THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.
The April day had been very long, and very, very dull in the handsome Walraven Fifth Avenue palace. Long and lamentable, as the warning cry of the banshee, wailed the dreary blast. Ceaselessly, dismally beat the rain against the glass. The icy breath of the frozen North was in the wind, curdling your blood and turning your skin to goose-flesh; and the sky was of lead, and the streets were slippery and sloppy, and the New York pavements altogether a delusion and a snare.
All through this bad, black April day, Mollie Dane had wandered through the house, upstairs and down-stairs, like an uneasy ghost.
Some evil spirit of unrest surely possessed her. She could settle nowhere. She threw herself on a sofa in her pretty bedroom, and tried to beguile the forlorn hours with the latest novel, in vain. She yawned horribly over the pages and flung it from her in disgust.
She wandered down to the drawing-room and tried the grand piano, whose tones were as the music of the spheres. Still in vain. The listless fingers fell aimlessly on the ivory keys.
She strove to sleep, but the nervous restlessness that possessed her only drove her to the verge of feverish madness in the effort. The girl was possessed of a waking nightmare not to be shaken off.
"What is it?" cried Mollie, impatiently, to herself. "What the mischief's the matter with me? I never felt like this before. It can't be remorse for some unacted crime, I never committed murder that I know of. It can't be dyspepsia, for I've got the digestive powers of an anaconda. It can't be the weather, for I've struggled through one or two other rainy days in my life-time; and it can't be anxiety for to-night to come, for I'm not apt to get into a gale about trifles. Perhaps it's a presentiment of evil to come. I've heard of such things. It's either that or a fit of the blue-devils!"
The long, wet, windy day wore on. Mr. Walraven slept through it comfortably in his study. Mrs. Walraven had a tête-à-tête luncheon with her cousin, the doctor, and dawdled the slow hours away over her tricot and fashion magazines.
Old Mme. Walraven rarely left her own apartments of late days. Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law detested each other with an intensity not common even in that relationship. How she ever killed time was a mystery unknown. Mollie good-naturedly devoted a couple of her precious daily hours to her. The house was as still as a tomb. Downstairs, Messrs. Johnson and Wilson, Mr. Coachman, Mme. Cook and Mlle. Chambermaid may have enjoyed themselves in one another's society, but above the kitchen cabinet all was forlorn and forsaken.
"Awfully slow, all this!" said Miss Dane to herself, with a fearful yawn. "I'll die of stagnation if this sort of thing keeps on. Mariana, howling in the Moated Grange, must have felt a good deal as I do just at present—a trifle worse, maybe, for I don't wish I were dead altogether. The Tombs is gay and festive compared to Fifth Avenue on a rainy day. I wish I were back playing Fanchon the Cricket, free and happy once more, wearing spangles as Ophelia of Denmark, and a gilt paper crown as Cleopatra of Egypt, I wasn't married then; and I didn't go moping about, like an old hen with the distemper, every time it was wet and nasty. If it keeps on like this I shall have a pretty time of it getting to Fourteenth Street, at ten o'clock to-night. And I'll surely go, if it were to rain cats, dogs, and pitchforks!"
She stood drearily at the drawing-room window, looking forlornly out at the empty street.
The eerie twilight was falling, rain and wind rising and falling with it, the street lamps twinkling ghostily through the murky gloaming, the pavement black and shining. Belated pedestrians hurried along with bowed heads and uplifted umbrellas, the stages rattled past in a ceaseless stream, full to overflowing. The rainy night was settling down, the storm increasing as the darkness came on. Mollie surveyed all this disconsolately enough.
"I don't mind a ducking," she murmured, plaintively, "and I never take cold; but I don't want that man to see me looking like a drowned rat. Oh, if it should turn out to be Hugh—dear, dear Hugh!" Her face lighted rapturously at the thought. "I never knew how much I loved him until I lost him. If it isn't Hugh, and Hugh asks me to run away with him to-morrow, I'll do it—I declare I will—and the others may go to grass!"
At that moment, voices sounded on the stairs—the voices of Mrs. Walraven and her cousin.
The drawing-room door was ajar, Mollie's little figure hidden in the amber drapery of the window, and she could see them plainly, without herself being seen.
