Spice Box (3 page)

“No,” he said, “I couldn’t do anything like that, not for
anyone.
I have made a promise and I will not go back on it. Brownleigh is depending on me. It wouldn’t be right.”

The melting brown eyes flashed, the lips took on a look of scorn.

“No,” he said firmly.

She argued and coaxed, but all to no purpose. The time was going that he had hoped to have filled with pleasant talk, and so at last he left her, quite disappointed that she had been so unreasonable, so determined to have her own way. Of course, she had been brought up to have everything she desired. And he was a fool even to play around for an hour or two with such a girl. She was not for him. He still had his way to make. He could never hope to give her all she would want.

But although he had started away in plenty of time for the plan he had made, the costly car in which he had been sent to Bradford Gables was not equipped for the snow that had fallen so rapidly even in this short time, and a slight breakdown delayed them further, so that when they arrived back at the Martin mansion it was quite dark, and he was not a little worried lest he was even now going to have trouble making his train. Also by this time his mind had suffered a turnaround, and it began to seem little short of cruel to have come away leaving the beautiful girl so unhappy. He began to question his own actions. Brownleigh had perfectly understood that it might not be possible for him to return in time. Perhaps it would have been all right to have stayed. Well, he would see how his patient was. Let that settle it. And yet, did he have the meekness to return to Rose after he had been so decided in refusing to stay?

He went up to his patient and found him sleeping quietly, his pulse steady, his whole condition very good. Well, there was nothing for it but to go back to the sanitarium and send Brownleigh off to the wedding.

The chauffeur, meanwhile, had put chains on the car, but the family of the patient were solicitous about him. They begged him to telephone the sanitarium and stay at least overnight. The storm was a real blizzard, they said. He might be snowed in on the train for hours. But when he firmly resisted their appeals, they served him hot delicacies and insisted on loaning him a great fur overcoat that they said would keep him warm on the train in case they were snowed in. And at last he was started.

It was not far to the Junction, only a matter of four or five miles, and the doctor had orders to stay overnight at the Junction if the roads were too bad to return home, so there was no need to worry about him.

Sterling had telephoned Brownleigh just before leaving the house, and the relief in the other’s voice when he found Sterling was returning left no doubt in his mind concerning his duty. Also, Brownleigh’s report of one particular patient made him still more anxious to get back to his work.

But as he sat in the dark in the car, Rose Bradford’s pretty alluring face kept coming across his vision. The disappointed pout, the tearful eyes. Yet what had he to do with her, child of luxury, who had stooped to coax one of the world’s workers to while away a stormy evening?

He set his lips in the darkness and began planning how he might conquer fate, make himself a force in the world, one who would have a right to court a girl like Rose.

The car wallowed through the uneven road, plunged from side to side, and was aggravatingly slow. Sterling studied his watch by the light of his pocket flashlight and saw it was getting perilously close to the time the train would pass the Junction.

The world stretched white and wide as he looked through the window. White darkness,
terribly
white. And even the lighted windows of the houses they passed made but small blurs afar. The progress of the car grew slower and slower. Then they came to an enormous drift that spread wide and high before them and the driver got down to examine it. A great wall of snow seemed to have reared itself impassably across the way. Sterling opened the car door and leaned out, calling questions, making futile suggestions. And then the driver uttered a sharp cry, a call it really was, and Sterling sprang out and went to his side.

It was then that he saw her. There in the full glare of the headlights of the car she lay, pillowed on the snow, her gold hair matted with ice where the velvet hood had fallen back. The velvet drapery of her cloak was fast disappearing under the hurricane of the sleet, and there above her arched the great stone gateway of the cemetery! It was a startling sight on a night like this, the beautiful girl with the white, white face in its setting of blue and gold and snow.

He glanced about him to see if there was anything to explain the phenomenon of a lovely young woman thus attired, asleep in a snowdrift in front of the cemetery in this awful storm, but only the driving sleet and luminous distance of impenetrable whiteness answered his question.

