Part 7

He turned back, struck by a sudden idea. "Why don't you make a magazine story of it?" he added. "I believe you can write fiction. Here's your chance. Describe the confession of the murderess, the mental struggle of the reporter, her suppression of the news, and its after-effect on her career."

His suggestion hit me much harder than his problem. The latter was certainly strong enough for purposes of fiction.

"Why," I said, slowly, "thank you. I believe I will."

Before Mr. Morris had closed the door I was drawing a fresh supply of copy-paper toward me; before he had left the building I had written the introduction to my first fiction story; and before the roar of the presses came up to my ears from the basement, at a quarter to two in the morning, I had made on my last page the final cross of the press-writer and dropped the finished manuscript into a drawer of my desk. It had been written with surprising ease. Helen Brandow had entered my tale as naturally as she would enter a room; and against the bleak background of her cell I seemed to see her whole life pass before me like a series of moving-pictures which my pen raced after and described.

The next morning found me severely critical as I read my story. Still, I decided to send it to a famous novelist I had met a few months before, who had since then spent some of her leisure in good-naturedly urging me to "write." I believed she would tell me frankly what she thought of this first sprout in my literary garden, and that night, quite without compunction, I sent it to her. Two days later I received a letter which I carried around in my pocket until the precious bit of paper was almost in rags.

"Your story is a corker," wrote the distinguished author, whose epistolary style was rather free. "I experienced a real thrill when the woman confessed. You have made out a splendid case for her; also for your reporter. Given all your premises, things _had_ to happen as they did. Offer the story to Mrs. Langster, editor of _The Woman's Friend_. Few editors have sense, but I think she'll know enough to take it. I inclose a note to her."

If Mrs. Appleton had experienced a thrill over my heroine's confession we were more than quits, for I experienced a dozen thrills over her letter, and long afterward, when she came back from a visit to England with new honors thick upon her, I amused her by describing them. Within twenty-four hours after receiving her inspiring communication I had wound my way up a circular staircase that made me feel like an animated corkscrew, and was humbly awaiting Mrs. Langster's pleasure in the room next to her dingy private office. She had read Mrs. Appleton's note at once, and had sent an office boy to say that she would receive me in a few minutes. I gladly waited thirty, for this home of a big and successful magazine was a new world to me--and, though it lacked the academic calm I had associated with the haunts of literature in the making, everything in it was interesting, from the ink-spattered desks and their aloof and busy workers to the recurrent roar of the elevated trains that pounded past the windows.

Mrs. Langster proved to be an old lady, with a smile of extraordinary sweetness. Looking at her white hair, and meeting the misty glance of her near-sighted blue eyes, I felt a depressing doubt of Mrs. Appleton's wisdom in sending me to her with a work of fiction which turned on murder. One instinctively associated Mrs. Langster with organ recitals, evening service, and afternoon teas in dimly lighted rooms. But there was an admirable brain under her silver hair, and I had swift proof of the keenness of her literary discrimination; for within a week she accepted my story and sent me a check for an amount equal to the salary I received for a month of work. Her letter, and that of Mrs. Appleton, went to Sister Irmingarde--was it only a year ago that I had parted from her and the convent? Then I framed them side by side and hung them in a place of honor on my study wall, as a solace in dark hours and an inspiration in brighter ones. They represented a literary ladder, on the first rung of which I was sure I had found firm footing, though the upper rungs were lost in clouds.

Mrs. Langster allowed my story to mellow for almost a year before she published it; and in the long interval Helen Brandow was acquitted, and disappeared from the world that had known her.

I myself had almost forgotten her, and I had even ceased to look for my story in the columns of _The Woman's Friend_, when one morning I found on my desk a note from Mr. Hurd. It was brief and cryptic, for Mr. Hurd's notes were as time-saving as his speech. It read:

Pls. rept. immed. N. H.

Without waiting to remove my hat I entered Mr. Hurd's office. He was sitting bunched up over his desk, his eyebrows looking like an intricate pattern of cross-stitching. Instead of his usual assortment of newspaper clippings, he held in his hand an open magazine, which, as I entered, he thrust toward me.

