|I WENT to bed early that night, and, partially undressing myself, I put
on a wrapper and sat on my bed reading till Mary should come to tell me
that Robbie had fallen asleep, and that it was time for our night-watch
to begin. I had not spoken to Mary again on the subject, for soon after
my investigations in the kitchen, Mrs. Brane had asked me to help her in
her work of going over the old, long-closed drawers and wardrobes in
the north wing, and I had had a very busy and tiring afternoon. It was
a relief, however, to find that Sara dropped her labors when I appeared.
Mrs. Brane looked almost as relieved as I felt.
“That is the most indefatigable worker I ever met, Miss Gale,” she said
in her listless, nervous way; “she's been glued to my side ever since we
began this interminable piece of work.”
“I wish you'd give it up, dear Mrs. Brane,” I said, “and let the
indefatigable Sara tire out her own energy. I'm sure that you have
none to spare, and this going over of old letters, and papers, and books
and clothes is very tiring and depressing work for you.”
She gave a tormented sigh. “Oh, isn't it? It's aging me.” She stood
before a great, old highboy, its drawers pulled out, and she looked
so tiny and helpless, as small almost as Robbie. All the rest of
the furniture was as massive as the highboy, the four-poster and the
marble-topped bureau, and the tall mirror with its tarnished frame. I
liked the mirror, and rather admired its reflection of myself.
Mrs. Brane looked wistfully about the room, and her eyes, like mine,
stopped at the mirror. “How young you look beside me,” she said, “and so
bright, with that wonderful hair! I wish you'd let me know you better,
dear; I am really very fond of you, you know, and you must have
something of a history with your beauty and your 'grand air,' and that
halo of tragedy Mr. Dabney talks about.” She smiled teasingly, but I was
too sad to smile back.
“My history is not romantic,” I said bitterly; “it is dull and sordid.
You are very good to me, dear Mrs. Brane.” I was close to tears. “I wish
I could do more for you.”
“More! Why, child, if it wasn't for you, I'd run away from 'The Pines'
and never come back. _No_ inducement, no consideration of any kind would
keep me in this place.”
She certainly spoke as though she had in mind some very weighty
inducement and consideration.
“Why do you stay, Mrs. Brane.” I asked impulsively. “At least, why don't
you go away for a change? It would do you so much good, and it would be
wonderful for Robbie. Why, Mrs. Brane, you have n't left this place for
a day, have you, since your husband died?”
“No, dear,” said the little lady sorrowfully, “hardly for an hour. It's
my prison.” She looked about the room again, and added as though she
were talking to herself, “I don't dare to leave it.”
“Dare?” I repeated.
She smiled deprecatingly. “That was a silly word to use, was n't it?”
Again that tormented little sigh. “You see, I'm a silly little person.
I'm not fit to carry the weight of other people's secrets.”
Again I repeated like some brainless parrot, “Secrets?”
“Of course there are secrets, child,” she said impatiently. “Every one
has secrets, their own or other people's. You have secrets, without
doubt?”
I had. She had successfully silenced me. After that we worked steadily,
and there was no further attempt at confidence.
Nevertheless, as I lay on my bed trying to read and waiting for Mary's
summons, I decided that I would make a strong effort to get Mrs. Brane
and Robbie out of the house. I had come to the conclusion that my
employer was the victim of a mild sort of mania, one symptom of which
was a fear of leaving her home. I thought I would consult with Dr.
Haverstock and get him to order Robbie and Robbie's mother a change of
air. It might cure the little fellow of his nervous terrors. How I wish
I had thought of this plan a few days sooner! What dreadful reason I
have for regretting my delay!
Mary was a long time in coming. I must have fallen asleep, for a while
later, I became aware that I had slipped down on my pillows and that
my book had fallen to the floor. I got up, feeling rather startled, and
looked at my clock. It was already half-past twelve, and Mary had not
called me. I went to my door and found that it was locked. I remembered
that it had been my alternate plan for Mary to lock me in, and I
supposed that she had forgotten that our final decision was in favor of
the other scheme, or she had preferred to watch over Robbie alone. I was
a little hurt, but I acquiesced in my imprisonment and went back to bed.
I put out the light, and was very soon asleep again.
I was waked by a dreadful sound of screaming. I sat up in bed, stiff
with fear, my heart leaping. Then I ran towards the door, remembered
that it was locked, and stood in the middle of the room, pressing my
hands together.
The screaming stopped. Robbie had had his nightmare, and it was over.
