The Face In The Glass

The morning expres fióla New York irrived at Chicfego at 8 o'clock, and I rougiit its usual medley of passengere, i inong tliem one very strange one. A ead womaa was found in one of the leeping-oars - a young and exceedingly ovely girl, with air üko aiïk and features exquisitelv perfect and fair. 8he lay in the lower berth of a secón as if ludmjp ; only, whcn tu;. tmv.a ler and looked in her face, the large, j black eyes were staring with a look of J gony and horror in them tlwt even eath had not been abje to remove. The upper berth, did not seem to have jeen occupied, and there was nothing bout her to indícate that she had died y violence except that look in her fixed yes and a sliglit distortion of. the lovely ] eatures. Upon Qe of ihe long, silky curls which lay across her throat, was a small )iece oí soft, slightly adhesive wax, rhich, flnding it impossible to remove therwise, the curl containing it being evered, was laid aside f or future e?camiation. It was learned upon inquiiy that she ïad come upon the train at Detroit, in iie night, and alone. The section had been engaged for her jeforehand, by a woman of middle age eemingly, though none of the officials t the ticket-office could give aiore than general description of her, she having worn a veil, and only partially lif ted it t any time. Nothing was discovered to eally excite suspicion of unfaimess, rhough an uncomfortable air of mystery mng about the affair. The exceeding beauty of the dead jirl, the richness of her clothing, the ïostly jewels in her ears and upon her lands, tne absence of any baggage, ven a traveling bag, the fact that an legant portemonnaie containing notes x a considerable amount was found in ihe pocket of her dress, but no papers r address of any sort, no name - these ircumstances were discussed and commented upon, untü curiosity grew weary. At the inquest the jury gave in their verdict in accordance with the report of the doctors - "Died of congestión of the lungs." Many came to look upon the beautiful, dead face, drawn by ;he noise the papers made about the affair ; and she was at last recognizod y friends from Detroit, whom she had ately been visiting, as a Miss Tracy, rom California. But they could give no explanation of the mystorious c:rcumstanceg attending and precedicg her death. She had leffc them without teling them where she was going - had jonfi out that afternoon ostensibly to ;all upou an acquaintance, and had not I returned. That was all they could teil. The body was sent to her father in san Francisco, and the matter dropped. 3ut there was a general feeling that a mystery remained back of all ; it might je a dark and terrible one. I was a young girl of 17 at hi& time, and chanced to be on the ;rain, and the very c;ir,.with the dead firl, though I did not lmow it till long ifterward. It happened in this way : I had been visiting a school friend, and was summoned home suddenly by ;elegraph to attend the wedding of a sister, whose betrothed, being called abroad unexpectedly, wished to take his bride with him. Henea the sudden marriage. I got aboard the train at a town about six hours' ride from Chicago, at 3 o'clock in the morning, and, not feeling inclined to sleep, took a seat in the small compartment of a palace-car, called the drawing-room. I sat with my back to.the main portion of the car, and so close to the door on the side by which passengers entered that no one would be likely to know I was there, except by actually lookiug inside. The lights were turned low, but snfficient remained to enable me to seeinthe mirrors about me most of the interior of the car outeide my own retreat. There was not much to see, the berths being mostly all closed. But for that very reason, perhaps, I noticed a hand which was holding slightly apart the draperies of a section half way down the car. The hand glittered with several evidently costly stoues upon the mal! fingers, and Hint was enough of itself to attract my ettention. When a face, the most beautiful I had ever seen in iny lif e, presently folio wed the hani, looking cautiously out, and quickly retreating, my interest increase -. the face was so white- the large tj.fr so anxious. Hei üietyj though seen . but for a rnomon , nfected mo. I could not help what she was looking tor, and I wil cced her berth conetañtly (in the mirrorj o see ii she would look out again. She did repeatedly. At last ï saw her face brighten into an ecstasy of joy, and at tho same nionient the figure of a man slippe.d swif tly along the aisle, and stopped beside her an instant. I could not see his face. He climbed instantly to the upper berth, without even removingthecap.whiehhe wore instead of a hnt, cIobs uoxvn over his forehead. I coüld not see his face then, but, after a time, when the cars stopped at a smali place about twenty miles f rom Chicago, I saw the same man, with his cap still on, coming back along the aisle. I had one glimpse