Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889

With much difficulty we found ourselves at last in the spacious grounds of Bella's estate. I had laid my plans carefully the day before, and there seemed no possibility that they would miscarry. By liberal fees I had learned from her butler that she was to spend that night in New York with a friend, and for a further consideration he offered to leave one of the drawing-room windows open so that we should have a clear field.

Everything seemed to be working beautifully, and I already felt the coveted letters in my grasp. We found the French window ajar, and with tremulous hearts stepped over the sill and into the room. After several collisions with the furniture, of which there seemed to be what we thought an unnecessary amount, we finally scraped our way into the hall.

Here was a quandary. We were in a hall, but what hall? Whether the stairs led in the right direction there was no one present to consult. We walked or rather crawled up them, nevertheless. I tried the first door on the landing, and was rewarded with "Is that you?" by a female voice that sent us scuttling along the passage in undignified haste.

Well, at last, after many narrow escapes from breaking our necks, we reached Bella's room. I knew it the moment I saw the closet full of shoes. Bella was always proud of her feet, and had, I believe, a pair of boots for every hour of the day.

To make things even more sure that I had arrived at the chaste temple of my former flame, there was the famous bureau of ebony inlaid with ivory – that bureau which contained enough of my inflammatory letters to reduce it to cinders.

"Can you regard that bureau with equanimity?" I exclaimed, unconsciously assuming a dramatic attitude. "Does it not recall your vanished youth – the red horizon of your adolescence? Ah," I cried, overcome by the sight of that familiar bit of furniture, "how often have I slid a piece of jewelry into that top drawer as a surprise for Bella! Her delighted shriek which followed the discovery rings in my ears even now. Oh, halcyon days of happy holiday, mine no more, can a lifetime with a funded houri wholly fill your place?"

"That's all very well," cried Vandeleur, who can assume a disgustingly practical tone when he wants to. "While you are rhapsodizing here over your poetical past, some stalwart menial may arrive with a blunderbuss, and fill our several and symmetrical persons with No. 2 buckshot. Perhaps Bella may have missed her train or her friend. She might return here at any moment and surprise us" – looking around him uneasily.

"Anybody would think that you had never been in a boudoir at this time of night," I retort savagely.

I begin to pull out the drawers of the bureau, breaking locks in the most reckless way, and tossing the contents of these dainty receptacles about in the most utter confusion. Vandeleur, with his eyeglass adjusted, is poking into everything in the closet as if he were looking for a mouse, only pausing now and then to glare around with an apprehensive shiver.

"Dear me," I soliloquize, while the contents of those bureau drawers are tossed here and there in the fever of my search. "How everything here reminds me of the past! She has even preserved the menu card of that memorable dinner at Torloni's; and here – here is a lock of brown hair tied with a pink ribbon! I really believe it must be mine!"

"My deah boy," howls Vandeleur, shaking me by the arm vigorously, "will you cut short your soliloquy? Is this a time for poetry, when we might get ten years if we were found burglarizing this house?"

I pay no attention.

"And here is the steel buckle from her shoe that fell off the night we danced together at the French ball. Poor dear Bella! that was not the only dance we led where folly played the fiddle!" – with a thrill of reminiscence.

"If you don't find those letters in just two minutes," interrupts the dreadful Vandeleur, "I shall post for home."

"In one second, my boy – one second."

Now I examine the bureau carefully for a concealed drawer. I seem to have ransacked every corner of that precious article in vain. Visions of Bella's vengeance flash before my eyes. I can see the demoniac smile on her face as she gloats over my downfall. The white wraith conjured up by the thought of those fateful letters fills me with a mad fury, and I long to dash that hateful bureau into a thousand pieces and flee the house.

But the demolition could not be executed noiselessly, and the situation is perilous enough already for a man of my delicately organized constitution, with a heart that runs down with a rumble like a Waterbury movement; so I think I won't break the bureau.

I renew my mad search for the missing drawer, that seems to be of a most retiring disposition, as drawers go. I bethink me of stories of missing treasure: how the hero counted off twenty paces across the floor, and then dropped his dagger so that its blade would be imbedded in the wood, and then dug through several tons of masonry, until he found a casket, sometimes of steel, sometimes of iron, and sometimes of both.

And then he did a lot more mathematical calculating, and pressed a knob, and there you are! Ah! a thought – I had forgotten to apply myself to the moulding of the bureau, as a hero of the middle ages would have done under the circumstances.

I begin from side to side, up, down, and around. Ha! ha! at last! A little drawer shoots out almost in my face, startling me like a jack-in-the-box.

