THE STORM.
The winter since Christmas had been unusually severe, and the oldest
inhabitants, of whom there are always many in every town, pronounced the
days, as they came and went, the coldest they had ever known. Ten,
twelve, and even fourteen degrees below zero the thermometers marked
more than once, while old Peterkin's which was hung inside the 'Lizy Ann
and always took the lead, went down one morning to seventeen, and all
the water-pipes and pumps in town either froze or burst, and Arthur
Tracy, who never forgot the poor, sent tons and tons of coal to them,
and whispered to himself:
"Poor Gretchen! It is hard for her if she is on the sea in such weather
as this. Heaven protect her, poor little Gretchen!"
The next day there was a change for the better, and the next, and the
next, until when the last day of February dawned people began to look
more cheerful, while the sun tried to break through the grey clouds
which shrouded the wintry sky. But this was only temporary, for before
noon the mercury fell again to eight below, the wind began to rise, and
when the New York train came panting to the station at half-past six,
clouds of snow so dense and dark were driving over the hills and along
the line of the track that nothing could be distinctly seen at a
distance.
It was not until the train had moved on that the station-master, who was
gathering up the mail-bag, which had been unceremoniously dropped, saw
across the track at a little distance from him the figure of a woman,
who seemed to be trying to examine a paper she held in her hand, while
clinging to her skirts and crying piteously was a child, but whether boy
or girl, he could not tell.
"Can I do anything for you?" he said, advancing toward the stranger, who
caught up the child in her arms, and without a word of answer, hurried
away in the storm and rapidly increasing darkness.
"Curis! She must have got off t'other side of the car. I wonder who she
is and where she is goin'. Not fur, I hope, such a night as this. Ugh!
the wind is like so many screech owls and almost takes a feller off his
feet," the agent said to himself, as he went back to the light and
warmth of his office, where he soon forgot the woman, who, with the
child held closely in her arms, walked swiftly on, her eyes strained to
their utmost tension as they peered through the darkness until she
reached a gate opening into a grassy road which led through the fields
in a straight line to Tracy Park and Collingwood beyond.
Carriages seldom traversed this road, but in the summer the people from
Collingwood and Tracy Park frequently walked that way, as it was a much
nearer route to town. Here the woman stopped, and looking up at the tall
arch over the gate, said aloud, as if repeating a lesson learned by
heart.
"Leave the car on your right hand; take the road to the right, as I have
drawn it on paper; go straight on for a quarter of a mile or more until
you come to a wide iron gate with a tall arch over it. This gate is also
at your right. You cannot mistake it."
"No," she continued, "I cannot mistake it. This is the place. We are
almost there," and putting down the child, she tugged with all her
strength at the gate, which she at last succeeded in opening, and
resuming her burden, passed through into the field where the snow lay on
the ground in great white drifts, while the blinding flakes and cutting
sleet from the leaden clouds above beat pitilessly upon her as she
struggled on her wearisome way.
And while she toiled on, fighting bravely with the storm, and
occasionally speaking a word of encouragement to the little child
nestled in her bosom, Arthur Tracy stood at one of the windows in his
library, with his face pressed against the pane, as he looked anxiously
out into darkness, shuddering involuntarily as the wind came screaming
round a corner of the house, bending the tall evergreens until their
slender tops almost touched the ground, and then rushing on down the
carriage-drive with a shriek like so many demons let loose from the
ice-caves of the north, where the winds are supposed to hold high
carnival.
They were surely holding a carnival to-night, and as Arthur listened to
the roar of the tempest he whispered to himself:
"A wild, wild night for Gretchen to arrive, and her dear little feet and
hands will be so cold; but there is warmth and comfort here, and love
such as she never dreamed of, poor Gretchen! I will hold her in my arms
and chafe her cold fingers and kiss her tired face until she feels that
her home-coming is a happy one. It must be almost time," and he glanced
at a small clock which stood upon the mantle.
