Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 127, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1904 — Woman The Mystery [ARTICLE]

Woman The Mystery

By HENRY HERMAN

CHAPTER I. three fatal days in June, 1848, and the Rm St. Jacques was a pandemonium. Ths whole street was one long line of barricades made of stones, timber, overturned wagons and handcarts, barrels, furniture—anything, in fact, desperate *»en could lay their hands on and pile ■p high as a breastwork. Overhead the fierce June sun blasted on a cloudless sky, and the soldiers panted with the parching heat, their faces black with powder, their uniforms torn to ah reds. Shirt-sleeved and bareheaded, they fought on, leaving no man alive where they had passed. Wihile the satanic din roared and crashed in the street below, an old man sat on the top floor of a small, tumbledown building at the back of one of the meanest houses. He was tall and thin. A girl of some sixteen or seventeen summers, as frail in figure as the man, with a face which as yet gave but little apparent promise of a beauty to come but for a curious glitter in a pair of big, deep-blue eyes, crouched in a corner of the room, holding her hands to her ears. The man rose at last. His right leg was paralyzed, and he dragged it along painfully and awkwardly as he walked. He limped slowly to the closed door, and listened. “They are coming nearer,'’ he gasped, while his face grew whiter and his eyes glittered feverishly. "They are coming nearer. They will' kill me like a dog, Uke a rat, like a snake!" The girl rose and went to him and threw her white arms around his neck and clung to him. “There may be an escape,” she whispered, hoarsely. “Surely they will not kill an old man like you, who is unarmed and can do no harm.” “I know better,” he growled. “They bave not forgotten that my ‘Song of .the Streets’ was sung in every wine shop. They will kill me, and—there, I do not mind. One or two bayonet thrusts, and there will be an end. I have lived long enough in this world; I am tired of being hunted ahd of dragging myself from cellar to roof, and from roof to cellar.” She clung to him again and kissed his .cold lips. An instinctive shudder crept through him at the touch, and he -panted, aa with one convulsive and nearly agonised clutch he gripped her by the shoulder and looked into her big eyes. “I am not so very terrible?” he questioned, with a feverish tremor. “Am I a wolf or a tiger?” “No, father, dear.” she said; “you are the best and the kindest of men. If you would only confide in me, if you would only tell me why you are always so troubled, why such a load seems always to be crushing you down? And now, iu this terrible hour, who knows? There may be hope for you still.” * “There is somebody coming up the atairs,” he cried, with gaunt terror in every feature. "Go and see who it is.” “It is I—Henri,” said a youthful male roice, husky with excitement. “Let me in quick, there is not a moment to be lost.” The girl hastily unlocked and unbolted ♦he door, and a young man, rather short and stoutly built, entered the room. He wab a good-looking young fellow, with the careless dash of the French revolutionist written large on his handsome, dark-bearded features. “I have seen him!” he cried, the moment he crossed the threshold. “That Englishman whom you pointed out to me. He is with the Nationals.” The old man staggered back to his chair, and held on to it, shaking as -in an ague. “How do you know? How do you know it is he?” he gasped. “I know it is he,” retorted the young man, excitedly. "He was not ten paces from me at the barricade by Dumont's butchery, and he glared at me ns I fired my pistol at him. I missed him; I wish I had killed him. I have come to tell you, to warn you!” There was a pause of a few heartbeats’ space, during which the old man rocked himself to and fro on his chair, tapping his thin- legs with his open palms. “How long will it be before he will be here?” h# asked at last, in a guttural whisper. “Fifteen minutes, perhaps.” was the •newer; “perhaps twenty, perhaps half an hour. But lie may be here in five, if things go badly.” “Very well," exclaimed the old man. “I am ready. Thank you for having warned me.” The young man gave a glance around the room, and looked at the girl with burning eyes. “And Helene?” he said, slowly, and with an amazing tenderness; “what about her? Had she not better come with me?” His voice was broken by emotion. “No!” nearly screamed the old man. “Arc you road? Go with you, to be killed in the street! Why should she go with you? Go away! Leave us! You are wasting your time and mine!” The young man shrugged his shoulders, and then held out a hand. “We may never see one another •gain,” he said: “tfnmn—.rqo.l-l.^”. ... ■ * paused again for a nioand then gripped the out’"Suctched hand nervously. “You are right." lie said. "Henri, I had forgotten. You are a good lad—you always were. We may never meet •gal n. Good-by for this world!” The girl had been standing in a comer of the room silently, and as the young aoao turned round she looked at him with ■ world of pleading iu her big eyes, lie ■tapped to her and kissed her ou the forehead without another word. “Good-by, Ileleue," he whispered. “Wibcai I am dead you will perhaps think «f me now and then. Good-by!” With that he rushed out, and the girl flaathictively closed the door again and bolted It. . CHAPTER 11. The old nun sat silently for half a admfte'a space after Henri had left the looa and hia eyea wandered hither and 4hWbtr round the place, aa if searching tor a solution of a puzzle which worried “i hare it!" ha exclaimed at last, ria-

