IN AND OUT OF WINDOWS.
Alice Belding was seated before her glass braiding her long hair. Her mother had come in from her own room, as her custom often was, to chat with her daughter in the half hour before bed-time. It gratified at once her maternal love and her pride to watch the exquisite beauty of her child, as she sat, dressed in a white wrapper that made her seem still taller than she was brushing and braiding the luxuriant tresses that gave under the light every tint and reflection of which gold is capable. The pink and pearl of the round arm as the loose sleeve would slip to the elbow, the poise of the proud head, the full white column of the neck, the soft curve of cheek and chin,—all this delighted her as it would have delighted a lover. But with all her light-headedness, there was enough of discretion, or perhaps of innate New England reserve, to keep her from ever expressing to Alice her pleasure in her beauty. So the wholesome-minded girl never imagined the admiration of which she was the object, and thought that her mother only liked to chat a little before sleeping. They talked of trivial matters, of the tea at Mrs. Hyson's, of Formosa Hyson's purple dress which made her sallower than ever, of rain and fair weather.
"I think," said Mrs. Bekling, "that Phrasy Dallas gets more and more stylish every day. I don't wonder at Arthur Farnham's devotion. That would make an excellent match—they are both so dreadfully clever. By the way, he has not been here this week. And I declare! I don't believe you have ever written him that note of thanks."
"No," said Alice, smiling—she had schooled herself by this time to speak of him carelessly. "I was too much frightened to thank him on the spot, and now it would be ancient history. We must save our thanks till we see him."
"I want to see him about other things. You must write and ask him to dinner to-morrow or next day."
"Don't you think he would like it better if you would write?"
"There you are again—as if it mattered. Write that 'Mamma bids me.' There, your hair is braided. Write the note now, and I will send it over in the morning before he gets away."
Alice rose and walked to her escritoire, her long robe trailing, her thick braids hanging almost to the floor, her fair cheek touched with a delicate spot of color at the thought of writing a formal note to the man she worshipped. She took a pen and wrote "My dear Mr. Farnham," and the conventional address made her heart flutter and her eyes grow dim. While she was writing, she heard her mother say:
"What a joke!"
She looked up, and saw that Mrs. Belding, having pushed open the shutters, had picked up her opera-glass and was looking through it at something out of the window.
"Do you know, Alice," she said, laughing, "since that ailantus tree was cut down, you can see straight into his library from here. There he is now, sitting at his desk."
"Mamma!" pleaded Alice, rising and trying to take the glass away from her. "Don't do that, I beg!"
"Nonsense," said her mother, keeping her away with one hand and holding the glass with the other. "There comes Budsey to close the blinds. The show is over. No; he goes away, leaving them open."
"Mamma, I will leave the room if——"
"My goodness! look at that!" cried the widow, putting the glass in her daughter's hand and sinking into a chair with fright.
Alice, filled with a nameless dread, saw her mother was pale and trembling, and took the glass. She dropped it in an instant, and leaning from the window sent forth once more that cry of love and alarm, which rang through the stillness of night with all the power of her young throat:
"Arthur!"
She turned, and sped down the stairs, and across the lawn like an arrow shot for life or death from a long-bow.
Farnham heard the sweet, strong voice ringing out of the stillness like the cry of an angel in a vision, and raised his head with a startled movement from the desk where he was writing. Offitt heard it, too, as he raised his hand to strike a deadly blow; and though it did not withhold him from his murderous purpose, it disturbed somewhat the precision of his hand. The hammer descended a little to the right of where he had intended to strike. It made a deep and cruel gash, and felled Farnham to the floor, but it did not kill him. He rose, giddy and faint with the blow and half-blinded with the blood that poured down over his right eye. He clapped his hand, with a soldier's instinct, to the place where his sword-hilt was not, and then staggered, rather than rushed, at his assailant, to grapple him with his naked hands. Offitt struck him once more, and he fell headlong on the floor, in the blaze of a myriad lights that flashed all at once into deep darkness and silence.
The assassin, seeing that his victim no longer moved, threw down his reeking weapon, and, seizing the packages of money on the desk, thrust them into his pockets. He stepped back through the open window and stooped to pick up his shoes. As he rose, he saw a sight which for an instant froze him with terror. A tall and beautiful form, dressed all in white, was swiftly gliding toward him over the grass. It drew near, and he saw its pale features set in a terrible expression of pity and horror. It seemed to him like an avenging spirit. He shut his eyes for a moment in abject fright, and the phantom swept by him and leaped like a white doe upon the platform, through the open window, and out of his sight. He ran to the gate, quaking and trembling, then walked quietly to the nearest corner, where he sat down upon the curb-stone and put on his shoes.
