XVIII
REFLECTIONS
Deborah re-entered the judge's house a stricken woman. Evading Reuther,she ran up stairs, taking off her things mechanically on the way. Shemust have an hour alone. She must learn her first lesson in self-controland justifiable duplicity before she came under her daughter's eyes. Shemust--
Here she reached her room door and was about to enter, when at a suddenthought she paused and let her eyes wander down the hall, till theysettled on another door, the one she had closed behind her the nightbefore, with the deep resolve never to open it again except undercompulsion.
Had the compulsion arisen? Evidently, for a few minutes later she wasstanding in one of the dim corners of Oliver's musty room, reopening abook which she had taken down from the shelves on her former visit. Sheremembered it from its torn back and the fact that it was an Algebra.Turning to the fly leaf, she looked again at the names and schoolboyphrases she had seen scribbled all over its surface, for the one whichshe remembered as, I HATE ALGEBRA.
It had not been a very clearly written ALGEBRA, and she would never havegiven this interpretation to the scrawl, had she been in a better mood.Now another thought had come to her, and she wanted to see the wordagain. Was she glad or sorry to have yielded to this impulse, when by acloser inspection she perceived that the word was not ALGEBRA at all,but ALGERNON, I HATE A ETHERIDGE.--I HATE A. E.--I HATE ALGERNON E. allover the page, and here and there on other pages, sometimes incharacters so rubbed and faint as to be almost unreadable and again sopressed into the paper by a vicious pencil-point as to have broken theirway through to the leaf underneath.
The work of an ill-conditioned schoolboy! but--this hate dated back manyyears. Paler than ever, and with hands trembling almost to the point ofincapacity, she put the book back, and flew to her own room, the prey ofthoughts bitter almost to madness.
It was the second time in her life that she had been called upon to gothrough this precise torture. She remembered the hour only too well,when first it was made known to her that one in closest relation toherself was suspected of a hideous crime. And now, with her mind clearedtowards him and readjusted to new developments, this crushing experienceof seeing equal indications of guilt in another almost as dear andalmost as closely knit into her thoughts and future expectations as Johnhad ever been. Can one endure a repetition of such horror? She had nevergauged her strength, but it did not seem possible. Besides of the twoblows, this seemed the heaviest and the most revolting. Then, only herown happiness and honour were involved; now it was Reuther's; and thefortitude which sustained her through the ignominy of her own trouble,failed her at the prospect of Reuther's. And again, the two cases werenot equal. Her husband had had traits which, in a manner, had preparedher for the ready suspicion of people. But Oliver was a man ofreputation and kindly heart; and yet, in the course of time THIS hadcome, and the question once agitating her as to whether Reuther was afit mate for him had now evolved itself into this: WAS HE A FIT MATE FORHER?
She had rather have died, nay, have had Reuther die than to find herselfforced to weigh and decide so momentous a question.
For, however she might feel about it, not a single illusion remained asto whose hand had made use of John Scoville's stick to strike downAlgernon Etheridge. How could she have when she came to piece the wholestory together, and weigh the facts she had accumulated against Oliverwith those which had proved so fatal to her husband.
First: the uncontrolled temper of the lad, hints of which she was dailyreceiving.
Secondly: his absolute, if unreasonable, hatred of the man thus brutallyassailed. She knew what such hatred was and how it eats into anundeveloped mind. She had gone through its agonies herself when she wasa young girl, and knew its every stage. With jealousy and personaldistaste for a start, it was easy to trace the revolt of this boyishheart from the intrusive, ever present mentor who not only shared hisfather's affections but made use of them to influence that fatheragainst the career he had chosen, in favour of one he not only dislikedbut for which he lacked all aptitude.
She saw it all from the moment his pencil dug into the paper thesetell-tale words: I HATE OLD E to that awful and final one when thedetested student fell in the woods and his reign over the judgment, aswell as over the heart, of Judge Ostrander was at an end.
In hate, bitter, boiling, long-repressed hate, was found the motive foran act so out of harmony with the condition and upbringing of a lad likeOliver. She need look for no other.
