CHAPTER XX
ONCE MORE AT BURTON'S INN
Again Sara Wrandall found herself in that never-to-be-forgottenroom at Burton's Inn. On that grim night in March, she had enteredwithout fear or trembling because she knew what was there. Now shequaked with a mighty chill of terror, for she knew not what wasthere in the quiet, now sequestered room. Burton had told them ontheir arrival after a long drive across country that patrons of theinn invariably asked which room it was that had been the scene ofthe tragedy, and, on finding out, refused point-blank to occupy it.In consequence, he had been obliged to transform it into a sort ofstore and baggage room.
Sara stood in the middle of the murky room, for the shutters hadlong been closed to the light of day, and looked about her in aweat the heterogeneous mass of boxes, trunks, bundles and rubbish,scattered over the floor without care or system. She had closedthe door behind her and was quite alone. Light sneaked in throughthe cracks in the shutters, but so meagrely that it only served toincrease the gloom. A dismantled bedstead stood heaped up in thecorner. She did not have to be told what bed it was. The mattresswas there too, rolled up and tied with a thick garden rope. Sheknew there were dull, ugly blood-stains upon it. Why the thriftyBurton had persevered in keeping this useless article of furniture,she could only surmise. Perhaps it was held as an inducement to themorbidly curious who always seek out the gruesome and gloat evenas they shudder.
For a long time she stood immovable just inside the door, recallingthe horrid picture of another day. She tried to imagine the scenethat had been enacted there with gentle, lovable Hetty Glynn andher whilom husband as the principal characters. The girl had toldthe whole story of that ugly night. Sara tried to see it as itactually had transpired. For months this present enterprise hadbeen in her mind: the desire to see the place again, to go therewith old impressions which she could leave behind when ready toemerge in a new frame of mind. It was here that she meant to shakeoff the shackles of a horrid dream, to purge herself of the lastvestige of bitterness, to cleanse her mind of certain thoughts andmemories.
Downstairs Booth waited for her. He heard the story of the tragedyfrom the surly inn-keeper, who crossly maintained that his businesshad been ruined. Booth was vaguely impressed, he knew not why, byBurton's description of the missing woman. "I'd say she was aboutthe size of Mrs. Wrandall herself, and much the same figger," hesaid, as he had said a thousand times before. "My wife noticed itthe minute she saw Mrs. Wrandall. Same height and everything."
A bell rang sharply and Burton glanced over his shoulder at theindicator on the wall behind the desk. He gave a great start andhis jaw sagged.
"Great Scott!" he gasped. A curious greyness stole over his face."It's--it's the bell in that very room. My soul, what can--"
"Mrs. Wrandall is up there, isn't she?" demanded Booth.
"It ain't rung since the night he pushed the button for--Oh, gee!You're right. She IS up there. My, what a scare it gave me." Hewiped his brow. Turning to a boy, he commanded him to answer thebell. The boy went slowly, and as he went he removed his hands fromhis pockets. He came back an instant later, more swiftly than hewent, with the word that "the lady up there" wanted Mr. Booth tocome upstairs.
She was waiting for him in the open doorway. A shaft of brightsunlight from a window at the end of the hall fell upon her. Herface was colourless, haggard. He paused for an instant to contrasther as she stood there in the pitiless light with the vivid creaturehe had put upon canvas so recently.
She beckoned to him and turned back into the room. He followed.
"This is the room, Brandon, where my husband met the death hedeserved," she said quietly.
"Deserved? Good heavens, Sara, are you--"
"I want you to look about you and try to picture how this placelooked on the night of the murder. You have a vivid imagination.None of this rubbish was here. Just a bed, a table and two chairs.There was a carpet on the floor. There were two people here, a manand a woman. The woman had trusted the man. She trusted him untilthe hour in which he died. Then she found him out. She had come tothis place, believing it was to be her wedding night. She found nominister here. The man laughed at her and scoffed. Then she knew.In horror, shame, desperation she tried to break away from him.He was strong. She was a good woman; a virtuous, honourable woman.She saved herself."
He was staring at her with dilated eyes. Slowly the truth was beingborne in upon him.
"The woman was--Hetty?" came hoarsely from his stiffening lips."My God, Sara!"
She came close to him and spoke in a half-whisper. "Now you knowthe secret. Is it safe with you?"