"Here!" he jerked. "What's this mean?"

I recognized with mild surprise the familiar cover of _The Woman's Friend_. A second glance showed me that the page Mr. Hurd was indicating with staccato movements of a nervous forefinger bore my name. My heart leaped.

"Why," I exclaimed, delightedly, "it's my story!"

Mr. Hurd's hand held the magazine against the instinctive pull I gave it. His manner was unusually quiet. Unusual, too, was the sudden straight look of his tired eyes.

"Sit down," he said, curtly. "I want to ask you something."

I sat down, my eyes on the magazine. As Mr. Hurd held it, I could see the top of one illustration. It looked interesting.

"See here," Mr. Hurd jerked out. "I'm not going to beat around the bush. Did you throw us down on this story?"

I stared at him. For an instant I did not get his meaning. Then it came to me that possibly I should have asked his permission to publish any work outside of the _Searchlight_ columns.

"But," I stammered, "you don't print fiction."

Mr. Hurd tapped the open page with his finger. The unusual quiet of his manner began to impress me. "_Is_ it fiction?" he asked. "That's what I want to know."

Godfrey Morris rose from his desk and came toward us. Until that instant I had only vaguely realized that he was in the room.

"Hurd," he said, quickly, "you're in the wrong pew. Miss Iverson doesn't even know what you're talking about." He turned to me. "He's afraid," he explained, "that Mrs. Brandow confessed to you in Fairview, and that you threw us down by suppressing the story."

For an instant I was dazed. Then I laughed. "Mr. Hurd," I said, "I give you my word that Mrs. Brandow never confessed anything to me."

Mr. Hurd's knitted brows uncreased. "That's straight, is it?" he demanded.

"That's straight," I repeated.

Hurd dropped the magazine on the floor and turned to his papers. "'L right," he muttered, "don't let 't happen 'gain."

Mr. Morris and I exchanged an understanding smile as I picked up the magazine and left the room.

In the outer room I met Gibson. His grin of greeting was wide and friendly, his voice low and interested.

"Read your story last night," he whispered. "Say, tell me--_did_ she, really?"

I filled the next five minutes explaining to Gibson. He looked relieved. "I didn't think there was anything in it," he said. "That woman's no murderess. But, say, you made the story read like the real thing!"

Within the next few days everybody on the _Searchlight_ staff seemed to have read _The Woman's Friend_, and to be taking part in the discussion my story aroused. Those of my associates who believed in the innocence of Mrs. Brandow accepted the tale for what it was--a work of fiction. Those without prejudice were inclined to think there was "something in it," and at least half a dozen who believed her guilty also firmly believed that I had allowed an acute and untimely spasm of womanly sympathy to deprive the _Searchlight_ of "the best and biggest beat in years." For a few days I remained pleasantly unconscious of being a storm-center, but one morning a second summons from Mr. Hurd opened my eyes to the situation.

"See here!" began that gentleman, rudely. "What does all this talk mean, anyway? They're saying now that you and Morris suppressed the Brandow confession between you. Jim, the elevator-boy, says he heard you agree to do it."

Godfrey Morris leaped to his feet and came toward us. "Good Lord, Hurd," he cried, fiercely, "I believe you're crazy! Why don't you come to me with this rot, if you're going to notice it, and not bother Miss Iverson? We joked about a confession, and I suppose Jim heard us. The joke was what suggested the magazine story."

"Well, _that's_ no joke." Hurd spoke grudgingly, as if unwillingly impressed. "Suppose the woman had confessed," he asked me, suddenly--"would you have given us the story?"

I shook my head. "Certainly not," I admitted. "You forget that I had agreed not to print a word she said."

Hurd's expression of uncertainty was so funny that I laughed. "But she didn't," I added, comfortingly. "Do you think I'd lie to you?"

