Woolson Constance Fenimore
Anne: A Novel

CHAPTER XXXVI

 
"I have no other than a woman's reason:
I think him so because I think him so."
 

– Shakspeare.

Summer was at its height. Multomah had returned to its rural quietude; the farmers were busy afield, the court-room was closed, the crowd gone. The interest in the Heathcote case, and the interest in Ward Heathcote, remained as great as ever in the small circle of which he and Helen had formed part; but nothing more could happen until November, and as, in the mean time, the summer was before them, they had found a diversion of thought in discovering an island off the coast of Maine, and betaking themselves thither, leaving to mistaken followers the belief that Caryl's still remained an exclusive and fashionable resort. Beyond this small circle, the attention of the nation at large was absorbed in a far greater story – the story of the Seven Days round Richmond.

Word had come to Anne from the northern island that the little boy, whose failing health had for so many months engrossed all Miss Lois's time and care, had closed his tired eyes upon this world's pain forever. He would no longer need the little crutch, which they had both grieved to think must always be his support; and Miss Lois coming home to the silent church-house after the burial in the little cemetery on the height, and seeing it there in its corner, had burst into bitter tears. For the child, in his helplessness and suffering, had grown into her very heart. But now Anne needed her – that other child whom she had loved so long and so well. And so, after that one fit of weeping, she covered her grief from sight, put a weight of silent remembrance upon it, and with much energy journeyed southward.

For Anne, Miss Lois, and Miss Teller were now linked together by a purpose, a feminine purpose, founded upon faith only, and with outlines vague, yet one none the less to be carried out: to go to Timloesville or its neighborhood, and search for the murderer there.

Miss Teller, who had found occupation in various small schemes for additions to Heathcote's comfort during the summer, rose to excitement when the new idea was presented to her.

"We must have advice about it," she began; "we must consult – " Then seeing in the young face, upon whose expressions she had already come to rely, a non-agreement, she paused.

"The best skill of detectives has already been used," said Anne; "they followed a track, worked from a beginning. We should follow no track, and accept no beginning, save the immovable certainty that he was innocent." She was silent a moment; then with a sigh which was a sad, yet not a hopeless, one, "Dear Miss Teller," she added, "it is said that women divine a truth sometimes by intuition, and against all probability. It is to this instinct – if such there be – that we must trust now."

Miss Teller studied these suggestions with respect; but they seemed large and indistinct. In spite of herself her mind reverted to certain articles of furniture which she had looked at the day before, furniture which was to make his narrow room more comfortable. But she caught herself in these wanderings, brought back her straying thoughts promptly, and fastened them to the main subject with a question – like a pin.

"But how could I go to Timloesville at present, when I have so much planned out to do here? Oh, Anne, I could not leave him here, shut up in that dreary place."

"It seems to me safer that you should not go," replied the girl; "it might be noticed, especially as it is known that you took this house for the summer. But I could go. And there is Miss Lois. She is free now, and the church-house must be very lonely." The tears sprang again as she thought of André, the last of the little black-eyed children who had been so dear.

They talked over the plan. No man being there to weigh it with a cooler masculine judgment, it seemed to them a richly promising one. Anne was imaginative, and Miss Teller reflected Anne. They both felt, however, that its accomplishment depended upon Miss Lois. But Anne's confidence in Miss Lois was great.

"I know of no one for whom I have a deeper respect than for that remarkable woman," said Miss Teller, reverentially. "It will be a great gratification to see her."

"But it would be best, I think, that she should not come here," replied Anne. "I should bid you good-by, and go away; every one would see me go. Then in New York I could meet Miss Lois, and we could go together to Timloesville by another route. At Timloesville nobody would know Miss Lois, and I should keep myself in a measure concealed; there were only a few persons from Timloesville at the trial, and I think I could evade them."

"I should have liked much to meet Miss Hinsdale," said Miss Margaretta, in a tone of regret. "But you know best."

"Oh, no, no," said Anne, letting her arms fall in sudden despondency. "I sometimes think that I know nothing, and worse than nothing! Moments come when I would give years of my life for one hour, only one, of trusting reliance upon some one wiser, stronger, than I – who would tell me what I ought to do."

