The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

[1] This story was written in collaboration with Miss Ina Lillian Peterson, to whom is rightly due the credit for whatever merit it may have.

I taught a little country school near Brownville, which, as every one knows who has had the good luck to live there, is the capital of a considerable expanse of the finest scenery in California.  The town is somewhat frequented in summer by a class of persons whom it is the habit of the local journal to call “pleasure seekers,” but who by a juster classification would be known as “the sick and those in adversity.”  Brownville itself might rightly enough be described, indeed, as a summer place of last resort.  It is fairly well endowed with boarding-houses, at the least pernicious of which I performed twice a day (lunching at the schoolhouse) the humble rite of cementing the alliance between soul and body.  From this “hostelry” (as the local journal preferred to call it when it did not call it a “caravanserai”) to the schoolhouse the distance by the wagon road was about a mile and a half; but there was a trail, very little used, which led over an intervening range of low, heavily wooded hills, considerably shortening the distance.  By this trail I was returning one evening later than usual.  It was the last day of the term and I had been detained at the schoolhouse until almost dark, preparing an account of my stewardship for the trustees—­two of whom, I proudly reflected, would be able to read it, and the third (an instance of the dominion of mind over matter) would be overruled in his customary antagonism to the schoolmaster of his own creation.

I had gone not more than a quarter of the way when, finding an interest in the antics of a family of lizards which dwelt thereabout and seemed full of reptilian joy for their immunity from the ills incident to life at the Brownville House, I sat upon a fallen tree to observe them.  As I leaned wearily against a branch of the gnarled old trunk the twilight deepened in the somber woods and the faint new moon began casting visible shadows and gilding the leaves of the trees with a tender but ghostly light.

I heard the sound of voices—­a woman’s, angry, impetuous, rising against deep masculine tones, rich and musical.  I strained my eyes, peering through the dusky shadows of the wood, hoping to get a view of the intruders on my solitude, but could see no one.  For some yards in each direction I had an uninterrupted view of the trail, and knowing of no other within a half mile thought the persons heard must be approaching from the wood at one side.  There was no sound but that of the voices, which were now so distinct that I could catch the words.  That of the man gave me an impression of anger, abundantly confirmed by the matter spoken.

“I will have no threats; you are powerless, as you very well know.  Let things remain as they are or, by God! you shall both suffer for it.”

“What do you mean?”—­this was the voice of the woman, a cultivated voice, the voice of a lady.  “You would not—­murder us.”

There was no reply, at least none that was audible to me.  During the silence I peered into the wood in hope to get a glimpse of the speakers, for I felt sure that this was an affair of gravity in which ordinary scruples ought not to count.  It seemed to me that the woman was in peril; at any rate the man had not disavowed a willingness to murder.  When a man is enacting the rôle of potential assassin he has not the right to choose his audience.

After some little time I saw them, indistinct in the moonlight among the trees.  The man, tall and slender, seemed clothed in black; the woman wore, as nearly as I could make out, a gown of gray stuff.  Evidently they were still unaware of my presence in the shadow, though for some reason when they renewed their conversation they spoke in lower tones and I could no longer understand.  As I looked the woman seemed to sink to the ground and raise her hands in supplication, as is frequently done on the stage and never, so far as I knew, anywhere else, and I am now not altogether sure that it was done in this instance.  The man fixed his eyes upon her; they seemed to glitter bleakly in the moonlight with an expression that made me apprehensive that he would turn them upon me.  I do not know by what impulse I was moved, but I sprang to my feet out of the shadow.  At that instant the figures vanished.  I peered in vain through the spaces among the trees and clumps of undergrowth.  The night wind rustled the leaves; the lizards had retired early, reptiles of exemplary habits.  The little moon was already slipping behind a black hill in the west.

I went home, somewhat disturbed in mind, half doubting that I had heard or seen any living thing excepting the lizards.  It all seemed a trifle odd and uncanny.  It was as if among the several phenomena, objective and subjective, that made the sum total of the incident there had been an uncertain element which had diffused its dubious character over all—­had leavened the whole mass with unreality.  I did not like it.

At the breakfast table the next morning there was a new face; opposite me sat a young woman at whom I merely glanced as I took my seat.  In speaking to the high and mighty female personage who condescended to seem to wait upon us, this girl soon invited my attention by the sound of her voice, which was like, yet not altogether like, the one still murmuring in my memory of the previous evening’s adventure.  A moment later another girl, a few years older, entered the room and sat at the left of the other, speaking to her a gentle “good morning.”  By her voice I was startled:  it was without doubt the one of which the first girl’s had reminded me.  Here was the lady of the sylvan incident sitting bodily before me, “in her habit as she lived.”

