The Burglar and the Blizzard by Alice Duer Miller
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Alice Duer Miller >> The Burglar and the Blizzard
"Oh, because--" Geoffrey hesitated an instant, and her fears interpreted
the pause.
"He's hurt. You are keeping it from me. You are deceiving me."
"I would scorn to deceive you," said Geoffrey with passion, and looked
at her to find some answer to the reverse question which he did not put
into words.
She did not appear to understand. "Then why didn't he come?" she asked.
"He had been out in the storm already. I thought it was my turn."
"I think you must be stronger than Billy." She cast a reflective glance
at his shoulders, and he was ashamed to find himself inordinately
flattered.
"He is really safe at your house?"
"I hope so, I did my best," he returned grimly.
She looked at him gravely. "You have been very kind to a stranger," she
said.
And at this point Geoffrey made the fatal mistake of his dealing with
her. It did not occur to him that he was going to shield McVay, but he
thought a more advantageous time could be found for telling her the
truth, in case of course she did not know it already. He felt that he
himself would be better able to deal a cold blow when she was warm and
sheltered. No man, he said to himself, could be disagreeable to a girl
who had no one to depend on but himself. So he said:
"He was not exactly a stranger to me. We were at school together."
"Oh, another of Billy's friends. I never knew such a person for
discovering friends at the most opportune times. He never wants anything
but what a friend turns up. Did you find him wandering about, or did he
come and demand admittance?"
"Why, neither exactly. I was not in the house at the time. He felt he
knew me well enough to walk in."
"He never told me he had a friend in the neighbourhood."
"We have not met since we were at school."
"He had not seen you since he was at school, and yet he felt he knew you
well enough to walk in on you!"
"Yes, he just walked in, and then I would not let him go."
"Men are so queer!" she exclaimed with a little laugh that had a spice
of admiration in it, under which Geoffrey writhed. He was sailing under
such false colours as her brother's benefactor.
"We ought to be starting," he said.
She looked round the room. "I hate to leave all these nice things," she
said. "Billy is so fond of them. There is some wine that some one gave
him that he says is really priceless."
"Leave it," said Geoffrey shortly.
"One would think you were a teetotaller from that tone. I wonder if I
could not take one bottle as a surprise to Billy. He would like to
contribute something to your hospitality, I am sure. Besides, if I leave
it, it may be stolen."
"Yes, it may be stolen." He looked down into her face.
"Then--"
"I ask you as a favour to leave it behind."
Nothing could have been more charming than her manner of yielding, sweet
and quick like a caress. It made him feel how pitiful sordid it all was.
They started immediately, started with a certain gaiety. Geoffrey chose
to remember only that they were together through a hard adventure, and
that it was his part to smooth her way. The bond of difficulties to
overcome united them. They felt the intimacy of a single absorbing
interest. They had nothing to think of but accomplishing their task,--of
that and of each other. As far as they could see were snow and black
trunks of trees. They scarcely remembered that any one but themselves
existed.
Now justly he could admire something besides her beauty. Her courage
warmed his heart. Yet with all her spirit she made no attempt to assert
her independence. She turned to him at every point. He guided her past
the scenes of his own disasters and saved her from the mistakes he had
already made.
But only for a little while did they move forward in this delightful
exhilaration. Before they had gone far she grew silent, and when she did
answer him spoke less spontaneously. She asked for neither help nor
encouragement, but plunged along as steadily as she was able. Her
skirts, however, wet and heavy, hampered her desperately, and the
exertion of walking through the thick snow began to tell. Geoffrey made
her stop every now and then for a breathing spell, but at length she
stopped of herself.
"Have we done half yet?" she asked.
"Just about," he answered, stretching truth in order to encourage her.
But he saw at once that he had failed,--that she had had a hope that
they were nearer their destination--that she began to doubt her own
powers. Presently she moved forward again in silence.
He began to be alarmed lest they should never reach his house, yet took
comfort in the thought, as he looked at her, that whatever strength she
had, she would use to the end. No hysterical despair would exhaust her
beforehand. She would not fail through lack of determination. Whether or
not she were the confederate of a thief she was a brave woman, yes, and
a beautiful one, he thought, looking down upon her in the glare of the
snow.
Presently he held out his hand in silence, and she as silently took it.
This was to Geoffrey the explanation of his whole life. This was what
men were made for.