But this cry of the young heart (brave, but yet so young) distressed Miss Margaretta. If the pilot should lose courage, what would become of the passengers? She felt herself looking into chaos.

Anne saw this. And controlled herself again.

"When should you start?" said the elder lady, relieved, and bringing forward a date. Miss Margaretta always found great support in dates.

"I can not tell yet. We must first hear from Miss Lois."

"I will write to her myself," said Miss Margaretta, putting on her spectacles and setting to work at once. It was a relief to be engaged upon something tangible.

And write she did. The pages she sent to Miss Lois, and the pages with which Miss Lois replied were many, eloquent, and underlined. Before the correspondence was ended they had scientifically discovered, convicted, and hanged the murderer, and religiously buried him.

Miss Lois was the most devoted partisan the accused man had gained. She was pleader, audience, public opinion, detective, judge, and final clergyman, in one. She had never seen Heathcote. That made no difference. She was sure he was a concentration of virtue, and the victim not of circumstances (that was far too mild), but of a "plot" (she wanted to say "popish," but was restrained by her regard for Père Michaux).

Miss Teller saw Heathcote daily. So far, she had not felt it necessary that Anne should accompany her. But shortly before the time fixed for the young girl's departure she was seized with the idea that it was Anne's duty to see him once. For perhaps he could tell her something which would be of use at Timloesville.

"I would rather not; it is not necessary," replied Anne. "You can tell me."

"You should not think of yourself; in such cases ourselves are nothing," said Miss Teller. "The sheriff and the persons in charge under him are possessed of excellent dispositions, as I have had occasion to prove; no one need know of your visit, and I should of course accompany you."

Anne heard her in silence. She was asking herself whether this gentle lady had lost all memory of her own youth, and whether that youth had held no feelings which would make her comprehend the depth of that which she was asking now.

But Miss Teller was not thinking of her youth, or of herself, or of Anne. She had but one thought, one motive – Helen's husband, and how to save him; all the rest seemed to her unimportant. She had in fact forgotten it. "I do not see how you can hesitate," she said, the tears suffusing her light eyes, "when it is for our dear Helen's sake."

"Yes," replied Anne; "but Helen is dead. How can we know – how can we be sure – what she would wish?" She seemed to be speaking to herself. She rose, walked to the window, and stood there looking out.

"She would wish to have him saved, would she not?" answered Miss Teller. "I consider it quite necessary that you should see him before you go. For you could not depend upon my report of what he says. It has, I am sorry to say, been represented to me more than once that I have a tendency to forget what has been variously mentioned as the knob, the point, the gist of a thing."

Anne did not turn.

Miss Teller noted this obstinacy with surprise.

"It is mysterious to me that after the great ordeal of that trial, Anne, you should demur over such a simple thing as this," she said, gently.

But to Anne the sea of faces in the court-room seemed now less difficult than that quiet cell with its one occupant. Then she asked herself whether this were not an unworthy feeling, a weak one? One to be put down at once, and with a strong hand. She yielded. The visit was appointed for the next day.

The county jail with its stone hall; a locked door. They were entering; the jailer retired.

The prisoner rose to receive them; he knew that they were coming, and was prepared. Miss Teller kissed him; he brought forward his two chairs. Then turning to Anne, he said, "It is kind of you to come;" and for a moment they looked at each other.

It was as if they had met in another world, in a far gray land beyond all human error and human dread. Anne felt this suddenly; if not like a chill, it was like the touch of an all-enveloping sadness, which would not pass away. Her fear left her; it seemed to her then that it would never come back.

As she looked at him she saw that he was greatly changed; her one glance in the court-room had not told her how greatly. Part of it was due doubtless to the effects of his wound, to the unaccustomed confinement in the heats of a lowland summer; his face, though still bronzed, was thin, his clothes hung loosely from his broad shoulders. But the marked alteration was in his expression. This was so widely different from that of the brown-eyed lounger of Caryl's, that it seemed another man who was standing there, and not the same. Heathcote's eyes were still brown; but their look was so changed that Gregory Dexter would never have occasion to find fault with it again. His half-indolent carelessness had given place to a stern reticence; his indifference, to a measured self-control. And Anne knew, as though a prophetic vision were passing, that he would carry that changed face always, to his life's end.

