NOON was near at hand when the guest of the hut waked to full consciousness. Her first impulse was to cry out with the pain that tortured her; but her strong will assumed command, and she looked inquiringly into the anxious face beside her Obviously she realized that a catastrophe had overtaken her, and she was now silently demanding an explanation.
Wilder had not expected this. Her calmness, and, more than that, her silent demand, were so different from the childish and unreasonable petulance that he had expected, that he was unprepared and confused.
“You have been hurt,” he stammered; “and it will be necessary for you to keep very quiet for a time.’
“How was I hurt?” she faintly asked. “The horses were frightened by the storm and ran away.”
“Oh, the storm! I remember.” Then she looked quickly and anxiously about. “My father,” she said,—“where is he?”
For a moment the oddly distorted face in the branches came grimacing between Wilder and his duty, but with a gasp and a repelling gesture he drove it away,—not so dexterously but that his struggle was seen.
“He—has gone to bring help,” he said. Then, quickly leaving the bedside to conceal his weakness and the shame of the lie that choked him, he added hastily, “Yes, he was not hurt; and when he and I had brought you to this hut he went to find help. He will return as soon as possible.” He felt that her glance was upon him with merciless steadiness. “Now,” said he, returning to the couch, “I will remove these bandages,”—referring to the cords that bound her to the bed;—“but you must promise me not to move except under my direction. Do you?”
She slightly nodded an assent, and he unbound her.
“Come,” he added, “you must have some of this broth. No, don’t try to rise; I will feed you from this spoon. It is not too hot, is it? That is good. Presently you will feel much better. You are not in much pain now, are you?”
“I am not a child,” she answered, with a slight touch of disdain and reproof. But he cheerily said,—
“Excellent, excellent! That is the way to feel!”
She lay silent for a while, looking up at the roof. Presently she said,—
“I imagine that I am badly hurt. Please tell me how and where I am injured.”
“Well, your left leg was hurt, and we shall have to keep it bandaged and your knee from bending. And there were some bruises on your side, and an injury to the scalp.”
“My scalp?” she quickly asked, raising her hand and asking, “Surely you did not shave my head?”
“No,” he replied, smiling amusedly; “except a small spot, and you can cover that until the hair grows out.”
She was not fully satisfied until she had felt the splendid wealth of hair that lay massed upon the pillow.
“May I ask who you are?” This was the question that he had dreaded most of all; but before he could stammer out the truth a light broke over her face, and she astounded him with this exclamation:
“Oh, you are the famous Dr. Mal-bone! This is extraordinary! I am very, very fortunate.”
Wilder had never conceived a lie so dazzling and happy as this mistake. Between wonder at his stupidity for not having thought of it, and a great delight that she had so naturally erred, he was too bewildered either to affirm or deny. He only realized that she had unwittingly solved the most difficult of his present problems. Had she been looking at him, she might have wondered at the strange expression that lighted up his face, and particularly the crimson temporarily displacing the death-like pallor that she had observed.
“Yes,” she resumed, after a pause, “I am fortunate; for I suppose that my injuries are a great deal worse than you have given me to believe, and that such skill as yours is needed.” She turned her glance again full upon him; but he had recovered his address, and now met her look with an approach to steadiness. “But,” she said, “you are a much younger man than I had expected to see; and you don’t look so crabbed as I might have inferred you were from the message you sent me a month ago.”
She paused, evidently expecting him to make some explanation; but he was silent, and looked so distressed that she smiled.
“You may remember,” she continued, “that a young lady at the lakes sent for you to treat her for bruises sustained in a fall, and that you told her messenger to give her your compliments and say that cold-water applications, an old woman, and God would do as well with such a case as you. I am that young lady.”
Wilder liked the young woman’s blunt and forthright manner, although it was novel and embarrassing.
“There were doubtless important cases demanding attention,” he explained.
“No doubt,” she agreed.
“And, after all,” he suggested, “didn’t you follow the advice and get good results?”
“Yes,” she answered, again smiling faintly; “that is true.” She closed her eyes. Presently she extended her hand, which Wilder took. She looked earnestly into his face, and asked, “It will be a long siege with me, will it not?”
“Much depends upon your temperament,” he answered. “If———”
“That is evasion,” she interrupted. “Be candid with me.” There was no demand in this request; it was an appeal from such depths of her as she knew, and it touched him.
“Yes,” he stammered, “unless———”
“The bone is broken, isn’t it?”
“Yes; but you are young and your health is superb. That is everything.”
