THE ALARM.
Neither Mrs. Burton nor Maude had slept very soundly that night. Both
had been haunted with a conviction that they heard something about the
house, stealthy footsteps Mrs. Burton thought, and she shook her snoring
spouse vigorously, and tried to make him get up, receiving for reply,
“Pish, only one of your fidgets; go to sleep, do, and let me alone.”
And so poor, timid Mrs. Burton listened until her ears ached, and,
hearing nothing more, made up her mind that she had been mistaken, and
there really was no cause for alarm. Maude, too, had taken fright, and
knocked softly at Georgie’s door, but Georgie was in the woodbine arbor,
and did not hear her, and she went back to bed and fell asleep again,
and was just dreaming that her wedding had proved to be her funeral,
when a piercing shriek rang through the house, followed by another and
another, each louder, more appalling than the other, until every sleeper
was awake and huddling together in the halls, demanded what it was, and
where the screams came from.
Jack was the first to decide that the noise was in Georgie’s room, and
entering through the unlocked door, he saw his sister sitting up in bed;
her eyes rolling wildly, her long black hair falling over her
night-dress, and her whole face the very image of terror, as she
shrieked, “The burglar—the man—been here—in this room—look—where he went
and what he did. Oh! Jack, Jack, I am dying, I shall die!”
She continued her wild ravings until Jack succeeded in quieting her so
far that she was able to tell her story, amid a series of moans and
gasps and sobs. She had been suddenly awakened by some slight sound in
her room, and saw a man wearing a mask, standing, revolver in hand,
close at her bedside, and evidently watching her. Before she could
scream, so paralyzed was she with fear, his hand was over her mouth, and
his hot breath on her face, as he bent close to her and said, “Be
perfectly quiet, if you wish to save your life. Scream once, or make any
sound which shall attract attention, and you are a dead woman before I
leave the room. I have no wish to harm _you_, but your diamonds I must
have.” Frozen with terror she had not dared to move, but lay perfectly
still while the villain searched her dressing-bureau, and took, she did
not know what.
“Look, Maude,” she gasped; but Maude had already looked, and found the
diamonds gone, and the purse empty; but the emeralds and pearls were
there safe,—a state of things accounted for on the supposition that the
robber had been startled by some noise, and left his depredations
unfinished. He fled through the door, Georgie said; and having finished
her tale, she fainted entirely away, while the male members of the house
dispersed outside to hunt for the thief, and the ladies staid to
minister to the fainting woman.
There was no shamming now. Georgie had borne so much, and suffered so
much, that the faint was real; and she lay so long unconscious, and
looked so white and corpse-like, that Mrs. Burton went off into
hysterics, declaring her darling was dead. As soon as possible, a
physician came, and after carefully examining his patient, and listening
to the story of the robbery as related by each of the dozen women in the
house, appeared to be greatly puzzled, and said he hardly knew what to
think. It was scarcely possible that a sudden fright, however great it
might have been, could have thrown the whole nervous system so
completely out of balance as Miss Burton’s seemed to be. Had she been
perfectly well heretofore?
Then Mrs. Burton remembered how nervous and fitful she had been ever
since Annie died. “She took a violent cold at that time,” the lady said,
“and has never been or looked well since.”
“I thought there must be something behind. A person in perfect health
could hardly be struck down like this by mere fright. She does not seem
to have the free use of her limbs. Miss Burton”—and he turned to his
patient—“lift your right hand if you can, or speak to me and tell me who
I am.”
The great black eyes were wide open, and fixed upon his face with an
expression which showed that Georgie heard; but the right hand did not
move, and the white lips only gave forth a queer kind of sound, as they
tried in vain to repeat the doctor’s name.
“What is it, doctor? Oh, tell me what ails my darling?” Mrs. Burton
asked, terribly frightened at the look on Georgie’s face, and the
peculiar expression of her mouth.
“Auntie,” Maude said, in a low whisper, “come with me; I’ll tell you;”
and leading her frightened aunt into the hall, she told her as gently as
possible that Georgie was paralyzed.
It was true. The long-continued strain upon mind and nerve, which she
had endured in guarding her secret, with the skeleton of detection
always threatening her, added to the terrible shock of the previous
night, had been more than nature could endure without a loud protest;
and the prickly sensation she had felt creeping through every vein was
the precursor to the fearful thing which had come upon her, striking her
down as the lightning strikes the oak, and leaving just one-half of her
helpless, motionless, dead. There was no feeling in any part of her
right side; no power to move the soft, white hand, which lay just where
they put it; no power to speak audibly in the pale lips whose last act
had been to frame a tissue of falsehoods whereby she could steer safely
through the labyrinth of woe in which she was entangled. Poor Georgie!