He opened his lips to speak, but no words came forth. Paralysisseemed to have gripped not only his throat but his senses. Hereeled. She grasped his arm in a tense, fierce way, and whispered:
"Be careful! No one must hear what we are saying." She shot a glancedown the deserted hall. "No one is near. I made sure of that. Don'tspeak! Think first--think well, Brandon Booth. It is what you havebeen seeking for months:--the truth. You share the secret with usnow. Again I ask, is it safe with you?"
"My God!" he muttered again, and passed his hand over his eyes.His brow was wet. He looked at his fingers dumbly as if expectingto find them covered with blood.
"Is it safe with you?" for the third time.
"Safe? Safe?" he whispered, following her example without knowingthat he did so. "I--I can't believe you, Sara. It can't be true."
"It IS true."
"You have known--all the time?"
"From that night when I stood where we are standing now."
"And--and--SHE?"
"I had never seen her until that night. I saved her."
He dropped suddenly upon the trunk that stood behind him, andburied his face in his hands. For a long time she stood over him,her interest divided between him and the hall, wherein lay theirpresent peril.
"Come," she said at last. "Pull yourself together. We must leavethis place. If you are not careful, they will suspect somethingdownstairs."
He looked up with haggard eyes, studying her face with curiousintentness.
"What manner of woman are you, Sara?" he questioned, slowly,wonderingly.
"I have just discovered that I am very much like other women, afterall," she said. "For awhile I thought I was different, that I wasstronger than my sex. But I am just as weak, just as much to bepitied, just as much to be scorned as any one of my sisters. I havespoiled a great act by stooping to do a mean one. God will bearwitness that my thoughts were noble at the outset; my heart wassoft. But, come! There is much more to tell that cannot be toldhere. You shall know everything."
They went downstairs and out into the crisp autumn air. She gavedirections to her chauffeur. They were to traverse for some distancethe same road she had taken on that ill-fated night a year and ahalf before. In course of time the motor approached a well-rememberedrailway crossing.
"Slow down, Cole," she said. "This is a mean place--a very meanplace." Turning to Booth, who had been sitting grim and silentbeside her for miles, she said, lowering her voice: "I rememberthat crossing yonder. There is a sharp curve beyond. This is theplace. Midway between the two crossings, I should say. Pleaseremember this part of the road, Brandon, when I come to the tellingof that night's ride to town. Try to picture this spot--this smooth,straight road as it might be on a dark, freezing night in the verythick of a screaming blizzard, with all the world abed save--twowomen."
For a long time she stood over him, her interestdivided between him and the hall]
In his mind he began to draw the picture, and to place the two womenin the centre of it, without knowing the circumstances. There wassomething fascinating in the study he was making, something gruesomeand full of sinister possibilities for the hand of a virile painter.He wondered how near his imagination was to placing the centralfigures in the picture as they actually appeared on that secretnight.
At sunset they went together to the little pavilion at the endof the pier which extended far out into the
Sound. Here they weresafe from the ears of eavesdroppers. The boats had been stowed awayfor the winter. The wind that blew through the open pavilion, nowshorn of all its comforts and luxuries, was cold, raw and repelling.No one would disturb them here.
With her face set toward the sinking east, she leaned against oneof the thick posts, and, in a dull, emotionless voice, laid barethe whole story of that dreadful night and the days that followed.She spared no details, she spared not herself in the narration.
