# Ainslee's Magazine/In Such a Night

Extracted from Ainslee's magazine, Feb 1909, pp. 64–73. Title decoration omitted.
IN SUCH A NIGHT
By Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
ONE hot night in August Westerveldt ran out from town to dine with his friends the Hattons, who lived all the year around at Wheaton, that delightful suburban town with its handsome houses set in emerald lawns and gay gardens, its wide streets shaded by great elm-trees and swept always by cool sea-breezes.
After dinner they had played bridge, and it was nearing twelve o’clock when the last rubber was completed. Then Westerveldt arose with an alacrity which spoke badly for his interest in the game, and with a barely stifled sigh of relief. As his partner no doubt realized, he had not felt in bridge humor throughout the evening. For many months he had been working under great pressure, the pressure of his own ideas, and he had been held continually in town; so now, noting the beauty of the night, he was conscious of a sudden and intense longing for the balm of its peace and beauty. Announcing his intention, then, to Hatton of strolling about a bit, he lighted a cigarette and wandered aimlessly through the grounds and out into the village street.
How the night restored his serenity worn by the rush and hurry of the day, of many arduous days! The silence was like a benediction of peace, and baring his head to the soft, light breeze, he walked on, unheeding the direction he took, unmindful of the passing moments, acquiescent to the spirit in his feet which led him he knew not and cared not whither.
The harvest moon rode high in the sky, and in its light he could see that he had entered a broad avenue shaded by maples. The arching branches, thick-leaved, threw deep shadows over the street and sidewalk; the houses loomed dim, almost formless masses in the background, and now and again, as they were defined by a shaft of moonlight, Westerveldt could distinguish the gleam of marble in an Italian garden, or hear the faint musical plash of a falling fountain.
He was completely under the spell of the night’s enchantment now, and walked on as in a dream, heedless of time or place, when suddenly, he was roused sharply from his dreaming and came back to the mundane with every sense strained and acute, for he had been struck very fairly and squarely upon the side of the head. It was a stinging though not a stunning blow, for the object, whatever it was, was not a heavy one, although it had evidently been thrown with considerable force.
Almost in the moment it struck him, Westerveldt swung around and prepared to meet an assailant—two or three of them, perhaps—bent on hold-up; but there was no rush, no husky voice from the close-lying shadows bidding him look down the barrel of a pistol and lift his hands. The calm loveliness of the night remained unbroken. Then, as he gradually realized that his attitude of defense was unnecessary and that his fighting blood was up for nothing, he laughed, unclenched his fists, and yielded himself to the stirrings of curiosity. Without entirely abandoning caution, he searched in his pocket for some matches, lighted one, and stooping down looked sharply about him for the missile. It lay at his feet, and still suspicious of an assailant who might take advantage of his bending attitude, he hastily picked it up. It was something tightly rolled, soft and silken to the touch, and seemed to contain a quantity of hard things like pebbles.
Westerveldt moved into a broad patch of moonlight, and after another quick glance of caution about him, proceeded to examine this object which had left its smarting remembrance on his cheek. As he turned it over carefully, it began to unroll, and as he drew it out to its full length, he gave an involuntary whistle of surprise; for it was a long stocking of violet silk, the small foot heavy with sharp-edged stones. Something new in weapons and bespeaking feminine cooperation and doubtless invention, he reflected.
Smiling cynically, he ran his hand into the depths of the stocking; but his fingers encountered something quite different from jagged pebbles, and with a tingling sense of excitement, an intuition which made his pulses beat, he drew up a handful of jewels—pins, pendants, rings of all kinds—rubies, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds. Barely taking time to examine them, he plunged his hand in again, eager to see what further treasures this purse of Fortunatus contained, and this time he drew forth a necklace, a single strand of enormous diamonds, sparkling in the moonlight like dew-drops.
Westerveldt gasped and then stood looking at his heaped handful of gleaming gems in an almost stupefied wonder. Was he really awake, or was this merely the iridescent and unsubstantial phase of a midsummer night’s dream? He shook his shoulders impatiently. Oh, he was wide enough awake, and here were the jewels in his hand; but what did it mean? What was he to do with them?