Evidently enough the two were sisters.

With a nebulous kind of apprehension that I might be recognized as the mute inglorious hero of an adventure which had in my consciousness and conscience something of the character of eavesdropping, I allowed myself only a hasty cup of the lukewarm coffee thoughtfully provided by the prescient waitress for the emergency, and left the table.  As I passed out of the house into the grounds I heard a rich, strong male voice singing an aria from “Rigoletto.”  I am bound to say that it was exquisitely sung, too, but there was something in the performance that displeased me, I could say neither what nor why, and I walked rapidly away.

Returning later in the day I saw the elder of the two young women standing on the porch and near her a tall man in black clothing—­the man whom I had expected to see.  All day the desire to know something of these persons had been uppermost in my mind and I now resolved to learn what I could of them in any way that was neither dishonorable nor low.

The man was talking easily and affably to his companion, but at the sound of my footsteps on the gravel walk he ceased, and turning about looked me full in the face.  He was apparently of middle age, dark and uncommonly handsome.  His attire was faultless, his bearing easy and graceful, the look which he turned upon me open, free, and devoid of any suggestion of rudeness.  Nevertheless it affected me with a distinct emotion which on subsequent analysis in memory appeared to be compounded of hatred and dread—­I am unwilling to call it fear.  A second later the man and woman had disappeared.  They seemed to have a trick of disappearing.  On entering the house, however, I saw them through the open doorway of the parlor as I passed; they had merely stepped through a window which opened down to the floor.

Cautiously “approached” on the subject of her new guests my landlady proved not ungracious.  Restated with, I hope, some small reverence for English grammar the facts were these:  the two girls were Pauline and Eva Maynard of San Francisco; the elder was Pauline.  The man was Richard Benning, their guardian, who had been the most intimate friend of their father, now deceased.  Mr. Benning had brought them to Brownville in the hope that the mountain climate might benefit Eva, who was thought to be in danger of consumption.

Upon these short and simple annals the landlady wrought an embroidery of eulogium which abundantly attested her faith in Mr. Benning’s will and ability to pay for the best that her house afforded.  That he had a good heart was evident to her from his devotion to his two beautiful wards and his really touching solicitude for their comfort.  The evidence impressed me as insufficient and I silently found the Scotch verdict, “Not proven.”

Certainly Mr. Benning was most attentive to his wards.  In my strolls about the country I frequently encountered them—­sometimes in company with other guests of the hotel—­exploring the gulches, fishing, rifle shooting, and otherwise wiling away the monotony of country life; and although I watched them as closely as good manners would permit I saw nothing that would in any way explain the strange words that I had overheard in the wood.  I had grown tolerably well acquainted with the young ladies and could exchange looks and even greetings with their guardian without actual repugnance.

A month went by and I had almost ceased to interest myself in their affairs when one night our entire little community was thrown into excitement by an event which vividly recalled my experience in the forest.

This was the death of the elder girl, Pauline.

The sisters had occupied the same bedroom on the third floor of the house.  Waking in the gray of the morning Eva had found Pauline dead beside her.  Later, when the poor girl was weeping beside the body amid a throng of sympathetic if not very considerate persons, Mr. Benning entered the room and appeared to be about to take her hand.  She drew away from the side of the dead and moved slowly toward the door.

“It is you,” she said—­“you who have done this.  You—­you—­you!”

“She is raving,” he said in a low voice.  He followed her, step by step, as she retreated, his eyes fixed upon hers with a steady gaze in which there was nothing of tenderness nor of compassion.  She stopped; the hand that she had raised in accusation fell to her side, her dilated eyes contracted visibly, the lids slowly dropped over them, veiling their strange wild beauty, and she stood motionless and almost as white as the dead girl lying near.  The man took her hand and put his arm gently about her shoulders, as if to support her.  Suddenly she burst into a passion of tears and clung to him as a child to its mother.  He smiled with a smile that affected me most disagreeably—­perhaps any kind of smile would have done so—­and led her silently out of the room.