It was as if the heavens had come down in a majesty of snow and lifted the earth up in a deep embrace.

Then his physician’s instinct and training instantly began to work. He plunged over to where the girl was lying and tried to lift her, giving directions to the frightened chauffeur, who was reluctant to touch what seemed to him like an apparition, but they finally succeeded in carrying her to the car and laying her on the cushions. Then the driver, wishing he were anywhere but on the road on a night like this, tried to find the road. He had taken the precaution to bring a snow shovel along, and working with all his might, managed to clear a way back into the main road. So he climbed to his seat and started his car, his mind still heavy over the burden of beautiful death behind him.

And meanwhile, Sterling knelt beside the silent girl, touching her cold, cold face that seemed so deathlike. He lifted the stiff little hand, but no response came. He threw back the frozen velvet cloak and stooped his skilled ear to listen if there was still life in her body. He could not be sure, but he worked swiftly with what remedies he had at hand. There was no time to lose.

He jerked off the warm fur coat in which his hostess had enveloped him and wrapped it around the girl’s still form. He chafed her cold hands; he took off the sodden slippers stiff with ice and held the little icy feet in his warm hands, drying them and finally wrapping them in the fur robe of the car. With his pocket flashlight he looked keenly into her face again for any signs of life. Then from his case he forced a few drops of stimulant between those white lips, but it was hard to tell whether they got farther than the lips, for he worked almost in the dark.

The face still looked marble-white and peaceful in its earthly beauty, and there was something so exquisitely pure and almost holy about her that he touched her with awe.

In desperation he laid his own face against the girl’s face and felt the chill of her flesh. He laid his lips upon hers, and tried to think he felt a warmth stealing into them.

Then suddenly he was confronted with the problem of what to do with her. They had reached the foot of the long hill below the cemetery. The village could not be far away. He could see dim lights blurring through the storm. He knew it was almost train time, for he had looked at his watch just before they had stopped their car. Would it be possible for him to stop somewhere and leave his burden and still make his train?

He called to the chauffeur. “Is there a doctor near here you can call before the train comes?”

The chauffeur shook his head. “Village is half a mile away. I don’t know any doctor around here.”

“Well, can you take her into the station and get someone to take charge of her at once? I must make the train.”

“Station’s closed,” said the man tersely.

“Well, what can you do with her?” asked the doctor sharply. “She ought to have help at once to save her life, if it isn’t too late already.”

“Me? I can’t do nothin’,” gasped the man in horror, stepping away from the sight of the closely wrapped figure.

“Perhaps you know her and can take her to her friends,” he suggested, looking anxiously toward the now coming train. “They will be searching everywhere for her.”

“I don’t know nobody down this way,” said the man stubbornly, with a frightened ring to his voice. “I just been to the house up yonder about two weeks. You’d better take her onto the train with you. I can’t do nothin’ with her.”

Then the train was upon them and there was no more time to think.

Sterling lifted his burden with the help of the chauffeur, who was all too anxious to get it away, and curious, startled officials received it and carried it, awestruck, to a compartment in the Pullman that happened to be vacant.

Sterling lingered on the step of the car a moment, shouting directions to the chauffeur, who readily promised anything to have him gone with the strange girl, who he was certain was dead. Oh! Certainly he would inform his people at once of the stranger who had been found, and ask Mrs. Martin to give the information to the surrounding countryside. Of course he would go to the police headquarters in the village so that the girl’s friends could find her. He assured Sterling that he would do all in his power to locate her folks, and his relieved countenance smiled benignly at the young doctor through the storm as the train took up its laborious way through the snow.

