The Man on the Box Part 37

"Oh, it is true enough," said Karloff. "G.o.d knows that it is true enough. But it rests with you to save him. Become my wife, and yonder fire shall swallow his dishonor--and mine. Refuse, and I shall expose him. After all, love is a primitive state, and with it we go back to the beginning; before it honor or dishonor is nothing. To-night there is nothing, nothing in the world save my love for you, and the chance that has given me the power to force you to be mine. What a fury and a tempest love produces! It makes an honorable man of the knave, a rascal of the man of honor; it has toppled thrones, destroyed nations, obliterated races. ... Well, I have become a rascal. Mademoiselle, you must become my wife." He lifted his handsome head resolutely.

Without giving him so much as a glance, she swept past him and sank on her knees at her father's side, taking his hands by the wrists and pressing them down from his face.

"Father, tell him he lies! Tell him he lies!" Ah, the entreaty, the love, the anxiety, the terror that blended her tones!

He strove to look away.

"Father, you are all I have," she cried brokenly. "Look at me! Look at me and tell him that he lies!... You will not look at me? G.o.d have mercy on me, it is true, then!" She rose and spread her arms toward heaven to entreat G.o.d to witness her despair. "I did not think or know that such base things were done... That these loving hands should have helped to encompa.s.s my father's dishonor, his degradation! ... For money! What is money? You knew, father, that what was mine was likewise yours. Why did you not tell me? I should have laughed; we should have begun all over again; I could have earned a living with my music; we should have been honest and happy. And now!... And I drew those plans with a heart full of love and happiness! Oh, it is not that you gambled, that you have foolishly wasted a fortune; it is not these that hurt here,"--pressing her heart. "It is the knowledge that you, my father, should let _me_ draw those horrible things. It hurts! Ah, how it hurts!" A sob choked her. She knelt again at her parent's side and flung her arms around the unhappy, wretched man. "Father, you have committed a crime to shield a foolish act. I know, I know! What you have done you did for my sake, to give me back what you thought was my own. Oh, how well I know that you had no thought of yourself; it was all for me, and I thank G.o.d for that. But something has died here, something here in my heart. I have been so happy! ... too happy! My poor father!" She laid her head against his breast.

"My heart is broken! Would to G.o.d that I might die!" Annesley threw one arm across the back of the chair and turned his face to his sleeve.

Karloff, a thousand arrows of regret and shame and pity quivering in his heart, viewed the scene moodily, doggedly. No, he could not go back; there was indeed a wall behind him: pride.

"Well, Mademoiselle?"

She turned, still on her knees.

"You say that if I do not marry you, you will ruin my father, expose him?"

"Yes,"--thinly.

"Listen. I am a proud woman, yet will I beg you not to do this horrible thing--force me into your arms. Take everything, take all that is left; you can not be so utterly base as to threaten such a wrong.

See!"--extending her lovely arms, "I am on my knees to you!"

"My daughter!" cried the father.

"Do not interrupt me, father; he will relent; he is not wholly without pity."

"No, no! No, no!" Karloff exclaimed, turning his head aside and repelling with his hands, as if he would stamp out the fires of pity which, at the sound of her voice, had burst anew in his heart. "I _will_ not give you up!"

She drew her sleeve across her eyes and stood up. All at once she wheeled upon him like a lioness protecting its young. In her wrath she was as magnificent as the wife of--Aeneas at the funeral pyre of that great captain.

"She knew! That was why she asked me all those questions; that is why she exacted those promises! Mrs. Chadwick knew and dared not tell me!

And I trusted you as a friend, as a gentleman, as a man of honor!" Her laughter rang out wildly. "And for these favors you bring dishonor!

Shame! Shame! Your wife? Have you thought well of what you are about to do?"

"So well," he declared, "that I shall proceed to the end, to the very end." How beautiful she was! And a mad desire urged him to spring to her, crush her in his arms, and force upon her lips a thousand mad kisses!

"Have you weighed well the consequences?"

"Upon love's most delicate scales."

"Have you calculated what manner of woman I am?"--with subdued fierceness.

"To me you are the woman of all women."

"Do you think that I am a faint-hearted girl? You are making a mistake.

I am a woman with a woman's mind, and a thousand years would not alter my utter contempt of you. Force me to marry you, and as there is a G.o.d above us to witness, every moment of suffering you now inflict upon me and mine, I shall give back a day, a long, bitter, galling day. Do you think that it will be wise to call me countess?" Her scorn was superb.