There was an inquest—­and the customary verdict:  the deceased, it appeared, came to her death through “heart disease.”  It was before the invention of heart failure, though the heart of poor Pauline had indubitably failed.  The body was embalmed and taken to San Francisco by some one summoned thence for the purpose, neither Eva nor Benning accompanying it.  Some of the hotel gossips ventured to think that very strange, and a few hardy spirits went so far as to think it very strange indeed; but the good landlady generously threw herself into the breach, saying it was owing to the precarious nature of the girl’s health.  It is not of record that either of the two persons most affected and apparently least concerned made any explanation.

One evening about a week after the death I went out upon the veranda of the hotel to get a book that I had left there.  Under some vines shutting out the moonlight from a part of the space I saw Richard Benning, for whose apparition I was prepared by having previously heard the low, sweet voice of Eva Maynard, whom also I now discerned, standing before him with one hand raised to his shoulder and her eyes, as nearly as I could judge, gazing upward into his.  He held her disengaged hand and his head was bent with a singular dignity and grace.  Their attitude was that of lovers, and as I stood in deep shadow to observe I felt even guiltier than on that memorable night in the wood.  I was about to retire, when the girl spoke, and the contrast between her words and her attitude was so surprising that I remained, because I had merely forgotten to go away.

“You will take my life,” she said, “as you did Pauline’s.  I know your intention as well as I know your power, and I ask nothing, only that you finish your work without needless delay and let me be at peace.”

He made no reply—­merely let go the hand that he was holding, removed the other from his shoulder, and turning away descended the steps leading to the garden and disappeared in the shrubbery.  But a moment later I heard, seemingly from a great distance, his fine clear voice in a barbaric chant, which as I listened brought before some inner spiritual sense a consciousness of some far, strange land peopled with beings having forbidden powers.  The song held me in a kind of spell, but when it had died away I recovered and instantly perceived what I thought an opportunity.  I walked out of my shadow to where the girl stood.  She turned and stared at me with something of the look, it seemed to me, of a hunted hare.  Possibly my intrusion had frightened her.

“Miss Maynard,” I said, “I beg you to tell me who that man is and the nature of his power over you.  Perhaps this is rude in me, but it is not a matter for idle civilities.  When a woman is in danger any man has a right to act.”

She listened without visible emotion—­almost I thought without interest, and when I had finished she closed her big blue eyes as if unspeakably weary.

“You can do nothing,” she said.

I took hold of her arm, gently shaking her as one shakes a person falling into a dangerous sleep.

“You must rouse yourself,” I said; “something must be done and you must give me leave to act.  You have said that that man killed your sister, and I believe it—­that he will kill you, and I believe that.”

She merely raised her eyes to mine.

“Will you not tell me all?” I added.

“There is nothing to be done, I tell you—­nothing.  And if I could do anything I would not.  It does not matter in the least.  We shall be here only two days more; we go away then, oh, so far!  If you have observed anything, I beg you to be silent.”

“But this is madness, girl.”  I was trying by rough speech to break the deadly repose of her manner.  “You have accused him of murder.  Unless you explain these things to me I shall lay the matter before the authorities.”

This roused her, but in a way that I did not like.  She lifted her head proudly and said:  “Do not meddle, sir, in what does not concern you.  This is my affair, Mr. Moran, not yours.”

“It concerns every person in the country—­in the world,” I answered, with equal coldness.  “If you had no love for your sister I, at least, am concerned for you.”

“Listen,” she interrupted, leaning toward me.  “I loved her, yes, God knows!  But more than that—­beyond all, beyond expression, I love him.  You have overheard a secret, but you shall not make use of it to harm him.  I shall deny all.  Your word against mine—­it will be that.  Do you think your ‘authorities’ will believe you?”

She was now smiling like an angel and, God help me!  I was heels over head in love with her!  Did she, by some of the many methods of divination known to her sex, read my feelings?  Her whole manner had altered.

“Come,” she said, almost coaxingly, “promise that you will not be impolite again.”  She took my arm in the most friendly way.  “Come, I will walk with you.  He will not know—­he will remain away all night.”

Up and down the veranda we paced in the moonlight, she seemingly forgetting her recent bereavement, cooing and murmuring girl-wise of every kind of nothing in all Brownville; I silent, consciously awkward and with something of the feeling of being concerned in an intrigue.  It was a revelation—­this most charming and apparently blameless creature coolly and confessedly deceiving the man for whom a moment before she had acknowledged and shown the supreme love which finds even death an acceptable endearment.