ing excitedly. “You must not remain -here: —I know a way;” ’ — The rooan was a tiny one, barely ten feet square, and even part of that space was rendered useless by the slanting of the garret, roof. There was but one little window high up in the wall, and it could only be reached by standing on a chair. Even that was shuttered, and the light entered but sparsely. "Open the shutter there,” said the old man quietly—so quietly now that the difference of tone sounded remarkable even to Helene, who was habituated to his changes of moods. "Look out cautiously. See if you notice smoke afeross the unfinished building opposite, or signs of fighting.” Helene brought a stool and stepped on it, and peered out between the partly opened shutters. “They have .passed the house in the other street, father,” she said. “They are fighting perhaps fifty yards away.” “Thank heaven for that!” exclaimed the old man. “There is time to save you yet.” lie limped toward the trunk that stood in the corner, and took from it a coil of rope. "Take this, my girl,” he said. “You must get into the store closet. The little window there is at the side and sheltered from view by the projection of the main building. You can get out that way unobserved. You are light and lithe and can lower yourself with this to the roof of the shed below. Is there anybody in the. yard?” “Nobody,” said the girl; “not a soul.” “I cannot do it myself,” he went on, calmly. “Lam too old, and I am a cripple; but you can get away in that manner. When you are on the roof of the shed you can let yourself down from that into the. yard. After that you can make yonr way out into the street as soon as it is safe. They won’t hurt a girl like you, but they would kill me like a dog.” "But, father,” pleaded the girl, “I do not want to go away. I do not want to leave you. 1 want to stay here with you.” "Nonsense!” he answered. “That would be sinful. That would be horrible. You will have to get away, and when you are safe in the street, go straight to Mr. Adams. You have only to tell him that I sent you, and he will take care of you.” “Mr. Adams?" asked the girl. “That AmerK a who came here last week?” "TF >ame. You know where he lives. You took a message from me to him. Now run, my child,” and he coiled the rope round her waist. "There,” he said; "you will be able to use it mose easily in this way. You will get away all right.” She clung to him still and kissed his white face. “I do not wan’t to go,” she begged. “1 really do not want to go.” “Yon must,” he retorted, “you shall—” And so saying, he pushed the gently resisting girl toward the store closet. On a sudden, however, a quiver of anguish convulsed his features, his eyes stared wildly, and he gasped as his lips opened and closed in mute, feverish agitation. He staggered forward and reached out a wildly fumbling hand, crying: l “Stay! I cannot let you go like that. There is not a moment to be lost, and I must tell you before I die.” She turned to him with a blank dismay in her eyes, while his voice became hoarser, and his breathing more painful. "You are very ill, father, dear,” she cried. “That’s just it,” he said, “that’s why I called you back. You call me father. Let me coirfess it—it is better thus—l am not jour father. Do not look at me so accusingly.” The girl retreated step by step to the wall, and stood there with an outstretched arm on either side of her, staring at the old man in an awe-struck amazement. "Yes," he said more quietly, “I am not your father. I have even been accused of having murdered your father.” Helene gave a shriek aud gripped her hair in both hands. “Do not think so ill of me,” he went on. "Do not think that the charge was true. I did not murder him. He had wronged me —he had bitterly wronged me —he had robbed me of the woman whom I loved better than myself. He had robbed me of all earthly happiness, of all hope; of all light of life, but I did not kill him. \Ye had a quarrel. It was on the cliff side, and he stumbled and fell over into the sea aud was drowned, and they said I hud murdered *him, but I did not. They hunted me from town to town, from house to house, from forest to swamp, but 1 escaped them; and more than that. I brought you with me. you, his child, the child of the woman I adored; tinier and daintier, but so nlike, that ns she was lost to me, I determined to keep j'ou by my side as a soothing remembrance of a love that was strau gled.” . He knelt down and dragged himself to her, and dung to her garments. "1 have been a father to you, l, ave I net ?" he went on, with hot Uiirn I not given y° l1 i b. r meat q£jV.v_iU , ' a V ! r 'Have I eaten u crust without sharing it with you? Tell me, that I may die in peace.” The girl stood there with a face aa white as the man’s, her eyes nearly starting from their sockets, her lips blanched. Finally she came to him quietly, took his head between her two hands and kissed him on the forehead. “I do not know what to do,” she said, softly and tenderly. “I do not know what to think, but that you have been like a father to me I can swear. Must I leave you now? Must I go away from you now, when you are in such dreadful danger? Why should I not share it as you shared it with me?” He looked at her ns if his heart wero bursting with a secret still concealed. A flash of yearning despair gleamed in his ej'ee, and in another moment he might bave spoken again. But the crashes and the roar in the street outside increased On n sudden, snd from the yard caine the hoarse shouts and cries and piercing yells and muffled groans, the fury of the virtors and the anguish of the dying. “Away!” be cried, madly; "away!

