The Doomsman by Van Tassel Sutphen (books to get back into reading .txt) 📕

His personal belongings were not burdensome to transfer—the books, half a dozen in all, his revolver and field-glass, and a good ash bow with twelve dozen arrows, each bearing his private mark of a scarlet feather. These last he had been at work upon through many a long evening in the last two months, and he was sure that they would serve him well should need arise. Clothing and blankets he did not trouble about, even with the cold weather close at hand, for he could reckon certainly on finding abundant supplies of this nature in the city itself.

On the fourth night after the finding of the bottle Constans swung lightly out of his garret window. He cast one farewell glance at the shuttered windows of Messer Hugolin's office. Through a chink struggled a feeble beam of pale, yellow light, but his uncle was poring, doubtless, over his ledgers and had heard no sound. The wolf-hound Grip wagged his tail as Constans passed, and he patted his head, the one single creature in his uncle's household who might regret his absence on the morrow. Now the way was clear; he stole off into the darkness, finding no difficulty in scaling the wall, and so was free.

The night was misty and starless and the tide on a[Pg 92] strong ebb. The voyage down-stream was without incident, and by midnight he had landed within the city lines, but much farther up-town than upon the occasion of his first adventure. His plan was to seek some uninhabited house within convenient distance of the library building and make that his temporary headquarters. He found what he wanted in the block immediately to the westward of the library, and in three or four trips he had transported thither his stock of food and other impedimenta. The boat had leaked badly on the way down the river, and was plainly unseaworthy. There was no place in which to hide the craft, and to allow her to remain moored at the pier would be tantamount to announcing his arrival to the first sharp-eyed Doomsman who might chance to pass that way. So, pushing her out into the current with a vigorous shove from his foot, Constans watched the little hull disappear in the darkness. Henceforth he must depend entirely upon his own resources, inadequate as they were for the task before him. But upon this phase of the situation he would not allow himself to dwell. Such unprofitable meditation could breed naught but irresolution and be unnerving to both body and mind; if he were to play the coward now he but invited the fate he feared. Courage, then, and forward![Pg 93]

A young girl sat before a magnificent fireplace of cut stone gazing into the fire of drift-wood that burned diffidently upon a hearth whose spaciousness would have been more fittingly adorned by Vergil's "no small part of a tree." Out-of-doors the snow was whirling down in small, frozen flakes that the northwest gale ground into powder against the granite walls and then sifted through every crack and crevice; not a door-sill or window-seat but wore its decoration of a pure white wreath. Bitterly cold it had grown with the closing in of the dusk, and the girl drew her cloak, a superb garment of Russian sables, closer about her shoulders and stretched out her hands to the dying blaze. Then she clapped them impatiently. A long interval and a middle-aged man answered the summons—a servant, as the coarse quality of his clothing proclaimed. He shuffled across the floor, his big boots creaking unpleasantly.

"More wood, Ugo," said the girl, without looking around; "and I do wish you would grease your boots. It is unbearable the way you clatter about."

"Grease my boots!" echoed the man, with ironic emphasis. "That is good counsel, seeing there isn't[Pg 94] enough lard in the house for the frying of an egg; yes, and no egg to fry."

The girl half turned, as though about to speak, then checked herself. Ugo went on impertinently:

"I could see long ago how things were going, but, Lord, what was the use of breaking my heart over it! A dainty lip means a short purse-string, and a sick woman's fancy is a bottomless well. Let's have plain speaking about this; it can't hurt any one now, and your mother——"

He stopped short, disconcerted, for all his bravado, by the sudden glint of red that lit up the girl's eyes. Her hand plucked at the black ribbon around her throat; yet when she spoke her voice was clear and even.

"Never mind about my mother," she said, and the man kept sulky silence.

"Is it really true that there is no food in the house?" she continued.

"There was never a rope made that hadn't an end," answered the servant, with a trifle more of his former assurance. "Not a scrap of bacon nor a handful of flour in the larder; even the rats will tell you that. I saw two of them leaving to-day, and I've about made up my mind to follow them."

The girl unlocked a drawer in the teak-wood table that stood at her elbow, and took from it a leathern thong some eight inches in length and knotted together at the ends, a purse-string in common parlance. Upon it were strung three of the thin brass tokens pierced in the centre by a square hole that were in ordinary use among the Doomsmen as currency, redeemable against the material supplies on hand in the public storehouses.[Pg 95]

The girl untied the thong and let the coins fall upon the table. She pushed them over to the fellow with a gesture superbly indifferent.

"Go now," she said, curtly. The man Ugo pocketed the money with a darkening face and turned to depart. At the door he hesitated, making as though he would say a final word. But the girl cut him short.

"Go!" she reiterated, and he had no choice but to obey.

"I should have been in peril of having my ear nicked," he said, under his breath, as he crossed the threshold. "It's just as well that I kept my tongue between my teeth and concluded not to mind Quinton Edge's business." He closed the door.

It had grown quite dark, and the fire was making its last stand for life. Only one small piece of wood remained unconsumed, and the flame licked at it lazily, like a beast of prey hanging over a carcass, gorged to repletion and yet unwilling to give over employment so delicious. Suddenly the girl rose to her feet and went to one of the long windows that looked out upon the street. The casement shook and rattled under the gale's rough hand. Hardly knowing what she did, she flung the window wide open.

In an instant she seemed to have been transported into the midst of the tumult, her face lashed by windy whips, her eyes blinded by fine particles of frozen snow, her ears deafened by the multitudinous voices of the storm sprites shrieking to their fellows. Something in her nature, fierce and untamed, leaped forth to meet the tempest. Intoxicated by the strong wine of its fury, she flung out her arms, half fearing, half hoping that she might be swept away, whirled[Pg 96] like some wild sea-bird, into the heart of the madness. A