"You might." Hurd was in a pessimistic mood. "To save her, or--" A rare phenomenon occurred; he smiled--all his boyish dimples suddenly revealed--"to save Morris from losing his job," he finished, coolly.

I felt my face grow hot. Morris rushed to the rescue. "The only thing I regret in this confounded mess," he muttered, ignoring Hurd's words, "is the effect on Mrs. Brandow. _The Woman's Friend_ has half a million readers. They'll all think she's guilty."

"Good job," said Hurd. "She _is_ guilty!"

"Rot! She's absolutely innocent," replied Morris. "Why, even the fool jury acquitted her on the first ballot!"

I left them arguing and slipped away, sick at heart. In the sudden moment of illumination following Morris's words it had come to me that the one person to be considered in the whole episode was the person of whom I had not thought at all! I had done Helen Brandow a great wrong. Her case had been almost forgotten; somewhere she was trying to build up a new life. I had knocked out the new foundations.

It was a disturbing reflection, and the events of the next few days deepened my depression. Several reviewers commented on the similarity of my story to the Brandow case. People began to ask where Mrs. Brandow was, began again to argue the question of her innocence or her guilt. Efforts were made to find her hiding-place. The thought of the injury I had done the unhappy woman became an obsession. There seemed only one way to exorcise it, and that was to see or write to my "victim," as Hurd jocosely called her, make my confession, and have her absolve me, if she would, of any intent of injury.

On the wings of this inspiration I sought Mr. Davies, and, putting the situation before him, asked for his client's address.

"Of course I can't give you her address," he explained, mildly. "But I'll write to her and tell her you want it. Yes, yes, with pleasure. I know how you feel." He smiled reflectively. "She's a wonderful woman," he added. "Most remarkable woman I ever met--strongest soul." He sighed, then smiled again. "I'll write," he repeated; and with this I had to be content. I had done all that I could do. But my nerves began to feel the effect of the strain upon them, and it was a relief when I reached my home in Madison Square late one evening and found Mrs. Brandow waiting for me.

She was sitting in a little reception-room off the main hall of the building, and as I passed the door on my way to the elevator she rose and came toward me. She wore a thick veil, but something in me recognized her even before I caught the flash of her eyes through it, and noticed the characteristically erect poise of the head which every reporter who saw her had described.

"Mr. Davies said you wanted to talk to me," she began, without greeting me. "Here I am. Have I come at the wrong time?"

I slipped my hand through her arm. "No," was all I could say. "It was very good of you to come at all. I did not expect that." In silence we entered the elevator and ascended to my floor. As I opened the door with my latch-key and waited for her to go in I spoke again. "I can't tell you how much I've been thinking of you," I said.

She made no reply. We passed through the hall into my study, and while I turned on the electric lights she dropped into a big arm-chair beside a window overlooking the Square, threw back her veil, and slipped off the heavy furs she wore. As the lights flashed up we exchanged a swift look. Little more than a year had passed since our former meeting, but she seemed many years older and much less beautiful. There were new lines about her eyes and mouth, and the black hair over her temples was growing gray. I started to draw down the window-shades, for it was snowing hard, and the empty Square below, with a few tramps shivering on its benches, afforded but a dreary vista. She checked me.

"Leave them as they are," she directed, imperiously, adding as an afterthought: "Please. I like to be able to look out."

I obeyed, realizing now, as I had not done before, what those months of confinement must have meant to her. When I had removed my hat and coat, and lit the logs that lay ready in my big fireplace, I took a chair near her.

"First of all," I began, "I want to thank you for coming. And then--I want to beg your forgiveness."

For a moment she studied me in silence. "That's rather odd of you," she murmured, reflectively. "You know I'm fair game! Why shouldn't you run with the pack?"

My eyes, even my head, went down before that. For a moment I could not reply. Then it seemed to me that the most important thing in the world was to make her understand.

"Of course," I admitted, "I deserve anything you say. I did a horrible thing when I printed that story. I should never have offered it to an editor. My defense is simply that I didn't realize what I was doing. That's what I want to make clear to you. That's why I asked to see you."