Thank God! this time my alibi was established without doubt. I was
enormously relieved, for I had begun myself to fear that I had been
walking in my sleep, and, perhaps, influenced by the description of
Robbie's favorite nightmare, had unconsciously acted out the horror
beside his bed. After a while, the house being fairly quiet, though I
thought I would hear Mary moving about, I went back to my bed. When she
could leave her charge I knew that she would come to me with her story.
I tried to be calm and patient, but of course I was anything but that.
It was nearly morning, a faint, greenish light spread in the sky,
opening fanlike fingers through the slats of my shutter. After a while,
it seemed interminable, a step came down the hall. It was not Mary's
padded, nurselike tread, it was the quick, resolute footstep of a man.
It stopped outside my door. There was no ceremony of knocking, no key
turned. The handle was sharply moved, and, to my utter amazement, the
door opened.
There stood Paul Dabney, fully dressed, his face pale and grim.
“Come out,” he said. “Come with me and see what has been done.” I
noticed that he kept one hand in his pocket, and that the pocket bulged.
I got up, still in my wrapper, my hair hanging in two long, dishevelled
braids, and came, in a dazed way, towards him. He took me by the wrist,
using his left hand, the other still in his pocket. His fingers were
as cold and hard as steel. I shrunk a little from them, and he gave my
wrist a queer, cruel little shake.
“What does it feel like, eh?” he snarled.
I merely looked at him. His unexpected appearance, his terrible manner,
the opening of that locked door without the use of any key, above all,
a dull sense of some overwhelming tragedy for which I was to be held
responsible,--all these things held me dumb and powerless. I let
him keep his grasp on my wrist, and I walked beside him along the
passage-way as though I were indeed a somnambulist. So we came to the
nursery door. Inside, I saw Mary kneeling beside Robbie's little bed,
and heard her sobbing as though her heart would break.
“What is it?” I whispered, looking at Paul Dabney and pulling back.
My look must have made some impression on him. A queer sort of gleam
of doubt seemed to pass across his face. He drew me towards the cot,
keeping his eyes riveted upon me.
There lay the little boy who had never allowed me to come so near to
him before, passive and still--a white little face, a body like a broken
flower. I saw at once that he was dead.
“Oh, miss,” sobbed Mary, keeping her face hidden, “why didn't you keep
to your plan? Oh, God have mercy on us, we have killed the poor soul!”
“Mary,” I whispered, “you locked me in.”
“Oh, indeed, Miss Gale, no. I thought you said you'd come and spend the
night with me. I had a couch made up. I waited for you, and I must have
fallen asleep...” Here she got to her feet, drying her eyes. We were
both talking in whispers, Dabney still held my wrist, the little corpse
lay silent there before us as though he were asleep. “I was waked by
Robbie. Oh, my lamb! My lamb!” Again she wept and tears poured down my
own face.
“I heard him,” I choked. “I would have come. But the door was locked.”
Here Mr. Dabney's fingers tightened perceptibly, almost painfully upon
my wrist.
“I opened your locked door,” he sneered. “Remember that.”
Mary looked at me with bewildered eyes. “I did n't lock your door,
miss.”
We stared at each other in dumb and tragic mystification.
“I came to Robbie as fast as I could,” she went on. “I was too late to
see any one go out. He was in convulsions, the pitiful baby! In my arms,
he died before ever I could call for help. Mr. Dabney come in almost at
once and and--Oh, miss, who's to tell his mother?”
I made a move. “I must--” I began, but that cold, steel grip on my wrist
coerced me.
“You go, Mary,” said Dabney, “and break it to her carefully. Send for
Dr. Haverstock. This--sleep-walker will stay here with me,” he added
between his teeth.
Mary, with a little moan, obeyed and went out and slowly away. Paul
Dabney and I stood in silence, linked together strangely in that room of
death. This was the man I loved. I looked at him.
“You look as innocent as a flower,” he said painfully. “Perhaps this
will move you.”
He drew me close to Robbie. He lifted one of the little hands and laid
it, still warm, in mine. The small fingers were clenched into a fist,
and about two of them was wrapped a strand of red-gold hair.
I fell down at Paul Dabney's feet.
The consciousness of his grip on my wrist, which kept me from measuring
my length on the floor, stayed with me through a strange, short journey
into forgetfulness.
“Ah!” said Paul Dabney, as I came back and raised my head; “I thought
that would cut the ground from under you.”
He quietly untwisted the hairs from the child's clutch, and, still
keeping his hold of me, he put the lock into his pocket-book and
replaced it in an inner pocket.
“Stand up!” he said.
I obeyed. The blood was beginning to return to my brain, and with it an
intolerable sense of outrage. I returned him look for look.
