The Other Side of the Door Part 15

Muttering that it was the weirdest go that he had ever struck, he clucked to the weary horses, and after a little more of cobblestones, began the struggle through the sand.

Those terrible sand-hills! We labored in them like a snail. They seemed to hang on the wheels, and to heap themselves in front of us; but the increasing light came on wings and what exact moment in all this long, gray and golden approach of the sun was to be considered dawn? At last we were over the hilltop, and floundering down the other side, the trees and gardens of houses overlooking the water front upon my left-hand, upon the other, sand and sea. Straight below, running out from the sh.o.r.e, was the little disused wharf. One or two Italian fishing-boats rocked in its shadow, but no vessel was in sight.

Could it be that I was too late? I thought, in an agony of uncertainty, as the carriage drew up at the pier. Thrusting my head and as much of my body as possible out of the carriage window I looked out the gray, winding channel toward the Heads. Not a sail in sight!

This was encouraging, for I knew, that even starting with the grayest light, there would not have been time for the vessel to have vanished out at sea. Through the other window Chestnut Street Hill, a great rounding ma.s.s, rose bluffly out of the water, shouldering the city out of sight. Near its base tall eucalyptus trees swayed against the blue bay; and through their shifting leaves and branches I was able to make out the masts and sails of the lugger lying close under the hill. It was so well hidden that had I not been expecting to see it, I must certainly have pa.s.sed it over altogether, taking the masts for tree boles, and the furled canvas for the light acacia bark.

I drew my cloak closer around my shoulders, pulled up the carriage blinds on each side, allowing only a crack wide enough for me to look through, and settled myself to the hard task of waiting, of being at once patient and vigilant. There was not an instant when I dared relax my watch, first at this window, now at that, for who could tell by which way the Spanish Woman would approach--through the sand-hills, driven up in her carriage, or, what was more probable, on foot over the tree-guarded slopes of the hill. The blink of an eyelash might lose her!

The dull gray light that had chilled sh.o.r.e and sea began to take on a warmer glint. I knew the east was growing rosy. And still she did not come. The fishing-boats began to go out, and at my back I heard the first murmur of the city stirring out of sleep. Two of the fishermen, Italians, stood on the wharf and stared at my carriage curiously, but I hardly noticed them. I felt as if I were outside of all the world, and everything usual that could happen.

The wind was freshening, picking up whitecaps on the bay, and presently I noticed that the lugger had shifted her position, had moved out a little from under the lea of the hill, and I saw they were running up sail on board. One large flapping white wing, and then another, rose and spread beyond the trees. I could even hear the piping sound of the sailors' voices; and then, with a veering and a tilting, and finally with a graceful bowing motion, she stood away from the hill and began to go out to sea.

Beautiful sight that it was I looked at it with despair. I could not believe it. How had the Spanish Woman got on board without my seeing her? Could she have slipped along through the bewildering shadows and so evaded me; or had she gone on board even before I had come? but, no, that couldn't be, for then the lugger could have sailed immediately, I thought, as I stood on the step of the carriage and watched the ship carrying my last hope swing round and dip her nose deep in the channel tide.

"There is only one chance," I said to myself. "Perhaps she will have left some word for him behind her at the house."

The thought had no sooner come into my mind than it possessed me with the conviction that this must be so. For when I remembered her looks and her words to me as she talked of him I felt sure that nothing could make her quite desert him, even though he had disappointed her. The idea of her house which a little while ago had terrified me, came now like an inspiration. I did not know what I should do or say when I reached it, "But something will tell me what to do when I am there," I thought, as we retraced our way over the floundering track of the hills.

When, for the second time that morning, I found myself in front of the Spanish Woman's gate, I sprang out of the carriage without a moment's hesitation. I told the man to drive back to our house on Washington Street and tell Mr. Fenwick there that I wanted him.

There I stood in the chill daylight, shivering in my pale blue cloak, impetuously clanging the brazen lion's head upon its clapper. The outer door opened to me noiselessly as it had done before, shutting as silently after. But the garden, which had seemed picturesque and dreamy under the kind sunlight, now looked ghastly, disheveled, crumbling, as if it had been deserted for at least a hundred years.

The inner door was a long time in opening. Just as I was beginning to despair it swung a cautious crack. I saw the glimmer of eyes, then immediately it was opened wide by a woman, the same maid whom I had seen brushing out the Spanish Woman's hair.