In the adjoining room the dinner table was laid for two, and one could
see that more care than usual had been given to its arrangement, while
the roses in the center were the largest and finest of their kind. In
the grate a bright fire was burning, and Arthur placed a large
easy-chair before it and then brought from the library a footstool, with
a delicate covering of blue and gold. No foot had ever yet profaned this
stool with a touch, for it was one of Arthur's specialties, bought at a
great price in Algiers; but he brought it now for Gretchen and saw in
fancy resting upon it the cold little feet his hands were to rub and
warm and caress until life came back to them, while Gretchen's blue eyes
smiled upon him and Gretchen's sweet voice said:
"Thank you, Arthur. It is pleasant coming home."
For the last two or three weeks Arthur had been very quiet and taciturn,
but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless and nervous, and
his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent headache came
on, and Charles, the servant who attended him, reported to Mrs. Tracy
that his lunch had been untouched, and that he really seemed quite ill.
Then Frank went to him, and sitting down beside him as he lay upon a
couch in the room with Gretchen's picture, said to him, not unkindly:
"Are you sick to-day?"
For a few moments Arthur made no reply, but lay with his eyes closed as
if he had not heard. Then suddenly rousing himself, he burst out,
vehemently:
"Frank, you think me crazy, and you have based that belief in part, on
the fact that I am always expecting Gretchen. And so for a long time I
have suppressed all mention of her, though I have never ceased to look
for her arrival, since--since--well, I may as well tell you the truth.
I know now that she could not have been with me on the ship and in the
train, although I thought she was. I wrote her to join me in Liverpool,
and fancied she did. But my brain must have been a little mixed. She did
not come with me, and when I made up my mind to that, as I did a few
weeks ago, I wrote again telling her to come at once, and giving her
directions how to find the park if she should arrive at the station and
no one there to meet her. She has had more than time to get here, but I
have said nothing about sending the carriage for her, as that seems to
annoy you. But Frank--" and Arthur's voice trembled as he went on--"I
dreamed of her last night; such strange dreams, and to-day she seems so
near to me that more than once I have put out my hand to touch her.
Frank, it is not insanity--this presentiment that she is near me--that
she is coming to me, or tidings of her; it is mind acting upon mind; her
thoughts of me reaching forward and fastening upon my thoughts of her,
making a mental bridge on which I see her coming to me. And you will
send for her. You will let John go again. Think if she should arrive in
this terrible storm and no one there to meet her. You will send this
once, and if she is not there I will not trouble you again."
There was something in Arthur's face which Frank could not resist, and
he promised that John should go.
"Oh, Frank," Arthur exclaimed, his face brightening at once, "you have
made me so happy! My headache is quite gone;" and then he began to plan
the dinner, which was to be more elaborate than usual, and served an
hour later, so as to give plenty of time for Gretchen to rest and dress
herself if she wished to do so.
"And she will when she sees the lovely dress I have for her," he
thought, and after his brother left him he went to the large closet
where he kept the trunk which he called Gretchen's, and into which
Dolly's curious eyes had never looked, although she longed to know its
contents.
This Arthur now opened, and had Dolly been there she would have held her
breath in wonder at the many beautiful things which it contained. Folded
in one of the trays, as only a French packer accustomed to the business
could have arranged it, was an exquisite dinner-dress of salmon-colored
satin, with a brocaded front and jacket of blue and gold, and
here and there a knot of duchess lace, which gave it a more airy
effect. This Arthur took out carefully and laid upon the bed in his
sleeping-apartment, together with every article of the toilet necessary
to such a dress, from a lace pocket-handkerchief to a pair of pale-blue
silk hose, which he kissed reverently as he whispered:
"Dear little feet, which are so cold now in the wretched car; but they
will never be cold again when once I have them here."
He was talking in German, as he always did when Gretchen was the subject
of his thoughts, and so Dolly, who came to say that some things which he
had ordered for dinner were impossible now, could not understand him,
but she caught a glimpse of the dress upon the bed, and advanced quickly
toward the open door, exclaiming:
"Oh, Arthur, what a lovely gown! Whose----"
But before she completed her question Arthur was upon the threshold and
had closed the door, saying as he did so:
"It is Gretchen's. I had it made at Worth's. She is coming to-night, you
know."