Miss Teller had related to him their plan, their womans' plan. He was strongly, unyieldingly, opposed to it. Miss Teller came home every day, won over to his view, and then as regularly changed her mind, in talking with Anne, and went back – to be converted over again. But he knew that Anne had persisted. He knew that he was now expected to search his memory, and see if he could not find there something new. Miss Teller, with a touching eagerness to be of use and business-like, arranged pen, paper, and ink upon the table, and sat down to take notes. She was still a majestic personage, in spite of her grief and anxiety; her height, profile, and flowing draperies were as imposing as ever. But in other ways she had grown suddenly old; her light complexion was now over-spread with a net-work of fine small wrinkles, the last faint blonde of her hair was silvered, and in her cheeks and about her mouth there was a pathetic alteration, the final predominance of old age, and its ineffective helplessness over her own mild personality.

But while they waited, he found that he could not speak. When he saw them sitting there in their mourning garb for Helen, when he felt that Anne too was within the circle of this grief and danger and pain, Anne, in all her pure fair youth and trust and courage, something rose in his throat and stopped utterance. All the past and his own part in it unrolled itself before him like a judgment; all the present, and her brave effort for him; the future, near and dark. For Heathcote, like Dexter, believed that the chances were adverse; and even should he escape conviction, he believed that the cloud upon him would never be cleared away entirely, but that it would rest like a pall over the remainder of his life. At that moment, in his suffering, he felt that uncleared acquittal, conviction, the worst that could come to him, he could bear without a murmur were it only possible to separate Anne – Anne both in the past and present – from his own dark lot. He rose suddenly from the bench where he had seated himself, turned his back to them, went to his little grated window, and stood there looking out.

Miss Teller followed him, and laid her hand on his shoulder. "Dear Ward," she said, "I do not wonder that you are overcome." And she took out her handkerchief.

He mastered himself and came back to the table. Miss Teller, who, having once begun, was unable to stop so quickly, remained where she was. Anne, to break the painful pause, began to ask her written questions from the slip of paper she had brought.

"Can you recall anything concerning the man who came by and spoke to you while you were bathing?" she said, looking at him gravely.

"No. I could not see him; it was very dark."

"What did he say?"

"He asked if the water was cold."

"How did he say it?"

"Simply, 'Is the water cold?'"

"Was there any foreign accent or tone, any peculiarity of pronunciation or trace of dialect, no matter how slight, in his voice or utterance?"

"I do not recall any. Stay, he may have given something of the sound of g to the word – said 'gold,' instead of 'cold.' But the variation was scarcely noticeable. Country people talk in all sorts of ways."

Miss Teller hurriedly returned to her chair, after wiping her eyes, wrote down "gold" and "cold" in large letters on her sheet of paper, and surveyed them critically.

"Is there nothing else you can think of?" pursued Anne.

"No. Why do you dwell upon him?"

"Because he is the man."

"Oh, Anne, is he? – is he?" cried Miss Teller, with as much excitement as though Anne had proved it.

"There is no probability. They have not even been able to find him," said Heathcote.

"Of course it is only my feeling," said the girl.

"But what Anne feels is no child's play," commented Miss Teller.

This remark, made in nervousness and without much meaning, seemed to touch Heathcote; he turned to the window again.

"Will you please describe to me exactly what you did from the time you left the inn to take the first walk until you came back after the river-bath?" continued Anne.

He repeated his account of the evening's events as he had first given it, with hardly the variation of a word.

"Are you sure that you took two towels? Might it not be possible that you took only one? For then the second, found at the end of the meadow trail, might have been taken by the murderer."

"No; I took two. I remember it because I put first one in my pocket, and then, with some difficulty, the other, and I spoke to Helen laughingly about my left-handed awkwardness." It was the first time he had spoken his wife's name, and his voice was very grave and sweet as he pronounced it.

Poor Miss Teller broke down again. And Anne began to see her little paper of questions through a blur. But the look of Heathcote's face saved her. Why should he have anything more to bear? She went on quickly with her inquiry.

"Was there much money in the purse?"

"I think not. She gave me almost all she had brought with her as soon as we met."

"Is it a large river?"

"Rather deep; in breadth only a mill-stream."

