And then he did a lot more mathematical calculating, and pressed a knob, and there you are! Ah! a thought – I had forgotten to apply myself to the moulding of the bureau, as a hero of the middle ages would have done under the circumstances.
I begin from side to side, up, down, and around. Ha! ha! at last! A little drawer shoots out almost in my face, startling me like a jack-in-the-box.
A faint perfume of crushed violets salutes my nostrils. The letters – they are there in the bottom of the drawer! I know them too well by the shape of the square large envelopes. They cost me many a dollar to send through the stage-door by the gouty Cerberus at the gate when Bella trod the boards.
I reach out my hand to seize them, when an awful scream causes me to stagger back in dismay.
Bella Bracebridge, in a jaunty travelling dress, stands in the doorway in the attitude of a tragic queen – her eyes flashing, her bosom heaving, just as she looked the day she asked for a raise in salary and didn't get it.
She steps towards me: I retreat, transfixed by her defiant attitude. She fear a common burglar? Never!
I know she intends to seize me and scream for help, and I am afraid, too, that she may recognize my face. So I step back – back, edging towards the window.
She reaches out her hand to seize me, then totters and falls in a dead faint.
I look around for Vandeleur. He has lost all presence of mind; is staring at the figure on the floor, with wild, dilated eyes, and an expression of hopeless idiocy on his face. I can hear people moving below stairs. Her scream must have aroused the house. "Vandeleur," shaking him by the arm, "we must run for it. Do you understand? Ten years! Hard labor!" – the last words hissed excitedly in his ear.
"What? where? who?" he mumbles, with a face as expressive as that of codfish.
I rush to the balcony to see if we can make the jump below. It is dark, but the leap must be made. Better a broken leg than a ball and chain on a healthy limb for years and years.
I drag Vandeleur in a helpless condition out on the balcony, boost him up on the railing, and push him off. Then I leap after him.
Fortunate fate! We fall into a clump of blackberry bushes, and not a moment too soon. Lights flash out from above. I hear the hum of excited voices, Bella's calm and distinct above the rest, as she gives the ominous order, "Let those bloodhounds loose!"
Ugh! We scramble out of the bushes in the most undignified haste, leaving most of our outward resemblance to human beings on the thorny twigs. Then helter-skelter over the fields and hedges, stumbling, staggering, and traversing what I suppose to be miles of country.
Vandeleur is snorting like a steam calliope in bad repair, and I am breathing with the jerky movement of an overworked accordion. "I can go no farther," he exclaims, dropping down in a huddled heap at the foot of a scrubby pine-tree like a bag of old clothes.
I don't feel much in a hurry either, but I try to infuse some life into him by hustling him and shaking him in a brutal and unsympathetic manner.
"Do you hear that?" I howl in despair as the baying of the bloodhounds rolls towards us over the meadow like muttered thunder. "There is nothing to do but climb this tree, unless you want to furnish a free lunch for those brutes."
"Free lunch? get me some," he mumbles, relapsing into his old idiotic state again. Then I fall upon that unfortunate man in a fury of rage, and pound him into a consciousness of his danger.
He consents at last to be pushed or rather dragged up in a tree, whose lowest limb I straddle with a feeling of wild joy and ecstasy just as the hounds rush past below, their flashing eyes looking to me just then as large as the headlights of a host of engines.
"Let's go home now," again murmurs the helpless creature at my side, shaking so on the limb that I am compelled to strap him there by his suspenders.
"Ain't we going home?" he chatters. "I want a good supper, and then a bed —bed," lingering on the last word with soothing emphasis.
"Oh, you'd like a nice supper, would you?" I growl. "Well, those bloodhounds are after the same thing. Perhaps you had better slide down the tree and interview them on the chances. Then one or the other of you would be satisfied."
"But they've gone away."
"Well, you needn't think you have been forgotten, just the same. Don't you see, wretched man, that the morning is breaking," pointing to the east, where the sun had begun "paintin' 'er red." "Once in the high road we should be discovered at once; here at least we are safe – uncomfortably safe," as I moved across the limb and impaled myself on a long two-inch splinter with spurs on it.
He fell into a doze after that, only rousing himself now and then to utter strange croaking sounds that frightened me almost as much as the baying of the bloodhounds. I think I fell asleep too for a few moments, for when I was roused by an awful yell proceeding from my companion I found that he had burst his bonds and fallen out of the tree, while the bright sun was shining in my eyes.
Visions of Ethel's face over our charming breakfast-table rose before me, and I seemed to scent afar off the steam of fragrant mocha in a dainty Sèvres cup as she held it towards me. The thought of that morning libation settled the business.
I would march stalwartly home – yea, though a thousand bloodhounds with dangerous appetites barred my way!
I slid down the tree and found Vandeleur still asleep. I don't believe that even the fall had waked the poor fellow up.
I had only to whisper the word "Breakfast" in his ears to have him start as if he had received a galvanic shock.
"Where?" he asked, with tears in his eyes.
"Home."
We crawled along through the bushes in the wildest haste our poor disjointed and almost dismembered bodies would carry us; like a pair of mud-turtles who had seen better days did we take to all-fours.
Fortunately, my place was not far away, and we had just strength enough to crawl up on the porch and fall against the door heavily.
"Breakfast," I gasped, as Ethel's lovely face appeared suddenly at my side like a benignant angel's.
"What – what can I get you?" murmured the dear girl, in an agony of mind, hurrying here and there, her eyes suffused with tears.
"Bloodhounds!" murmured Vandeleur, relapsing into idiocy.
SCARE THE THIRD
If you have ever had the fortune to be married to a Vassar graduate of the gushing and kittenish order, between nineteen and twenty, you will understand how difficult it was to explain my dilapidated appearance that memorable morning.
The ingenuity of my fabrications would have stocked a popular romance writer with all the modern conveniences; and I am sure the recording angel must have had difficulty in keeping pace with my transgressions unless he or she understood short-hand.
Vandeleur took an early opportunity to escape to the city, knowing very well that he would be held accountable for my degraded and dilapidated condition. The friends of a married man always are held responsible by his wife for any of his moral lapses, no matter when or where they may occur.
If I had only succeeded in my undertaking I might have viewed even my wounds – of which there were many – with some equanimity. But to have suffered in vain was enough to try the strongest soul; and I am afraid I was unnecessarily brusque to Ethel when she insisted on soaking me hourly in the most horrible liniments of her mother's decoction. I was pickled for about a week by her fair hands, and had become so impregnated with camphor and aromatic compounds that I exhaled spices like an Eastern mummy or a shopworn sachet-bag, and longed to get away from myself and the drugstore smell that clung to me closer than I ever want my brother to cling. I consented to the embalming process, because I wanted to look