A despairing look grayed her face, which then quickly reddened with anger and rebellion. Her host said nothing. He saw that she was competent to make the fight with herself without his aid; that her mind, though now disturbed by her suffering, was able to comprehend much that her condition meant, being obviously an uncommonly strong, clear mind, and that it would give to an acceptance of her position the philosophic view that was so much needed. He saw the hard, brave fight that she was making, and he had no fear for the outcome. Gradually he saw the contemplative expression of the eyes turned within, and the face grow gaunt and haggard under the strain. As slowly he saw her emerge from the depths into which he had thrust her, and from the very slowness of the victory, he knew that she had won. When again she looked into his face, he knew that her soul had been tried as it never had been before, and that she was stronger and better for it. And he knew that there was yet another trial awaiting her which perhaps she could not have borne had not she passed through this one.
“Another thing,” she said, as earnestly as before; “when do you expect my father to return?”
“Very soon—as soon as he——”
“Evasion again,” she protested, a slight frown of impatience darkening her face; but it instantly disappeared, and her manner was appealing again. “Be my friend as well as my physician, Dr. Malbone. Please tell me the truth. I can bear it now.”
The young man bowed his head in dejection.
“Snow is still falling,” he said, “and doubtless many trees are across the road. We can only wait and hope.”
A transient look of gratitude for his seeming candor softened her hard beauty, and she withdrew her hand and her glance. Then he knew that another mighty struggle was taking place within her. He knew from the deep crimson that suffused her face how fully she realized all that he must be to her during the weary weeks to come. He saw the outward evidences of the unthinkable revulsion that filled her, with him as its cause. He knew that in agony of soul she rebelled against the fate that had placed her helpless in the hands of a stranger, and that stranger a man, and that man the one now serving her, however willingly, however faithfully, with whatever tact and delicacy. He saw, from her hopless glance about the cabin, the bitterness of the fight that she was making to accept its repellent hospitality. And, worst of all, he saw, or thought he saw, that in the victory that she finally won there was more of an iron determination to endure than of a simple resignation to accept.
So these two began their strange life together. As may be supposed, it was wholly devoid of true companionship, and necessarily so. That made it the harder, in a way, for both. From the severe furnishings of his larder the host did his best to provide for her comfort. She never complained of the coarse, inadequate food, all of which had to be of a kind that could bear keeping for months, and none of which was pleasing to a fastidious taste made all the more delicate by illness and prostration from her injuries. All of the countless attentions that her helplessness imposed upon him he gave with the business-like directness of a physician and nurse, and this was obviously gratifying to her. She never complained of the cruel hardness of the bed, and never failed to express her gratitude for the slight shiftings of position that he deemed it safe to give her.
Most cheering to the host was the fair progress that his patient made. Her curious mistake that he was Dr. Malbone had given him a mastery of the situation that was of inestimable value. Manifestly she reposed full confidence in his skill, and he made the most of that. She never again asked for opinions concerning her father’s return. Her only inquiries were with regard to the weather, the severity of which did not relax from day to day, from week to week. When Wilder would return from short excursions over the snow, which now lay deep throughout the mountains and was steadily growing deeper, she would look at him a moment expectantly, hoping for good news; but it was not necessary for him to say that there was none, and she asked no questions.
The dread and dismay of Wilder grew with the heaping up of snow about the hut. Before he built the house, he had learned that in winter, when the storms were very severe, the shelf upon which he had reared the structure was banked with snow, but to what height no one had ever ascertained. There had never been such a storm as this within the memory of the white settlers. Hence the snow was heaped higher than ever before. There were special reasons for this. The shelf formed an eddying-point for the wind that came in the intervals of the snowfall, and the snow from all sides was thus swirled and pitched upon the shelf. It had not yet reached the roof, but it had to be kept cleared from the window and the front door, and that meant watchfulness and labor. Should it continue to accumulate until it reached the roof and the top of the chimney, a serious situation would confront the prisoners.
Not while the patient remained helpless was there anything but a rigid business bearing between these two unhappy mortals. Between them was reared an impalpable wall that neither cared to attack. But in time the patient grew better and stronger both in body and mind; and, besides, strange developments began to make themselves felt.
Among the effects of the young woman, Wilder had discovered a book in which she kept a journal. She had called for it as soon as she was able to write; and, as a woman’s observation is keener than a man’s, it is best to introduce here (and in other places throughout the narrative) such extracts from her journal as seem helpful.
THE following is from the lady’s journal:
“Yes, I will write it again, absurd though it may turn out to be: There is some mystery about this cabin. I have tried over and over to convince myself that my weakness and the unnatural situation in which I am placed make me morbid and suspicious; but I know that I am still a hard-headed woman, without a particle of nonsense in my composition; and I know that I am able to see things in their proper light, and to understand them in a way. And I say that the signs of something wrong here are growing more and more evident, without furnishing me the least clue to the nature of the mystery; but I feel that, whatever the mystery is, it is one to be dreaded. I try not to think about it; but where is the sense in that? Is it not better for me to do all the observing and thinking I can, and thus be the better prepared for whatever may happen.
