The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  The passage from the stinging freshness of the night to the stale overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere Hotel had checked the preternaturally rapid working of his mind, and he was now scarcely conscious of thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would have thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to oversleep the hour fixed for his departure. He thought it safest, instead, to seat himself once more by the table, in the most uncomfortable chair that he could find, and smoke one cigar after another till the first sign of dawn should give an excuse for action.

  He had laid his watch on the table before him, and was gazing at the hour-hand, and trying to convince himself by so doing that he was still wide awake, when a noise in the adjoining room suddenly straightened him in his chair and banished all fear of sleep.

  There was no mistaking the nature of the noise; it was that of a woman’s sobs. The sobs were not loud, but the sound reached him distinctly through the frail door between the two rooms; it expressed an utter abandonment to grief; not the cloud-burst of some passing emotion, but the slow down-pour of a whole heaven of sorrow.

  Woburn sat listening. There was nothing else to be done; and at least his listening was a mute tribute to the trouble he was powerless to relieve. It roused, too, the drugged pulses of his own grief: he was touched by the chance propinquity of two alien sorrows in a great city throbbing with multifarious passions. It would have been more in keeping with the irony of life had he found himself next to a mother singing her child to sleep: there seemed a mute commiseration in the hand that had led him to such neighborhood.

  Gradually the sobs subsided, with pauses betokening an effort at self-control. At last they died off softly, like the intermittent drops that end a day of rain.

  “Poor soul,” Woburn mused, “she’s got the better of it for the time. I wonder what it’s all about?”

  At the same moment he heard another sound that made him jump to his feet. It was a very low sound, but in that nocturnal silence which gives distinctness to the faintest noises, Woburn knew at once that he had heard the click of a pistol.

  “What is she up to now?” he asked himself, with his eye on the door between the two rooms; and the brightly-lit keyhole seemed to reply with a glance of intelligence. He turned out the gas and crept to the door, pressing his eye to the illuminated circle.

  After a moment or two of adjustment, during which he seemed to himself to be breathing like a steam-engine, he discerned a room like his own, with the same dressing-table flanked by gas-fixtures, and the same table in the window. This table was directly in his line of vision; and beside it stood a woman with a small revolver in her hands. The lights being behind her, Woburn could only infer her youth from her slender silhouette and the nimbus of fair hair defining her head. Her dress seemed dark and simple, and on a chair under one of the gas-jets lay a jacket edged with cheap fur and a small traveling-bag. He could not see the other end of the room, but something in her manner told him that she was alone. At length she put the revolver down and took up a letter that lay on the table. She drew the letter from its envelope and read it over two or three times; then she put it back, sealing the envelope, and placing it conspicuously against the mirror of the dressing-table.

  There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show that Woburn felt sure that her next act would be to return to the table and take up the revolver; but he had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After putting the letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, standing a little sideways, so that he could now see her face, which was distinctly pretty, but of a small and inelastic mold, inadequate to the expression of the larger emotions. For some moments she continued to study herself with the expression of a child looking at a playmate who has been scolded; then she turned to the table and lifted the revolver to her forehead.

  A sudden crash made her arm drop, and sent her darting backward to the opposite side of the room. Woburn had broken down the door, and stood torn and breathless in the breach.

  “Oh!” she gasped, pressing closer to the wall.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said; “I saw what you were going to do and I had to stop you.”

  She looked at him for a moment in silence, and he saw the terrified flutter of her breast; then she said, “No one can stop me for long. And besides, what right have you—”

  “Everyone has the right to prevent a crime,” he returned, the sound of the last word sending the blood to his forehead.

  “I deny it,” she said passionately. “Everyone who has tried to live and failed has the right to die.”

  “Failed in what?”

  “In everything!” she replied. They stood looking at each other in silence.

  At length he advanced a few steps.

  “You’ve no right to say you’ve failed,” he said, “while you have breath to try again.” He drew the revolver from her hand.

  “Try again—try again? I tell you I’ve tried seventy times seven!”

  “What have you tried?”

  She looked at him with a certain dignity.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “that you’ve any right to question me—or to be in this room at all—” and suddenly she burst into tears.

  The discrepancy between her words and action struck the chord which, in a man’s heart, always responds to the touch of feminine unreason. She dropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in her hands, while Woburn watched the course of her weeping.

  At last she lifted her head, looking up between drenched lashes.

  “Please go away,” she said in childish entreaty.

  “How can I?” he returned. “It’s impossible that I should leave you in this state. Trust me—let me help you. Tell me what has gone wrong, and let’s see if there’s no other way out of it.”

  Woburn had a voice full of sensitive inflections, and it was now trembling with profoundest pity. Its note seemed to reassure the girl, for she said, with a beginning of confidence in her own tones, “But I don’t even know who you are.”

  Woburn was silent: the words startled him. He moved nearer to her and went on in the same quieting tone.

  “I am a man who has suffered enough to want to help others. I don’t want to know any more about you than will enable me to do what I can for you. I’ve probably seen more of life than you have, and if you’re willing to tell me your troubles perhaps together we may find a way out of them.”

