Presently the two figures parted, and in the person of the female now hurrying down the peach walk toward the house, the astonished husband recognized his wife.
For a moment he stood gazing, stolidly it seemed, out of the window. Only the dull leaden look creeping over his face, and, presently, the panting breath gave indication of the shock he had received.
That his wife, whom he had considered as pure as the angels in Heaven, should take advantage ofhis first absence to meet another man clandestinely—another man! Bah! an old lover, for did she not kiss him at parting? Yes, that much the glasses had enabled him to see. The thought was agony, a thousand times worse than death.
“Oh, Alice! Alice! my love, my wife! Howcouldyou!” he cried to the unhearing walls, as he put his hand to his head with a gesture of infinite pain.
That, however, was the last wail of love’s weakness; then the frenzy of jealousy and revenge seized him and possessed him like a demon, and the look on his face, as he took a revolver from a secret panel in the bureau, boded ill for his future happiness.
“Fooled, the very first month of my marriage too!” he muttered; and the words seemed ground out between his clenched teeth.
“——But I will clear this thing up or put an end to it once for all, even if in doing so I have to put an end——”
His voice sank as he passed from a side door and stole rapidly through the garden to intercept the man who had just left his wife.
The narrow path through the woods brought himout, as he had anticipated, in advance of the person whom he had come to meet.
He saw him coming along a hundred yards or so away, and he felt, mixed up with his murderous feelings, a craving to see the face of the man for whom his wife had forgotten him even in their honeymoon.
The stranger bade him good-evening with an easy, nonchalant air, and was passing on his way to the station.
“Stay!” commanded the other, in a hoarse and unnatural tone.
The face that turned towards him with an air of easy surprise was wonderfully handsome, and now that it recognized an enemy in the man before it, as insolent as handsome.
“Who are you?” inquired Montgomery, in a calmer tone, of which the other possibly failed to note the full significance.
The stranger’s answer was to flick the ash from his cigar in the other’s face, and then to turn easily and coolly on his heel.
In an instant, Montgomery’s hand was on his shoulder, and the two men faced each other at bay.
“You met a lady just now, and you kissed her on leaving?” burst from between Montgomery’s white lips.
“I certainly did.”
“Do you know who she is?”
“Quite well.”
“And you dare to tell me that to my face?”
“Yes, and also to tell you that I hope to meet and kiss the lady a great many more times.”
“Never, at least, in this world again,” grimly broke in the other, lashed to madness by the insolent smile of his antagonist, and stepping back a pace, he levelled the revolver full at the stranger’s face.
As the other saw the gleam of the barrel he shouted “Stay!” and threw back his head, but the action was too late, the bullet struck him in the temple, and he fell to the ground, his face bathed in blood.
For a moment the other stood motionless with the smoking weapon in his hand. Then he stooped and looked in the face of the dead man.
All the amazing fury had died out of his heart; he looked towards the home where his wife was awaiting him, and he murmured, “God forgiveyou, Alice, you have made me a murderer.” Then there came to him, as to all similarly circumstanced, the brute instinct of self-preservation. “No one saw me arrive,” he muttered to himself, “no one will suspect me; still, I would likeherto know that I had found out her crime and punished it.”
As he said this, a strange, ghastly smile, weird in the extreme, crept over his face, and he laid on the dead man’s breast gently—not in tribute to the man, but in reverence of death—the wedding-ring which he had bought that day to replace the missing one.
“She will understand by this just how it happened,” he murmured, as he turned to go.
Once he looked back and saw the dark form lying on the lonely road, and, so strange a composite is humanity, he felt a thrill of revengeful joy, to think how refined a method of punishment he had discovered for his wife.
Poor, short-sighted, misguided man; how little he dreamt of the widespread harm which that small, innocent-looking gold hoop was destined to work.
THEshriek of the railway whistle recalled George Montgomery to a sense of his desperate situation, and, at the same time, suggested a means of escape. The 8.45 fast up-train was arriving. It was due in New York an hour later. There was the barest possibility that he might be arrested on his arrival in New York, but, on the other hand, the general ignorance as to his having been at the scene of the murder, the distance from the telegraph station, and the infinite advantages presented by the great metropolis for concealing his identity, far out-balanced the possible risk, and the fugitive hesitatingly entered the train.
For the first time in his life he anathemized the long, well-lit cars common to all, and remembered with regret the narrow and private first-class carriages which he had seen on the English railroads. How he would have liked to bury himself between their sheltering cushions, and by means of a handsome fee to the guard have secured the compartment to himself.
Who shall describe what the murderer feels during the first hour of his criminal life, when the crime has been unpremeditated, and there has been no previous process of hardening up? An hour ago this man was one who rightly claimed the respect of all his fellow-men, and had his claim abundantly allowed.Nowhe had fallen, sheer and at a single plunge, through civilization’s whole strata of respectability, to find himself jarred and stupefied by the fall on the bed-rock of crime, below which nothing human goes. He picked up a paper lying in the adjoining seat, and his eye caught the heading of a flagrant defalcation unearthed that day. Two hours previous he had read the same news and had felt only contempt for the miserable delinquent;nowthe mere swindler seemed as far removed from him in the category of crime as Lazarus in Heaven seemed removed from Dives in torment.
As the train sped on, the remembrance of his wife’s infidelity finally drove all thought of his crime from his mind. As memory, ruthless and unsparing, pictured to his gaze all that they hadbeen to each other, and recalled every incident of their courtship and marriage, when he had so blindly and foolishly thought that they were all the world to each other, the limits of the carriage in which he traveled seemed impossible to hold him, and the old lust of murder crept up on his brain like a returning springtide.
When the fresh paroxysm had spent itself the train entered New York.
Within twenty minutes a carriage stopped at a certain number in Nassau Street, and the fugitive, with the aid of his private key, entered his office. As he did so, the janitor handed him some letters which had arrived since he had left. These he carelessly cast aside, reserving one, the handwriting of which seemed familiar. This he laid on one side. There was no lack of decision in George Montgomery’s actions. First of all, he wrote a letter to his partner, saying that circumstances beyond his control compelled his temporary absence, and requesting that until further advised, a certain sum be paid monthly to his wife. He also intimated that he had taken with him a copy of the firm’s telegraphic code which he would use if necessary.
After concluding such arrangements as he deemedadvisable for the proper conduct of the business during his absence, he withdrew from the safe a considerable sum of money, substituting his check on a leading bank for the same. Then, after ringing for a messenger boy, he ran his fingers through his address-book and having consulted the shipping list to see as to the outgoing vessels, a sudden inspiration seemed to seize him, and he ordered a cab and drove to the private residence of Isamord Hadley, principal owner of the New York & Spanish Steamship Company.
“The tide serves at 3A.M.,” he muttered, as he took his seat in a cab, “and I believe Spain has no extradition treaty with this country, and if she has, no American detective could find me there, so long as I have plenty of money.”