"I see," she said, slowly. "It's not the story you're apologizing for. It's the effect."

"Yes," I explained, eagerly, "it's the effect. I hadn't been out of school more than a year when I came to you in Fairview," I hurried on. "I was very young, and appallingly ignorant. It never occurred to me that any one would connect a fiction story with--with your case."

She looked at me, and with all the courage I could summon I gazed straight back into her strange, deep eyes. For a long instant the look held, and during it something came to me, something new and poignant, something that filled me with an indescribable pity for the loneliness I now understood, and for the courage of the nature that bore it so superbly. She would ask nothing of the world, this woman. Nor would she defend herself. People could think what they chose. But she would suffer.

I leaned toward her. "Mrs. Brandow," I said, "I wish I could make you understand how I feel about this. I believe it has made me ten years older."

She smiled. "That would be a pity," she said, "when you're so deliciously young."

"Is there anything I can do?" I persisted.

She raised her eyebrows. "I'm afraid not," she murmured, "unless it is to cease doing anything. You see, your activities where I am concerned are so hectic."

I felt my face burn. "You're very hard on me, but I deserve it. I didn't realize," I repeated, "that the story would suggest you to the public."

"Even though you described me?" she interjected, the odd, sardonic gleam deepening in her black eyes.

"But I didn't describe you as you are," I protested, eagerly. "I made you a blonde! Don't you remember? And I made a Western city the scene of the trial, and changed some of the conditions of the--" I faltered--"of the crime."

"As if that mattered," she said, coolly. "You described _me_--to the shape of my finger-nails, the buttons on my shoes." Suddenly she laughed. "Those dreadful buttons! I see them still in my dreams. It seems to me that I was always sewing them on. The only parts of me I allowed to move in the court-room were my feet. No one could see them, under my skirt. I used to loosen a button almost every day. Then of course I had to sew them on. I had a sick fear of looking messy and untidy--of degenerating physically."

She faced the wide windows and the snow-filled sky. In my own chair, facing the fire, I also directly faced her.

"I'm going to Europe," she announced at last. "I'm sailing to-morrow morning--to be gone 'for good,' as the children say. That's why I came to-night." For a moment she sat in silence, wholly, restfully at her ease. Dimly I began to realize that she was enjoying the intimacy of the moment, the sense of human companionship, and again it came to me how tragically lonely she must be. She had no near friends, and in the minds of all others there must always be the hideous interrogation-point that stood between her and life. At best she had "the benefit of the doubt." And I had helped to destroy even the little that was left to her. I could have fallen at her feet.

"I'm going away," she added, "to see if there is any place for me in the life abroad. If there is I want to find it. If I were the sort of woman who went in for good works, my problem would be easier; but you see I'm not."

I smiled. I could not see her as a worker in organized charity, parceling out benefits tied with red tape. It was no effort, however, to picture her doing many human and beautiful kindnesses in her own way.

We talked of Europe. I had never been there. She spoke of northern Africa, of rides over Morocco hills, of a caravan journey from Tangier to Fez, of Algerian nights, of camping in the desert, of palms and ripe figs and of tropical gardens. It was fascinating talk in the purple lights of my driftwood fire, with a snow-storm beating at my windows. Suddenly she checked herself.

"I think, after all," she said, lightly, "you're rather good for me. You've done me good to-night. You did me good the day you visited me at Fairview. You were so young, so much in earnest, so much in love with life, and you saw so much with your big, solemn eyes. You gave me something new to think about, and I needed it. So--don't regret anything."

I felt the tears spring to my eyes.

She drew on her gloves and buttoned them slowly, still smiling at me.

"I might never even have seen your story," she went on, quietly, "if my maid had not brought it to me. I don't read _The Woman's Friend_." There was a hint of the old superciliousness in her tone and about her upper lip as she spoke. "On the whole, I don't think it did me any harm. The opinion of strangers is the least important thing in my little arctic circle. So, forget me. Good night--and good-by."

I kept her hand in mine for a moment. "Good-by," I said. "Peace be with you."

