The Burglar and the Blizzard by Alice Duer Miller
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Alice Duer Miller >> The Burglar and the Blizzard
"Remember you?"
"Yes, we were at school together for a time."
Geoffrey stared, and then exclaimed spontaneously:
"You used to be able to wag your ears."
"Can still."
"Why, you are Skinny McVay."
The man nodded. Neither was without a sense of humour, and yet saw
nothing comic in these untender reminiscences.
"I remember the masters all hated you," said Geoffrey, "but you were
straight enough then, weren't you?"
Again the man nodded. "I took to this sort of thing a month or so ago."
After a moment Geoffrey said:
"Did not I hear you were in the navy?"
"No," said McVay. "I was at Annapolis for a few months. I had an idea I
should like the navy, but Heavens above! I could not stand the Academy.
They threw me out. It seems I had broken every rule they had ever made.
It was worse than State's prison."
"Are you in a position to judge?" asked Geoffrey coolly.
"No," said McVay, as if he nevertheless had information on the subject.
"Well, you will be soon," said Holland, not sorry for an opportunity to
point out that his heart was not softened by recollections of his school
days. But McVay appeared to ignore this intimation.
"Yes," he said ruminatively; "I've done a lot of things in my time."
"Well, I don't want to hear about them," said Geoffrey, who had no
intention of being drawn into an intimate interchange. The burglar
looked more surprised than angered at this shortness, and only said:
"Would you have any objection to my putting a match to that fire?"
"No," said Geoffrey, and McVay, with wonderful dexterity, managed to
start a cheering blaze with his left hand.
For a few minutes Geoffrey's determined attention to his book
discouraged his companion, but presently rapping the pages of Tristram
Shandy with the back of his hand, he exclaimed:
"Sterne! Ah, there was a man! Something of my own type, too, it
sometimes strikes me. Capable, you know, really a genius, but so
unfortunately different from other people. Ordinary standards meant
nothing to him--too original--sees life from another standpoint,
entirely. That's me! I--"
"Sit down," roared Geoffrey.
"Oh, it's nothing, nothing," said McVay, "only I talk better on my
feet."
"Well, you wouldn't talk as well with a bullet in you."
McVay sank back again in his chair. "Yes," he said, "that's me. Why,
Holland, I have no doubt you would be surprised if you knew the number
of things that I can do--that I am really proficient in. Anything with
the hands," he waved his fingers supplely in the air, "is no trouble to
me at all. I have at once a natural skill that most people take a
lifetime to acquire."
"I'm told there's work for all where you are going."
McVay looked a trifle puzzled for an instant, but never allowing himself
to remain at a loss, he said:
"Work! Do you really mean to say that you believe in a utilitarian
Heaven, where we are going to work with our hands? For my part--"
"I had reference to the penitentiary," said Geoffrey.
"Oh, yes, of course, the penitentiary. There are some wonderful men in
the penitentiary. You don't admit that, I suppose, with your
conventional ideas; but to me they are just as admirable as any other
great creative artist,--sculptor or financier. I see you don't quite get
that. You are hemmed in by conventional standards, and your possessions,
and all the things to which you attach such great importance."
"I don't attach so much importance that I steal them from other people,"
said Geoffrey.
"Philistine, Holland, philistine! Is not any one who has anything
stealing from some one or other? Of course. But I see you don't catch
the idea. Well, I dare say I would not either in your place--rather
think I would not. My sister is just the same way. Sweet girl, witty in
her own way, but philistine. She is so good as to be my companion,
apparently on equal terms, in many ways my superior, but it would be
impossible for me even to mention these ideas to her,--ideas which are
of the greatest interest to me."
"I wonder," said Geoffrey, "how much of all this rubbish you believe?"
McVay smiled with great sweetness. "I wonder myself, Holland. Still it
is undeniably amusing, and the main thing is that I enjoy life,--a hard
life too in many ways. Fate has dealt me some sad blows. Look at such a
coincidence as your turning up to-night, of all nights in the year."
"It was scarcely a coincidence. I came--"
"Oh, I know, I know. You came to see after your sister's things, but
still, if you look at it a little more carefully, you will see that it
_was_ a coincidence that you should be by nature a man of prompt action.
Nine men out of ten in your place--still, I'm not depressed. You cannot
say, Holland, that I behave or talk like a man who has ten years of hard
labour before him, can you? I dare say you have never been thrown with a
person who showed less anxiety. Yet as a matter of fact, there is
something preying on my mind. Something entirely aside from anything you
could imagine."
