I should have kept my eyes for the many brilliant and interesting sights constantly offered me. I might have done so, had I been ever eighteen, or had I not come from the country.
I was visiting in a house where fashionable people made life a perpetual holiday. Yet of all the pleasures which followed so rapidly, one upon another, the greatest was the hour I spent in my window after the day's dissipations were all over, watching a man's face, bending night after night over a study-table in the lower room of the great house in our rear.
Why did it affect me so? It was not a young face, but it was very handsome, and it was enigmatic.
The day following my arrival in the city I had noticed the large house in our rear, and had asked some questions about it. It had a peculiarly secluded and secretive look. The windows were all shuttered and closed, with the exception of the three on the lower floor and two others directly over these. On the top story they were even boarded up, giving to that portion of the house a blank and desolate air.
The grounds were separated from the street by a brick wall in our direction; the line of separation was marked by a high iron fence, in which I saw a gate.
The Vandykes, whom I had questioned on the matter, were very short in their replies. But I learned this much. That the house belonged to one of New York's oldest families. That its present owner was a widow of great eccentricity of character, who, with her one child, a daughter, unfortunately blind from birth, had taken up her abode in some foreign country, where she thought her child's affliction would attract less attention than in her native city.
The house had been closed to the extent I have mentioned, immediately upon her departure, but had not been left entirely empty. Mr. Allison, her man of business, had moved into it, and, being fully as eccentric as herself, had contented himself for five years with a solitary life in this dismal mansion, without friends, almost without acquaintances, though he might have had unlimited society and any amount of attention, his personal attractions being of a very uncommon order, and his talent for business so pronounced, that he was already recognized at thirty-five as one of the men to be afraid of in Wall Street. Of his birth and connections little was known; he was called the Hermit of -- -- Street.
I was not very well one day, and I had been left alone in the house.
At seven o'clock -- how well I remember the hour! -- I was sitting in my window, waiting for the return of the Vandykes, and watching the face which had now appeared at its usual place in the study. Suddenly my attention was drawn from him to a window in the story over his head, by the rapid blowing in and out of a curtain. As there was a lighted gas-jet near by, I watched the gyrating muslin with apprehension, and was shocked when, in another moment, I saw the flimsy folds give one wild flap and flare up into a dangerous flame.
I dashed out of my room down-stairs, calling for the servants. But Lucy was in the front area and Ellen above, and I was on the back porch and in the garden before either of them responded.
Meanwhile, no movement was observable in the brooding figure of Mr. Allison. I sprang through the gate and knocked with all my might on a door which opened upon a side porch.
Confronting me with dilating eyes, he faltered slowly back till his natural instincts of courtesy recalled him to himself, and he bowed, when I found courage to cry:
"Fire! Your house is on fire! Up there, overhead!"
So intense were the feelings I saw aroused in him that I expected to see him rush into the open air with loud cries for help. But instead, he pushed the door to behind me, and locking me in, said, in a strange tone:
"Don't call out, don't make any sound or outcry, and above all, don't let any one in; I will fight the flames alone!" and seizing a lamp from the study-table, he dashed from me toward a staircase I could see in the distance.
Alas! it was a thrilling look -- a look which no girl could sustain without emotion; and spellbound under it, I stood in a maze, alone and in utter darkness.
While my emotions were at their height a bell rang. It was the front door-bell, and it meant the arrival of the engines.
As the bell rang a second time, a light broke on the staircase I was so painfully watching, and Mr. Allison descended, lamp in hand, as he had gone up.
What passed between him and the policeman whose voice I heard in the hall, I do not know. I finally heard the front door close.
I must have met him with a pleading aspect, very much like that of a frightened child, for his countenance changed as he approached me.
"My dear young lady, how can I thank you enough and how can I sufficiently express my regret at having kept you a prisoner in this blazing house?"
Had he stopped again? I was in such a state of inner perturbation that I hardly knew whether he had ceased to speak or I to hear.
"May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?" he asked, in a tone I might better never have heard from his lips.
"I am Delight Hunter, a country girl, sir, visiting the Vandykes."
Then as my lips settled into a determined curve, he himself opened the door, and bowing low, asked if I would accept his protection to the gate.
Declining his offer with a wild shake of the head, I dashed from the house and fled with an incomprehensible sense of relief back to that of the Vandykes.
The servants, who had seen me rush toward Mr. Allison's, were still in the yard watching for me. I did not vouchsafe them a word. I could hardly formulate words in my own mind. A great love and a great dread had seized upon me at once.
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