To the majority of criminals such a reflection would have been like a reprieve from death, but the brooding brow and leaden eye of this man told that there was no balm in Gilead for his tortured soul, and that wherever he went, and to the last breath of his life, he must carry with him, like an incurable, malignant cancer, the knowledge of a crime, horrifying beyond conception to his mind, and yet unrepented of, because amply justified by the monstrous circumstance of his bride’s infidelity. His unbalanced mind inveighed against Heaven for loading him with a trial so far beyond mortal strength or endurance. Like stormy gusts of passion these wild, rebellious thoughts swept across his mind, wrecking and devastating the training of a lifetime as they went, and leaving him faint and breathless with their fury.
During the mental lull which followed one of these outbursts he bethought him of the letter of which the handwriting was familiar. This letter, which he had selected from the others which the janitor had given him, he had placed in his pocket, and he now essayed to open it. The jolting of the cab and the uncertain light of the street, however, made him change his mind, and he returned the letter to his pocket unopened.
Presently the cab stopped and the fugitive alighted. Upon inquiry, he found that his friend was at home and ready to see him. These two men had been bosom friends from their boyhood, and their friendship had in maturer years become intensified and solidified by the fact that they were brother Masons in the same lodge.
Isamord Hadley’s face grew white and grave as his friend told him of the events of that terrible evening.
“You surely must be dreaming, George,” he said at length, “I have not seen much of your wife, but from what I did see I would pledge my life unhesitatingly on her innocence. For Heaven’s sake, man, go back to her.”
“Never while I live will I willingly look on her face again.” This was said fiercely and with an air of great determination, but with a quiver in the brusqueness of his voice, and then the poor tortured soul turned his head to hide the great sobs which now shook his frame. The kindly voice and the sympathetic eye of his old friend had, for the time being, exorcised the demon of jealousy, and now poor George Montgomery stood revealed a most miserable, broken-hearted man.
“You forget the murder,” at length he faltered; “how could I ever go back?”
Two hours later Mr. Hadley left his house in company with George Montgomery in disguise. A cab took them to the docks, and when they stepped on board the “City of Seville” Montgomery was introduced to the Captain as Mr.Angus Forman, a citizen of Chicago bound for Cadiz. As owner of the vessel, Mr. Hadley bespoke for his friend every kind attention and assistance which the captain and officers could render him. Before leaving he took an opportunity of explaining to the captain that his friend’s journey was partly undertaken on account of his health, which had become impaired through over-work, and partly through a recent family trouble, the details of which he did not enter into.
At 3.15A.M.the “City of Seville” raised her anchor and left her moorings, and when the early summer’s morning dawned, she was fast leaving the land behind her.
As the outline of the shore grew dim, the solitary passenger on board the “City of Seville” strained his gaze to catch the latest glimpse of land, and the summons of the steward to breakfast fell unheeded on his ears. At length, when the haze hid the land from view, and only the heaving billows met his eye on every side, he turned away.
Half an hour later the captain on the bridge saw the figure of a man fall prone on deck. The occurrence was unusual, and the captain left his post to ascertain what it meant. He found his guest,Mr. Angus Forman, lying insensible with an open letter tightly grasped in his hand. By the captain’s orders, the passenger was removed to his cabin, where he shortly afterwards regained consciousness. As sensibility returned, his first gaze was directed to the letter, which was still clenched, all crumpled, in his stiffened grasp.
“Oh, unhappy wretch that I am, and more than murderer,” he moaned. “My poor, faithful darling, I have killed your brother and now you must loathe me forevermore. Oh, why did I leave that cursed ring there to establish my guilt!” As the wailing died from his lips, he turned from the light as a creature stricken to death retreats to the darkest corner of its lair to die in.
That night the strange passenger of the “City of Seville” was raving in delirium, and for weeks, while the sailing vessel ploughed on its monotonous way, he lay between life and death.
At length there came a day when the watchers by the invalid’s side surrendered all hope, and it was then that, for the first time, the captain felt it incumbent upon him to read the letter which had apparently precipitated the catastrophe.
In itself the letter gave little clue to the secretof his passenger, but coupled with the latter’s incoherent ravings, the captain was able to arrive at a fairly accurate knowledge of what the secret was.
The letter was addressed to George Montgomery and was evidently from his wife’s grandmother. In it the writer intimated that her grand-daughter, through dread that it might lessen her husband’s love for her, had concealed from him the fact that she had a scapegrace brother. The old lady thought thatanysecret between husband and wife was harmful, and in that belief she had thought it best to make him acquainted with the fact, so that he might find some opportunity to pave the way towards inviting his wife’s full confidence, and so remove what might be a future cause of grave misunderstanding. “I am the more anxious to set you two right on this matter,” she continued, “because I feel that sooner or later you will yourself hear of my wretched grandson from outside sources, and if the indications are correct, sooner rather than later, as he is again in some trouble or other, and likely to come for help to his sister, as he has been in the habit of doing. It seemed to me that I saw him lurking about ourhouse to-day, but my eyesight is very indifferent and I cannot speak positively as to this.” The letter concluded with an urgent appeal to him to remember his wife’s sensitiveness of mind as well as her delicacy of constitution, and to invite and not force her confidence.
After he had finished the letter, the captain looked at the name on the envelope. He was a self-contained, trustworthy man, and beyond a prolonged “Ah—h,” as he noted the discrepancy between the names of Montgomery and Forman, he gave no utterance to his feelings, as he passed to his cabin, where he again sealed up the passenger’s letter and addressed it (Mr. Angus Forman).
At midnight the captain was summoned to the sick man’s side.
“He is sinking fast,” explained the first officer in a low tone, “but he is conscious at last, and wishes to see you.”
ASAlice Montgomery was returning to the house from the peach walk, where she had met her brother according to his appointment, she caught a glimpse of her husband hastily entering the wood. He was walking fast, and before she had decided to call to him he had entered the wood and was lost to her sight.
“He is searching for me,” she murmured, pleased at his apparent precipitancy, and yet a little anxious as to how she was to explain her failure to meet him. As she followed him into the wood her steps grew slower as she found herself unable to frame to her entire satisfaction an excuse for her very glaring omission.
“He must have gone to the Lake Summer-House, thinking to find me there,” she presently surmised, as she came to two cross forest paths. Saying this she entered the road opposite to that which her husband had taken. When she reached theSummer-House and found it empty, a look of alarm for the first time crossed her face.
“Oh, I hope he has not met Tom,” she whispered to herself half in dismay. At that instant a shot rang through the wood, startling her almost into a cry. “I wonder what that can be,” she exclaimed, “George has no fire-arms; but perhaps it is some one shooting at the squirrels.”
After a moment’s hesitation she retraced her steps towards the direction of the report, and passed into the foot-path taken by her husband some ten minutes previously.
This brought her to the turnpike road, which was deserted, but for an object lying on the ground some fifty yards away, and not clearly discernible at that distance in the fading light.
A strange tremor filled her breast and almost palsied her limbs as she moved towards the inanimate object lying so still and awful; and now as she neared it, fast taking the semblance of a human body.