She drew her veil down over her face, and moved to the door. I followed and opened it for her. On the threshold she stopped and hesitated, looking straight at me; and in that instant I knew as surely as I ever knew anything in my life that now at last her guard was down--that from the fastness of her soul something horrible had escaped and was leaping toward me. She cast a quick glance up and down the outer hall. It was dim and empty. I hardly dared to breathe.

"There is one thing more," she said, and her words rushed out with an odd effect of breathlessness under the continued calm of her manner. "The only really human emotion I've felt in a long time is--an upheaval of curiosity."

I looked at her, and waited.

She hesitated an instant longer, then, standing very close to me, gripped my shoulders hard, her eyes deep in mine, her voice so low I hardly caught her meaning.

"Oh, wise young judge!" she whispered. "Tell me, before we part--_how did you know_?"

VI

THE LAST OF THE MORANS

On my right rose a jagged wall of rock, hundreds of feet high and bare of vegetation save for a few dwarfed and wind-swept pines. On my left gaped the wide mouth of what seemed to be a bottomless ravine. Between the two was a ledge not more than six feet wide, along which "Jef'son Davis," my mountain horse, was slowly and thoughtfully making his difficult way. Occasionally from the pit's depths a hawk or turkey-buzzard rose, startling me with the flapping of its strong wings, and several times the feet of Jef'son Davis dislodged a bit of rock which rattled across the ledge, slipped over the side, and started on a downward journey whose distance I dared not estimate.

For more than an hour I had not met a human being. I had not seen a mountain cabin or even a nodding plume of smoke. I had not heard the bark of a dog, the tinkle of a cow-bell, nor any other reassuring and homely testimony that I was in a world of men. Yet I knew that somewhere around me must be lurking figures and watchful eyes, for I was in the stronghold of the Morans and the Tyrrells, and the Morans and Tyrrells were on the war-path, and therefore incessantly on guard.

This journey through the Virginia mountains to "write up family feuds" was the result of an inspiration recently experienced by Colonel Cartwell, our editor-in-chief. He was sure I could uncover "good dramatic stuff."

"They're potting at each other every minute down there," he explained to me when he sent me off on the assignment. "Give their time to it. Morans and Tyrrells are the worst. Tyrrell has killed six Morans. Get his story before the Morans get him. See? And find out what it's all about, anyway."

According to the map I had made that morning under the direction of the postmaster of Jayne's Crossroads, I knew I must be even now within a mile of the cabin of the Morans.

"'Tain't healthy travelin' fo' men," that gentleman had volunteered languidly, "but I reckon a lady's safe 'nuff, 'specially ef yo' leave the jou'ney to the hawse. Jef'son Davis, he knows ev'ry inch of that thar trail. All yo' got t' do is t' give Jef'son his haid."

Jef'son Davis was having his head, and he had thus far been true to his trust. At a certain point on the trail I was to look for huge boulders in a strange position, with a big and lonely cedar standing guard near them. At the right of this cedar was an almost hidden trail, which, followed for twenty minutes, would lead me to the Moran cabin. I was not to be alarmed if a bullet whispered its sinister message in my ear. To kill women was no part of the Moran traditions, and a fatality to me would be a regrettable incident, due wholly, if it occurred at all, to the impulsive nature of Samuel Tyrrell, who had formed the careless habit of firing at moving objects without pausing to discover what they were. It was because of this eccentricity, I gathered, that the sympathy of the mountain people lay largely with Moran--who, moreover, though both men were the last of their respective lines, was a boy of twenty-two, while Tyrrell was well on in middle life.

I rode slowly along the trail, which, clear in the high lights of the noonday sun, was now widening and turning to the right. The ravine appeared to be growing more shallow. Flashes of red haw and scarlet dogwood began to leap out at me from the edges. Presently, beyond the turn, I discovered the boulders, silhouetted sharply against the soft October sky. Near them was the lonely cedar, and after twice passing it I found the side-trail, and rode peacefully down its dim corridor.