The Fatal Glove by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

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"He took all my father had," he said, under his breath; "he would have
sullied the fair fame of my mother; and if I could take from him
everything but life, I would do it."

Sharp, with a dexterous skill, removed the fastenings of a shutter, and
then the window yielded readily to his touch. He stepped inside; Arch
followed. All was quiet, save the heavy ticking of the old clock on the
hall stairs. Up the thickly carpeted stairway, along the corridor they
passed, and Sharp stopped before a closed door.

"We must pass through one room before reaching that where the safe is
which contains the treasure," he said, in a whisper. "It is possible that
there may be some one sleeping in that room. If so, leave them to me,
that is all."

He opened the door with one of a bunch of keys which he carried, and
noiselessly entered. The gas was turned down low, but a mellow radiance
filled the place. A bed stood in one corner, and Sharp advanced toward
it. The noise he had made, slight though it was, aroused the occupant,
and, as she started up in affright, Arch met the soft, pleading eyes of
Margie Harrison. She spoke to him, not to Sharp.

"Do not let him kill me!"

Sharp laid a rough hand on her shoulder, and put a knife at her throat.

Simultaneously, Arch sprang upon him like a tiger.

"Release that girl!" he hissed. "Dare to touch her with but the tips of
your fingers, and by Heaven I will murder you!"

Sharp sprang back with an oath, and at the same moment a pistol-shot rang
through the house, and Sharp, bathed in blood, fell to the floor. Old Mr.
Trevlyn, travel-stained and wet, strode into the room.

"I've killed him!" he said, in a cracked voice of intense satisfaction.
"He didn't catch old Trevlyn napping. I knew well enough they'd be after
my diamonds, and I gave up the journey. Margie, child, are the jewels
safe?"

She had fallen back on the pillows, pale as death, her white night-dress
spattered with the blood of the dead robber.

Arch lifted a tiny glove from the carpet, thrust it into his bosom, and,
before old Trevlyn could raise a hand to stop him, he had got clear of
the premises.

Such a relief as he felt when the cool, fresh air struck his face. He had
been saved from overt criminality. God had not permitted him to thus
debase himself. Now that his excitement was gone, he saw the heinousness
of the sin he had been about to commit in all its deformity.

Let old Trevlyn go! Let him gloat over his diamonds while yet he had
opportunity. He would not despoil him of his treasures, but he could not
give up his scheme of vengeance. It should be brought about some other
way.

A large reward was offered by Mr. Trevlyn for the apprehension of Sharp's
accomplice, but, as no description of his person could be given by any
one except Margie, who could not or would not be explicit on that point,
he was not secured.

Trevlyn recognized and appreciated her noble generosity in suffering him
to go free, for in the one look she had given him on that disgraceful
occasion, he had felt that she recognized him. But she pitied him enough
to let him go free.

Well, he would show her that her confidence was not misplaced. He would
deserve her forbearance. He was resolved upon a new life.

He left the saloon, and after many rebuffs succeeded in getting
employment as errand-boy in a large importing house. The salary was a
mere pittance, but it kept him in clothes and coarse food, until one day,
about a year after his apprenticeship there, he chanced to save the life
of Mr. Belgrade, the senior partner. A gas-pipe in the private office of
the firm exploded, and the place took fire, and Mr. Belgrade, smothered
and helpless, would have perished in the flames, had not Arch, with a
bravery few would have expected in a bashful, retiring boy, plunged
through the smoke and flame, and borne him to a place of safety.

Mr. Belgrade was a man with a conscience, and, grateful for his life, he
rewarded his preserver by a clerkship of importance. The duties of this
office he discharged faithfully for three years, when the death of the
head clerk left a vacancy, and when Arch was nineteen he received the
situation.

Through these three years he had been a close student. Far into the night
he pored over his books, and, too proud to go to school, he hired a
teacher and was taught privately. At twenty he was quite as well educated
as nine-tenths of the young men now turned out by our fashionable
colleges.

Rumors of Margie Harrison's triumphs reached him constantly, for Margie
was a belle and a beauty now. Her parents were dead, and she had been
left to the guardianship of Mr. Trevlyn, at whose house she made her
home, and where she reigned a very queen. Old Trevlyn's heart at last
found something beside his diamonds to worship, and Margie had it all her
own way.

She came into the store of Belgrade and Co. one day, and asked to look
at some laces. Trevlyn was the only clerk disengaged, and with a very
changeable face he came forward to attend to her. He felt that she would
recognize him at once--that she would remember where she had seen him the
last time--a house-breaker! She held his reputation in her keeping.