There are moments whose experience no pen can describe, and far be it from us to attempt the impossible. What of agony and horror Alice Montgomery suffered when she saw her brother lyingdead on the public highway, while his parting kiss was yet warm on her lips, to be understood must be endured. Her first impulse was to give way to her uncontrollable grief; but at that instant her straining eyes caught sight of an object which froze the first cry on her lips. This was the new wedding-ring which shone cold and distinct against the dark coat worn by the dead man. As it lay there it seemed to voice the full intent with which the murderer had placed it on his victim’s breast.
As if carved in pale cold marble the young bride stood there staring at the dead body, and at the awful ring shrieking out its horrid tale. So silent and still she stood that the birds fluttered near to her on the road, and the squirrels stopped midway in their flight, and sat upright in the dusty way to regard her.
Then, like a statue endowed with vitality, she stooped and removed the ring from its place, murmuring in a low monotone, “The ring he bought for me to-day.” Then she looked at it strangely and almost coldly, and finally placed it in her pocket-book. Only a little shiver and a gasp disturbed the calm—that was all.
With a desperate effort and with a self-possession bordering on the horrible, she removed the revolver, of which the handle was discernible, from the dead man’s pocket, and peered into each separate chamber. Alas! they were all full. For an instant the long white fingers grasped the weapon and then a cartridge driven from its place fell into her palm. This she also placed in her pocket-book. Then she stooped and picked up the empty shell which the murderer had cast from his revolver after firing. Would it fit her brother’s weapon? It did; the pistols were of the same (Smith & Wesson) make and also of similar calibre.
Her next task was a still more terrible one, but it was performed without a tremor of the quick and capable fingers. With gentle yet unfaltering touch she took the match-box from her brother’s vest pocket, and, having abstracted a single match from it, she returned it to its place. Then, moving into the shadow of the wood, lest the flame should attract attention, she applied the lighted match to the empty chamber, smoking and discoloring it as if the pistol had been recently fired.
This done, she laid the revolver close to the outstretched hand of the dead man.
“God forgive me,” she said in a low tone, “for making my brother a suicide, but it is to save my husband’s life.”
This was said with the same unnatural calm, and then the speaker knelt beside the dead man and kissed him on the lips which were still unchilled by death. Once, twice, three times, her lips, colder than those of the dead, sought his face, then she took out her handkerchief to wipe the blood which was penetrating the poor, unseeing, wide-open eyes. Then, remembering the part which she had to play, she refrained.
“God help me, my deceit has killed my brother; I must try to save my husband.” Murmuring this she turned from the dreadful spectacle on the road and passed into the wood with a strange mechanical woodenness of step, as if the shock which had spared her brain and hands had benumbed or paralyzed her lower limbs.
As she neared the house her grandfather rose from his seat on the piazza, and advanced to meet her.
“What is the matter, child?” he cried, alarmed beyond measure at the ghastly face on which the seal of a great horror had been stamped, and alarmedno less at the unnatural calm of his grand-daughter’s manner, as she stood before him with staring eyes, whose dilated pupils suggested insanity.
“Grandpapa, go down to the road,” she murmured pantingly, and with a strange catch in her voice, “down by the white elm tree; something terrible has happened to Tom.” And, her gruesome work being ended, poor over-spent nature gave way, and she fell unconscious to the ground.
When she had been restored to sensibility and carried to her room, her grandfather, calling the colored butler to follow him, went to investigate the cause of her emotion. The gardener, who was found watering the plants in the front, was also summoned to accompany his master.
What the three found the reader already knows. The old white-haired grandfather uttered no sound, and only the exclamations of the horrified servants broke the weird silence.
“A lamp and a stretcher, Julius, quick!” exclaimed the old man, silencing with a wave of his hand the lamentations of the others. Then he stooped and put his ear to the chest of the silent figure; long and patiently he listened, and then, as if reluctant to believe the worst, or still uncertain,he undid the coat and vest and re-applied his ear to catch the faintest flicker of life, if it be that any such were left in the prostrate body.
“Your ear is younger than mine, try whether you can hear any action in his heart.” This was said to the butler, who bent his head in silent obedience to the commands of his master.
“Seems to me that I can hearsomething, sah!”
The minutes appeared hours while the two waited in the gathering gloom for the return of Julius with the lamp and the stretcher. At last, however, he arrived, and the inanimate body was carried gently to the house. Five minutes later a mounted groom left for the nearest doctor. When the latter had made his examination he announced that life was not extinct, and that while it hung by a thread, there was still room for hope. The bullet had fractured the skull and caused concussion of the brain, but the latter organ had not been penetrated, the missile having glanced from the bone in consequence of the slanting position of the forehead at the moment of fire.
“I think it right to tell you,” the doctor said at parting, “that while the patient’s life may possibly be saved, his reason will probably be endangered.Do you think the young man intended to commit suicide?” he added by way of inquiry, as his last remark was received in silence.
“I think not,” was the reply; “he was full of life, and was constantly getting into trouble, but nothing weighed heavily on his mind; no, I imagine that he took out his revolver to fire at some over-bold squirrel, perhaps, and while examining the chambers to see whether they were all loaded he probably touched the hair-trigger unintentionally; I think that is, perhaps, the correct solution of the mystery.”
“I have no doubt that it is,” said the doctor, as he turned to go. “Good-night, sir.”
WHENthe young bride, Alice Montgomery, pale and wan, the mere spectre of her former self, left the sick room for the first time, a month had elapsed from the date of the events narrated in the last chapter. The interval had brought no tidings of her missing husband, beyond the intelligence conveyed by his partner that he had visited the office on the night of his departure, and arranged for her maintenance during a prolonged absence. This uncertainty as to his fate had greatly retarded her recovery, and the triumph which her youth had thus gained in dragging her back to life was, as yet, too uncertain to mitigate the anxiety felt by her aged relatives. Her brother had recovered from his wound, and had, in a measure, regained his health, but the mental disorder predicted by the medical adviser was now only too apparent. Of the occurrences of that dreadful night he had evidently no recollection, and he never spoke of them. His mind seemedperpetually occupied with monetary troubles, and no assurance on the part of his grandfather that these had all been adjusted served to allay his apprehension. From a youthful irrational creature of erratic habits he seemed suddenly to have passed into careworn middle life, burdened with a thousand gloomy anxieties.
Altogether the house of Arlington lay in a sombre shadow during those bright summer days, and many silvery hairs were added to its aged heads in the long weeks of trouble and grief through which they had to pass.
“Grandma, have you got my purse?” suddenly asked the young bride, while seated on the veranda one afternoon in the early days of her convalescence.
“Yes, dear,” replied the other, a delicate flush mantling her cheeks as she thought of its contents—the cartridge and the wedding-ring; “shall I fetch it?”
“Please, dear; has anyone else seen it, grannie?”
“No, love; I have kept it locked up since the night of the—the accident.”
