THE COMING IN THE NIGHT.
Soon after their return to Chicago, Celeste began to observe changes in
her husband's manner. He gave up newspaper illustrating and went in
for water colors and began to take lessons in oil painting. The
cleverness of Jud Sherrod, the boy, was not wanting in the man. In a
short time the born artist in him was mastering the difficulties of
color and he was painting in a manner that surprised not only his
critical friends but himself. He toiled hard and faithfully; his
little studio on the top floor of their home was always a place of
activity.
Feverishly he began these first attempts at coloring, Celeste his only
critic. With loving yet honest eyes she saw the faults, the virtues
and the improvement. He worked day and night, despite her
expostulations. The bright eyes he turned to her when he took them
from the canvas were not the gray, hungry ones that dulled into reverie
when he was alone with his pigments. His eyes saw two dancing faces in
the colors as he spread them: one dark, distressed, and weary, the
other fair, bright, and happy.
There came to him a powerful desire to see Justine, but with it the
fear that he could not leave her if he again felt her presence touching
his. For an hour at a time, day after day, he would hold Celeste in
his arms, uttering no word, stroking her hair, caressing her face,
gloomily repentant. The enormity of his mistake--he would not call it
crime--had come full upon him. It was not that he had broken the laws
of the land, but that he had deceived--deceived.
Men about town remarked the change and wondered. Douglass Converse, in
anxiety, sought to ascertain the cause, fearing to find Celeste
unhappy. She was, beyond doubt, blissfully happy, and he fell back
upon the old solution: Sherrod was not well. The latter, in response
to blunt questioning, told him he was not sick, not tired, not worried,
but his heart quaked with the discovery that the eyes of his friends
were upon him and always questioning.
"Dudley, dear, let us go to Florida next month," said Celeste one night
as they drove home from the theatre. He had drooped moodily through
the play and had been silent as they whirled along in the carriage. In
casting about for the cause of his apparent weariness, she ascribed it
to overwork.
"Do you really want to go, Celeste?" he asked, tenderly. "Will the
stay down there do you good?"
"I want to get away from Chicago for awhile. I want to be where it is
bright and warm. Why should we stay here through all this wretched
winter when it is so easy to go to such a delightful place? You must
finish your picture in time to start next month. You don't know how
happy it will make me."
If he could only take Justine with them! That longing swelled his
heart almost to the bursting. "If Justine could only enjoy it all with
me," he groaned to himself. "If she could go! If she could go where
it is warm and bright! If I could have them both with me there could
be no more darkness, no more chill, no more unhappiness."
As the days dragged along, nearer and nearer the date set for the
departure for Florida, he grew moodier, more dejected. But one thought
filled his mind, the abandonment of Justine; not regret for the wrong
he was doing Celeste, but remorse for the wrong he was doing Justine.
Sleepless nights found him seeing her slaving, half-frozen, on that
wretched farm, far from the bright world he had enjoyed and she would
have enjoyed.
At last, a week before the day set for their departure for Florida he
reached a sudden determination. He would see Justine, he would go to
her in the night and kiss her and take her up in his arms and bear her
to Chicago with him, there to--but no! He could not do that! He could
only kiss her and take her in his arms and then steal back to the other
one, a dastard. There could be but one and it was for him to choose
between them.
He wondered if he could go back to the farm and live, if he could give
up all he had won, if he could confess his error to Justine, if he
could desert Celeste, if he could live without both of them.
Selfishness told him to relinquish Justine, honor told him to strip the
shackles from Celeste, even though the action broke her heart.
Then there came to his heart the design of the coward, and he could not
get away from its horrible influence. It battled down manly
resistance, it overthrew every courageous impulse, it made of him a
weak, forceless, unresisting slave. With the fever of this malignant
impulse in his blood, he stealthily began the laying of plans that were
to end his troubles. But one person would be left to suffer and to
wonder and she might never know the truth.
One dark night there descended from the railway coach at Glenville, a
roughly clad man whose appearance was that of a stranger but whose
actions were those of one familiar with the dark surroundings. There
had been few changes in Glenville since the day on which Jud Sherrod
left the place for the big city on the lake, but there had been a
wondrous change in the man who was returning, under cover of night, to
the quaint, old-fashioned home of his boyhood. He had gone away an
eager, buoyant youth, strong and ambitious; he was coming back a
heartsick, miserable old man, skulking and crafty.
Through unused lanes, across dark, almost forgotten fields, frozen and
bleak, he sped, his straining eyes bent upon the blackness ahead,
fearfully searching for the first faint flicker in a certain window.
He did not know how long it took him to cover the miles that lay
between the village and the forlorn cottage in the winter-swept lane.
He had carefully concealed his face from the station men and there were
so few people abroad in that freezing night that no one knew of the
return of Justine's long-absent husband. His journey across the fields
was accomplished almost before he knew it had begun, so full was his
mind of the purpose that brought him there. Every sound startled and
unnerved him, yet he hurried on unswervingly. He was going to the end
of it all.
At last he came to the fence that separated Justine's little farm from
the broad acres of David Strong. Scarce half a mile away stood the
cottage, hidden in the night. He knew it was there, and he knew that a
light shone from a window on the side of the house farthest from him.
It was there that she loved to sit, and, as it was not yet ten o'clock,
she could not have gone to bed. He swerved to the south, and by a wide
detour came to the garden fence that he had built in the days gone by.