He glanced helplessly up and down and all around. No one was in sight. The house before him—he could discern its outlines more distinctly now—was entirely dark, not a sound came from it, not even the faintest candle glimmer was anywhere visible. The whole place seemed enveloped in the dreamy atmosphere of a late summer night; and yet the stones—worth a king’s ransom—had in all possibility been thrown from one of those black gaping windows; the manner in which they struck him indicated that they had been thrown from a height.
Still standing stock-still in his square of moonlight, his outstretched hand full of glittering stones, Westerveldt ran rapidly over the probabilities of the situation. Only two hypotheses appealed to his sense of reason. The first was, that some one behind one of those dark windows had thrown the jewels out in a moment of anger. But what, he asked himself, could have been the occasion for such an emotion? There had certainly been no struggle or he would have heard it; the night was too still for him not to have done so. The other hypothesis was that they had been thrown down by a burglar in a moment of panic, anticipating a discovery which did not occur. This was the more reasonable theory, Westerveldt felt.
He saw the whole picture. The burglar, in the act of looting the lady’s safe, fancied he heard a noise. He dared not conceal his booty on his person, and glancing desperately about him, saw the lady’s stocking—the first thing at hand. Hastily he thrust the jewels into it, rolled it into a compact ball, and threw it out of the window, trusting to luck to make his own stealthy escape, and gather up his eccentrically concealed treasure from the lawn in his flight.
Of course there was still another supposition, namely, that the burglar had arranged to drop his haul from the window to a confederate below, and that, in peering down from above, he had mistaken Westerveldt for his accomplice. In that case, the real confederate, who had probably been frightened into temporary hiding, now merely awaited the assistance of his pal to set on Westerveldt and recover the loot.
Westerveldt smiled, and his face set in those grim lines which showed the force and determination which had been powerful factors in the success of his career. Anticipating thus the probable moves of the thieves, what should he do to checkmate them? No doubt the sensible and commendatory course would be to note carefully the exact situation of the house, and then taking advantage of a good start, make a dash for the Hattons, and assuming that he got there in safety, call at the robbed mansion the next morning and return to a distracted lady her purloined jewels. Just so! But could anything be more tame? And at any rate, would his story be fully credited? Would there not always cling to him the suspicion of being the real thief, the sinner overcome by remorse? No, all the sporting blood in him rebelled. This was adventure, genuine adventure, and he could not and would not relinquish the zest of seeing the thing through.
This decided, he rolled the stocking as tightly as he could about the ornaments and making a compact package of it thrust it in his trousers’ pocket, then on second thoughts withdrew it and placed it in his breast pocket, tightly buttoning his coat over it. Then he drew back into the shade of the trees and waited. There he stood, listening keenly, his eyes glancing in all directions; but the moments dragged by and nothing happened. At last he moved again into the moonlight and looked at his watch. Half an hour had monotonously ticked by since he had begun his vigil. This savored of anything but adventure. He yawned and stretched his arms. An adjacent stone bench looked inviting and innocent, being set clear of shrubbery, and Westerveldt sank down with a sigh of relief.
He still realized the necessity of caution; but there was little to stimulate it, not even the rustle of a twig, the twitter of a sleepy bird. The windows yawned as black and empty as ever. The moon sank slowly into a bed of fleecy clouds. A night of tender breezes and faint delicate flower scents, a night for high and tender romance, not sordid and brutal conflict.
“‘In such a night,’” murmured Westerveldt, “‘did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well.’” His voice trailed. He turned his eyes upward and strove to discern the stars; but by some queer “twist of vision, the Milky Way seemed to spread over the entire surface of the sky. He looked about him and beheld trees as men, walking. Odd, but of course an illusion of the moonlight. Forgetful for the moment of possible danger, his mind dwelt upon vast and illimitable themes, the problems of the ages, the philosophies of every race, the most aspiring thoughts of men. Contemplation absorbed him. For how long, he knew not; but suddenly, he sat upright with a jerk and looked dazedly about him. Why, where was he? What had happened?
Ah, he remembered now, and hastily clapped his hands to his breast. Yes, it was safe, thank fortune! And no thanks to him! But how different everything looked, There was a strange and solemn hush on the earth, while a pale and wonderful light, not of the moon, pulsated over the sky. Westerveldt gazed with surprise and delight, and then his glance fell upon a girl who stood quite near him, looking at him with puzzled eyes in which there were a touch of apprehension and a much larger measure of hope. White draperies trailed long on the ground, her dark hair fell back from her brow and lay in a heavy plait down her back, and her deep eyes were gray, a soft gray.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as Westerveldt rose hastily to his feet.
