The Greatest Christmas Tales & Poems in One Volume (Illustrated). О. Генри
clothes round his neck. “ No, Charles, no,” she continued; “ not if I know it. Take your chocolate and get up. There is not a moment to be lost.” With that she laid her hand. upon his shoulder, and made him clearly understand that he would not be allowed to take further rest in that bed.
Grumbling, sulky, coughing continually, and declaring that life under such circumstances was not worth having, he did at last get up and dress himself. When once she knew that he was obeying her she became again tender to him, and certainly took much more than her own share of the trouble of the proceedings. Long before the time was up she was ready, and the porter had been summoned to take the luggage downstairs. When the man came she was rejoiced to see that it was not he whom she had met among the passages during her nocturnal rambles. He shouldered the box, and told them that they would find coffee and bread and butter in the small salle-A-manger below.
“I told you that it would be so, when you would boil that stuff,” said the ungrateful man, who had nevertheless swallowed the hot chocolate when it was given to him.
They followed their luggage down into the hall; but as she went, at every step, the lady looked around her. She dreaded the sight of that porter of the night; she feared lest some potential authority of the hotel should come to her and ask her some horrid question; but of all her fears her greatest fear was that there should arise before her an apparition of that face which she had seen recumbent on its pillow.
As they passed the door of the great salon, Mr. Brown looked in. “ Why, there it is still!” said he.
“What?” said she, trembling in every limb.
“The mustard-pot!”
“They have put it in there since,” she exclaimed energetically, in her despair. “ But never mind. The omnibus is here. Come away.” And she absolutely took him by the arm.
But at that moment a door behind them opened, and Mrs. Brown heard herself called by her name. And there was the night-porter,—with a handkerchief in his hand. But the further doings of that morning must be told in a further chapter.
Chapter IV.
Mrs. Brown Does Escape
It had been visible to Mrs. Brown from the first moment -of her arrival on the ground floor that “ something was the matter,” if we may be allowed to use such a phrase; and she felt all but convinced that this something had reference to her. She fancied that the people of the hotel were looking at her as she swallowed, or tried to swallow, her coffee. When her husband was paying the bill there was something disagreeable in the eye of the man who was taking the money. Her sufferings were very great, and no one sympathised with her. Her husband was quite at his ease, except that he was complaining of the cold. When she was anxious to get him out into the carriage, he still stood there leisurely, arranging shawl after shawl around his throat. “You can do that quite as well in an omnibus,” she had just said to him very crossly, when there appeared upon the scene through a side door that very night-porter whom she dreaded, with a soiled pockethandkerchief in his hand.
Even before the sound of her own name met her ears Mrs. Brown knew it all. She understood the full horror of her position from that man’s hostile face, and from the little article which he held in his hand. If during the watches of the night she had had money in her pocket, if she had made a friend of this greedy fellow by well-timed liberality, all might have been so different! But she reflected that she had allowed him to go unfee’d after all his trouble, and she knew that he was her enemy. It was the handkerchief that she feared. She thought that she might have brazened out anything but that. No one had seen her enter or leave that strange man’s room. No one had seen her dip her hands in that jar. She had, no doubt, been found wandering about the house while the slumberer had been made to suffer so strangely, and there might have been suspicion, and perhaps accusation. But she would have been ready with frequent protestations to deny all charges made against her, and, though no one might have believed her, no one could have convicted her. Here, however, was evidence against which she would be unable to stand for a moment. At the first glance she acknowledged the potency of that damning morsel of linen.
During all the horrors of the night she had never given a thought to the handkerchief, and yet she ought to have known that the evidence it would bring against her was palpable and certain. Her name, “ H. Brown,” was plainly written on. the corner. What a fool she had been not to have thought of this! Had she but remembered the plain marking which she, as a careful, well-conducted British matron, had put upon all her clothes, she would at an hazard have recovered the article. Oh that she had waked the man, or bribed the porter, or even told her husband! But now she was, as it were, friendless, without support, without a word that she could say in her own defence, convicted of having committed this assault upon a strange man in his own bedroom, and then of having left him T The thing must be explained by the truth; but how to explain such truth, how to tell such story in a way to satisfy injured folk, and she with only barely time 1 sufficient to catch the train! Then it occurred to her that they could have no legal right to stop her because the pockethandkerchief had been found in a strange gentleman’s bedroom. “ Yes, it is mine,” she said, turning to her husband, as the porter, with a loud voice, asked if she were not Madame Brown. “ Take it, Charles, and come on.” Mr. Brown naturally stood still in astonishment. He did put out his hand, but the porter would not allow the evidence to pass so readily out of his custody.
“What does it all mean?” asked Mr. Brown.
“A gentleman has been—eh—eh—. Something has been done to a gentleman in his bedroom,” said the clerk.
“Something done to ‘a gentleman! “ repeated Mr. Brown.
“Something very bad indeed,” said the porter. “ Look here,” and he showed the condition of the handkerchief.
“Charles, we shall lose the train,” said the affrighted wife.
“What the mischief does it all mean? “ demanded the husband.
“Did Madame go into the gentleman’s room?” asked the clerk. Then there was an awful silence, and all eyes were fixed upon the lady.
“What does it all mean? “ demanded the husband. “ Did you go into anybody’s room?”
“I did,” said Mrs. Brown with much dignity, looking round upon her enemies as a stag at bay will look upon the hounds which are attacking him. “ Give me the handkerchief.” But the night-porter quickly put it behind his back. “ Charles, we cannot allow ourselves to be delayed. You shall write a letter to the keeper of the hotel, explaining it all.” Then she essayed to swim out, through the front door, into the courtyard in which the vehicle was waiting for them. But three or four men and women interposed themselves, and even her husband did not seem quite ready to continue his journey. “Tonight is Christmas Eve,” said Mrs. Brown, “and we shall not be at Thompson Hall! Think of my sister!”
“Why did you go into the man’s bedroom, my dear?” whispered Mr. Brown in English.
But the porter heard the whisper, and understood the language;—the porter who had not been “tipped.” “ Ye’es;—vy? “ asked the porter.
“It was a mistake, Charles; there is not a moment to lose. I can explain it all to you in the carriage.” Then the clerk suggested that Madame had better postpone her journey a little. The gentleman upstairs had certainly been very badly treated, and had demanded to know why so great an outrage had been perpetrated. The clerk said that he did not wish to send for the police—here Mrs. Brown gasped terribly and threw herself on her husband’s shoulder,—but he did not think he could allow the party to go till the gentleman upstairs had received some satisfaction. It had now become clearly impossible that the journey could be made by the early train. Even Mrs. Brown gave it up herself, and demanded of her husband that she should be taken back to her own bedroom.
“But what is to be said to the gentleman? “ asked