THE PENITENT THIEF
A frosty gloom was over the city of Aniston, moon and stars hidden by a
cloudy sky, from which a light snow--the first of the season--was
sifting down. The streets were asleep; only occasional belated
pedestrians were to be seen in the chilly air. These saw a man, his face
muffled from the snowflakes, pass hurriedly toward the fountained
square, from whose steeple two o'clock was just striking. The wayfarer
skirted the square, keeping in cover of the buildings as though avoiding
chance observation, till he stood on the pavement of a Gothic chapel
fronting the open space.
Here he paused and glanced furtively about him. He could see the
entrance to the minister's study, at which he had so often knocked and
the great rose-window of the audience-room where he had once gamed with
Harry Sanderson. This was the building he must enter like a thief.
On the night of his flight from Smoky Mountain, Hugh had ridden hard
till dawn, abandoning the horse to find its way back as best it might.
Hidden in a snug retreat, he had slept through the next day, to
recommence his journeying at nightfall. He had thus been obliged to make
haste slowly and had lost much valuable time. For two days after his
arrival, he had hung about outside the town in a fever of impatience;
for though he had readily ascertained that the premises were unoccupied,
the first night he had been frightened away by the too zealous scrutiny
of a policeman, and on the next he had been unable to force the door.
That morning he had secured a skeleton-key, and now the weather was
propitious for his purpose.
After a moment's reconnoitering, he scaled the frost-fretted iron
palings and gained the shelter of the porch. He tried the key anxiously;
to his relief it fitted. Another minute and he stood in the study, the
door locked behind him, his veins beating with excitement.
He felt along the wall, drawing his hand back sharply as it encountered
the electric switch. He struck a wax _fusee_ and by its feeble ray gazed
about him. The room looked as it had always looked, with Harry's books
on the shelves, and his heavy walking-stick in the corner, and there
against the wall stood the substantial iron safe that held his own
ransom. Crouching down before it, he took from his pocket the paper upon
which was written the combination; ten to the right, five to the left,
twice nineteen to the right--
The match scorched his fingers, and he lighted another and began to turn
the knob. The lock bore both figures and letters in concentric rings,
and he saw that the seven figures Harry had written formed a word. Hugh
dropped the match with a smothered exclamation, for the word was
Jessica! So Harry really had loved her in the old days! Had he profited
by that wedding-day expulsion to make love to her himself? Yet on the
night of the game with Harry in the chapel the house in the aspens had
been closed and dark. How had she come to be in Smoky Mountain? His
father was dead--so Harry had said. If so, the money had gone to her, no
doubt. Well, at any rate, she had never been anything to him and he was
no dog-in-the-manger. What he needed now was the thousand dollars, and
here it was. He swung the massive door wide and took out the canvas bag.
With this and the ruby ring--it must easily be worth as much again--he
could put the round world between himself and capture.
He closed the safe, and with the bag of coin in his hand, groped his way
to the door of the chapel. It was less dark there, for the snow was
making a white night outside, and the stained glass cast a wan glimmer
across the aisles. He could almost see himself and Harry Sanderson
sitting in the candle-light at the communion table inside the
altar-rail, almost hear the musical chink of the gold! His hand wandered
to his pocket, where lay the one wax wafer he had kept as a
pocket-piece. At that altar he had sworn to pay a day of clean living
for each of the counters he had lost. He had not kept that oath, and now
vengeance was near to overtaking him. He shuddered. He had turned over a
new leaf this time in earnest, and he would make up for the broken vow!
But meanwhile he greatly needed sleep, and to-night in the open that was
out of the question. He could gain several good hours' rest where he
was, and still get away before daybreak. He drew together the
altar-cushions and lay down, the canvas bag beside him, but he was cold,
and at length he rose and went into the vestry for a surplice. He
wrapped this about him, and, lighting a cigarette, lay down again. He
was very tired, but his limbs twitched from nervousness. He lighted one
cigarette after another, but sleep was coy. He tried to woo it with
nonsense rhymes, but the lines ran together. He tried the remedy of his
restless, precocious childhood--the counting of innumerable sheep as
they leaped the hurdle one by one; but now all of the sheep were black.