"You don't tell me!" said Geoffrey, who did not know whether to be most
amused or infuriated by his companion's conversation.
"I am about to tell you," said McVay graciously, "I am very seriously
worried about my sister. In fact I don't see that there is any getting
away from it; you will have to let me go out for an hour or so and get
her."
"Let you do _what_?"
"Get my sister. She's living in a little hut in your woods, and I am
actually afraid she will be snowed up."
"It seems highly probable."
"Well, then, I must go and get her."
Geoffrey stared at him a moment, and then said: "You must be crazy."
"Maybe I am," answered McVay, as if the suggestion were not without an
amusing side. "Maybe I am, but that is not the point. Think of a girl,
Holland, alone, all night, in such a storm. Now, I put it to you: it is
not a position in which you would leave your sister, is it?"
Geoffrey began a sentence and finding it inadequate, contented himself
with a laugh.
"There you see," said McVay. "It's out of the question. The place is
draughty, too, though there is a stove. Do you remember the house at
all? You would be surprised to see how nicely I've fixed it up for her."
"No doubt I should," replied Holland, thinking of the Vaughan and
Marheim valuables.
"It is surprisingly livable, but it _is_ draughty," McVay went on. "The
truth is I ought to have gone south, as I meant to do last week. But one
cannot foresee everything. The winters have been open until Christmas so
often lately. However, I made a mistake and I am perfectly willing to
rectify it. If you have no objection, I'll go and bring her back here."
"If you have any respect for your skin you won't move from that chair."
"Oh, the devil, Holland, don't be so--" he hesitated for the right word,
not wishing to be unjust,--"so obtuse. Listen to that wind! It's cold
here. Think what it must be in that shanty."
"Very unpleasant, I should think."
"More than that, more than that,--suffering, I have no doubt. Why, she
might freeze to death if anything went wrong with the fire. It is not
safe. It's a distinct risk to leave her. Let alone that a storm like
this would scare any girl alone in a place like that, there is some
danger to her life. Don't you see that?"
"Yes, I see," returned Geoffrey, "but you ought to have thought of that
before you came burgling in a blizzard."
"Thought of it! Of course I thought of it. But I had no idea whatever of
being caught, with old McFarlane laid up and the two boys away, it did
seem about the safest job yet."
There was a pause, for Geoffrey evidently had no intention of even
arguing the matter, and presently McVay continued:
"Now you know you would feel badly to-morrow morning if anything went
wrong with her, and you knew you could have helped it!"
"Helped it!" said Geoffrey. "What do you mean? Let you loose on the
county for the sake of a story no sane man would believe?"
"Well," returned McVay judicially, "perhaps you could not do that, but,"
he added brightly, "you could go yourself."
"Yes," said Geoffrey, "I _could_--"
"Then I think you ought to be getting along."
"Upon my word, McVay," said Holland, "you are something of a humorist,
aren't you?"
McVay again looked puzzled, but rose to the occasion.
"Oh, hardly that," he said. "Every now and then I have a way of putting
things,--a way of my own. I find often I am able to amuse people, but if
you are cheerful yourself, you make other people so. I was just thinking
that it must be a great thing for men who have been in prison for years
to have some one come in with a new point of view."
"I'm sure you will be an addition to prison life. It's an ill wind, you
know."
"It's an ill wind for my sister, literally enough. Come, Holland, you
certainly can trust me. Do be starting."
"Why, what do you take me for?" said the exasperated Geoffrey. "Do you
really suppose that I am going, looking for a den of your accomplices in
order to give you a chance to escape?"
"'Accomplices!'" exclaimed McVay; and for the first time a shade of
anger crossed his brow; "'_accomplices'_! I have no accomplices.
Anything I do I think I am able to do alone. Still," he added putting
aside his annoyance, "if you feel nervous about leaving me I'd just as
lief give you my word of honour to stay here until you come back."
"Your _what_?"
McVay made a slight gesture of his shoulders, as if he were being a good
deal tried. "Oh, anything you like," he said. "I suppose you could lock
me up in a closet."
"I don't think we need trouble to arrange the details," said Geoffrey
drily. "But I'll tell you what I will do. After I get you safely in jail
to-morrow, I'll get a trap and go and look up this hut."
"It may be too late then."
"It may," said Geoffrey, and continued to read.
