That broke the tension. Like a piece of machinery4 momentarily out of gear, the group adjusted itself and snapped back into action. All but me—I stood as I had been standing5 when Mrs. Whitehall spoke6 those words. My outward vision saw their moving figures, their backs as they crowded round her, a hand that held a glass to her lips, her face bent7 toward the glass, ashen8 and haggard. I saw but realized nothing. For a moment I was on another plane of existence, seemed to be shot up into it. I don't tell it right—a fellow who doesn't know how to write can't explain a feeling like that. You've got to fill it in out of your imagination. A man who's been in hell gets suddenly out—that's the best way I can describe it.
I didn't get back to my moorings, come down from the clouds to the solid ground, till the scene by the table was over. Mrs. Whitehall was sitting up, a little color in her cheeks, mistress of herself again. They'd evidently said something to lull9 her fears about Carol for the distraction10 of her mood was gone. It wasn't till I saw the narrowed interest of George's eyes, the hungry expectation of O'Mally's watching face, that I remembered they were still on the scent11 of a murder in which Barker's daughter was as much involved as Barker's fiancée. That brought me back to the moment and its meaning like an electric shock.
I made a stride forward, to get closer, to hear them, for they were at the table again, waiting on the words of Mrs. Whitehall. The first sentence that struck my ear aptly matched her pitiful appearance:
"Gentlemen, I'm broken. I've been through too much."
The chief answered very gently:
"Having said what you have, would it not be wisdom to tell us everything? We pledge ourselves to secrecy12."
She nodded, a gesture of weary acquiescence13.
"Oh, yes. I don't mind telling—it was to be told; but," she dropped her eyes to her hands clasped in her lap. In that position her likeness14 to Carol, as she had sat there a few weeks before, was singularly striking. "I'll have to go back a good many years, before my child was born, before the world had heard of Johnston Barker."
"Wherever you want, Mrs. Whitehall," the chief murmured. "We're entirely15 at your service."
She drew a deep breath and without raising her eyes said:
"I was married to Johnston Barker twenty-eight years ago in Idaho. He was a miner then and I was a school teacher, nineteen years old, an orphan16 with no near relations. I was not strong and had gone to the Far West for my health. Under the unaccustomed work I broke down, developing a weakness of the lungs, and casual friends, the parents of a pupil, took me with them to a distant mining camp for the drier air. There I met Johnston and we became engaged.
"In those days in such remote places there were no churches or clergymen and contract marriages were recognized. I did not believe in them, would not at first consent to such a ceremony, but a great strike taking place in a distant camp, he prevailed upon me to marry him by contract, the friends with whom I was living acting17 as witnesses.
"The place to which he took me was wild and inaccessible18, connecting by trails with other camps and by a long stage journey with a distant railway station. We lived there for a month—happy as I have never been since. Then a woman, a snake in the garden, finding out how I had married hinted to me that such contracts were illegal. I don't know why she did it—I've often wondered—but there are people in the world who take a pleasure in spoiling the joy of others.
"I didn't tell Johnston but resolved when an opportunity came to stand up with him before an ordained19 minister. It came sooner than I hoped. Not six weeks after we were man and wife a 'missioner' made a tour through the mining camps of that part of the state. He would not come to ours—we were too small and distant—so I begged my husband to go to him, tell him our case and bring him back. It would have been better for us both to have gone, but I was sick—too young and ignorant to know the cause of my illness—and Johnston, who seemed willing to do anything I wanted, agreed.
"We calculated that the trip—on horseback, over half-cut mountain trails—would take three or four days there and back. At the end of the fifth day he had not returned and I was in a fever of anxiety. Then again that woman came to me with her poisoned words: I was not a legal wife; could he, knowing this, have taken the opportunity to desert me? God pity her for the deadly harm she did. Sick, alone, inexperienced, eaten into by horrible doubts, I waited till two weeks had passed. Then I was sure that he had done as she said—left me.
"I won't go over that—the past is past. I took what money I had and made my way to the railway. From there by slow stages, for by this time I was ill in mind and body, I got as far as St. Louis, where, my money gone, unable to work, I wrote to an uncle of my mother's, a doctor, whom I had never seen but of whom she had often spoken to me.
"Men like him make us realize there is a God to inspire, a Heaven to reward. He came at once, took me to his home in Indiana, and nursed me back to health. He was a father to me, more than a father to the child I had. No one knew me there—no one but he ever heard my story. I took a new name, from a distant branch of his family, and passed as a widow. When my little girl was old enough to understand I told her her father had died before she was born.
"We lived there for twenty-four years. Before the end of that time the name of Johnston Barker rose into prominence20. My uncle hated it—would not allow it mentioned in his presence. When he died three years ago, he left us all he had—fifty thousand dollars, a great fortune to us. Then Carol, who had chafed21 at the narrow life of a small town, persuaded me to come to New York. I had no fear of meeting Barker, our paths would never cross, and to please her was my life.
"She is not like me, fearful and timid, but full of daring and ambition. When the farm we bought in New Jersey22 suddenly increased in value and the land scheme was suggested, she wanted to try it. At first it wasn't possible as we hadn't enough money. It was not until she met Mr. Harland at a friend's house in Azalea, that the plan became feasible for he was taken with the idea at once. After visiting the farm a few times, and talking it over with her, he offered to come in as a silent partner, putting up the capital.
"The move to town alarmed me. There, in business, she might run across the man who was her father—and this is exactly what happened. You've seen my daughter—you know what she is. Looking at me now you may not realize that she is extraordinarily23 like what I was when Johnston Barker married me.
"He saw her first in the elevator at the Black Eagle Building. Men always noticed her—she was used to it—but that night she told me laughing of the old man who had stared at her in the elevator, stared and stared and couldn't take his eyes off. My heart warned me, and when I heard her description I knew who he was and why he stared.
"After that there was no peace for me. I had a haunting terror that he would find out who she was and might try to claim her. This increased when she told me of his visit to her office to buy the lot—an excuse I understood—and his questions about her former home. Then I tried to quiet myself with the assurances that he could not possibly guess—he had never heard the name of Whitehall in connection with me, he had never known a child was expected.
"But a night came when I was put with my back against the wall. She returned from work, gay and excited, saying Mr. Barker had been in the office that afternoon and asked her if he might call and meet her mother. The terrible
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