The Cup of Trembling and Other Stories Part 5

"I did. I saw him," gasped Esmee. "It was all quiet after a while. I thought he had gone. I came out into the room, and there he stood close by that window, staring in; and the dog was with him. It was Tip."

"And you did not open the door to Tip?"

"Jack dear, have you not told me that I was never to open the door when you were away?"

"But didn't you speak to the man? Didn't you ask him who he was or what he wanted?"

"How could I? He did not speak to me. He stared at me as if I were a ghost, and then he went away."

"I would have questioned any man that came here with Tip. Tip doesn't take up with toughs and hobos. What was he like?"

Esmee had retreated under this cross-questioning, and stood at some distance from Jack, pale, and trembling with an ague of the nerves.

"What was he like?" Jack repeated.

"He was most awfully beautiful. He had a face like--like a death-angel."

Jack rejected this phrase with an impatient gesture. "Was he fair, with blue eyes, and a little blond mustache?"

"I don't know. The light was not good. He stood close to the window, or I could not have seen him. What have I done? Was it wrong not to open the door?"

"Never mind about that, Esmee. I want you to describe the man."

"I can't describe him. I don't need to. I know--I know it was your brother."

"It must have been; and we have been sitting here--how many hours?"

"I did not know there could be anybody--who--had a right to come in."

"Such a night as this? Get away, Tip!"

Jack had risen, and thrown off his coat. Esmee saw him get down his snow-shoe rig. He pulled on a thick woolen jersey, and b.u.t.toned his reefer over that. His foot-gear was drying by the fire; he put on a pair of German stockings, and fastened them below the knee, and over these the India-rubber buskins which a snow-sh.o.e.r wears.

"Tip had better have something to eat before we start," he suggested. He did not look at Esmee, but his manner to her was very gentle and forbearing; it cut her more than harsh words and unreasonable reproaches would have done.

"He seems to think that I have done it," she said to herself, with the instinct of self-defense which will always come first with timid natures.

Tip would not touch the food she brought him. She followed him about the room meekly, with the plate in her hand; but he shrunk away, lifting his lip, and showing the whites of his blood-rimmed eyes.

Except for this defect, the sequel of distemper or some other of the ills of puppyhood, Tip had been a good-looking dog. But this accident of his appearance had prejudiced Esmee against him at the first sight.

Later he had made her dislike and fear him by a habit he had of d.o.g.g.i.ng his master to her door, and waiting there, outside, like Jack's discarded conscience. If chidden, or invited to come in, the unaccountable creature would skulk away, only to return and take up his post of dumb witness as before; so that no one who watched the movements of Jack's dog could fail to know how Jack bestowed his time. In this manner Esmee had come almost to hate the dog, and Tip returned her feeling in his heart, though he was restrained from showing it. But to-night there was a new accusation in his gruesome eye.

"He will not eat for me," said Esmee, humbly.

"He must eat," said Jack. "Here, down with it!" The dog clapped his jaws on the meat his master threw to him, and stood ready, without a change of countenance, at the door.

"Can't you say that you forgive me?" Esmee pleaded.

"Forgive you? Who am I, to be forgiving people?" Jack answered hoa.r.s.ely.

"But say it--say it! It was your brother. If it had been mine, I could forgive you."

"Esmee, you don't see it as it is."

"I do see it; but, Jack, you said that I was not to open the door."

"Well, you didn't open it, did you? So it's all right. But there's a man out in the snow, somewhere, that I have got to find, if Tip can show me where he is. Come, Tip!"

"Oh, Jack! You will not go without"--Jack turned his back to the door, and held out his arms. Esmee cast herself into them, and he kissed her in bitter silence, and went out.

These two were seated together again by the fire in the same room. It was four o'clock in the morning, but as dark as midnight. The floor in spots was wet with melted snow. They spoke seldom, in low, tired voices; it was generally Esmee who spoke. They had not been weeping, but their faces were changed and grown old. Jack shivered, and kept feeding the fire. On the bed in the adjoining room, cold as the snow in a deserted nest, lay their first guest, whom no house fire would ever warm.

"I cannot believe it. I cannot take it in. Are you sure there is nothing more we could do that a doctor would do if we had one?"

"We have done everything. It was too late when I found him."

"How is it possible? I have heard of persons lost for days--and this was only such a few hours."

"A few hours! Good G.o.d, Esmee! Come out with me, and stand five minutes in this storm, if you can. And he had been on snow-shoes all day; he had come all the way up-hill from town. He had had no rest, and nothing to eat. And then to turn about, and take it worse than ever!"

"It is an impossible thing," she reiterated. "I am crazy when I think of it."

Tip lifted his head uneasily, rose, and tapped about the room, his long-nailed toes rattling on the uncarpeted floor. He paused, and licked up one of the pools of melted snow. "Stop that!" Jack commanded. There was dead silence. Then Tip began again his restless march about the room, pausing at the bedroom door to whine his questioning distress.

"Can't you make him stay in the kitchen?" Esmee suggested timidly.

"It is cold in the kitchen. Tip has earned his place by my fire as long as I shall have one," said Jack, emphatically.

Down fell some crashing object, and was shivered on the floor. The dog sprang up, and howled; Esmee trembled like a leaf.

"It's only your little looking-gla.s.s," she whispered. There was no mystery in its having fallen in such a wind from the projecting log where Esmee, with more confidence than judgment, had propped it.

In silence both recalled the light words that had pa.s.sed when Jack had taken it down from its high nail, saying that the mirrors in his establishment had not been hung with reference to persons of her size; and Esmee could see the picture they had made, putting their heads together before it, Jack stooping, with his hands on her shoulders, to bring his face in line with hers. Those laughing faces! All smiles, all tremulous mirth in that house had vanished as the reflections in a shattered mirror.

Jack got up, and fetched a broom, and swept the clinking fragments into the fire. The frame he broke in two and tossed after them.

"Call me as soon as it is light enough to start," he said to Esmee.

"But not unless it has stopped snowing?"

"Call me as soon as it is light, please," Jack repeated. He stumbled as he walked, like an old man. Esmee followed him into the drear little kitchen, where a single candle on the table was guttering in the draft.

The windows were blank with frost, the boards cracked with the cold.

Esmee helped prepare him a bed on a rude bunk against the wall, and Jack threw himself down on his pallet, and closed his eyes, without speaking.

Esmee stood watching him in silence a moment; then she fell on her knees beside him on the floor.

"Say that you can forgive me! How shall I bear it all alone!"