THE convalescent thrust aside the momentary depression that her host’s
strange expression had given her, and proceeded.
“At last I realized that all mild measures would be useless. I knew that
at any time something dreadful might happen, and I was determined
to save my old schoolmate from the disgrace and sorrow that she was
inviting. Without directly encouraging her to proceed as she had
started, I gave her to understand that she might always depend upon my
friendship. Then I set about the serious work that I had to do.”
There was another long pause.
“Well?” said her host, a little harshly and impatiently; and that change
from no his habitual gentleness gave her a passing wonder. Then she saw
that she was hurting him. She had waited for that sign.
“I knew that it would be an easy task to match my wit with that of a
sentimental, scheming fiddler and a foolish girl. I needn’t give all
the details of the plan that I carried out. It was merely a matter
of getting an engagement for him somewhere else for a time, and of
presenting to her in his absence some evidence of his faithlessness. I
knew them both well enough to foresee that she would never let him know
what she had heard,--that she would simply send him adrift, and expect
him to make an explanation if he was innocent, and that he would be too
abashed to demand an explanation from her or make one himself. There was
no danger that he would open a way to disprove or even deny the evidence
that I produced.
“All this, you understand, I did with the greatest delicacy. The plan
worked perfectly. They never saw each other again.”
Wilder turned and looked her full in the face. It was the way in which
he did it that sharpened her attention, for it was a look in which she
felt, rather than saw, a command.
“What became of them?” he quietly asked, but she felt that the question
required an answer.
“Oh,” she replied, her air of indifference veiling her determination
to hold control of the situation, “the vagabond fiddler was never seen
again. As for Ada--but that was infinitely better than to have lived a
life of wretchedness----”
“As for Ada?”
“She was dead in a month,”--this with a hard and defiant manner.
The young man rose from his chair, which he clumsily upset. In a
strangely uncertain, stumbling fashion he went to the front door,
and felt for the latch, as though blind. Then he changed his mind and
started for the rear door; but whatever purpose he had was interrupted
by his overturning a small table and sending the books and other
articles upon it clattering to the floor. Evidently startled and
confused by the noise and his own clumsiness,--though hardly more so
than the young woman, who was watching him in amazement,--he righted the
table with difficulty, and began to pick up the articles that had fallen
from it. Instead, however, of replacing them on the table, he put them
on the bed. His face was livid, his eyes were sunk alarmingly deep in
his skull, and he seemed to have become suddenly old and wrinkled. His
hands trembled, and weakness so overcame him that he sat down upon the
edge of the bed.
This state quickly passed, and the young man looked at his guest, who
had been compelled to turn her chair laboriously to observe him; and
when he saw the perplexed and distressed look in her face--seeing
nothing of the gratification and triumph that her distress partly
obscured--he smiled faintly and came firmly to his feet. “It must have
been an attack of vertigo,” he explained, feebly. But he continued
to look at her so steadily and with so penetrating a gaze that her
uneasiness increased. Had she carried her torture of him too far? Oh,
well, it would do him good in the end!
“And now,” he said, in a voice that steadily grew stronger and firmer,
“I will tell _you_ a story.” He was standing directly in front of her
and looking down into her face. “One day, just after a great sorrow had
fallen upon me, I was strolling along the water-front of San Francisco,
and sat down upon some lumber at the end of a pier. I had not noticed
a number of rough-looking young men sitting near me, until one of them
said, in the course of the talk that they were having, ‘Yes, but I loved
her! It was the way in which he said it that attracted my notice. I
judged from his appearance that he was a laborer, perhaps a stevedore;
but there was something in his voice that belongs to stricken men in all
the walks of life. One of his companions said, ‘Nonsense, Frank; there’s
just as good fish in the sea as ever was caught out of it.’ But Frank
shook his head and said, ‘Not for me.’ The others said nothing, and
after a little while Frank repeated, ‘Not for me.’ Did you ever hear a
man say that?”
Wilder’s voice, which had been steadily growing louder, suddenly sank
almost to a whisper as he asked his guest that question. The wrinkles
were deepening in his face, and his glance had a sharpness of
penetration that the young woman found it hard to meet without wincing.
“Then,” resumed Wilder, “another of his companions, seeking to show him
the folly of his grief, made some remarks about the woman that I cannot
repeat. Frank replied without anger: ‘Don’t say that, Joe: you mean
well, but don’t say it. She was the woman I loved. Every night, now,
when I put out the light to go to bed, I see her in the room; and when I
go on streets that are dark, I think she’s walking with me. I loved
that woman; and now I don’t know what to do. For she’s dead, boys, she’s
dead; and by God! they killed her.’”
Wilder was still looking down into the face of his guest as he
concluded, and she had been looking up into his; but when, with a
trembling voice, he spoke the last sentence, her glance dropped to the
floor. After a pause he spoke again, and his voice was full, round, and
passionate.