Yet he had no further satisfaction in his book. He knew that the burglar
kept casting meditative glances at him as if in wonder at such
brutality, and in truth, his own mind was not entirely at ease. If by
any chance the story were true,--if there was a woman at his doors
freezing to death, how could he sit enjoying the fire? But, on the other
hand, could any one have a more evident motive for deception than his
informant? What better opportunity for escape could be arranged? It was
so evident, so impudent as to be almost convincing. What more likely for
instance, than that the hut was a regular rendezvous for criminals and
tramps, that by going he would be walking into the veriest trap? Yet
again there was the report confirmed by Harris's story that a woman was
in some way connected with these robberies. The wind whistled round the
house with a suggestion of difficulty, of combat with the elements, of
actual danger, perhaps, that suddenly gave Geoffrey a new view of delay.
Had it not something the air of cowardice, or at least of laziness? He
found his eyes had read the same page three times, while his brain was
busy devising means by which McVay could be secured in his absence--if
he went.
At length he rose suddenly to his feet.
"I'll go," he said, "but before I go, I'll tie you up so safely that, if
I don't come back, you'll starve to death before you'll be able to get
out or make any one hear you. On these terms do you still want me to
go?"
"Oh, yes, I want you to go," said McVay, "only for goodness sake be
careful. If you should feel any temptation to lie down and go to sleep
don't yield to it; they say it's fatal. The great thing is to keep on
walking--"
"Oh, shut up," said Geoffrey. In view of the possibility that he was
going to meet death at the hands of his fluent companion's accomplices
he found this friendly advice unbearable.
"This hut, I take it," he said, "is an old woodcutter's shanty in the
north woods?"
"Yes, something over a mile and a half north of here."
"I know the place," said Geoffrey, "now come along, and we'll see how I
can fix you up until I come back."
He had in mind a heavy upstairs cedar-closet. It had been designed by a
thoughtful architect for the storing of summer wearing apparel, and was
strongly built. It had besides the advantage of having a door that
opened in and so was difficult to break open from the inside. Here,
having removed a complete burglar's outfit from his pockets, Geoffrey
disposed McVay, being met with a readiness on McVay's part that seemed
to prove either that he was sincere in his belief in Holland's safe
return, or else was perfectly confident of being able to open the door
as soon as Geoffrey's back was turned.
"But he'll find himself mistaken," Geoffrey murmured as, having locked
the door, he turned away. At this instant a faint knocking was audible,
and, gathering that McVay had some final instructions to give, Geoffrey
again opened the door.
"By the way," said the burglar, and for the first time a certain
constraint, amounting almost to embarrassment, was discernible in his
manner, "my sister has no idea about--it would be a great shock to
her--in fact, you understand, she has not discovered exactly how our
money comes to us."
"Do you expect me to believe that?" asked Geoffrey.
"I grant it does not sound likely," returned McVay, "and indeed would
not be possible with any other man than myself. But I hit upon a pretty
good yarn,--worked out well everyway. I told her--"
"I don't want to hear your infernal lies."
"But it might be convenient for you to know. I told her," McVay
chuckled, "that I was employed as night watchman at Drake's paper mill.
That of course kept me out all night, and--"
"She must think night watchmen get good wages."
"That was just it. I told her Drake was an old friend of mine, and just
wanted an excuse to give me an allowance until he found me a better job.
You see I just lost a nice job in a bank--"
"I suppose it would be indiscreet to inquire why?"
"Well, we won't discuss it," said McVay with an agreeable smile. "Of
course she could understand that such an inferior position as a
watchman's had to be kept a profound secret, hence our remote mode of
life, and the fact that I don't allow a butcher or baker to come near
us. I tell her that if it were known that I had held such a poor
position, it would interfere with my getting a better. So, if you should
happen to find that you have to explain to her why I am detained here--"
"_If_ I should explain to her," said Geoffrey. "What do you suppose I am
going to do?"
"Well, I suppose you will find it necessary," said McVay. "Indeed, as a
matter of fact, I would much rather have you do it than do it myself.
Still, you might bear in mind to tell her as gently as possible. If she
were your own sister--"
"Oh, go to the devil," said Geoffrey, and slammed the door.
