The Hollow of Her Hand

G >> George Barr McCutcheon >> The Hollow of Her Hand

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For a long time she stood immovable just inside the door, recalling
the horrid picture of another day. She tried to imagine the scene
that had been enacted there with gentle, lovable Hetty Glynn and
her whilom husband as the principal characters. The girl had told
the whole story of that ugly night. Sara tried to see it as it
actually had transpired. For months this present enterprise had
been in her mind: the desire to see the place again, to go there
with old impressions which she could leave behind when ready to
emerge in a new frame of mind. It was here that she meant to shake
off the shackles of a horrid dream, to purge herself of the last
vestige of bitterness, to cleanse her mind of certain thoughts and
memories.

Downstairs Booth waited for her. He heard the story of the tragedy
from the surly inn-keeper, who crossly maintained that his business
had been ruined. Booth was vaguely impressed, he knew not why, by
Burton's description of the missing woman. "I'd say she was about
the size of Mrs. Wrandall herself, and much the same figger," he
said, as he had said a thousand times before. "My wife noticed it
the minute she saw Mrs. Wrandall. Same height and everything."

A bell rang sharply and Burton glanced over his shoulder at the
indicator on the wall behind the desk. He gave a great start and
his jaw sagged.

"Great Scott!" he gasped. A curious greyness stole over his face.
"It's--it's the bell in that very room. My soul, what can--"

"Mrs. Wrandall is up there, isn't she?" demanded Booth.

"It ain't rung since the night he pushed the button for--Oh, gee!
You're right. She IS up there. My, what a scare it gave me." He
wiped his brow. Turning to a boy, he commanded him to answer the
bell. The boy went slowly, and as he went he removed his hands from
his pockets. He came back an instant later, more swiftly than he
went, with the word that "the lady up there" wanted Mr. Booth to
come upstairs.

She was waiting for him in the open doorway. A shaft of bright
sunlight from a window at the end of the hall fell upon her. Her
face was colourless, haggard. He paused for an instant to contrast
her as she stood there in the pitiless light with the vivid creature
he had put upon canvas so recently.

She beckoned to him and turned back into the room. He followed.

"This is the room, Brandon, where my husband met the death he
deserved," she said quietly.

"Deserved? Good heavens, Sara, are you--"

"I want you to look about you and try to picture how this place
looked on the night of the murder. You have a vivid imagination.
None of this rubbish was here. Just a bed, a table and two chairs.
There was a carpet on the floor. There were two people here, a man
and a woman. The woman had trusted the man. She trusted him until
the hour in which he died. Then she found him out. She had come to
this place, believing it was to be her wedding night. She found no
minister here. The man laughed at her and scoffed. Then she knew.
In horror, shame, desperation she tried to break away from him.
He was strong. She was a good woman; a virtuous, honourable woman.
She saved herself."

He was staring at her with dilated eyes. Slowly the truth was being
borne in upon him.

"The woman was--Hetty?" came hoarsely from his stiffening lips.
"My God, Sara!"

She came close to him and spoke in a half-whisper. "Now you know
the secret. Is it safe with you?"

He opened his lips to speak, but no words came forth. Paralysis
seemed to have gripped not only his throat but his senses. He
reeled. She grasped his arm in a tense, fierce way, and whispered:

"Be careful! No one must hear what we are saying." She shot a glance
down the deserted hall. "No one is near. I made sure of that. Don't
speak! Think first--think well, Brandon Booth. It is what you have
been seeking for months:--the truth. You share the secret with us
now. Again I ask, is it safe with you?"

"My God!" he muttered again, and passed his hand over his eyes.
His brow was wet. He looked at his fingers dumbly as if expecting
to find them covered with blood.

"Is it safe with you?" for the third time.

"Safe? Safe?" he whispered, following her example without knowing
that he did so. "I--I can't believe you, Sara. It can't be true."

"It IS true."

"You have known--all the time?"

"From that night when I stood where we are standing now."

"And--and--SHE?"

"I had never seen her until that night. I saved her."

He dropped suddenly upon the trunk that stood behind him, and
buried his face in his hands. For a long time she stood over him,
her interest divided between him and the hall, wherein lay their
present peril.

"Come," she said at last. "Pull yourself together. We must leave
this place. If you are not careful, they will suspect something
downstairs."