Dolly had heard from her husband of Arthur's fancy, and though she had
no faith in it, she replied:
"Yes, Frank told me you were expecting her, and I came to say that we
cannot get the fish you ordered, for no one can go to town in this
storm, and I doubt if we could find it if we did. You will have to skip
the fish."
"All right; all right. Gretchen will be too much excited to care,"
Arthur replied, standing with his hand upon the door-knob until Dolly
left the room and went to the kitchen, where Frank was interviewing the
coachman.
He had found that important personage before the fire, bending nearly
double, and complaining bitterly of a fall he had just had on his way
from the stable to the house. According to his statement, the wind had
taken him up bodily, and carrying him a dozen rods or so, had set him
down upon a stone flower-pot which was left outside, nearly breaking his
back, as he declared. This did not look very promising for the drive to
the station, and Frank opened the business hesitatingly, and asked John
what he thought of it.
"I think I would not go out in such a storm as this with my back if
Queen Victoria was to be there," John answered, gruffly. "And what would
be the use?" he continued. "I have been to meet that woman, if she is a
woman, with the outlandish name, more than fifty times, I'll bet. He
don't know what he is talking about when he gets on her track. And
s'posin' she does come. She can find somebody to fetch her. She ain't
going to walk."
This seemed reasonable; and as Frank's sympathies were with his coachman
and horses rather than with Gretchen and his brother, he decided with
John that he need not go, and then returned to the library, resolving
not to see his brother again until after train time, but to let him
think that John had gone to the station.
At half-past five, however, Arthur sent for him, and said:
"Has he gone? It must be time."
"Not quite; it is only half-past five. The train does not come until
half-past six, and is likely to be late," was Frank's reply.
"Yes, I know," Arthur continued; "but he should be there on time. Tell
him to start at once, and take an extra robe with him, and say to
Charles that I will have sherry to-night, and champagne, too, and
Hamburgh grapes, and----"
The remainder of his speech was lost on Frank, who was hurrying down the
stairs, with a guilty feeling in his heart, although he felt that the
end justified the means, and that under the circumstances he was
warranted in deceiving his half-crazy brother. Still he was ill at ease.
He had no faith in Arthur's presentiments, and no idea that any one
bound for Tracy Park would be on the train that night, but he could not
shake off a feeling of anxiety, amounting almost to a dread of some
impending calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station
might have averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood
looking out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching
for some possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill
scream of the locomotive as it stopped for a moment, and then dashed on
into the white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not
glad, as the minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half
three-quarters of an hour, until at last he heard the clock strike the
half-hour past seven, and nobody had come.
"I shall have to tell Arthur," he thought, and, with something like
hesitancy, he started for his brother's room.
Arthur was standing before the fire, with his arm thrown caressingly
across the chair where Gretchen was to sit, when Frank opened the door
and advanced a step or two across the threshold.
"Has she come? I did not see the carriage. Where is she?" Arthur cried,
springing swiftly forward, while his bright, eager eyes darted past his
brother to the open door-way and out into the hall.
"No, she has not come. I knew she wouldn't; and it was nonsense to send
the horses out such a night as this," Frank said, sternly, with a
mistaken notion that he must speak sharply to the unfortunate man, who,
if rightly managed, was gentle as a child.
"Not come! There must be some mistake!" Arthur said, all the brightness
fading from his face, which grew pinched and pallid as he continued:
"Not come! Oh, Frank! did John say so? Was no one there? Let me go and
question him--there must be a mistake."
He was hurrying toward the door, when Frank caught his arm and detained
him, while he said, decidedly:
"No use to see John. Can't you believe me when I tell you no one was
there--and I knew there would not be. It was folly to send."
