The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katharine Green (best novels for beginners txt) 📕

Mr. Fox at once arose; the moment was ripe for conquest. He put his most vital question first:

"In all this interview with your sister, did you remark any discoloration on her throat?"

The witness's lips opened; surprise spoke from her every feature.
"Discoloration?" she repeated. "I do not know what you mean."

"Any marks darker than the rest of her skin on her throat or neck?"

"No. Adelaide had a spotless skin. It looked like marble as she lay there. No, I saw no marks."

"Miss Cumberland, have you heard or read a full account of this trial?"

She was trembling, now. Was it from fear of the truth, or under that terror of the unknown embodied in this question.

"I do not know," said she. "What I heard was from my nurse and Mr. Moffat. I read very little, and that was only about the first days of the trial and the swearing in of jurors. This is the first time I have heard any mention made of marks, and I do not understand yet what you allude to."

District Attorney Fox cast at Mr. Moffat an eloquent glance, which that gentleman bore unmoved; then turning back to the witness, he addressed her in milder and more considerate tones than were usually heard from him in cross-examination, and asked: "Did you hold your sister's hands all the time she lay dying, as you thought, on the lounge?"

"Yes, yes."

"And did not see her raise them once?"

"No, no."

"How was it when you let go of them? Where did they fall then?"

"On her breast. I laid them down softly and crossed them. I did not leave her till I had done this and closed her eyes."

"And what did you do then?"

"I went for the note, to burn it."

"Miss Cumberland, in your direct examination, you said that you stopped still as you crossed the floor at the time, thinking that your sister called, and that you looked back at her to see."

"Yes, sir."

"Were her hands crossed then?"

"Yes, sir, just the same."

"And afterward, when you came from the fire after waiting some little time for courage?"

"Yes, yes. There were no signs of movement. Oh, she was dead—quite dead."

"No statements, Miss Cumberland. She looked the same, and you saw no change in the position of her hands?"

"None; they were just as I left them."

"Miss Cumberland, you have told us how, immediately after taking the poison, she staggered about the room, and sank first on a chair and then on the lounge. Were you watching her then?"

"Oh, yes—every moment."

"Her hands as well as her face?"

"I don't know about her hands. I should have observed it if she had done anything strange with them."

"Can you say she did not clutch or grip her throat during any of this time?"

"Yes, yes. I couldn't have forgotten it, if she had done that. I remember every move she made so well. She didn't do that."

Mr. Fox's eye stole towards the jury. To a man, they were alert, anxious for the next question, and serious, as the arbitrators of a man's life ought to be.

Satisfied, he put the question: "When, after telephoning, you returned to the room where your sister lay, you glanced at the lounge?"

"Yes, I could not help it."

"Was it in the same condition as when you left—the pillows, I mean?"

"I—I think so. I cannot say; I only half looked; I was terrified by it."

"Can you say they had not been disturbed?"

"No. I can say nothing. But what does—"

"Only the answer, Miss Cumberland. Can you tell us how those pillows were arranged?"

"I'm afraid not. I threw them down quickly, madly, just as I collected them. I only know that I put the window cushion down first. The rest fell anyhow; but they quite covered her—quite."

"Hands and face?"

"Her whole body."

"And did they cover her quite when you came back?"

"They must have—Wait—wait! I know I have no right to say that, but I cannot swear that I saw any change."

"Can you swear that there was no change—that the pillows and the window cushion lay just as they did when you left the room?"

She did not answer. Horror seemed to have seized hold of her. Her eyes, fixed on the attorney's face, wavered and, had they followed their natural impulse, would have turned towards her brother, but her fear—possibly her love—was her counsellor and she brought them back to Mr. Fox. Resolutely, but with a shuddering insight of the importance of her reply, she answered with that one weighty monosyllable which can crush so many hopes, and even wreck a life:

"No."

At the next moment she was in Dr. Carpenter's arms. Her strength had given way for the time, and the court was hastily adjourned, to give her opportunity for rest and recuperation.

Threescore and ten I can remember well:
Within the volume of which time, I have seen
Hours dreadful, and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowledge.

Macbeth.

I shall say nothing about myself at this juncture. That will come later.
I have something of quite different purport to relate.

When I left the court-room with the other witnesses, I noticed a man standing near the district attorney. He was a very plain man—with no especial claims to attention, that I could see, yet I looked at him longer than I did at any one else, and turned and looked at him again as I passed through the doorway.

Afterward I heard that he was Sweetwater, the detective from New York who had had so much to do in unearthing the testimony against Arthur,—testimony which in the light of this morning's revelations, had taken on quite a new aspect, as he was doubtless the first to acknowledge. It was the curious blending of professional disappointment and a personal and characteristic appreciation of the surprising situation, which made me observe him, I suppose. Certainly my heart and mind were full enough not to waste looks on a commonplace stranger unless there had been some such overpowering reason.