They will be here in another moment. Away!” Helene stood looting at him for two or three seconds’ space, but he clutched her by the shoulder and pushed her into the store closet. He slammed the little door, and Immediately pushed a heavy trunk against it, piling another one on that, and throwing a rug over the whole, so as to hide the door as much as possible. He listened for, awhile, and even amid the din he thought he could hear the girl’s movements as she unfastened the tiny window and crept out oh to the roof.' Then all was lost to him amid the awful noise in the yard below. He stood for a second or two, as if undecided what to do; then, with a sudden impulse, he lifted up one of the planks of the floor, and looked down into the dark space below: By kneeling and stretching out an arm he reached a square packet, weighing some three or four pounds. He cut the string with Ids knife and opened the paper. It contained gunpowder. That done, he stretched out his arm again, and touched three or four other packets, and thus assured himself of their place—simply inserting his knife in each, and ripping them partly open. Then he replaced the packet which he had taken out, and scattered part of the loose gunpowder near it and around it between the rafters close to the other packets. After that he rose, and, limping to a little chest of drawers in the corner, took from it a cotton fuse, about three or four yards in length. He cut a piece from this, and inserted it well among the loose gunpowder, pulled the end of the fuse through a hole in the floor close to his own chair, and taking a handful of matches from his pocket, sat himself down and waited, while a calm smile settled on his face. “I shall die,” he said, “as I had hoped, in harness, and with my secret locked iu my heart. He has discovered me at last, then. lie can come as soon as he likes, Mr. Walter Glaydes—the Honorable Walter Glaydes; the golden bird has flown away, and he will be able to recommence the hunt —that is-to say, if he be alive.” He feebly clapped his hands, and listened, with body forward, bent for the sounds on the staircase. The roar below continued, and he drew himself up, breathing a heavy sigh. “Her brother’s son!” he muttered; “Lord Yorley’s son, Agatha’s nephew, and Helene’s cousin. Another of the brood who sold my love away from me and afterward hunted me over the face of the earth. So he is intent on finding her,” ho sneered; “so noble-minded, so disinterested! Helene's millions, Helene’s lands—'they offer no attraction. Of course not! Master Walter is only impelled by pure love for his fair, his wronged cousin! Ha! ha! He will not find her. She shall not be contaminated by the gold which broke my life in two, which wrecked all my hopes. For gold her mother was bartered away from me. She shall be untouched by the curse. He knows her not, has never seen her since she was a baby. Now she is free, and I can trust the man to whom she goes to guard her against that crew for all the world.” CHAPTER 111. The face of the tenth barricade in the Rue St. Jacques was silent; no more flashes of musketry, no more .puffs of smoke. Every one of the defenders lay behind the barrier of stones', dead or dj'ing. A little further up the street another crowd of desperate men stubbornlj 1 awaited the charge of the National Guards, who swarmed over the barricades with hard-set lips, aud bayonets red with human blood. “On!” cried the captain. “Down with them! Kill the dogs!” And they swept on, smashing away at the doors of houses, bursting in shutters with the butt-ends of their muskets, rushing upward aud onward, and pinning the unfortunate wretches whom they found against the walls like so many flies. Two men charged among that furious crowd, both of them eager to reach the heart of the fight, both of them rushing onward, sword and pistol in hand, but neither of them really bloodthirsty at heart nor cruelly disposed to their fellow 1 creatures. One of them was a broad-chested, straight-limbed young fellow of about four and twenty, fair-haired and blueeved; a set of white teeth shone beneath a stubby reddish mustache, its color barely 1 distinguishable amid the grime of powder and dirt with which the whole faee was besmeared. (To be continued.)