Eleven Possible Cases Part 22

"The latest is that The Death Line has moved. The Thurbers have a private wire, and I just heard that Denver is cut off now! It looks as if it was every man for himself."

So terrible was this announcement, and so engrossed was I with the despairing thoughts that it gave rise to, that I took little heed of what was going on about me until I reached Ca.n.a.l Street. The one dull conviction that it was useless to fight against now was that annihilation had set in; that some destroying wave had started out to encircle the globe and that the race was doomed. Something, G.o.d alone knew what, had happened to our planet, and humanity was to be swept away in one of those cataclysms with which soulless Nature prepares for a new order of existence.

I was rudely awakened from this reverie of wretchedness by the crowd which surged against me with a blind, unvindictive violence. My one desire was to get uptown to the woman I loved and had neglected, and I saw that every minute was adding to the difficulty.

How I reached the Brevoort House I do not know. But there I found a number of citizens who had not utterly lost their heads, and who had come together for counsel. There was a private wire in the house, and they were receiving intelligence from several central points in the city. The looks of these men, who were huddled into the parlor, were enough to dismay the most resolute observer. Their pale faces and painfully set mouths indicated the sense of an awful crisis which wisdom did not know how to meet or avoid. A well-known citizen read the dispatches to them as they were received, and torn as I was by impatience, my curiosity held me there to hear. It was now about half-past eleven in the morning. The rapidity with which events had moved since I got up was made startlingly apparent by the information here furnished. The authorities, together with a number of influential citizens, had come together as if by a common instinct at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The Mayor, the Police and Fire Commissioners, several wealthy bankers, and a number of prominent clergymen were holding some kind of council and sending out appeals for co-operation and addresses to the public, which latter were entirely unheeded. As I forced myself into the room I saw and heard a venerable and majestic gentleman, evidently a clergyman, addressing those present in an impa.s.sioned manner. There were tears in his eyes and an awful sadness in his voice.

"Men and brethren," he said, "it is appointed unto all men once to die.

If it be appointed unto us who remain to die together, let us die like Christians who still retain our faith in eternal justice and eternal mercy, and not like wild beasts that devour each other."

A report came that the fatal east wind was blowing. And at this there was a general movement of those present, as if the time were too short to waste in longer listening. I came up Lafayette Place to Astor Place with the intention of reaching Fourth Avenue. Both s.p.a.ces were choked with people, and on Eighth Street I saw a woman on the steps of a private residence, wildly calling on the mob, which paid no attention to her, to repent, for the day of judgment was at hand. Her white hair was blown over her face and her arms were frantically gesticulating. Into the great hall of the Cooper Union a ma.s.s of religious people had flocked, and a number of speakers were making addresses and offering up prayers. When I pa.s.sed the woman who was exhorting the crowd I had noticed the manner in which her hair, which was of soft, flossy white, streamed out straight in front of her, but it did not occur to me until I reached the square in front of the Cooper Union that this was caused by the peculiar and ominous draft of wind from the east of which I had heard so much, for it was there that I saw a crowd pointing up to the roof of the vast building known as the Bible House, which appeared to be covered with people. Some of them were holding flags and drapery, and the material floated out westward without any of the undulating motion which always marks a flag in a disturbed current. These extemporized pennants stood out as if they were starched. I could see that this sign produced a dumb sort of terror in the crowd. It seemed to me then that all emotion of which I was capable was centered in the one desire to get to the woman I loved and die with her. A crus.h.i.+ng and at the same time an animating remorse, as if somehow I had been responsible for her death at least, in disregarding her warnings, and somehow doubly guilty in mistrusting her motives, unmanned me and inflamed me. It was with something of the same disregard of everybody but oneself that I had seen in others that I fought my way to Twenty-first Street. What brutalities I committed need not be recounted. That hour remains with me an acute and jangled memory of frenzy. I reached the steps of Judge Brisbane's house torn and bleeding. The terrible scenes were in my eyes, and the dreadful, monotonous tumult of human desperation--that vast sigh of doomed humanity, pierced here and there by the wails and shrieks of despair and the cries of innocence for help, was in my ears. The celerity with which it had all come on left no chance for cool reason.

An invisible phantom was at the heels of the community and we were part of a mighty stampede. After fumbling for an instant at the bell and pus.h.i.+ng back several ghastly creatures who were on the steps, I must have applied my shoulder to the door and pushed it in. Some one appeared to be resisting on the other side, but it gave way and I half fell into Judge Brisbane's vestibule. An instant later we were looking into each other's faces, I, b.l.o.o.d.y and soiled and ragged and wild with the frenzy of fear and impatience; he, pale as death, but resolute, and holding an enormous bar over me.

"Quick!" he said. "Help me fasten this door!"

