Vous avez aupres de vous un plus doux rayonnement et un pas grand mystere, la femme.”
—Les Miserables.
AND NOW FOLLOWED DAYS in which I seemed to make little or no progress.
Mr. Clavering, disturbed perhaps by my presence, forsook his usual haunts, thus depriving me of all opportunity of making his acquaintance in any natural manner, while the evenings spent at Miss Leavenworth’s were productive of little else than constant suspense and uneasiness.
The manuscript required less revision than I supposed.
But, in the course of making such few changes as were necessary, I had ample opportunity of studying the character of Mr. Harwell.
I found him to be neither more nor less than an excellent amanuensis.
Stiff, unbending, and sombre, but true to his duty and reliable in its performance, I learned to respect him, and even to like him; and this, too, though I saw the liking was not reciprocated, whatever the respect may have been.
He never spoke of Eleanore Leavenworth or, indeed, mentioned the family or its trouble in any way; till I began to feel that all this reticence had a cause deeper than the nature of the man, and that if he did speak, it would be to some purpose.
This suspicion, of course, kept me restlessly eager in his presence.
I could not forbear giving him sly glances now and then, to see how he acted when he believed himself unobserved; but he was ever the same, a passive, diligent, unexcitable worker.
This continual beating against a stone wall, for thus I regarded it, became at last almost unendurable.
Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable—how was I to gain anything?
The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters.
Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once, and never twice the same, I learned to dread, even while I coveted, an interview.
She appeared to be passing through some crisis which occasioned her the keenest suffering.
I have seen her, when she thought herself alone, throw up her hands with the gesture which we use to ward off a coming evil or shut out some hideous vision.
I have likewise beheld her standing with her proud head abased, her nervous hands drooping, her whole form sinking and inert, as if the pressure of a weight she could neither upbear nor cast aside had robbed her even of the show of resistance.
But this was only once.
Ordinarily she was at least stately in her trouble.
Even when the softest appeal came into her eyes she stood erect, and retained her expression of conscious power.
Even the night she met me in the hall, with feverish cheeks and lips trembling with eagerness, only to turn and fly again without giving utterance to what she had to say, she comported herself with a fiery dignity that was well nigh imposing.
That all this meant something, I was sure; and so I kept my patience alive with the hope that some day she would make a revelation.
Those quivering lips would not always remain closed; the secret involving Eleanore’s honor and happiness would be divulged by this restless being, if by no one else.
Nor was the memory of that extraordinary, if not cruel, accusation I had heard her make enough to destroy this hope—for hope it had grown to be—so that I found myself insensibly shortening my time with Mr. Harwell in the library, and extending my tete-a-tete visits with Mary in the reception room, till the imperturbable secretary was forced to complain that he was often left for hours without work.
But, as I say, days passed, and a second Monday evening came round without seeing me any further advanced upon the problem I had set myself to solve than when I first started upon it two weeks before.
The subject of the murder had not even been broached; nor was Hannah spoken of, though I observed the papers were not allowed to languish an instant upon the stoop; mistress and servants betraying equal interest in their contents.
All this was strange to me.
It was as if you saw a group of human beings eating, drinking, and sleeping upon the sides of a volcano hot with a late eruption and trembling with the birth of a new one.
I longed to break this silence as we shiver glass: by shouting the name of Eleanore through those gilded rooms and satin-draped vestibules.
But this Monday evening I was in a calmer mood.
I was determined to expect nothing from my visits to Mary Leavenworth’s house; and entered it upon the eve in question with an equanimity such as I had not experienced since the first day I passed under its unhappy portals.
But when, upon nearing the reception room, I saw Mary pacing the floor with the air of one who is restlessly awaiting something or somebody, I took a sudden resolution, and, advancing towards her, said:
“Do I see you alone, Miss Leavenworth?”
She paused in her hurried action, blushed and bowed, but, contrary to her usual custom, did not bid me enter.
“Will it be too great an intrusion on my part, if I venture to come in?” I asked.
Her glance flashed uneasily to the clock, and she seemed about to excuse herself, but suddenly yielded, and, drawing up a chair before the fire, motioned me towards it.
Though she endeavored to appear calm, I vaguely felt I had chanced upon her in one of her most agitated moods, and that I had only to broach the subject I had in mind to behold her haughtiness disappear before me like melting snow.
I also felt that I had but few moments in which to do it. I accordingly plunged immediately into the subject.
“Miss Leavenworth,” said I, “in obtruding upon you to-night, I have a purpose other than that of giving myself a pleasure.
I have come to make an appeal.”
Instantly I saw that in some way I had started wrong.
“An appeal to make to me?” she asked, breathing coldness from every feature of her face.
“Yes,” I went on, with passionate recklessness. “Balked in every other endeavor to learn the truth, I have come to you, whom I believe to be noble at the core, for that help which seems likely to fail us in every other direction: for the word which, if it does not absolutely save your cousin, will at least put us upon the track of what will.”
“I do not understand what you mean,” she protested, slightly shrinking.
“Miss Leavenworth,” I pursued, “it is needless for me to tell you in what position your cousin stands.
You, who remember both the form and drift of the questions put to her at the inquest, comprehend it all without any explanation from me.
But what you may not know is this, that unless she is speedily relieved from the suspicion which, justly or not, has attached itself to her name, the consequences which such suspicion entails must fall upon her, and—”
“Good God!” she cried; “you do not mean she will be—”
“Subject to arrest?