"You won't fail?" Mrs. Walraven said, impressively. "I will do my part. Are you equal to yours?"
"I never fail where I mean to succeed," answered Dr. Guy, with equal emphasis. "Sooner or later, I triumph! I shall triumph now! 'All things are possible to him who knows how to wait.' I have waited, and this night gives me my reward."
The house door closed after the young man. Mrs. Walraven peeped into the drawing-room, never seeing the slender figure amid the voluminous golden damask, and then reascended the stairs. Mollie was again in silence and solitude.
"Now, what are those two up to, I should like to know?" soliloquized the young lady. "Some piece of atrocious mischief, I'll be bound! He looks like the Miltonic Lucifer sometimes, that man, only not one half so good-looking; but there is a snakish, treacherous, cold-blooded glare in his greenish-black eyes that makes me think of the arch-tempter; and some people have the bad taste to call him handsome."
The twilight had ended in darkness by this time. Mollie put her hand to her belt to find her watch, but it was not there.
"I have left it on my dressing-table," she thought, moving away. "I will have a cup of tea in my room this evening, and let guardy and Madame Blanche dine together. I wish it were time to start. I abominably hate waiting."
Mollie found her watch on the table, and was rather surprised to see it past eight.
"I had no idea it was so late," she said to herself. "I shall leave here at half past nine. There is nothing like keeping tryst in season."
She rang for Lucy, ordered a little supper in her room, and then dismissed the maid.
"I shan't want you again to-night, Lucy," she said. "You can go out, if you like, and see your mother."
Lucy tripped away, right well pleased, and Mollie dawdled the time over her supper and a book.
Half past nine came very soon.
"Time to get ready," thought Mollie, starting up. "Dear, dear! it's highly romantic and highly sensational, this nocturnal appointment with a masked man, and that man one's mysterious husband. I can't say much for the place; there's precious little romance around the Maison Dorée. Does it still rain, I wonder?"
She opened the blind and looked out. Yes, it still rained; it still blew in long, shuddering gusts; the low-lying sky was inky black; athwart the darkness flashed the murky street lamps.
Mollie dropped the curtain, with a little shiver.
"'The night is cold, and dark, and dreary,
It rains, and the wind is never weary.'
It's a horrible night to be abroad, but I'll keep my word, if I drown for it!"
She hunted up the long water-proof mantle she had worn the night of her abduction, drew the hood far over her head and face, wrapped it around her, opened the window, and resolutely stepped out on the piazza.
She paused an instant—a blinding rush of wind and rain almost took her off her feet; the next, the brave little heroine was flitting along the slippery piazza, down the stairs, out of the wicket gate and into the black, shining street.
Away sped Mollie—swift as a little, wingless Mercury—down the avenue, through Union Square, to the place of tryst.
She expected every moment to hear the city clocks chime ten, but she reached Broadway without hearing them. Little wonder, when it was but half past nine.
Drenched through, blown about, breathless, panting, almost scared at the dreary forlornness of the deserted streets, the adventurous little damsel reached the place of tryst.
Was she too soon? Surely not. There stood a cab, drawn close to the curbstone, and there, in the shadow of the cab, stood a tall man in a cloak, evidently waiting.
The lamps of the carriage shone upon him, but the cloak collar was so turned up, the slouched hat so pulled down, such a quantity of dark beard between, that nothing was visible of the face whatever.
Mollie paused, altogether exhausted; the man advanced a step out of the shadow.
"White Mask?" he asked, in a cautious whisper.
"Black Mask!" responded Mollie, promptly.
"All right, then!" replied the man, speaking in French, and speaking rapidly. "It's impossible to stand here in the rain and talk. I have brought a carriage—let me assist you in."
But Mollie shrunk back. Some nameless thrill of terror suddenly made her dread the man.
"You must—you must!" cried the man, in an impetuous whisper. "We can not stand here in this down-pour. Don't you see it is impossible? And the first policeman who comes along will be walking us off to the station-house."
He caught her arm and half led her to the carriage. Shrinking instinctively, yet hardly knowing what to do, she found herself in it, and seated, before she quite knew it.