His hand trembled as he took down the laces--she glanced at his face. A
start of surprise--a conscious, painful blush swept over her face. He
dropped the box, and the rich laces fell over her feet.

"Pardon me," he said hurriedly, and, stooping to pick them up, the little
glove he had stolen on that night, and which he wore always in his bosom,
fell out, and dropped among the laces.

She picked it up with a little cry.

"The very glove that I lost four years ago! And you are--" she stopped
suddenly.

He paled to the lips, but, lifting his head proudly, said: "Go on. Finish
the sentence. I can bear it."

"No, I will not go on. Let the memory die, I knew you then, but you were
so young, and had to bear so much among temptations! And the other was a
villain. No, I am silent. You are safe."

He stooped, and, lifting the border of her shawl, kissed it reverently.

"If I live," he said solemnly, "you will be glad you have been so
merciful. Some time I shall hear you say so."

She did not purchase any laces. She went out forgetful of her errand, and
Arch was so awkward for the remainder of the day, and committed so many
blunders, that his fellow-clerks laughed at him unrebuked, and Mr.
Belgrade seriously wondered if Trevlyn had not been taking too much
champagne.

* * * * *

Margie Harrison and her guardian sat at breakfast. Mr. Trevlyn showed his
years very plainly. He was nearly seventy-five--he looked eighty.

Margie looked very lovely this morning and it was of this the old man was
thinking as he glanced at her across the table. She had more than
fulfilled the promise of her childhood. The golden hair was chestnut now,
and pushed behind her ears in heavy rippling masses of light and shadow.
Her eyes had taken a deeper tone--they were like wells whose depth you
could not guess at. Her features were delicately irregular, the forehead
low, broad and white; her chin was dimpled as an infant's, and her mouth
still ripe and red, as a damask rosebud. She wore a pink muslin wrapper,
tied with white ribbons, and in her hair drooped a cluster of
apple-blossoms.

"Margie dear," said Mr. Trevlyn, pausing in his work of buttering a
muffin, "I want you to look your prettiest to-night. I am going to bring
home a friend of mine--one who was also your father's friend--Mr.
Linmere. He arrived from Europe to-day."

Margie's cheek lost a trifle of its peachy bloom. She toyed with her
spoon, but did not reply to his remark.

"Did you understand me, child? Mr. Linmere has returned."

"Yes sir."

"And is coming here to-night. Remember to take extra pains with yourself,
Margie, for he has seen all the European beauties, and I do not want my
little American flower to be cast in the shade. Will you remember it?"

"Certainly, if you wish it, Mr. Trevlyn."

"Margie!"

"Yes!"

"You are aware that Mr. Linmere is your affianced husband, are you not?"

"I have been told so."

"And yet in the face of that fact--well, of all things, girls do beat me!
Thank heaven, I have none of my own!" he added testily.

"Girls are better let alone, sir. It is very hard to feel one's self
bound to fulfil a contract of this kind."

"Hard! Well, now, I should think it easy. Mr. Linmere is all that any
reasonable woman could wish. Not too old, nor yet too young; about
forty-five, which is just the age for a man to marry; good-looking,
intelligent and wealthy--what more could you ask?"

"You forgot that I do not love him--that he does not love me."

"Love! tush! Don't let me hear anything about that. I loath the name.
Margie, love ruined my only son! For love he disobeyed me and I disowned
him, I have not spoken his name for years! Your father approved of Mr.
Linmere, and while you were yet a child you were betrothed. And when your
father died, what did you promise him on his deathbed?"

Margie grew white as the ribbons at her throat.

"I promised him that I would _try_ and fulfil his requirements."

"That you would _try_! Yes. And that was equal to giving an unqualified
assent. You know the conditions of the will, I believe?"

"I do. If I marry without your consent under the age of twenty-one, I
forfeit my patrimony. And I am nineteen now. And I shall not marry
without your consent."

"Margie, you must marry Mr. Linmere. Do not hope to do differently. It
is your duty. He has lived single all these years waiting for you. He
will be kind to you, and you will be happy. Prepare to receive him with
becoming respect."

Mr. Trevlyn considered his duty performed, and went out for his customary
walk.

At dinner Mr. Linmere arrived. Margie met him with cold composure. He
scanned her fair face and almost faultless form, with the eye of a
connoisseur, and congratulated himself on the fortune which was to give
him, such a bride without the perplexity of a wooing. She was beautiful
and attractive, and he had feared she might be ugly, which would have
been a dampener on his satisfaction. True, her wealth would have
counter-balanced any degree of personal deformity; but Mr. Paul Linmere
admired beauty, and liked to have pretty things around him.

