"I cannot let you in."
There was a short silence.
"I pray you, let me in," he said again.
"I have told you I cannot. Who are you?"
"I am a soldier, wounded. I'm trying to get back to my friends at ----."
He mentioned a settlement about fifty miles north. "I have missed my
way, and I can't drag myself any farther."
Her heart swung violently between suspicion and compassion.
"I am alone in the house," she said. "My husband is away, and he made me
promise not to let any one in on any pretence whatever during his
absence."
"Then I shall die on your doorstep," said the voice. "I can't drag
myself any farther."
There was another silence.
"It is beginning to snow," he said.
"I know," she said, and he heard the trouble in her voice.
"Open the door and look at me," he said, "and see if I can do you any
harm."
She opened the door, and stood on the threshold, barring the way. He was
leaning against the doorpost with his head against it, as she had often
seen her husband lean when he was talking to her on a summer evening.
Something in his attitude, so like her husband's, touched her strangely.
Supposing he were in need, and pleaded for help in vain!
The man turned his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged
with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his
tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and
now stood staring dumbly at her.
"My husband will never forgive me," she said, with a sort of sob.
He said nothing more. He seemed at the last point of exhaustion. Through
the dim white night a few flakes of snow fell upon his harsh, repellent
face and on his bandaged arm.
A sudden wave of pity carried all before it.
She beckoned him into the house, and locked and barred the door. She put
him in her husband's chair by the fire. He hardly noticed anything. He
seemed stupefied. He sat staring alternately at the fire and at her.
When she asked him to which regiment he belonged, he did not answer.
She set before him the supper she had prepared for herself, and chafed
his hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then he
ate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all she had put
before him.
A semblance of life returned gradually to him.
"I was pretty near done up when I knocked," he said several times.
She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, wrapped it in
fresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He took it all as a matter of
course.
She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in the back
kitchen. When she came back to the living-room, she found he had dragged
himself to his feet, and was looking vacantly at a little picture of
President Lincoln on the mantelshelf. She showed him the bed and told
him to lie down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She left
him, and presently heard him cast himself down. A few minutes later she
went to the door and listened. His heavy, regular breathing told her he
was asleep.
She went back to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire.
Was he really asleep? Was it all feigned, the wound, the story, the
exhaustion? Had she been trapped? Oh! what had she done? What had she
done?
She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, experienced,
fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to be deluded, in spite of
being warned; knew that her feelings had been played upon, made use of,
not even dexterously made use of; knew that she had disobeyed her
husband, broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself into
disgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes of that self it was
already stolen. It was still under the plank beneath her feet, but it
was already stolen.
The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresistible tenderness
for suffering and weakness even in its uncouthest garb, said
incessantly, "I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do no
less. Somebody brought him into the world. Some woman cried for joy and
anguish when he was born. He would have died if I had not taken him in.
I could do no less."
Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to reconcile herself
to going upstairs to her own room and to bed.
Once she got up and noiselessly took down her husband's revolver from
the mantelshelf, and examined it. He had taken its fellow with him, and
apparently, contrary to his custom, he had taken the powder-flask with
him too, for it was gone from its nail. The revolvers were always kept
loaded, but--by some evil chance--the one that remained was unloaded.
She could have sworn she had seen her husband load it two days ago. Why
was this numbness creeping over her again? She got out powder and
bullets from a small store she had of her own, loaded and primed it, and
laid it on the table beside her.
The night had become very still. Her hearing seemed to reach out till
she felt she could have heard a coyote move in its hole miles away. The
log fire creaked and shifted. The tall clock in the corner ticked,
catching its chain now and then as its manner was. The wooden walls
shrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuated
the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound
fell upon her ear--very low, but different, not like the fragmentary
inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound,
aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without
moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the
wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the
soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after
all. There it was again. Where did it come from?
_The man in the next room?_
She took up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door of
the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly through
the crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. She
listened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing a
pretence? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the
light with her hand.
She bent over the sleeping man. At the first glance her heart sank, for
he had not taken off his boots. But as she looked hard at him her
suspicions died within her. He lay on his back with his coarse,
emaciated face towards her, his mouth open, showing his broken teeth.
The sleep of utter exhaustion was upon him. She could have killed him
as he lay. He was not acting. He was really asleep.
She crept out of the room again, leaving the door ajar, and went back to
the kitchen.
Hardly had she sat down when she heard the sound again. It was too faint
to reach her except when she was in the kitchen. She knew now where it
came from--_the door_. Some one was picking the lock.