“I—I——” he began inadequately, and then burning with the consciousness of the rectitude, even nobility of his behavior, he collected his scattered faculties and grasped for what savoir faire he possessed. “My only excuse for my presence”—his tone was slightly wounded—“is that I am waiting some stir and movement in the house yonder. I believe”—this very loftily—“that I have in my possession the property of some one within.”
“Oh-h,” the girl interrupted him, bent toward him, hands clasped. “Oh-h-h!” Her long sigh bespoke the most intense relief. “Have you a——” She paused interrogatively, while the color came and went in her soft olive cheek.
“They—or rather it, containing they”—in his anxiety to reassure her, Westerveldt ignored grammar—“hit me on the head, and I have been here ever since, waiting to know why. And now that I am in a measure enlightened, let me return to you your property.”
He drew the stocking from his pocket and handed it to her.
“Oh, thank you,” with warmest gratitude, one hand outstretched to clutch it, the other holding the lace of her robe together, while the color flowed in waves over her face. “You see,” in eager explanation, “I’m stopping with my friends here. We motored down most unexpectedly last night, and I felt a little uneasy and restless sleeping in a strange room. I always do. I put my necklace and rings and things in that,” indicating the stocking, “and then I slipped it under my pillow and——” She stopped abruptly.
“And then in the night you fancied you heard a burglar, and you threw them out of the window,” with a kindly smile of indulgent comprehension.
“No.” She hung her head, and he reflected upon the charm of her blushes. “It wasn’t that. Something, a sound or something, I do not know what, roused me a little in the night and I involuntarily slipped my hand under the pillow, with the instinct I suppose of protecting my property, and—— I was only about one third awake, I suppose,” her head drooping lower in shame-faced explanation, “and when I felt that little soft, cold, smooth bundle, I thought it was a mouse. Ugh!” She shivered at the remembrance. “So I threw it out of the window with all my might. Then feeling perfectly satisfied I fell fast asleep again. Oh, you may laugh,” with a petulant lifting of her chin. “but you don’t know how I detest mice; and just because I do, I’m always pursued by them. Why, once” —her gray eyes very widely opened and her voice lowered impressively, as if recounting a tragedy—“I woke up in the night and felt one running right up my back. Fancy!” Her antipathy expressed itself in fresh shivers. “Just fancy feeling the little cold feet of the awful creature pattering up your back!”
Westerveldt speedily and tactfully repressed all signs of amusement. “It wouldn’t be very agreeable, would it?” he admitted, with grave sympathy. “But go on, you hadn’t finished. How did you finally discover the loss of your jewels?”
“Oh, yes. Well,” taking up the broken thread of her narrative, “when I awoke again, it was to full consciousness and then I remembered the whole thing. At first, I thought it was all a dream, but alas, my remembrance was very soon confirmed by finding the jewels gone. So I threw on some things and ran down-stairs as fast as I could, hoping and praying that they had fallen on the lawn unnoticed and that I might find them without any difficulty. But I didn’t, and I was beginning to despair and feel dreadfully until I saw you sitting here. It was barely daylight, you know, and I could just make out the figure of a man sitting on the bench. Of course I was more frightened than ever then, and my first impulse was to run. Then I realized from your relaxed attitude that you were asleep; your head was down on your outstretched arm, you know. So curiosity really saved the day, for I came nearer, and then,” with a breath of relief, “I saw that you were the sort of person you are, and I began to feel more comfortable, and to hope that perhaps you might have found them. Oh, it does seem too good to be true that you did!”
"I am very glad that I did,” he said simply and sincerely.
“Oh!” she exclaimed irrelevantly. “Mice!” with an expressive gesture. “If some one would only invent a trap with a lethal chamber in it so that they wouldn’t squeak when they’re caught! It’s dreadful when they squeak. That is the reason that they overrun me. I never can have traps about.”
“Let me try and see what I can do,” John Westerveldt suggested. “A mouse-trap with a lethal chamber!” He laughed boyishly. “I'll invent one and have some made just for you. I don’t believe the rest of the world would bother with them.”
“But could you,” she cried, “invent things?”
“That is my business,” he answered modestly.
