Читать книгу Marked "Personal" - Anna Katharine Green - Страница 6

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And now there arose from without such an infernal din, that if these three men had wished to talk they would have found it difficult. Drunk with success, the mob was on its way down the street, hooting and yelling, while crashing panes and women’s shrieks marked its progress. In a few minutes more they would be in front. Suddenly there came a second ring at the door-bell. This time the negro paused before opening it.

“That is not my master’s ring,” he declared, and laid his ear against the panels of the door.

In an instant he started back. Thundering knocks were shaking the wood against which he leaned.

“Open!” came in harsh demand from without. “We see your lights! Let us have the negro and we won’t stop.”

A hundred voices took up the echo. “The nigger! The nigger! Let us have the nigger!”

The rioters were upon them. Mr. White and Mr. Phillips, standing side by side in the adjoining parlor, mingled their glances, and Mr. White reached up his hand toward the chandelier. But the negro, entering hurriedly, made him a motion and his hand fell back.

“Don’t, gentlemen,” he pleaded, coming very near and shouting to them, for the noise was deafening. “You are not afraid of the mob, nor am I. Wait a moment longer for my master, and if he does not come—” He paused, listened, and suddenly raised his hand again. “Hush!” he seemed to say and quickly passed again into the hall, this time toward the back of the house.

“What shall we do?” said Mr. Phillips appealingly to Mr. White, as they were left alone. “I had rather face those demons,” he declared, pointing toward the front of the house which was already being assailed by stones and bullets, “than meet the man.”

“We have no choice,” shouted back Mr. White. “To be sure, if the mob forces its way in, we cannot help ourselves. But the house is strong, and I think I heard a volley just then, as if the militia were coming.”

Mr. Phillips shook his head and looked eagerly at the door. The key was gone from the lock. “We might unbar the windows,” he appeared to signify by the gesture he made.

Mr. White frowned. Mr. Phillips, dropping his head, moved timidly toward the front of the house. A splinter of wood flew to meet him; it came from one of the shutters that had just been crushed in.

“The nigger! the nigger!” rang through the gap, in startling distinctness.

Mr. Phillips, dizzy, maddened almost by conflicting fears, shrank back and peered wildly about. Suddenly he darted toward the table, and dashing aside the cover from the dish he had previously opened, he reached for the pistol within, hoarsely shrieking, “I will sell my life; I will not throw it away! Come, White, let us fight them with their own weapons!”

But a grasp of iron falling on his wrist made him look around. It was the negro who stood calmly over him, shaking his head, and holding before his eyes a slip of soiled paper on which some words seemed to have been hurriedly scrawled.

“From my master,” shouted the man, between the clamorous blows that were now shaking the doors and windows alike.

Mr. Phillips stared, but could read nothing. Mr. White took the paper, and managed after a few minutes’ study to make out these words:

“Hurt—dying—tell gentlemen to go.

D.”

A flush, red as the blood which was being spilled so near them, swept up over Mr. White’s pale face. He trembled, and for the moment looked weaker in his relief than he had during the worst moments of his late suspense.

“We are released, pardoned, told to go,” he shrieked in Mr. Phillips’s straining ear. “The man is dying, and it has opened his heart to pity.”

The cry the other gave was shriller than any which came from without.

“Let us fly, then,” he shrieked. “Life! Life! I shall know you again—see my little one—”

But the leap he gave toward the door was cut short. The consciousness of the pandemonium holding revel on the other side of it deterred him. There was no escape by that road. He looked helplessly at the negro.

This man, thus appealed to, bowed low with all of his old deference. Then, turning, he beckoned them both toward the rear.

“There is a ladder leaning against the further fence of the yard,” he confided to them, as soon as they had reached a spot where their voices could be more readily heard. “I had it placed there for my own escape, but it is at your service.”

Mr. White, putting his hand in his pocket, looked at the negro. “Where is the man who brought this scrawl?” he asked.

“Gone. He came by the back yard, and has gone by it.”

“And your master—where is he?”

“Lying on the floor of a drinking saloon around the corner. He was just breathing his last when the man came away. A stone had hit his chest and broken in his ribs. Otherwise,” the negro added, with an odd return to his former smooth and significant manner, “he would not have failed of entertaining you at dinner.”

Mr. White, with a muttered oath, gave the man one rebuking stare and then seemed to forget him.

“Come!” he cried to Mr. Phillips, in the ringing tone of a great relief, and bounded down the half dozen steps he saw before him into the back yard.

Mr. Phillips, hastily passing the negro, followed joyfully; but, as he did so, a sudden cessation of the noises in front made him look back. It was an unfortunate glance; for, by means of two mirrors hanging on opposite walls, he caught an unexpected glimpse into a room they had not entered, and in that room he discerned a man whose countenance he knew, though he had not seen it before in twelve years.

It was that of their long-expected and redoubtable host, and so far from showing injury or death, wore not only the hue of health, but an expression of diabolical triumph as at the success of some well-planned game.

Paralyzed at this sudden shock given to his hopes, Lemuel Phillips paused. The negro, unsuspicious of what he had seen, thought that his agitation was occasioned by his fears of the mob, and hastened to explain that the police had shown themselves at the corner, and that the rioters were now flying toward Broadway. At which information, the spell of the other’s terror was broken, and throwing back his head he burst into a loud laugh and cried:—.

“Then I will fly, too!” And dashing after Mr. White, he disappeared into the yard just as the lights went out in the house behind him.

For some reason he never told his companion what had been revealed to him by that one backward glance.