He did not once interrupt her. All the time she was speaking he wasstudying the profile of her face as if fascinated by its strangeimmobility. For the matter of a full half-hour he sat on the rail,his back against a post, his arms folded across the breast of thethick ulster he wore, staring at her, drinking in every word ofthe story she told. A look of surprise crept into his face whenshe came to the point where the thought of marrying Hetty to thebrother of her victim first began to manifest itself in her designs.For a time the look of incredulity remained, to be succeeded by utterscorn as she went on with the recital. Her reasons, her excuses,her explanations for this master-stroke in the way of compensationfor all that she had endured at the hands of the scornful Wrandalls,all of whom were hateful to her without exception, stirred himdeeply. He began to understand the forces that compelled her toresort to this Machiavellian plan for revenge on them. She admittedeverything: her readiness to blight Hetty's life for ever; herutter callousness in laying down these ugly plans; her surpassingvindictiveness; her reflections on the triumph she was to enjoy whenher aims were fully attained. She confessed to a genuine pity forHetty Castleton from the beginning, but it was outweighed by thatthing she could only describe as an obsession!...How she hatedthe Wrandalls!...Then came the real awakening: when the truth cameto her as a revelation from God. Hetty had not been to blame. Thegirl was innocent of the one sin that called for vengeance so faras she was concerned. The slaying of Challis Wrandall was justified!All these months she had been harbouring a woman she believedto have been his mistress as well as his murderess. It was not somuch the murderess that she would have foisted upon the Wrandallsas a daughter, but the mistress!...She loved the girl, she hadloved her from that first night. Back of it all, therefore, lay thestern, unsuspected truth: from the very beginning she instinctivelyhad known this girl to be innocent of guile....Her house of cardsfell down. There was nothing left of the plans on which it hadbeen constructed. It had all been swept away, even as she stroveto protect it against destruction, and the ground was strewn withthe ashes of fires burnt out....She was shocked to find that shehad even built upon the evil spot! Almost word for word she repeatedHetty's own story of her meeting with Challis Wrandall, and how shewent, step by step and blindly, to the last scene in the tragedy,when his vileness, his true nature was revealed to her. The girlhad told her everything. She had thought herself to be in lovewith Wrandall. She was carried away by his protestations. She wasinfatuated. (Sara smiled to herself as she spoke of this. She knewChallis Wrandall's charm!) The girl believed in him implicitly.When he took her to Burton's Inn it was to make her his wife, asshe supposed. He had arranged everything. Then came the truth. Shedefended herself....
"I came upon her in the road on that wild night, Brandon, at theplace I pointed out. Can you picture her as I have described her?Can you picture her despair, her hopelessness, her misery? I havetold you everything, from beginning to end. You know how she cameto me, how I prepared her for the sacrifice, how she left me. Ihave not written to her. I cannot. She must hate me with all hersoul, just as I have hated the Wrandalls, but with greater reason,I confess. She would have given herself up to the law long ago, ifit had not been for exposing me to the world as her defender, herprotector. She knew she was not morally guilty of the crime ofmurder. In the beginning she was afraid. She did not know our land,our laws. In time she came to understand that she was in no realperil, but then it was too late. A confession would have placedme in an impossible position. You see, she thought of me all thistime. She loved me as no woman ever loved another. Was not I thewife of the man she had killed, and was not I the noblest of allwomen in her eyes? God! And to think of what I had planned forher!"
This was the end of the story.
The words died away in a sort of whimpering wail, falling in withthe wind to be lost to his straining ears. Her head drooped, herarms hung limply at her side.
For a long time he sat there in silence, looking out over thedarkening water, unwilling, unable indeed, to speak. His heart wasfull of compassion for her, mingling strangely with what was leftof scorn and horror. What could he say to her?
At last she turned to him. "Now you know all that I can tell you ofHetty Castleton,--of Hetty Glynn. You could not have forced thisfrom me, Brandon. She WOULD not tell you. It was left for me to doin my own good time. Well, I have spoken. What have you to say?"
"I can only say, Sara, that I thank God for EVERYTHING," he saidslowly.
"For everything?"
"I thank God for you, for her and for everything. I thank God thatshe found him out in time, that she killed him, that you shieldedher, that you failed to carry out your devilish scheme, and thatyour heart is very sore to-day."
"You do not despise me?"
"No. I am sorry for you."
Her eyes narrowed. "I don't want you to feel sorry for me."
"You don't understand. I am sorry for you because you have foundyourself out and must be despising yourself."
"You have guessed the truth. I despise myself. But what could beexpected of me?" she asked ironically. "As the Wrandalls would say,'blood will tell.'"
"Nonsense! Don't talk like that! It is quite unworthy of you. Inspite of everything, Sara, you are wonderful. The very thing youtried to do, the way you went about it, the way you surrender, makesfor greatness in you. If you had gone on with it and succeeded,that fact alone would have put you in the class with the great,strong, virile women of history. It--"
"With the Medicis, the Borgias and--" she began bitterly.
"Yes, with them. But they were great women, just the same. Youare greater, for you have more than they possessed: a conscience.I wish I could tell you just what I feel. I haven't the words. I--"
"I only want you to tell me the truth. Do you despise me?"
"Again I say that I do not. I can only say that I regard youwith--yes, with AWE."
"As one might think of a deadly serpent."
"Hardly that," he said, smiling for the first time. He crossedover and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Don't think too meanlyof yourself. I understand it all. You lived for months without aheart, that's all."
"You put it very gently."
"I think I'm right. Now, you've got it back, and it's hungry forthe sweet, good things of life. You want to be happy. You want tolove again and to be loved. You don't want to be pitied. I understand.It's the return of a heart that went away long months ago and leftan empty place that you filled with gall. The bitterness is gone.There is something sweet in its place. Am I not right?"