To tell the truth, he was sadly in need of money. It was fortunate that
his old friend, Mr. Harrison, Margie's dead father, had taken it into his
head to plight his daughter's troth to him while she was yet a child. Mr.
Harrison had been an eccentric man; and from the fact that in many points
of religious belief he and Mr. Paul Linmere agreed, (for both were
miserable skeptics,) he valued him above all other men, and thought his
daughter's happiness would be secured by the union he had planned.

Linmere had been abroad several years, and had led a very reckless,
dissipated life. Luxurious by nature, lacking in moral rectitude, and
having wealth at his command, he indulged himself unrestrained; and when
at last he left the gay French capital and returned to America, his whole
fortune, with exception of a few thousands, was dissipated. So he needed
a rich wife sorely, and was not disposed to defer his happiness.

He met Margie with _empressement_, and bowed his tall head to kiss the
white hand she extended to him. She drew it away coldly--something about
the man made her shrink from him.

"I am so happy to meet you again. Margie, and after ten years of
separation! I have thought so much and so often of you."

"Thank you, Mr. Linmere."

"Will you not call me Paul?" he asked, in a subdued voice, letting his
dangerous eyes, full of light and softness, rest on her.

An expression of haughty surprise swept her face. She drew back a pace.

"I am not accustomed to address gentlemen--mere acquaintances--by
their Christian names, sir."

"But in this case, Margie? Surely the relations existing between us
will admit of such a familiarity," he said, seating himself, while she
remained standing coldly near.

"There are no relations existing between us at present, Mr. Linmere," she
answered, haughtily; "and if, in obedience to the wishes of the dead, we
should ever become connected in name, I beg leave to assure you in the
beginning that you will always be Mr. Linmere to me."

A flush of anger mounted to his cheek; he set his teeth, but outwardly he
was calm and subdued. Anger, just at present, was impolitic.

"I hope to win your love, Margie; I trust I shall," he answered, sadly
enough to have aroused almost any woman's pity; but some subtle instinct
told Margie he was false to the core.

But all through the evening he was affable and complaisant and
forbearing. She made no attempt to conceal her dislike of him.
Concealments were not familiar to Margie's nature. She was frank
and open as the day.

Mr. Linmere's fascinations were many and varied. He had a great deal of
adaptation, and made himself agreeable to every one. He had traveled
extensively, was a close observer, and had a retentive memory. Mr.
Trevlyn was charmed with him. So was Alexandrine Lee, a friend of
Margie's, a rival belle, who accidentally (?) dropped in to spend the
evening.

Mr. Linmere played and sang with exquisite taste and skill--he was a
complete master of the art, and, in spite of herself, Margie listened to
him with a delight that was almost fascination, but which subsided the
moment the melody ceased.

He judged her by the majority of women he had met, and finding her
indifferent, he sought to rouse her jealousy by flirting with Miss Lee,
who was by no means adverse to his attentions. But Margie hailed the
transfer with a relief which was so evident, that Mr. Linmere, piqued and
irritated, took up his hat to leave, in the midst of one of Miss Lee's
most brilliant descriptions of what she had seen in Italy, from whence
she had just returned. He went over to the sofa where Margie was sitting.

"I hope to please you better next time," he said, lifting her hand.
"Good-night, Margie dear." And before she was aware, he touched his lips
to her forehead. She tore her hand away from him, and a flush of anger
sprang to her cheek. He surveyed her with admiration. He liked a little
spirit in a woman, especially as he intended to be able to subdue it when
it pleased him. Her anger made her a thousand times more beautiful. He
stood looking at her a moment, then turned and withdrew.

Margie struck her forehead with her hand, as if she would wipe out the
touch he had left there.

Alexandrine came and put her arm around Margie's waist.

"I almost envy you, Margie," she said, in that singularly purring voice
of hers. "Ah, Linmere is magnificent! Such eyes, and hair, and such a
voice! Well, Margie, you are a fortunate girl."

And Miss Lee sighed, and shook out the heavy folds of her violet silk,
with the air of one who has been injured, but is determined to show a
proper spirit of resignation.

Mr. Paul Linmere hurried along through an unfrequented street to his
suite of rooms at the St. Nicholas. He was very angry with everybody; he
felt like an ill-treated individual. He had expected Margie to fall at
his feet at once. A man of his attractions to be snubbed as he had
been, by a mere chit of a girl, too!