No more passed between these two on the subject, but each understood the other, and if the gloom did not lighten with the mutual understanding,their hearts grew stronger to endure its burden.
“Why do you not wear your wedding-ring?” her grandmother inquired one day.
“I lost it the morning George left.”
A look of perplexity crossed the other’s face, but the trouble in her grand-daughter’s eyes checked further inquiry.
When the “City of Seville” sailed into the port of Cadiz the captain of the vessel handed a sealed envelope to his passenger, Angus Forman, with the assurance, somewhat stiffly delivered, that his secret, whatever it might be, was safe with him.
The other received the envelope in silence, and when he broke the seal and found the letter from his wife’s grandmother, which had been the means of revealing his victim’s identity, he read it again without apparent emotion.
During the long weeks of delirium and slow recovery to health in which he had passed the interval of the sailing vessel’s slow passage, he had discounted all human misery it seemed to him, and as he stood on the deck, the mere skeleton of his former self, he felt alike indifferent to the approach of weal or woe.
Far down in his breast there ached the dull ceaseless pain of a love forever lost, which drowned every other feeling and made him indifferent to it.
When the custom-house officers came aboard he was surprised—after a languid fashion, and as one thinking of some casual acquaintance rather than himself—that no detectives accompanied them, and that he was not arrested for murder, but when he found that no inquiry was made for him, and he was at liberty to go and come as he pleased, there was no corresponding relief or elation visible in his manner.
On bidding the captain adieu he thanked him for his great kindness. “I owe you my life,” he remarked, “and when I am certain that I am grateful to you for preserving it, I will thank you more warmly,” with which enigmatical sentence he passed ashore.
As health returned his tortured mind sought relief in excitement and he left Cadiz for Madrid, where he strove to allay the grief which gnawed at his heart by plunging into the wild excitement of that hot-headed and hot-blooded capital. After a time the ferocious excitement of the weekly bull fight ceased to deaden the agony which preyed athis heart, and he allied himself with a revolutionary movement, which had the advantage of promising equal excitement with some risk to the life which had long been a burden to him.
The Carlist rising seemed like the first glimpse of Heaven’s good will to him, and as such he embraced the opportunity it afforded. The contagious excitement aroused by the Pretender, thrilled through his being, and, at length, he opened his soul to his fellow-men. It were more correct, perhaps, to say fellow-man, since his sole companion and confidant was a much-travelled Spanish soldier of fortune, whose desperate circumstances, as narrated by himself, had first melted the icy reserve which begirt the heart-sore wanderer.
As the two travelled together to the front, the stranger, by insidious inquiries gathered piecemeal George Montgomery’s history. More particularly, however, he seemed interested in the bulky telegraphic code which the other carried with him, and he was puzzled, he said, with his eternal smile, to understand how a book of the kind could be of any practical value; he appeared to be unlettered in business ways, and the other, to while away the long evenings, explained to him the working ofthe code, as he would have elucidated any ordinary puzzle.
“It seems plain to you, doesn’t it?” said his friend, one night, laughingly, as he clasped his head in his palms at the end of a long explanation, “yet I swear the whole thing is Greek to me. I suppose my brain must be unusually dense.”
That night a false alarm was given, and, in the confusion, George Montgomery was parted from his friend. When order was at length restored, and the former endeavored to collect his baggage, he found that his telegraphic cipher was missing. A hasty march was made from the dangerous locality, and in the darkness he was parted from his friend, whom he did not see again. “It is the fortune of war,” he remarked, somewhat bitterly to himself, for he had grown to like his new-found friend, and in the daily exigencies of an exciting life he soon forgot his passing acquaintance.
The date of this alarm was the 5th of August. On the 10th the firm of Alford & Montgomery, in New York, received a cable message in cipher, of which the translation was:
“Please remit by cable to the Bank of Madrid,five thousand dollars, payable to my order without identification.“George Montgomery.”
“Please remit by cable to the Bank of Madrid,five thousand dollars, payable to my order without identification.
“George Montgomery.”
On receipt of this despatch the firm telegraphed to Mrs. Montgomery, and received in reply a request to assure her husband that all was well, and to beg him to return to his wife without delay.
On the evening of the 10th, the Atlantic cable carried the following message in cipher:
“We have remitted five thousand dollars, by cable, as requested. Your wife entreats you to return, and says, ‘All is well.’“Alford & Montgomery.”
“We have remitted five thousand dollars, by cable, as requested. Your wife entreats you to return, and says, ‘All is well.’
“Alford & Montgomery.”
When this message was delivered and translated, the receiver smiled strangely as he lit a fresh cigar, adding, after he had established its fire, “Seeing how easy it has been, I’m only sorry, friend Montgomery, that I did not cable for twenty thousand dollars instead of five thousand dollars. It was a bright idea to steal that very useful code of yours.”
At that moment the clank of a heavy sabre on the marble floor of the hotel smote on his ear, and the weight of a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.
“I arrest you, señor, at the instance of the Bank of Madrid.”
“The charge?” fiercely ejaculated the other, finding his struggles useless.
“Forgery,” was the grim and laconic reply.
“Ah, well, that is an old hallucination of the bank’s and easily answered; let me light a cigarette any way,” urged the other, with simulated indifference, as he turned the folded dispatch towards the light. The officer made no objection and presently his prisoner ground the ashes of the telegraphic message beneath his heel.
At Arlington, Alice Montgomery waited with agonizing anxiety for a cabled reply to the loving message which she had sent across the ocean to her unhappy husband. As the days passed without bringing her any answering message she persuaded her husband’s partner to telegraph again to Madrid. Still no response, and still another message sped on its way beneath the ocean, only, however, to result in the same stony silence.
At length, in reply to a letter sent to the Bank of Madrid, there came the intelligence that the $5,000 remitted had never been applied for, and that the Cable Company had only been able to deliver the first message, all the others being stillat the hotel where the husband had received the first one.
Perhaps the information that her husband had received the loving message which she had sent him, and had closed his ears and his heart to her piteous appeal, was the bitterest drop in the cup of Mrs. Montgomery’s affliction; and for a while it seemed as if in grinding out the ashes of the cablegram beneath his heel in the hotel at Madrid, the villain who had stolen George Montgomery’s cipher, had likewise ground out the life of his now thoroughly heartbroken wife. But no thought of compunction crossed the mind of the felon, now languishing in a Spanish cell and torturing his mind how best he could manage to get hold of that money in the bank, so that with a portion of it he might bribe his jailers and regain his freedom.
“I wonder how my American friend enjoys fighting the Spanish troops?” he smilingly queried of himself one day as he sat under the great white-washed wall of the prison court rolling a fresh cigarette.
At that moment, George Montgomery, sorely wounded, was bleeding his life out on the sunnyslopes of the Sierra Morena mountains, and murmuring brokenly, now faintly, now passionately, as his fever ebbed and flowed, the name of his dearly loved wife, whom fate had at last, to all appearances, forever separated from him.