Mrs. Belding followed, as rapidly as she could, the swift flight of her daughter; but it was some minutes after the young girl had leaped through the window that her mother walked breathlessly through the front door and the hall into the library. She saw there a sight which made her shudder and turn faint. Alice was sitting on the floor, holding in her lap the blood-dabbled head of Farnham. Beside her stood a glass of water, a pitcher, and several towels. Some of them were red and saturated, some were still fresh and neatly folded. She was carefully cleansing and wiping the white forehead of the lifeless man of the last red drop.
"Oh, Alice, what is this?" cried her mother.
"He is dead!" she answered, in a hoarse, strained voice. "I feared so when I first came in. He was lying on his face. I lifted him up, but he could not see me. I kissed him, hoping he might kiss me again. But he did not. Then I saw this water on the stand over there. I remembered there were always towels there in the billiard-room. I ran and got them, and washed the blood away from his face. See, his face is not hurt. I am glad of that. But there is a dreadful wound in his head." She dropped her voice to a choking whisper at these words.
Her mother gazed at her with speechless consternation. Had the shock deprived her of reason?
"Alice," she said, "this is no place for you. I will call the servants and send for a surgeon, and you must go home."
"Oh, no, mamma. I see I have frightened you, but there is no need to be frightened. Yes, call the servants, but do not let them come in here for awhile, not till the doctors come. They can do no good. He is dead."
Mrs. Belding had risen and rung the bell violently.
"Do, mamma, see the servants in the hall outside. Don't let them come in for a moment. Do! I pray! I pray! I will do anything for you."
There was such intensity of passion in the girl's prayer that her mother yielded, and when the servants came running in, half-dressed, in answer to the bell, she stepped outside the door and said, "Captain Farnham has been badly hurt. Two of you go for the nearest doctors. You need not come in at present. My daughter and I will take care of him."
She went back, closing the door behind her. Alice was smiling. "There, you are a dear! I will love you forever for that! It is only for a moment. The doctors will soon be here, and then I must give him up."
"Oh, Alice," the poor lady whimpered, "why do you talk so wildly? What do you mean?"
"Don't cry, mamma! It is only for a moment. It is all very simple. I am not crazy. He was my lover!"
"Heaven help us!"
"Yes, this dear man, this noble man offered me his love, and I refused it. I may have been crazy then, but I am not now. I can love him now. I will be his widow—if I was not his wife. We will be two widows together—always. Now you know I am doing nothing wrong or wild. He is mine.
"Give me one of those towels," she exclaimed, suddenly. "I can tie up his head so that it will stop bleeding till the doctors come."
She took the towels, tore strips from her own dress, and in a few moments, with singular skill and tenderness, she had stopped the flow of blood from the wound.
"There! He looks almost as if he were asleep, does he not? Oh, my love, my love!"
Up to this moment she had not shed one tear. Her voice was strained, choked, and sobbing, but her eyes were dry. She kissed him on his brow and his mouth. She bent over him and laid her smooth cheek to his. She murmured:
"Good-by, good-by, till I come to you, my own love!"
All at once she raised her head with a strange light in her eyes. "Mamma!" she cried, "see how warm his cheek is. Heaven is merciful! perhaps he is alive."
She put both arms about him, and, gently but powerfully lifting his dead weight of head and shoulders, drew him to her heart. She held him to her warm bosom, rocking him to and fro. "Oh, my beloved!" she murmured, "if you will live, I will be so good to you."
She lowered him again, resting his head on her lap. A drop of blood, from the napkin in which his head was wrapped, had touched the bosom of her dress, staining it as if a cherry had been crushed there. She sat, gazing with an anguish of hope upon his pale face. A shudder ran through him, and he opened his eyes—only for a moment. He groaned, and slowly closed them.
The tears could no longer be restrained. They fell like a summer shower from her eyes, while she sobbed, "Thank God! my darling is not dead."
Her quick ear caught footsteps at the outer door. "Here, mamma, take my place. Let me hide before all those men come in."
In a moment she had leaped through the window, whence she ran through the dewy grass to her home.
An hour afterward her mother returned, escorted by one of the surgeons. She found Alice in bed, peacefully sleeping. As Mrs. Belding approached the bedside, Alice woke and smiled. "I know without your telling me, mamma. He will live. I began to pray for him,—but I felt sure he would live, and so I gave thanks instead."