Once as they stood resting the wind, which fortunately had been at their
backs the entire trip, hurled her against him, where she remained an
instant, too weak to move. It was he who set her gently on her feet
again.
The latter part of the journey she made almost wholly by his help, and
when they stood before the piazza, she could not have managed the little
step had he not virtually lifted her up. He took her directly to the
library and laid her on the sofa. The fire, owing to the absence of
McVay, had gone out. It took Geoffrey some time with his benumbed hands
to build a blaze. When he turned toward her again she was sleeping like
a child.
The sight was too much for his own weariness, and reflecting that McVay
was either gone or still safe, he stretched himself on the hearth-rug
and was soon asleep also.
IV
It was after two o'clock in the afternoon when he awoke. He must have
slept three hours. He looked at the sofa and saw the girl still sleeping
peacefully. He almost wished that she would never awake to all the
dreadful surprises that the house held for her. Her eye-lashes curved
long and dark on her cheek. Geoffrey turned away quickly.
He had awakened with a sudden disagreeable conviction that people have
been known to smother to death in closets. He stole quietly from the
library and ran up stairs with not a little anxiety. Indeed so great was
his dread that he would have been really relieved to see the closet door
standing open as an immediate proof that it did not hide a corpse. It
was, however, locked as he had left it. But as he hastened to undo it, a
voice from within reassured him:
[Illustration: HE LET MCVAY OUT OF THE CLOSET]
"Well, where have you been all this time?"
"You may be thankful I'm back at all. It did not look like it, at one
time."
"Where is Cecilia?"
"Down stairs asleep."
McVay gave a little giggle. "Ah," he said, "I bet you have had the devil
of a time. I bet you wished once or twice that you had let me be the one
to go."
"It wasn't child's play."
"Child's play! I rather think not. These things are all well enough
among men, but women!" he waved his hand; "so sensitive, so cloistered!"
"Your sister behaved nobly," said Geoffrey severely.
"Bound to, Holland, bound to. Still it must have been a shock."
"It was a hard trip for any woman."
McVay looked up. "Oh," he said, "I wasn't speaking of the trip. I meant
about me. What did she say?"
"She did not say anything. She went to sleep."
"She did not say anything when you told her I was booked for the
penitentiary?"
"Oh," said Geoffrey, and there was a slight pause. Then he added: "Why
should I tell her what she must know."
"I tell you she knows nothing about my--profession."
"Your _profession_!"
"Hasn't a notion of it."
"What, with my sister's coat on her back, and the Innes' bag in her
hand"?"
"No!" McVay drew a step nearer. "You see I told her that I had found a
second-hand store where I could get things for nothing." He chuckled,
and Geoffrey withdrew with a look of repulsion that evidently
disappointed the other.
"That was a good idea, wasn't it?" he asked with a faint appeal in his
voice. "She thought it was likely, anyhow."
"She must be very gullable," said Geoffrey brutally.
"Or else," said McVay with a conscious smile, "I must be a pretty good
dissembler."
At this acute instance of fatuity Geoffrey, if he had followed his
impulse, would have flung McVay back in the closet and locked the door.
Instead, he said:
"Come down stairs. I want to look up something to eat."
"Thank you," said the burglar, "it would be a good idea."
"You need not thank me," said Geoffrey. "I don't take you with me for
the pleasure of your company, but because I don't dare let you out of my
sight."
McVay, as was his habit when anything unpleasant was said, chose to
ignore this speech.
"You know," he said, as they went down stairs, "I suppose that most men
shut up in a closet for all those hours would take it as a hardship,
but, to me it was a positive rest. I really in a way enjoyed it. It is
one of my theories that every one ought to have resources within. Now I
dare say you were quite anxious about me."
"I never thought of you at all," said Geoffrey. "After I got in I went
to sleep for three hours."
McVay looked at him once or twice, in surprise. Then he said with
dignity: "Asleep? Well, really, Holland, I don't think that was very
considerate."
"Don't talk so loud," said Geoffrey, "you'll wake your sister."
Geoffrey had always been in the habit of going on shooting trips at
short notice, and so it was his rule to keep a supply of canned eatables
in the house to be ready whenever the whim took him. On these he now
depended, and was not a little annoyed to find the kitchen store room
where they were kept securely locked.