As he slunk past the corner of the barn his gaze fell upon the lighted
window.
He clung to the fence and gazed intently at the square blotch of yellow
in the blackness. She was there! In that room! His Justine! For a
moment his resolution wavered. Then he doggedly turned his back upon
the kindly glimmer in her window, and looked into the shadow. He did
not dare look again upon the loving light that stretched its warmth out
to him as he shuddered and cringed on the threshold of his own home,
almost within the clasp of those adoring arms.
But, with his back to her, his face to the darkness, he waited, waited,
waited. It seemed to him that hours passed before he dared again to
face the house, fearing that another glimpse of her light would break
his resolution. His mind was a blank save for one tense thought--the
one great thought that had drawn him from one woman to the other. He
thought only of the moment when the light in the window should
disappear, when stillness should be in Justine's bed-chamber, when no
accusing eye could look upon what was to follow. His numb fingers felt
for the knife that lay sheathed in his overcoat pocket, and he
shuddered as they touched it.
His eyes again turned apprehensively toward the house. The window was
dark; he could see nothing except the dense outlines of the square
little building against the black sky. There was a dead chill in the
air. The silence weighed upon him. He made a stealthy way to the
weather boards of the house. The touch of his numb fingers against the
frosty wood was uncanny, and he drew his hand sharply away. For a
moment he paused, and his crouching form straightened with a sudden
consciousness of its position. The deepest revulsion swept over him,
the most inordinate shame and horror. Why was he coming to her in the
dead of night, like an assassin, sneaking, cringing, shivering? With a
groan he recklessly strode forward to the dark window frame. His
fingers touched the glass of two or three panes, then the rags that
kept the wind out of others. In there she was lying asleep, alone,
breathing softly, dreaming of him perhaps. He was within ten feet of
that dear, unconscious body and she was sweetly alive--a tender
breathing thing that loved him better than life. Alive, and he had
come to take life away from her!
He had come to steal the only thing that was left to her--her life.
With wild eyes he sought to penetrate the darkness beyond the glass.
As plainly as if it were broad daylight his imagination revealed to him
the interior of the bare room. There were his drawings on the walls;
the worn ingrain carpet of green and red; the old rocking-chair and the
two cane-bottom chairs; the walnut stand with its simple cover of white
muslin, the prayer-book and the kerosene lamp; Justine's little
work-basket with its yarn, its knitting, its thread, thimble,
patch-pieces and the scissors. Across the back of a chair hung her
pitifully unfashionable dress of calico, her white underskirt, her
thick petticoat; beside the bed stood the heavy, well-worn shoes with
her black stockings lying limp and lifeless across them. The white
coverlet, rumpled and ridged by the lithe figure that snuggled
underneath; the brown hair, the sweet, tired face with its closed eyes,
sunk in the broad pillow; the gentle breathing, the regular movement of
the covers that stretched across the warm, slumbering body; the brown,
strong hand that wore his ring resting beside the cheek of the sleeper.
A sudden eagerness to clasp the hand, to hold it firm, to protect it
from something, came to him. He wondered for a moment why she should
need protection--before he remembered.
How could he live without her? The folly of trying to do so! Better,
far better, that he should die and take her with him, leaving the other
to wonder and at last find her young way back to happiness through
forgetfulness. Foresworn to end his own misery and to destroy every
possible chance that might convey his faithlessness to the trusting
Justine, he had slunk away from the city, bidding farewell to the world
that had weakened him, and was now clinging to her window sill with
love and murder in his heart. He had come to kill her and to kill
himself. He must have it over. There was no other way. His legs
trembled as he sped on to the kitchen door. The door was bolted and he
sought the narrow window. It moved under his effort, creaking
treacherously, but he did not pause. A half-dead fire smoldered in the
kitchen stove--their kitchen stove--and he sank beside it, craving its
friendly warmth. He crouched there for many minutes, steeling himself
for what was to come. Indecision and weakness assailed him again and
again, but he overcame them; the fear of death made him cast glances
over his shoulder, but he set his teeth; the terror of crime shook him,
but he fought it away. There was but one way to end the tragedy, there
was but one way to save Justine. It would be over in a moment; there
was relief in that.
How he crept through the kitchen and the dark sitting-room he did not
know, but at last he found himself, breathless and pulseless, at her
door. Then came the stunning thought: was she alone in the room? Was
old Mrs. Crane with her or was she in the little half-story room at the
head of the stairs? He shrank back to the kitchen noiselessly.
Groping his way to the table he ran his hand over its surface until it
touched the candlestick that he knew was there as well as if he had
seen it. He lighted the candle from the flickering blue flame in the
stove, and, shading it with his hand, glided swiftly to her door.
After what seemed an hour of irresolution, he softly pressed the latch.
The almost imperceptible noise sounded like a crash of thunder in his
sensitive ears, but the door swung slowly open and he stood in his
wife's room. Yes! There was the bed and there was the mass of brown
hair and the white, blurred face and----
But, what was that noise? His heart stopped beating--his wide eyes saw
Justine's hand slowly stretch out and, as if its owner were acting in
her sleep, apparently tuck in the covers on the side of the bed nearest
the wall. A faint, smothered wail came to his ears. There was no
mistaking the sound.
A baby!
As he stood there in the doorway, frozen to the spot, the candle in one
hand, the knife in the other, Justine moved suddenly and in a moment
was staring at him with wide, terrified eyes.