INa Spanish monastery George Montgomery recovered from the wounds which had so nearly proved fatal, and, by-and-by, when the last gleanings of the autumnal crop of grapes shrivelled on its southern walls, he felt the dawnings of returning convalescence.
As his eye, released from the shadow of death, swept the panorama of mountain ranges and smiling valleys visible from his lofty eyrie in the monastery, earth seemed very fair to him, and the life, so hardly retained, acquired a double value in his sight.
His mind, with recovering strength, began to regain its equilibrium, and his disordered brain was at last able to review in proper perspective the situation as between himself and (first) his wife and (second) his crime.
As his thoughts, purged from the dross of passion in that habitation where nothing unworthy could live, calmly reviewed the situation, he felt abasedto think how selfishly he had acted—how cowardly indeed, he thought, as he scourged himself with bitter self-recriminations.
Clear to him it seemed, as the evening star which rose on his view nightly and darkened every other constellation by its brilliancy, that his duty was to have communicated with his wife on the first available moment after learning of the horrible mistake he had made in assuming her brother to be her lover; and this he ought to have done at all hazards to himself.
Was it too late? What might not have happened in those months of silence?
These questions tortured his mind day by day with ever-increasing violence, and finally, and reluctantly, the holy brotherhood permitted the departure of the wounded man in order to enable him, while yet perhaps there was time, to make atonement for a grievous wrong.
He bade the monks adieu with unfeigned regret. The odor of sanctity which seemed to pervade the very walls of the monastery had impressed him powerfully; he had seen how, while ministering to human trouble and endowed with broad human sympathies, the brothers still held themselves “unspotted from the world,” and he felt, on bidding them farewell, like an African traveler, who, driven by desperate circumstances, leaves behind him the last well and the last glimpse of verdure to plunge into the unknown and illimitable desert beyond, strewn with the skeletons of those who have gone before.
He shuddered at times when he reflected what possibly awaited him as he remembered that awful figure lying on the cold road with the night descending on it like a pall. He shuddered but he did not hesitate. The monastic teachings had cleared his brain and outlined a path which he had determined to follow, if his life lasted, until he reached the desired goal.
He still had ample funds in his possession, and he was accordingly able to reach Cadiz without delay. Immediately on arriving he wrote a long letter to his wife, explaining fully the circumstances under which he had fled; he concealed nothing: it was part of his merited punishment he felt (and that not the least painful) to be compelled to make the humiliating confession to his wife that he had suspected her fidelity even during their honeymoon.
The writing of this letter was a terrible ordealand called into distressing activity the keenest emotions.
Never perhaps had the reasons for utter despair taken such palpable shape as when the closing lines of his own letter lay before him in all their stern significance.
“I shall never cease to love you while life lasts,” these said, “but I know that I can now awake in you only feelings of abhorrence as the murderer of your brother. I will not try to see you again, for indeed I think that one glance of reproach from your eyes would kill me outright where I stood.
“I am leaving this city within twenty-four hours not to return. I cannot give you my address and I would not if I could. I have only one request to make, that you will endeavor to blot all recollection of my most unhappy self from your mind. And even that miserable solace is, I feel, to be denied me, for however time might efface all memory of me as a husband, eternity itself could not obliterate the horrible recollection of me as your brother’s murderer.”
The following day, when the “City of Havana” sailed for Cuba, George Montgomery (or ratherAngus Forman, for he had resumed his assumed name), was one of the passengers.
Why he had made the West Indies his objective point he might perhaps have been unable truthfully to decide. The reason that he gave to himself was that his mind required yet another change of scene, while his enfeebled body demanded that it should be to a still warmer clime. Deep down in his heart, however, he was conscious of another reason, a craving or soul-hunger to be nearer the Mecca of his heart. He fought in vain against the tumultuous joy which swelled in his breast when an inward voice whispered day by day and louder and louder as the vessel surged on its way, “half-way home,” and yet he told himself with a despair to which each breath of hope added keener poignancy, that the second half of that way his feet would never traverse.
On the fifth day out from Cadiz, an event occurred which had considerable effect on his after life. As he stood on the deck listlessly watching a school of porpoises which had raced alongside the ship, he was conscious of a considerable commotion among the sailors. The cause was the discovery of a stowaway among the merchandise in thehold. As the wretched prisoner was dragged forward for the captain’s inspection, Montgomery recognized in him his old companion, the Spanish soldier of fortune, De Leon, who had disappeared on the night of the alarm when they were on their way to join the forces of Don Carlos. To the readers this enterprising gentleman is known as the man who stole the telegraphic cipher, who used it to cable for $5,000, and who finally wound up in a Spanish prison before his roguery was consummated to his satisfaction.
By appealing to the cupidity of his jailer, he had at last induced the latter to secure a temporary substitute and leave of absence for a few hours from the jail in order to obtain the money from the bank which the latter had been instructed to pay over to George Montgomery on demand.
He had gone to the bank under the keen surveillance of his confederate, the jailer, only to find, however, that the advice to pay the money had been cancelled.
This was a death-blow to his hopes, but the hardy villain, surmising that liberty even without wealth was better than incarceration, determined to make a bold dash for liberty while he had the chance.
Watching his opportunity he tripped up his disappointed and now furious companion, the jailer, with such violence as to rob that baffled functionary of what little intelligence he possessed, for the space of several minutes. De Leon’s knowledge of the purlieus of Madrid enabled him to hide in safety until a suitable opportunity arose for him to leave the city, and through his ingenuity as an adventurer, he was able to reach the coast in safety. There, after a time, he had been able to secrete himself on board the “City of Havana” while the careless sailors were enjoying their afternoon siesta.
On board this Spanish ship the captain’s views of a stowaway’s crime were, to say the least, somewhat harsh.
The wretched man’s starved condition and the misery of his appearance aroused no spark of pity in the breast of the unfeeling skipper, whose moustache bristled with rage at the thought of the daring and effrontery of the man who had perpetrated such a fraud upon him and the owners of the ship.
“Fifty lashes on the bare back at once, and to be handed over to the authorities in Havana on landing,” was the sentence decreed, with theaccompaniment of many elaborate and inspiring Castilian oaths by the haughty Spaniard. His desperate situation paralyzed the stowaway into silence. One glance at the ruthless face of the captain satisfied the poor wretch, whose career as an adventurer enabled him to read the human countenance like an open page, that appeal was hopeless, while of means of escape there were none, with only the wide waste of waters as a refuge.
As the hunted gaze of the captive scanned all the faces around him he suddenly drew back as if struck in the face by a blow, and cast his eyes downward to the deck. He had recognized George Montgomery. In an instant he summed up the situation in this wise: “If this man identifies me I shall be handed over to the authorities at Havana, not as a suspicious character, but as a thief and a forger, and that, added to my conspiracy with the jailer and my escape, will ensure me twenty years of the galleys.”