Then there was a silence. It seemed as if they all felt how little there was to work with, to hope for.

"Will you let Miss Teller draw on a sheet of paper the outline of your left hand?" continued Anne.

He obeyed without comment.

"Now please place your hand in this position, and let her draw the finger-tips." As she spoke, she extended her own left hand, with the finger-tips touching the table, as if she was going to grasp something which lay underneath.

But Heathcote drew back. A flush rose in his cheeks. "I will have nothing to do with it," he said.

"Oh, Ward, when Anne asks you?" said Miss Teller, in distress.

"I do not wish her to go to Timloesville," he said, with emphasis; "I have been utterly against it from the first. It is a plan made without reason, and directly against my feelings, my wishes, and my consent. It is unnecessary. It will be useless. And, worse than this, it may bring her into great trouble. Send as many detectives as you please, but do not send her. It is the misfortune of your position and hers that at such a moment you have no one to control you, no man, I mean, to whose better judgment you would defer. My wishes are nothing to you; you override them. You are, in fact, taking advantage of my helplessness."

He spoke to Miss Teller. But Anne, flushing a little at his tone, answered him.

"I can not explain the hope that is in me," she said; "but such a hope I certainly have. I will not be imprudent; Miss Lois shall do everything; I will be very guarded. If we are not suspected (and we shall not be; women are clever in such things), where is the danger? It will be but – but spending a few weeks in the country." She ended hesitatingly, ineffectively. Then, "To sit still and do nothing, to wait – is unendurable!" broke from her in a changed tone. "It is useless to oppose me. I shall go."

Heathcote did not reply.

"No one is to know of it, dear Ward, save ourselves and Miss Hinsdale," said Miss Teller, pleadingly.

"And Mr. Dexter," added Anne.

Heathcote now looked at her. "Dexter has done more for me than I could have expected," he said. "I never knew him well; I fancied, too, that he did not like me."

"Oh, there you are quite mistaken, Ward. He is your most devoted friend," said Miss Teller.

But a change in Anne's face had struck Heathcote. "He thinks me guilty," he said.

"Never! never!" cried Miss Teller. "Tell him no, Anne. Tell him no."

But Anne could not. "He said – " she began; then remembering that Dexter's words, "If I try, it will be for yours," were hardly a promise, she stopped.

"It is of small consequence. Those who could believe me guilty may continue to believe it," said Heathcote. But his face showed that he felt the sting.

He had never cared to be liked by all, or even by many; but when the blow fell it had been an overwhelming surprise to him that any one, even the dullest farm laborer, should suppose it possible that he, Ward Heathcote, could be guilty of such a deed.

It was the lesson which careless men, such as he had been, learn sometimes if brought face to face with the direct homely judgment of the plain people of the land.

"Oh, Anne, how can you have him for your friend? And I, who trusted him so!" said Miss Teller, with indignant grief.

"As Mr. Heathcote has said, it is of small consequence," answered Anne, steadily. "Mr. Dexter brought me here, in spite of his – his feeling, and that should be more to his credit, I think, than as though he had been – one of us. And now, Miss Teller, if there is nothing more to learn, I should like to go."

She rose. Heathcote made a motion as if to detain her, then his hand fell, and he rose also.

"I suppose we can stay until Jason Longworthy knocks?" said Miss Margaretta, hesitatingly.

"I would rather go now, please," said Anne.

For a slow tremor was taking possession of her; the country prison, which had not before had a dangerous look, seemed now to be growing dark and cruel; the iron-barred window was like a menace. It seemed to say that they might talk; but that the prisoner was theirs.

Miss Margaretta rose, disappointed but obedient; she bade Heathcote good-by, and said that she would come again on the morrow.

Then he stepped forward. "I shall not see you again," he said to Anne, holding out his hand. He had not offered to take her hand before.

She gave him hers, and he held it for a moment. No word was spoken; it was a mute farewell. Then she passed out, followed by Miss Teller, and the door was closed behind them.

"Why, you had twenty minutes more," said Jason Longworthy, the deputy, keeping watch in the hall outside.

CHAPTER XXXVII

"The fisherman, unassisted by destiny, could not catch a fish in the Tigris; and the fish, without fate, could not have died upon dry land."