"I will find means to tame her, when once she is mine," he muttered. "By
heaven! but it will be rare sport to break that fiery spirit! It will
make me young again!"

Something white and shadowy bound his path. A spectral hand was laid on
his arm, chilling like ice, even through his clothing. The ghastly face
of a woman--a face framed in jet black hair, and lit up by great black
eyes bright as stars, gleamed through the mirk of the night.

The man gazed into the weird face, and shook like a leaf in the blast.
His arm sank nerveless to his side, palsied by that frozen touch; his
voice was so unnatural that he started at the sound.

"My God! Arabel Vere! Do the dead come back?"

The great unnaturally brilliant eyes seemed to burn into his brain. The
cold hand tightened on his arm. A breath like wind freighted with snow
crossed his face.

"Speak for heaven's sake!" he cried. "Am I dreaming?"

"Remember the banks of the Seine!" said a singularly sweet voice, which
sounded to Mr. Paul Linmere as if it came from leagues and leagues away.
"When you sit by the side of the living love, remember the dead! Think of
the dark rolling river, and of what its waters covered!"

He started from the strange presence, and caught at a post for support.
His self-possession was gone; he trembled like the most abject coward.
Only for a moment--and then, when he looked again, the apparition had
vanished.

"Good God!" he cried, putting his hand to his forehead. "Do the dead
indeed come back! I saw them take her from the river--O heaven! I saw her
when she sank beneath the terrible waters! Is there a hereafter, and does
a man sell his soul to damnation who commits what the world calls
murder?"

He stopped under a lamp and drew out his pocket-book, taking therefrom a
soiled scrap of paper.

"Yes, I have it here. 'Found drowned, the body of a woman. Her linen was
marked with the name of Arabel Vere. Another unfortunate--' No, I will
not read the rest. I have read it too often, now, for my peace of mind.
Yes, she is dead. There is no doubt. I have been dreaming to-night. Old
Trevlyn's wine was too strong for me. Arabel Vere, indeed! Pshaw! Paul
Linmere, are you an idiot?"

Not daring to cast a look behind him, he hurried home, and up to his
spacious parlor on the second floor.

Linmere turned up the gas into a flare, and, throwing off his coat, flung
himself into an arm-chair, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
He looked about the room with half-frightened, searching eyes. He dreaded
solitude, and he feared company, yet felt the necessity of speaking to
something. His eyes lighted on the greyhound dozing on the hearth-rug.

"Leo, Leo," he called, "come here, sir!"

The dog opened his eyes, but gave no responsive wag of his tail. You saw
at once that though Leo was Mr. Paul Linmere's property, and lived with
him, he did not have any attachment for him.

"Come here, sir!" said Linmere, authoritatively.

Still the animal did not stir. Linmere was nervous enough to be excited
to anger by the variest trifle, and the dog's disobedience aroused his
rage.

"Curse the brute!" he cried; and putting his foot against him, he sent
him spinning across the room. Leo did not growl, or cry out, but his
eyes gleamed like coals, and he showed his white teeth with savage but
impotent hatred. It was easy to see that if he had been a bulldog instead
of a greyhound, he would have torn Mr. Paul Linmere limb from limb.

Linmere went back to his chair, and sat down with a sullen face; but he
could not rest there. He rose, and going into an inner room, brought out
an ebony box, which he opened, and from which he took a miniature in a
golden case. He hesitated a moment before touching the spring, and when
he did so the unclosing revealed the face of a young girl--a fair young
girl in her early youth--not more than eighteen summers could have
scattered their roses over her, when that beautiful impression was taken.
A ripe southern face, with masses of jet-black hair, and dark brilliant
eyes. There was a dewy crimson on her lips, and her cheeks were red as
damask roses. A bright, happy face, upon which no blight had fallen.

"She was beautiful--beautiful as an houri!" said Mr. Paul Linmere,
speaking slowly, half unconsciously, it seemed, his thoughts aloud. "And
when I first knew her she was sweet and innocent. I made her sin. I led
her into the temptation she was too weak to resist. Women are soft and
silly when they are in love, and because of that, men have to bear all
the blame. She was willing to trust me--she ought to have been more
cautious. Who blames me, if I tired of her? A man does not always want
a moping complaining woman hanging about him; and she had a deuced
unpleasant way of forcing herself upon me when it was particularly
disagreeable to have her do so. Well--but there is no use in
retrospection. She was drowned--she and her unborn child, and
the dead can never come back--no, never!"

He sprang up and rang the bell sharply. Directly his valet, Pietro, a
sleepy-looking and swarthy Italian, appeared.