For a moment Arthur's pale, haggard face, which looked still more
haggard and pale with the fire-light flickering over it, confronted
Frank steadily; then the lips began to quiver and the eyelids to twitch,
while great tears gathered in his eyes, until at last, covering his face
with his hands, he staggered to the couch, and throwing himself upon it,
sobbed convulsively.
"Oh, Gretchen, my darling!" he said "I was so sure, and now everything
is swept away, and I am left so desolate."
Frank had never seen grief just like this, and with his conscience
pricking him for the deception he had practiced, he found himself
pitying his brother as he had never done before; and when at last the
latter cried out loud, he went to him, and laying his hand gently upon
his bowed head, said to him soothingly:
"Don't Arthur; it is terrible to see a man cry as you are crying."
"No, no; let me cry," Arthur replied. "The tears do me good, and my
brain would burst without them. It is all on fire, and my head is aching
so hard again."
At this moment Charles appeared, asking if his master would have dinner
served. But Arthur could not eat, and the table which had been arranged
with so much care for Gretchen was cleared away, while Gretchen's chair
was moved back from the fire and Gretchen's footstool put in its place,
and nothing remained to show that she had been expected except the
pretty dress, with its accessories, which lay upon Arthur's bed. These
he took care of himself, folding them with trembling hands and tear-wet
eyes, as a fond mother folds the clothes her dead child has worn,
sorrowing most over the half worn shoes, so like the dear little feet
which will never wear them again. So Arthur sorrowed over the
high-heeled slippers, with the blue rosettes and pointed toes,
fashionable in Paris at that time. Gretchen had never worn them, it is
true, but they seemed so much like her, that his tears fell fast as he
held them in his hands, and dropping upon the pure white satin, left a
stain upon it.
When everything was put away and the long trunk locked again, Arthur
went back to the couch and said to his brother, who was still in the
room:
"Don't leave me, Frank, till I am more composed. My nerves are
dreadfully shaken to-night, and I feel afraid of something, I don't know
what. How the wind howls and moans! I never heard it like that but once
before and that was years ago, among the Alps in Switzerland. Then it
blew off the roof of the chalet where I was staying, and I heard
afterward that Amy died that night. You remember Amy, the girl I loved
so well, though not as I love Gretchen. If she had come, I should have
told you all about her, but now it does not matter who she is, or where
I saw her first, knitting in the sunshine, with the halo on her hair,
and the blue of the summer skies reflected in her eyes. Oh, Gretchen, my
love, my love!"
He was talking more to himself than to Frank, who sat beside him until
far into the night, while the wild storm raged on and shook the solid
house to its very foundations. A tall tree in the yard was uprooted, and
a chimney-top came crushing down with a force which threatened to break
through the roof. For a moment there was a lull in the tempest, and,
raising himself upon his elbow, Arthur listened intently, and then, in a
whisper, which made Frank's blood curdle in his veins, he said:
"Hark! there's more abroad to-night than the storm! Something is
happening which affects me. I have heard voices in the wind all the
evening--Gretchen calling me from far away. Frank, Frank, _did_ you hear
that? It was a woman's cry; her voice--Gretchen's. Yes, Gretchen, I am
coming."
With a bound he was at the window, which he opened, and leaning far out
of it, listened to hear repeated a sound which Frank, too, had heard--a
cry like the voice of one in mortal peril calling for help.
It might have been the wind which swept round the corner in a great
gust, driving the snow and sleet into Arthur's face, and making him draw
in his body, nearly half of which was leaning from the window as he
waited for the cry to be repeated. But it did not come again, though
Frank, whose nerves were strung to almost as high a tension as his
brother's, thought he heard it once more above the roar of the tempest,
and a feeling of disquiet took possession of him as he sat for an hour
longer talking to his brother, and listening to the noise without.
Gradually the storm subsided, and when the clock struck one the wind had
gone down, the snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was struggling
feebly through a rift of dark clouds in the west. After persuading his
brother to go to bed, Frank retired to his own room, and was soon
asleep, unmindful of the tragedy which was being enacted not very far
away, where a little child was smiling in its dreams, while the woman
beside it was praying for life until her mission should be
accomplished.