The man watched the train until it was out of sight and then hurried to his car, resolved not to say a single word to anybody about the affair. In his opinion that girl was dead, and maybe he would get mixed up with a murder case somehow if he let on he knew anything about it. Moreover, he had decided on the way over to Bradford Gables that evening that people who would ask a chauffeur to go out in a storm like this for
any
guy just to see a
girl
, or catch a train, weren’t good folks to work for, and now was as good a time as any to leave. He would take that car home, and then he would vanish in the morning. What that doctor ought to have done was to leave that girl lying there in the snow and let her folks find her. She must have been dead long before they got there anyway, and it was none of their concern. What was the use of turning everything upside down and being uncomfortable for someone who was already dead? He believed in looking out for number one always and everywhere. So he went to the village and took a little much needed stimulant and then managed to get the car back to its owner’s garage so late that he did not come in contact with any of the family. He said not a word about the strange experience he and the visiting doctor had encountered. He spent the rest of the night packing his effects for a hasty departure, and quite early in the morning he announced to his master that he had heard through a cousin he had met in town the night before, that his mother was very sick, and he felt he should go to her at once. So he received his wages and departed before anyone had time to question him. And long before the doctor had ventured to disturb the family to ask whether they had found out anything about the girl, he had disappeared from the region. So the family knew nothing about the happening in the storm.

Like a frail, crushed lily, Janice lay in a white bed at the hospital and made little response to the treatment given her. It was as if she had gone too far into the world of whiteness and shadows to return.

Meanwhile, back in the house from which she had fled, the drink-crazed man had searched in vain to find her. In a puzzled anger he at last pieced together a story. He told the servants and the few neighbors who came to inquire, that his sister-in-law had gone on a visit to the far west with a relative, and it might be some time before she returned. Then he hastily closed his house, offered it for sale, and went his way into a far country.

Some ten days later there appeared in the local papers of the region near the Martins’ estate a brief account of the young woman who had been found near the cemetery gateway on the night of the blizzard, but not one of all the host of friends who loved Janice and her dead sister recognized her from the brief description given. A lovely girl attired in thin white and a sumptuous velvet cloak trimmed with fur. The Janice they knew would never have tramped the drifts on the road to the cemetery in a blizzard. It never occurred to anyone that the young woman who had been found and was lying near death’s door in a nearby hospital could be Janice Whitmore. She would write to them, of course, as soon as she rallied from the death of her beloved sister. This other girl was probably some poor dancer from a cabaret—a sinner, or perhaps sinned against, and in a desperate situation trying to end her life. “What a pity!” they said and thought no more about it. So days went on, and only the young doctor who had found her, and was slowly bringing her back to life again, had any interest in her.

Her brother-in-law had no thought of her, not even of wonder as to what had become of the helpless young girl who had been left in his power and had escaped him. His only fear was that Janice had gone to a distant cousin who was a famous lawyer and knew all about the financial affairs of the two sisters. He did not wish to get under the keen eyes of that lawyer, nor listen to his questioning about the estate, for Janice was scarcely of age yet, and this cousin had been an executor of the sisters’ inheritance. He did not care to have that cousin know how he had tampered with the estate and how greatly it had diminished under his hand.

The wondering servants in his household had shaken their heads and whispered, mindful of the loud voice and the way the master thundered orders to the girl; mindful of the unwelcome embraces at the foot of the stairs, the wild fright in the girl’s eyes. What had he done to her? Had she gone out alone in that storm, and what had happened to her?

Furtively they searched the house, even down to the cellar, every cranny where she might have hidden. But they were dismissed and far away before any news came out about the girl that was found.

Later, when Dr. Sterling communicated more at length with Mrs. Martin, she employed detectives and did her interested best to find out who the mysterious girl could have been, but nothing ever came of it.

And the girl lay white and listless in her hospital bed, unconscious of what went on about her, utterly forgetful of all the recent happenings, coming out of chill cold and going into a burning fever, buried in the oblivion of delirium, opening her white lips only to moan in low, helpless quiet when the cool hand of the doctor was laid on her hot forehead. Once or twice she opened her eyes and looked up at him with a frightened glance, fearful, questioning, and then slowly her eyelids dropped and closed over the troubled eyes, as if satisfied. She drew a soft little sigh and seemed to rest more quietly. It strangely touched the young doctor, as if somehow she was depending upon him, as if in some mysterious way she understood that he had saved her from death in the storm.