“I sometimes try to think that it is only the strangeness of this strange man—if I may call him a man—that makes me feel a mystery in the air. It is hard to get hold of anything tangible in his bearing, so unobtrusively alert he is. There must be some explanation of the fact that a physician as skilful as he is should bury himself in these mountains—should hide himself from the different world to which he evidently belongs.
“He is a gentleman,—I will do him the justice to admit that. He is a great deal besides any gentleman that I have ever seen before. Let me try to explain this to myself. Although he makes not the slightest show of attending to my wants, I know his every thought is upon me. He sleeps on the stone floor in front of the fireplace,—that is, if he sleeps at all, which I sometimes doubt. Even when he is not looking at me in that distant, abstracted way that he has, I feel that the whole cabin is filled with his eyes, and that they are always looking at me, day and night, but with an expression different from the veiled one of his own eyes. They do not have the distant, thoughtful, perfunctory, business-like expression of the eyes in his head, but a different one,—an expression that seems to be a mixture of duty, pity, kindness, patience, forbearance, and—it will make me feel better to write it—contempt. I feel that these countless eyes are reading my deepest thoughts, and looking over my shoulder as I write.
“Of course I do not really feel all this, else I should not be writing thus. But I feel something. O God! when will this wretched strain be over?...
“I have discovered that he guards most jealously the back door of the cabin. When I first came to consciousness after my hurt, I saw what I took to be evidence that my strength of will was greater than his. I believe so yet; but he certainly has a way of baffling me and holding me in a position from which I cannot escape. I am curious to know a great many things; it is my right to know them. Why does he surround himself with a deafness that nothing can penetrate? Why and how does he make it impossible for me to ask him questions? And who ever heard of a man so supremely indifferent as not to ask a woman placed as I am a single question about herself, her life, her tastes, her family, her world? Why has he made it impossible for me to ask him any questions? At first he had placed my bed so that I could see the rear door by turning my head; but when he observed that I had become curious, he found an excuse to turn my bed so that it was impossible for me to see the door, and I was too proud to object.
“I wish I could have respect for him. Of course he surmises that I am wealthy, and he must know that he will be handsomely paid for his services. I gave him to understand as much one day, and he looked at me in a blank way that was most disconcerting. But that did not deceive me. I do not wish to be unjust, but I know something about human nature. I think that the man’s whole course may be to impress me with his great solicitude and make his services appear the more valuable. Bah! he needn’t have gone to the trouble.
“I am going to watch that door in spite of him. I know already that he keeps it carefully locked, and that when he goes out he bars it on the other side. Such distrust, when I am so unable to pry into his secrets, is unwarranted and offensive. Another thing I have noted. The back door leads into some kind of inner apartment.
“How is he going to guard it when I am able to be about? Then his life will be a burden. I will make it so.
“Gratitude? Oh, yes! I have heard of such a thing. But this is an obligation that money can discharge, and I will see that it does. Has he done anything more for me than a physician ought to do? I am familiar with the ways in which these gentry play upon the gratitude of their wealthy patients, and present bills that they think a sense of shame will accept. So long as the rich are the prey of the poor, the poor need not expect sympathy from the rich. I know the power of money to secure attendance of all sorts, and I can see its power manifested now.
“This man seems to be utterly lacking in masculine qualities. To give an illustration: The other day, when he thought I was absorbed in reading,—I must say that he has excellent taste in books,—I found tears trickling down his cheeks while he was reading before the fire. I noted from the division of the book as he held it open the approximate place where he was reading. Afterward I asked him for the book, and found that it opened readily at a place where the leaves were tear-stained. It was the silliest story imaginable,—a foolish account of true-lovers separated by designing persons and dying of a broken heart! Imagine a grown man crying over such nonsense as that!
“Here is a queer circumstance that I have noted, and have wondered about: In not a single one of Dr. Malbone’s books does his name appear; and it is evident that wherever it did appear he has erased it. There may be easy ways of accounting for this, but to me it looks suspicious. Is it a part of the mystery of a refined and skilful physician burying—I believe hiding—himself in these mountains? I remember to have heard at the lakes that he never attended city people spending the summer here if he could avoid it. I certainly know that he refused to visit me, and that he sent me an insulting message besides. What is the reason? Is he more or less acquainted with people of the better class, and is he afraid of meeting some whom he may have known when he lived somewhere else and passed under a different name? The inhabitants of these mountains venerate him, and believe that his skill is omnipotent. Well, I have nothing to say against his skill, for certainly he has handled my case perfectly; but if these simple and ignorant mountain-folk should see him in the intimacy in which I know him, and discover what a cold, suspicious, weak, petty man he is, I think they would reform their opinion of him.
