The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton Part 11

"It is strange," said Mr. Middleton, "that after Clarissa had shown her devotion to the extent of saving his life, Captain Leadbury could have had, even for a moment, any misgivings that she loved him."

"One cannot always be sure," said the emir. "A lover, being in a highly nervous state because of his emotion, is always more or less unstrung and unable to form a sound judgment or behave rationally. It is because of this, that there are so many lovers' quarrels. But one need not be at sea as regards the question of the affection of the object of his tender pa.s.sion. It is only necessary for you to wear a philter upon the forehead and you can obtain the love of any woman,"

and giving Mesrour some directions, the Nubian brought to his master a minute bag of silk an inch square and of wafer thinness, which, both from its appearance and the rare odor of musk which it exhaled, resembled a sachet bag.

"Wear this on your forehead," said the emir, presenting it to Mr.

Middleton.

"But I would look ridiculous doing that, and excite comment,"

expostulated the student of law.

"Not at all," said the emir. "Put it inside the sweat-band of the front of your hat and no one will perceive it and yet it will have all its potency."

Which, accordingly, Mr. Middleton did, and having thanked the emir for his entertainment and instruction and the gift, he departed.

The close of the relation of the adventure of Miss Clarissa Dawson left Mr. Middleton in a most amorous mood. His mind was full of soft dreams of the delight William Leadbury must have experienced as he sat in the hack with Clarissa's cheek against his, pouring forth his love into her surprised ear. Before retiring for the night, he sat for some time ciphering on the back of an envelope and kept putting down "$1,000, $500, $560; $560, $500, $1,000; $500, $560, $1,000; $500, $1,000, $560," but as the result of the addition was never over $2,060, whatever way he put it, and as the stipend he received for his labors in the law offices of Brockelsby and Brockman was but $26 a month, he did not feel that he had any business to s.n.a.t.c.h the young lady of Englewood to his breast and tell her of his love and his bank account.

He went to see her on the following night. The exquisite beauty of this peerless young woman had never so impressed him as upon this night and he was gnawed by the most intense longing to call her his own. As he thought of the fortunate William Leadbury with his rich uncle, he fairly hated him, and anon he cursed Brockelsby and Brockman for refusing to raise his salary to a point commensurate with the value of his services. Surely, the young lady of Englewood, even were he to believe her gifted with only ordinary penetration, instead of being the highly intelligent and perspicacious person he knew her to be, could see how he felt and must know that it was only a question of time and more money, and a.s.suredly, one so gracious could not, in view of the circ.u.mstances, begrudge him the advance of one kiss and one embrace pending the formal offer of himself and his fortunes. So as he stood in the doorway, bidding her good-night, right in the midst of an irrelevant remark concerning the weather, he suddenly and without warning, threw his arms about her and essayed to kiss her. But the young lady of Englewood, with a cry commingled of surprise and horror, sprang away.

"How dare you sir? What made you do that? What sort of a girl do you think I am?" she said in freezing tones.

Mr. Middleton replied, stuttering weakly in a very husky voice, "I think you are a nice girl."

"A nice girl!" quoth the young lady of Englewood fiercely. "You know no nice girl would allow it. Nice girl, indeed. You think so. You know no nice girl would let you do such a thing," and she slammed the door in his face.

Away went Mr. Middleton with his heart full of bitterness because she would not let him do such a thing, and in the hallway stood the young lady of Englewood with her heart full of bitterness because he had tried to do such a thing and because she could not let him do such a thing.

"Much good was the philter," said Mr. Middleton, remembering the emir's gift, but almost at the same time, he recalled that the philter had not been on his forehead when he attempted to embrace the young lady of Englewood, for he had held his hat in his hand.

The farther he departed from her, the more his resentment grew, and he declared to himself that he would never have anything more to do with her. She was ungrateful, cold, haughty, not at all the kind of girl he could wish as his partner for life. He would proceed to let her see that he could do without her. He would cast her image from the temple of his heart and never go near her again. For a moment, he was disturbed by the thought that perhaps she would decline to receive him, even if he should call, but he quickly banished this unpleasant reflection and fell to devising means by which he might make it clearly apparent to the young lady of Englewood that he did not care.

