Part 7 (1/2)
”Some one to see you, Miss Ellie,” he announced, and disappeared abruptly before I could ask who.
I went in, fearing it would prove to be some girl whom I did not know well, who had called out of mere curiosity. I was surprised to find, awaiting me in the hall, a person whom I did not know at all--whom I had never even seen before. It was a half-grown shuffling Mexican, with a blank and stupid face, looking as if he might be some one's stable-boy. But as soon as he saw me, he produced from some pocket and presented to me with remarkable swiftness and dexterity, a small immaculate white note. It was addressed to me, and the writing was not Estrella Mendez's small copper-plate script, but a larger, bolder, more das.h.i.+ng hand, scarcely like a woman's.
”To the Senorita Elenora:” it began,--and I wondered whether it could be from one of mother's old friends, for she had had several among the great Spanish families of the north. ”I am asking if you will honor me with your presence for a short hour this morning,” the letter ran. ”It is impossible that I come to you, for I am ill. But there is a very great reason why I must see you. It is a matter touching justice. You will not fail.” It was signed ”Carlotta Valencia.”
I read the signature twice over, and then the letter. No, my eyes were not playing tricks. But still, could it be some practical joke? I put the envelope to my face. Ah, it was she, it was the perfume of that flower! She had really written; she had summoned me.
The very fact that she had communicated with me, this being who was not as I was, whose life seemed as irrevocably separated from mine, as if she inhabited another planet, was amazing. And as for those expressions in her letter, ”a very great matter,” ”touching justice,” I dared not think what I wanted to believe.
I carried the note out into the garden. ”I don't know how to answer this,” I said, handing it to Mr. Dingley.
He read it, and whistled. ”Well!” he said; and then, ”there's one thing sure; you will not go alone!”
”Why, you don't mean to say I'm to go!” I cried.
He looked inquiringly. ”Why not?”
”Oh, but father doesn't even like me to speak her name.”
Mr. Dingley coughed. ”Quite right, quite right! That is, of course, under ordinary circ.u.mstances. But in affairs of this sort, where state's evidence is concerned, we are obliged to lay personal feeling aside. Now from this letter,” and Mr. Dingley tapped the little sheet which he held before him, ”I gather that the Senora Valencia may have some information concerning this case of ours now going forward. Of course if it's incriminating, the state must have it. On the other hand, if it should tend to exonerate the defendant, of course we shall be very glad.”
I murmured, ”Oh, yes!” The hope of a possible means of clearing Johnny Montgomery went flus.h.i.+ng through me.
If the Spanish Woman had anything to say I knew it would be in his favor. Still, there was something strange about it. ”But if she has this information,” I asked, ”why doesn't she tell it in the court?”
”My dear Miss Ellie, why indeed? We never know why women do things.
But it has been my experience in legal cases, and especially in criminal ones, that women will often give evidence in some such high-fantastic way as this, which could never be got out of them through the proper channel,--that is by means of cross-examination, in court. Now she's evidently taken a fancy to tell you something, and I feel it is our duty to see just how much is in it.”
”Oh, yes,” I said again, but this time more faintly, for when I thought of whom I was to face, some cowardly thing in me wavered, ”But are you sure it's--safe?”
Mr. Dingley laughed. ”My dear Miss Ellie, we don't live in the dark ages!”
He made me feel ashamed of my hesitations. I went back into the hall, told the Mexican in Spanish, yes, that I would come quickly. He seemed satisfied with this verbal message, and I watched him shuffle down the steps, in spite of his loose-hung gait, with admirable quickness. Then I told Lee that I was going out; dinner at half-past two, all as simply and usually as if I had been intending merely to stroll over to the beach. But there the usualness of things ended.
Mr. Dingley did not at all take the way I expected, the most direct and open way by the broad easy streets, where at this hour of Sunday the church-goers were promenading; but we went roundabout, through unexpected short cuts, and then across the empty stretches of the sand-lots toward where the long gray facade of the convent stretched; and close beside it the high fence with the latticed top which surrounded the Spanish Woman's house. Above the fence the roof and the small windows beneath the eaves were just visible. As we drew near my heart beat quickly, and still I felt that, as when I was a child, I was only going to pa.s.s it. But we turned, and I realized I was actually stopping at the gate.
This was so high it was merely a door cut in the fence, allowing no glimpse of what was within, and instead of immediately opening it, Mr.
Dingley rapped upon it with the iron knocker, whose lion head had been wont to snarl at me years ago. I heard a sharp clicking as of something being unlocked, and the gate opened. But after we were inside I got an uncanny shock, for excepting ourselves there was not a soul to be seen.
”Clever contrivance that,” said Mr. Dingley, glancing up. And then I noticed a wire which ran from the fastening of the gate to its top, and from there in a straight line to the house. But even this discovery didn't remove my uneasy sense of being in an enchantment.
Around us were weedy gra.s.s plots, bushes smothering in vines, broken flower urns, a dry and weather-stained fountain; and to and fro across the neglect of it all moved the shadows of the restless eucalyptus trees. A brick path, very mossy and giving uncertain foothold, ran straight to the front of the house--a blank-looking facade, all the shutters closed over the windows, and a deeply hooded door.
Mr. Dingley gave the bell handle a vigorous pull, but not the faintest tinkle reechoed through the interior. We waited. There wasn't a sound of any one inside approaching through the hall. I was fully prepared to be admitted by the same unseen agency that had moved the gate. But when, quite suddenly, the door opened, I was aware of a figure, very dimly seen in the gloom of the hall. We were allowed to enter without a question, without a word; and as quickly the door closed upon us.
After the broad sunlight the hall seemed so dark, I could but sense high ceilings and hanging draperies above my head, and feel beneath my feet the soft depth of a carpet. All that my eyes could distinguish was the little white glimmer of Mr. Dingley's card as he handed it to the person who had opened the door.
We were led through several rooms; but either they were interior rooms without windows, or else the windows were closely m.u.f.fled, for they were so dark I could hardly find my way. But when at last our conductor drew back a curtain, a tempered light streamed upon us, and showed me that the cornices of the anteroom where we were standing were gilded, that the carpet which I was crus.h.i.+ng under my feet, was the color of wine, and every fold of the velvet curtain where it took the light like a ruby. The servant, holding it back, was a strange creature, with a tightly closed mouth, and eyes that looked as if he kept them open only a crack to see out of, but not on any account to let any one peep in. He waved at the room in front of us, and then, still silent as an apparition, returned, disappearing into the gloom through which we had come, carrying Mr. Dingley's card with him. I followed Mr. Dingley into the great apartment, which I thought must be the _sala_ of the house, and sat down in the midst of its magnificence.
It was in strange contrast to the neglect of the garden without; and to my eyes it was novel in character. There were dark portraits in old gold frames on the wall; curtains shutting out all light, but the faintest and most colored; mirrors multiplying the tapestries and marble statues, and seeming to extend the very walls of the room itself. I kept catching glimpses of figures standing in these delusive vistas, and then, with a start, realizing they were but myself.
Presently the servant returned. I saw multiple images of him advancing upon me from all sides as if to surround me. They flitted, disappeared, and the real presence bowed.