The instant the sleeping man was out of her sight she suspected him
again.
Was he really asleep after all? He had not taken off his boots. When she
came back from making his bed she had found him standing by the
mantelshelf. Had he unloaded the pistol in her absence? Would he
presently get up, and open the door to his confederates?
Her mind rose clear and cold and unflinching. She took up the pistol,
and then laid it down again. She wanted a more noiseless weapon. She got
out her husband's great clasp-knife from the open tool-box, took the
lamp, and crept back to the man's bedside. She should be able to kill
him--certainly she should be able to kill him; and then she should have
the pistol for the other one.
But he still slept heavily. When she saw him again, again her
suspicions fell from her. She _knew_ he was asleep.
She shook him by the shoulder, noiselessly, but with increasing
violence, until he opened his eyes with a groan. Then only she
remembered that she was shaking his wounded arm. He saw the knife in her
hand, and raised his left arm as if to ward off the blow.
"Listen," she whispered, close to his ear. "Don't speak. There is a man
trying to break into the house. You must get up and help me."
He stared at her, vaguely at first, but with growing intelligence. The
food and sleep had restored him somewhat to himself. He sat up on the
couch.
"Take off my boots," he whispered; "I tried, and could not."
Her last suspicion of him vanished. She cut the laces with her knife,
and dragged his boots off. They stuck to his feet, and bits of the
woollen socks came off with them. They had evidently not been taken off
for weeks. While she did it, he whispered, "Why should any one be
wanting to break in? There's nothing here to take."
"Yes, there is," she said. "There's a lot of money."
"Good Lord! Where?"
"Under the floor in the kitchen."
"Then it's the kitchen they'll make for. You bet they know where the
money is, if they know it's here. Are there many of 'em?"
"I don't know."
"Well, we shall know soon enough," said the man. He had become alert,
keen. "Have you any pistols?"
"Yes, one."
"Fetch it, but don't make a sound, mind."
She stole away, and returned with the pistol. She would have put it into
his hand, but he pushed it away.
"It's no use to me," he said, "with my arm in a sling. I will see what I
can do with my left hand and the knife. Can you shoot?"
"Yes."
"Can you hit anything?"
"Yes."
"To be depended on?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's darned lucky. How long will that door hold?"
They were both in the little passage by now, pressed close together,
listening to the furtive pick, pick, of some one at the lock.
"I don't think it will hold more than a minute."
"Now, look here," he said, "I shall go and stand at the foot of the
stair, and knife the second man, if there is a second. The first man
I'll leave to you. There's a bit of light outside from the snow. He'll
let in enough light to see him by as he opens the door. Don't wait. Fire
at him as he comes in, and don't stop; go on firing at him till he
drops. You've got six bullets. Don't you make any mistake and shoot me.
I've had enough of that already. Now, you look carefully where I'm going
to stand and when I'm there you put out the lamp."
He spoke to her as a man does to his comrade.
That she could be frightened did not seem to enter his calculations. He
moved with cat-like stealth to the foot of the tiny staircase, and
flattened himself against the wall. Then he stretched his left arm once
or twice as if to make sure of it, licked the haft of the knife, and
nodded at her.
She instantly put out the lamp.
All was dark save for a faint thread of light which outlined the door.
Across the thread something moved once--twice. The sound of picking
ceased. Then another sound succeeded it, a new one, unlike the last, as
if something was being gently prized open, wrenched.
"The bar will hold," she said to herself; and then remembered for the
first time that the rung into which the bar slid had been loose these
many days. It was giving now.
It had given!
The door opened silently, and a man came in.
For a moment she saw him clear with the accomplice snowlight behind him.
She did not hesitate. She shot once and again. He fell, and struggled
violently up, and she shot again. He fell, and dragged himself to his
knees, and she shot again. Then he sank gently and slowly down, as if
tired, with his face against the wall, and moved no more.
The man on the stairs rushed out and looked through the open door.
"By G----! he was single-handed," he said.
Then he stooped over the prostrate man, and turned him over on his
back.
"Dead!" he said, chuckling. "Well done, missus! Stone dead!"
He was masked.
The dirty left hand tore the mask callously off the grey face.
The woman had drawn near, and looked over his shoulder.
"Do you know him?" said the man.
For a moment she did not answer, and the pistol which had done its work
so well dropped noisily out of her palsied hand.
"He is a stranger to me," she said, looking fixedly at her husband's
fading face.