"I am waiting for your answer. Will you be my wife, or shall I be forced to make my villainy definitive?"

"Permit me to take upon these shoulders the burden of answering that question," said a voice from the window.

Warburton, dressed in his stable clothes and leggings, hatless and drenched with rain, stepped into the room from the veranda and quickly crossed the intervening s.p.a.ce. Before any one of the tragic group could recover from the surprise caused by his unexpected appearance, he had picked up the packet of plans and had dropped it into the fire. Then he leaned with his back against the mantel and faced them, or rather Karloff, of whom he was not quite sure.

XXIII

SOMETHING ABOUT HEROES

Tick-lock, tick-tock went the voice of the little friend of eternity on the mantel-piece; the waxen sheets (to which so much care and labor had been given) writhed and unfolded, curled and crackled, and blackened on the logs; the cold wind and rain blew in through the opened window; the lamp flared and flickered inside its green shade; a legion of heroes peered out from the book-cases, no doubt much astonished at the sight of this ordinary hero of mine and his mean, ordinary clothes. I have in my mind's eye the picture of good D'Artagnan's frank contempt, Athos'

magnificent disdain, the righteous (I had almost said honest!) horror of the ultra-fashionable Aramis, and the supercilious indignation of the bourgeois Porthos. What! this a hero? Where, then, was his rapier, his glittering baldric, his laces, his dancing plumes, his fine air?

Several times in the course of this narrative I have expressed my regret in not being an active witness of this or that scene, a regret which, as I am drawing most of these pictures from hearsay, is perfectly natural. What must have been the varying expressions on each face! Warburton, who, though there was tumult in his breast, coolly waited for Karloff to make the next move; Annesley, who saw his terrible secret in the possession of a man whom he supposed to be a stable-man; Karloff, who saw his house of cards vanish in the dartling tongues of flame, and recognized the futility of his villainy; the girl... Ah, who shall describe the dozen shadowy emotions which crossed and recrossed her face?

From Warburton's dramatic entrance upon the scene to Karloff's first movement, scarce a minute had pa.s.sed, though to the girl and her father an eternity seemed to come and go. Karloff was a brave man. Upon the instant of his recovery, he sprang toward Warburton, silently and with predetermination: he must regain some fragment of those plans. He would not, could not, suffer total defeat before this girl's eyes; his blood rebelled against the thought. He expected the groom to strike him, but James simply caught him by the arms and thrust him back.

"No, Count; no, no; they shall burn to the veriest crisp!"

"Stand aside, lackey!" cried Karloff, a sob of rage strangling him.

Again he rushed upon Warburton, his clenched hand uplifted. Warburton did not even raise his hands this time. So they stood, their faces within a hand's span of each other, the one smiling coldly, the other in the att.i.tude of striking a blow. Karloff's hand fell unexpectedly, but not on the man in front of him. "Good G.o.d, no! a gentleman does not strike a lackey! Stand aside, stand aside!"

"They shall burn, Count,"--quietly; "they shall burn, because I am physically the stronger." Warburton turned quickly and with the toe of his boot shifted the glowing packet and renewed the flames. "I never realized till to-night that I loved my country half so well. Lackey?

Yes, for the present."

He had not yet looked at the girl.

"Ah!" Karloff cried, intelligence lighting his face. "You are no lackey!"--subduing his voice.

James smiled. "You are quite remarkable."

"Who are you? I demand to know!"

"First and foremost, I am a citizen of the United States; I have been a soldier besides. It was my common right to destroy these plans, which indirectly menaced my country's safety. These,"--pointing to the bank-notes, "are yours, I believe. Nothing further requires your presence here."

"Yes, yes; I remember now! Fool that I have been!" Karloff struck his forehead in helpless rage. "I never observed you closely till now. I recall. The secret service: Europe, New York, Washington; you have known it all along. Spy!"

"That is an epithet which easily rebounds. Spy? Why, yes; I do for my country what you do for yours."

"The name, the name! I can not recollect the name! The beard is gone, but that does not matter,"--excitedly.

Warburton breathed easier. While he did not want the girl to know who he was just then, he was glad that Karloffs memory had taken his thought away from the grate and its valuable but rapidly disappearing fuel.

"Father! Father, what is it?" cried the girl, her voice keyed to agony.

"Father!"