I left him still talking to Mr. Fox, and later received this account of the interview which followed between them and Dr. Perry.

"Is this girl telling the truth?" asked District Attorney Fox, as soon as the three were closeted and each could speak his own mind. "Doctor, what do you think?"

"I do not question her veracity in the least. A woman who for purely moral reasons could defy pain and risk the loss of a beauty universally acknowledged as transcendent, would never stoop to falsehood even in her desire to save a brother's life. I have every confidence in her. Fox, and I think you may safely have the same."

"You believe that she burnt herself—intentionally?"

"I wouldn't disbelieve it—you may think me sentimental; I knew and loved her father—for any fortune you might name."

"Say that you never knew her father; say that you had no more interest in the girl or the case, than the jurors have? What then—-?

"I should believe her for humanity's sake; for the sake of the happiness it gives one to find something true and strong in this sordid work-a-day world—a jewel in a dust-heap. Oh, I'm a sentimentalist, I acknowledge."

Mr. Fox turned to Sweetwater. "And you?"

"Mr. Fox, have you those tongs?"

"Yes, I forgot; they were brought to my office, with the other exhibits. I attached no importance to them, and you will probably find them just where I thrust them into the box marked 'Cumb.'"

They were in the district attorney's office, and Sweetwater at once rose and brought forward the tongs.

"There is my answer," he said pointing significantly at one of the legs.

The district attorney turned pale, and motioned Sweetwater to carry them back. He sat silent for a moment, and then showed that he was a man.

"Miss Cumberland has my respect," said he.

Sweetwater came back to his place.

Dr. Perry waited.

Finally Mr. Fox turned to him and put the anticipated question:

"You are satisfied with your autopsy? Miss Cumberland's death was due to strangulation and not to the poison she took?"

"That was what I swore to, and what I should have to swear to again if you placed me back on the stand. The poison, taken with her great excitement, robbed her of consciousness, but there was too little of it, or it was too old and weakened to cause death. She would probably have revived, in time; possibly did revive. But the clutch of those fingers was fatal; she could not survive it. It costs me more than you can ever understand to say this, but questions like yours must be answered. I should not be an honest man otherwise."

Sweetwater made a movement. Mr. Fox turned and looked at him critically.

"Speak out," said he.

But Sweetwater had nothing to say.

Neither had Dr. Perry. The oppression of an unsolved problem, involving lives of whose value each formed a different estimate, was upon them all; possibly heaviest upon the district attorney, the most serious portion of whose work lay still before him.

To the relief of all, Carmel was physically stronger than we expected when she came to retake the stand in the afternoon. But she had lost a little of her courage. Her expectation of clearing her brother at a word had left her, and with it the excitation of hope. Yet she made a noble picture as she sat there, meeting, without a blush, but with an air of sweet humility impossible to describe, the curious, all-devouring glances of the multitude, some of them anxious to repeat the experience of the morning; some of them new to the court, to her, and the cause for which she stood.

Mr. Fox kept nobody waiting. With a gentleness such as he seldom showed to any witness for the defence, he resumed his cross-examination by propounding the following question:

"Miss Cumberland, in your account of the final interview you had with your sister, you alluded to a story you had once read together. Will you tell us the name of this story?"

"It was called 'A Legend of Francis the First.' It was not a novel, but a little tale she found in some old magazine. It had a great effect upon us; I have never forgotten it."

"Can you relate this tale to us in a few words?"

"I will try. It was very simple; it merely told how a young girl marred her beauty to escape the attentions of the great king, and what respect he always showed her after that, even calling her sister."

Was the thrill in her voice or in my own heart, or in the story—emphasised as it was by her undeniable attempt upon her own beauty? As that last word fell so softly, yet with such tender suggestion, a sensation of sympathy passed between us for the first time; and I knew, from the purity of her look and the fearlessness of this covert appeal to one she could not address openly, that the doubts I had cherished of her up to this very moment were an outrage and that were it possible or seemly, I should be bowed down in the dust at her feet—in reality, as I was in spirit.

Others may have shared my feeling; for the glances which flew from her face to mine were laden with an appreciation of the situation, which for the moment drove the prisoner from the minds of all, and centred attention on this tragedy of souls, bared in so cruel a way to the curiosity of the crowd. I could not bear it. The triumph of my heart battled with the shame of my fault, and I might have been tempted into some act of manifest imprudence, if Mr. Fox had not cut my misery short by recalling attention to the witness, with a question of the most vital importance.

"While you were holding your sister's hands in what you supposed to be her final moments, did you observe whether or not she still wore on her finger the curious ring given her by Mr. Ranelagh, and known as her engagement ring?"

"Yes—I not only saw it, but felt it. It was the only one she wore on her left hand."

The district attorney paused. This was an admission unexpected, perhaps, by himself, which it was desirable to have sink