He sprung after her, closed the door, the carriage started at once at a great pace, and the poor little fly was fairly caught in the spider's web.
"I don't like this," said Mollie, decisively. "I had no idea of entering a carriage when I appointed this meeting. Where are you taking me to?"
"There is no need to be alarmed, pretty Mollie," said the man, still speaking French. "I have given the coachman orders to rattle along through the streets. We can talk here at our leisure, and as long as we please. You must perceive the utter impossibility of conversation at a street corner and in a down-pour of rain."
Mollie did, but she fidgeted in her seat, and felt particularly uncomfortable, all the same. Now that it was too late, she began to think she had acted unwisely in appointing this meeting.
"Why didn't I let well enough alone?" thought the young lady. "At a distance, it seemed the easiest thing in the world; now that I am in the man's power, I am afraid of him, more so than I ever was before."
The man had taken his seat beside her. At this juncture he put his arm around her waist.
"Why can't we be comfortable and affectionate, as man and wife should—eh, Mollie? You don't know how much obliged to you I am for this interview."
There was a ring of triumph in his tone that Mollie could not fail to perceive. Her heart gave a great jump of terror, but she angrily flung herself out of his arm.
"Keep your distance, sir! How dare you? You sing quite a new song since I saw you last! Don't you lay a finger on me, or I'll—"
"What, pretty Cricket?" with a sardonic laugh.
Mollie caught her breath. That name, that tone—both were altogether new in the unknown man.
The sound of the voice, now that he spoke French, was quite unlike that of the man she had come to meet. And he was not wont to call her Cricket.
Had she made some horrible mistake—been caught in some dreadful trap? But, no; that was impossible.
"Look here, Mr. Mask," said Mollie, fiercely, "I don't want any of your familiarity, and I trust to your honor to respect my unprotected situation. I appointed this meeting because you kept your word, and behaved with tolerable decency when we last parted. I want to end this matter. I want to know who you are."
"My precious Mollie, your husband!"
"But who are you?"
"One of your rejected suitors."
"But which of them?—there were so many."
"The one who loved you best."
"Pshaw! I don't want trifling! What is your name?"
"Ernest."
"I never had a lover of that name," said Mollie, decidedly. "You are only mocking me. Are you—are you—Hugh Ingelow?"
Her voice shook a little. The man by her side noted it, and burst into a derisive laugh.
"You are not Hugh Ingelow!" Mollie cried in a voice of sharp, sudden pain—"you are not!"
"And you are sorry, pretty Mollie? Why, that's odd, too! He was a rejected lover, was he not?"
"Let me out!" exclaimed the girl, frantically—"let me go! I thought you were Hugh Ingelow, or I never would have come! Let me out! Let me out!"
She made a rush at the door, with a shrill cry of affright. A sudden panic had seized her—a horrible dread of the man beside her—a stunning sense that it was not the man she loved.
Again that strident laugh—mocking, sardonic, triumphant—rang through the carriage. Her arms were caught and held as in a vise.
"Not so fast, my fair one; there is no escape: I can't live without you, and I see no reason why a man should live without his wife. You appointed this meeting yourself, and I'm excessively obliged to you. I am taking you to the sea-side to spend the honey-moon. Don't struggle so—we'll return to New York by and by. As for Hugh Ingelow, you mustn't think of him now; it isn't proper in a respectable married woman to know there is another man in the scheme of the universe except her husband. Mollie! Mollie! if you scream in that manner you'll compel me to resort to chloroform—a vulgar alternative, my dearest."
But Mollie struggled like a mad thing, and screamed—wild, shrill, womanly shrieks that rang out even above the rattle and roll of the carriage wheels.
The man, with an oath, placed his hand tightly over her mouth. They were going at a frightful pace, and already the city, with its lights and passengers, was left far behind. They were flying over a dark, wet road, and the wind roared through distant trees, and the rain fell down like a second deluge.
"Let me go—let me go!" Mollie strove madly to cry, but the tightening grasp of that large hand suffocated her.
The carriage seemed suddenly to reel, a thousand lights flashed before her eyes, a roar like the roar of many waters surged in her ears, a deathly sickness and coldness crept over her, and with a gasping sob she slipped back, fainting away for the first time in her life.