Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 34

Thus driven into a corner Adelaide looked him squarely in the eyes, and braced herself for the attack.

"You know that I love you, Adelaide?"

"Yes, I know it."

"That I have loved you from the first moment that I saw you--desperately, hopelessly?"

"Thank you for saying that, Professor Waite; it would have been wicked in me to have given you hope. I never meant to do so. I am glad that you have not misunderstood me. And since you give me credit for not encouraging you, rather for striving to keep you from this avowal, why have you spoken? I would so gladly have spared you the pain, the humiliation of a refusal."

"You have not allowed me to finish what I was saying. I loved you at first hopelessly for I saw that you scorned me; but lately you have not scorned me. You have pitied me; you have been very kind and considerate; your manner has wholly changed, and I believed that your feelings had changed also."

Something in Adelaide's honest eyes flamed up as he spoke. She could not even look a lie, though she tried hard to do so.

"I am right," he cried triumphantly, "you have changed! You love me?

Adelaide, you love me!"

His arms were almost about her, but she kept him off.

"It is impossible, Professor Waite. It can never be," she replied solemnly.

"Never is a long day. I will not urge you, or hasten you. I will be patient and wait, for you have changed, and you will love me wholly by and by. It is our destiny. G.o.d meant us for each other. I cannot

Make thee glorious by my pen And famous by my sword,

but I can do it with my brush, and I will spend my life painting you, Adelaide. Art and Love! It is too much for mortal man to possess and live."

"Be content with art," Adelaide replied gently. "It is a great gift, and must console you, for I cannot be your wife."

"Cannot? Why not?"

"I will tell you. You think you love me, but it will pa.s.s. I regard you very highly, but not above duty. The feeling which I have for you, Professor Waite, cannot be love, since it is perfectly easy for me now to give you up----"

"No," he a.s.sented; "if that is true you do not love me."

"Listen! The reason that it is easy for me, is not that I do not respect and admire you; not that I am not grateful to you, and do not suffer in giving you pain; not that I might not come to care still more for you, but because I know that a far tenderer heart than mine is wholly yours; that some one else, who richly deserves your affection, loves you with an utter self-abnegation of which I am incapable----"

"I know of whom you speak," he cried impatiently, "but she is a child, and will outgrow this fancy. G.o.d knows that I am innocent, Adelaide, of having ever deluded her foolish little heart."

"All too innocent; you might have treated her more kindly!"

"What! When I can never love her?"

"Never is a long day. You have said so. You are going away. Try to forget me and to love her, and when you return again two years hence to America----"

"When I return she will be married; she will, at least, have outgrown this silly dream."

Adelaide shook her head. "Promise me that you will do as I ask; that you will go and ask her when you come again."

"And if she refuses me, as she certainly will, may I come to you for the reward of my obedience?"

Again the tell-tale light flashed in Adelaide's eyes, but she only said: "She will not refuse you." And in the hall Milly's voice was heard in a high key, with the best of intentions, announcing the return of the guests from the dining-room, as she replied to some banter of Stacey's:

"Indeed, Stacey Fitz Simmons, I never change my mind--never."

"Good-by," said Adelaide.

Professor Waite raised the _portiere_ for her to pa.s.s. "You are very cruel," he murmured.

"You will thank me for this some day," she said, and the curtain of an impenetrable fate fell between them.

Milly seized my arm a few moments later. "I don't understand it at all,"

she said, "but Adelaide has certainly refused Professor Waite. I met him just now in the hall, and he glared at me like a maniac. I was positively afraid of him. I ran in to speak to Adelaide, but others had entered before me, and she only took my hand and squeezed it tight, while she talked with the Bishop. And Tib, she was as white as a sheet."

While making allowances for Milly's exaggerations, it seemed probable to me that her deductions were correct. Something unusual had happened, for when we went to our rooms we found that Adelaide had already retired for the night, and had taken Cynthia's empty room, leaving a note for Milly saying that she had a headache and would rather be alone.

If we had known, Milly and I, that Adelaide had put from her a love whose dearness she only realized after its sacrifice, we might have saved her years of heroic self-abnegation, and so have frustrated G.o.d's plan for making her a resolute, generous, and n.o.ble character.

But we did not know it, and the two girls who loved each other so dearly looked into each other's eyes at parting, and thought that they read each other's souls there, and yet misunderstood the reading as completely as if they had been utter strangers.