She hesitated. "If you mean that I want to be loved by my enemies,Brandon, you are wrong," she said clearly. "I have not been chastenedin that particular."
"You mean the Wrandalls?"
"It is not in my nature to love my enemies. We stand on the samefooting as before, and always shall. They understand me, I understandthem. I am glad that my project failed, not for their sake, butfor my own."
He was silent. This woman was beyond him. He could not understanda nature like this.
"You say nothing. Well, I can't ask you to understand. We will notdiscuss my enemies, but my friends. What do you intend to do inrespect to Hetty?"
"I am going to make her my wife," he said levelly.
She turned away. It was now quite dark. He could not see theexpression on her face.
"What you have heard does not weaken your love for her?"
"No. It strengthens it."
"You know what she has done. She has taken a life with her ownhands. Can you take her to yo
ur bosom, can you make her the motherof your own children? Remember, there is blood on her hands."
"Ah, but her heart is clean!"
"True," she said moodily, "her heart is clean."
"No cleaner than yours is now, Sara."
She uttered a short, mocking laugh. "It isn't necessary to say athing like that to me."
"I beg your pardon."
Her manner changed abruptly. She turned to him, intense and serious.
"She is so far away, Brandon. On the other side of the world, andshe is full of loathing for me. How am I to regain what I have lost?How am I to make her understand? She went away with that last uglythought of me, with the thought of me as I appeared to her on thatlast, enlightening day. All these months it has been growing morehorrible to her. It has been beside her all the time. All thesemonths she has known that I pretended to love her as--"
"I don't believe you know Hetty as well as you think you do," hebroke in. "You forget that she loved you with all her soul. Youcan't kill love so easily as all that. It will be all right, Sara.You must write and ask her to come back. It--"
"Ah, but you don't know!" Then she related the story of the liberatedcanary bird. "Hetty understands. The cage door is open. She mayreturn when she chooses, but--don't you see?--she must come of herown free will."
"You will not ask her to come?"
"No. It is the test. She will know that I have told you everything.You will go to her. Then she may understand. If she forgives she willcome back. There is nothing else to say, nothing else to consider."
"I shall go to her at once," he said resolutely.
She gave him a quick, searching glance.
"She may refuse to marry you, even now, Brandon."
"She CAN'T!" he cried. An instant later his face fell. "By Jove,I--I suppose the law will have to be considered now. She will atleast have to go through the form of a trial."
She whirled on him angrily. "The law? What has the law to do withit? Don't be a fool!"
"She ought to be legally exonerated," he said.
Her fingers gripped his arm fiercely. "I want you to understand onething, Brandon. The story I have told you was for your ears alone.The secret lives with us and dies with us."
He looked his relief. "Right! It must go no farther. It is not amatter for the law to decide. You may trust me."
"I am cold," she said. He heard her teeth chatter distinctly asshe pulled the thick mantle closer about her throat and shoulders."It is very raw and wet down here. Come!"
As she started off along the long, narrow pier, he sprang afterher, grasping her arm. She leaned rather heavily against him fora few steps and then drew herself up. Her teeth still chattered,her arm trembled in his clasp.
"By Jove, Sara, this is bad," he cried, in distress. "You're chilledto the marrow."
"Nerves," she retorted, and he somehow felt that her lips were setand drawn.
"You must get to bed right away. Hot bath, mustard, and all that.I'll not stop for dinner. Thanks just the same. I will be over inthe morning."
"When will you sail?" she asked, after a moment.
"I can't go for ten days, at least. My mother goes into the hospitalnext week for an operation, as I've told you. I can't leave untilafter that's over. Nothing serious, but--well, I can't go away.I shall write to Hetty to-night, and cable her to-morrow. By theway, I--I don't know just where to find her. You see, we were notto write to each other. It was in the bargain. I suppose you don'tknow how I can--"
"Yes, I can tell you precisely where she is. She is in Venice, butleaves there to-morrow for Rome, by the Express."
"Then you have been hearing from her?" he cried sharply.
"Not directly. But I will say this much: there has not been a daysince she landed in England that I have not received news of her.I have not been out of touch with her, Brandon, not even for anhour."
"Good heaven, Sara! You don't mean to say you've had her shadowedby--by detectives," he exclaimed, aghast.
"Her maid is a very faithful servant," was her ambiguous rejoinder.