A short laugh broke from Trent in spite of himself, but he said nothing.
She smiled deprecatingly. "Well, I couldn"t remember if you had spoken my name; and I thought it might be so. But the next time, at the Wallaces", you did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during those few days I almost brought myself to tell you, but never quite. I began to feel that you wouldn"t let me, that you would slip away from the subject if I approached it. Wasn"t I right? Tell me, please." He nodded.
"But why?" He remained silent.
"Well," she said, "I will finish what I had to say, and then you will tell me, I hope, why you had to make it so hard. When I began to understand that you wouldn"t let me talk of the matter to you, it made me more determined than ever. I suppose you didn"t realize that I would insist on speaking even if you were quite discouraging. I dare say I couldn"t have done it if I had been guilty, as you thought. You walked into my parlor to-day, never thinking I should dare. Well, now you see."
Mrs. Manderson had lost all her air of hesitancy. She had, as she was wont to say, talked herself enthusiastic, and in the ardor of her purpose to annihilate the misunderstanding that had troubled her so long she felt herself mistress of the situation.
"I am going to tell you the story of the mistake you made," she continued, as Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still looked at her enigmatically. "You will have to believe it, Mr. Trent; it is so utterly true to life, with its confusions and hidden things and cross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes that n.o.body thinks twice about taking for facts. Please understand that I don"t blame you in the least, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you did. You knew that I had no love for my husband, and you knew what that so often means. You knew before I told you, I expect, that he had taken up an injured att.i.tude towards me; and I was silly enough to try and explain it away. I gave you the explanation of it that I had given myself at first, before I realized the wretched truth; I told you he was disappointed in me because I couldn"t take a brilliant lead in society.
Well, that was true. He was so. But I could see you weren"t convinced.
You had guessed what it took me much longer to see, because I knew how irrational it was. Yes; my husband was jealous of John Marlowe; you had divined that.
"Then I behaved like a fool when you let me see you had divined it; it was such a blow, you understand, when I had supposed all the humiliation and strain was at an end, and that his delusion had died with him. You practically asked me if my husband"s secretary was not my lover, Mr.
Trent--I _have_ to say it, because I want you to understand why I broke down and made a scene. You took that for a confession; you thought I was guilty of that, and I think you even thought I might be a party to the crime, that I had consented.... That did hurt me; but perhaps you couldn"t have thought anything else--I don"t know."
Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his head at the words. He did not raise it again as she continued. "But really it was simple shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory of all the misery that mad suspicion had meant to me. And when I pulled myself together again you had gone."
She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a drawer, and drew out a long, sealed envelop.
"This is the ma.n.u.script you left with me," she said. "I have read it through again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, at your cleverness in things of this kind." A faintly mischievous smile flashed upon her face and was gone. "I thought it was splendid, Mr.
Trent--I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested.
And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thank you for your generous, chivalrous act in sacrificing this triumph of yours rather than put a woman"s reputation in peril. If all had been as you supposed, the facts must have come out when the police took up the case you put in their hands. Believe me, I understood just what you had done, and I never ceased to be grateful even when I felt most crushed by your suspicion."
As she spoke her thanks her voice shook a little, and her eyes were bright. Trent perceived nothing of this. His head was still bent. He did not seem to hear. She put the envelop into his hand as it lay open, palm upwards, on his knee. There was a touch of gentleness about the act which made him look up.
"Can you--" he began slowly.
She raised her hand as she stood before him. "No, Mr. Trent, let me finish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am still feeling the triumph of beginning it." She sank down into the sofa from which she had first risen. "I am telling you a thing that n.o.body else knows. Everybody knew, I suppose, that something had come between us, though I did everything in my power to hide it. But I don"t think any one in the world ever guessed what my husband"s notion was. People who know me don"t think that sort of thing about me, I believe. And his fancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts. I will tell you what the situation was. Mr. Marlowe and I had been friendly enough since he came to us. For all his cleverness--my husband said he had a keener brain than any man he knew--I looked upon him as practically a boy. You know I am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack of ambition that made me feel it the more. One day my husband asked me what I thought was the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much about it I said, "His manners." He surprised me very much by looking black at that, and after a silence he said, "Yes, Marlowe is a gentleman, that"s so"--not looking at me.
"Nothing was ever said about that again until about a year ago, when I found that Mr. Marlowe had done what I always expected and hoped he would do--fallen desperately in love with an American girl. But to my disgust he had picked out the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all those whom we used to meet. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she did as she liked with them; very beautiful, well-educated, very good at games--what they call a woman-athlete--and caring for nothing on earth but her own amus.e.m.e.nt. She was one of the most unprincipled flirts I ever knew, and quite the cleverest. Everyone knew it, and Mr. Marlowe must have heard it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all.... I don"t know how she managed it, but I can imagine.... She liked him, of course; but it was quite plain to me that she was playing with him. The whole affair was so idiotic, I became perfectly furious. One day I asked him to row me in a boat on the lake--all this happened at our house by Lake George. We had never been alone together for any length of time before. In the boat I talked to him. I was very kind about it, I think, and he took it admirably, but he didn"t believe me a bit. He had the impudence to tell me that I misunderstood Alice"s nature. When I hinted at his prospects--I knew he had scarcely anything of his own--he said that if she loved him he could make himself a position in the world. I dare say that was true, with his abilities and his friends; he is rather well-connected, you know, as well as popular.