That sudden call of duty struck something habitual in me, and, without knowing exactly what I was doing, I found myself a.s.sisting him in barricading the door. The endeavor somewhat changed the current of my thoughts from the danger that was unseen to the danger that was storming under our windows. I must have muttered some kind of excuse for my conduct to the Judge, for he said: "No time for apologies or recriminations now. The house is full of my neighbors, who have come here for protection. Go upstairs and look after the women. The best and only thing we can do is to preserve a quiet place to die in, and not be trampled to pieces. Are you armed?"

I dashed up the broad staircase, and found the upper rooms occupied by women, some of whom, in morning attire hastily thrown on, were sitting around with their heads in their hands, while others were huddled at the windows, staring with strained looks of terror at the crowds on the street. Walking up and down the room, wringing his hands, a middle-aged man was giving expression to the most terrible irony and cowardice, without reference to his listeners.

I ran my eye over the huddled groups of frightened women. The one I sought was not there. I flew through the groaning figures on the stairway up to her chamber. I knocked loudly, and called her by name pa.s.sionately. Then I listened. I heard nothing but the dull sounds of the human tumult that came through the open cas.e.m.e.nt, and the sighing tones of the telegraph wires as the steady draft from the east swept through them. I shook the door, and abjured her to come to me. Then in my madness I burst it in. She was on her knees at the bed, with her hands on her ears, and her head buried in the bedclothes. I fell down on my knees beside her, and put my arm around her. "Kate," I said, "we will die together. Look up. Love at least is eternal." She was cold. I caught her head between my hands, and turned her beautiful face toward me. My G.o.d, she was dead! Dead, with her staring eyes full of terror, and her beautiful mouth set in hard and ghastly lines. Then it was that I felt rise up within me for the first time the rebellious bitterness of the natural man. Need I tell you that at such moments man is little better than an animal, save in his free agency that enables him to defy? I pa.s.sed hours there--moaning, cursing, bewailing. When at last the force of the paroxysm had expended itself, I shook my fist in the face of heaven, with the obduracy of Pagan Greek, and said: "Come on now, you envious Fates, and do your worst speedily, or I will be too quick for you!"

Judge Brisbane found me there, raving.

"Do you know?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, "and I am grateful. She is spared much that we must endure."

"And so," I said, "life, love, and the vaunted future of the race end in mockery."

"It seems so," he replied. "But we cannot be sure. Come with me."

We ascended to the roof. The spectacle that greeted us was indescribable. The tops of all the houses were black with people, who were staring mutely and with childish terror into the West. The steady, subdued organ tone of the rus.h.i.+ng atmosphere could now be heard above all else. We stood there in silence a few moments, and then I said, "It's terrible. What do you suppose is taking place?"

"I suppose," replied the Judge, "that we are losing our atmosphere.

Reeling it off, so to speak, slowly, as we revolve. Our planet has entered some portion of the ethereal s.p.a.ce where the conditions are sucking us dry of oxygen. As it recedes from the earth the water disappears, and we shall be left to revolve like the moon, without air and without liquid, and consequently without life."

He said this meditatively, less as if he were answering my question than if he were formulating his own fears.

"Then," I remarked, "if this takes place gradually, the millions have got to struggle and writhe and fight together in suffocation. We can at least blow our brains out and cheat such a fate."

"I should hate," said the Judge, "to think that the man who was to marry Kate had not the bravery to face his destiny."

That was all that was said. We came down, and some ripples of intelligence reached us during the afternoon from one or two persons who made their way into the house. We learned that in the frenzy of fear the populace were committing the most extraordinary excesses. The sh.o.r.e line of the Atlantic was crowded with people, many of whom plunged into the ocean in the vain attempt to get away. The scenes in the city were too revolting to narrate, for a large cla.s.s of the community, released from all restraint of moral and civil law, were bent on securing all the lawless pleasures that force could command, during the few hours that was left to them. And the line was steadily coming East. Chicago was cut off at twelve o'clock. And at four intelligence had ceased coming from Buffalo. At this time the sound of the winds was like the roar of the sea. I had torn myself away from the window where I had been staring at the now packed and struggling ma.s.ses of people, and had locked myself in the room with the dead body of Kate. There was a vial of opium on her table that had been used for neuralgia; I swallowed it, and sat down by the bedside. I know not how long I remained there. But a loud report, as of a discharged cannon, roused me. I remember staggering and panting in the dark, with a semi-consciousness that the end had come, and I now know that report was occasioned by the bursting of the drums of my ears.

I remember nothing more. I have given you a plain statement of my experiences in that crisis, and I dare say they are uneventful enough by the side of the experiences of millions.

SHALL HE MARRY HER?

BY ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.

CHAPTER I.

When I met Taylor at the club the other night, he looked so cheerful I scarcely knew him.

"What is it?" cried I, advancing with outstretched hand.

"I am going to be married," was his gay reply. "This is my last night at the club."

I was glad, and showed it. Taylor is a man for whom domestic life is a necessity. He has never been at home with us, though we all liked him and he, in his way, liked us.

"And who is the fortunate lady?" I inquired; for I had been out of town for some time and had not as yet been made acquainted with the latest society news.