“During the last month he has been going oftener and oftener through the back door. What business has he there? If I did not have a feeling that, little as he trusts me, I might safely trust him to the end of the world, I would have a fear for my own safety. But I rest secure in the belief that the prospect of collecting a generous fee for restoring me safe to my father is a sufficient protection, to say nothing of the confidence that I have in the man’s queer sense of honor. Why, he treats me as though I were a queen, and bears himself as my humblest subject hanging upon my smallest word—up to a certain point. Beyond that I get bewildered.
“Oh, my father, my father! There is no man in the world like you, none that knows me, that loves me as you do! If you only knew how my heart yearns every moment for you! Why could not this man have the least of your qualities,—your iron will, your scorn of weak things in human nature, your dominating, achieving power It is in comparing this man with you that I find him so small, so pusillanimous, so different from the standard of manhood that you have made me adopt, so different from me, so infinitely far from me. It is good that it is so, but it makes me lonely beyond all expression. I would rather be alone in a desert than with this strange mirage of a man, this male with an infinite capacity for the little things that only little women are suited to do. He tortures me with his goodness, his self-sacrifice to me, his making me feel that he lives only to make me comfortable and bring me back to health. Where are you, my father? I know that you will come to me when you can. That much I know, I know! Come, father, and take me from this awful prison!...
“I think I have done remarkably well to be as patient as I have been. This horrid food is enough to kill a healthy woman,—tinned meats and vegetables, tinned everything, and hardly any flour, but sea-biscuits instead! Of course my poor slave does his best to prepare things in such a way that it will be possible for me to eat them, for he seems to realize that I am a human being....
“I am determined to bring this man to an acquaintance with his tongue. The loneliness that I feel is unbearable. He must be as lonely as I, and, like me, he is probably too proud to make a sign. Of course he talks to me now when I make him, but about things in Asia or Africa that I am certain are as dull to him as to me. He is maintaining this distance, I am certain, just to guard his history and true character, and to keep me in a position where it will remain impossible for me to find out what is going forward on the other side of that door. I will talk to him about myself; that will compel him to talk about himself. I can’t bear this isolation. It is inhuman. And I have no fears that he will presume. They passed long ago.
“I have just two more things to record at present. One is that my host is growing thinner and more hollow-eyed, and the other is that several times lately I have dreamed of hearing the strangest and sweetest music. It sounded like the playing of a violin by a master hand. I have been unable to determine whether I was really dreaming. One singular thing in connection with it is that when I looked for him the other night on his rugs before the fire after I had heard the music, or dreamed I heard it, he was not there. I tried to remain awake until he returned, for I wondered where he could be in the middle of the night, with the snow heaped up to the roof of the house and a fearful gale blowing cold outside, and I felt lonely and uneasy. But I went to sleep before he returned. I have no doubt, however, that he was on the other side of the rear door.”
This ends, for the present, the extracts from the lady’s journal.
THE patient had so far recovered that she could be propped up in bed, where she straightened out the bungling work of her inexperienced hair-dresser, and made her glorious hair a fit embellishment of her beauty. She was pale, and her cheeks had lost the roundness and her eyes the brilliancy of their wont. But she was regaining the flesh that she had lost, and the brightness of spirit that her afflictions had dimmed; and her pallor only softened and refined a beauty that likely had been somewhat too showy in health.
Something even better than that had been accomplished. It was not conceivable that her strong and rebellious spirit had been ever before brought under other than the ordinary restraints of a conventional life. She had developed the good sense to make the most of her present uncomfortable situation, and the will to bear its hardships. In the eyes of her host the superiority of her character entitled her to admiration, which he gave her simply and unconsciously, without any regard to her sex and beauty. Her acute insight had informed her of this admiration, and her spirit chafed under its character. One day she said,—
“It seems strange to me, Dr. Malbone, that you have never taken any interest in my past life.”
He looked at her quickly and curiously, and somewhat awkwardly replied,—
“I did not wish to intrude, Miss Andros.”
“Would that have been intrusion? I hadn’t thought of it.”
“You must know that I feel an interest in everything that concerns you.” He said this readily, simply, and naturally, and she wondered if he was sincere.
“Of course,” she went on, “lack of all companionship between us means mutual distrust.” This was a sharp thrust, and it found him unguarded. Then she saw that she had gone too far at the start; and this impression was confirmed when, after a pause, he remarked,—
“You and I have been strangely placed. I knew that the conventions of the best-bred people mean much to you, and I have merely respected your natural and proper regard for them. Under these circumstances it was not possible for me to make the first effort to be—friendly, if you will permit the expression.”
She smiled, but the manliness of the rebuke and its entire justice made her secretly resent it. She was determined to hold herself perfectly in hand, for a serious purpose now moved her, and she would not be balked.
“That is all in the past now,” she said. “I have learned to know you as a man of the finest sense of honor, proud, reserved, and self-sacrificing. It would not have been possible for any other sort of man to treat a woman as you have treated me. No, don’t interrupt me. There is nothing but common sense and simple justice in what I am saying, and unless you let me say it you will be harsh and cruel. After all that you have done for me, it is my right to tell you how I feel about it.”