But his enlightenment came very soon after that.
"My husband helped me out of the boat when we came back. He joked with Mr. Marlowe about something, I remember; for through all that followed he never once changed in his manner to him, and that was one reason why I took so long to realize what he thought about him and myself. But to me he was reserved and silent that evening--not angry. He was always perfectly cold and expressionless to me after he took this idea into his head. After dinner he only spoke to me once. Mr. Marlowe was telling him about some horse he had bought for the farm in Kentucky, and my husband looked at me and said, "Marlowe may be a gentleman, but he seldom quits loser in a horse trade." I was surprised at that, but at that time--and even on the next occasion when he found us together--I didn"t understand what was in his mind. That next time was the morning when Mr. Marlowe received a sweet little note from the girl asking for his congratulations on her engagement. It was in our New York house. He looked so wretched at breakfast that I thought he was ill, and afterwards I went to the room where he worked, and asked what was the matter. He didn"t say anything, but just handed me the note, and turned away to the window. I was very glad that was all over, but terribly sorry for him too, of course. I don"t remember what I said, but I remember putting my hand on his arm as he stood there staring out on the garden; and just then my husband appeared at the open door with some papers. He just glanced at us, and then turned and walked quietly back to his study. I thought he might have heard what I was saying to comfort Mr. Marlowe, and that it was rather nice of him to slip away. Mr.
Marlowe neither saw nor heard him. My husband left the house that morning for the West while I was out. Even then I did not understand. He used often to go off suddenly like that, if some business project called him.
"It was not until he returned a week later that I grasped the situation.
He was looking white and strange, and as soon as he saw me he asked me where Mr. Marlowe was. Somehow the tone of his question told me everything in a flash.
"I almost gasped. I was wild with indignation. You know, Mr. Trent, I don"t think I should have minded at all if any one had thought me capable of openly breaking with my husband and leaving him for somebody else. I dare say I might have done that. But that coa.r.s.e suspicion ... a man whom he trusted ... and the notion of concealment. It made me see scarlet. Every shred of pride in me was strung up till I quivered, and I swore to myself on the spot that I would never show by any word or sign that I was conscious of his having such a thought about me. I would behave exactly as I always had behaved, I determined--and that I did, up to the very last. Though I knew that a wall had been made between us now that could never be broken down--even if he asked my pardon and obtained it--I never once closed the door between our rooms at night.
"And so it went on. I never could go through such a time again. My husband showed silent and cold politeness to me always when we were alone--and that was only when it was unavoidable. He never once alluded to what was in his mind; but I felt it, and he knew that I felt it. Both of us were stubborn in our different att.i.tudes. To Mr. Marlowe he was more friendly, if anything, than before--heaven only knows why. I fancied he was planning some sort of revenge; but that was only a fancy.
Certainly Mr. Marlowe never knew what was suspected of him. He and I remained good friends, though we never spoke of anything intimate after that disappointment of his; but I made a point of seeing no less of him than I had always done. Then we came over to England and to White Gables, and after that followed--my husband"s dreadful end."
She threw out her right hand in a gesture of finality. "You know about the rest--so much more than any other man," she added; and glanced up at him with a quaint expression.
Trent wondered at that look. But the wonder was only a pa.s.sing shadow on his thought. Inwardly his whole being was possessed by thankfulness. All the vivacity had returned to his face. Long before Mrs. Manderson ended her story he had recognized the certainty of its truth, as from the first days of their renewed acquaintance he had doubted the story that his imagination had built up at White Gables, upon foundations that seemed so good to him.
He said: "I don"t know how to begin the apologies I have to make. There are no words to tell you how ashamed and disgraced I feel when I realize what a crude, c.o.c.k-sure blundering at a conclusion my suspicion was.
Yes, I suspected--you! I had almost forgotten that I was ever such a fool. Almost; not quite. Sometimes when I have been alone I have remembered that folly, and poured contempt on it. I have tried to imagine what the facts were. I have tried to excuse myself."
She interrupted him quickly. "What nonsense. Do be sensible, Mr. Trent.
You had only seen me on two occasions in your life before you came to me with your solution of the mystery." Again the quaint expression came and was gone. "If you talk of folly, it really is folly for a man like you to pretend to a woman like me that I had innocence written all over me in large letters--so large that you couldn"t believe very strong evidence against me after seeing me twice." Mrs. Manderson laughed, and her laugh carried him away with it. He knew well by this time that sudden rush of cascading notes of mirth, the perfect expression of enjoyment; he had many times tried to amuse her merely for his delight in the sound of it. "And now it"s all over, and you know--and we"ll never speak of it any more."
"I hope not," Trent said in sincere relief. "If you"re resolved to be so kind as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on your blasting me with your lightnings. And now, Mrs. Manderson, I had better go. Changing the subject after this would be like playing puss-in-the-corner after an earthquake." He rose to his feet.
