Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 41

There is no bell, but there is an old-fas.h.i.+oned iron knocker upon the door; shall I use it; what if it wakes up some strange sleeper and brings a fever-heated night-capped angry head out of the upper window, with hasty words, perhaps cross ones of "who is there?" I have no familiar "it's me," to answer. No one will say, "wait a moment, dear, and I will open the door."

All is still within. It were a pity to disturb the quiet sleepers for nothing, nothing but the gratification of idle curiosity; to make the inquiry if--if--Mrs. Mrs.--what was her name? Now that is gone--faded from my memory as easily as it was washed away from that paper. Whom could I inquire for? Should I inquire for "Little Katy's Mother?" I should in all probability be told to go across the street and inquire there, where I got my liquor, upon which to get drunk. Or else, perhaps, to go home and inquire if my "mother knew that I was out;" or told that she might happen to wake up, and find her green gosling of a son gone--gone out in the street to inquire after little girls' mothers--no doubt she would be much alarmed. It was well that the moon was veiled, or else the man in it would have seen how sheepish I looked as I sneaked down the steps, with a weary step, that could not have gone the half a mile without tiring.

How I did rejoice that no watchman was in sight to see how crest-fallen I went away and stood up in the shade of a lamp post! A few minutes afterwards, I would have given gold for the sight of a bra.s.s star.

What for? Why did I not go home? What prompted me to keep watch at that lamp post? My object in coming had failed. I had acted upon the momentary spur of a nervous temperament, heated into a state of excitement by what I had seen in the early part of the evening, connected with some of the scenes of the last few weeks' exciting life, which had driven me, without consideration, to start off chasing an ignis fatuus, in the swampy, Jack o'lantern producing air of this city, and it had led me here and left me leaning against a lamp post. Was ever poor wight led into a deeper bog? "Go home," reason told us. If the lamp post had been a repelling magnet, I should have gone. It was the contrary, and I could not break the attraction.

That iron lamp post may possess a very strong magnetic power, yet it is hardly possible, or probable--nay, it is very improbable that it was that power which had drawn me hither and kept me waiting "coming events."

They do "cast their shadows before," for the shadow, and then the substance of a man came round the corner. Like half of those who walk the streets at this hour, he was drunk. Just then there was a moving light in No. 53. The intoxicated night-walker caught the sight of it just as he came opposite the lamp post, and he stopped and laughed one of those horrid laughs, which give the blood a chill and send it with a pang and fluttering fear to the heart.

The last sad remains of a gentlemen--no--a roue, stood in the dim light of a lamp which had been to him the guide to ruin.

"Ha, ha, ha, my old bird, you are astir I see. It is a long time since I have seen you, but I have caged you at last. You would not speak to me, ha, in Broadway, but I tracked you home, and now I am going to roost in the old nest, or I will blow you out of your fine feathers, my lady.

Won't let me in? Won't let me in? Then I will break in. Hold, here comes a star. I'll keep dark while it s.h.i.+nes." Back he went around the corner, the star went carelessly onward down that way, and I went eaves-dropping. I was impelled to do it. I saw a light come in the front room and heard voices, and felt that there was some strange connection between this house and that man, and perhaps myself, and that the mystery must soon be solved.

The blinds were closed, but the sash was up. I stood close under the window, and the voices dropped down upon my ear through the slats, clear and distinct as though I had been in the room.

The light-bearer with a noiseless step, as though afraid of awaking some sick sleeper, approached a bed, shading the light with her hand.

It was no use. The timid start easy. There was a rustling-sound, as though some one started up from an uneasy pillow and sleep-disturbing dreams.

"Will he come?"

That voice, those words. Do I dream, or are there spirits near? Oh, how familiar--how painfully familiar--reminiscential of things past. What can it mean? But one voice ever spoke those words in that tone, and that voice will never speak again. The dreamer is in the street. It is my brain that is disturbed. Hark! Again! I heard aright.

"Oh, no, he will not come. Why should he? What am I to him? Yet I wanted to see him a moment. It seems as though it is he only who can protect me from that dreaded man. Oh, Phebe, Phebe, what should we do if he were to come here to-night? He has sworn to have revenge upon me for leaving him; yet how could I live with a man who threatened my life every day in his drunken fits? Long after I went to Paris, he wrote to me that he would rob me of my child--his child, if he died in the attempt. I long thought--nay, hoped that he was--that is, that he never would return from Cuba. I heard of him in the dungeons of the Moro, and now he is here."