He looked up with haggard eyes, studying her face with curious
intentness.

"What manner of woman are you, Sara?" he questioned, slowly,
wonderingly.

"I have just discovered that I am very much like other women, after
all," she said. "For awhile I thought I was different, that I was
stronger than my sex. But I am just as weak, just as much to be
pitied, just as much to be scorned as any one of my sisters. I have
spoiled a great act by stooping to do a mean one. God will bear
witness that my thoughts were noble at the outset; my heart was
soft. But, come! There is much more to tell that cannot be told
here. You shall know everything."

They went downstairs and out into the crisp autumn air. She gave
directions to her chauffeur. They were to traverse for some distance
the same road she had taken on that ill-fated night a year and a
half before. In course of time the motor approached a well-remembered
railway crossing.

"Slow down, Cole," she said. "This is a mean place--a very mean
place." Turning to Booth, who had been sitting grim and silent
beside her for miles, she said, lowering her voice: "I remember
that crossing yonder. There is a sharp curve beyond. This is the
place. Midway between the two crossings, I should say. Please
remember this part of the road, Brandon, when I come to the telling
of that night's ride to town. Try to picture this spot--this smooth,
straight road as it might be on a dark, freezing night in the very
thick of a screaming blizzard, with all the world abed save--two
women."

[Illustration: For a long time she stood over him, her interest
divided between him and the hall]

In his mind he began to draw the picture, and to place the two women
in the centre of it, without knowing the circumstances. There was
something fascinating in the study he was making, something gruesome
and full of sinister possibilities for the hand of a virile painter.
He wondered how near his imagination was to placing the central
figures in the picture as they actually appeared on that secret
night.

At sunset they went together to the little pavilion at the end
of the pier which extended far out into the Sound. Here they were
safe from the ears of eavesdroppers. The boats had been stowed away
for the winter. The wind that blew through the open pavilion, now
shorn of all its comforts and luxuries, was cold, raw and repelling.
No one would disturb them here.

With her face set toward the sinking east, she leaned against one
of the thick posts, and, in a dull, emotionless voice, laid bare
the whole story of that dreadful night and the days that followed.
She spared no details, she spared not herself in the narration.

He did not once interrupt her. All the time she was speaking he was
studying the profile of her face as if fascinated by its strange
immobility. For the matter of a full half-hour he sat on the rail,
his back against a post, his arms folded across the breast of the
thick ulster he wore, staring at her, drinking in every word of
the story she told. A look of surprise crept into his face when
she came to the point where the thought of marrying Hetty to the
brother of her victim first began to manifest itself in her designs.
For a time the look of incredulity remained, to be succeeded by utter
scorn as she went on with the recital. Her reasons, her excuses,
her explanations for this master-stroke in the way of compensation
for all that she had endured at the hands of the scornful Wrandalls,
all of whom were hateful to her without exception, stirred him
deeply. He began to understand the forces that compelled her to
resort to this Machiavellian plan for revenge on them. She admitted
everything: her readiness to blight Hetty's life for ever; her
utter callousness in laying down these ugly plans; her surpassing
vindictiveness; her reflections on the triumph she was to enjoy when
her aims were fully attained. She confessed to a genuine pity for
Hetty Castleton from the beginning, but it was outweighed by that
thing she could only describe as an obsession!...How she hated
the Wrandalls!...Then came the real awakening: when the truth came
to her as a revelation from God. Hetty had not been to blame. The
girl was innocent of the one sin that called for vengeance so far
as she was concerned. The slaying of Challis Wrandall was justified!
All these months she had been harbouring a woman she believed
to have been his mistress as well as his murderess. It was not so
much the murderess that she would have foisted upon the Wrandalls
as a daughter, but the mistress!...She loved the girl, she had
loved her from that first night. Back of it all, therefore, lay the
stern, unsuspected truth: from the very beginning she instinctively
had known this girl to be innocent of guile....Her house of cards
fell down. There was nothing left of the plans on which it had
been constructed. It had all been swept away, even as she strove
to protect it against destruction, and the ground was strewn with
the ashes of fires burnt out....She was shocked to find that she
had even built upon the evil spot! Almost word for word she repeated
Hetty's own story of her meeting with Challis Wrandall, and how she
went, step by step and blindly, to the last scene in the tragedy,
when his vileness, his true nature was revealed to her. The girl
had told her everything. She had thought herself to be in love
with Wrandall. She was carried away by his protestations. She was
infatuated. (Sara smiled to herself as she spoke of this. She knew
Challis Wrandall's charm!) The girl believed in him implicitly.
When he took her to Burton's Inn it was to make her his wife, as
she supposed. He had arranged everything. Then came the truth. She
defended herself....