"I'll make her sorry. I'll show her I don't care, I'll show her I don't care."

There is a restaurant under the bas.e.m.e.nt of one of the larger and more celebrated saloons of the city, where a genial Gaul provides, for the modest sum of fifty cents, a course dinner, with wine. The wine is but ordinary California claret, but the viands are excellently cooked and of themselves sufficient inducement for a wight to part with half a dollar without consideration of the wine. There are those who, in the melancholy state that follows a disappointment in love, go without food and drink, while others turn to undue indulgence in drink. There are yet others, though few observers seem to have noted them, who turn toward greater indulgence in food, seeking surcease and forgetfulness of the pains of the heart in benefactions to the stomach.

It was very seldom that Mr. Middleton spent so much as fifty cents upon a meal, but the conduct of the young lady of Englewood having deprived him of any present object for laying up money, and, moreover, the pains of the heart before alluded to demanding the vicarious offices of the stomach, he went to the little French restaurant the next evening.

It was somewhat late when he arrived and there were in the room but two diners beside himself. These were a man and a woman, who by many little obvious evidences made manifest that they were not husband and wife. They had arrived at the dessert and were eating ice cream with genteel slowness, conversing the while with great decorum. Both were tall and fair, singularly well matched as to height and the ample and shapely proportions of their figures, and both were well, though quietly and even simply, dressed. They were nearly of an age, too, he being apparently forty, and she thirty-five. Their years sat lightly upon them, however, and if upon her face there were traces left by the longing for the lover who had not yet come into her life, that was all which upon either countenance betrayed that their lives had been other than care-free and happy. a.s.suredly, any one would have called them a fine looking man and woman. All this Mr. Middleton observed in a glance or two and then addressed himself to the comestibles that were set before him and doubtless would not have given the couple thought again, had not the waitress at the close of the meal fluttered at his elbows, placing the vinegar cruet and Worcesters.h.i.+re sauce bottle within easy reach, which services caused Mr. Middleton to look up in some wonder, as he was engaged with custard pie and he had never heard of any race of men, however savage, who used vinegar and Worcesters.h.i.+re sauce upon custard pie. The waitress, who was a young woman of a pleasant and intelligent countenance, met this glance with another compounded of mystery and communicativeness, and bending low while she removed the vinegar and Worcesters.h.i.+re sauce to a new station, murmured:

"That man over there has been here seven nights running, with a different woman every time."

Mr. Middleton sitting quiet in the surprise this information caused him, she repeated what she had said, adding, "and once he was here at noon besides, different woman every time."

Eight women in seven days! Certainly this was quite a curious thing.

"Do you know who he is? Have you ever seen any of the women before?"

"Nop. Don't know anything about him except what I have seen of him here. Never saw any of the women before--nor since."

Nor since. Mr. Middleton found himself asking himself if anybody had seen any of the women since. Had the girl in this chance remark unwittingly hit upon a terrible mystery? Nor since, nor since.

The man who had so suddenly a.s.sumed an interest in Mr. Middleton's eyes, arose, and going to the window, looked out at the street above, which was spattered with a sudden shower. He began to lament that he had not brought an umbrella and said he would go after one, when the storm so increased in violence that even a person provided with an umbrella--as was Mr. Middleton--would not care to venture into it, for such was the might of the wind now filling the air with its shrieks, that the rain swept in great lateral sheets which made an umbrella a futile protection. Yet notwithstanding this fury of the elements, the man of many women went out.

A half hour went by. An hour, and the storm did not abate and the man did not return. The good-looking waitress invited Mr. Middleton to sit at ease by a table in a rear part of the room, where lolling on the opposite side, with charming unconsciousness she let her hand lie stretched more than half across the board, a rampart of crumpled newspapers concealing it from the view of the eighth guest of the mulierose man. But whatever Mr. Middleton had done on previous occasions and might do on occasions yet to come, he now wished to avoid all appearances that might cause the eighth woman to regard him as at all inclined to other than discreet and modest conduct, for he was resolved to find out what he could about the man and eight women.