of his face in the mirror - a brief one----but fa tïiab instant he lifted hts eyes, and in the glass our eyes met. He stood staring a moment, j and then, with a glance around him of savage bewilderment, dashed by and disappeared. I cannot describe the creeping, icy thrill which that one look, encountered only in a glass, sent throtifïh BMfc The face toO hault'e'yi. mü, more by its exprwsioh than lts features - a handsoifie, wicked, sneering face, that fascinated and repelled at the same moment - a face whose ghostly, livid whiteness it sickened me to remember, whose terrible eyes in that one flash of meeting had seemed to look abject fear and 1 age threatening at once. I cowered down ih f&j sedt, and covered m,y faioe with tay shawl, af raid to I iook lest I should meet that awml glance again, and finally feil asleep, not waking till we were entering Chicago. I had no baggage - I had lef t my trunk to be sent in the next train- and I got off at Twenty-second street. As I left the car, I remembered noticing that one section in the middle of the car remained undisturbed and Olosely curtained still. The conductor had addressed the occüpant several timos; but when she did not anwer súwáníj her to be still Blefepjng, tina did no't discover that it was the sleep of death until after the arrival of the train at the depot. In consequence perhaps of my having left the car at Twenty-second street, I was not remembered, or called as a witness at the inquest, and as my sister tvas I married at J.8 o'elonk tbao ciay, and I went. Mmy with her to New York and I ! remained there some weeks after she haa sailed with her husband, I did not happen to hear of thé finding of that dead girl in a sleeping-car, in a long time. A year passsd. My sister was still abroad. I was having a good time in society, of which I was extremely fond. I had lately formed the aoquaintance of a gentleman who brought a letter of introduction from my sister. He was an IMlgllSIimüu, OM.0 ííteu io jnuMi iu Paris, and b?d m?t ray Mater there, and had been able to extend her and her husband sorüe courtesies, whioh she in her letter asked me to return as f ar as lay in my power. I was obliged, thereore, to be polite to the gentleman, though I had taken a violent dislike to him. I could not account to myself for my aversión, but it was insurmountable. He was very handsome and distinguished-looking, but I never met Mm suddenly without a fltart, and a chilly shrinking as ií I hád met him somewheïe beföre, under terrifying circumstanoes. He seemed very rich, and I am ashamed to say that, in spite of my dislike, when he asked me to marry him I hesitated about refusing him, beoause I did not like to lose the eclat of being attended by him - an attendanoe which I knew the girls generally envied me. I did not give him a decided answer. About this time, Balph Winston carne home from California. Balph and I had been chiidren together, and very easily grew the best of friends now. The Englishman chanced to be in New York when Balph first came. The two met at our house and in my presence, and it was evident at sight that this was pot the first time they had met ; and that they entertained a mutual dislike for each other, though both acknowledged the introduction like strangers. ' ' Have you ever met Mr. Byers be' fore ?" I asked Balph, at the flrst opportunity. "Yes." " And yon don't liVe him ?" Balph shook his head omphatically. " Why not?" "Do you know how he got his money ?" "No." " Well, TH teil you, one of the prettiest girls in San Francisco feil in love with his handsome face. She was a rich heiress, and as good and true a girl as she know how to be. Her father hated Byers, and would never consent to her marrying him. She would not marry him without her father's consent. But just as soon as sho came of legal age to do so, she made her will, and gave all her money to Byers, at her death. óhe was visiting in Detroit af terwards, and went away without telling her friends there where she was going, or even without taking a trunk with her. The next they heard of her she was iound dead in a sleeping-car at Chicago. " Here Balph repeated to me.those particulars of the tragedy which I recounted at the begipning of this recital. ' " Byers, of course, got all her money," Balph went on, " and took it so greedily and unscrupulously that everybody who knew the circumstances was disgusted. He was in Europe at the time of her death, and came posting to California af ter the money as soon as he heard of it; and when he had got it, went posting back again. Everybody in San Francisco despieed him." Ealph's story affected me very strangely. . " Was Byers suspected of knowing anything about her death ? " I asked. "There was some mystery about it. But the iuquost had ; decided that stfc died a natural death', and Byers was abroad at the time, so they could not connect him witti it. But I havo always suspected, and so have many, that he knew