"I came upon her in the road on that wild night, Brandon, at the
place I pointed out. Can you picture her as I have described her?
Can you picture her despair, her hopelessness, her misery? I have
told you everything, from beginning to end. You know how she came
to me, how I prepared her for the sacrifice, how she left me. I
have not written to her. I cannot. She must hate me with all her
soul, just as I have hated the Wrandalls, but with greater reason,
I confess. She would have given herself up to the law long ago, if
it had not been for exposing me to the world as her defender, her
protector. She knew she was not morally guilty of the crime of
murder. In the beginning she was afraid. She did not know our land,
our laws. In time she came to understand that she was in no real
peril, but then it was too late. A confession would have placed
me in an impossible position. You see, she thought of me all this
time. She loved me as no woman ever loved another. Was not I the
wife of the man she had killed, and was not I the noblest of all
women in her eyes? God! And to think of what I had planned for
her!"

This was the end of the story.

The words died away in a sort of whimpering wail, falling in with
the wind to be lost to his straining ears. Her head drooped, her
arms hung limply at her side.

For a long time he sat there in silence, looking out over the
darkening water, unwilling, unable indeed, to speak. His heart was
full of compassion for her, mingling strangely with what was left
of scorn and horror. What could he say to her?

At last she turned to him. "Now you know all that I can tell you of
Hetty Castleton,--of Hetty Glynn. You could not have forced this
from me, Brandon. She WOULD not tell you. It was left for me to do
in my own good time. Well, I have spoken. What have you to say?"

"I can only say, Sara, that I thank God for EVERYTHING," he said
slowly.

"For everything?"

"I thank God for you, for her and for everything. I thank God that
she found him out in time, that she killed him, that you shielded
her, that you failed to carry out your devilish scheme, and that
your heart is very sore to-day."

"You do not despise me?"

"No. I am sorry for you."

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't want you to feel sorry for me."

"You don't understand. I am sorry for you because you have found
yourself out and must be despising yourself."

"You have guessed the truth. I despise myself. But what could be
expected of me?" she asked ironically. "As the Wrandalls would say,
'blood will tell.'"

"Nonsense! Don't talk like that! It is quite unworthy of you. In
spite of everything, Sara, you are wonderful. The very thing you
tried to do, the way you went about it, the way you surrender, makes
for greatness in you. If you had gone on with it and succeeded,
that fact alone would have put you in the class with the great,
strong, virile women of history. It--"

"With the Medicis, the Borgias and--" she began bitterly.

"Yes, with them. But they were great women, just the same. You
are greater, for you have more than they possessed: a conscience.
I wish I could tell you just what I feel. I haven't the words. I--"

"I only want you to tell me the truth. Do you despise me?"

"Again I say that I do not. I can only say that I regard you
with--yes, with AWE."

"As one might think of a deadly serpent."

"Hardly that," he said, smiling for the first time. He crossed
over and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Don't think too meanly
of yourself. I understand it all. You lived for months without a
heart, that's all."

"You put it very gently."

"I think I'm right. Now, you've got it back, and it's hungry for
the sweet, good things of life. You want to be happy. You want to
love again and to be loved. You don't want to be pitied. I understand.
It's the return of a heart that went away long months ago and left
an empty place that you filled with gall. The bitterness is gone.
There is something sweet in its place. Am I not right?"

She hesitated. "If you mean that I want to be loved by my enemies,
Brandon, you are wrong," she said clearly. "I have not been chastened
in that particular."

"You mean the Wrandalls?"

"It is not in my nature to love my enemies. We stand on the same
footing as before, and always shall. They understand me, I understand
them. I am glad that my project failed, not for their sake, but
for my own."

He was silent. This woman was beyond him. He could not understand
a nature like this.

"You say nothing. Well, I can't ask you to understand. We will not
discuss my enemies, but my friends. What do you intend to do in
respect to Hetty?"

"I am going to make her my wife," he said levelly.

