"No banisters, sweet Juliet? Not yet—not yet; but Orrin will protect you from falling. No harm can come to you while he is at your side. Do you admire this sweep to the stairs? I saw a vision when I planned it, of a pretty woman coming down at the sound of her husband's step. The step has changed in sound to my imagination, but the pretty woman is prettier than ever, and will look her best as she comes down these stairs. Oh, that is a window-ledge for flowers. A honeymoon is nothing without flowers, and you must have forget-me-nots and pansies here till one cannot see from the window. You do not like such humble flowers? Fie! Mistress Juliet, it is hard to believe that,—even Orrin doubts it, as I see by his chiding air."
Here the gentle and bantering tones ceased, for he had reached the top of the stair. But in another moment I heard them again as he passed from room to room, pausing here and pausing there, till suddenly he gave a cheerful laugh, spoke her name in most inviting accents, and stepped into that room.
Then as if roused into galvanic action, I rose and followed, going up those midnight stairs and gaining the door where he had passed as if the impulse moving me had lent to my steps a certainty which preserved me from slipping even upon that dank and dangerous ascent. When in view of him again, I saw, as I had expected, that he was drawn up by the window and was bowing and beckoning with even more grace and suavity than he had shown below. "Will you not step out, Mistress Juliet?" he was saying; "I have a plan which I am anxious to submit to your judgment and which can only be decided upon from without. A high step true, but Orrin has lifted you over worse places and—and you will do me a great favor if only—" Here he gave a malignant shriek, and his countenance, from the most smiling and benignant expression, altered into that of a fiend from hell. "Ha, ha, ha!" he yelled. "She goes, and he is so fearful for her that he leaps after. That is a goodly stroke! Both—both—Crack! Ah, she looks at me, she looks—"
Silence and then a frozen figure crouching before my eyes, just the silence and just the figure I remembered seeing there twenty years before, only the face is older and the horror, if anything, greater. What did it mean? I tried to think, then as the full import of the scene burst upon me, and I realized that it was a murderer I was looking upon, and that Orrin, poor Orrin, had been innocent, I sank back and fell upon the floor, lost in the darkness of an utter unconsciousness.
I did not come to myself for hours; when I did I found myself alone in the old house.
Nothing was ever done to the Colonel, for when I came to tell my story the doctors said that the facts I related did not prove him to have been guilty of crime, as his condition was such that his own words could not be relied upon in a matter on which he had brooded more or less morbidly for years. So now when I see him pass through the churchyard or up and down the village street and note that he is affable as ever when he sees me, but growing more and more preoccupied with his own thoughts I do not know whether to look upon him with execration or profoundest pity, nor can any man guide me or satisfy my mind as to whether I should blame his jealousy or Orrin's pride for the pitiful tragedy which once darkened my life, and turned our pleasant village into a desert.
Of one thing only have I been made sure; that it was the Colonel who lit the brand which fired Orrin's cottage.
A MEMORABLE NIGHT
CHAPTER I
I am a young physician of limited practice and great ambition. At the time of the incidents I am about to relate, my office was in a respectable house in Twenty-fourth Street, New York City, and was shared, greatly to my own pleasure and convenience, by a clever young German whose acquaintance I had made in the hospital, and to whom I had become, in the one short year in which we had practised together, most unreasonably attached. I say unreasonably, because it was a liking for which I could not account even to myself, as he was neither especially prepossessing in appearance nor gifted with any too great amiability of character. He was, however, a brilliant theorist and an unquestionably trustworthy practitioner, and for these reasons probably I entertained for him a profound respect, and as I have already said a hearty and spontaneous affection.
As our specialties were the same, and as, moreover, they were of a nature which did not call for night-work, we usually spent the evening together. But once I failed to join him at the office, and it is of this night I have to tell.
I had been over to Orange, for my heart was sore over the quarrel I had had with Dora, and I was resolved to make one final effort towards reconciliation. But alas for my hopes, she was not at home; and, what was worse, I soon learned that she was going to sail the next morning for Europe. This news, coming as it did without warning, affected me seriously, for I knew if she escaped from my influence at this time, I should certainly lose her forever; for the gentleman concerning whom we had quarrelled, was a much better match for her than I, and almost equally in love. However, her father, who had always been my friend, did not look upon this same gentleman's advantages with as favorable an eye as she did, and when he heard I was in the house, he came hurrying into my presence, with excitement written in every line of his fine face.
"Ah, Dick, my boy," he exclaimed joyfully, "how opportune this is! I was wishing you would come, for, do you know, Appleby has taken passage on board the same steamer as Dora, and if he and she cross together, they will certainly come to an understanding, and that will not be fair to you, or pleasing to me; and I do not care who knows it!"
I gave him one look and sank, quite overwhelmed, into the seat nearest me. Appleby was the name of my rival, and I quite agreed with her father that the tête-à-têtes afforded by an ocean voyage would surely put an end to the hopes which I had so long and secretly cherished.
"Does she know he is going? Did she encourage him?" I stammered.
But the old man answered genially: "Oh, she knows, but I cannot say anything positive about her having encouraged him. The fact is, Dick, she still holds a soft place in her heart for you, and if you were going to be of the party—"
"Well?"
"I think you would come off conqueror yet."
"Then I will be of the party," I cried. "It is only six now, and I can be in New York by seven. That gives me five hours before midnight, time enough in which to arrange my plans, see Richter, and make everything ready for sailing in the morning."
"Dick, you are a trump!" exclaimed the gratified father. "You have a spirit I like, and if Dora does not like it too, then I am mistaken in her good sense. But can you leave your patients?"
"Just now I have but one patient who is in anything like a critical condition," I replied, "and her case Richter understands almost as well as I do myself. I will have to see her this evening of course and explain, but there is time for that if I go now. The steamer sails at nine?"
"Precisely."
"Do not tell Dora that I expect to be there; let her be surprised. Dear girl, she is quite well, I hope?"
"Yes, very well; only going over with her aunt to do some shopping. A poor outlook for a struggling physician, you think. Well, I don't know about that; she is just the kind of a girl to go from one extreme to another. If she once loves you she will not care any longer about Paris fashions."
"She shall love me," I cried, and left him in a great hurry, to catch the first train for Hoboken.
It seemed wild, this scheme, but I determined to pursue it. I loved Dora too much to lose her, and if three weeks' absence would procure me the happiness of my life, why should I hesitate to avail myself of the proffered opportunity. I rode on air as the express I had taken shot from station to station, and by the time I had arrived at Christopher Street Ferry my plans were all laid and my time disposed of till midnight.