But motive goes for little if not supported by evidence. Was itpossible, with this new theory for a basis, to reconstruct the story ofthis crime without encountering the contradiction of some well-knownfact?
She would see.
First, this matter of the bludgeon left, as her husband declared,leaning against the old oak in the bottom of the ravine. All knew thetree and just where it stood. If Oliver, in his eagerness to head offEtheridge at the bridge, had rushed straight down into the gully fromOstrander Lane, he would almost strike this tree in his descent. Thediagram sketched on page 185 will make this plain. What more natural,then, than for him to catch up the stick he saw there, even if his mindhad not been deliberately set on violence. A weapon is a weapon; and anangry man feels easier with something of the kind in hand.
Armed, then, in this unexpected way, but evidently not yet decided uponcrime (or why his nervous whittling of the stick) he turned towards thebridge, following the meandering of the stream which in time led himacross the bare spot where she had seen the shadow. That it was hisshadow no one could doubt who knew all the circumstances, and that sheshould have leant just long enough from the ruins to mark this shadowand take it for her husband's--and not long enough to see the manhimself and so detect her error, was one of those anomalies of crimewhich make for judicial errors. John skurrying away through the thickettowards Claymore, Oliver threading his way down the ravine, and shehurrying away from the ruin above with her lost Reuther in hand! Suchwas the situation at this critical moment. Afterwards when she came backfor the child's bucket, some power had withheld her from looking againinto the ravine or she might have been witness to the meeting at thebridge, and so been saved the misery and shame of believing as long asshe did that the man who intercepted Algernon Etheridge at that placewas her unhappy husband.
The knife with the broken point, which she had come upon in her searchamong the lad's discarded effects, proved only too conclusively that itwas his hand which had whittled the end of the bludgeon; for the bit ofsteel left in the wood and the bit lost from the knife were to her exacteye of the same size and an undoubted fit.
map]
Oliver's remorse, the judge's discovery of his guilt (a discovery whichmay have been soon but probably was late--so late that the penalty ofthe doing had already been paid by the innocent), can only be guessedfrom the terrible sequel: a son dismissed, a desolated home in which thefather lived as a recluse.
How the mystery cleared, as she looked at it! The house barred fromguests--the double fence where, hidden from all eyes, the wretchedfather might walk his dreary round when night forbade him rest or memorybecame a whip of scorpions to lash him into fury or revolt--the stairsnever passed--(how could he look upon rooms where his wife had dreamedthe golden dreams of motherhood and the boy passed his days of innocentyouth)--aye, and his own closed-up room guarded by Bela from intrusionas long as breath remained to animate his sinking body! What was itssecret? Why, Oliver's portrait! Had this been seen, marked as it was forall men's reprobation, nothing could have stemmed inquiry; and inquirywas to be dreaded as Judge Ostrander's own act had shown. Not till hehad made his clumsy attempt to cover this memorial of love and guilt andrehanging it, thus hidden, where it would attract less attention, hadshe been admitted to his room. Alas! alas! that he had not destroyed itthen and there. That, clinging to habits old as his grief and theremorse which had undoubtedly devoured him for the part he had played inthis case of perverted justice, he had trusted to a sheet of paper tocover what nothing on earth
could cover, once Justice were aroused orthe wrath of God awakened.
Deborah shuddered. Aye, the mystery had cleared, but only to enshroudher spirits anew and make her long with all her bursting heart andshuddering soul that death had been her portion before ever she hadessayed to lift the veil held down so tightly by these two remorsefulmen.
But was her fault irremediable? The only unanswerable connection betweenthis old crime and Oliver lay in the evidence she had herself collected.As she had every intention of suppressing this evidence, and as she hadsmall dread of any one else digging out the facts to which she onlypossessed a clew, might she not hope that any suspicions raised by herinquiries would fall like a house of cards when she withdrew her handfrom the toppling structure?
She would make her first effort and see. Mr. Black had heard hercomplaint; he should be the first to learn that the encouragement shehad received was so small that she had decided to accept her presentgood luck without further query, and not hark back to a past which mostpeople had buried.