XXXIII
THE CURTAIN LIFTED
Ten o'clock! and one of the five listed to be present had arrived--therector of the church which the Ostranders had formerly attended.
He was ushered into the parlour by Deborah, where he found himselfreceived not by the judge in whose name he had been invited, but by Mr.Black, the lawyer, who tendered him a simple good morning and pointedout a chair.
There was another person in the room,--a young man who stood in one ofthe windows, gazing abstractedly out at the line of gloomy fence risingbetween him and the street. He had not turned at the rector's approach,and the latter had failed to recognise him.
And so with each new arrival. He neither turned nor moved at any one'sentrance, but left it to Mr. Black to do the honours and make the bestof a situation, difficult, if not inexplicable to all of them. Nor couldit be seen that any of these men--city officials, prominent citizens andold friends, recognised his figure or suspected his identity. Beyond apassing glance his way, they betrayed neither curiosity nor interest,being probably sufficiently occupied in accounting for their ownpresence in the home of their once revered and now greatly malignedcompeer. Judge Ostrander, attacked through his son, was about to say ordo something which each and every one of them secretly thought hadbetter be left unsaid or undone. Yet none showed any disposition toleave the place; and when, after a short, uneasy pause during which allattempts at conversation failed, they heard a slow and weighty stepapproaching through the hall, the suspense was such that no one but Mr.Black noticed the quick whirl with which Oliver turned himself about,nor the look of mortal anguish with which he awaited the opening of thedoor and his father's entrance among them. No one noticed, I say, until,simultaneously with the appearance of Judge Ostrander on the threshold,a loud cry swept through the room of "Don't! don't!" and the man theyhad barely noticed, flashed by them all, and fell at the judge's feetwith a smothered repetition of his appeal: "Don't, father, don't!"
Then, each man knew why he had been summoned there, and knowing, gazedearnestly at these two faces. Twelve years of unappeased longing, ofsmothered love, rising above doubts, persisting in spite of doubts, wereconcentrated into that one instant of mutual recognition. The eye of thefather was upon that of the son and that of the son upon that of thefather and for them, at least in this first instant of reunion, theyears were forgotten and sin, sorrow and on-coming doom effaced fromtheir mutual consciousness.
Then the tide of life flowed back into the present, and the judge,motioning to his son to rise, observed very distinctly:
"DON'T is an ambiguous word, my son, and on your lips, at this juncture,may mislead those whom I have called here to hear the truth from us andthe truth only. You have heard what happened here a few days ago. How along-guarded, long-suppressed suspicion--so guarded and so suppressedthat I had no intimation of its existence even, found vent at a momentof public indignation, and I heard you, you, Oliver Ostrander, accusedto my face of having in some boyish fit of rage struck down the man forwhose death another has long since paid the penalty. This you havealready been told."
"Yes." The word cut sharply through the silence; but the fire with whichthe young man rose and faced them all showed him at his best. "Butsurely, no person present believes it. No one can who knows you and theprinciples in which I have been raised. This fellow whom I beat as a boyhas waited long to start this damnable report. Surely he will get nohearing from unprejudiced and intelligent men."
"The police have listened to him. Mr. Andrews, who is one of thegentlemen present, has heard his story and you see that he stands heresilent, my son. And that is not all. Mrs. Scoville, who has loved youlike a mother, longs to believe in your innocence, and cannot."
A low cry from the hall.
It died away unheeded.
"And Mr. Black, her husband's counsel," continued the father, in thefirm, low tones of one who for many long days and nights had schooledhimself for the duty of this hour, "shares her feeling. He has tried notto; but he does. They have found evidences--you know them; proofs whichmight not have amounted to much had it not been for the one mischievousfact which has undermined public confidence and given point to theseattacks. I refer to the life we have led and the barriers we haveourselves raised against our mutual intercourse. These have undone us.To the question, 'Why these barriers?' I can find no answer but the onewhich ends this struggle. Succumbing myself, I ask you to do so also.Out of the past comes a voice--the voice of Algernon Etheridge,demanding vengeance for his untimely end. It will not be gainsaid. Notsatisfied with the toll we have both paid in these years of sufferingand repression,--unmindful of the hermit's life I have led and of theheart disappointments you have borne, its cry for punishment remainsinsistent. Gentlemen--Hush! Oliver, it is for me to cry DON'T now--JohnScoville was a guilty man--a murderer and a thief--but he did not wieldthe stick which killed Algernon Etheridge. Another hand raised that. No,do not look at the boy. He is innocent! Look here! look here!'" And withone awful gesture, he stood still,--while horror rose like a wave andengulfed the room--choking back breath and speech from every living soulthere, and making a silence more awful than any sound--or so they allfelt, till his voice rose again and they heard--"You have trusted toappearances; you must trust now to my word. I am the guilty man, notScoville, and not Oliver, though Oliver may have been in the ravine thatnight and even handled the bludgeon I found at my feet in the recessesof Dark Hollow."