“Really!” She seated herself on the stone bench and with a negligent little gesture invited him to a place beside her. “Oh, how delightful! To be able really to invent things seems to me the most interesting thing in the world. What else have you invented? What other things have you done?”
“Oh, a few things.” He strove to speak of his achievements in the proper and conventional tones of bored indifference, but his profound interest in his work colored and warmed his voice. “The—the last thing is my aeroplane.”
“An aeroplane! But surely not the wonderful new flying-machine that the papers are full of and that every one is talking about!” She was quite breathless in her excited interest.
He squirmed a little, flushed and nodded like a guilty but pleased school-boy.
“Then you must really be—Westerveldt!” her eyes sparkling, and leaning forward the better to see him.
“Yes.” He was deeply embarrassed now. “But look!” grasping at a change of topic. “By Jove! It is dawn!”
“Dawn!” she repeated, looking about her with awed and radiant eyes. “I do not remember ever seeing the dawn before. At least, not like this. How beautiful it is!”
“Is it not?” he murmured.
For a moment they gazed upon the fair new world, seeing it with new eyes, and then the girl dropped her contemplation of the wonders of light to become keenly conscious of her appearance. Hastily, she drew her floating draperies about her and, lifting her arms, mechanically tried to bind the heavy braid of her hair about her head. Naturally, as she had nothing wherewith to hold it in place, it fell about her shoulders in a more loosened and picturesque disorder.
The growing light revealed her flushed perturbation, “I didn’t take time to dress,” she murmured. “I just threw on this negligée and hurried down.”
“Naturally,” he replied courteously.
“If I only had a hairpin! Why,” with that little petulant lift in her voice, “if you can invent aeroplanes, can’t you invent hairpins that will stay in?”
"I’ll try that, too,” he said meekly.
At that moment, some demon prompted him to look down and he caught a glimpse of her small bare feet thrust hastily into slippers. He averted his eyes immediately; but not before she had followed his glance. For a dreadful second he thought she was going to fly without one parting word; but she reconsidered this very evident intention, and rose rather grandly to her full height, determined to carry off the situation with what dignity she could command. But before she could utter the brief and conventional words which should thank and dismiss him, the whistle of a train shrilled through the calm of the early morning.
“Good gracious! That must be my train.” Westerveldt pulled his watch from his pocket. “It is, and I must catch it. I haven’t even time to go back to the Hattons for my things; I'll wire Joe to bring them in with him on a later train,” thinking aloud. “I’ve got to run.”
“And I, too, must run,” she cried. “The sun is up. The house will be opened in a few minutes. Oh, I must fly; but first let me thank you from my heart.” She smiled sweetly into his eyes‘as he took her outstretched hand.
“But you have nothing to thank me for,” he insisted. “It is I—I who must thank you. And I mean to see you soon—soon. Good-by.”
He sprinted across the lawn and down the wide tree-bordered street to the station, where a great black engine puffed and panted, its wheels already beginning their slow preliminary revolutions. Westerveldt had a bare moment to jump aboard, and throw himself breathlessly into a seat, thanking the fates that he had worn his light overcoat when he had strolled unwittingly into adventure-land the night before, as it served in a measure to conceal his evening clothes.
He settled himself comfortably and drew his hat over his closed eyes, but not to sleep. No, his action was a mere indication of a desire on his part to shut out from view the sordid, frowsy humanity crowding the seats, and to vision again the mystery of the night and the sparkle and freshness of the dawn, which had met and mingled and personified themselves in a lovely girl with sweet, dark-lashed gray eyes and a wilful mouth. But—he sat bolt upright with a suddenness which caused his fellow-travelers to lift their eyes and stare at him curiously. His paradise of dreaming had been invaded by the serpent; not of doubt, this time, but of remembrance. Idiot that he was! He took occasion here to add mental and picturesque adjectives to the bare noun, idiot, as the full measure of his stupidity burst upon him, for he did not even know her name, had not even made the least attempt to learn it. His resentment against himself flamed into an erupting Vesuvius of objurgation.
But the inherent optimism of his nature gradually asserted itself. Not for long did Westerveldt ever dwell in gloom. Being an inventor, a successful one at that, who had succeeded in convincing the world of the practicality of a fair number of his ideas, he was a young man of infinite resource, and he had sufficient faith in himself to feel sure that he would, in one way or another, have no difficulty in gaining all the information he desired.