This difficulty, however, McVay made light of. He asked for his tools
and on being given them set to work on the door.
"Have you ever noticed," he said, "the heavy handed way in which some
men use tools? Look at my touch,--so light, yet so accurate. I take no
credit to myself. I was born so. It's a very fortunate thing to be
naturally dexterous."
"It would have been more fortunate for you if you had been a little less
so."
"Oh, I don't know about that, Holland. I might have starved to death
years ago."
"I wish to God you had," said Geoffrey.
McVay shook his head faintly in deprecation of such violence, but
otherwise preferred to pass the remark by, and they soon set to work
heating soup and smoked beef. When all was ready and spread in the
dining-room--this was McVay's suggestion; he said food was unappetising
unless it were nicely served--Geoffrey said:
"Go and see if your sister is awake, and if she is," he added firmly,
"I'll give you a few minutes alone with her, so that you can explain the
situation fully."
McVay nodded and slipped into the library. Geoffrey shut the door behind
him, and sat down on a bench in the hall from which he could command
both doors.
If he entertained the doubts of her innocence which he continually told
himself no sane man could help entertaining, he found himself strangely
nervous. He felt as if he were waiting outside an operating room. He
thought of her as he had seen her asleep, of the curve of her eye-lashes
on her cheek, of her raising those lashes, awaking to be met with
McVay's revelations. Even if she were guilty, Geoffrey found it in his
heart to pity her waking to learn that her brother was a prisoner. How
unfortunate, too, would be her own position,--the guest, if only for a
few hours, of a man who was concerned only to lodge her brother in jail.
His heart gave a distinct thump when the library door opened and they
came out together. His eyes turned to her face at once, and found it
unperturbed. Didn't she care, or had she always known?
McVay caught his arm when she had passed them by, and whispered glibly:
"Thought it was better to wait until she had had something to eat--shock
on an empty stomach, so bad--so hard to bear."
Geoffrey shook his arm free. "You infernal coward," he whispered back.
"Well, I like that," retorted McVay, "you didn't tell her yourself when
you had the chance."
"It wasn't my affair. I did not tell her because--"
"Oh, I know," McVay interrupted with a chuckle. "I've been knowing why
for the last ten minutes."
They followed her into the dining-room.
It was not a sumptuous repast to which they sat down, but Geoffrey asked
nothing better. He was sitting opposite to her,--a position evidently
decreed him by Fate from the beginning of time. He could look at her,
and now and then, in spite of her delicious reluctance, could force her
to meet his eyes. When this happened, nothing was ever more apparent
than that, for both of them, a momentous event had occurred.
She was almost completely silent, and as for him, his responses to the
general conversation which McVay kept attempting to set up, were so
entirely mechanical that he was scarcely aware of them himself.
It was she who suddenly remembered that it was Christmas day.
"And _this_ is our Christmas dinner," observed McVay regretfully.
"Oh, no," returned the girl, "this is luncheon. I'll cook your dinner.
You'll see."
There was a pause. Geoffrey looked at McVay. The moment for
disillusioning her had manifestly come. Wherever they might next meet it
would not be at his dinner table. A hateful vision of a criminal court
rose before him.
"Miss McVay," he said gravely, indifferent to the signals of warning
which the other man was directing toward him; "we shall not be here at
dinner. Your brother will tell you my reasons for wishing to start down
the mountain."
"Now?"
"At once."
She coloured slowly and deeply,--the only evidence of anger. "I do not
need any other reason than your wish that we should go," she said,
rising. "I should thank you for having borne with us so long."
"Upon my word, Holland, it is madness to start as late as this," said
McVay. "It will be dark in an hour."
She turned on her brother quickly: "Please say no more about the matter,
Billy," she said. "We will start at once."
"You won't start if it means certainly freezing to death," he
remonstrated.
She flashed a glance at Geoffrey, who had also risen and was trying to
compel the truth from McVay by a stern, steady glance.
"I _would_," she answered and shut the door behind her.
McVay sprang up and was about to follow her when Geoffrey stopped him.
"One moment," he said, "you are quite right. It is too late to start
to-night. We must stay here until to-morrow. But if we are to spend a
night here without your sister's being told--"
"My dear Holland, think of her position, if we did tell her!"
"I grant that the information had better be withheld until just as we
are starting, but in that case I must--"
"I know what you are going to ask,--my word of honour not to escape. I
give it, I give it willingly."