He looked so embarrassed and miserable that she laughed outright; and the music of that rare note sounded in his heart; for it was not a cruel laugh, but merry and hearty, as one would laugh at the comical discomfiture of a friend; and as such it fulfilled its purpose.
Thus the ice that had filled the cabin was broken, in a measure, at last, and this at once eased the gloom and coldness of the wretched lives imprisoned therein.
From that beginning the convalescent drifted easily and gracefully into an account of her world of wealth and pleasure and fashion. She realized that she must first open her own life before she could expect her host to give her a view of his and of the nearer and stranger things that impinged upon her. Her voice was smooth and musical. She dwelt particularly upon the lighter and fashionable side of her life, because she believed that the tact and refinement of the man who listened so well, yet so silently, were born of such a life, and that he had deliberately withdrawn himself from it.
Matters went more smoothly after that day. But the young woman was finally forced to accept her defeat,—she had opened her own simple, vacant life, but had gained not a glimpse into his. And she realized, further, that all the advances toward a friendlier understanding had been made by her, and none by him; that his manner toward her, with all its tireless watchfulness, its endless solicitude, its total extinction of every selfish thought, its impenetrable reserve, had not changed one jot or tittle. Then a bitter resentment filled her, and she hated him and determined to torture him.
He had not been so guarded but that she had found a vulnerable spot in his mail. This was what she regarded as the silly, sentimental side of his nature. She had led him into this disclosure by a long series of adroit moves, the purpose of which he had not suspected. Assuming a profound appreciation of the softer and tenderer things of life, she had brought herself into the attitude of one who cherishes them, and thus led him into the trap. Their talk concerned love, and he opened his heart and displayed all its foolish weakness.
“Can there be anything more sacred,” he asked, warmly, “than the love of men and women? Is there anything to which trifling should be more repugnant? The man who loves one woman with all in him that makes him a man, has taken that into his soul which will be its refining and uplifting force to the end of all things with him; and, noble as that is, the love of a woman for one man who loves her surpasses it beyond all comprehension, and is the truest gleam of heavenly radiance in human lives.”
It was spared him to see the amused and contemptuous curl of lip that bespoke a world-worn heart; but he had let down his guard, and his punishment would come.
It was some days afterward that the blow fell. The convalescent was now sitting on a chair, where her ever-solicitous nurse had placed her. She was now ready to strike. She would hold up to him a mirror of himself,—a weak, sentimental, pusillanimous man. Fortunately, she could relate from an experience in her own life a tale whose ridiculous hero she judged had been just such a man as Dr. Malbone. She would be violating none of the rules of hospitality. Her host had permitted her to walk into a humiliating position, and her desire to punish him should not be denied gratification.
She had brought the talk round to the mistakes that men and women make in the bestowal of their affection, and remarked carelessly that men were proverbially stupid in estimating the loveliness of women. Almost without exception, she declared, they preferred girls for their beauty, their softness, their negative qualities, their genuine or pretended helplessness; and she added that a woman of strength and true worth would scorn a love so cheaply won and held in so light esteem by its bestowers.
“But some girls,” she added, “are even worse than men. You may generally expect stupidity from a man, but not always folly from a girl. A rather distressing case of a girl’s folly once came to my notice. There was a girl who had been my classmate in school. It was there that we formed for each other the girlish affection which all girls must have at that age. Yet the difference between us was great even then, and it increased after we had gone out into the world. She and I moved in the same circle. Her parents were wealthy, and she had every opportunity to see and learn life and get something of value from it. Instead of that, she grew more and more retired, and less fitted for the life to which she belonged. She was the most unpractical and romantic girl that ever lived. Her girl friends dropped her one by one. I was the last to remain, and I did all I could to get some worldly sense into her soft and foolish head. She would only smile, and put her arms round me, and declare that she knew she was foolish, but that she couldn’t help it.
“She was very fond of music and poetry, and at last I learned that she was taking lessons on the violin from some fiddling nobody who made his living by playing and teaching. I never happened to see him, or I might have done something to stop the mischief that was brewing. Her parents were blind to her folly, but that is a common weakness of parents.
“There never had been any great exchange of confidences between Ada and me since our school-days. I could have told her a great deal about the ways of men,—you see,” the narrator hastened to add, “I had been a very good observer, and had learned some things that it is to the advantage of every girl to know. I mean, you understand, about love. It is only people with a silly view of that subject that ever get into trouble. Girls of Ada’s disposition have no sense; they invariably suffer through lack of perception and strength.