"Yes, ma'am, I is sure he is here. Dat am de fact. Jis sich man, stout, red face, black hair, and such eyes. I is sure he is a wicked man."

"Only when he is drinking."

"Well, dat all de time wid some folk."

There was a groan of anguish in the bed.

"But, Phebe, you describe his looks just as I saw them to-day. Have you seen him?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am--thought I wouldn't tell you though--but it come out when I didn't know him."

"Where? Has he been here? Has he tracked me home?"

"Why, you see, ma'am, when I goes to the door to let Agnes Brentnall out, I sees him over the way, by de lamp, and when she goes down the street, he walks after her, and dat am last I see of him dis night."

"Poor girl, then she is lost. If ever he fixes his basalisk eye upon her beauty, how can she escape. Poor girl--G.o.d protect thee--man will not."

There was a sobbing that told of tears--tears that told of a kind heart, crushed by a cold and careless world.

Then I was about to enter, but something said, "not yet," and I stepped down into the shadow by the high steps, till the footfall I heard upon the pavement should go by.

It did not pa.s.s--it came directly up to the door, familiar as a burglar with its night latch key. Why had they not bolted the door? It opened as though to one who had a right to enter. The intruder--it was the dark-visaged man I had seen five minutes before--closed the door gently after him without latching it.

There was a thin lace curtain before the window, through which, as I looked in between the slats of the blind, I could see him as he approached the bed. Phebe had left the light and gone into the back room. The lady had buried her face in the pillows--nothing but her raven locks, hanging loose in her neck, were visible. The villain looked at her for a moment, then, satisfied that she was asleep, he reached over her, and lifted a beautiful little girl from her side.

"Mother! mother!"

The light shone in her face--the mother started at the appealing cry for help--sprang up--Heavens, what do we see? It is little Sissee--Little Katy's sister and her mother!

What a sight for that mother! The man she so much dreaded--the man who had so disturbed her dreams--with her child, her last, her only child, in his strong arms, and no one near to protect, to save.

She sprang towards him, and fixed her feeble hands in his hair. Of what avail? He flung her from him reeling, fainting, across the room. The noise brought the faithful Phebe from her couch--too late. The mother saw her child disappearing in the dark pa.s.sage--she heard her screams for help--she heard no more. One look of his terrible eye, as he bore away her struggling child, was enough to kill one of a stronger form than hers. One look of satisfied revenge--revenge of a man upon a feeble woman, and his hand is upon the door. One step more and he is in the street. One step more and he fell, beneath a blow of a stout cane in a strong man's hand, and lay trembling across that threshold, quivering like a bullock felled by the butcher's blow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NEW YORK STREET SCENE.--_Page 341._]

"Here, Phebe, take the child; take care of the mother; tell her all is safe; the Lord watches over the truly penitent; he will protect; he will save."

I dragged the unconscious ma.s.s of human flesh down upon the pavement, and struck three sharp blows upon the stones, with the broken cane--broken in avenging a feeble woman. It was answered right and left, up and down, and again repeated. I peered into the darkness for the coming succor.

Will it come? Will it come in time? For a strong hand has seized my only weapon, now he has it in his. There is a momentary struggle--the prostrate man is up and the other one down.

A large Bowie knife, the midnight prowler's fas.h.i.+onable weapon, is gleaming at my throat. A moment more, and all my debts were paid and duties done.

Moments fleet fast, but all too slow for the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife, when it is not the will of Him that giveth life, that life should fail. The knife fell, but not with a blow--it fell from a broken arm.

The watchman's club had done the work. The watchman had heard the call, and had come in time to save the avenger and punish the a.s.sa.s.sin.

"Take him away. You know me and where to send when I am wanted. I have another life to save inside this house."

What was said or done need not be told. The reader is dull of divining power, if he does not already know. I cannot tell. I only know that I awaked from a short nap, next morning, in an easy chair, with a sweet little girl, some three years old, clinging her arms around my neck and nestling her cheek up to mine. Had mortal ever sweeter dreams?

"What time is it, Phebe?"

"Don't know dat, sir; sun up yonder."

"Is it? And she sleeps quietly? Very well, let her sleep. I will send a doctor, on my way home, to look at her. Good by. Bon jour, Sis. One more kiss, there."

"You will come again, when mamma wakes up?"

"Yes--Good bye."

CHAPTER XVI.

AGNES BRENTNALL.

"Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil."