergusons' house itself. It had a charming garden, planted with roses, with big, blue Chinese jars at the elbows of the paths and on the porch, and a dear little upper balcony--just such a one as Leonore walks out upon in _Il Trovatore_--which overlooked the convent and its gardens. Sitting here with Hallie one late afternoon, while sunlight was still among the housetops, but with the convent garden in shadow so deep it looked like a reflection in water, I saw the procession of nuns, slim, black figures and bending heads, winding slowly through it. The sight touched me with a very melancholy yet not quite unhappy feeling.

"What would you think, Hallie," I asked, "if I should become a nun?"

"A nun!" Hallie almost shrieked. "Ellie Fenwick, what are you thinking of? Why, you would have to cut off all your lovely hair!"

"Yes," I said, "one of the sisters there told me that she had hair as long as mine when she was a girl, and yet she doesn't look unhappy now.

And then everything is so peaceful over there, the garden is so quiet, and they are so calm! I think I should love to; and oh, dear, Hallie, you don't know! I am very unhappy!"

Hallie put her arm around me and said firmly, "You will do no such thing! You will come to Estrella's party to-night and forget all about convents and such hateful things! Of course, I know what the matter is; and it's very lovely and awfully romantic, but really I'm afraid that he is quite gone, dear. Don't you think you could think of some one else?"

I said I couldn't bear to, that I didn't want to go to Estrella's party, that I hated the thought of the people I would have to meet.

But Hallie can be very persuading, and when I left her my resolution had weakened considerably.

"Why not go?" I argued with myself on my way home. "I will have to begin this sort of thing again sometime--that is, supposing I don't go into the convent, and I am afraid father wouldn't like me to do that.

At least while I am making up my mind about it anything will be better than brooding over this thing, which I can't help."

When I reached home I felt restless and the house seemed very small.

Rather diffidently I broached the subject of Estrella's ball to father; but he was quite delighted.

"Excellent," he said, hurried off a boy to the Mendez house with word that I was coming, sent out for flowers and made a lovely little fuss about me. I tried to make myself look as pretty as possible in a pale tulle, with little rosy wreaths upon it, and the high old tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb, that had been mother's, in my hair. The excitement gave me more color than I had had for weeks. I thought, "Even if I am not happy, at least I can be excited."

[Ill.u.s.tration: I tried to make myself look as pretty as possible.]

Father looked so tired that when he left me at the Mendez house I asked why need he come back for me, why not just send the carriage. He wouldn't hear of that, and then Senora Mendez said why shouldn't I stay at their house all night? So it was agreed, and Estrella, looking like a little dancer, in a yellow gown sown [Transcriber's note: sewn?] with twinkling spangles, came running and hurried me up-stairs to take off my cloak.

The ball was a large one--one of those affairs that is so big it makes you feel lost. I danced, danced madly; but a forlorn conviction kept growing on me that I did not have that same joyful feeling that I could dance on air which other parties had brought me. Every young man who looked at me was not a possible sweetheart, yet more looked at me than ever did before. I had a little crowd around me, and lots of pretty things were said to me, and I was not so afraid to reply as I had been.

When Senor Mendez, Estrella's father, who is fat, but dances like thistledown, took me for a turn around the room, "You are having quite a success, eh, my child?" he said. "The young men are beginning to wake up. You are coming out."

That was all very pleasing and my wits were never any too sharp at a dance, being in a dreamy and delicious state of obedience to the music and the swimming atmosphere, so that I did not keenly take note of why Laura Burnet did not return my bow. Jack Tracy took me in to supper, and fussed until he found seats for us in the big hall beyond the supper-room. It appeared he was wanting to propose to me again; and, as I was ready for anything as far as only making proposals went, I did not try to stop him. Behind us a curtain hung, the only thing between us and the ball-room, but the orchestra was still playing softly and there was hardly any one in that room, so I thought no one could overhear us.

In the midst of it, Aleppo Mendez put his head in the door and asked what had Jack done with his partner's program? Jack, not discovering it in his pocket, very much vexed at being interrupted, went to look for it with Aleppo in the supper-room, and I was left alone.

For a few moments I sat listening to the music. Then this ended with a soft chord, and on the other side of the curtain I heard the quick rustling of a girl's frock, and a girl's voice, "Just wait, I must put one more hair-pin in it or it never will stay up."

