Queenie heard the key grate in the lock and sprang up, uttering wild
shrieks of passion and despair, almost beside herself with the horror of
her new situation.
But no response came to her frenzied screams and cries. Perhaps those
gilded walls had echoed such wails of agony before, and the hearts of
those who heard them had grown callous with long familiarity.
She ran up and down the room like one mad, alternately skrieking and
beating upon the locked door, until she fell upon the floor, conquered
by sheer exhaustion.
She lay there awhile, then sprang up restlessly again.
"I will endure it no longer," she said, passionately; "I will throw
myself down from the window and kill myself!"
Full of that wild, suicidal resolve, she ran to the window and pushed up
the sash.
The night was far spent, and that awful darkness that comes just before
dawn obscured everything, its blackness intensified by the drizzling
rain that still poured steadily down.
Queenie fell upon her knees with the rain beating in upon her white face
and long, flowing hair, and clasped her little hands together as her
father had taught her to do when she was but a toddling baby-girl.
"Oh, God!" she prayed, lifting her lovely, despairing face to the dark
sky as if to catch a glimpse of the all-merciful Father to whom she
appealed. "Oh, God, pity and forgive me for sending my soul uncalled for
before its divine Maker. And, Heavenly Father, whatever of wrong I have
committed, do Thou pity and pardon it. That sin with which I stand
charged Thou knowest I would have died a thousand deaths rather than
willfully commit it, and----"
She paused, overcome by agonized recollections, and rising, peered out
into the darkness below.
"In the morning when he comes out into the garden," she said, "he will
find my poor, crushed, bleeding body lying beneath this window. Surely,
then, when his murderous hate has driven me to self-destruction, his
revenge will be complete!"
She placed her hand on the sill of the window, and leaned forward for
the fatal spring that was to end her earthly sorrows.
How slight a thing can distract our attention even in the most absorbing
moments of our lives.
Queenie's hands fell upon a cold, wet mass of leaves, and a gust of
intoxicating perfume blew into her face. She immediately drew back.
She had suddenly remembered that some thickly twisted vines of ivy and
sweet-scented honeysuckle were trained up to her window in the second
story.
A thought, as sudden as an inspiration, darted into her mind.
Instead of dashing her brains out on the hard ground below, why not
escape down this ladder of vines to love and happiness again?
"I will do it," she said to herself. "I will go back to my husband. I
will tell him I was stolen from my grave, and that I revived in the
fresh air, and life came back to me in its full tide. Oh! how glad he
will be to see me--my poor Lawrence. He loved me so dearly!"
In the swift revulsion of feeling from despair and desperation to love
and hope again she gave way to a burst of hysterical tears.
"I must not stay here to weep," she said, at length, brushing the
crystal drops away from her cheeks. "I must be far on my way to my
husband before he discovers my escape."
She took up the thick, hooded waterproof cloak that lay on a chair, and
wrapped it around her.
"This will never do," she said, seeing the long train of her splendid
dress sweeping from beneath the hem of the cloak. "I must not be seen
going into the city in this plight."
She took off the cloak and tucked up the long train and pinned it
securely around her, resumed the waterproof, and climbed up into the
window.
"Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said. "Pray God I may never look on your
evil face again!"
She took a firm hold of the thick body of the vine with both hands, and
with a slight shudder swung herself forward into the darkness.
The vine swayed and creaked with her weight, and for one dreadful moment
she thought she should be precipitated to the ground to the death which
a moment before she had courted, but which now, in the new dawn of hope,
she shunned. The shower of rain-drops, shaken down from the leaves into
her face, almost took her breath away. The wild wind tossed her from
side to side like a feather as she clung to her frail support.
"I shall surely be killed," she said to herself in terror.
But no--the delicate reed to which she had trusted her existence did not
fail her. She waited breathlessly a moment, then feeling that it still
held secure, she cautiously slipped one hand and then the other down to
a lower hold on the body of the vine. In that way, with many frightened
heart-beats, with sore and bleeding hands, and at infinite pains, she at
length accomplished the descent, and stood upon the ground enfolded like
a mantle by the thick darkness and pouring rain.
At the gate she paused again, and looked up at one window in a wing of
the house where a night-light glimmered faintly.
"Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said, again. "May the vengeance of God be
swift to overtake and punish you for your awful sins!"
She opened the gate softly and stepped out into the wet and slushy
road, wetting her thin, white satin slippers and silk stockings through
and through at the first step. She did not care for it, she scarcely
felt it, her heart was beating so quick and fast with joy.
"I am free!" was the exultant cry of her heart. "I am free--I am going
back to my husband. I shall tell him how fondly I have learned to love
him since I promised to be his wife. I will cling so closely to his side
that Leon's vindictive rage can never touch me!"
She pushed on steadily through the mud and water, her long garments
speedily becoming soaked with the watery elements and greatly impeding
her ease and rapidity of motion, while her heart began to beat wildly
with terror at the darkness, the desolation and loneliness of the
country road.
"I am very tired," she moaned, after traveling what seemed to her a long
distance. "It is five miles to the city. I must have come two miles at
least. I wonder if I can hold out to get there. My feet are so heavy
with the mud and the water that I can scarcely lift them. I must sit
down here and rest myself one minute--only _one little minute_!"
She dropped down like a log on the grass by the side of the road, and
the first pale beams of the watery dawn just breaking in the east,
showed her deathly-white face just fading into unconsciousness.