A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.
Fair read a book until ten o’clock, but the feeling of rest and
security she longed for did not come. Every now and then she would
start and flash her large eyes about the room and heave long sighs at
its emptiness and loneliness.
Then she began to wonder how far Sadie was on her way to Philadelphia.
Again she would sigh and wish her friend back, and at last her thoughts
turned to the poor mother, of whom she had been so suddenly and cruelly
bereaved.
“He killed her just as truly as if he had stabbed her to the heart,”
she murmured bitterly. “Ah, how I hate him, how I loathe the very
thought of him! Yet I am powerless to punish him for his dastardly
crime.”
She did not guess that by her scorn of him, her refusal to live with
him, and her precautions against him, she was punishing him in the
cruelest fashion for his sins, for the poor tool that Belva had used to
further her designs against Fair had fallen in love with his fate, and
worshiped her with a fierce, half-savage passion that drove him wild
with its futility.
To win the heart of the beautiful girl he had deceived, he would have
bartered his hopes of heaven; but, in her righteous pride and scorn,
she held aloof from him as the stars from the earth, and he, in a fury
of jealous love, abandoned all pretense of business, and spent his days
and nights in dogging her footsteps and devising means to get her into
his possession.
No wonder Fair was restless and miserable, for this love of Carl
Bernicci was as unrelenting as hate. It followed her with the fierce
persistency of a bloodhound tracking its prey, and woe be unto her if
ever she fell into his power. In some subtle way, she felt this, and
her fear kept her wretched.
“If he were a gentleman, he would not persecute me. He would shrink,
abashed, from the memory of what he had done, and leave me in peace,
as the only atonement he could offer,” she had said to Sadie over and
over; but her friend could only shake her head and answer:
“He is not exactly a gentleman, and his love for you overrules his
instincts of generosity. Besides, there is Belva Platt, who no doubt
spurs him on to persecute you.”
So Fair mused bitterly over her troubles until the heavy white lids
drooped over the tired eyes, the pretty head fell back against her
chair, and she slept like a weary child, with her small hand, so
delicate and dimpled, in spite of the labor it had to perform, pushed
in between the leaves of her book. Thus a long hour went by, and the
night wore on. The weary inmates of the house had all retired to rest,
and quiet stole over everything.
Fair slept on peacefully in her chair, and there was no one to hear the
catlike step that approached her door, nor the muffled click of the
burglar’s tool that turned back the lock. It opened noiselessly, and
a man glided into the room with an evilly exultant smile on his dark
face--Carl Bernicci.
Shutting the door as softly as he had opened it, the man advanced and
gazed with gloating eyes at the sleeping girl, who, with the heavy,
dark lashes lying on her rounded cheeks, and the breath coming hotly
between her parted lips, looked like a beautiful, innocent child.
His face reddened as he gazed, and his breath came hotly. He murmured:
“Now, if I can only mesmerize her, as Belva said, she will not cry out
when she awakes. She will be charmed, fascinated, and all my own!”
He fixed his burning dark eyes with a basilisk gaze upon her lovely
face; but, as if it were a serpent trying to charm her in her sleep,
the girl started broad awake all in an instant with a cry of fear that
rose into a shriek as she perceived the dark face looking down into her
own:
“Help! Help! Murder!”
The girlish voice, wild with fear and anger, seemed to startle all the
echoes in the quiet old house into instant life. Fair’s shriek seemed
to come ringing back to them:
“Help! Help! Murder!”
Carl Bernicci recoiled in astonishment for an instant. He had not
counted upon anything like this.
Belva, who had been his able adviser, had assured him that, once inside
the room, Fair would not resist him any further, but would give up her
obstinate resistance to his rights, and consent to forgive him and live
with him.
But her ringing shriek of fear told quite a different story, and he
shrank back in alarm, giving her opportunity to spring from her chair
and rush toward the door, reiterating her shrill scream for help:
“Murder! Murder!”
Recovering himself, he sprang after her, and, with a fierce oath,
clapped his hand over her mouth.
“Be still, you little wild cat!” he said savagely. But Fair, like the
wild cat he called her, fought him off with the energy of despair, and
the tussle between them was growing fierce indeed when hurried feet
were heard rushing along the corridor, the door was quickly burst open,
and the room filled with a swarm of excited men, women, and children.
In ten seconds Carl Bernicci’s grasp on Fair was broken, and two stout
men were holding him between them, laughing in his face at his hoarse
protestations.
“Let me go! She is my wife, and I have a right here!”
A score of voices denied his claim indignantly before Fair could even
speak, for her story was not known here, and to the inmates of the
house she was known simply as Miss Fielding, the pretty girl who was
rooming with Miss Allen.
“He’s a burglar, that’s what he is!” shouted one. “Bring the police at
once.”
Carl Bernicci had private reasons for not desiring a personal encounter
with the police, and at those words he hastily made up his mind not to
stay and argue his claim to his wife with the guardians of the law. He
cast a malignant glance at Fair, who was supported between two motherly
looking women, and then made such a supreme effort for liberty that he
broke the grasp of his captors and escaped through the door, pursued by
a yelling mob, who screamed at the tops of their voices:
“Stop thief! Stop thief!”
Fair, on being left alone with the two elderly women, sighed bitterly,
and exclaimed:
“Oh, I am so frightened! I cannot stay in this room alone.”
The women promised that one or the other would stay with her, and
begged her to tell them how it had all happened.
“Oh, I hardly know,” she sighed, putting her hand to her brow in agony.
“Sadie had a telegram calling her to the bedside of a dying sister in
Philadelphia, and she had to go, so I was left alone. I was frightened
and lonely at having to spend the night by myself, so I sat down to
read a book, and fell asleep. I awoke suddenly, trembling all over, and
saw that strange man standing beside me, looking down into my face. I
sprang up and screamed, and he cursed me and clapped his hands over my
mouth. Then I began to struggle to get free, and you all broke in the
door. Oh, how awful it was! I shall never forget it--never!”
The poor girl wept passionately.
The two women comforted her as best they could, and one of them kindly
offered to sleep with her. The other one went to get her man, as she
called him, to fix the broken lock on the door, which was soon done,
after which the disturbed house grew quiet again, the escaped thief not
having been apprehended.
“The rascal, what could he expect to stale among such poor folks as
the likes of us?” humorously demanded the Irishman who fixed the lock
of the door.
Fair shuddered and was silent. Let them think him a common thief if
they would. Better so than to know the truth, for then they might turn
against her and advise her to live with her husband and not act like a
fool, as some of the factory hands had already done.