A faint perfume of crushed violets salutes my nostrils. The letters – they are there in the bottom of the drawer! I know them too well by the shape of the square large envelopes. They cost me many a dollar to send through the stage-door by the gouty Cerberus at the gate when Bella trod the boards.

I reach out my hand to seize them, when an awful scream causes me to stagger back in dismay.

Bella Bracebridge, in a jaunty travelling dress, stands in the doorway in the attitude of a tragic queen – her eyes flashing, her bosom heaving, just as she looked the day she asked for a raise in salary and didn't get it.

She steps towards me: I retreat, transfixed by her defiant attitude. She fear a common burglar? Never!

I know she intends to seize me and scream for help, and I am afraid, too, that she may recognize my face. So I step back – back, edging towards the window.

She reaches out her hand to seize me, then totters and falls in a dead faint.

I look around for Vandeleur. He has lost all presence of mind; is staring at the figure on the floor, with wild, dilated eyes, and an expression of hopeless idiocy on his face. I can hear people moving below stairs. Her scream must have aroused the house. "Vandeleur," shaking him by the arm, "we must run for it. Do you understand? Ten years! Hard labor!" – the last words hissed excitedly in his ear.

"What? where? who?" he mumbles, with a face as expressive as that of codfish.

I rush to the balcony to see if we can make the jump below. It is dark, but the leap must be made. Better a broken leg than a ball and chain on a healthy limb for years and years.

I drag Vandeleur in a helpless condition out on the balcony, boost him up on the railing, and push him off. Then I leap after him.

Fortunate fate! We fall into a clump of blackberry bushes, and not a moment too soon. Lights flash out from above. I hear the hum of excited voices, Bella's calm and distinct above the rest, as she gives the ominous order, "Let those bloodhounds loose!"

Ugh! We scramble out of the bushes in the most undignified haste, leaving most of our outward resemblance to human beings on the thorny twigs. Then helter-skelter over the fields and hedges, stumbling, staggering, and traversing what I suppose to be miles of country.

Vandeleur is snorting like a steam calliope in bad repair, and I am breathing with the jerky movement of an overworked accordion. "I can go no farther," he exclaims, dropping down in a huddled heap at the foot of a scrubby pine-tree like a bag of old clothes.

I don't feel much in a hurry either, but I try to infuse some life into him by hustling him and shaking him in a brutal and unsympathetic manner.

"Do you hear that?" I howl in despair as the baying of the bloodhounds rolls towards us over the meadow like muttered thunder. "There is nothing to do but climb this tree, unless you want to furnish a free lunch for those brutes."

"Free lunch? get me some," he mumbles, relapsing into his old idiotic state again. Then I fall upon that unfortunate man in a fury of rage, and pound him into a consciousness of his danger.

He consents at last to be pushed or rather dragged up in a tree, whose lowest limb I straddle with a feeling of wild joy and ecstasy just as the hounds rush past below, their flashing eyes looking to me just then as large as the headlights of a host of engines.

"Let's go home now," again murmurs the helpless creature at my side, shaking so on the limb that I am compelled to strap him there by his suspenders.

"Ain't we going home?" he chatters. "I want a good supper, and then a bed —bed," lingering on the last word with soothing emphasis.

"Oh, you'd like a nice supper, would you?" I growl. "Well, those bloodhounds are after the same thing. Perhaps you had better slide down the tree and interview them on the chances. Then one or the other of you would be satisfied."

"But they've gone away."

"Well, you needn't think you have been forgotten, just the same. Don't you see, wretched man, that the morning is breaking," pointing to the east, where the sun had begun "paintin' 'er red." "Once in the high road we should be discovered at once; here at least we are safe – uncomfortably safe," as I moved across the limb and impaled myself on a long two-inch splinter with spurs on it.

He fell into a doze after that, only rousing himself now and then to utter strange croaking sounds that frightened me almost as much as the baying of the bloodhounds. I think I fell asleep too for a few moments, for when I was roused by an awful yell proceeding from my companion I found that he had burst his bonds and fallen out of the tree, while the bright sun was shining in my eyes.

Visions of Ethel's face over our charming breakfast-table rose before me, and I seemed to scent afar off the steam of fragrant mocha in a dainty Sèvres cup as she held it towards me. The thought of that morning libation settled the business.

I would march stalwartly home – yea, though a thousand bloodhounds with dangerous appetites barred my way!

I slid down the tree and found Vandeleur still asleep. I don't believe that even the fall had waked the poor fellow up.

I had only to whisper the word "Breakfast" in his ears to have him start as if he had received a galvanic shock.

"Where?" he asked, with tears in his eyes.

"Home."

We crawled along through the bushes in the wildest haste our poor disjointed and almost dismembered bodies would carry us; like a pair of mud-turtles who had seen better days did we take to all-fours.