"The Senora Valencia?" I asked, feeling the mockery of my question, but pressing forward in terror lest she should not let me in. Her face had a set appearance. She looked as if she hated me, but she admitted me readily enough, closing the door quickly upon me. There, just within the threshold of the house, she held out to me a white envelope.

The outside was blank, enigmatic as the servant's face, but from it I pulled a folded sheet of paper scrawled in that bold hand, which, like all other attributes of that woman, was unforgettable. Within the paper was a card. Upon the card I read:

"You see, he understands me perfectly. He wishes to be rid of me and he has chosen the one way possible. I give you back his words."

No signature, and the card was my dance program still with its little pencil. On the back I read the farewell Johnny Montgomery had made her. It was in Spanish. "I am in love with another woman. Go away without me. I am going back."

I stood crumpling the thing in my clenched hand and the first thought came trembling in words: "Oh, cruel, cruel! How could he say it!"

When I remembered her pa.s.sionate face and wild will I wondered what love had done with her when first she had read that card. If a girl like Laura Burnet had fainted at a lesser shock, what had a creature like the Spanish Woman done? And then the next thought came, wiping out the memory of the first. "But there is nothing here to help Johnny Montgomery--nothing at all!"

The maid's voice broke upon my bewilderment, harsh and grating. "Will the Senorita walk up-stairs?"

I turned to her in increasing amazement. What might this mean? Was I after all to find my mystery's clew?

"The Senora's room," the woman explained, going before, and I followed up the stair.

I thought I could have told without previous knowledge that the house had been deserted by its mistress. The rooms which had been warm as with the heat of life were now deathly cold, as if they had been closed for a long time. The sweet, thick perfume which had pervaded them had failed, leaving only a dank smell of old weighty hangings; the very mysteriousness seemed to have disappeared out of the pa.s.sageways and doors, every turn and unexpected opening and winding of which I remembered through sheer terror.

At the door of the private _sala_ there was no pause; the maid did not knock. No need, was there, at the door of an empty room? She led me straight across the anteroom and there in front of the curtain stood the impa.s.sive major-domo, the man who had led me there the first time.

He was as still as a bronze. He did not even seem to see me, but stretching out his hand gathered up the velvet folds and drew the curtain a little to one side.

There breathed upon me across the threshold, wonderfully fresh and living, like a human presence, that strong perfume of the Spanish Woman's flower. I stood fixed in astonishment. There at the far end of the room she was, the Spanish Woman herself.

She was seated, yet not as she had been the first time I had seen her, in her low combing chair; but full facing me on a great high-backed seat like a throne, her feet on a footstool, a table at her right on which her hand rested over some white thing, like a folded paper. Her gown, too dull for gold, too shining for anything else, streamed down on each side to the floor. Her whole look was as if she had dressed and seated herself and made ready for some great thing. Her head was flung back, resting against the cushion and she was looking straight at me. She did not speak. I felt she was waiting, and that I must begin.

I walked slowly across the room, not knowing what to say to her, but when I had covered half the distance some shaft of sunrise slanting into the room lighted her face with its pale reflection and I saw her eyes. They were half closed, and behind her thick, long lashes they gleamed mistily like silver. My knees doubled up under me and I went down on them in sheer weakness, for I knew that she was dead.

For a moment I could think of nothing and the room like a wheel went around me; but I kept saying, "No, no! I will not, I must not faint!"

and after a few moments I moved forward, still, I think, on my knees, and looked at the paper under her hand. I was too weak to get to my feet. I reached up and took it. I looked at the Spanish Woman. I looked at the fine, firm, foreign handwriting.

"On the day of May the seventh, 1865, in the presence of John Montgomery and my peon, Victor Perez, I, Carlotta Valencia, shot and killed Martin Rood in his gambling-house on Dupont and Washington Streets. Signed, Carlotta Valencia. Victor Perez."

On the table, almost hidden by her hand, I saw the thing which I had seen once before lying in the gutter on Dupont Street--the pearl-handled revolver.

I sat there at her feet, and, looking up at her, I felt as if she had won, though now I knew it was quite the other way. But she looked so calm, so mighty, so indifferent, sitting up there above me, that she made death seem a little thing, and she herself not even wicked. Then the room swam away from me as in a dream.

The next thing I was conscious of was a broken foreign voice speaking; and I found myself covered up with a great coat lying on a sofa in the down-stairs _sala_; and there, strangely seen among its velvet and gilding, was father with his hair tossed on end and his clothes huddled upon him, and Mr. Dingley, very white and drawn, and the peon Perez, who was talking. I listened to his voice going on as if it were part of a dream.