“If I am unfortunate enough to walk in my sleep,” I said quiveringly,
“and if, through this misfortune, I have been so terribly unhappy as to
cause the death of this poor delicate child, is that any reason, Paul
Dabney, that you should hold me by the wrist and threaten me and treat
me like a murderess?”
I was standing at my full height, and my eyes were fixed on his. To
my inexpressible relief, the expression of his face changed. His eyes
faltered from their implacable judgment, his lips relaxed, his fingers
slowly slipped from my wrist. I caught his arm in both my hands.
“Paul! Paul!” I gasped. Not for long afterwards did I realize that I had
used his name. “How can you, how can you put me through such agony? As
though this were not enough! O God! God!”
I broke down utterly. I shook and wept. He held me in his arms. I could
feel him tremble.
“Go back to your room,” he said at last, in a low, guilty sort of voice.
“Try to command yourself.”
I faltered away, trying pitifully as a punished child, to be obedient,
to be good, to merit trust. He looked after me with such a face of
doubt and despair that, had it not been for Robbie's small, wax-like
countenance, I must have been haunted by the look.
I got somehow to my room and lay down on my bed. I was broken in body,
mind, and spirit. For the time being there was no strength or courage
left in me. But they came back.
CHAPTER VII--THE RUSSIAN BOOK-SHELVES
|IT was fortunate for us all, especially for poor Mary, that, after
Robbie's death, Mrs. Brane needed every care and attention that we could
give her. For myself, I had expected prompt dismissal, but, as it
turned out, Mrs. Brane more than ever insisted upon my staying on
as housekeeper. Neither Mary, because of her loyalty to me, nor Paul
Dabney, for some less friendly reason, had told the poor little woman
of the cause of Robbie's death, nor of their suspicions concerning my
complicity, unconscious or otherwise.
It may seem strange to the reader that I should not have left “The
Pines.” It seems strange to me now. But there was more than one reason
for my courage or my obstinacy. First, I felt that after Dabney's
extraordinary treatment of me, treatment which he made no attempt to
explain and for which he made no apology, my honor demanded that I
should stay in the house and clear up the double mystery of the locked
door that opened, and of the strand of red-gold hair that was wrapped
around poor little Robbie's fingers. Of course I may have dreamed that
the door was locked; I may have, that time when I fancied myself broad
awake, been really in a state of trance, and, instead of finding a
locked door and going back to bed, I may then have gone through the
door and down the hall to Robbie's nursery, coming to myself only, when,
being again in bed, I had awakened to the sound of his screams. This
explanation, I know, was the one adopted by Mary. Mr. Dabney had other
and darker suspicions. I realized that in some mysterious fashion he had
constituted himself my judge. I realized, too, by degrees, and here, if
you like, was the chief reason for my not leaving “The Pines,” that Paul
Dabney simply would not have let me go. Unobtrusively, quietly, more,
almost loathfully, he kept me under a strict surveillance. I became
conscious of it slowly. If I had to leave the place on an errand he
accompanied me or he sent Mary to accompany me. At about this time Mrs.
Brane, without asking any advice from me, engaged two outdoor men.
They were to tidy up the grounds, she told me, and to do some repairing
within and without. They were certainly the most inefficient workmen I
have ever seen. They were always pottering about the house or grounds.
I grew weary of the very sight of them. It seemed to me that one was
always in my sight, whatever I did, wherever I went.
Mrs. Brane felt Robbie's death terribly, of course; she suffered not
only from the natural grief of a mother, but from a morbid fancy that,
in some way, the tragedy was her own fault. “I should have taken him
away. I should not have let him live in this dreary, dreadful house.
What was anything worth compared to his dear life! What is anything
worth to me now!” There was again the suggestion that living in this
house was worth something. I should have discussed all these matters
with Mr. Dabney. Indeed, I should have made him my confidant on all
these mysteries which confronted me, had it not been for his harshness
on that dreadful night. As it was, I could hardly bear to look at him,
hardly bear to speak to him. And, yet, poor, wretched, lonely-hearted
girl that I was, I loved him more than ever. I kept on with my work
of dusting books, and he kept on with his everlasting notes on Russian
literature, so we were as much as ever in each other's company. But what
a sad change in our intercourse! The shadow of sorrow and discomfort
that lay upon “The Pines” lay heaviest of all in that sunny, peaceful
bookroom where we had had such happy hours. And I could not help being
glad of his presence, and, sometimes, I found his eyes fixed upon me
with such a look of doubt, of dumb and miserable feeling. I was trying
to make up my mind to speak to him in those days. I think that in the
end I should have done so, with what result I cannot even now imagine,
had it not been, first, for the episode of the Russian Baron, and,
second, for another matter, infinitely and incomparably more dreadful
than any other experience of my life.
