Positively forgotten--it _is_ your birthday, isn't it, Dickie! If I had
only known you _wanted_ one--------” And she came up and kissed him,
with something like contrition, although his birthday had never been one
of the sentimental anniversaries which she felt bound to observe with
gifts.
“Don't feel bad about it--I don't care, you know--really,” he said.
“Only, I thought you had something of the sort in that brass-bound
box--that was the only reason I mentioned it.”
“Brass-bound box--why, no, I--I forgot it. I'm ashamed of myself, but I
forgot the date entirely!”
But she volunteered no explanation of what the box contained, although
the opportunity was so good a one.
And Clarke wondered more than ever.
What could it be? The letters of some former sweetheart? Well, all girls
had sweethearts before they married, he supposed; at least all men did.
He had had several himself. There was nothing in that. And he would not
make an ass of himself by saying any more about it.
Only... he could not remember any old sweethearts that he wouldn't have
told Agnes all about, if she had asked him. He had no secrets from her.
But she had a secret from him... innocent enough, of course. But still,
a secret. There was none of those old sweethearts of his whose letters
he cared to keep after five years of marriage. And there was no... But,
steady! Where were his reflections leading him? Into something very like
suspicion? Positively, yes; to the verge of it. Until Agnes got ready to
tell him all about it, he would forget that damned box!
And if she never got ready, why, that was all right, too. She was his
wife, and he loved her... and that settled it.
Perhaps that should have settled it, but it did not. Certain
healthy-looking, fleshy specimens of humanity are said to succumb the
quickest to pneumonia, and it may be that the most ingenuous natures
suffer the most intensely with suspicion, when once thoroughly
inoculated.
II
|Clarke fought against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort
necessary to the fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself.
He loved his wife, and trusted her, he told himself over and over again,
and in all their relations hitherto there had never been the slightest
deviation from mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect?
He could not have told himself. He went over their life together in his
mind. In the five years of their married life, he could not have helped
but notice that men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was
natural. She was a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected
credit upon him, in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock
a wife up and deny her the society proper to her years. And her
very catholicity of taste, the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of
masculine attention, had but served to make his confidence all the more
complete. True, he had never thought she loved him as much as he loved
her... but now that he came to think of it, was there not a warmer
quality to her affection since his return from this last trip west? Was
there not a kind of thoughtfulness, was there not a watchful increase in
attentiveness, that he had always missed before? Was she not making love
to him every day now; just as he had always made love to her before?
Were not the parts which they had played for the five years of their
married life suddenly reversed? They were! Indeed they were! And what
did that mean? What did that portend? Did the brass-bound box have aught
to do with that? What was the explanation of this change?
The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged rôles
into capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began
covertly to watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He
said nothing more about the box, but within six months after the first
day upon which he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his
thoughts.
_What_ did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected
nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If
his wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign.
If anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her
thoughtfulness in small things, increased.
III
|There came a day when he could stand this self-torture no longer,
he thought. He came home from his office--Clarke was a partner in a
prosperous real-estate concern--at an hour when he thought his wife not
yet returned from an afternoon of call making, determined to end the
matter once for all.
He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer.
He found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the
drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key.
Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it
open! With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something
with which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would
take it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step.
He turned, just as his wife entered the room.
Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and
rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the
fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights,
it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her
gaze. He essayed a clumsy lie:
“Agnes,” he began, indicating the desk, “I--I got a bill to-day from
Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know--I was sure that the
account had been settled--that you had paid them, and had shown me the
receipt--that you had paid them from your allowance, you know--and I
thought I would come home and look up the receipt.”
It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while
he was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down
on the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite
casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands.
“The receipt is here,” she said; and got it for him.
The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each
other, and they both trembled with agitation.
Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that
little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred
to it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and
fumbling hands, and played out the deception.
Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the
story were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of
softness--almost of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready
to try and melt him into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she!
Well, that would not work with him! And with the receipted bill waving
in his hand, he made it the text of a lecture on extravagance, into
which he plunged with vehemence.
Why did he not let her speak? He would not admit the real reason to
himself, just then. But in his heart he was afraid to have her go on.
Afraid, either way it turned. If she were innocent of any wrong, he
would have made an ass of himself--and much worse than an ass. If she
were guilty, she might melt him into a weak forgiveness in spite of
her guilt! No, she must not speak... not now! If she were innocent, how
could he confess his suspicions to her and acknowledge his baseness? And
besides... women were so damned clever... whatever was in that box, she
might fool him about it, somehow!
And then, “Good God!” he thought, “I have got to the place where I hug
my suspicion to me as a dearer thing than my love, have I? Have I got so
low as that?”
While these thoughts raced and rioted through his mind, his lips
were feverishly pouring out torrents in denunciation of feminine
extravagance. Even as he spoke he felt the black injustice of his
speech, for he had always encouraged his wife, rather than otherwise, in
the expenditure of money; his income was a good one; and the very furs
which formed the text of his harangue he had helped her select and even
urged upon her.
It was their first quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which has
only one side to it. For she listened in silence, with white lips
and hurt eyes, and a face that was soon set into a semblance of hard
indifference. He stormed out of the room, ashamed of himself, and
feeling that he had disgraced the name of civilization.
IV
|Ashamed of himself, indeed; but before the angel of contrition could
take full possession of his nature, the devil of suspicion, the imp of
the box, regained its place.
For why had she not answered him? She knew he cared nothing about the
trivial bill, the matter of the furs, he told himself. Why had she not
insisted on a hearing, and told him about the box? She knew as well as
he that that was what he had broken into her desk to get!
Justice whispered that she had been about to speak, and that he had
denied her the chance. But the imp of the box said that an honest woman
would have _demanded_ the chance--would have persisted until she got it!
And thus, his very shame, and anger at himself, were cunningly turned
and twisted by the genius of the brass-bound box into a confirmation of
his suspicions.
V
|Suspicions? Nay, convictions! Beliefs. Certainties!
They were certainties, now! Certainties to Clarke's mind, at least. For
in a month after this episode he had become a silent monomaniac on the
subject of the brass-bound box. He felt shame no longer. She was guilty.
Of just what, he did not know. But guilty. Guilty as Hell itself, he
told himself, rhetorically, in one of the dumb rages which now became so
frequent with him.
_Guilty--guilty--guilty_--the clock on the mantelpiece ticked off many
dragging hours of intolerable minutes to that tune, while Clarke lay
awake and listened. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--repeat any word often
enough, and it will hypnotize you. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--so he and
the clock would talk to each other, back and forth, the whole night
through. If any suggestions of his former, more normal habits of thought
came to him now it was they that were laughed out of court; it was they
that were flung away and scorned as traitors.
She was guilty. But he would be crafty! He would be cunning. He would
make no mistake. He would allow her no subterfuge. He would give her no
chance to snare him back into a condition of half belief. There should
be no juggling explanations. They were clever as the devil, women were!
But this one should have no chance to fool him again. She had fooled him
too long already.
And she kept trying to fool him. Shortly after his outburst over the
furs, she began again a series of timid advances which would have struck
him as pathetic had he not known that her whole nature was corroded and
corrupted with deceit, with abominable deceit. She was trying to make
him believe that she did not know why he was angry and estranged, was
she? He would show her! He hated her now, with that restless, burning
intensity of hatred known only to him who has injured another. A hatred
that consumed his own vitality, and made him sick in soul and body. The
little sleep he got was passed in uneasy dreams of his revenge; and his
waking hours were devoted to plots and plans of the form which it should
take. Oh, but she had been cunning to fool him for so long; but she
should see! She should see! When the time for action came, she should
see!
VI
|Something, one tense and feverish midnight, when he lay in his bed
snarling and brooding and chuckling--a kind of snapping sense in some
remote interior chamber of his brain, followed by a nervous shock that
made him sit upright--warned him that the time for action was at hand.
What is it that makes sinners, at provincial revival meetings, suddenly
aware that the hours of dalliance are past and the great instant that
shall send them to “the mourners' bench” is at hand? Somehow, they seem
to know! And, somehow, Clarke felt an occult touch and knew that his
time for action had arrived.
He did not care what came afterwards. Any jury in the world, so he told
himself, ought to acquit him of his deed, when they once knew his story;
when they once looked at the damning evidence of her guilt which she
had hidden away for so long in the brass-bound box. But if they did not
acquit him, that was all right, too. His work in the world would have
been done; he would have punished a guilty woman. He would have shown
that all men are not fools.
But he did not spend a great deal of thought on how other people would
regard what he was about to do. As he crept down the hall with the knife
in his hand, his chief sensation was a premonitory itch, a salty tang
of pleasure in the doing of the deed itself. When hatred comes in where
love has gone out, there may be a kind of voluptuary delight in the act
of murder.
Very carefully he opened the door of her room. And then he smiled to
himself, and entered noisily; for what was the need of being careful
about waking up a woman who was already dead? He did not care whether he
killed her in her sleep or not;--indeed, if she wakened and begged for
her life, he thought it might add a certain zest to the business. He
should enjoy hearing her plead. He would not mind prolonging things.
But things were not prolonged. His hand and the muscles of his forearm
had tensed so often with the thought, with the idea, that the first blow
went home. She never waked.
VII
|He got the box, and opened it.
Inside was a long envelope, and written on that were the words:
“To be opened by my husband only after my death.”
That time had come!
Within the envelope was a letter. It was dated on the day of his return
from his western trip, a few months before. He read:
“Dick, I love you!
“Does it seem strange to you that I should write it down?
“Listen, Dickie dear--I _had_ to write it! I couldn't tell you when I
was alive--but I just had to tell you, too. And now that I am dead, what
I say will come to you with all of its sweetness increased; and all
of its bitterness left out! It will, now that I am dead--or if you die
first, you will never see this. This is from beyond the grave to you,
Dickie dear, to make all your life good to you afterwards!
“Now, listen, dear, and don't be hard on me.
“When I married you, Dickie, I _didn't_ love you! You were wild about
me. But I only _liked_ you very much. It wasn't really love. It wasn't
what you _deserved_. But I was only a girl, and you were the first man,
and I didn't know things; I didn't know what I _should have_ felt.
“Later, when I realized how very much you cared, I was ashamed of
myself. I grew to see that I had done wrong in marrying you. Wrong to
both of us. For no woman should marry a man she doesn't love. And I was
ashamed, and worried about it. You were so good to me! So sweet--and you
never suspected that I didn't care like I should. And because you were
so good and sweet to me, I felt _worse_. And I made up my mind you
should _never_ know! That I would be everything to you any woman could
be. I tried to be a good wife. Wasn't I, Dickie, even then?
“But I prayed and prayed and prayed. 'O God,' I used to say, 'let me
love him like he loves me!' It was five years, Dickie, and I _liked_ you
more, and _admired_ you more, and saw more in you that was worth while,
every week; but still, no miracle happened.
“And then one morning _a miracle did happen!_
“It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how
kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and _needed_ you. And
when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so different,
somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?--it had come! And I
sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come home so
that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie, _as
you deserved!_ My prayers had been answered, somehow--or maybe it was
what any woman would do just living near you and being with you.
“And then I saw _I couldn't tell you, after all!_
“For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for
five years _I hadn't loved you_, Dickie!
“And how would _that_ make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a
knife, Dickie?
“Oh, I wanted you to know! _How_ I wanted you to know! But, you see, I
couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just
_had_ to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it, somehow
or other. And I _will_ make you feel it, Dickie!
“But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head
about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they
can be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one
smallest bit of your love... not now! It would _kill_ me!
“But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you--it's my first
love letter--the first real one, Dickie. If _you_ die first, I'll tell
you in Heaven. And if _I_ die first, you'll understand!
“Agnes.”
XII.--Behind the Curtain
|It was as dark as the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A
drizzling rain blanketed the earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed
and struggled along the country road, now in the beaten path, and now
among the wet weeds by its side, I had never more heartily yearned
for the dullness and comforts of respectability. Here was I with more
talents in my quiver, it pleased me to think, than nine out of ten of
the burghers I had left sleeping snug and smug in the town a few miles
behind; with as much real love of humanity as the next man, too; and yet
shivering and cursing my way into another situation that might well mean
my death. And all for what? For fame or riches? No, for little more than
a mere existence, albeit free from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but
ready to become an honest man then and there, to turn back and give
up the night's adventure, had but my imagination furnished me with the
picture of some occupation whereby I might gain the same leisure and
independence as by what your precisians call thieving.