It was fortunate, shall we not say providential, that Adelaide occupied Cynthia's room that night, and that she was so disturbed that she could not sleep? for toward morning she noticed a bright light s.h.i.+ning through the transom over the door. Her first thought was that the thief was at work at the cabinet, and stealing cautiously from her bed she peered through the key-hole. There was no one near the cabinet, and throwing on a wrapper she softly opened the door. The room was vacant and the light which she had noticed streamed in from the window. On looking out what was her horror to see that the rear of the house was in flames. The fire had originated in the kitchen, and was making its way toward the front of the building. Her presence of mind did not desert her. She stepped to Milly's room, wakened her gently and told her what was the matter, and then her clear voice rang out, "Fire, fire!" as she hastened to Madame's room, sounding the telegraphic alarm in the corridor as she went. How differently people behave during a crisis like this! With the exception of Adelaide, I think we all lost our wits to a certain extent. Milly, although wakened so gently, was quite frightened out of hers. She dressed herself with extreme deliberation, heating her curling irons in the gas jet and crimping her bangs very prettily. She put on one high-b.u.t.toned boot and one Louis Seize slipper, but was particular about her gloves--fastening every b.u.t.ton--and came to me to be helped with her graduation dress, which laced in the back.

Winnie was also greatly excited. She donned a diminutive blazer tennis jacket over her nightgown, and seeming to consider herself in full dress, rushed off to awaken Miss Noakes, carrying a small pitcher of ice-water in her hand with which to help extinguish the fire. Having forcibly entered Miss Noakes's room, she emptied her pitcher in the face of that indignant woman. I was not much better. Possessed with the idea that I must save things, I dragged "the commissary" from under my bed, and filled it with an absurd collection of useless articles--old school books, empty pickle jars, the tidies from the chairs, all the soap from the wash-stand, a soap stone which my mother had insisted on my having as a remedy for cold feet; this I carefully wrapped in my flannel petticoat to avoid breakage. I then tossed in the globes from the gas fixtures, and finding that the cover of the trunk would not go down, sat upon it, crus.h.i.+ng the frail gla.s.s globes to atoms. It was at this juncture that Milly came out to have her dress laced, and I was so dazed that I obeyed her. Adelaide entered a few moments later, and, spreading a blanket on the floor, opened the door leading into the studio for the first time since our initial escapade of the school year. Her intensity of feeling gave her the strength required to push the heavy chest aside, and she hastily collected all of Professor Waite's sketches and studies, wrapped them in the blanket, and descended the turret stairs with them.

Managing--how, she never knew--to burst open the door at the foot, and to carry the heavy package through the crowd which had now collected across the park to the Home of the Elder Brother, where Emma Jane received them. Winnie meantime had returned from her life-saving expedition, and a.s.sisted me in tumbling the commissary out of the window, following it with every other piece of furniture in the room.

We had some difficulty with the cabinet, but finally our united efforts succeeded in toppling it over the balcony, narrowly missing crus.h.i.+ng a fireman who was coming up the escape to order us to stop throwing out the furniture, as the fire had been extinguished.

"How provoking!" was Winnie's first exclamation. "All this excitement for nothing!" The fire had merely burned out the interior woodwork of the kitchen; but had it not been for Adelaide's prompt alarm, it was impossible to tell how much damage or even loss of life might have ensued. On ascertaining that there was no longer any danger, Adelaide attempted to carry back the pictures, but found herself quite unable to do so, and a procession of four of the Home boys was formed to bring them.

Adelaide begged us all to promise not to tell Professor Waite of her attempt to rescue his property, and as we were all very much mortified by our own absurd performances, we readily complied with her request.

It was late in the morning when we bethought ourselves of picking up our shattered property, which Winnie and I had tossed into the yard.

Fortunately, our trunks of clothing had been so heavily packed that they had not shared this fate. We descended and viewed the heap of wreckage with dismay. Cerberus came out to aid us, and, removing the broken lounge and table, discovered the old oak cabinet an almost unrecognizable jumble of carved panels, for after it had fallen the lounge had descended upon it with the force of a catapult.

Winnie and I picked up the panels, lamenting loudly over the mischief which we had done.

"No great harm, after all," said Adelaide consolingly. "The panels are only separated at the joints; the wood is so hard that they have not really broken," and then she gave a little cry: "Winnie, what does this mean? Here is your essay!"

"Has Giovanni de' Medici returned it?" I asked.

"It would seem so," Winnie replied, in great excitement. "See, girls, here is every bit of the stolen money! The ghost has kept his word, and has returned it after his confession was read publicly."

"Where did you find it?" I asked, utterly mystified.

"Right here, in the drawer to which we had lost the key, just under the upper part of the cabinet. You remember it has been locked since the very first day of school."

"But is the money all there?"

"Yes; your forty-seven dollars, and the sixty from the Catacomb Party for the Home."

"How did it ever come there?"