AN ALARM IN THE NIGHT
There was nothing that I could ask, nothing that I could say, and aside
from her thanks she was silent. So without a word I turned and helped
the other woman to her feet, and still in silence the three of us walked
along until we came to an easy rise where I helped them both to the
track. We were just in time, for as we gained the track our trolley
rounded the curve and took us aboard.
So for a mile or so Miss Tabor and I sat in intimate aloofness, while
the car bore us through the beauty of the fading summer day. Everywhere
birds were chanting the evening, and ever and again with growing
insistence the vivid breath of the nearing sea blew past us. All my life
this first summer tang of salt air had never failed to stir me. It had
meant vacation and the vague trumpet call of the unknown. But now I sat
unheeding, burning with an unreasoning and sullen resentment. I knew
that I was a fool. What possible difference could it make to me if the
acquaintance of a merry week and a few more intimate hours chose to hide
a wedding-ring in her breast. It certainly was no business of mine, nor
could she owe me any explanation. Yet I wanted explanation more than
anything else in the world. It certainly could not be her own and
yet--whose was it, anyway? Certainly not her mother's, for her mother I
knew was alive. But then, whose could it be? And why did it matter so
much? Why should such a patent terror fill her at the thought of its
loss? Why was it again so finally and so quickly hidden away? It was
even strange, I thought, that she should let the emotion that she must
know I had seen, pass with no effort of explanation.
I glanced at her. She was sitting, looking wearily ahead, distress was
in her eyes, and every little line of her body spoke fatigue without
hope; only her hands, tightly clasped in her lap, showed the
determination of some hidden thought. The blue of a little bruise had
begun to show near her temple. A wave of tenderness swept over me, the
pity of a man for a woman tired and in unvoiced distress. Who was I that
I should question her? What possible claim had I upon even the least of
her thoughts? She was pathetically weary and disturbed, and I was a
sullen brute.
I spoke to her as if conversation had been unbroken. "Of course I am to
take you home."
She shook her head.
"That's perfectly absurd," I said. "There must be some inn or other near
you. I can put up there for the night and go on in the morning. In fact,
I am pretty tired, myself; the nearest place that I can get supper and a
bed is the best place for me."
She considered for a long moment. "Very well," she said at last, "I am
tired and still a little dizzy; it would be nice to be taken all the way
home. I don't generally mind the dark, but I suppose that we were a good
deal shaken up. There is an inn, too, but it would be very silly of you
to go there, unless--unless for some reason we could not put you up."
"Oh, come," I said, "you probably have a houseful at the present moment,
and you know it. Nothing is more upsetting in the world than the
unexpected guest."
"Well, we shall see," she answered. "I am pretty sure that nobody but
the family is at home, and father will want to see you and thank you.
Knight-errantry appeals to him. We will leave the asking to mother. If
she can she will want you to stay. If she can't, well the inn is not so
bad after all. There it is, by the way, on that little hill. I had no
idea that we were so near home. We get off at that next electric light.
Will you please signal to the conductor?"
The car stopped and I helped her down, taking our two bags with the
strange feeling that I was suddenly coming to the end of a brief
sentimental journey. Our companion in misfortune, who had chosen a seat
by herself, scarcely looked up. It was no great walk to the house and
presently Miss Tabor pointed it out to me. It was large and low, set
well back upon a great lawn that a tall, dark hedge divided from the
outer world.
As we neared the pillared gate a high-shouldered man stepped out
nervously from the shadow. Miss Tabor put her hand upon my arm. "Just
wait here a moment, please," she said and ran forward to him.
It had grown almost dark, but I could see that she leaned toward him,
placing both hands upon his shoulders. The soft sibilance of her
whispered words and the startling rumble of his bass came to me
indistinctly, merely wordless tones. I grew red in the darkness and
turned my back, for I had caught myself trying to listen.
Presently Miss Tabor came to me. "I didn't mean to keep you so long,"
she apologized, "but you see--"
"It wasn't long," I said shortly, surprised to find myself angry. So as
we climbed the steps the shadow had dropped between us again.
For a moment I stood blinking when the door had shut behind us. The
large, low room in which we stood was not brilliantly lighted, but the
sudden change from the soft outdoor gloom dazzled me. The room was very
large indeed, floored with dull red tile, paneled in dark oak; a great
Dutch fireplace, filled with flowers, breathed fragrance. Opening from
the room's far end, and raised three steps above its level, was a
dining-room. On our entrance two chairs had been pushed back from the
table, and now a slim, pretty little woman came running down the steps
and across the big room.
"Lady, dear," she cried, "what on earth has made you so late?" She flung
herself into Miss Tabor's arms, hugging her as a child would.