“Although I did not see much of her, it at last became evident that something serious was the matter. Her manner became softer and gentler, her sympathies were keener, and there was a light in her eyes that an observing woman cannot misunderstand. I was somewhat older than she, and that gave me an advantage in the plan that I decided upon; but of greater advantage was her reliance upon me. It was necessary that I should gain her full confidence, as I didn’t wish to take any step in the dark, nor one that might have proved useless. You will understand that in all I afterward did and caused to be done I acted solely from a regard for her welfare. I believed that she had formed an attachment for this—this fiddler—bah! Everything in me revolts when I think of it. Here was a girl that was pretty, sweet, gracious, the soul of trust and fidelity, ready to throw herself away upon an unspeakable fiddler! And there was no excuse whatever for it. A score of men adored her,—men of her own station in life,—men of wealth, men of culture, men of strength and character, men of birth, men of consequence in the world. Incredible as it may seem, they passed over other girls far more capable in every way, and sighed for this shy violet.
“I knew that there was something wrong in her refusal to accept the attentions of any of them. I knew that her inherited tastes, the examples all around her, and her natural regard for the wishes of her parents and friends, ought to have induced her to give her affections to a man worthy of her. I determined to find out what that obstacle was; and it was solely for her own good that I did so. I knew that if she married this—this low musician, her life would be filled with bitterness, disappointment, and regrets. I knew that she would soon come to be ashamed of the alliance. I knew——”
“How did you know all that?” came in a voice so strange, so constrained, so distant, that she turned in wonder toward her host. He sat looking into the fire, the ruddy glow of which concealed the death-like pallor that during the last few minutes had been deepening in his face.
“How did I know it?” she responded in surprise. “That is a singular question from one who ought to be as well aware of it as I.”
He made no reply, and she turned her head to the window and watched the snow steadily rebuilding the bank that her host had so recently cleared away.
“Perhaps,” she remarked, with a slight sneer, “you asked that question to get an argument with me, for I have heard you express romantic and sentimental views on the subject of love. But of one thing I am confident: I know that you have been a man of the world, and that you understand life and human nature; and I know that while men like to assume a sentimental attitude toward love, it is merely a pose. I will not argue the matter with you. You know as well as I that such a marriage would have been a fatal mistake.”
She said this in a hard, emphatic way that indicated her desire to end the discussion. Then she resumed her story.
“I got into her confidence by professing sympathy with her, and adopting her point of view,—by anticipating it, I mean, for she was too guarded to disclose it. The poor little idiot fell into the trap. She had been carrying her secret for months, and the burden of it was wearing her out. You know, a nature of that kind must have sympathy, must have some one to listen, must have a confidant. She had not dared to trust her parents, for she knew that they would put a stop to her folly. When she found, as she thought, that I was in full sympathy with her, she laid her poor foolish heart completely open. And what do you think she was going to do?”
She turned toward her host as she asked the question, and found him still sitting immovable and looking into the fire. He seemed not to have heard her, for he made no answer; and his stony silence and stillness gave her a strange sensation that might have weighed more with her had she not been so deeply interested in her narrative, and so well satisfied with her part in its happenings. She turned her glance again toward the window, and resumed:
“She had decided to run away with this vulgar—fiddler. There was but one thing lacking,—he had not asked her; but she believed that he loved her with all his soul, and that he was having a fight with himself to decide whether it would be right for him to bring so scandalous a thing upon her. She and he both realized that it would be worse than useless for him to ask her parents for her. She said to me, ‘He fears that I shall be unhappy in the poverty that would be my lot if we should go away and marry. He fears that I should miss the luxuries to which I had been accustomed. He fears that my friends will think he had married me for my fortune. He has so many fears, and they are all for me. Yet I know that he would cheerfully lay down his life for me. There never was a man so unselfish, so generous, so ready to sacrifice himself for others.’
“I could hardly keep from laughing while the poor child was telling me all that rubbish. Before employing harsh measures to check her foolish purpose, I resorted to milder ones. While continuing to be sympathetic, I nevertheless said a great many things that would have set her thinking if she had had any sense. I gave her to understand, as delicately as possible (for I was careful not to rouse any resentfulness or stubbornness in her), that her lover undoubtedly was a worthless fellow, as persons of his class are; that he was weak in character and loose in morals; that he was merely a sly adventurer, playing adroitly upon her innocence and confidence, and anxious to leave his laborious life for one of ease at her expense. I compared her station as his wife with that as the wife of a man in her own sphere.
“The trouble was that she cared nothing for the position that she occupied. She honestly believed, poor idiot! that she could be as happy poor as rich. But the great obstacle was her infatuation for the man, and her belief that he was finer and better than the men of her own station. She was dreamy and romantic, and that is why she idealized this fiddling nobody. The more she told me of his gentleness, his refinement, his unselfishness, his poetic nature, the more I saw that he lacked the sterling qualities of manhood, the more I realized that he had made a careful study of her weaknesses and was playing upon them with all the unscrupulous skill of his species. She implored me to meet him, to know him, to study him. Of course that was out of the question. She was sure, she said, that I should come to admire and respect him as she had. I firmly declined to see him. I have even forgotten his name.”