As these thoughts crashed like a shell through De Leon’s brain, he forgot about the flogging which he was going to receive; the enormity of the terrible punishment awaiting him in Spain obliterating every other thought. All his nativehardihood had deserted him, and he hung limp and with closed eyes against the mast to which he had been lashed in readiness for the ordered whipping.
He was vaguely conscious of a sudden silence among the men around him, and, at length opening his eyes fearfully, he saw Montgomery in conversation with the captain, and pointing towards him. He saw, or at least concluded, that his worst fears had been realized; that the man he had robbed had recognized him, and as he fancied he could hear him detailing the particulars of his crime, he closed his eyes hurriedly and the pallor on his face whitened to the hue of death.
In his conclusion that Montgomery had recognized him the miserable culprit was correct, but as the reader is aware, the former had no cognizance of his theft or of his other attempted frauds, and his conversation with the captain at the moment was simply a proposition to pay double compensation to the ship’s owners for the fare of which they had been defrauded, together with a handsomedouceurto the captain himself for the liberation of the prisoner.
The captain listened in moody silence, but under his lids an avaricious gleam shot outwardsand downwards. “Captain! he is an old fellow-traveler of mine, and a right good fellow; let him go; if you had ever seen him as I have seen him in good circumstances, you would be shocked at the change in his appearance; he has suffered enough already, God knows.”
This appeal moved the captain not one whit, but it provided a way for him to secure the proffered consideration, and the grimness of his features relaxed as if the other had released him from a disagreeable and painful duty from which naturally his whole soul revolted.
“Say no more, señor, your assurance as to that unfortunate gentleman’s respectability is received unreservedly. I can, of course, accept nothing for myself; the knowledge that I have been of service to you is in itself sufficient reward (this with a profound bow and radiant smile), but my duty to the owners of the ship compels me to accept your offer to recoup us for this man’s passage money. If, however, you will see the purser, these details can be readily arranged. I will instruct him to receive the money;” whereupon the captain left for the purser’s office.
When George Montgomery had settled accountswith the purser, he had not only paid double fare for his erring friend, but he had, in response to a somewhat broad hint from the purser, paid a further sum of $250, which the latter intimated would be the probable fine imposed on the captain if it were discovered by the owners that he had not inflicted the usual punishment on the stowaway. Perhaps it was to avoid the possibility of the owners discovering such a flagrant dereliction of duty that no entries were made in the ship’s books of the sums handed over that day!
When George Montgomery returned on deck, he found the inanimate figure of his old fellow-traveler still bound to the mast. In response to his glance of surprise at the captain, the latter explained with a smile and another overpowering bow, that he thought Señor Forman might like to release the prisoner himself.
Accepting a knife tendered by one of the crew he advanced to the mast. The sight of the pale and haggard features covered with the glassy moisture of a sudden and unspeakable terror might have moved a heart of stone. The heavy lids still tightly closed the horrified eyes, and the whole aspect was that of the dead.
“I have come to release you,” George whispered in his ear, but the other gave no sign, save only that a dark flush began to creep up over his neck.
“Don’t you remember me, old friend? Great Heavens, a glass of brandy here, quick! The man is dying!”
The eyes had opened wide and stared horribly while you might count five, and the fugitive color had died suddenly away and the body fallen a dead weight on the ropes.
But “good news never kills,” and at length the sorrowful knight of fortune recovered consciousness to find himself alone with the friend whom he had wronged, and who was now bending over him in eager solicitude. His bonds had been removed and he lay in his friend’s cabin. When he had satisfied himself that he was not the victim of some pleasing hallucination, and that he was really at liberty, he took his friend’s hand between both his own, and kissed it again and again, while the hot tears rained unheeded from his poor eyes.
“Ah, you are very weak,” explained his friend, “but here comes the cook with some nice nourishing soup.”
GEORGE MONTGOMERYtook an early opportunity of explaining to his friend De Leon, that, for certain reasons, he was traveling under an assumed name. To the other, it is lamentable to add, this appeared the most natural thing in the world, and he never gave the matter a second thought.
The devotion of the rescued stowaway to the friend who had saved him was touching in the extreme. He followed him like his shadow, with a dog-like fidelity which awoke the sneers of the supercilious Spaniards. There were occasions when these sneers roused the ire of the patient De Leon and prompt retribution seemed very near the heads of the offenders, but the butt of their shafts recollected himself in time and dissembled his wrath, conscious that he was not yet quite out of danger, and that so long as he was on board ship and within touch, he was by no means beyond the reach of Spanish malice.
At length the island of Cuba was reached, and the two friends left the ship in safety.
On the night of their arrival, as the two were seated in the Hotel Pasaje, in Havana, the second officer of the ship, who had been celebrating his return with some old friends, entered the hotel. When he saw De Leon, he pointed him out jeeringly to the friends who accompanied him, as “the stowaway.”
He had been a special offender in this respect on board ship, so that it scarcely needed the fresh insult to fire De Leon’s blood.
When the latter noticed that the officer’s companions were regarding him curiously, he rose to his feet with much deliberation, and, lifting his full wine-glass from the table, he threw its contents straight into the officer’s face. As the latter endeavored to wipe the dark claret from his face, De Leon, with the air of a grandee of Spain, raised his hat to the other gentleman; then fixing his gaze on the officer, he said; “I am at your service, señor.”
The interposition of the hotel officials prevented any continuation of the quarrel there, and the entire party left together. George Montgomery,who accompanied his friend, was in dismay at the quarrel and the duel with the officer which seemed impending.
“You do not know, my friend, what you are about. If you knew what it was to have blood on your hands you would die rather than shed it.”
The other glanced at him strangely for a moment, and then replied, “In anything but this I would obey you willingly, but I am by birth a Spanish noble, and this man has insulted me. I have avenged that insult, and now I should be a coward if I did not give him the satisfaction he requires.”
At this moment one of the officer’s friends approached Montgomery and informed him courteously that the gentleman who had been insulted demanded satisfaction, and intimated that the more promptly it could be afforded, the more it would be to the taste of his principal.
As George Montgomery hesitated and then protested that nothing would induce him to sanction a duel, De Leon took the matter into his own hands, and said, “This gentleman is the only friend I have in the city; he will not act, therefore I must dispense with a second, and I say I am ready nowto meet your principal. I have no preference as to weapons, but as the choice rests with me, and to save time, I name the rapier. I am content to accompany you alone, and as soon as we can secure the weapons, I will go with you and settle the matter.”
The other bowed gravely, and, promising to return in a few minutes, he left.
“Good-bye, for the present, at least,” exclaimed De Leon with outstretched hand to his friend, as his opponent’s second returned with the rapiers under his arm. “If all goes well I will return to the hotel in a couple of hours, and if not, why then dearest of friends, adieu,” and he raised the other’s hand to his lips and kissed it, not formally, but tenderly and even passionately.
“Oh! I cannot let you go alone,” returned the other. “It is all wrong, I know, and can only build up untold misery in the future, but I cannot turn my back on a friend.”
In reply De Leon pressed his hand, and together they entered one of three carriages which had been summoned for the use of the party.