So affecting not to note the hand temptingly disposed, he discoursed in a voice which was plainly audible in every corner of the room, not so much because of its loudness--for he had but little raised it--as because of a distinct and precise enunciation. This very precision, which always implies a regard for the rules, proprieties and amenities of life, seemed to stamp him as a man worthy of confidence, even had not his sentiments been of the most high-minded character. He described the great flood of 1882, which wrought such havoc in Missouri, in which cataclysm his Uncle Henry Perkins had suffered great loss. He extolled the commendable conduct of his uncle in sacrificing valuable property that he might save a woman; letting a flatboat loaded with twenty-five hogs whirl away in the raging flood, in order to rescue a woman from Booneville, Missouri, the wife of a county judge, who was floating in the waste of waters upon a small red barn. The dullest could infer from the approval he gave this act of his Uncle Henry, unwisely chivalrous as it might seem in view of the fact that whoever rescued the judge's wife farther down stream, would return her to the judge, while no one would return the hogs to Mr.

Perkins--the dullest could infer from his praise that he was himself a chivalrous and tender young man whom any woman could trust.

The hour was become an hour and a half and both the pretty waitress and the eighth woman had grown very fidgetty. The waitress saw she was to beguile the tedious period of emprisonment by the tempest with no dalliance with Mr. Middleton. The eighth woman was worried by the absence of her escort. Mr. Middleton stepped to her side, where she stood staring out at the wind-swept street, and addressed her.

"Madame, it would almost seem as if some accident had detained your escort. May I not offer to call a cab and see you home? I have an umbrella with me."

The lady thanked him almost eagerly, saying that she would wait fifteen minutes more and at the elapse of that time, her escort not appearing, would gladly avail herself of his kind offer.

Twenty minutes later, they were whirling away northward. Crossing the Wells Street bridge, they turned eastward only a few blocks from the river. The rain had suddenly ceased. The wind having relaxed nothing of its fierceness, it occasionally parted the scudding clouds high over head to let glimpses of the moon escape from their wrack, and Mr.

Middleton saw he was in a region whence the invasion of factories and warehouses had driven the major portion of the inhabitants forth, leaving their dwellings untenanted, white for rent signs staring out of the empty cas.e.m.e.nts like so many ghosts. The lady signaling the driver to stop, Mr. Middleton a.s.sisted her to alight, and glanced about him. Here the work of exile had been very thorough. Not yet had the factories come into this immediate neighborhood, but the residents had retreated before the smoke of their advancing lines, leaving a wide unoccupied s.p.a.ce behind the rear guard. Up and down the street, in no house could he perceive a light. The moon s.h.i.+ning forth clear and resplendent, its face un.o.bstructed by clouds for a moment, he saw stretching away house after house with white signs that grimly told their loneliness. Indeed, quite deserted did appear the very house to whose door they splashed through the pools in the depressions of the tall flight of stone steps. The lady threw open the door and stepped briskly in, and her footfalls rang sharply upon a bare floor and resounded in a hollow echo that told it was an empty house!

An empty house! An empty house! What danger might lurk here and how easy might losels lure victims to their door! Mr. Middleton paused on the threshold, staring into the gloom, but whatever irresolute thoughts he had entertained of retreat were dispelled by the sound of a wail from the lady, and the sight of her face, white in the moonlight, as she rushed out to him.

"Oh, oh," she moaned, gibbering a gush of words which, despite their incoherence of form, in their tone proclaimed fear, consternation, and despair.

Lighting a match, Mr. Middleton stepped into the house. Standing in the little circle of dull yellow light, he saw beneath his feet windrows of dust and layers of newspapers that had rested beneath a carpet but lately removed, and beyond, dusk emptiness, and silence. He advanced, looking for a chandelier, but though he found two, the incandescent globes had been removed from them. Throwing a ma.s.s of the papers from the floor into the grate and lighting them, a bright glare brought out every corner of the room. There was nothing but the four bare walls.

"They have taken everything, everything!" cried the poor lady.

"Who?" asked Mr. Middleton, after the manner of his profession.

"Who? Would that I knew!--Thieves."

