第68章
Tansey rounded the table, and flung himself, with superb nerve, upon the Mexican.Just then a clangour began; the clocks of the city were tolling the midnight hour.Tansey clutched at Torres, and, for a moment, felt in his grasp the crunch of velvet and the cold facets of the glittering gems.The next instant, the bedecked caballero turned in his hands to a shrunken, leather-visaged, white-bearded, old, old, screaming mummy, sandalled, ragged, and four hundred and three.The Mexican woman was crawling to her feet, and laughing.She shook her brown hand in the face of the whining /viejo/.
"Go, now," she cried, "and seek your senorita.It was I, Ramoncito, who brought you to this.Within each moon you eat of the life-giving /chili/.It was I that kept the wrong time for you.You should have eaten /yesterday/ instead of /to-morrow/.It is too late.Off with you, /hombre/! You are too old for me!"
"This," decided Tansey, releasing his hold of the gray-beard, "is a private family matter concerning age, and no business of mine."
With one of the table knives he hastened to saw asunder the fetters of the fair captive; and then, for the second time that night he kissed Katie Peek--tasted again the sweetness, the wonder, the thrill of it, attained once more the maximum of his incessant dreams.
The next instant an icy blade was driven deep between his shoulders;
he felt his blood slowly congeal; heard the senile cackle of the perennial Spaniard; saw the Plaza rise and reel till the zenith crashed into the horizon--and knew no more.
When Tansey opened his eyes again he was sitting upon those self-same steps gazing upon the dark bulk of the sleeping convent.In the middle of his back was still the acute, chilling pain.How had he been conveyed back there again? He got stiffly to his feet and stretched his cramped limbs.Supporting himself against the stonework he revolved in his mind the extravagant adventures that had befallen him each time he had strayed from the steps that night.In reviewing them certain features strained his credulity.Had he really met Captain Peek or Katie or the unparalleled Mexican in his wanders--had he really encountered them under commonplace conditions and his over-
stimulated brain had supplied the incongruities? However that might be, a sudden, elating thought caused him an intense joy.Nearly all of us have, at some point in our lives--either to excuse our own stupidity or to placate our consciences--promulgated some theory of fatalism.We have set up an intelligent Fate that works by codes and signals.Tansey had done likewise; and now he read, through the night's incidents, the finger-prints of destiny.Each excursion that he had made had led to the one paramount finale--to Katie and that kiss, which survived and grew strong and intoxicating in his memory.
Clearly, Fate was holding up to him the mirror that night, calling him to observe what awaited him at the end of whichever road he might take.He immediately turned, and hurried homeward.
Clothed in an elaborate, pale blue wrapper, cut to fit, Miss Katie Peek reclined in an armchair before a waning fire in her room.Her little, bare feet were thrust into house-shoes rimmed with swan's down.By the light of a small lamp she was attacking the society news of the latest Sunday paper.Some happy substance, seemingly indestructible, was being rhythmically crushed between her small white teeth.Miss Katie read of functions and furbelows, but she kept a vigilant ear for outside sounds and a frequent eye upon the clock over the mantel.At every footstep upon the asphalt sidewalk her smooth, round chin would cease for a moment its regular rise and fall, and a frown of listening would pucker her pretty brows.
At last she heard the latch of the iron gate click.She sprang up, tripped softly to the mirror, where she made a few of those feminine, flickering passes at her front hair and throat which are warranted to hypnotize the approaching guest.
The door-bell rang.Miss Katie, in her haste, turned the blaze of the lamp lower instead of higher, and hastened noiselessly down stairs into the hall.She turned the key, the door opened, and Mr.Tansey side-stepped in.
"Why, the i-de-a!" exclaimed Miss Katie, "is this you, Mr.Tansey?
It's after midnight.Aren't you ashamed to wake me up at such an hour to let you in? You're just /awful/!"
"I was late," said Tansey, brilliantly.
"I should think you were! Ma was awfully worried about you.When you weren't in by ten, that hateful Tom McGill said you were out calling on another--said you were out calling on some young lady.I just despise Mr.McGill.Well, I'm not going to scold you any more, Mr.
Tansey, if it /is/ a little late--Oh! I turned it the wrong way!"
Miss Katie gave a little scream.Absent-mindedly she had turned the blaze of the lamp entirely out instead of higher.It was very dark.
Tansey heard a musical, soft giggle, and breathed an entrancing odour of heliotrope.A groping light hand touched his arm."
"How awkward I was! Can you find your way--Sam?"
"I--I think I have a match, Miss K-Katie."
A scratching sound; a flame; a glow of light held at arm's length by the recreant follower of Destiny illuminating a tableau which shall end the ignominious chronicle--a maid with unkissed, curling, contemptuous lips slowly lifting the lamp chimney and allowing the wick to ignite; then waving a scornful and abjuring hand toward the staircase--the unhappy Tansey, erstwhile champion in the prophetic lists of fortune, ingloriously ascending to his just and certain doom, while (let us imagine) half within the wings stands the imminent figure of Fate jerking wildly at the wrong strings, and mixing things up in her usual able manner.