There came before his eyes, uncalled, the portrait of his dead mother,
that had always hung at home in the wainscoted library. In her memory
his father had built this very chapel. He wondered again whether she had
looked like the picture.
A softer feeling came to him. She would be sorry if she could know his
plight. Perhaps if she had lived his life might have been different.
Slow tears stole down his cheeks--not now of affected sentimentalism, or
of hysterical self-pity, but warmer drops from some deeper well that had
not overflowed since he was a little boy. If he had the chance he would
live from now on so that if she were alive she need not be ashamed! The
promise he made himself at that moment was an honester one than all his
selfish years had known, for it sprang not from dread, but from the
better feeling that his maturity had trampled and denied. He felt a kind
of peace--the first real peace he had known since his school-days--and
with it drowsiness came at last. With the drops wet on his cheek,
forgetfulness found him. In a few minutes he was sleeping heavily.
The last half-consumed cigarette dropped from his relaxing fingers to
the cushion, where it made a smoldering nest of fire. A tiny tongue of
flame caught the edge of a wall-hanging, ran up to the dry oaken rafters
and speedily ignited them. In fifteen minutes the interior of the
chapel was a mass of flame, and Hugh woke gasping and bewildered.
With a cry of alarm he sprang to his feet, seized the bag of coin and
ran to the door of the study. In his haste he stumbled against it, and
the dead-lock snapped to. He was a prisoner now, for he had left the
skeleton-key in the inside of the outer door. Clutching his treasure, he
ran to the main entrance; it was fast. He tried the smaller windows;
iron bars were set across them. He made shift to wrap the surplice about
his mouth, against the stifling smoke and fiery vapors. The bag dropped
from his hand and the gold rolled about the floor. He stooped and
clutched a handful of the coins and crammed them into his pocket. Was he
to die after all like this, caught like a rat in a trap? In his panic of
terror he forgot all necessity of concealment; he longed for nothing so
much as discovery by those whose cries he now heard filling the waking
street. Many voices were swelling the clamor there. Bells were pealing a
terror-tongued alarm, but those on the spot saw that the structure was
doomed. Hugh screamed desperately, but the roar of the flames overhead
and the angry crackling of the woodwork drowned all else. The roof
timbers were snapping, the muffling surplice was scorching, a thousand
luminous points about him were bursting into fire in the sickening
heat. He pounded with all his might upon the door panels, but in vain.
Who outside could have imagined that a human being was pent within that
fiery furnace?
Uttering a hoarse cry, with the strength of despair, Hugh wrenched a pew
from the floor and made of it a ladder to reach the rose-window.
Mounting this, he beat frantically with his fist upon the painted glass.
The crystal shivered beneath the blows, and clinging to the iron
supports, his beard burnt to the skin, he set his face to the aperture
and drew a gulping breath of the sweet, cold air. In his agony, with
that fiery hell opening beneath him, he could see the massed people
watching from the safety that was so near.
"Look! Look!" The sudden cry went up, and a thrill of awe ran through
the crowd. The glass Hugh had shattered had formed the face of the
Penitent Thief in the window-design, and his outstretched arms fitted
those of the figure. It was as though by some ghastly miracle the
painted features had suddenly sprung into life, the haggard eyes opened
in appeal. The watchers gasped in amazement.
The flame was upon him now. He was going to his last account--with no
time to alter the record. But had not his sleeping vow been one of
reformation? He tried to shriek this to the deaf heavens, but all the
spellbound watchers heard was the cry: "Lord, Lord, remember--" And this
articulate prayer from the crucified malefactor filled them with a
superstitious horror. In the crowd more than one covered his face with
his hands.
All at once there came a shout of warning. The wall opened outward,
tottered and fell.
Then it was that they saw the writhing figure, tangled in the twisted
lead bars of the wrecked rose-window. Shielding their faces from the
unendurable heat, they reached and bore it to safety, laying it on the
crisp, snowy grass, and tearing off the singed and smoking ministerial
robes.
Judge Conwell was one of these. In the flaring confusion he leaned over
the figure--the gleam of the ruby ring on the finger caught his eye. He
bent forward to look into the drawn and distorted face.
"Good God!" he said. "It's Harry Sanderson!"