There was a pause in the narration. The young man was so still that his guest looked round at him, and found his gaze fastened upon her. She started, for she saw that it held a veiled quality that she did not understand, and that for a moment filled her with uneasiness. He quickly and without a word looked again at the fire.
THE convalescent thrust aside the momentary depression that her host’s strange expression had given her, and proceeded.
“At last I realized that all mild measures would be useless. I knew that at any time something dreadful might happen, and I was determined to save my old schoolmate from the disgrace and sorrow that she was inviting. Without directly encouraging her to proceed as she had started, I gave her to understand that she might always depend upon my friendship. Then I set about the serious work that I had to do.”
There was another long pause.
“Well?” said her host, a little harshly and impatiently; and that change from no his habitual gentleness gave her a passing wonder. Then she saw that she was hurting him. She had waited for that sign.
“I knew that it would be an easy task to match my wit with that of a sentimental, scheming fiddler and a foolish girl. I needn’t give all the details of the plan that I carried out. It was merely a matter of getting an engagement for him somewhere else for a time, and of presenting to her in his absence some evidence of his faithlessness. I knew them both well enough to foresee that she would never let him know what she had heard,—that she would simply send him adrift, and expect him to make an explanation if he was innocent, and that he would be too abashed to demand an explanation from her or make one himself. There was no danger that he would open a way to disprove or even deny the evidence that I produced.
“All this, you understand, I did with the greatest delicacy. The plan worked perfectly. They never saw each other again.”
Wilder turned and looked her full in the face. It was the way in which he did it that sharpened her attention, for it was a look in which she felt, rather than saw, a command.
“What became of them?” he quietly asked, but she felt that the question required an answer.
“Oh,” she replied, her air of indifference veiling her determination to hold control of the situation, “the vagabond fiddler was never seen again. As for Ada—but that was infinitely better than to have lived a life of wretchedness——”
“As for Ada?”
“She was dead in a month,”—this with a hard and defiant manner.
The young man rose from his chair, which he clumsily upset. In a strangely uncertain, stumbling fashion he went to the front door, and felt for the latch, as though blind. Then he changed his mind and started for the rear door; but whatever purpose he had was interrupted by his overturning a small table and sending the books and other articles upon it clattering to the floor. Evidently startled and confused by the noise and his own clumsiness,—though hardly more so than the young woman, who was watching him in amazement,—he righted the table with difficulty, and began to pick up the articles that had fallen from it. Instead, however, of replacing them on the table, he put them on the bed. His face was livid, his eyes were sunk alarmingly deep in his skull, and he seemed to have become suddenly old and wrinkled. His hands trembled, and weakness so overcame him that he sat down upon the edge of the bed.
This state quickly passed, and the young man looked at his guest, who had been compelled to turn her chair laboriously to observe him; and when he saw the perplexed and distressed look in her face—seeing nothing of the gratification and triumph that her distress partly obscured—he smiled faintly and came firmly to his feet. “It must have been an attack of vertigo,” he explained, feebly. But he continued to look at her so steadily and with so penetrating a gaze that her uneasiness increased. Had she carried her torture of him too far? Oh, well, it would do him good in the end!
“And now,” he said, in a voice that steadily grew stronger and firmer, “I will tellyoua story.” He was standing directly in front of her and looking down into her face. “One day, just after a great sorrow had fallen upon me, I was strolling along the water-front of San Francisco, and sat down upon some lumber at the end of a pier. I had not noticed a number of rough-looking young men sitting near me, until one of them said, in the course of the talk that they were having, ‘Yes, but I loved her! It was the way in which he said it that attracted my notice. I judged from his appearance that he was a laborer, perhaps a stevedore; but there was something in his voice that belongs to stricken men in all the walks of life. One of his companions said, ‘Nonsense, Frank; there’s just as good fish in the sea as ever was caught out of it.’ But Frank shook his head and said, ‘Not for me.’ The others said nothing, and after a little while Frank repeated, ‘Not for me.’ Did you ever hear a man say that?”
Wilder’s voice, which had been steadily growing louder, suddenly sank almost to a whisper as he asked his guest that question. The wrinkles were deepening in his face, and his glance had a sharpness of penetration that the young woman found it hard to meet without wincing.
“Then,” resumed Wilder, “another of his companions, seeking to show him the folly of his grief, made some remarks about the woman that I cannot repeat. Frank replied without anger: ‘Don’t say that, Joe: you mean well, but don’t say it. She was the woman I loved. Every night, now, when I put out the light to go to bed, I see her in the room; and when I go on streets that are dark, I think she’s walking with me. I loved that woman; and now I don’t know what to do. For she’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.’”
