The House of the Whispering Pines

by Anna Katharine Green

“Something went on at dinner-time. It was not a usual meal,” put in the district attorney. “You and your sisters—”

“Stop!” He was at that point of passion which dulls the most self-controlled to all sense of propriety.

“Don’t talk to me about that dinner. I want to forget that dinner. I want to forget everything but the two things I live for—to see that fellow hanged, and to—” The words choked him, and he let his head fall, but presently threw it up again. “That dastard, whom may God confound, passed a letter across Adelaide into Carmel’s hand,” he panted out. “I saw him, but I didn’t take it in; I wasn’t thinking. I was—”

“Who broke the glasses?” urged his relentless inquisitor. “One at your plate, one at Carmel’s, and one at the head of the board where sat your sister Adelaide?”

“God! Must I tell these things?” He had started to his feet and his hand, violent in all it did, struck his forehead impulsively, as he uttered this exclamation. “Have it, then! Heaven knows I think of it enough not to be afraid to speak it out in words. Adelaide”—the name came with passion, but once uttered, produced its own calming effect, so that he went on with more restraint—“Adelaide never had much patience with me. She was a girl who only saw one way. ‘The right! the right!’ was what she dinned into my ears from the time I was a small boy and didn’t know but that all youngsters were brought up by sisters. I grew to hate what she called ‘the right,’ I wanted pleasure, a free time, and a good drink whenever the fancy took me. You know what I am, Dr. Perry, and everybody in town knows; but the impulse which has always ruled me was not a downright evil one; or if it was, I called it natural independence, and let it go at that. But Adelaide suffered. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t care a fig for it, but she did suffer. God forgive me!”

He stopped and mopped his forehead. Sweetwater moved a trifle on his seat, but the others—men who had passed the meridian of life, who had known temptations, possibly had succumbed to them, from time to time—sat like two statues, one in full light and the other in as dark a shadow as he could find.

“That afternoon,” young Cumberland presently resumed, “she was keyed up more than usual. She loved Ranelagh,—damn him!—and he had played or was playing her false. She watched him with eyes that madden me, now, when I think of them. She saw him look at Carmel, and she saw Carmel look at him. Then her eyes fell on me. I was angry; angry at them all, and I wanted a drink. It was not her habit to have wine on the table; but sometimes, when Ranelagh was there, she did. She was a slave to Ranelagh, and he could make her do whatever he wished, just as he can make you and everybody else.”

Here he shot insolent glances at his two interlocutors, one of whom changed colour—which, happily, he did not see. “‘Ring the bell,’ I ordered, ‘and have in the champagne. I want to drink to your marriage and the happy days in prospect for us all,’ It was brutal and I knew it; but I was reckless and wild for the wine. So, I guess, was Ranelagh, for he smiled at her, and she rang for the champagne. When the glasses had been set beside each plate, she turned towards Carmel. ‘We will all drink,’ she said, ‘to my coming marriage,’ This made Carmel turn pale; for Adelaide had never been known to drink a drop of liquor in her life. I felt a little queer, myself; and not one of us spoke till the glasses were filled and the maid had left the dining-room and shut the door.

“Then Adelaide rose. ‘We will drink standing,’ said she, and never had I seen her look as she did then. I thought of my evil life when I should have been watching Ranelagh; and when she lifted the glass to her lips and looked at me, almost as earnestly as she did at Ranelagh,—but it was a different kind of earnestness,—I felt like—like—well, like the wretch I was and always had been; possibly, always will be. She drank;—we wouldn’t call it drinking, for she just touched the wine with her lips; but to her it was debauch. Then she stood waiting, with the strangest gleam in her eyes, while Ranelagh drained his glass and I drained mine. Ranelagh thought she wanted some sentiment, and started to say something appropriate; but his eye fell on Carmel, who had tried to drink and couldn’t, and he bungled over his words and at last came to a pause under the steady stare of Adelaide’s eyes.

“‘Never mind, Elwood,’ she said; ‘I know what you would like to say. But that’s not what I am thinking of now. I am thinking of my brother, the boy who will soon be left to find his way through life without even the unwelcome restraint of my presence. I want him to remember this day. I want him to remember me as I stand here before him with this glass in my hand. You see wine in it, Arthur; but I see poison—poison—nothing else, for one like you who cannot refuse a friend, cannot refuse your own longing. Never from this day on shall another bottle be opened under my roof. Carmel, you have grieved as well as I over what has passed for pleasure in this house. Do as I do, and may Arthur see and remember.’