“They killed her, madam, as they have killed many another. How it was
that they killed the woman whose death had filled this rough man’s life
with grief and despair, I do not know. But they killed her. Some
murderous human hand shattered a scheme that the Almighty himself had
laid. I wish you could have heard him say, ‘She’s dead, boys, she’s
dead; and by God! they killed her.’ The sound of its agony would have
found the heart that was intended to do more than keep you alive with
its beating. Do you know what murder is? Do you know the difference
between the gross, stupid, brutal murder that in satisfying its coarse
lust for blood runs its thick neck into the halter, and the finer,
daintier, infinitely more cruel murder that kills with torturing
cruelty, and thus outwits the gallows? The blood-murderer is a poor
fool, dwarfed in mind and crippled in soul. Perhaps he gets his full
punishment when the law stretches his useless neck. But the murderer who
outwits the law in his killing, who murders the innocent and
unsuspecting and confiding, who makes friendship the cup from which the
poison is drunk, who employs the most damnable lies and treachery, who
calmly watches the increasing agonies of his victim as the poison slowly
does its work,--what punishment do you think can reach such a murderer
as that?”
The young man’s voice had become loud, harsh, and threatening. Violent
emotions were stirring him. His whole slender frame seemed to have
expanded. His face was flushed, his eyes were blazing, his fingers
clutched at invisible things, his entire aspect was menacing. His guest,
awed and terrified, raised her glance to his face.
“And by whom is such a murder done?” he cried. “It is done by one who,
coming into the world with a soul fresh and complete from the hands
of the Creator, deliberately turns aside from the way of nature and
nature’s God, crushes the attributes that form our one link with heaven
and our one hope of immortality, throttles all that might be useful in
bringing light and strength into the lives of others, and in shameless
defiance of the Almighty’s manifest will sets up false gods to worship,
sacrifices self-respect for self-love, banishes the essence of life and
clings to the dross, and wallows like swine in a mire of his own making.
The blood-murderer is infinitely better than that. He has at least a
human heart in all its savage majesty.
“And for what is such a murder done? It proceeds from a dwarfed,
distorted soul, deliberately, consciously, intelligently made so by its
possessor. Its purpose is to destroy the one touch of beauty, sweetness,
and purity that makes us akin to the angels. It sees an exquisite
flower; that flower must be plucked, else its beauty would flourish and
its destiny be fulfilled. It finds love in its purest, noblest, most
unselfish form between two whom God had made each for the other for
the fulfilling of his own inscrutable design, and by lies and treachery
proceeds to kill one and destroy the happiness of the other. What
punishment, madam, is adequate for such a murder? The hands of the law
would be polluted by strangling a murderer so base, so cowardly, so
infinitely lower and meaner than the lowest beasts, so utterly unworthy
of the honor of the gallows-tree. There can be but one adequate
punishment, and only Omnipotence could devise a hell sufficient for it.
And the sooner this punishment comes, the sooner will the vengeance of
God be satisfied. What higher duty could rest upon a mortal standing in
awe and reverence under his Maker’s law than to set the law in force?”
In the dismay and terror that now filled her soul the woman could not
mistake the meaning of that threat, nor the madness that would give it
force. A numbing fear, a feeling that she was sinking into a bottomless
pit, put gyves upon all her faculties. In a hopeless stupor she sat,
in speechless dread of the blow that she felt must fall. To her dazed
attention the avenger himself stood before her in all the terror of
infuriated justice free from its leash and plunging forward headlong
and irresistible to satisfy its vengeance. Never had she dreamed that a
mortal could face a thing so terrible as this man, who, having
dragged her from death, and with infinite patience, gentleness, and
unselfishness had been nursing her back to health and strength, now
stood as the judge and executioner of her naked, trembling, convicted
soul. Her eyes strained, her lips apart, she looked up, speechless and
motionless, into his face; and to her his blazing eyes and tense frame
filled all the world with vengeance, scorn, and death.
“Woman,” he cried, “whether it be murder or justice, your death would
remove an infamous stain from the face of this fair world. If you can,
make your peace with God, for I am going to send your damned black soul
where it can do no further harm. It is with immeasurable hate, with
infinite loathing, that I am going to kill you.”
He clutched her shoulder, and the hot iron grip of his fingers tore her
skin. He thrust his face close to hers, and she heard the grinding
of his teeth, which his parted lips showed as the fangs of a maddened
beast.
“You viper!” he cried; “you have no right to life!”
She saw his free hand seeking her throat. Then her energies were
unlocked. She threw back her head, and with all her might cried out,--
“Father! father! help me! save me!” The young man started back, clutched
his head with both hands, and looked about in a wild and frightened way.
“What was that?” he breathlessly asked. “Did you hear? The wolves are
coming down. That was the howl of the she-wolf!” In a dazed manner he
found his way to the back door, opened it, passed out, and bolted it
behind him.