The Russian Baron came to “The Pines” one morning about ten days after
little Robbie's death. Mrs. Brane received him in the drawing-room, and
presently rang the bell and sent Sara upstairs with a message for me.
I came down at once. The Baron sat opposite to Mrs. Brane before the
small coal fire. He was a heavy, high-shouldered, bearded man, with that
look of having too many and too white teeth which a full black beard
gives. His figure reminded me of a dressed-up bolster. It was round and
narrow, and without any shape, and it looked soft. His plump hands were
buttoned into light-colored gloves, which he had not removed, and his
feet were encased in extravagantly long, pointed, very light tan shoes.
He kept his eyebrows raised, and his eyes opened so wide that the whites
showed above the iris, and this with no sense of effort and for no
reason whatever. It disguised every possible expression except one of
entirely unwarranted, extreme surprise. At first, when I came into the
room, I thought that in some way I must have caused the look, but I soon
found that it was habitual to him. Mrs. Brane looked at once nervous,
and faintly amused.
“Miss Gale,” she said, “this is Baron Borff.” She consulted the card on
her lap. “He was a friend of my husband's when my husband was in Europe,
and he, too, like Mr. Dabney, wants to see my husband's collection of
Russian books.”
The Baron stood up, and made me a bow so deep that I discovered his hair
was parted down the back.
“Mees Gale,” said the Baron, looking up at me while he bowed. He
suggested the contortions of a trained sea-animal of some kind.
“I shall have to ask you to show him the books, Miss Gale,” went on Mrs.
Brane. “It seems to be one of your principal duties in the house, does
n't it! And I certainly did not engage you for a librarian. But I have
not been very well since my little boy died--” Her lips quivered and
the Baron gave a magnificent, deep, organ-like murmur of sympathy, his
unreasonably astonished eyes being fixed meanwhile upon me. In fact,
he had stared at me without deviation since my entrance, and I was
thoroughly out of countenance.
“It ees true that I should not have intruded myself at this so tragic
time into your house of mourning,” he said, “but, unfortunately, my time
in your country is so very short that unless I come at this juncture I
should not be able to come at all, and so--”
“I understand, of course,” said Mrs. Brane, rising and twisting the
Baron's card in her hand. “I am very glad you came. Will you not take
dinner with us this evening?”
The Baron looked at me as if for consent or advice, and, thinking that
he was considering his hostess's health I made a motion of my lips of
“no,” at which he promptly but very politely and effusively declined her
hospitality, and followed me out of the room.
Young Dabney met us in the hall. I introduced him to the Baron, who
turned very pale, quite green, in fact. I was astonished at this loss
of color on his part, especially as Mr. Dabney was extremely polite
and gentle with him in his demure way, and strolled beside him into the
bookroom chatting in the most friendly fashion, and reminding me of his
manner to me on the first afternoon of our acquaintance. The Baron stood
in the middle of the bookroom peeling off his gloves as though his hands
were wet. His forehead certainly was, and he stayed green and kept those
astonished eyes fixed upon me so that I felt like screaming at him to
remove them.
Paul Dabney sat on the window seat and took up a book.
“I shall be perfectly quiet, Baron,” he said, “and not disturb your
investigations.”
He was admirably quiet, but I could not help but see that he did very
little reading. He did not turn a page, but sat with one hand in his
pocket. I remembered that he had held his hand just that way on the
night of Robbie's death. One of the outdoors men came across the lawn,
and began to trim the vine beside one of the open windows. I thought the
Baron could not complain of any too much privacy for his researches.
“This is the Russian library,” I said, and led the way to the shelves.
He followed me so closely that I could feel his breath on my neck. He
was breathing fast, and rather unevenly.
“Thank you so much,” he said. He took out a volume, and rustled the
pages. At last, “I wonder if I might be allowed to pursue my studies
with no other assistance than yours, Miss Gale,” he asked irritably. He
wiped his forehead. “I am a student, a recluse. It is a folly, but
these presences”--he pointed towards Mr. Dabney and the man at the
window--“disturb me.”
I glanced at Paul Dabney, who smiled and came down from his window seat,
moving towards the door, the book under his arm, his hand still in his
pocket. He did not say anything, but went out quietly and nearly closed
the door. I shut it quite. A second later I heard him speaking to
the man outside, and he, too, removed himself. The Baron gave a great
whistling sigh of relief, ran to each of the windows in turn, then came
back to me and spoke in a low, muttering voice.
“You are incomparable, madame,” he said.