Then consternation spoke, and muttered cries were heard of "Madness! Itis not we who are needed here but a physician!" and dominating all, theringing shout:
"You cannot save me so, father. I hated Etheridge and I slew him.Gentlemen," he prayed in his agony, coming close into their midst, "donot be misled for a moment by a father's devotion."
His lifted head, his flashing eye, drew every look. Honour confrontedthem in a countenance from which all reserve had melted away. No guiltshowed there; he stood among them, a heroic figure.
Slowly, and with a dread which no man might measure, the glances whichhad just devoured his young but virile countenance passed to that of thefather. They did not leave it again. "Son?" With what tenderness hespoke, but with what a ring of desolation. "I understand your effort andappreciate it; but it is a useless one. You cannot deceive these friendsof ours--men who have known my life. If you were in the ravine thatnight, so was I. If you handled John Scoville's stick, so did I, ANDAFTER YOU! Let us not struggle for the execration of mankind; let itfall where it rightfully belongs. It can bring no sting keener than thatto which my breast has long been subject. Or--" and here his tones sank,in a last recognition of all he was losing forever, "if there issuffering in a once proud man flinging from him the last rag of respectwith which he sought to cover the hideous nakedness of an unsuspectedcrime, it is lost in the joy of doing justice to the son who would takeadvantage of circumstances to assume his father's guilt."
But Oliver, with a fire which nothing could damp, spoke up again:
"Gentlemen, will you see my father so degrade himself? He has dwelt socontinually upon the knowledge which separated us a dozen years ago thathe no longer can discriminate between the guilty and the innocent. Wouldhe have sat in court; would he have uttered sentences; would he havekept his seat upon the bench for all these years, if he had borne withinhis breast this secret of personal guilt? No. It is not in human natureto play such a part. I was guilty--and I fled. Let the act speak foritself. The respect due my father must not be taken from him."
Confession and counter-confession! What were they to think! AlansonBlack, aghast at this dread dilemma, ran over in his mind all that hadled him to accept Oliver's guilt as proven, and then, in immediateopposition to it, the details of that old trial and the judge'sconsequent life; and, voicing the helpless confusion of the others,observed with forced firmness:
"We have heard much of Oliver's wanderings in the ravine on that fatalnight, but nothing of yours, Judge Ostrander. It is not enough for youto say that you were there; you must prove it
."
"The proof is in my succumbing to the shock of hearing Oliver's nameassociated with this crime. Had he been guilty--had our separation comethrough his crime and not through my own, I should have been preparedfor such a contingency, and not overwhelmed by it."
"And were you not prepared?"
"No, before God!"
The gesture accompanying this oath was a grand one, convincing in itsfervour, its majesty and power.
But facts are stubborn things, and while most of those present werestill thrilling under the effect of this oath, the dry voice of DistrictAttorney Andrews was heard for the first time, in these words:
"Why, then, did you, on the night of Bela's death, stop on your wayacross the bridge to look back upon Dark Hollow and cry in the bitteresttones which escape human lips, 'Oliver! Oliver! Oliver!' You were heardto speak this name, Judge Ostrander," he hastily put in, as themiserable father raised his hand in ineffectual protest. "A man waslurking in the darkness behind you, who both saw and heard you. He maynot be the most prepossessing of witnesses, but we cannot discredit hisstory."
"Mr. Andrews, you have no children. To the man who has, I make my lastappeal. Mr. Renfrew, you know the human heart both as a father and apastor. Do you find anything unnatural in a guilty soul bemoaning itsloss rather than its sin, in the spot which recalled both to hisoverburdened spirit?"
"No."
The word came sharply, and it sounded decisive; but the ones whichfollowed from Mr. Andrews were no less so.
"That is not enough. We want evidence, actual evidence that you are notplaying the part your son ascribes to you."
The judge's eyes glared, then suddenly and incomprehensively softenedtill the quick fear that his mind as well as his memory had gone astray,vanished in a feeling none of them could have characterised, but whichgave to them all an expression of awe.
"I have such evidence," announced the judge. "Come."
Turning, he stepped into the hall. Oliver, with bended head and adiscouraged mien, quickly followed. Alanson Black and the others,casting startled and inquiring looks at each other, brought up the rear.Deborah Scoville was nowhere to be seen.
At the door of his own room, the judge paused, and with his hand on thecurtain, remarked with unexpected composure: "You have all wondered, andothers with you why for the last ten years I have kept the gates of myhouse shut against every comer. I am going to show you."
And with no further word or look, scarcely even giving attention toOliver's anguished presence, he led them into the study and from thereon to that inner door known and talked of through the town as the doorof mystery. This he slowly opened with the key he took from his pocket;then, pausing with the knob in his hand, he said:
"In the years which are past, but two persons beside myself have crossedthis threshold, and these only under my eye. Its secret was for my ownbreast. Judge what my remorse has been; judge the power of my own secretself-condemnation, by what you see here."
And, entering, he reached up, and pulled aside the carpet he had strungup over one end of the room, disclosing amid a number of loosenedboards, the barred cell of a condemned convict.
* * * * *
"This was my bed, gentlemen, till a stranger coming into my home, madesuch an acknowledgment of my sin impossible!"