Back Aa

Hemlock Avenue Mystery

Close

<h4>CHAPTER XIX</h4> The radiance of Miss Wolcott's face was still lingering in Lyon's mind and diffusing a glow over his imagination when he crossed the few steps that separated her house from Broughton's. Broughton opened the door for him, as he had formed the habit of doing. The anguished and despairing inquiry in his eyes pulled Lyon up sharply. He had come from the morning to night, from the hope of youth to the sorrow of age, from those whose story was to end happily to those who knew in their own hearts the tragedy of life. "You have nothing to tell me?" Broughton asked, though his tone showed he expected nothing. Lyon shook his head, "No. You have heard nothing?" "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing." From habit he led Lyon into the dining room, where they had always sat to smoke before retiring, but the room showed no preparations for an evening of good cheer. It was as blank and forlorn as Broughton's face. "Where can she be?" he demanded, stopping in his restless walk to face Lyon imperiously. "Ill as she was, with God knows what trouble on her mind and conscience, where can she have gone? Did she feel that it was impossible to live? Did she go to her death,--or to hide and wait for him?" "If you mean Lawrence, that's all nonsense," said Lyon, calmly. "I may tell you now--there were reasons why I couldn't before--that Lawrence is deeply in love with Miss Wolcott, who lives next door, and she returns his sentiment. I am satisfied that their formal engagement will be announced as soon as he is cleared of this accusation." "What of that?" said Broughton dully. "He may be playing with a dozen women for all I know." "He isn't that sort." "He is the sort that keeps up a secret correspondence with another man's wife, and lures her from her home and her husband. That I know, and knowing that I can't believe very much good of him in other ways. He knows where my wife is now." "I don't believe it." "Well, he will know before I do," said Broughton, sullenly. "She has fled because she was connected with that affair in some way. It is even possible that she discovered I was watching. And if she hasn't destroyed herself, she has gone where she can wait for him." Lyon felt helpless. The unreason of jealousy comes so near to insanity that argument and common sense are helpless before it. It can only be mastered by authority or by an appeal to the emotions, and Lyon did not feel himself in position to offer either to a man of Woods Broughton's age and personal force. "Well, good night," he said lamely. "I'm going to bed." "Go," said Broughton. "There is no reason why you should not sleep. I shall not sleep until I know where she is. Good God, this very minute she may be a helpless prisoner in some terrible den of infamy. She may be suffering,--though she cannot suffer as I do." Lyon got away from him and went up to the little back bedroom which had come to seem so homelike in the short week he had been there. Kittie's curtains were both down--of course. Her faithfulness to their code even to this disastrous end struck him as pathetic. "Dear little girl," he murmured, and blew a kiss across the night to her. One can venture so much more in the night than in the unsympathetic blaze of common day. How much farther he might have gone on his excursion into sentiment can only be guessed, for just then his eye was caught and his mind diverted by something which, in a moment, took on more than a momentary importance. It was nothing more portentous than a lighted window in Miss Wolcott's home. The curious thing about it was that he had never seen a light in that second-story window before. Every evening when he had looked for Kittie's signal. Miss Wolcott's house had presented a perfectly blank and unobservant side to his view. Now some one was occupying a room which corresponded with his own room in this neighboring house. While his eye lingered on the light in idle speculation, he saw and distinctly recognized Miss Wolcott as she passed between the window and the light in the room. The sight was not in itself startling and yet he started and metaphorically rubbed his eyes. Miss Wolcott wore a hat. Instinctively he looked at his watch. It lacked a few minutes of eleven. Eleven o'clock in Waynscott was an hour when respectable householders went to bed, unless they went on a journey. Was it possible that Miss Wolcott was going out, alone and unattended, at this hour? He had the greatest confidence in the innocence of her intentions, whatever they were, but the story which she had told had not given him the same prejudice in favor of her discretion. What foolish plan might she have in her mind now? Why had she said nothing of her intention when he left her an hour ago? Distinctly worried, he reached for the overcoat and hat which he had thrown down on a chair in his room, and then went back to the window. If she was really bent on a midnight errand, he would escort her, whether she liked it or not. He would quietly watch for the moment of her departure, and then join her at her own front door. But while he waited, another head crossed the lighted field of the window,--not Miss Wolcott's. She was not going alone, then, for this woman also wore a hat, and about her neck was the graceful line of an upturned fur collar. He did not know Miss Wolcott's friends,--he knew, indeed, very few women in Waynscott,--and yet something teasingly familiar about the lift of the head, the turn of the neck, puzzled