THE FLIGHT.
A handsome residence on the south side of Queen Street had been the home
of the prosperous ship-carpenter, William Zane. His name was on the door
on a silver plate. As the evening deepened and the news spread, the bell
was pulled so often that it aided the universal alarm following a crime,
and a crowd of people, reinforced by others as fast as it thinned out,
kept up the watch on ever-recurring friends, coroner's officers and
newspaper reporters, as they ascended the steps, looked grave, made
inquiries, and returned to dispense their information.
But there was very little indignation, for Zane had been an insanely
passionate man, rather hard and exacting, and had he been found dead
alone anywhere it would probably have been said at once that he brought
it on himself. His partner, Rainey, however, had conducted himself so
negatively and mildly, and was of such general estimation, that the
murder of the senior member of the film took on some unusual public
sympathy from the reflected sorrow for his fellow-victim. The latter had
been one of Zane's apprentices, raised to a place in the establishment
by his usefulness and sincere love of his patron. Just, forbearing,
soft-spoken, and not avaricious, Sayler Rainey deserved no injury from
any living being. He was unmarried, and, having met with a
disappointment in love, had avowed his intention never to marry, but to
bequeath all the property he should acquire to his partner's only son,
Andrew Zane.
What, then, was the motive of this double murder? The public
comprehension found but one theory, and that was freely advanced by the
rash and imputative in the community of Kensington: The murderer was he
who had the only known temptation and object in such a crime. Who could
gain anything by it but Andrew Zane, the impulsive, the mischief-making
and oft-restrained son of his stern sire, who, by a double crime, would
inherit that undivided property, free from the control of both parent
and guardian?
"It is parricide! that's what it is!" exclaimed a fat woman from
Fishtown. "At the bottom of the river dead men tell no tales. The
rebellious young sarpint of a son, who allus pulled a lusty oar, has
chased them two older ones into the deep water of the channel, where a
pistol shot can't be heard ashore, and he expected the property to be
his'n. But there are gallowses yet, thank the Lord!"
"Mrs. Whann, don't say that," spoke up a deferential voice from the face
of a rather sallow-skinned young man, with long, ringleted, yellow hair.
"Don't create a prejudice, I beg of you. Andrew Zane was my classmate.
He gave his excellent father some trouble, but it shouldn't be
remembered against him now. Suppose, my friends, that you let me ring
the bell and inquire?"
"Who's that?" asked the crowd. "He's a fine, mature-looking, charitable
young man, anyway."
"Its the old Minister Van de Lear's son, Calvin. He's going to succeed
his venerable and pious poppy in Kensington pulpit. They'll let him in."
The door closed when Calvin Van de Lear entered the residence of the
late William Zane. When it reopened he was seen with a handkerchief in
his hand and his hat pulled down over his eyes, as if he had been
weeping.
"Stop! stop! don't be going off that way!" interposed the fat fishwife.
"You said you would tell us the news."
"My friends," replied Calvin Van de Lear, with a look of the greatest
pain, "Andrew Zane has not been heard from. I fear your suspicions are
too true!"
He crossed the street and disappeared into the low and elderly residence
of his parents.
"Alas! alas!" exclaimed a grave and gentle old man. "That Andrew Zane
should not be here to meet a charge like this! But I'll not believe it
till I have prayed with my God."
Within the Zane residence all was as in other houses on funeral eves. In
the front parlor, ready for an inquest or an undertaker, lay the late
master of the place, laid out, and all the visitors departed except his
housekeeper, Agnes, and her friend, "Podge" Byerly. The latter was a
sunny-haired and nimble little lady, under twenty years of age, who
taught in one of the public schools and boarded with her former
school-mate, Agnes Wilt. Agnes was an orphan of unknown parentage, by
many supposed to have been a niece or relative of Mr. Zane's deceased
wife, whose place she took at the head of the table, and had grown to be
one of the principal social authorities in Kensington. In Reverend Mr.
Van de Lear's church she was both teacher and singer. The young men of
Kensington were all in love with her, but it was generally understood
that she had accepted Andrew Zane, and was engaged to him.
Andrew was not dissipated, but was fond of pranks, and so restive under
his father's positive hand that he twice ran away to distant seaports,
and thus incurred a remarkable amount of intuitive gossip, such as
belongs to all old settled suburban societies. This occasional firmness
of character in the midst of a generally light and flexible life, now
told against him in the public mind. "He has nerve enough to do anything
desperate in a pinch," exclaimed the very wisest. "Didn't William Zane
find him out once in the island of Barbadoes grubbing sugar-cane with a
hoe, and the thermometer at 120 in the shade? And didn't he swear he'd
stay there and die unless concessions were made to him, and certain
things never brought up again? Didn't even his iron-shod father have to
give way before he would come home? Ah! Andrew is light-hearted, but he
is an Indian in self-will!"
To-night Agnes was in the deepest grief. Upon her, and only her, fell
the whole burden of this double crime and mystery, ten times more
terrible that her lover was compromised and had disappeared.
"Go to bed, Podge!" said Agnes, as the clock in the engine-house struck
midnight. "Oblige me, my dear! I cannot sleep, and shall wait and watch.
Perhaps Andrew will be here."