For one thing, he knew the house where she had tarried for a night. Then he would enlist the Hattons in his service. Mrs. Hatton was probably on calling terms with the people who dwelt in the big gray mansion, or if not, she would at least know who they were, and either she or Joe should get this dearest of girls’ name for him. Simple. Quite.
Arriving in town, he had just time to change his clothes, snatch a few mouthfuls of breakfast and get downtown in time to meet some members of a syndicate who were on the verge of financially interesting themselves in his aeroplane. For several days he was in close conference with them, varied by frequent trial trips in his machine. It needed more or less adjustment, and one or two repairs, and consequently over a week passed before he again had on his evening clothes. Probably he wouldn’t have considered donning them then, so little inclined was he for social duties, if he had not been invited to dine at the home of one of his interested if not interesting capitalists.
Just before leaving his apartment, he slipped his keys into his trousers’ pocket, and was startled to hear a faint metallic rattle as they struck some object already there. He thrust his hand down to discover what it was, and his heart stood still, for his fingers closed about a ring. Slowly, reluctantly, with sickening forebodings, he drew it out. It was an enormous ruby set in dull gold, easily the gem of the whole silk-stocking collection as he remembered it. As he turned it in his fingers, it caught the light from the hall-lamp and gave back a thousand reflections.
But the sparkle of it, the gleam of its rich, wine-red beauty aroused no pleasure in him. He felt himself turn cold as he looked at it. What would she, what could she think of him? The answer was obvious; she could think but one thing. The certainty of her inevitable conclusion made him feel the desperate need of explanations. He shuddered to think of the time that had elapsed since the night he had met her, the night in which he had restored her jewels and walked off with the pick of the lot in his pocket.
Under the goad of these reflections, he resolved on immediate action. The thought of sitting through a long dinner with a vista of bridge afterward was more than he could think of. It did not even give him a qualm, in fact, it was a decided lift to his spirit to commit the unpardonable social sin of backing out of a dinner at the last moment; and so feverish were his activities that it was but the work of a few minutes to send a telegram to his hostess, change his clothes, take a “taxi” to the station, and there, after a few impatient, restless moments, board the first train for Wheaton.
On the way down he planned his next moves. First, he would go to the Hattons, tell them the whole story, get their point of view, request their advice, perhaps their assistance in the matter of speedily extricating himself from his present uncomfortable position. But when he finally stepped off the train and took his way up the quiet village street, his resolution wavered, and after hesitating a moment or two, he turned into the avenue he remembered so well. But although his heart beat high as one daring plan after another suggested itself, it sank immeasurably as he reached the house. That stood amid its brilliantly lighted neighbors as forbiddingly dark as the night itself, and as Westerveldt walked up the steps of the porch, he saw that all of the lower windows were boarded up.
Having ventured so far, however, he was not to be deterred from venturing farther. Again and again he pressed the bell, until at last, meeting no response, and convinced that the house was empty, he was about to turn away, when heavy footsteps echoed through the hall. Then innumerable bolts and bars were slowly withdrawn, and there stood before him a charwoman holding in one hand a candle which illuminated her incredibly stupid and doughlike face. Whatever her nationality, it was evident that she understood no English, for after listening a few moments to Westerveldt’s often-repeated, almost pathetic, requests to know the whereabouts of the family, she merely shook her head, until at last, her patience apparently exhausted, she slammed the door violently and without warning in his face.
It was a very dejected young man who presented himself ten minutes later at the Hattons. Fortunately, they were alone and both professed themselves delighted to see him; but their consternation at his worn and haggard appearance was evident, and he found himself under the necessity of giving such full and detailed answers to their questions as to how he had been. spending his time, and how many hours a day and night he had been working, that it was some moments before he could touch upon the subject uppermost in his thoughts.
It was a tremendous relief when he could at last take advantage of a lull in the tide of friendly solicitude to make a clean breast of the whole matter—to talk it out, even if his story elicited more amusement than the almost tragic sympathy which he felt it merited; but when he reached the present time and described his recent visit to the black and lonely house, his disappointment and dejection were so manifestly keen that the Hattons began to take his misery more seriously.
“You must mean the Weatherby place,” said Joe Hatton, knocking the ashes from his cigar. “That has been closed for a week or two, hasn't it, Alice?”