III
Geoffrey was born with a love of adventure, and his dislike to his
present expedition arose not from fear, but from a consciousness that if
he did run into a den of thieves he would think himself such an ass to
have come. Indeed, there seemed a fair chance that he might think this
even if nothing worse happened than that the hut proved empty, for he
would have had a long walk for nothing better than to provide McVay with
an opportunity to escape. He did not see exactly how McVay could get
out, but he was aware that few people would think it wise to leave a
burglar locked in a closet in an empty house with some hours of leisure
at his disposal.
The first glimmering of dawn was visible as he stepped off the piazza;
the wind was blowing fiercely and the snow still falling. He had not
gone a hundred yards before he knew that the expedition was to be more
difficult than he had imagined. To make headway against the wind was a
constant struggle, and he seemed to slip back in the snow at every step.
Still the natural obstinacy of his nature was aroused, and as his
attention was more and more engaged with the endeavor to make his way,
he had less time to think of the probable futility of his proceeding.
Long before he sighted the hut, he was wet to the waist, not only
because he had been in half a dozen drifts, but because the snow had
penetrated every crevice of his clothing.
The hut was a forlorn little spot upon the landscape, a patch of grey on
the stretch of forest and snow. A shutter blowing in the wind gave an
impression of desertion, for how could any one, however wretched, sit
idle under that recurrent bang?
Drawing his revolver, Geoffrey approached the door. He had no intention
of giving a possible enemy an opportunity to prepare himself, and so did
not knock, but, putting his shoulder against the door, shoved mightily.
The hinges broke from the rotten wood at once, and he stumbled in.
The pale light of the early winter morning showed a depressing interior,
for the window was not the only opening. There was a great gap in the
roof where, earlier in the night, the chimney had fallen, and now its
bricks littered the floor, already well covered with snow. Some attempt
must have been made, as McVay had boasted, of "fixing it up"; there were
books in the shelves on the walls, and a black iron stove on which the
snow now lay fearlessly. As Geoffrey took in the situation, something in
a huge chair, which he had taken for a heap of rugs, stirred and moved,
and finally rose, betraying itself to be a woman. Geoffrey had been
prepared to find a den of thieves, or nothing at all, or even a girl, as
McVay had said. He told himself he would be surprised at nothing, yet
found himself astounded, overwhelmed at the sight of a beautiful face.
The girl must have been beautiful so to triumph over her surroundings,
for all sorts of strange garments were huddled about her, and over all a
silk coverlet originally tied like a shawl under her chin, had slipped
sideways, and fell like a Hussar's jacket from one shoulder. Her hair
stood like a dark halo about her little face, making it seem smaller and
younger, almost too small for the magnificent eyes that lit it.
Geoffrey, tolerably well versed in feminine attractions, said to himself
that he had never seen such blue eyes.
And suddenly while he looked at her and her desperate plight, pity
became in him a sort of fury of protection, the awakening of the
masculine instinct toward beauty in distress. It was a feeling that the
other women he had admired--well-fed, well-clothed, well-cared-for young
creatures--had always signally failed to arouse. He had seen it in other
men, had seen their hearts wrung because an able-bodied girl must take a
trolley car instead of her father's carriage, but he had thought himself
hard, perhaps, unchivalrous; but now he knew better. Now he knew what it
was to feel personally outraged at a woman's discomfort.
"Good God!" he cried, "what a night you have had. How wicked, how
abominable, how criminal--"
[Illustration: "GOOD GOD," HE CRIED "WHAT A NIGHT YOU HAVE HAD"]
"It has been a dreadful night," said the girl, "but it is nobody's
fault."
"Of course it is somebody's fault," answered Geoffrey. "It must be. Do
you mean to tell me no one is to blame when I have been sitting all
night with my feet on the fender, and you--"
"Certainly," said she with an extraordinarily wide, sweet smile, "I
could wish we might have changed places."
"I wish to Heaven we might," returned Geoffrey, and meant it. Never
before had he yearned to bear the sufferings of another. He had often
seen that it was advisable, suitable just that he should, but burningly
to want to was a new experience.
"Thank you," said the girl, "but I'm afraid there is nothing to be
done."
"Nothing to be done!" He dropped on his knees before the black monster
of a stove, "Do you suppose I'm here to do nothing?"
"You are here, I think, for shelter from the storm."
It had not occurred to him before that she looked upon him as a chance
wanderer.
"That shows your ignorance of the situation. I am here to rescue you. I
left my fireside for no other reason. As I came along I said at every
blast, 'that poor, poor girl.' I set out to bring you to safety. I begin
to think I was born for no other reason."