I recognized Estrella's tones. There was a little pause, and then, evidently resuming the main thread of her discourse she went on, "Of course, as I was saying, it was awfully brave of her to do it, but how could she! Why, if I had been in such a position just thinking what it would have meant to him, I know I couldn't have made a sound!"

"Well, if I could I wouldn't have!" It was Laura speaking with great bitterness. "It wasn't as if she had to tell. She was the only one in the city who saw it. No one would have known anything if only she had held her tongue!"

"Oh, but," Estrella broke in, in a deprecating voice, "it was an awful thing he did!"

"Oh, was it?" Laura retorted scornfully, "Lots of men do the same thing and aren't so very bad; and lots more would do it if they dared. Just because he is handsomer and braver and has a higher temper than most, lots of people hate him. And because Ellie Fenwick is little and looks young, and every one was saying how pale and pathetic she looked and how convincing it was, the way she told her story, oh, I heard the talk all around the court room!--she just worked on the sympathies of the jury! It wasn't justice that convicted him! It was Ellie Fenwick!"

I sat perfectly still, grasping my cold little ice-cream plate in one hand, not hearing anything more, not even seeming to think, until I heard Jack Tracy's voice beside me.

"Good Heavens! what's the matter?" And then, calling out in absurd alarm, "Don't faint, don't faint!"

"I am not going to faint," I said, though I had a very strange feeling of floating, and his face looked a little misty to me. "I want to go home. Get me a carriage!"

"But you're ill! Let me call Estrella."

I caught hold of his sleeve. "Don't say a word to her! Don't dare, promise me!" I shook his sleeve fiercely. He looked quite scared.

"Get me a carriage," I said, "and mind you don't say anything to any one until I have gone. Then you can tell Estrella that I was feeling ill and decided to go home."

CHAPTER X

A LIGHT IN THE DARK

Fortunately it was late, after midnight, and a few early ones, dragged away by their fathers and mothers, were already going; and m.u.f.fled in my long cloak and lace scarf I managed to slip out in the wake of a group of these--hoping they would not notice my being alone--and into my carriage, evading Jack's insistence that he must see me home by shutting the door in his face.

As the carriage went laboring off down the dark hill I crouched in a heap on the seat. If Estrella and Laura had seized me by the shoulders and bodily thrust me out of doors I could not have felt more utterly an outcast. "Does every one feel like that about me, even my friends?" I thought.

All my life I had been taught, and had believed, that only good came of telling the truth. Well, now the opportunity to prove that had come.

I had done what had been demanded of me, and every one looked upon me as though I were inhuman. Had all the laws of the universe been suddenly turned upside down? Ought my lips to have been sealed instinctively by what I saw? Ought I to have been struck dumb on the witness-stand? Was it true, the terrible injustice of Laura's words, that because of me--not alone the story I had told, but my looks, my misery, my very pity for him--he had been convicted?

I was recalled to my surroundings by the rocking of the carriage.

Great rains, which had fallen lately, had left the roads gullied, and rough as the sea. The moon would not rise until after one o'clock, and what made our progress really dangerous, something had gone wrong with the carriage lights. They dwindled and went out when we were but a block on our way, and no scratching of matches would make them stay lighted for a minute. At the foot of the hill the driver brought the horses to a halt, and informed me that the road ahead looked impa.s.sable.

I peered out of the window.

An unbuilt s.p.a.ce was on my right, and across the dark expanse, and across the street which cut the other side of it I looked to the long roofs and walls of the convent, all a dull monotone scarcely distinguishable from the night. Only on the corner a solitary street lamp illuminated a little s.p.a.ce of the wall and made a pool of light on the pavement beneath.

The silence was broken by the sound of voices talking--the jargon of peons, I thought--and I remembered that I was alone, and driving across a lonely part of the city. The voices seemed to be approaching down Powell Street, even now perhaps under the very convent walls. They sounded loud and jovial.

"Can't you turn into the sand-lot, and make a cross-cut to Mason Street?" I whispered to the driver.

Muttering that sand was "decenter than mud at least," he remounted his box and swung the horses about. In the mud the wheels and hoofs made only a soft "squshing" sound. We turned away into the dark, unlighted s.p.a.ce without the approaching group being any the wiser of our presence.