“Yes, the whole family have gone to Egypt, South Africa, or somewhere for the winter. They sailed last Saturday.”
Westerveldt groaned. Then a ray of hope brightened his eyes. “I can get their address and cable them.”
Mrs. Hatton shook her head. “I doubt if any one here knows it. You see, they only bought that place last spring, and they’ve had a constant succession of visitors, and of course, have been so completely occupied with them that very few people here have met them.”
“But of course, there is, there must be some one from whom I can find out where they are over there,” contended Westerveldt obstinately. “They haven't vanished and left an untenanted house on the hands of a caretaker. Why, man alive!” to Hatton. “Don’t you see that I’ve got to get a cable to them and learn that girl’s address?”
“But how will they know whom you mean,” asked Mrs. Hatton, with simple feminine practicality, “since you haven’t the faintest idea of her name?”
This was staggering. Westerveldt grew rather white. “I could describe her so that they would know at once whom I meant,” he insisted eagerly. “She was dark, rather dark and tall—I think she was tall and—and lovely.” His voice faltered as if even he realized the inadequacy of this description.
Mrs. Hatton gave a tiny shrug of the shoulders. “Oh, they had no end of tall, dark, pretty girls here all summer, interspersed with tall, light, pretty ones. Mrs. Weatherby was married when she was just out of college and she must have had her whole class here off and on.” She paused and reflected. “I do remember one especially attractive dark girl who was here just for a short time, a day or two. They said that she was a great heiress, an orphan, and had a wonderful collection of jewels inherited from her mother.”
Westerveldt’s loosely clasped hands hung between his knees, his eyes were on the rug at his feet. At her words, his head sank a little lower. Presently, he lifted it and brushed back the hair from his brow with an impatient gesture.
“What am I going to do?” he cried. “You both knock everything I suggest instead of giving a little helpful advice. Great Heavens! Think of my position! What am I in her eyes but a thief—just a common thief, who took occasion to carefully examine her jewels, select the best, and return the others to her with grandiloquent virtue? Ugh! And she knows who I am. I told her my name.”
“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Hatton consolingly, “she’ll think you stole that, too.”
“She can’t,” he replied gloomily. “My mug has been in all the papers and magazines lately, and she’s probably seen it. She could hardly help doing so. And think of her pluck! She hasn't shown me up, handed me over to the police, as she should have done. Neither has she made any quiet efforts to recover her property. She probably thinks I’m one of those crazy inventors she’s read about who burn all the furniture up and pawn the last loaf of bread in the house in order that they may perfect their wonderful invention. She was willing to lose a valuable ruby, in order to assist struggling genius minus a moral sense.” He bent his head upon his arm and shuddered.
Mrs. Hatton endeavored to console him by reiterating her belief that there was nothing to do but wait, absolutely nothing; and Joe, who had managed to extract a wealth of humor from the situation, crowned his offenses by urging Westerveldt, with all that joviality we bring to bear upon the troubles of our friends, to cheer up, accompanying this advice with a far too hearty slap between the shoulders.
Then Westerveldt arose with what dignity and lightness of demeanor he could summon, insisted upon taking the eleven o’clock train to town instead of remaining the night with his friends.
During the ensuing winter, he embarked seriously upon a search for a lost and lovely girl. It was the absorbing occupation of his leisure hours, and became a pursuit in itself, almost a mission. He went out socially more, far more than he had ever done before. He haunted the places where women do congregate. He even made his way into department stores and bonbon shops. He attended matinées. Almost he invaded the beauty-parlors. He put veiled advertisements in the newspapers, but no answers came, and although he saw her a thousand times, he never saw her. Although she was always just ahead of him and he hastened his steps to overtake her, he never met her. And during his eternal quest, instead of being buoyed up by hope, he was haunted by pessimistic fears that she was not in this country. He was convinced that she had gone abroad with the Weatherbys, and he carefully read all the newspaper descriptions of foreign fêtes in which Americans participated, expecting always to see some description of her beaux yeux and her wonderful jewels.
The winter dragged by, but he had not chanced upon even the faintest clue. His “lost Lenore” seemed more hopelessly lost than ever.