“Truly,” I thought in my inexperience, “here is something new under the moon.”

And the moon must have smiled.

Before we parted I had exacted a promise that she would walk with me the next afternoon—­before going away forever—­to the Old Mill, one of Brownville’s revered antiquities, erected in 1860.

“If he is not about,” she added gravely, as I let go the hand she had given me at parting, and of which, may the good saints forgive me, I strove vainly to repossess myself when she had said it—­so charming, as the wise Frenchman has pointed out, do we find woman’s infidelity when we are its objects, not its victims.  In apportioning his benefactions that night the Angel of Sleep overlooked me.

The Brownville House dined early, and after dinner the next day Miss Maynard, who had not been at table, came to me on the veranda, attired in the demurest of walking costumes, saying not a word.  “He” was evidently “not about.”  We went slowly up the road that led to the Old Mill.  She was apparently not strong and at times took my arm, relinquishing it and taking it again rather capriciously, I thought.  Her mood, or rather her succession of moods, was as mutable as skylight in a rippling sea.  She jested as if she had never heard of such a thing as death, and laughed on the lightest incitement, and directly afterward would sing a few bars of some grave melody with such tenderness of expression that I had to turn away my eyes lest she should see the evidence of her success in art, if art it was, not artlessness, as then I was compelled to think it.  And she said the oddest things in the most unconventional way, skirting sometimes unfathomable abysms of thought, where I had hardly the courage to set foot.  In short, she was fascinating in a thousand and fifty different ways, and at every step I executed a new and profounder emotional folly, a hardier spiritual indiscretion, incurring fresh liability to arrest by the constabulary of conscience for infractions of my own peace.

Arriving at the mill, she made no pretense of stopping, but turned into a trail leading through a field of stubble toward a creek.  Crossing by a rustic bridge we continued on the trail, which now led uphill to one of the most picturesque spots in the country.  The Eagle’s Nest, it was called—­the summit of a cliff that rose sheer into the air to a height of hundreds of feet above the forest at its base.  From this elevated point we had a noble view of another valley and of the opposite hills flushed with the last rays of the setting sun.

As we watched the light escaping to higher and higher planes from the encroaching flood of shadow filling the valley we heard footsteps, and in another moment were joined by Richard Benning.

“I saw you from the road,” he said carelessly; “so I came up.”

Being a fool, I neglected to take him by the throat and pitch him into the treetops below, but muttered some polite lie instead.  On the girl the effect of his coming was immediate and unmistakable.  Her face was suffused with the glory of love’s transfiguration:  the red light of the sunset had not been more obvious in her eyes than was now the lovelight that replaced it.

“I am so glad you came!” she said, giving him both her hands; and, God help me! it was manifestly true.

Seating himself upon the ground he began a lively dissertation upon the wild flowers of the region, a number of which he had with him.  In the middle of a facetious sentence he suddenly ceased speaking and fixed his eyes upon Eva, who leaned against the stump of a tree, absently plaiting grasses.  She lifted her eyes in a startled way to his, as if she had felt his look.  She then rose, cast away her grasses, and moved slowly away from him.  He also rose, continuing to look at her.  He had still in his hand the bunch of flowers.  The girl turned, as if to speak, but said nothing.  I recall clearly now something of which I was but half-conscious then—­the dreadful contrast between the smile upon her lips and the terrified expression in her eyes as she met his steady and imperative gaze.  I know nothing of how it happened, nor how it was that I did not sooner understand; I only know that with the smile of an angel upon her lips and that look of terror in her beautiful eyes Eva Maynard sprang from the cliff and shot crashing into the tops of the pines below!

How and how long afterward I reached the place I cannot say, but Richard Benning was already there, kneeling beside the dreadful thing that had been a woman.

“She is dead—­quite dead,” he said coldly.  “I will go to town for assistance.  Please do me the favor to remain.”

He rose to his feet and moved away, but in a moment had stopped and turned about.

“You have doubtless observed, my friend,” he said, “that this was entirely her own act.  I did not rise in time to prevent it, and you, not knowing her mental condition—­you could not, of course, have suspected.”

His manner maddened me.

“You are as much her assassin,” I said, “as if your damnable hands had cut her throat.”  He shrugged his shoulders without reply and, turning, walked away.  A moment later I heard, through the deepening shadows of the wood into which he had disappeared, a rich, strong, baritone voice singing “La donna e mobile,” from “Rigoletto.”