"I can't leave you up, Aggy, and with that thing so near." She locked
toward the front parlor, where, behind the folding-doors, lay the dead.
"I have no fear of _that_. He was always kind to me. My fears are all in
this world. O _darling_!"
She burst into sobs. Her friend kissed her again and again, and knew
that feelings between love and crime extorted that last word.
"Aggy," spoke the light-hearted girl, "I know that you cannot help
loving him, and as long as he is loved by you I sha'n't believe him
guilty. Must I really leave you here?"
Her weeping friend turned up her face to give the mandatory kiss, and
Podge was gone.
Agnes sat in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with
unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon
the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us
feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment
float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice
deprived of a mother's love, she had only entered woman's estate when
another class of cares beset her. Her beauty and sweetness of
disposition had brought her more lovers than could make her happy. There
was but one on whom she could confer her heart, and this natural choice
had drawn around her the perils which now overwhelmed them all.
Accepting the son, she incurred the father's resentment upon both; for
he, the dead man yonder, had also been her lover.
"Oh, my God!" exclaimed the anguished woman, kneeling by her chair and
laying her cheek upon it, while only such tears as we shed in supreme
moments saturated her handkerchief, "what have I done to make such
misery to others? How sinful I must be to set son and father against
each other! Yet, Heavenly Father, I can but love!"
There was a cracking of something, as if the dead man in the great,
black parlor had carried his jealousy beyond his doom and was breaking
from his coffin to upbraid her. A door burst open in the dining-room,
which was behind her, and then the dining-room door also unclosed, and
was followed by a cold, graveyard draft. A moment of superstition
possessed Agnes. "Guard me, Saviour," she murmured.
At the dining-room threshold, advancing a little over the sill, as if to
rush upon her, was the figure of a man, dressed, head to foot, in
sailor's garments--heavy woollens, comforter, tarpaulin overalls, and
knit cap. He looked at her an instant, standing there, shivering, and
then he retired a pace or two and closed the door to the cellar, by
which he had entered the house. Even this little movement in the
intruder had something familiar about it. He advanced again, directly
and rapidly, toward her, but she did not scream. He threw both arms
around her, and she did not cry. Something had entered with that bold
figure which extinguished all crime and superstition in the monarchy of
its presence--Love.
A kiss, as fervent and long as only the reunited ever give with purity,
drew the soul of the suspected murderer and his sweetheart into one
temple.
"Agnes," he whispered hoarsely, when it was given, "they have followed
me hard to-night. Every place I might have resorted to is watched. All
Kensington--my oldest friends--believe me guilty! I cannot face it. With
this kiss I must go."
"Oh, Andrew, do not! Here is the place to make your peace; here take
your stand and await the worst."
"Agnes," he repeated, "I have no defence. Nothing but silence would
defend me now, and that would hang me to the gallows. I come to put my
life and soul into your hands. Can you pray for me, bad as I am?"
"Dear Andrew," answered Agnes, weeping fast, "I have no power to stop
you, and I cannot give you up. Yes, I will pray for you now, before you
start on your journey. Go open those folding-doors and we will pray in
the other room."
"What is there?"
"Your father."
He stopped a long while, and his cheek was blanched.
"Go first," he whispered finally. "I am not afraid."
She led the way to the bier, where the body, with the frost hardly yet
thawed from it, lay under the dim light of the chandelier. Turning up
the burners it was revealed in its relentless, though not unhappy,
expression--a large and powerful man, bearded and with tassels of gray
in his hair.
The young man in his coarse sailor's garb, muffled up for concealment
and disguise, placed his arm around Agnes, and his knees were unsteady
as he gazed down on the remains and began to sob.
"Dear," she murmured, also weeping, "I know you loved him!"
The young man's sobs became so loud that Agnes drew him to a chair, and
as she sat upon it he laid his head in her lap and continued there to
express a deep inward agony.
"I loved him always," he articulated at last, "so help me God, I did!
And a _parricide_! Can you survive it?"
"Andrew," she replied, "I have taken it all to heaven and laid the sin
there. Forever, my darling, intercession continues for all our offences
only there. It must be our recourse in this separation every day when we
rise and lie down. Though blood-stained, he can wash as white as snow."
"I will try, I will try!" he sobbed; "but your goodness is my reliance,
dearest. I have always been disobedient to my father, but never thought
it would come to this."
"Nor I, Andrew. Poor, rash uncle!"
"Agnes," whispered Andrew Zane, rising with a sudden fear, "I hear
people about the house--on the pavement, on the doorsteps. Perhaps they
are suspecting me. I must fly. Oh! shall we ever meet again under a
brighter sky? Will you cling to me? I am going out, abandoned by all the
world. Nothing is left me but your fidelity. Will it last? You know you
are beautiful!"
"Oh, sad words to say!" sighed Agnes. "Let none but you ever say them to
me again. Beautiful, and to the end of such misery as this! My only
love, I will never forsake you!"
"Then I can try the world again, winter as it is. Once more, oh, God!
let me ask forgiveness from these frozen lips. My father! pursue me not,
though deep is my offence! Farewell, farewell forever!"
He disappeared down the cellar as he had come, and Agnes heard at the
outer window the sound of his escaping. When all was silent she fell to
the floor, and lay there helplessly weeping.