Miss Tabor kissed her gaily. "We will tell you all about it, mother,
dear," she laughed. "Let me introduce Mr. Crosby, without whose help I
should have probably been much later. And, Mr. Crosby, this is my
mother."
She greeted me graciously, turning to introduce me to her husband, who
had followed her more slowly. He was a florid man and rather tall, his
gray eyes being level with my own.
When places had been made for us at the table, and we were gathered in
the close radius of the table lights, I found myself surprised that the
daughter looked so little like either. Her mother was much smaller than
she, one of those women who never grow thin or fat, but whose age comes
upon them only as sort of dimming of color and outline. And indeed, in
the more intimate light I found her looking more her years, pretty and
soft and doll-like, but too delicate a vessel for any great strength of
spirit, a sweet little woman, affectionate and inconsequent. Her words
came quickly and with a certain merry insistence, but with little
nervous pauses that were almost sad in their intensity; and once when a
bicycle sounded faintly from the street she stopped altogether, her hand
at her heart, her head turned and listening, until her husband's quick
laugh brought her blue eyes questioningly to him. Then we all plunged
into conversation at once as if ashamed of the sudden pause it had given
us.
Miss Tabor and I were made to give an account of our accident, or rather
she gave it, and a very nicely tempered account it was, too. I was kept
busy devising plausible confirmation of surprising understatements. She
seemed for some reason very anxious to hide a possible seriousness in
the matter, and her first brief, pleading glance bound me to her, freely
accepting the judgment of her conscience for my own. Under these
circumstances I expected no mention of the loss and finding of the ring
and there was none.
Both mother and father called Miss Tabor "Lady"; so, I remembered, had
all her intimates at the Christmas house party. Yet her bag had been
initialed "M. B. T." I thought the nickname a gracious one and well
suited to all the manner of her bearing. I wondered idly as they talked
what the M. stood for, sure in my heart that it, too, was graceful and
fitting. And as "Lady" told of the beauty of the meadow where we had
been delayed "almost two hours by an old flat wheel, or something like
that--isn't that the term, Mr. Crosby?" I decided that if the rest of my
three months were spent in the most humdrum of ways, my vacation as a
whole would not have been a barren one.
There was little conversation after we had left the table. Miss Tabor
said that she was too sleepy to sit up--and, indeed, the strain that she
had been under was already beginning to show through even the vivacity
of her acting. For my part, I had no inclination to sit in the family
circle that she left. I, too, was tired, and I had many things to think
and little to say. So that as she got up I, too, pleaded fatigue, and my
need of finding my room at the inn.
"The inn! Indeed you will do nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Tabor.
"There is a bed just waiting for tired young men here." She glanced for
confirmation at her daughter.
Miss Tabor said nothing but looked across to her father. He paused an
uncomfortable second, then turned to me with a smile.
"Of course you are to stay here," he said.
His pause had troubled me, and I hesitated, but Mrs. Tabor would hear no
arguments or excuses, and overwhelmed my stammering in a rippling
torrent of proof that I was a very silly young man, and that she would
not hear another word about any such an absurdity as my going; and as I
stood embarrassed, Mr. Tabor, with another glance at his daughter, took
my bag himself, and, his hand upon my shoulder, fairly bore me off to my
room. I was too comfortably tired to lie long awake, even with so
eventful a day to turn over in retrospect. As I floated downward into
the dark through a flood of incongruous images, green meadows and
roaring trains, clamorous streets and calm rooms, delicate with white
and silver, I distinctly heard a step upon the porch, the click and
closure of the front door, and the deep voice of the man we had met at
the gate. But even my angry interest in him was weaker than the waves of
drowsiness.
I roused into that dubious half-consciousness which is the territory of
the powers of darkness; in which the senses are vaguely alive, while no
judgment restrains or questions the vagaries of imagination; the place
of evil memories and needless fears, of sweeping reforms whose vanity
appears with the new light, and of remembered dreams whose beauty faints
upon the threshold of the day. It was still so dark that before I could
place myself amid my unfamiliar surroundings, I was aware of smothered
commotion. People were awake and in trouble; the house was full of
swishing garments and the hurry of uncomfortable feet. Some one passed
my door swiftly, carrying a light, whose rays swept through the cracks
and swung uncannily across the ceiling. Another door opened somewhere,
letting out a blur of voices, among which I seemed to distinguish the
bass growl of the man at the gate. My first thought was of fire; and
with the shock of that I sprang up and across the room, groping for the
handle of the door. It would not open. I pulled and tugged at it,
feeling above and below for a bolt. There was none, nor was any key in
the keyhole. After some stumbling, I found the switch of the electric
light, and in the sudden radiance explored the floor for the fallen key.
It was not there; and a hurried examination of the crack showed me that
the lock had been turned from the outside.