"My intended bride is Mrs. Walworth, the young widow----"

He must have seen a change take place in my expression, for he stopped.

"You know her, of course," he added, after a short study of my face.

I had by this time regained my self-possession.

"Of course," I repeated, "and I have always thought her one of the most attractive women in town. Another shake upon it, old man?"

But my heart was heavy and my mind perplexed, notwithstanding the forced cordiality of my tones, and I took an early opportunity to withdraw by myself and think over the situation.

Mrs. Walworth! She was a pretty woman, and what was more, she was, to all appearance, a woman whose winning manners bespoke a kindly heart.

"Just the person," I contemplated, "whom I would pick out for the helpmate of my somewhat exacting friend, if----" I paused on that if. It was a formidable one, and grew none the smaller or less important under my broodings. Indeed, it seemed to dilate until it a.s.sumed gigantic proportions, worrying me and weighing so heavily upon my conscience that I at last rose from the newspaper at which I had been hopelessly staring, and looking up Taylor again, asked him how soon he expected to become a Benedict.

His answer startled me. "In a week," he replied, "and if I have not asked you to the ceremony, it is because Helen is not in a position to----"

I supposed he finished the sentence, but I did not hear him. If the marriage was so near, of course it would be folly on my part to attempt to hinder it. I drew off for the second time.

But I could not remain easy. Taylor is a good fellow, and it would be a shame to allow him to marry a woman with whom he could never be happy.

He would feel any such disappointment so keenly, so much more keenly than most men. A lack of principle or even of sensibility on her part, would make him miserable. Antic.i.p.ating heaven, it would not take a h.e.l.l to make him wretched, a purgatory would do it. Was I right, then, in letting him proceed in his intentions regarding Mrs. Walworth, when she possibly was the woman who----I paused and tried to call up her countenance before me. It was a sweet one and possibly a true one. I might have trusted her for myself, but I do not look for perfection and Taylor does, and will certainly go to the bad if he is deceived in his expectations. But in a week! It is too late for interference--only it is never too late till the knot is tied. As I thought of this, I decided impulsively, and perhaps you may say unwisely, to give him a hint of his danger, and I did it in this wise.

"Taylor," said I, when I had him safely in my own rooms, "I am going to tell you a bit of personal history, curious enough I think to interest you even upon the eve of your marriage. I do not know when I shall see you again, and I should like you to know how a lawyer and a man of the world can sometimes be taken in."

He nodded, accepting the situation good-humoredly, though I saw by the abstraction with which he gazed into the fire, that I should have to be very interesting to lure him from the thoughts that engrossed him. As I meant to be very interesting, this did not greatly concern me.

"One morning last spring," I began, "I received in my morning mail a letter, the delicate penmans.h.i.+p of which at once attracted my attention and awakened my curiosity. Turning to the signature, I read the name of a young lady friend of mine, and, somewhat startled at the thought that this was the first time I had ever seen the handwriting of one I knew so well, I perused the letter with an interest that presently became painful as I realized the tenor of its contents. I will not quote the letter, though I could, but confine myself to saying that after a modest recognition of my friends.h.i.+p for her--quite a fatherly friends.h.i.+p, I a.s.sure you, as she is only eighteen and I, as you know, am well on toward fifty--she proceeded to ask, in an humble and confiding spirit, for the loan--do not start--of fifty dollars. Such a request coming from a young girl, well connected, and with every visible sign of being generously provided for by her father, was certainly startling to an old bachelor of settled ways and strict notions, but remembering her youth and the childish innocence of her manner, I turned over the page and read as her reason for proffering such a request, that her heart was set upon aiding a certain poor family that stood in immediate need of food, clothes, and medicines, but that she could not do what she wished because she had already spent all the money allowed her by her father for such purposes, and dared not go to him for more, as she had once before offended him by doing this, and feared if she repeated her fault he would carry out the threat he had then made of stopping her allowance altogether. But the family was a deserving one and she could not see any member of it starve, so she came to me, of whose goodness she was a.s.sured, convinced I would understand her perplexity and excuse her--and so forth and so forth, in language quite childlike and entreating, which, if it did not satisfy my ideas of propriety, at least touched my heart, and made any action which I could take in the matter extremely difficult.

"To refuse her request would be at once to mortify and aggrieve her; to accede to it and give her the fifty dollars she asked--a sum, by the way, I could not well spare--would be to encourage an action, easily pardoned once, but which if repeated would lead to unpleasant complications, to say the least. The third course of informing her father of what she needed I did not even consider, for I knew him well enough to be sure that nothing but pain to her would be the result. I therefore compromised the affair by enclosing the money in a letter in which I told her that I comprehended her difficulty and sent with pleasure the amount she needed, but that as a friend I must add that while in the present instance she had run no risk of being misunderstood or unkindly censured, that such a request made to another man and under other circ.u.mstances might provoke a surprise capable of leading to the most unpleasant consequences, and advised her if she ever again found herself in such a strait to appeal directly to her father, or else to deny herself a charity which she was in no position to bestow.