With the thought I stumbled off the road again, and into a narrow gully
that splashed me to the knees with muddy water. Out of that, I walked
plump into a hedge, and when I sought to turn from it at right angles, I
found myself still following its line. This circumstance showed me that
I was come unaware upon the sharp turn of the road which marked the
whereabouts of the house that was my object. Following the hedge, I
found the entrance to the graveled driveway within a hundred yards of
my last misstep, and entered the grounds. I groped about me for a space,
not daring to show a light, until presently a blacker bulk, lifting
itself out of the night's comprehensive blackness, indicated the
house itself, to my left and a bit in front of me. I left the moist
gravel--for there is nothing to be gained on an expedition of this
sort by advertising the size and shape of your boots to a morbidly
inquisitive public--and reached the shelter of the veranda by walking
across the lawn.
There, being out of eyeshot from the upper windows, I risked a gleam
from my pocket lantern, one of those little electric affairs that are
occasionally useful to others than night watchmen. Two long French
windows gave on the veranda; and, as I knew, both of them opened from
the reception hall. A bit of a way with the women is not amiss in my
profession; and the little grayeyed Irish maid, who had told me three
weeks before of old man Rolfe's stinginess and brutality towards the
young wife whom he had cooped up here for the past four years, had also
given me, bit by bit, other information more valuable than she could
guess. So, thanks to the maid, I was aware that the safe where the Rolfe
jewels were kept--and often a substantial bit of money as well--was
situated in the library; which was just beyond the hall and connected
with it by a flight of four or five steps. This safe was my objective
point.
The wooden window shutters were but the work of a moment; and the window
fastenings themselves of only a few minutes more. (I flatter myself that
I have a very coaxing way with window fasteners.) The safe itself would
give me the devil's own trouble, I knew. It was really a job for two
men, and I ached all over to be at it, to be safely through with it, and
away, a good hour before sunrise.
The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my
little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp
weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again,
though I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something
between a grunt and a squeak.
And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came
the answer--a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness of
the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately through
my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement.
For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence
was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound
came softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose
my held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been
through the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me.
“Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?”
So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts
almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have
her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought
steadied me to action.
“Shh,” I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually
opening it again. “S-h-h! No, it is not Charles”--and I put one foot
backward across the sill. “It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to
say----”
Click!--went something by the window, and the room was flooded with
sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!--and
I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the
most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young
woman it has ever been my lot to meet.
“Who are you?” she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet.
“Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?”
As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands
in the air--they had gone up quite involuntarily--I must have been the
very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles, whoever
the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked pistol.
Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol with
her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be ablaze
with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness. I
wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the
house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood
wondering she repeated:
“Who are you? And what do you want?”
“Madame,” I stammered, my jarred brain fastening upon the sentence she
had interrupted, “Charles sent me to--to say to you----”
“Charles who?” she asked. And as tense as was her face, a gleam of
merriment shot through her eyes. “Charles who?” she repeated.
Charles was not one of the points upon which the Irish maid had given me
information.
The lady with the pistol considered for a moment. “You are not very
clever, are you?” she said.
“If you will pardon me,” I said, “I think I had better be going. I seem
to have mistaken the house.”
“You at least seem to have mistaken the proper manner in which to enter
it,” she returned.
“Why, as to the mode of entrance,” I said, “I might plead that the
mistake appears to have been less in that than in the person who
employed it.”
I could not resist the retort. A dull red crept slowly up her neck and
face; a pallid, olive-tinted face, beautiful in itself, beautiful for
its oval contour and broad brow, and frame of black hair; beautiful in
itself, and yet dominated and outdone by the lustrous, restless beauty
of the dark eyes wherewith she held me more surely captive than by
virtue of the pistol.
“You will come in,” she said, “and sit there.” She indicated a seat
beside a central table. “But first you will kindly let me have whatever
weapons you may possess.” She took my revolver, examined it, and put her
own in the breast of her gown. “Now you may put your hands down,” she
said, “your arms must ache by now. Sit down.”
I sat. She stood and looked at me for a moment.
“I am wondering what you are going to do with me,” I ventured.