"I'm not going to ask for anything at all," said Geoffrey. "I'm going to
tell you one or two things, and I advise you to pay attention. We won't
have any nonsense at all. Remember I am armed, and I am a quick man with
a gun. There may be some quicker, but not in the East, and it wasn't in
the East I got my training. You will always keep in front of me where I
can see you plainly, and you will never, under any circumstances come
nearer than six feet to me. If you should ever come nearer than that or
take a sudden step in my direction, I'd shoot you just as sure as I
stand here."
McVay looked distinctly crestfallen. "Oh, come, Holland," he said,
"isn't that the least little bit exaggerated? You would not shoot me
before my own sister?"
"I would not like to, but there are things I should dislike even more,
and having you escape is one of them."
The other thought it over. "The trouble is," he explained, "that I am
impulsive. You must have noticed it. I get carried away. You know how I
am. I'm not at all sure that I shall remember."
"I advise you to try, for this is the only warning you will get."
"I cannot believe, Holland, that you would really shoot me in cold blood
in the presence of my own sister."
"You had better behave as if you believed it."
"I don't like this arrangement," McVay broke out peevishly. "Suppose,
for the sake of argument, that I did forget,--that I put my hand on your
shoulder--a very natural gesture."
"I should shoot instantly."
"But fancy the shock to Cecilia."
"Not more of a shock, perhaps, than discovering that you are a thief.
And another thing, it may be very gay and amusing to be forever fooling
about the subject, but I advise you against it. It does not amuse me."
"Oh, be honest, Holland, it does, it must amuse you. It is essentially
amusing."
"It won't amuse her, or you either when she finds out that you are not
only a thief but that you have been able to find amusement in deceiving
her."
Again McVay's gaiety seemed momentarily dashed. "Very true," he said, "I
had not thought of that. But then," he added more brightly, "who can
tell if it will actually fall to my lot to tell her. Things happen so
strangely. It may turn out that that is _your_ part."
"It may," said Geoffrey, "but only because I have had to shoot after
all." With which he opened the door and they returned to the library.
V
Cecilia was not in the library, and McVay, without comment on her
absence, turned at once to his book.
"If you won't think me impolite, Holland, I'll go on with my Sterne.
Conversation is always a great temptation to me, but I have so little
opportunity to read that I feel I ought not to neglect it,--especially
as your books are so unusual."
He settled himself to Tristram Shandy with appreciation, but Geoffrey
could not read. He sat, indeed, with a book open on his knee, but his
eyes were fixed on the carpet. The knowledge of the girl's presence in
his house distracted him like a lantern swung before his eyes. He gave
himself up to steeping himself in his emotion, which, in some
situations, is the nearest thing possible to thinking.
Geoffrey's success with women had been conspicuous, as was natural for
he was good looking, rich and apparently susceptible. As a matter of
fact, however, his susceptibility was purely superficial, and for this
very reason he was not afraid to give it full sway. The deeply
susceptible man learns to be cautious, to distrust his feelings, but
Geoffrey had always too truly recognised his fundamental indifference to
have any reason to distrust himself. He had never been in love. Like
Ferdinand he, "for different virtues had liked many women," although in
his case it had not always been necessarily virtues that had attracted
him. But there were certain women who had always appealed to him for
some conspicuous quality, or characteristic, who for one reason or
another pleased him, to which one side or another of his nature
responded. He had often thought that if he could make up a composite
woman of all of them he might be in great danger of falling in love. But
now he was aware that his whole nature responded to the attraction of
the girl upstairs, as a dog answers instinctively to the call of its
master. He could say to himself that she was this or that,--brave and
beautiful, but he knew that such qualities were but an insignificant
part of the total effect. His reason could find causes enough to approve
her, but something more important had gone ahead, and made straight the
paths of his reason, something which transcended it, and which in case
of a divergence between the two, his reason could never overcome.
For, of course, the realisation of McVay and all his presence implied
fell coolly upon his exaltation. By no means had Geoffrey said to
himself in so many words that he was in love,--far less had anything so
definite as marriage crossed his mind. He was too much in love to be so
practical. He only knew that McVay's mere existence was a contamination
and a tragedy.
He had been sitting thus for some time, when he heard her step on the
stairs. He rose and met her in the hall, whence he could still keep his
eye on McVay's studious figure in the library.