  She dried her eyes and glanced at the revolver.

  “That’s the only way out,” she said.

  “How do you know? Are you sure you’ve tried every other?”

  “Perfectly sure, I’ve written and written, and humbled myself like a slave before him, and she won’t even let him answer my letters. Oh, but you don’t understand”— she broke off with a renewal of weeping.

  “I begin to understand—you’re sorry for something you’ve done?”

  “Oh, I’ve never denied that—I’ve never denied that I was wicked.”

  “And you want the forgiveness of someone you care about?”

  “My husband,” she whispered.

  “You’ve done something to displease your husband?”

  “To displease him? I ran away with another man!” There was a dismal exultation in her tone, as though she were paying Woburn off for having underrated her offense.

  She had certainly surprised him; at worst he had expected a quarrel over a rival, with a possible complication of mother-in-law. He wondered how such helpless little feet could have taken so bold a step; then he remembered that there is no audacity like that of weakness.

  He was wondering how to lead her to completer avowal when she added forlornly, “You see there’s nothing else to do.”

  Woburn took a turn in the room. It was certainly a narrower strait than he had foreseen, and he hardly knew how to answer; but the first flow of confession had eased her, and she went on without farther persuasion.

  “I don’t know how I could ever have done it; I must have been downright crazy. I didn’
t care much for Joe when I married him—he wasn’t exactly handsome, and girls think such a lot of that. But he just laid down and worshipped me, and I was getting fond of him in a way; only the life was so dull. I’d been used to a big city—I come from Detroit—and Hinksville is such a poky little place; that’s where we lived; Joe is telegraph-operator on the railroad there. He’d have been in a much bigger place now, if he hadn’t—well, after all, he behaved perfectly splendidly about that.

  “I really was getting fond of him, and I believe I should have realized in time how good and noble and unselfish he was, if his mother hadn’t been always sitting there and everlastingly telling me so. We learned in school about the Athenians hating some man who was always called just, and that’s the way I felt about Joe. Whenever I did anything that wasn’t quite right his mother would say how differently Joe would have done it. And she was forever telling me that Joe didn’t approve of this and that and the other. When we were alone he approved of everything, but when his mother was round he’d sit quiet and let her say he didn’t. I knew he’d let me have my way afterwards, but somehow that didn’t prevent my getting mad at the time.

  “And then the evenings were so long, with Joe away, and Mrs. Glenn (that’s his mother) sitting there like an image knitting socks for the heathen. The only caller we ever had was the Baptist minister, and he never took any more notice of me than if I’d been a piece of furniture. I believe he was afraid to before Mrs. Glenn.”

  She paused breathlessly, and the tears in her eyes were now of anger.

  “Well?” said Woburn gently.

  “Well—then Arthur Hackett came along; he was traveling for a big publishing firm in Philadelphia. He was awfully handsome and as clever and sarcastic as anything. He used to lend me lots of novels and magazines, and tell me all about society life in New York. All the girls were after him, and Alice Sprague, whose father is the richest man in Hinksville, fell desperately in love with him and carried on like a fool; but he wouldn’t take any notice of her. He never looked at anybody but me.” Her face lit up with a reminiscent smile, and then clouded again. “I hate him now,” she exclaimed, with a change of tone that startled Woburn. “I’d like to kill him—but he’s killed me instead.

  “Well, he bewitched me so I didn’t know what I was doing; I was like somebody in a trance. When he wasn’t there I didn’t want to speak to anybody; I used to lie in bed half the day just to get away from folks; I hated Joe and Hinksville and everything else. When he came back the days went like a flash; we were together nearly all the time. I knew Joe’s mother was spying on us, but I didn’t care. And at last it seemed as if I couldn’t let him go away again without me; so one evening he stopped at the back gate in a buggy, and we drove off together and caught the eastern express at River Bend. He promised to bring me to New York.” She paused, and then added scornfully, “He didn’t even do that!”

  Woburn had returned to his seat and was watching her attentively. It was curious to note how her passion was spending itself in words; he saw that she would never kill herself while she had any one to talk to.

  “That was five months ago,” she continued, “and we traveled all through the southern states, and stayed a little while near Philadelphia, where his business is. He did things real stylishly at first. Then he was sent to Albany, and we stayed a week at the Delavan House. One afternoon I went out to do some shopping, and when I came back he was gone. He had taken his trunk with him, and hadn’t left any address; but in my traveling-bag I found a fifty-dollar bill, with a slip of paper on which he had written, ‘No use coming after me; I’m married.’ We’d been together less than four months, and I never saw him again.

  “At first I couldn’t believe it. I stayed on, thinking it was a joke—or that he’d feel sorry for me and come back. But he never came and never wrote me a line. Then I began to hate him, and to see what a wicked fool I’d been to leave Joe. I was so lonesome—I thought I’d go crazy. And I kept thinking how good and patient Joe had been, and how badly I’d used him, and how lovely it would be to be back in the little parlor at Hinksville, even with Mrs. Glenn and the minister talking about free-will and predestination. So at last I wrote to Joe. I wrote him the humblest letters you ever read, one after another; but I never got any answer.