"Bring me a glass of brandy, Pietro; and look you, sir, you may sleep
to-night on the lounge in my room. I am not feeling quite well, and may
have need of you before morning."

The man looked surprised, but made no comment. He brought the stimulant,
his master drank it off, and then threw himself, dressed as he was, on
the bed.

Upper Tendom was ringing with the approaching nuptials of Miss Harrison
and Mr. Linmere. The bride was so beautiful and wealthy, and so
insensible to her good fortune in securing the most eligible man in her
set. Half the ladies in the city were in love with Mr. Linmere. He was
so _distingue_, carried himself so loftily, and yet was so gallantly
condescending, and so inimitably fascinating. He knew Europe like a book,
sang like a professor, and knew just how to hand a lady her fan, adjust
her shawl, and take her from a carriage. Accomplishments which make men
popular, always.

Early in July Mr. Trevlyn and Margie, accompanied by a gay party, went
down to Cape May. Mr. Trevlyn had long ago forsworn everything of the
kind; but since Margie Harrison had come to reside with him he had given
up his hermit habits, and been quite like other nice gouty old gentleman.

The party went down on Thursday--Mr. Paul Linmere followed on Saturday.
Margie, had hoped he would not come; in his absence she could have
enjoyed the sojourn, but his presence destroyed for her all the charms
of sea and sky. She grew frightened, sometimes, when she thought how
intensely she hated him. And in October she was to become his wife.

Some way, Margie felt strangely at ease on the subject. She knew that the
arrangements were all made, that her wedding _trousseau_ was being gotten
up by a fashionable _modiste_, that Delmonico had received orders for the
feast, and that the oranges were budded, which, when burst into flowers,
were to adorn her forehead on her bridal day. She despised Linmere with
her whole soul, she dreaded him inexpressibly, yet she scarcely gave her
approaching marriage with him a single thought. She wondered that she did
not; when she thought of it all, she was shocked to find herself so
impassive.

Her party had been a week at Cape May, when Archer Trevlyn came down,
with the wife of his employer, Mr. Belgrade. The lady was in delicate
health, and had been advised to try sea air and surf-bathing. Mr.
Belgrade's business would not allow of his absence at just that time,
and he had shown his confidence in his head clerk by selecting him as
his wife's escort.

Introduced into society by so well established an aristocrat as Mrs.
Belgrade, Arch might at once have taken a prominent place among the
fashionables; for his singularly handsome face and highbred manners made
him an acquisition to any company. But he never forgot that he had been
a street-sweeper, and he would not submit to be patronized by the very
people who had once, perhaps, grudged him the pennies they had thrown to
him as they would have thrown bread to a starving dog. So he avoided
society, and attended only on Mrs. Belgrade. But from Alexandrine Lee
he could not escape. She fastened upon him at once. She had a habit
of singling out gentlemen, and giving them the distinction of her
attentions, and no one thought of noticing it now. Arch was ill at ease
beneath the infliction, but he was a thorough gentleman, and could not
repulse her rudely.

A few days after the arrival of Mrs. Belgrade, Arch took her down to the
beach to bathe. The beach was alive with the gorgeous grotesque figures
of the bathers. The air was bracing, the surf splendid.

Mr. Trevlyn's carriage drove down soon after Mrs. Belgrade had finished
her morning's "dip;" and Margie and Mr. Linmere, accompanied by
Alexandrine Lee, alighted. They were in bathing costume, and Miss Lee,
espying Arch, fastened upon him without ceremony.

"Oh, Mr. Trevlyn," she said, animatedly, "I am glad to have come across
you. I was just telling Mr. Linmere that two ladies were hardly safe with
only one gentleman in such a surf as there is this morning. I shall have
to depend on you to take care of me. Shall I?"

Of course, Arch could not refuse, and apologizing to Mrs. Belgrade, who
good-naturedly urged him forward, he took charge of Miss Lee.

Linmere offered Margie his hand to lead her in, but she declined. He kept
close beside her, and when they stood waist deep in the water, and a huge
breaker was approaching, he put his arm around her shoulders. With an
impatient gesture she tore herself away. He made an effort to retain her,
and in the struggle Margie lost her footing, and the receding wave bore
her out to sea.

Linmere grew pale as death. He knew if Margie was drowned, he was a
ruined man. His pictures and statuary would have to go under the
hammer--his creditors were only kept from striking by his prospect of
getting a rich wife to pay his debts. He cast an imploring eye on the
swimmers around him, but he was too great a coward to risk his life
among the swirling breakers.

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