"You are a strange girl," said Mrs. Belding, gravely. "But you are right. Dr. Cutts says, if he escapes without fever, there is nothing very serious in the wound itself. The blow that made that gash in his head was not the one which made him unconscious. They found another, behind his ear; the skin was not broken. There was a bump about as big as a walnut. They said it was concussion of the brain, but no fracture anywhere. By the way, Dr. Cutts complimented me very handsomely on the way I had managed the case before his arrival. He said there was positively a professional excellence about my bandage. You may imagine I did not set him right."
Alice, laughing and blushing, said, "I will allow you all the credit."
Mrs. Belding kissed her, and said, "Good-night," and walked to the door. There she paused a moment, and came back to the bed. "I think, after all, I had better say now what I thought of keeping till to-morrow. I thank you for your confidence to-night, and shall respect it. But you will see, I am sure, the necessity of being very circumspect, under the circumstances. If you should want to do anything for Arthur while he is ill, I should feel it my duty to forbid it."
Alice received this charge with frank, open eyes. "I should not dream of such a thing," she said. "If he had died, I should have been his widow; but, as he is to live, he must come for me if he wants me. I was very silly about him, but I must take the consequences. I can't now take advantage of the poor fellow, by saving his life and establishing a claim on it. So I will promise anything you want. I am so happy that I will promise easily. But I am also very sleepy."
The beautiful eyelids were indeed heavy and drooping. The night's excitement had left her wearied and utterly content. She fell asleep even as her mother kissed her forehead.
The feeling of Offitt as he left Algonquin Avenue and struck into a side street was one of pure exultation. He had accomplished the boldest act of his life. He had shown address, skill, and courage. He had done a thing which had appalled him in the contemplation, merely on account of its physical difficulties and dangers. He had done it successfully. He had a large amount of money in his pocket—enough to carry his bride to the ends of the earth. When it was gone—well, at worst, he could leave her, and shift for himself again. He had not a particle of regret or remorse; and, in fact, these sentiments are far rarer than moralists would have us believe. A ruffian who commits a crime usually glories in it. It exalts him in his own eyes, all the more that he is compelled to keep silent about it. As Offitt walked rapidly in the direction of Dean Street, the only shadow on his exultation was his sudden perception of the fact that he had better not tell Maud what he had done. In all his plans he had promised himself the pleasure of telling her that she was avenged upon her enemy by the hands of her lover; he had thought he might extort his first kiss by that heroic avowal; but now, as he walked stealthily down the silent street, he saw that nobody in the universe could be made his confidant.
"I'll never own it, in earth or hell," he said to himself.
When he reached Matchin's cottage, all was dark and still. He tried to attract Maud's attention by throwing soft clods of earth against her window, but her sleep was too sound. He was afraid to throw pebbles for fear of breaking the panes and waking the family. He went into the little yard adjoining the shop, and found a ladder. He brought it out, and placed it against the wall. He perceived now for the first time that his hands were sticky. He gazed at them a moment. "Oh, yes," he said to himself, "when he fell I held out my hands to keep his head from touching my clothes. Careless trick! Ought to have washed them, first thing." Then, struck by a sudden idea, he went to the well-curb, and slightly moistened his fingers. He then rubbed them on the door-knob, and the edge of the door of the cottage, and pressed them several times in different places on the ladder. "Not a bad scheme," he said, chuckling. He then went again to the well, and washed his hands thoroughly, afterward taking a handful of earth, and rubbing them till they were as dirty as usual.
After making all these preparations for future contingencies, he mounted the ladder, and tried to raise the window. It was already open a few inches to admit the air, but was fastened there, and he could not stir it. He began to call and whistle in as low and penetrating a tone as he could manage, and at last awoke Maud, whose bed was only a few feet away. She started up with a low cry of alarm, but saw in a moment who it was.
"Well, what on earth are you doing here? Go away this minute, or I'll call my father."
"Let me in, and I will tell you."
"I'll do nothing of the sort. Begone this instant."
"Maud, don't be foolish," he pleaded, in real alarm, as he saw that she was angry and insulted. "I have done as you told me. I have wealth for us both, and I have"—he had almost betrayed himself, but he concluded—"I have come to take you away forever."
"Come to-morrow, at a decent hour, and I will talk to you."