Wilder was still looking down into the face of his guest as he concluded, and she had been looking up into his; but when, with a trembling voice, he spoke the last sentence, her glance dropped to the floor. After a pause he spoke again, and his voice was full, round, and passionate.
“They killed her, madam, as they have killed many another. How it was that they killed the woman whose death had filled this rough man’s life with grief and despair, I do not know. But they killed her. Some murderous human hand shattered a scheme that the Almighty himself had laid. I wish you could have heard him say, ‘She’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.’ The sound of its agony would have found the heart that was intended to do more than keep you alive with its beating. Do you know what murder is? Do you know the difference between the gross, stupid, brutal murder that in satisfying its coarse lust for blood runs its thick neck into the halter, and the finer, daintier, infinitely more cruel murder that kills with torturing cruelty, and thus outwits the gallows? The blood-murderer is a poor fool, dwarfed in mind and crippled in soul. Perhaps he gets his full punishment when the law stretches his useless neck. But the murderer who outwits the law in his killing, who murders the innocent and unsuspecting and confiding, who makes friendship the cup from which the poison is drunk, who employs the most damnable lies and treachery, who calmly watches the increasing agonies of his victim as the poison slowly does its work,—what punishment do you think can reach such a murderer as that?”
The young man’s voice had become loud, harsh, and threatening. Violent emotions were stirring him. His whole slender frame seemed to have expanded. His face was flushed, his eyes were blazing, his fingers clutched at invisible things, his entire aspect was menacing. His guest, awed and terrified, raised her glance to his face.
“And by whom is such a murder done?” he cried. “It is done by one who, coming into the world with a soul fresh and complete from the hands of the Creator, deliberately turns aside from the way of nature and nature’s God, crushes the attributes that form our one link with heaven and our one hope of immortality, throttles all that might be useful in bringing light and strength into the lives of others, and in shameless defiance of the Almighty’s manifest will sets up false gods to worship, sacrifices self-respect for self-love, banishes the essence of life and clings to the dross, and wallows like swine in a mire of his own making. The blood-murderer is infinitely better than that. He has at least a human heart in all its savage majesty.
“And for what is such a murder done? It proceeds from a dwarfed, distorted soul, deliberately, consciously, intelligently made so by its possessor. Its purpose is to destroy the one touch of beauty, sweetness, and purity that makes us akin to the angels. It sees an exquisite flower; that flower must be plucked, else its beauty would flourish and its destiny be fulfilled. It finds love in its purest, noblest, most unselfish form between two whom God had made each for the other for the fulfilling of his own inscrutable design, and by lies and treachery proceeds to kill one and destroy the happiness of the other. What punishment, madam, is adequate for such a murder? The hands of the law would be polluted by strangling a murderer so base, so cowardly, so infinitely lower and meaner than the lowest beasts, so utterly unworthy of the honor of the gallows-tree. There can be but one adequate punishment, and only Omnipotence could devise a hell sufficient for it. And the sooner this punishment comes, the sooner will the vengeance of God be satisfied. What higher duty could rest upon a mortal standing in awe and reverence under his Maker’s law than to set the law in force?”
In the dismay and terror that now filled her soul the woman could not mistake the meaning of that threat, nor the madness that would give it force. A numbing fear, a feeling that she was sinking into a bottomless pit, put gyves upon all her faculties. In a hopeless stupor she sat, in speechless dread of the blow that she felt must fall. To her dazed attention the avenger himself stood before her in all the terror of infuriated justice free from its leash and plunging forward headlong and irresistible to satisfy its vengeance. Never had she dreamed that a mortal could face a thing so terrible as this man, who, having dragged her from death, and with infinite patience, gentleness, and unselfishness had been nursing her back to health and strength, now stood as the judge and executioner of her naked, trembling, convicted soul. Her eyes strained, her lips apart, she looked up, speechless and motionless, into his face; and to her his blazing eyes and tense frame filled all the world with vengeance, scorn, and death.
“Woman,” he cried, “whether it be murder or justice, your death would remove an infamous stain from the face of this fair world. If you can, make your peace with God, for I am going to send your damned black soul where it can do no further harm. It is with immeasurable hate, with infinite loathing, that I am going to kill you.”
He clutched her shoulder, and the hot iron grip of his fingers tore her skin. He thrust his face close to hers, and she heard the grinding of his teeth, which his parted lips showed as the fangs of a maddened beast.
“You viper!” he cried; “you have no right to life!”
She saw his free hand seeking her throat. Then her energies were unlocked. She threw back her head, and with all her might cried out,—
“Father! father! help me! save me!” The young man started back, clutched his head with both hands, and looked about in a wild and frightened way.
“What was that?” he breathlessly asked. “Did you hear? The wolves are coming down. That was the howl of the she-wolf!” In a dazed manner he found his way to the back door, opened it, passed out, and bolted it behind him.