I sat down on the bed and tried to gather my common sense. I remembered
perfectly having left the door unlocked and the key in its place within.
By what conceivable design or accident had I been made a prisoner? The
melodramatic suggestions born of the hour and my excited fancy were
simply absurd in such a place. I was in a Connecticut suburb, a home of
lawn parties and electric lights, and this was the Twentieth Century;
yet I could find no explanation more reasonable. Fire was by this time
out of the question; and an accident or practical joke would have been
evident by now. Meanwhile, the muffled turmoil of the house continued. A
man's voice and a woman's broke into inarticulate altercation, and
presently I thought I heard a cry and a sound like the fall of something
soft and heavy. I sprang to the door again and shook it with all my
strength, but it was so solidly fitted that it did not even rattle. Then
some one ran softly down-stairs; the front door banged sharply; and,
looking out, I saw the figure of a man, his shoulders raised and his
elbows bent with haste, run swiftly across the bar of light that
streamed from my window and disappear in the dark. Could he have broken
into the house, locking the bedrooms against interruption, and fled upon
being discovered? I was opening my window to shout for help when I was
arrested by a voice that there was no mistaking.
"I can't! We mustn't!" she wailed. "What will he think of us?"
An angry whisper answered, and of the rest I could distinguish only the
tone. The whisper grew more volubly urgent, while her replies hesitated.
At last she came quietly down the hall and knocked at my door.
"Mr. Crosby--are you awake?"
"I should think so," I answered. "What has happened? I'm locked in."
"Nothing. It's all right--really. Will you come down-stairs as soon as
you can, very quietly?"
"Certainly. Half a minute. What's the matter?"
"Nothing," she said. "Hurry!" The key turned in the lock and she was
gone. I dressed with a haste that made my fingers clumsy, and ran
down-stairs. The bustle in the house had quieted into an irregular
murmur.
Miss Tabor was waiting for me in the hall below. The lights were not on,
and I could see only that she was wrapped in something long and dark,
her hair gathered into a loose knot above her head. Perhaps only the dim
light made me imagine traces of tears.
"Thank you for being so ready," she began in a quick undertone. "Now,
listen! you must--"
"Tell me what's the trouble," I broke in. "Is it burglary, or is
somebody taken suddenly ill?"
"There isn't any trouble," she repeated. "You must believe that, and you
must do as I tell you. I'm terribly sorry, but it's impossible for you
to remain here any longer. You must go away--now, at once, and without
knowing or asking anything. Of course there's a good reason, and of
course you can be trusted not to talk or inquire. That's all. It's
perfectly simple; there's nothing really surprising about it."
"You mean I'm to leave this minute--in the middle of the night?"
"Yes; now. Don't wonder or worry. Think as well of us as you can--don't
think about us at all! There's nothing the matter. I ought to have
known. Accept my apologies for all of us, and--good-by." She held out
her hand.
"That's all very well," I said. "Of course I'll go if you wish it, and
ask no questions. Only tell me when I can see you again, and if there's
anything in the world I can do for you. I'll be staying at the inn."
A latch-key clicked behind us, and the man I had seen at the gate
tiptoed in. "All right?" he whispered.
"I think so; hurry," she replied, and he passed swiftly and quietly
up-stairs. She turned to me a drawn face, speaking in strained
monotone.
"You must never see me again. You mustn't stay in town, nor try to do
anything. Oh, can't you understand? The only help you can give is to
go--go away utterly and forget all about it as if you had never met me.
Honestly I'm grateful, and I think everything good of you, but--oh, go
away!"
"As you please," I said. "What about my things?"
"Wait a minute." She ran lightly up to the landing and returned with my
suit-case, closed and strapped. I took my hat from the table by the
door.
"Good-by," she said. "Promise me not to try to come back."
What is there in darkness and the sense of night to make even the
plainest woman so lovely? She was close before me as I turned, the
mysterious oval of her face wavering upward as though rising through dim
water; her hair a heavier shadow against the gloom, her lips a living
blossom, and her eyes luminous out of undiscoverable depths. The dark
wrap she wore lost itself downward in long, fading lines; and all the
hidden form and the nameless fragrance of her were wonderfully the same,
one with midnight and midsummer. As I took her hand, I do not know what
agony of restraint held my arms from around her; only I kept repeating
over and over to myself, "I have no right--I have no right"--and because
of that I could not for a moment answer her in words. Suddenly from
above came a sharp shock and the metallic splash of broken glass. The
voices broke out in a quick murmur, and she shrank and shook as if
cringing away from a blow.
"Oh, go quickly!" she cried. "They need me!"
I opened the door. "Good-by," I said weakly, "and--God bless you!" And
even as I turned on the threshold to lift my hat the latch clicked
behind me.