Yes, he said, it was true there had been bad blood between the two men.

First it had been the young man's debts, and then it had been the Senora. The Senora had told the young man she would give up Rood; but of course that was impossible, Perez said, with a shrug, as where was the money to come from he should like to know? But she was constantly afraid lest young Montgomery might find it out. Therefore, Perez said, when he had seen Montgomery going into Rood's place at two o'clock on the morning of the shooting he went at once to his mistress and told her. Taking Perez with her, she had hurried to the gambling-house with the purpose of somehow separating the two, and there in the bar the quarrel had taken place.

It seemed that the truth of Rood's position as "protector" to the Senora had reached Montgomery, and he had come to tax Rood with it, and Rood had told him. He told him even before the Senora's face, and Montgomery had said he was done with the whole crew of them. He was going to get out of it, he was going away. Then the Senora had clung to Montgomery, telling him she would do anything to keep him with her; and Rood had turned upon him. It was then that the Senora had shot Rood. He had been standing so near the swinging door that at the shot, to their horror, he had fallen backward through it.

Before any one could think, the peon went on, Montgomery had s.n.a.t.c.hed the revolver from her, saying: "I shot him," and had rushed out into the street, and after a moment's waiting the Senora had run out, and seeing the revolver picked it up. Yes, he said, she had worn a white dress and undoubtedly it was she and not the Senorita Fenwick that the woman who had looked out the window had seen. But she had not run down the street, as this witness had said, who, like all women, only remembered what she wished to believe, but back into the gambling-house, and through there into an alley at the rear, from which they entered a house the Senora was familiar with, and remained there until the afternoon when the excitement had somewhat subsided. Then they had gone quietly back to the Senora's house.

Yes, the pistol was the Senora's. Mr. Montgomery had bought it for her a little while before. Yes, the Senora had made sure to save Mr.

Montgomery and but for the Senorita Fenwick it would have been. For she had many friends, friends of power, he said. At that Mr. Dingley grew paler, and started to speak, but then he seemed to change his mind. Father looked at him, and I wondered then had the trouble been that Mr. Dingley had been one of those friends of hers. When the police came and we left the place, Mr. Dingley and father separated without a word, and father took me home alone in the carriage.

EPILOGUE

TWO YEARS

All the experiences which I had gone through with, with such apparent lack of feeling, seemed to take their revenge on me at once. For a while I was very ill, delirious with fever; and when I was myself again and the doctor would let me be talked to, the new trial was all over, and Johnny Montgomery had been acquitted a week ago. It was Hallie, all smiles, with her hands full of roses, who brought this news in to me; and in a few days, she said, Jack Tracy had told her, Montgomery was going to leave the city. This set me wondering whether that night in the carriage and everything we had told each other then had been no more than part of my fever visions.

At last I gathered courage enough to ask father if Johnny Montgomery had inquired about me. Father looked annoyed, and said, "Yes," that he had been sending every day, and that he had asked if he might see me when I was able, but, father said, he had thought it best to refuse.

That made me so miserable I began to be ill again, and the doctor was afraid I would have a relapse; so finally father gave his permission for me to see Johnny.

It was strange and unreal to think that it was actually he, gaunt and white and serious-looking, standing beside my bed and gazing down at me with timid eyes. We were both so glad to see each other we were a little afraid. The shadow of things that had happened was over us still and made us grave.

I must have looked very thin, for he took my hand as if he thought it would break and his voice was hardly above a whisper. He said whatever good came of him and whatever happiness he had hereafter he would owe to me, and that would be more than owing me his life; but father was right in saying that a man with the reputation he held in this city had no right to see or speak with me. He had only come to thank me and to say good-by. He was going away to South America.

"But father does not know you," I said, "and I am sure you are quite a different man from what any one here thinks you. And if you go away it will break my heart."

At that he looked happier and said if I felt that way he would go just the same, but it would make him want to come back again. And then, perhaps, he might be more the sort of man my father would give his daughter to. A friend of his father's, he said, had offered him an overseer's place in his mine in South America; and would I forget all about him in two years, he wanted to know?

"Two years will seem a very long time," I said, "but I shall remember you and wait for you for ever."

He smiled and said, "Those two years will be almost for ever to me, but I have bought my chance dear, and even the hope of such happiness is more than I deserve."