She was dressed in her sables ready for departure.
[Illustration: SHE WAS DRESSED IN HIS SISTER'S SABLES--READY FOR
DEPARTURE]
They looked at each other a moment in silence, he appealingly, she, with
a cold blankness that seemed to say that not even a look could make her
take further notice of him as a living being.
"Have you really been thinking that I wanted to turn you out?" he said,
with directness.
"I have not been thinking about the matter at all," she answered,
turning her head a little aside from his direct gaze. "But I do think so
of course. After all why should you not wish it?"
"You think me likely to want anything that would part us--that is the
way my manner strikes you?" He was surprised to find his voice not
absolutely steady.
She favoured him with a short stare from under her lids. "You seem to
forget that I have your own word that you insisted on our going.
Possibly you have changed your mind, but I have made mine up." She made
a motion as if to pass in, and go on toward the library.
"I have changed so completely since I saw you," said Geoffrey, "that I
scarcely recognise life in this--this ecstasy. That is the only change.
Am I likely to turn you out when I have been waiting all my life for you
to come?"
It had been with her own dream, her own credulity with which she had
been fighting quite as much as with Holland, and the charm began to work
once again. She said very coolly:
"You are very kind, but as you said, we ought to be starting,--or have
you forgotten saying that?"
"Be just. You knew I was going too. You knew I urged our going
because--"
"Well, why?" Her look was still from half-shut lids, but the lines of
her mouth had softened by not a little.
"There is a danger of being snowed up here. Now I appreciate that there
would be greater danger in starting out so late. And,--and equally
desperate for me, whatever we do."
"Desperate?"
"If you only want an opportunity to think so meanly of me,--to hate me,
as your look said."
"I do not hate you."
"You are very eager to be rid of my company."
"I did not understand."
"You are going to stay?"
"Until we can go safely."
"Not longer?"
As this was a question obviously impossible to answer directly she said,
"We are under sufficiently large obligations to you already."
And Geoffrey, about to answer, looked up and saw McVay was observing
them with satisfaction, so that words froze on his lips.
Here was the whole bitterness of the situation concentrated. To be
observed at all in a moment of genuine emotion was bad enough, but to be
observed by one who so plainly hoped to profit, was unbearable. Never,
said Geoffrey to himself, at that glance of triumph from McVay's clear
little eyes, never should any influence lead him to let a thief slip
through his fingers.
He realised too, for the first time, that he could not hope for another
word alone with Cecilia. McVay must always be present. It was a hideous
sort of revenge that every waking minute must be spent in the man's
company. Geoffrey had not appreciated the full meaning of his
instructions to McVay to keep always in sight. Not a word or a look
could be exchanged without McVay's seeing and rejoicing.
Yet, in spite of his irritation, he could not but admire the sort of
affectionate swagger with which McVay rose to greet her, as if the
brother of so tender a creature must remember his responsibility.
"Well, my dear," he said sitting down beside her on the sofa, "feel
better? Really a terrible experience. Holland has just been telling me
about it--saying how well you behaved," (Geoffrey favoured him with a
scowl behind her back), "a perfect heroine,--so he says."
"Mr. Holland is very kind," said the girl.
"Kind!" cried McVay enthusiastically. "Kind! I should rather think he
was. Why, I could give you instances of his kindness--"
"You need not trouble," said Geoffrey.
McVay smiled at his sister as much as to say: What did I tell you?... so
modest, so unassuming.
To Geoffrey this sort of thing was unspeakably painful. He was willing
enough to meet McVay in a grim interchange over his strange combination
of facility and crime, of doom and triviality. But when it became any
question of playing upon Cecilia's unconsciousness of the situation, he
writhed. Yet, a little discernment would have shown him how natural, how
encouraging from his own point of view her unconsciousness was. To fall
in love thoroughly is sufficiently disconcerting. Which of us needs to
be told that it is an absorbing process, that life looks different, and
that all past experiences must be reviewed in the light of this
unexpected illumination. And if this is true of the more usual forms of
the great passion, what is to be said of a girl who, in a single day,
sees and loves a rescuer, a handsome powerful young creature, who comes
to her with all the attributes of a soldier and a prince, who comes not
only to save and protect, but as host and dispenser of all comfort and
beauty.