more than he was wiiling to teli. " Balph and I were sitting at one extremity of the two parlors. A largo mirror was near us, and exactly opposite this mirror in the other parlor was another. As Balph said these words, I lookcd round the rooms involuntarily in search of Mr. Byers. He was nowhero to be seen, but glancing accidentaliy in the glass near me, as I turned to address Balph again, my words froze on my lips. For there, staring at me from the mirror, was the very face whose reflection had scared me 80 in the drawing-room of the ing-car a year bofore. The very same - liandsome, wicked, sneering - in the eyes the same expression of mingled foar and threatening, on tho face the same livid ancl horrible whiteness. and as our eyes nset in the inirror he knew me Rgaiü, as I knew him. I could not look away. I thought I beheld a visión. It was only by a supreme effort that I kept my senscs, so strongly did the old horror and terroi of that face, which had held me once, hold me again now. "Ealph," I said in alow voice, "look where I am looking, and teil me if oil see artythinj-," Kalpn obeyed. "I see Cecil Byers glowering at us like a demon,", he said. "He hates me for loving you, I suppose ; and let him, only don't you marry him, Lou. I could bear to lose you myself better than to see you the wife of that devil." Cecil Byers ! Oddas ,t snsy sbeih, I had not reüögnSed that awful face in the glass as his, till Kalph named him. I put my hand in Kalph's arm. "Take me away out of this room, quick," I "I never want to meet Cecil Byers again. I am sure I shall scream or faint, or do something dreadfulifldo." Ealph got me ottt of the room by the nearefet aobr, one which led out upon the terrace, and then I quietly fainted away, a thing whieh I never did before or since. At the moment I recognized the face in the glass as the face of Cecil Byers, that moment the whcde circumstances of the strange ptory Ralph had just told me seemed to rise before me like monsters. I was b,ack in the d-awing-room of th'3 oleepingcar again. 1 was watching in the inirror opposite me that section half way down the car from which I had beheld "the palest and loveliest of faces look with anxious eyes. I was recalliug the figure of the man I had seen go gliding toward her, and I remembered now, though it had scarcely occurred to me at the time, and never been recalled since, that as I left the car at Twenty-secotid street, that very section remaihed shut in by its draping curtains, just as it had all night. 8uddenly th,e atf'ful ëonviëtion bürst in upon me that Cecil Byers was a murderer, and that I had almost seen him do tlie deed. Was it any wonder I fainted ? The next day I went with my father before a magistrate and told my story. I had to do it. The angel face of that poor murdered giil hati.nted me till t didj I ánd wüuld nave haunted me till I died, if I had not, for I believe she had been iniirdered. My story seemed very little when it was told, but when it was proved that I was on the car that very night, or rather morning, on which the dead girl was found, and when I swore positively that it was Cecil Byers I saw go to her berta and come away from it, the matter began to look worthy of investigation. It was found that Byers had been seen both in Chicago and Detroit before n,nd af te t,ha.t. pofr inri 't. ílhÜÍli. ríe muse have sceiíwrütus:,j., mi uo had left Chicago, they found, when they went to arrest him for the murder. They f olio wed him, howeVjgr, and captured him in Wew Tork. ie was very bold and deflant at first, but ultimately eonfessed the cruel deed. He had met the unfortunate girl out walking, and had persuaded her at last to consent to a secret marriage. She had always been firm enough in her refuwal before. bvt now she had nét reen h!m ia a loilg time, and he was very eloquent, and she did love him, and she was of age. Besides, he promised never to claim her as long as her father lived, unless by his consent ; so 3he yielded. They went on the cars aeparately, he joining her afterward. Ee watehed from the upper berth till she feil asleep, and then creeping down, smotbered her by holding a piaster of thick wax over her mouth and Qostrils. No wonder her eyes wore auch a look of agony and horror even in death. When Byers was asked why he killed her, he answered almost coolly: " I needed tho money, and I knew it might be a long time before I got the handling of it if she lived." " But when she was your wife you could have claimed it." "Ah, that was just it. She could not be my wife, because I was already married. It was my wife who engaged the section in the sleeping-car for her.'' " Where is your wife now t' " Dead," was the sullen answer, " as she deserved to be." He deserved to be hung, but he was not. He sickened with some kind of fever in tho prison, and died there, without ever having shown much signs of repentance. Such natures as his are incapable of true repentance, I Gelieve.