There were hot tears shed for her that bright June morning, when the
sun, which should have shone upon her bridal day, came up over the
eastern hills, and looked in at the windows of the room where she lay so
helpless and so still, knowing perfectly well what was doing and saying
around; but having no power to tell them that she knew, save by the
feeble pressure of the fingers of her left hand, and the slow shutting
of her eyelids.
Wistfully Georgie’s eyes followed each movement of the people around
her, as if imploring aid, and resting longest upon Jack, who wept like a
little child over his stricken sister. All her faults and errors were
forgotten in this great calamity which had come so suddenly upon her;
and he remembered only that she was his sister, the beautiful girl whom
he had loved, and petted, and befriended, and chided, and scolded, and
blamed, ever since he had been old enough to read her character aright.
There were no scoldings, no chidings, no blaming now; nothing but love
and tenderness; and the hot tears rained in torrents over his face, as,
in obedience to a look in her eye, which he construed into a wish for
him to come nearer to her, he bent his face to hers, and felt the cold
lips trying to kiss his cheek, while the left hand crept feebly up to
his head, and stroked and parted his hair. No one of all those present
thought Jack one whit less manly for the great choking sobs which he
smothered on Georgie’s neck, or the tears which dropped so fast upon her
hair and brow.
With a trembling grasp she held his face close to her own and tried to
tell him something. But it was all in vain that he strained every nerve
of his ear to understand what she meant. There was nothing to be made
out of the mumbling noise, the only sound she could articulate. It would
not always be thus, the doctor said. She would recover her powers of
speech, partially, if not in whole, and possibly recover the use of her
limbs. He had seen far worse forms of paralysis from which there was
entire recovery. She was young, and naturally healthy, and had every
reason to hope for entire restoration to health.
“Be of good courage,” he said to her kindly, for he saw she understood
him, and hung eagerly upon his words; “be of good courage, and you will
yet be a happy bride, though perhaps not to-day.”
There was a sound then from the pallid lips, a low, moaning sound, and a
spasm of pain contracted every muscle of the white face, while in the
dark eyes there was a look of horror, as if the doctor’s words had not
been welcome ones. Maude, who was standing by her, and chafing her
lifeless hands, said to her next, “We have sent for Roy, Georgie. Do you
want to see him?”
At the mention of Roy’s name, the dumb lips spoke with an agonized
effort which brought the great sweat-drops upon cheek and brow.
“No, no, no; Ja-ack,” they said, and the sound was more like the moan of
some wounded animal than like a human cry, while the eyes seemed as if
trying to leap from their sockets, as they fastened themselves upon
Jack.
“What, sister? What is it?” he asked, and with another mighty effort the
lips moved slowly, and one by one made out the words, “Don’t—let—Roy—”
They could not articulate any more, but Jack thought he comprehended her
meaning, and said, “Not let Roy see you yet? Is that it, sister?”
She clutched his hand nervously in answer to the question and held it
tightly in her own. She did not want to see Roy then or ever. She could
not bear it, she thought; could not endure to look upon what she had
loved and lost just as it was within her reach. Guilt, remorse, and
shame were busy at work, and those who watched by her little dreamed of
the bitter anguish which was rending her soul and sending out that rain
of perspiration which wet her night-dress about the neck, and wet her
long, black hair, and the pillow on which she lay, and which was the
means eventually of doing her bodily good. The profuse perspiration
seemed in some way to grapple with, and partially subdue the disease, so
that after an hour or more she could speak more distinctly, and the
little finger of her right hand moved once as Maude was rubbing it.
“You are already better, Georgie. We will soon have you well,” Maude
said encouragingly, while one of the ladies in attendance carried the
good news that Georgie had spoken, to Mrs. Burton, who was in strong
hysterics on the sofa in her own room, and over whom poor, ignorant Mr.
Burton had emptied by turns the water-jug, the camphor-bottle, the
cologne and arnica, in his awkward attempts to help her.
Limp and wet, with her false curls as straight as an Indian’s hair, and
her under teeth on the floor where the hapless husband planted his boot
heel upon them, and crushed them out of shape, the poor woman received
the news, and in her joy went into another hysteric fit worse than any
which had preceded it. Frightened now out of his wits, and taking
advantage of the presence of some one with whom he could leave his
spouse, Mr. Burton retreated precipitately from the room, wondering why
the deuce the women wanted to raise such a row as his wife and Georgie
were doing.
“Hanged if I don’t take the first train for New York, and stay there,
too, when I get there,” he said, as he rushed out into the back yard,
where he met Roy, just dismounting from his horse, and looking very
anxious and disturbed, though _not_ as unhappy as one might expect of a
man who had just heard that his bridal, for that day at least, was
impossible, and his bride a paralytic.