She turned away. It was now quite dark. He could not see the
expression on her face.

"What you have heard does not weaken your love for her?"

"No. It strengthens it."

"You know what she has done. She has taken a life with her own
hands. Can you take her to your bosom, can you make her the mother
of your own children? Remember, there is blood on her hands."

"Ah, but her heart is clean!"

"True," she said moodily, "her heart is clean."

"No cleaner than yours is now, Sara."

She uttered a short, mocking laugh. "It isn't necessary to say a
thing like that to me."

"I beg your pardon."

Her manner changed abruptly. She turned to him, intense and serious.

"She is so far away, Brandon. On the other side of the world, and
she is full of loathing for me. How am I to regain what I have lost?
How am I to make her understand? She went away with that last ugly
thought of me, with the thought of me as I appeared to her on that
last, enlightening day. All these months it has been growing more
horrible to her. It has been beside her all the time. All these
months she has known that I pretended to love her as--"

"I don't believe you know Hetty as well as you think you do," he
broke in. "You forget that she loved you with all her soul. You
can't kill love so easily as all that. It will be all right, Sara.
You must write and ask her to come back. It--"

"Ah, but you don't know!" Then she related the story of the liberated
canary bird. "Hetty understands. The cage door is open. She may
return when she chooses, but--don't you see?--she must come of her
own free will."

"You will not ask her to come?"

"No. It is the test. She will know that I have told you everything.
You will go to her. Then she may understand. If she forgives she will
come back. There is nothing else to say, nothing else to consider."

"I shall go to her at once," he said resolutely.

She gave him a quick, searching glance.

"She may refuse to marry you, even now, Brandon."

"She CAN'T!" he cried. An instant later his face fell. "By Jove,
I--I suppose the law will have to be considered now. She will at
least have to go through the form of a trial."

She whirled on him angrily. "The law? What has the law to do with
it? Don't be a fool!"

"She ought to be legally exonerated," he said.

Her fingers gripped his arm fiercely. "I want you to understand one
thing, Brandon. The story I have told you was for your ears alone.
The secret lives with us and dies with us."

He looked his relief. "Right! It must go no farther. It is not a
matter for the law to decide. You may trust me."

"I am cold," she said. He heard her teeth chatter distinctly as
she pulled the thick mantle closer about her throat and shoulders.
"It is very raw and wet down here. Come!"

As she started off along the long, narrow pier, he sprang after
her, grasping her arm. She leaned rather heavily against him for
a few steps and then drew herself up. Her teeth still chattered,
her arm trembled in his clasp.

"By Jove, Sara, this is bad," he cried, in distress. "You're chilled
to the marrow."

"Nerves," she retorted, and he somehow felt that her lips were set
and drawn.

"You must get to bed right away. Hot bath, mustard, and all that.
I'll not stop for dinner. Thanks just the same. I will be over in
the morning."

"When will you sail?" she asked, after a moment.

"I can't go for ten days, at least. My mother goes into the hospital
next week for an operation, as I've told you. I can't leave until
after that's over. Nothing serious, but--well, I can't go away.
I shall write to Hetty to-night, and cable her to-morrow. By the
way, I--I don't know just where to find her. You see, we were not
to write to each other. It was in the bargain. I suppose you don't
know how I can--"

"Yes, I can tell you precisely where she is. She is in Venice, but
leaves there to-morrow for Rome, by the Express."

"Then you have been hearing from her?" he cried sharply.

"Not directly. But I will say this much: there has not been a day
since she landed in England that I have not received news of her.
I have not been out of touch with her, Brandon, not even for an
hour."

"Good heaven, Sara! You don't mean to say you've had her shadowed
by--by detectives," he exclaimed, aghast.

"Her maid is a very faithful servant," was her ambiguous rejoinder.

CHAPTER XXI

DISTURBING NEWS

He walked home swiftly through the early night, his brain seething
with tumultuous thoughts. The revelations of the day were staggering;
the whole universe seemed to have turned topsy-turvy since that
devastating hour at Burton's Inn. Somehow he was not able to confine
his thoughts to Hetty Castleton alone. She seemed to sink into the
background, despite the absolution he had been so ready, so eager
to grant her on hearing the story from Sara's lips. Not that his
resolve to search her out and claim her in spite of everything was
likely to weaken, but that the absorbing figure of Sara Wrandall
stood out most clearly in his reflections.