"Now, Maud, my beauty, don't believe I am humbugging. I brought a lot of money for you to look at—I knew you wanted to be sure. See here!" He drew from his pocket a package of bank bills—he saw a glittering stain on them. He put them in the other pocket of his coat and took out another package. "And here's another, I've got a dozen like them. Handle 'em yourself." He put them in through the window. Maud was so near that she could take the bills by putting out her hand. She saw there was a large amount of money there—more than she had ever seen before.
"Come, my beauty," he said, "this is only spending-money for a bridal tour. There are millions behind it. Get up and put on your dress. I will wait below here. We can take the midnight train east, be married at Clairfield, and sail for Paris the next day. That's the world for you to shine in. Come! Waste no time. No tellin' what may happen tomorrow."
She was strongly tempted. She had no longer any doubt of his wealth. He was not precisely a hero in appearance, but she had never insisted upon that—her romance having been always of a practical kind. She was about to assent—and to seal her doom—when she suddenly remembered that all her best clothes were in her mother's closet, which was larger than hers, and that she could not get them without passing through the room where her parents were asleep. That ended the discussion. It was out of the question that she should marry this magnificent stranger in her every-day dress and cotton stockings. It was equally impossible that she should give that reason to any man. So she said, with dignity:
"Mr. Offitt, it is not proper for me to continue this conversation any longer. You ought to see it ain't. I shall be happy to see you to-morrow."
Offitt descended the ladder, grinding out curses between his set teeth. A hate, as keen as his passion, for the foolish girl fired him. "Think," he hissed, "a man that killed, half an hour ago, the biggest swell in Buffland, to be treated that way by a carpenter's wench." "Wait awhile, Miss; it'll come my innings." He lifted up the ladder, carried it carefully around the house, and leaned it against the wall under the window of the room occupied by Sleeny.
He hurried back to his lodging in Perry Place, where he found Sam Sleeny lying asleep on his bed. He was not very graciously greeted by his drowsy visitor.
"Why didn't you stay out all night?" Sam growled. "Where have you been, anyhow?"
"I've been at the variety-show, and it was the boss fraud of the season."
"You stayed so long you must have liked it."
"I was waiting to see just how bad a show could be and not spoil."
"What did you want to see me about tonight?"
"The fact is, I expected to meet a man around at the Varieties who was to go in with us into a big thing. But he wasn't there. I'll nail him to-morrow, and then we can talk. It's big money, Sammy, and no discount. What would you think of a thousand dollars a month?"
"I'd a heap rather see it than hear you chin about it. Give me my hammer, and I'll go home."
"Why, I took it round to your shop this evening, and I tossed it in through the window. I meant to throw it upon the table, but it went over, I think from the sound, and dropped on the floor. You will find it among the shavings, I reckon,"
"Well, I'm off," said Sam, by way of good-night.
"All right. Guess I'll see you to-morrow."
Offitt waited till he could hear the heavy tread of Sleeny completing the first flight of stairs and going around to the head of the second. He then shut and locked his door, and hung his hat over the keyhole. He turned up his lamp and sat down by the table to count his night's gains. The first package he took from his pocket had a shining stain upon the outside bill. He separated the stained bill carefully from the rest, and held it a moment in his hand as if in doubt. He walked to his wash-stand, but at the moment of touching his pitcher he stopped short. He took out his handkerchief, but shook his head and put it back. Finally, he lighted a match, applied it to the corner of the bill, and watched it take fire and consume, until his fingers were scorched by the blaze. "Pity!" he whispered—"good money like that."
He seated himself again and began with a fierce, sustained delight to arrange and sort the bank-bills, laying the larger denominations by themselves, smoothing them down with a quick and tender touch, a kindling eye and a beating heart. In his whole life, past and future, there was not such another moment of enjoyment. Money is, of course, precious and acceptable to all men except idiots. But, if it means much to the good and virtuous, how infinitely more it means to the thoroughly depraved—the instant gratification of every savage and hungry devil of a passion which their vile natures harbor. Though the first and principal thing Offitt thought of was the possession of Maud Matchin, his excited fancy did not stop there. A long gallery of vicious pictures stretched out before his flaming eyes, as he reckoned up the harvest of his hand. The mere thought that each bill represented a dinner, where he might eat and drink what he liked, was enough to inebriate a starved rogue whose excesses had always been limited by his poverty.
When he had counted and sorted his cash, he took enough for his immediate needs and put it in his wallet. The rest he made up into convenient packages, which he tied compactly with twine and disposed in his various pockets. "I'll chance it," he thought, after some deliberation. "If they get me, they can get the money, too. But they sha'n't get it without me."
He threw himself on his bed, and slept soundly till morning.