A drive of twenty minutes landed them on a lonely spot hedged in on three sides by loftypalms and a dense undergrowth of palmetto, and on the other side by the blue waters of the bay, where a solitary craft lay moored near the shore.
The moon was high in the heavens, and the light was almost as clear as day.
When De Leon ran his fingers over the weapon which was handed to him, he seemed jubilant with gaiety. “My friend,” he exclaimed, “if I thought I was going to die, I would make a confession to you; I did you a great wrong once. But I shall spit that wretch like a lark, and I cannot afford to lose your friendship, so my confession must wait.”
While the preliminary arrangements were being made the movement on shore had attracted the attention of the look-out on board the low-lying craft at anchor a few hundred yards away, and presently a boat put off from the ship containing the three officers on duty, who correctly surmised the cause of the unwonted gathering and came ashore to see the fight.
As they joined the group they saluted its members courteously, but carelessly, as men who were seldom wont to crave permission for their presence, and were indifferent whether it was accorded ornot, an impression which was heightened by a certain swagger in their manner which savored more of the buccaneer than of the naval officer, and also by a superfluity of armament about their persons.
When the duellists had taken their places the contrast in the expressions of the two principals was very marked.
On De Leon’s face there was an air of smiling assurance which seemed to goad his opponent almost to fury. He had fully regained his strength during the weeks which had elapsed since his discovery on board ship as a stowaway, and the muscular neck and powerful arms promised that, given equal skill, the observant moon would have left her proud elevation in the sky before his physical powers would surrender to mere fatigue.
At last the signal of attack was given and the fine steel blades slid along each other see-saw as their owners felt their way to the attack. Then the officer shot out his weapon apparently full at the broad breast of his antagonist. But no harm was done, and the ring of the steel hilts as they clashed together, was the only sound which was borne on the night air. A temporary lock of blades prevented any harm being done, and whenthey were disengaged the two began afresh the see-sawing with their weapons.
De Leon, however, had already gauged his opponent’s ability, and before the latter could fathom his intention or do anything beyond blindly advancing his weapon, the other’s rapier had disengaged itself from his blade, slid like a lightning flash over his arm and pierced his neck.
The fight was over almost ere the weapon was withdrawn, and the officer, choked with blood, staggered backwards and fell into the arms of his friends.
At that instant a shrill double whistle of warning was heard from the ship and the three officers belonging to it retraced their steps rapidly to the boat. At the same moment a body of Spanish troops plunged through the palmetto, cutlass in hand.
“Stay!” shouted De Leon to the retreating officers, “take us with you.”
His suspicious brain had surmised a trap, and he was afraid of the troops as foes. The law and order of Spain he dreaded as much as suspected Christians in former ages feared the Inquisition.
The reasons which impelled the officers to consent to his request may probably be found in the fact that both looked able, powerful men, and one at least had just proved himself to be a very efficient swordsman.
“All right, in with you—quick!” shouted the first officer by way of reply, and the two took their seats hurriedly in the boat, which was immediately pushed off from the shore.
The vessel was found on a closer acquaintance to be engaged in the contraband trade, and the captain in command, in consideration of the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars, agreed to land the two passengers on the mainland of Florida. The arrangement suited his own purposes for the moment although he would have preferred to retain his passengers, and the two were accordingly landed in safety at Punta Rassa, where they engaged a boat and its owner, a Florida oyster dredger of villainous appearance, and, had they known it, of still more evil reputation.
With this man they entered into a contract to take them through the great Lake Okeechobee, with which he assured them he was familiar, and thence northward through the chain of canals and lakeswhich led to within reasonable distance of one of the principal termini of the very limited railway service of Florida.
Why did George Montgomery choose such a route?
He would probably have found it hard to furnish a reasonable explanation. When he landed in the State it seemed sufficient rapture for the moment to feel that he was once more on the same continent with his wife, and that no terrible width of ocean any longer divided them.
Still he could not forget that he was a fugitive from justice, and that in all probability the “hue and cry” had been raised against him as the murderer of his brother-in-law. He shuddered as he thought that on his first visit to a railway station he might be confronted by a reward offered for his own apprehension.
And so, satisfied with the thought that day by day he was creeping or drifting nearer to the woman for whom his whole soul and body hankered, he seemed to find a temporary contentment in his lot.
His preoccupation of mind rendered him the most unsuspicious of mortals, and so hastened acatastrophe which came near terminating prematurely his wanderings.
In taking a bundle of papers from his pocket one day a package of notes of large denomination fell to the bottom of the boat. As a matter of fact the parcel represented five thousand dollars, and with a five-hundred-dollar bill as its outward symbol looked, it must be confessed, its full value.
As the eyes of the boatman fell upon the parcel they glared at it with a greed of covetousness which De Leon read at a glance and carefully noted. The owner of the notes neither saw nor recked of the commotion aroused by his carelessness. De Leon, however, not only saw the error, but made it quite clear to the boatman that he understood him.
“Ah! my dear friend, there is trouble for us both ahead,” De Leon muttered, as he softly soaked the boatman’s cartridges in the limpid waters of Lake Okeechobee while that worthy slept. “I,” he resumed, “am a Soldier of Fortune,you, my worthy ruffian, are simply a murderer! but beware, De Leon watches!”
As he referred to himself as a Soldier of Fortune, it is possible that he was endeavoring to discriminate to the satisfaction of his conscience betweena genius ofla haute finance, who, in extremity, and with the touch of a master, borrows a telegraphic cipher and uses it with brilliant, if ephemeral, result, and a simple highway robber.
It is but just, however, to the brave De Leon to say that his cheeks tingled with shame whenever he thought of the very scurvy trick he had once played on his old and unsuspecting friend in stealing his code and suppressing the message from his wife.
“Ah! it is a sorry business to rob a whole-souled generous man who trusts you blindly.”
As De Leon reflected thus, the boat lay at anchor for the night on the broad bosom of that inland sea, Lake Okeechobee.
“I think,” he whispered to himself, “I ought to mention that message to my friend; it might lessen his distress, and yet howcanI let him know how I have wronged him and tried to defraud him? I cannot do it.”
Three weeks later they stopped at a landing-place on the Kissimmee River, in order to secure some fresh food. They had passed through the great lake in safety, and also through its principal tributary to a point north of Fort Kissimmee. Thatstoppage was the first of any consequence since they had left Lake Okeechobee, and it is possible that the careful watch observed by De Leon having been without result up to that time, his vigils had grown somewhat careless.
This, however, is mere conjecture, but on the night of that landing, De Leon awoke from a heavy stupor to find the boatman raising his axe to slay his friend Montgomery. De Leon essayed to rise to his feet, yelling out an alarm to his friend as he did so. The assassin, however, had taken the precaution to tie some ropes across the other’s limbs, loosely enough so as not to awake him, yet in such a way as to prevent him rendering any sudden assistance to his friend.