What an amazing creature she was! He could not drive her out of his
thoughts, even when he tried to concentrate them on the one person
who was dearest to him of all in all the world, his warm-hearted,
adorable Hetty. Strange contrasts suggested themselves to him as he
strode along, head bent and shoulders hunched. He could not help
contrasting the two women. He loved Hetty; he would always love her,
of that he was positive. She was Sara's superior in every respect,
infinitely so, he argued. And yet there was something in Sara that
could crowd this adored one, this perfect one out of his thoughts
for the time being. He found it difficult to concentrate his thoughts
on Hetty Castleton.

How white and ill Sara had looked when she said good-night to him
at the door! The memory of her dark, mysterious eyes haunted him;
he could see them in the night about him. They had been full of
pain; there were torrents of tears behind them. They had glistened
as if burnished by the fires of fever.

Even as he wrote his long, triumphant letter to Hetty Castleton,
the picture of Sara Wrandall encroached upon his mental vision. He
could not drive it out. He thought of her as she had appeared to
him early in the spring; through all the varying stages of their
growing intimacy; through the interesting days when he vainly tried
to translate her matchless beauty by means of wretched pigments;
up to this present hour in which she was revealed, and yet not
revealed, to him. Her vivid face was always before him, between
his eyes and the thin white paper on which he scribbled so eagerly.
Her feverish eyes were looking into his; she was reading what he
wrote before it appeared on the surface of the sheet!

His letter to Hetty was a triumph of skill and diplomacy, achieved
after many attempts. He found it hard not to say too much, and
quite as difficult not to say too little. He spent hours over this
all-important missive. At last it was finished. He read and re-read
it, searching for the slightest flaw: a fatal word or suggestion that
might create in her mind the slightest doubt as to his sincerity.
She was sure to read this letter a great many times, and always
with the view to finding something between the lines: such as pity,
resignation, an enforced conception of loyalty, or even faith! He
meant that she should find nothing there but love. It was full of
tenderness, full of hope, full of promise. He was coming to her
with a steadfast, enduring love in his heart, he wanted her now
more than ever before.

There was no mention of Challis Wrandall, and but once was Sara's
name used. There was nothing in the letter that could have betrayed
their joint secret to the most acute outsider, and yet she would
understand that he had wrung everything from Sara's lips. Her secret
was his.

He decided that it would not be safe to anticipate the letter by a
cablegram. It was not likely that any message he could send would
have the desired effect. Instead of reassuring her, in all probability
it would create fresh alarm.

Sleep did not come to him until after three o'clock. At two he got
up and deliberately added a postscript to the letter he had written.
It was in the nature of a poignant plea for Sara Wrandall. Even as
he penned the lines, he shuddered at the thought of what she had
planned to do to Hetty Castleton. Staring hard at the black window
before him, the pen still in his hand, he allowed his thoughts
to dwell so intimately on the subject of his well-meant postcript
that her ashen face with its burning eyes seemed to take shape in
the night beyond. It was a long time before he could get rid of
the illusion. Afterwards he tried to conjure up Hetty's face and
to drive out the likeness of the other woman, and found that he
could not recall a single feature in the face of the girl he loved!

When he reached Southlook in the morning, he found that nearly all
of the doors and windows were boarded up. Wagons were standing in
the stable-yard, laden with trunks and crates. Servants without
livery were scurrying about the halls. There was an air of finality
about their movements. The place was being desolated.

"Yes, sir," said Watson, in reply to his question, "we ARE in a
rush. Mrs. Wrandall expects to close the 'ouse this evening, sir.
We all go up this afternoon. I suppose you. know, sir, we 'ave
taken a new apartment in town."

"No!" exclaimed Booth.

"Yes, sir, we 'ave, sir. They've been decorating it for the pawst
two weeks. Seems like she didn't care for the old one we 'ad. As
a matter of fact, I didn't care much for it, either. She's taken
one of them hexpensive ones looking out over the Park, sir. You
know we used to look out over Madison Avenue, sir, and God knows it
wasn't hinspirin'. Yes, sir, we go up this afternoon. Mrs. Wrandall
will be down in a second, thank you, sir."

Booth actually was startled by her appearance when she entered the
room a few minutes later. She looked positively ill.

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