And then in February, he had to go out to Chicago on business, and there, late one afternoon, on Michigan Avenue, he met her. It was a cold, raw day. The lake tossed gray and angry beyond the long lines of moving carriages and rolled out to an equally gray and bleak horizon. Westerveldt saw her first, some distance away, before she saw him; and this time there were no moments of hope, or half conviction. From the moment his eyes fell upon her he knew positively and irrevocably that it was she, and his heart throbbed with the joy that the mere sight of her gave him. Who could mistake her? That sweet, petulant mouth, the individual way her hair fell in great sweeping waves over her temples, those dark-lashed, direct gray eyes.
But, and he noted this with a pang, she looked a little thinner, paler than she had that summer morning of their one meeting, and odd as it was, even to his untutored eyes, she was shabby, obviously, unmistakably shabby.
Then she lifted her eyes and saw him, and over the delicate oval of her face—oh, a little thinner and surely more finely drawn than in the summer—there flashed a color and a light.
Their steps hastened, almost ran, then they stopped abruptly.
“It is you!” he cried.
“It is really you!” she sighed, and the exclamations were simultaneous.
Then he turned, and slowly, very slowly, they walked on together.
“How—how I have searched for you!” he stammered.
“For me?” tremulously. “Why?”
“Oh, surely you know why,” he murmured.
She turned a rosier red. “Because—because——”
“Because I could not bear to have you think such things of me. All these months you must have thought of me as a thief, condemned me as a thief; but that was not the only reason. There was—there is another, deeper, more vital——”
“A thief!” horror and surprise in her tone, her eyes. “A thief! How could I think that after that night in Wheaton? Why should I have thought such a thing?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” he said bitterly. “What else could you have thought of me when I turned over to you all your jewels with the exception of what was probably of the greatest value among them—a magnificent pigeon’s-blood ruby?”
She looked up at him quickly, and he thought a little strangely, through her long, dark lashes, and then those upcurled lashes fell again on her rose-stained cheeks,
“But a thief!” in tender reproof. “Why, I only thought, I only thought you had kept it as a souvenir of that night.”
“‘Blessed are the pure in heart!’” He almost shouted it. A souvenir! The lovely innocence of the thought—that he had kept a ring of tremendous value as a souvenir!
“Just imagine,” he said, “the difficulties of my search for you! I did not, do not now, even know your name.”
“Lenore,” she answered. “Lenore Hastings.”
“Not really!” he cried. “My lost Le——”
“Don’t say it!” quickly.
“My found Lenore,” he supplemented.
Was it strange that she should blush again? At any rate it was not surprising, for really she blushed beautifully.
“But what have you been doing since we met?” hastily retreating to less dangerous ground. “Have you invented the mouse-trap with the lethal chamber, and the hairpins that will stay in? The newspapers tell how far and fast you have gone with your air-ships, but they don’t say anything about the other things.”
“Never mind,” he said. “You shall have them. The newspapers never deal with the most important topics. But wait!” He drew from his pocket a small leather case. “I invented the lock on this, at any rate. It has never left me, for I did not know what minute I might meet you, you see.”
He opened it and drew out the ruby. The pale February sun struggled through the clouds and shimmered over the lake and avenue, and the ring caught its fugitive gleams and held them in its sparkling facets. But Lenore shrank and viewed it with distaste.
“Horrid thing! Think”—again she lifted her sweet eyes to his—“of all the self-reproach and anxiety it has caused you!” She put out a disdainful thumb and finger and lifted the ring from its bed. “There, you trouble-maker! I never want to see you again.” With a sweeping gesture, she threw it far out toward the lake.
“Good Heavens!” He turned a face of pale consternation upon her, a horrible fear that she had a mania for throwing away jewels chilling his blood. “You have thrown away a fortune.” He made as if to dash among the crowding vehicles.
“But it is not!” she cried earnestly. “Believe me, it is not. Do you not know? But of course you cannot. I am a poor struggling little actress, no heiress with a collection of jewels, I assure you. I had a good position last summer—I have none at all now—and in my part I had to wear a lot of jewels. Mrs. Weatherby is a classmate of mine, and she stopped at the theater one night last summer and insisted on my going down to Wheaton in her motor to spend the night, and she literally carried me off in costume, insisting that she would supply all necessities after I got there. But the jewels, the whole lot of them were paste. The whole lot of them!” vehemently.
“Oh, no!” He shook his head with a tremulous sigh of relief. “Not the whole lot of them. One jewel was real, and I want her to have and to hold forever.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1935, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 88 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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