She smiled rather wearily, "Your coming at all is so strange that I
could almost believe you."
"You may thoroughly believe me, more easily perhaps when I tell you I
did not particularly want to come. I started out at dawn very cross and
cold because I did not know what I was going to find...."
"But I thought you said you did know that you were going to rescue a
girl?"
"A girl, yes. But what's a mere girl? How many thousand girls have I
seen in my life? Is that a thought to turn a man's head? What I did not
know was that I was going to find _you_."
"The fire will never burn with the chimney strewn on the floor," she
said mildly.
"Well, I've said it, you see," he answered, "and you won't forget it,
even if you do change the subject." He turned his attention to the fire.
Where is the man, worthy of the name to whom the business of fire
building is not serious?
Presently seeing he needed help she dropped to her knees beside him and
tried to shove a piece of wood into place. In the process her numbed
fingers touched his, and he instantly dropped everything to catch her
hand in both of his.
"Your hands are as cold as ice," he said, holding them tightly, and
thanking Fate that this bounty had fallen to his lot.
She withdrew them. "You are too conscientious," she said. "That is not
part of the duty of a rescue party."
"It is, it is," said Geoffrey violently. "It is the merest humanity."
"Humanity?"
"To me, of course, if you will pin me down."
"Oh, there is no reason for the rescued to be humane."
"They ought to be grateful."
"They are."
"_Gratefuller_ then. Is it nothing that I have taken all the trouble to
be born and grow up and live just to come here for you?"
"Perhaps I could be gratefuller if there were any prospect of a fire."
"Oh, curse the fire," said Geoffrey rising from his knees. "Who minds
about it?"
"I mind very much."
"Well, you mustn't. You must not mind about anything, because it sets up
too strong a reaction in me. There's no telling what I might not do
under the stress. Come away from this dreadful place. The fires will
burn in my house, and that is where we are going."
"I can't do that," she said, looking very grave.
"You can't do anything else."
"I must wait for my brother. He's out somewhere in this storm, and if he
comes back and finds me gone--"
"Oh, your brother," said Geoffrey, "I forgot all about him. He's at my
house already. He sent me for you."
"Oh," said she, sighing with relief, and then added maliciously: "then
my plight was not revealed to you in a vision?"
"The vision is with me now."
She had to perfection, the art of allowing her mind to drift away when
she thought it advisable.
"And so you took poor Billy in?" she said.
Geoffrey coughed. "Well, in a sense," he answered.
She rose. "We'll go at once," she said. "Is it far?"
"Not very, but it is going to be hard work."
He felt more practical. His delight had slipped from him at the
realisation of her relationship to McVay. For a moment he felt
depressed, then as he saw her struggling to undo the knot that held the
comforter about her, he forgot everything but the pleasure of doing her
a service. And in the midst of this joy, the coverlet slid to the ground
and revealed her clad from head to foot in his sister's sables.
There was a pause.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
"That is a nice warm coat you have on."
"Isn't it?" She rubbed her cheek against the high collar with a
tenderness trying to any masculine onlooker. "It saved my life."
It was on the tip of Geoffrey's tongue to ask if he was not entitled to
a similar claim on her consideration, but he suppressed it. Was it
possible that she did not know that the garments she wore were stolen?
Could any sane woman really believe that sable coats fell naturally to
the lot of night watchmen? Her manner was candour itself, but how should
it not be? What more inevitable than that she should make an effort to
deceive a casual stranger? She had the most evident motives for behaving
exactly as she did. Just so, however, he had reasoned about McVay, and
yet McVay had been sincere. There had been a girl in distress exactly as
he had said. It was contrary to all reason, but it was true. Might not
the girl be true too? Was it not possible, he asked himself, and
answered that it was more than possible, it was the truth. He chose to
believe in her, and turned his anger against McVay, who could drag her
through such a mire. He felt the tragedy of a high-minded woman tricked
out in stolen finery, and remembered with a pang that he himself was
hurrying on the moment of disillusion.
"I wonder," she said, "if I could take some things with me. Is it
impossible for me to carry a bag?"
"Yes, but not for me."
"It would be only this." She held up a small Russia leather affair
legibly marked with Mrs. Inness' initials.
"I will take it," said Geoffrey. His faith was sorely tried.
She moved about collecting things and packing, and presently remarked:
"But if Billy is all right, why didn't he come for me himself?"