Mr. Middleton then realized she had been the victim of a form of robbery far too common, where the scoundrels come with drays and carry off the whole household equipment, in the householder's absence. That which had been done in comparatively well-populated quarters was easy of accomplishment on this deserted street.

Penetrated with compa.s.sion, he moved toward the unfortunate woman, who with an abandonment he had not expected of one so stately and reserved, threw herself upon his breast, weeping as though her heart would break.

"They have taken everything. How can I get along now! My piano is gone and how can I give lessons without it! I will have to go back to Peoria!"

Soothingly Mr. Middleton patted the weeping woman on the back. With infinite tenderness, he kissed her tear-bedewed cheeks and gently he laid her head upon his shoulder, and then with both arms clasped about her, he imparted to her statuesque figure a sort of rocking motion, crooning with each oscillation, "There, there, there, there," until the paroxysm of her grief abated and pa.s.sed from weeping into gradually subsiding sobs, and he began to tell her that he would be only too happy to give his legal services to convict the villains when caught--as they surely would be. The lady by degrees becoming more cheerful and giving him a description of the stolen property, he discussed ways and means of recovering it, and to prevent her from relapsing into her former depressed condition, occasionally imprinted a consolatory salute upon her cheek, from which he had previously wiped the wet tracks of the tears that had now some time ceased gus.h.i.+ng, for there had been a salty taste to the first osculations, which while not actually disagreeable, had not been to his liking.

At length, the lady not only ceased even to sigh, but even to talk, and yet remained leaning upon him, which was whether because she was weary, exhausted by grief, or whether because her supporter was such a good looking young man, is not evident. Doubtless it was true that at first her misery and unhappiness made her need the sympathetic caresses of any one within reach and that with the return of her equilibrium she continued to make this an excuse for enjoying without any reproach of impropriety a recreation which ordinarily the conventions of society would compel her to eschew. As for the rising light in the legal profession, he began to find the weight she leant upon him oppressive, and his occupation, delightful at first, palling and growing monotonous. The monotony he somewhat relieved by frequently kissing her, now on one velvet cheek, now on the other, and again her lips; slowly, one two, three, in waltz measure; and rapidly, one, two three, four, in two-step measure, when all at once in the midst of a sustained half note there came to him the reflection that this was no time of night for him to be there in the dark in a deserted house kissing a woman with whose social standing, whose very name, he was unacquainted. He was about to ask a few leading questions, when there was the sound of wheels in the street; a carriage stopped before the door.

Quickly extricating himself from the lady's arms, Mr. Middleton stepped to the door, only to see the carriage drive away, the sound of voices singing a solemn chant in a strange and unknown tongue floating back to him. Wondering what all this could mean, he turned to find the lady standing at his side, silently regarding him in a wrapt manner.

"The hour is late," said she, in a hollow, mournful voice, "and I ought to be seeking some shelter where I can lay my head, but where, oh, where?"

The lady made a tragic gesture as she asked this question, and there in that lonely street with this lorn woman at this late hour of the night in the eerie light of the cloud-obscured moon, with the wind, now howling and now sobbing and moaning, Mr. Middleton felt very solemn indeed. But he pulled himself together and suggested a low-priced and respectable hotel not far away, and toward this they were faring when they pa.s.sed a house which, unlike most of the others of the vicinity, bore signs of habitation, and unlike any of the others, had a light showing in a window. In fact, there was a light in every window of the two upper stories and in the windows of the first floor and even in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Pausing to wonder at this unusual illumination, Mr. Middleton felt his arm suddenly clutched, and a voice which he would never have believed came from the lady, if there had been any one else present, grated into his ear, "It's him."

Though startled by this enigmatical utterance, he followed when she ascended two steps of the stoop for a better view in the uncurtained window. There, with his face buried in his hands, seated on a roll of carpeting with a tack hammer and saucer of tacks at his side, sat the mulierose man!

"This house was empty at four this afternoon," said the lady.

"Heavens, that's my piano in the corner! That's my center table! I believe that's my carpet! That's my watercolor painting I painted myself! _He's_ robbed me!"

Her voice rose to a shriek, and at the sound a woman's head popped out of the window above and the mulierose man came running to the door. He was in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves but wore a hat.