"You are right," she said. "But no! Wait. There is another thing--part of the same subject; and we ought to pick up all the pieces now while we are about it. Please sit down." She took the envelop containing Trent"s ma.n.u.script despatch from the table where he had laid it. "I want to speak about this."
His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly. "So do I, if you do," he said slowly. "I want very much to know one thing."
"Tell me."
"Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy, why did you never make any use of it? When I began to realize that I had been wrong about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying that you could not bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope round a man"s neck, whatever he might have done. I can quite understand that feeling. Was that what it was? Another possibility I thought of was that you knew of something that was by way of justifying or excusing Marlowe"s act. Or I thought you might have a simple horror, quite apart from humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in connection with a murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases have to be practically forced into giving their evidence. They feel there is defilement even in the shadow of the scaffold."
Mrs. Manderson tapped her lips with the envelop without quite concealing a smile. "You didn"t think of another possibility, I suppose, Mr.
Trent," she said.
"No." He looked puzzled.
"I mean the possibility of your having been wrong about Mr. Marlowe as well as about me. No, no; you needn"t tell me that the chain of evidence is complete. I know it is. But evidence of what? Of Mr. Marlowe having impersonated my husband that night, and having escaped by way of my window, and built up an alibi. I have read your despatch again and again, Mr. Trent, and I don"t see that those things can be doubted."
Trent gazed at her with narrowed eyes. He said nothing to fill the brief pause that followed. Mrs. Manderson smoothed her skirt with a preoccupied air, as one collecting her ideas.
"I did not make any use of the facts found out by you," she slowly said at last, "because it seemed to me very likely that they would be fatal to Mr. Marlowe."
"I agree with you," Trent remarked in a colorless tone.
"And," pursued Mrs. Manderson, looking up at him with a mild reasonableness in her eyes, "as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose him to that risk."
There was another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with an affectation of turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself, somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quite feminine, and that he liked her to be feminine. It was permitted to her--more than permitted--to set her loyal belief in the character of a friend above the clearest demonstrations of the intellect. Nevertheless, it chafed him. He would have had her declaration of faith a little less positive in form. It was too irrational to say she "knew." In fact (he put it to himself bluntly) it was quite unlike her. If to be unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially feminine trait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it up better than any woman he had known.
"You suggest," he said at length, "that Marlowe constructed an alibi for himself, by means which only a desperate man would have attempted, to clear himself of a crime he did not commit. Did he tell you he was innocent?"
She uttered a little laugh of impatience. "So you think he has been talking me round! No, that is not so. I am merely sure he did not do it.
Ah! I see you think that absurd. But see how unreasonable you are, Mr.
Trent! Just now you were explaining to me quite sincerely that it was foolishness in you to have had a certain suspicion of me." Trent started in his chair. She glanced at him, and went on: "Now I know a great deal more about Mr. Marlowe than you know about me even now. I saw him constantly for several years. I don"t pretend to know all about him; but I do know that he is incapable of a crime of bloodshed. The idea of his planning a murder is as unthinkable to me as the idea of your picking a poor woman"s pocket, Mr. Trent. I can imagine you killing a man, you know ... if the man deserved it and had an equal chance of killing you.
I could kill a person myself in some circ.u.mstances. But Mr. Marlowe was incapable of doing it. I don"t care what the provocation might be. He had a temper that nothing could shake, and he looked upon human nature with a sort of cold magnanimity that would find excuses for absolutely anything. It wasn"t a pose; you could see it was a part of him. He never put it forward, but it was there always. It was quite irritating at times.... He really loathed and hated physical violence. He was a very strange man in some ways, Mr. Trent. He gave one a feeling that he might do unexpected things--do you know that feeling one has about some people?... What part he really played in the events of that night I have never been able to guess. But n.o.body who knew anything about him could possibly believe in his deliberately taking a man"s life." Again the movement of her head expressed finality, and she leaned back in the sofa, calmly regarding him.
"Then," said Trent, who had followed this with earnest attention, "we are forced back on two other possibilities, which I had not thought worth much consideration until this moment. Accepting what you say, he might still conceivably have killed in self-defense; or he might have done so by accident."
The lady nodded. "Of course I thought of those two explanations when I read your ma.n.u.script."
"And I suppose you felt, as I did myself, that in either of those cases the natural thing, and obviously the safest thing, for him to do was to make a public statement of the truth, instead of setting up a series of deceptions which would certainly stamp him as guilty in the eyes of the law, if anything went wrong with them."
"Yes," she said wearily, "I thought over all that until my head ached.
And I thought somebody else might have done it, and that he was somehow screening the guilty person. But that seemed wild. I could see no light in the mystery, and after a while I simply let it alone. All I was clear about was that Mr. Marlowe was not a murderer, and that if I told what you had found out, the judge and jury would probably think he was. I promised myself that I would speak to you about it if we should meet again; and now I"ve kept my promise."
Trent, his chin resting on his hand, was staring at the carpet. The excitement of the hunt for the truth was steadily rising in him. He had not in his own mind accepted Mrs. Manderson"s account of Marlowe"s character as unquestionable. But she had spoken forcibly; he could by no means set it aside, and his theory was much shaken.