  “Finally I found I’d spent all my money, so I sold my watch and my rings—Joe gave me a lovely turquoise ring when we were married—and came to New York. I felt ashamed to stay alone any longer in Albany; I was afraid that some of Arthur’s friends, who had met me with him on the road, might come there and recognize me. After I got here I wrote to Susy Price, a great friend of mine who lives at Hinksville, and she answered at once, and told me just what I had expected—that Joe was ready to forgive me and crazy to have me back, but that his mother wouldn’t let him stir a step or write me a line, and that she and the minister were at him all day long, telling him how bad I was and what a sin it would be to forgive me. I got Susy’s letter two or three days ago, and after that I saw it was no use writing to Joe. He’ll never dare go against his mother and she watches him like a cat. I suppose I deserve it—but he might have given me another chance! I know he would if he could only see me.”

  Her voice had dropped from anger to lamentation, and her tears again overflowed.

  Woburn looked at her with the pity one feels for a child who is suddenly confronted with the result of some unpremeditated naughtiness.

  “But why not go back to Hinksville,” he suggested, “if your husband is ready to forgive you? You could go to your friend’s house, and once your husband knows you are there you can easily persuade him to see you.”

  “Perhaps I could—Susy thinks I could. But I can’t go back; I haven’t got a cent left.”

  “But surely you can borrow money? Can’t you ask your friend to forward you the amount of your fare?”

  She shook her head.

  “Susy ain’t well off; she couldn’t raise five dollars, and it costs twenty-five to get back to Hinksville. And besides, what would become of me while I waited for the money? They’ll turn me out of here to-morrow; I haven’t paid my last week’s board, and I haven’t got anything to give them; my bag’s empty; I’ve pawned everything.”

  “And don’t you know anyone here who would lend you the money?”

  “No; not a soul. At least I do know one gentleman; he’s a friend of Arthur’s, a Mr. Devine; he was staying at Rochester when we were there. I met him in the street the other day, and I didn’t mean to speak to him, but he came up to me, and said he knew all about Arthur and how meanly he had behaved, and he wanted to know if he couldn’t help me—I suppose he saw I was in trouble. He tried to persuade me to go and stay with his aunt, who has a lovely house right round here in Twenty-fourth Street; he must be very rich, for he offered to lend me as much money as I wanted.”

  “You didn’t take it?”

  “No,” she returned; “I daresay he meant to be kind, but I didn’t care to be beholden to any friend of Arthur’s. He came here again yesterday, but I wouldn’t see him, so he left a note giving me his aunt’s address and saying she’d have a room ready for me at any time.”

  There was a long silence; she had dried her tears and sat looking at Woburn with eyes full of helpless reliance.

  “Well,” he said at length, “you did right not to take that man’s money; but this isn’t the only alternative,” he added, pointing to the revolver.

  “I don’t know any other,” she answered wearily. “I’m not smart enough to get employment; I can’t make dresses or do type-writing, or any of the useful things they teach girls now; and besides, even if I could get work I couldn’t stand the loneliness. I can never hold my head up again—I can’t bear the disgrace. If I can’t go back to Joe I’d rather be dead.”

  “And if you go back to Joe it will be all right?” Woburn suggested with a smile.

  “Oh,” she cried, her whole face alight, “if I could only go back to Joe!”

  They were both sil
ent again; Woburn sat with his hands in his pockets gazing at the floor. At length his silence seemed to rouse her to the unwontedness of the situation, and she rose from her seat, saying in a more constrained tone, “I don’t know why I’ve told you all this.”

  “Because you believed that I would help you,” Woburn answered, rising also; “and you were right; I’m going to send you home.”

  She colored vividly. “You told me I was right not to take Mr. Devine’s money,” she faltered.

  “Yes,” he answered, “but did Mr. Devine want to send you home?”

  “He wanted me to wait at his aunt’s a little while first and then write to Joe again.”

  “I don’t—I want you to start tomorrow morning; this morning, I mean. I’ll take you to the station and buy your ticket, and your husband can send me back the money.”

  “Oh, I can’t—I can’t—you mustn’t—” she stammered, reddening and paling. “Besides, they’ll never let me leave here without paying.”

  “How much do you owe?”

  “Fourteen dollars.”

  “Very well; I’ll pay that for you; you can leave me your revolver as a pledge. But you must start by the first train; have you any idea at what time it leaves the Grand Central?”

  “I think there’s one at eight.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “In less than two hours, then; it’s after six now.”

  She stood before him with fascinated eyes.

  “You must have a very strong will,” she said. “When you talk like that you make me feel as if I had to do everything you say.”

  “Well, you must,” said Woburn lightly. “Man was made to be obeyed.”

  “Oh, you’re not like other men,” she returned; “I never heard a voice like yours; it’s so strong and kind. You must be a very good man; you remind me of Joe; I’m sure you’ve got just such a nature; and Joe is the best man I’ve ever seen.”

  Woburn made no reply, and she rambled on, with little pauses and fresh bursts of confidence.