– Saadi.

Anne met Miss Lois in New York. Miss Lois had never been in New York before; but it would take more than New York to confuse Miss Lois. They remained in the city for several days in order to rest and arrange their plans. There was still much to explain which the letters, voluminous as they had been, had not made entirely clear.

But first they spoke of the child. It was Miss Lois at length who turned resolutely from the subject, and took up the tangled coil which awaited her. "Begin at the beginning and tell every word," she said, sitting erect in her chair, her arms folded with tight compactness. If Miss Lois could talk, she could also listen. In the present case she listened comprehensively, sharply, and understandingly. When all was told – "How different it is from the old days when we believed that you and Rast would live always with us on the island, and that that would be the whole," she said, with a long, sad retrospective sigh. Then dismissing the past, "But we must do in this disappointing world what is set before us," she added, sighing again, but this time in a preparatory way. Anew she surveyed Anne. "You are much changed, child," she said. Something of her old spirit returned to her. "I wish those fort ladies could see you now!" she remarked, taking off her spectacles and wiping them with a combative air.

Possessed of Anne's narrative, she now began to arrange their plans in accordance with it, and to fit what she considered the necessities of the situation. As a stand-point she prepared a history, which, in its completeness, would have satisfied even herself as third person, forgetting that the mental organizations of the Timloesville people were probably not so well developed in the direction of a conscientious and public-spirited inquiry into the affairs of their neighbors as were those of the meritorious New England community where she had spent her youth. In this history they were to be aunt and niece, of the same name, which, after long cogitation, she decided should be Young, because it had "a plain, respectable sound." She herself was to be a widow (could it have been possible that, for once in her life, she wished to know, even if but reminiscently, how the married state would feel?), and Anne was to be her husband's niece. "Which will account for the lack of resemblance," she said, fitting all the parts of her plan together like those of a puzzle. She had even constructed an elaborate legend concerning said husband, and its items she enumerated with relish. His name, it appeared, had been Asher, and he had been something of a trial to her, although at the last he had experienced religion, and died thoroughly saved. His brother Eleazer, Anne's father, had been a very different person, a sort of New England David. He had taught in an academy, studied for the ministry, and died of "a galloping consumption" – a consolation to all his friends. Miss Lois could describe in detail both of these death-beds, and repeat the inscriptions on the two tombstones. Her own name was Deborah, and Anne's was Ruth. On the second day she evolved the additional item that Ruth was "worn out keeping the accounts of an Asylum for the Aged, in Washington – which is the farthest thing I can think of from teaching children in New York – and I have brought you into the country for your health."

Anne was dismayed. "I shall certainly make some mistake in all this," she said.

"Not if you pay attention. And you can always say your head aches if you don't want to talk. I am not sure but that you had better be threatened with something serious," added Miss Lois, surveying her companion consideringly. "It would have to be connected with the mind, because, unfortunately, you always look the picture of health."

"Oh, please let me be myself," pleaded Anne.

"Never in the world," replied Miss Lois. "Ourselves? No indeed. We've got to be conundrums as well as guess them, Ruth Young."

They arrived at their destination, not by the train, but in the little country stage which came from the south. The witnesses from Timloesville present at the trial had been persons connected with the hotel. In order that Anne should not come under their observation, they took lodgings at a farm-house at some distance from the village, and on the opposite side of the valley. Anne was not to enter the village; but of the meadow-paths and woods she would have free range, as the inhabitants of Timloesville, like most country people, had not a high opinion of pedestrian exercise. Anne was not to enter the town at all; but Miss Lois was to examine "its every inch."

The first day passed safely, and the second and third. Anne was now sufficiently accustomed to her new name not to start when she was addressed, and sufficiently instructed in her "headaches" not to repudiate them when inquiries were made; Miss Lois announced, therefore, that the search could begin. She classified the probabilities under five heads.

First. The man must be left-handed.

Second. He must say "gold" for "cold."

Third. As Timloesville was a secluded village to which few strangers came, and as it had been expressly stated at the trial that no strangers were noticed in its vicinity either before or after the murder, the deed had evidently been committed, not as the prosecution mole-blindedly averred, by the one stranger who was there, but by no stranger at all – by a resident in the village itself or its neighborhood.