him. Did he know her? And then suddenly, the solution of it all flashed upon him. That delicately turned head belonged to Mrs. Broughton. Dolt, idiot, that he was, not to have reasoned it out before! Mrs. Broughton, fleeing from Miss Elliott's by way of the secret panel in the fence, had taken shelter at Miss Wolcott's. What more natural? What more simple? And now, under cover of the night, she was preparing to continue her flight. In a flash, without waiting for logical processes, Lyon saw what he must do. He hurled himself downstairs three steps at a time and out of the front hall. As he had expected, a carriage was waiting before Miss Wolcott's door. He went up to the driver, ostentatiously looking at his watch. "When does the train leave?" he asked. "Eleven forty-five," the man answered. "Oh, then there is time enough," he said easily, and ran back to the house. Broughton, who had been startled by Lyon's noisy run through the hall, was awaiting him at the front door. "What's up?" he asked. Lyon realized that the moment had come for the autocratic dominance of the sane mind. He put his hand impressively on Broughton's shoulder and faced him sternly, imperiously. "Mr. Broughton, if I could put you at this moment face to face with your wife, what would be your attitude toward her?" "What do you mean?" gasped Broughton, too bewildered by this new manner to really grasp Lyon's words. "Would you meet her with accusation, doubt, and coldness? Or will you hide that unworthy side of your thought and let her see the love that you really feel?" Broughton's face darkened. "If she can satisfy my doubts--" "She must never know them! And this for your sake more than hers. Think, man. How will you go through the years that lie before you if you must spend them with the constant knowledge that you once failed her, that she knows it, and that she can nevermore be proud of you or sure of you? You will have made it necessary for her to forgive you. Can you stand the humiliation of that knowledge?" "She to forgive me?" stammered Broughton. "For what?" "For doubting her. You should have believed in her against every appearance. If you want to hold your head up before her, never let her know what traitorous doubts you have harbored." "How do you know that they are traitorous?" asked Broughton, struggling for a grip on his past passions. "Because--now listen and understand exactly what this means,--because your wife, when she fled from Miss Elliott's, took refuge with Miss Wolcott, who is Lawrence's fiancée. Can you believe for the thousandth part of an instant that she would have gone to that girl if there was anything between her and Lawrence? It is unthinkable. Now hold that one fact firmly,--do not forget it for a moment,--and come with me to your wife." He crushed Broughton's hat upon the bewildered man's head and dragged him out and across the dividing yards to Miss Wolcott's door. The whole episode had only taken a few moments, but he breathed more freely when he had actually got Broughton to the steps of the other house before the women came out. There was no time to spare, however. The doorknob turned softly. The door opened noiselessly and the two women stood there, cloaked and veiled, ready to set forth. Instead, Lyon drew Broughton inside, as though the door had been opened for the purpose of admitting them. "I must beg that you give me a few moments, Miss Wolcott," Lyon began. But the need of making any explanation was taken from him. The lady who at their first appearance had shrunk back of Miss Wolcott, suddenly gave a little inarticulate cry and threw herself upon Broughton's breast. "Woods! Oh, Woods! Where did you come from?" she cried and burst into tears. Lyon held his breath in suspense, but it is not in masculine nature to thrust away a beautiful sobbing woman. Broughton's arms lifted to enclose her, and his voice murmured, not ungently: "There, there, Grace! Control yourself!" Lyon turned to Miss Wolcott, trying to leave the reunited husband and wife in as much privacy as the situation admitted. "What was your plan? Where were you going?" he asked, urgently. She had thrown back her veil, and her face was pale, but resolute. "We were trying to escape," she said. "From whom?" "That terrible detective. He had found Mrs. Broughton. He went to see her yesterday and told her--" She stopped abruptly, and a shudder shook her visibly. "What did he tell her? In charity, let me know." "He told her she would have to appear as a witness at the trial and give testimony against me. "Against you!" The room reeled before Lyon's eyes, but he pulled himself together. "Let me dismiss your carriage and then you must tell me what you mean. It was wild of you to try to run away. In the first place, you would not be able to take any train without being stopped. The police know of Mrs. Broughton's disappearance and are watching all outgoing trains, of course. Besides,--but let us dispose of the carriage, first." He went to' the door and dismissed the coachman. As he came back, he saw that Broughton had disengaged his wife's arms and was facing her with that jealous sternness in his eyes that Lyon had dreaded. "But to leave my home secretly, at the urging of--of--of anyone, was not what I have a right to expect of my wife. I have reason to demand an explanation." The tears were still sparkling on Mrs. Broughton's lashes, but she looked up at him with a steady glance. "I am not your wife," she said quietly. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2