The immediate result of De Leon’s alarm was to divert to himself the blow intended for his friend. For a moment the yellow, devilish face of the boatman bent over him with a look of indescribable malice, the next the axe descended full on poor De Leon’s helpless head, and with a groan he sank unconscious into the bottom of the boat.
The boatman turned in time to see that Montgomery was awake and feeling for his pistol, then,recognizing that the game was up, he jumped ashore.
When he got to the distance of about a hundred yards from the boat, and so out of pistol range, he raised his rifle, which he had taken up as he left the boat, and fired. Thanks, however, to poor De Leon’s thoughtfulness in saturating the ruffian’s cartridges, the latter’s murderous intentions were foiled although he tried shell after shell before he gave up as useless his efforts to kill Montgomery.
The latter, oblivious of the murderer’s persistent attempts to shoot him, was stooping over his wounded friend endeavoring to stay the frightful loss of blood from the blow given him by the native. The wound had not been what it had been intended to be—immediately fatal. When De Leon saw the axe descending he had moved his head so as to evade the full force of the weapon which had accordingly somewhat glanced in its stroke.
Still the wound, although not instantly fatal, bid fair to prove so ere long, and Montgomery groaned when he thought of his inability to render his friend skilled assistance.
When he saw that the hemorrhage still continuedin spite of all his efforts, a feeling of desperate helplessness seized upon him and his eyes scanned the land to see whether any possible help was within sight.
While his glance was turned towards the prairie a boat suddenly collided gently with his own, and, to his amazement, he found a powerful Indian seated in a birch canoe alongside.
The Indian made a cordial yet dignified signal of friendship, and almost exhausted his English vocabulary with his greeting, “How do?”
In despair, the other pointed to his dying companion and then to the woods beyond, indicating that the murderer had fled.
The Indian took in the situation at a glance, and paddling to the shore he gathered from the armless socket of an aged live oak, a handful of spiders’ webs; this done, he removed the other bandages and placed the webs against the wound.
The fine clinging meshes of the webs did what the cloths had failed to do, and the terrible bleeding stopped. De Leon opened his eyes at length, and his friend rejoiced to see that he was sensible and as yet, at least, free from fever.
“Friend, come here to me,” faintly whisperedthe wounded man, after looking wistfully at George Montgomery for a time.
“I am going to leave you, George,” and his voice rested tenderly as a woman’s on the other’s name; “and now that I am dying I want to tell you about a wrong I did you. Stoop lower.”
ALICEMONTGOMERY’Shealth steadily drooped as the weeks went by and brought no sign from her husband in reply to her loving message, and when at length she received the letter written by her husband on leaving the monastery its utter hopelessness served only to add to her misery and to further undermine her health.
“We must take our poor darling south for the winter,” said the old grandmother to her husband, “or we shall lose her,” and her sad-eyed partner sighed acquiescence.
For Alice, the spring of her life seemed broken, and look which way she would, the horizon seemed dark and hopeless.
Her brother’s malady showed no signs of improvement; he went about pursued by a thousand phantasmal monetary cares—a craze of his brain for which no remedy could be provided, and which was only kept within bounds by his habit of spending long hours daily in signing imaginary checks in payment of inextinguishable loans.
In the late autumn an incident happened to him which accomplished what his medical advisers had considered to be well-nigh impossible in the ordinary course of nature.
While hanging a picture for his sister one day, the step-ladder on which he stood gave way, and precipitated him through a large pane of thick plate-glass. The sharp edges of the glass cut his face and neck severely and the result was a most terrible and alarming hemorrhage, which was only stopped after such a loss of blood as imperiled for a time the sufferer’s life.
This loss, however, served to ease and finally to entirely remove the pressure upon his brain resulting from his bullet wound, and when he came back to consciousness from the long fainting spells which succeeded the loss of blood, he inquired feebly of his sister, where he was, and whether she knew who the man was who had shot him.
His life, from the moment George Montgomery’s bullet had struck him until now, was a complete blank.
When Alice Montgomery learned from herbrother’s lips what had taken place between him and her husband on the night of the quarrel, she, gentle soul, had no blame for the latter, although she loaded herself with bitter reproaches.
“My poor husband; whatmusthe have thought to see me meeting and kissing another man surreptitiously, when he believed I had no male relative living excepting the one in this house!”
Her husband’s letter had prepared her for her brother’s confession, but the details, as furnished by the latter, showed that the crime had been the result of but a momentary frenzy of jealousy which, as a woman, she could readily forgive.
When she took her first walk out of doors with her invalid brother, the last shock of autumn had stripped the trees and covered the sward with a dense matting of leaves which the colored gardener was leisurely removing with a large rake.
For a while the two stopped to speak to the old servitor, and then the latter resumed his work.
Suddenly Alice sprang with a cry from her brother’s side and seized the gardener’s rake.
“Stop! I saw something flash in the light just where your rake is.”
Softly she turned over the crumpled mass andthere, at last, lying on a withered chestnut leaf, and round and clear as the first day it was made, lay the wedding-ring lost on that fateful morning, so many weary months ago.
Hidden in the dense green of the turf during the summer season, it had become exposed by the withering of the grass, only to be presently covered by the falling leaves.
First glancing at the initials and date cut on the inside of the hoop to see that there was no chance of a mistake, Alice pressed the ring again and again to her lips, cooing and murmuring glad words of love to herself the while.
“This is my wedding-ring,” she exclaimed to her greatly astonished brother, “which I lost on the day of your—your first accident, and all my trouble, I am sure, resulted from that loss. Now its recovery seems like an omen of good luck. Oh, I wonder where on the face of the world my dear husband is! I want to send him a message to tell him that all will be right if he will only come back.” And then as the apparent hopelessness of his return came back to her mind, the bright light died out of her eyes, and she resumed the walk with her brother in silence.
At the same hour George Montgomery learned for the first time from his dying comrade’s lips about the message which his wife had sent him by cable: “Come back; all is well.”
He had no words of reproach for the man who had atoned for the harm which he had done by sacrificing his life for him, but even in the midst of his great and new-found happiness, he groaned to think what dire complications the want of a reply to that message might have entailed.
The Indian had towed the boat to the shores of the beautiful Lake Rosalie, in whose wonderful hammocks that branch of the Seminole tribe which still clung to the Grand Mico, Tallahassee, had long built their wigwams.
The Indians bore the wounded man gently up the bluff on a deer-skin litter, and laid him on a soft couch of prepared Spanish moss, or old man’s beard, as it is sometimes called.
Over the sick man’s couch a great live oak flung its protecting shade, high above and impermeable to either sun or rain. On all sides the same gigantic trees with their dense evergreen foliage, towered to the skies, their vast limbs festooned with the long draperies of the flowing Spanish moss.A wide open space lay within a vast forest of these trees. The space was large enough for the encampment of an army, and as the mighty span of the live oak branches enabled them to overlap far overhead, the whole looked like some vast cathedral ornamented with delicate fretwork and bathed in a soft and appropriate religious gloom.