Fourth. As the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Heathcote was unexpected, the crime must have been one of impulse: there had not been time for a plan.

Fifth. The motive was robbery: the murder was probably a second thought, occasioned, perhaps, by Helen's stirring.

Miss Lois did not waste time. Within a few days she was widely known in Timloesville – "the widow Young, from Washington, staying at Farmer Blackwell's, with her niece, who is out of health, poor thing, and her aunt so anxious about her." The widow was very affable, very talkative; she was considered an almost excitingly agreeable person. But it was strange that she should not have heard of their event, their own particular and now celebrated crime. Mrs. Strain, wife of J. Strain, Esq., felt that this ignorance was lamentable. She therefore proposed to the widow that she should in person go to the Timloe Hotel, and see with her own eyes "the very spot."

"The effect, Mrs. Young, is curdling," she declared.

Mrs. Young was willing to be curdled, if Mrs. Strain would support her in the experience. On the next afternoon, therefore, they went to the Timloe Hotel, and were shown over "the very floor" which had been pressed by the footsteps of the murderer, his beautiful wife, and her highly respectable and observing (one might almost say providentially observing) maid. The landlord himself, Mr. Graub, did not disdain to accompany them. Mr. Graub had attended the trial in person, and he had hardly ceased since to admire himself for his own perspicuous cleverness in owning the house where such a very distinguished crime had been committed. There might be localities where a like deed would have injured the patronage of an inn; but the neighborhood of Timloesville was not one of them. The people slowly took in and appreciated their event, as an anaconda is said slowly to take in and appreciate his dinner; they digested it at their leisure. Farmers coming in to town on Saturdays, instead of bringing luncheon in a tin pail, as usual, went to the expense of dining at the hotel, with their wives and daughters, in order to see the room, the blind, and the outside stairway. Mr. Graub, in this position of affairs, was willing to repeat the tale, even to a non-diner. For Mrs. Young was a stranger from Washington, and who knew but that Washington itself might be stirred to a dining interest in the scene of the tragedy, especially as the second trial was still to come?

The impression on the blind was displayed; it was very faint, but clearly that of a left hand.

"And here is the cloth that covered the bureau," continued the landlord, taking it from a paper and spreading it on the old-fashioned chest of drawers. "It is not the identical cloth, for that was required at the trial, together with a fac-simile of the blind; but I can assure you that this one is just like the original, blue-bordered and fringed precisely the same, and we traced the spots on it exactly similar before we let the other go. For we knew that folks would naturally be interested in such a memento."

"It is indeed deeply absorbing," said Mrs. Young. "I wonder, now, what the size of that hand might be? Not yours, Mr. Graub; yours is a very small hand. Let me compare. Suppose I place my fingers so (I will not touch it). Yes, a large hand, without doubt, and a left hand. Do you know of any left-handed persons about here?"

"Why, the man himself was left-handed," answered the landlord and Mrs. Strain together – "Captain Heathcote himself."

"He had been wounded, and carried his right arm in a sling," added Mr. Graub.

"Ah, yes," said the widow; "I remember now. Was this impression measured?"

"Yes; I have the exact figures," replied the landlord, taking out a note-book, and reading the items aloud in a slow, important voice.

"Did you measure it yourself?" asked the widow. "Because if you did it, I shall feel sure the figures are correct."

"I did not measure it myself," answered Mr. Graub, not unimpressed by this confidence. "I can, however, re-measure it in a moment if it would be any gratification to you."

"It would be – immense," said the widow. Whereupon he went down stairs for a measure.

"I am subject to dizziness myself, but I must hear some one come up that outside stairway," said Mrs. Young to Mrs. Strain during his absence. "Would you do it for me? I want to imagine the whole."

Mrs. J. Strain, though stout, consented; and when her highly decorated bonnet was out of sight, the visitor swiftly drew from her pocket the paper outline of Heathcote's hand which Anne had given her, and compared it with the impression. The outlines seemed different; the hand which had touched the cloth appeared to have been shorter and wider than Heathcote's, the finger-tips broader, as though cushioned with flesh underneath. Mrs. Strain's substantial step was now heard on the outside stairway. But the pattern was already safely returned to the deep pocket of Mrs. Young.