I was perfectly astonished, both at the speech and the manner. But this
was my first specimen of the Russian nobility, and supposing that it
was the aristocratic Russian method of compliment, I bowed, and
was going to follow Mr. Dabney out, when the Baron, kneeling by the
bookcase, clutched my skirt in his hand.
“You will not leave me?”
I withdrew my skirt from his grasp. “Not if I can be of any help to you,
Baron,” I said and could not restrain a smile, he was so absurd.
“Help? _Boje moe! Da!_”
He turned from me, and began rapidly to remove all the books from the
bookcase. I thought this a peculiar way to pursue studies, especially
as he was so frightfully quick about it; I have never seen any one so
marvellously quick with his hands, tumbling the books down one after the
other. When the case was entirely empty, and I knew that I should have
the work of filling it again, he very calmly removed a shelf and began
feeling with his fingers along the back of the case. I stared at him,
silent and fascinated. I thought him harmlessly insane. He was evidently
very much excited. He tapped with his fingers. Perspiration streamed
down his face. He glanced at me over his shoulder.
“You see,” he said. “It is back there. Don't you hear?”
I heard that his tapping produced a hollow sound.
“What are you about?” I asked him sternly.
At that he began tumbling the books back in their places as feverishly
as he had taken them out. In an incredibly short time they were
arranged.
“Yes, yes, you are quite right,” he said as though my bewildered
question had been a piece of advice. “Now you see for yourself.” He got
up and dusted his knees. “It is much safer for you, but I did not dare
to trust it to writing. You have, however, much better opportunities
than I knew. It will be in Russian, of course, but that, too, will give
you no trouble. I meant to contrive a meeting with Maida, but this is
much better.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed, the jargon made no sense at all.
He took my hand and raised it to his lips.
“You are extraordinary, astonishing! Such youth! Such innocence! _Bo je
moe!_ How is it done?” He put his mouth close to my ear, and muttered
something in Russian, the spitting, purring tongue which I detest. What
he said, for I was able to translate it, sent me back, white and shaking
into the nearest chair.
“It will not be long, eh?” the Baron had sputtered into my ear, “before
the young man, too, is found with three of those golden hairs about his
fingers, eh?”
I sat down and covered my eyes with my hands, an action that seemed to
throw him into a convulsion of mirth. When I looked up, the abominable,
grotesque figure was gone.
I went over to the window. He was walking rapidly down the driveway.
As he turned the corner I saw a man step from the side of the road and
saunter after him. It was one of the outside men engaged by Mrs. Brane.
I ran upstairs to my own room, and sat down at random in the chair
before my dressing-table and rested my head in my hands. I sat there for
a long, long time, and I felt that I was fighting against a mist. Just
so must some victim dragonfly struggle with the dreadful stickiness of
the spider's web. I was blinded mentally by the very meshes that were
beginning to wrap round me. I knew now that I was in great danger of
some kind, that I was being played with by sinister and evil forces,
that, perhaps purposely, I was being terrified and bewildered and
mystified. There was none whom I could surely count for a friend, no one
except Mary, and how could she or any one else understand the undefined,
dreamlike, grotesque forms my experiences had taken. Mrs. Brane,
perhaps, was the person for me to take into my confidence, and yet, was
it fair to frighten her when she was so delicate? Already one person
too many had been frightened in that house. Mr. Dabney was my enemy. No
matter what the feeling that possessed his heart, his brain was pitted
against me. I was being made a victim, a cat's-paw. But how and by whom?
This Baron had treated me as an accomplice. He had showed me a secret.
He had made to me a horrible suggestion. The power that had frightened
away the three housekeepers, the power that had scared Delia and Jane
and Annie from their home, the power that had thrown little Robbie into
the convulsions that caused his death, the power that had taken every
one but me and the Lorrences--for Mary now slept near Mrs. Brane--out of
the northern wing--this power was threatening Paul Dabney and, from
the Baron's whispered words, I understood that it was threatening Paul
Dabney through me. Was it not a supernatural evil? Was I not perhaps
possessed? Could I be driven to commit crimes and to leave as evidence
against myself those strands of hair? Flesh and blood could not bear
the horror of all this. I would go to Mr. Dabney at once.
With this resolution to comfort me, I rose and made myself ready for
dinner. It was too late to change my dress, but Mrs. Brane was not
particular as to our dressing for dinner; besides, my frock was neat and
fresh, a soft gray crêpe with wide white collar and cuffs. My working
dresses were all made alike and trimmed in this Quaker style which I had
found becoming. I thought that, in spite of extreme pallor and shadows
under my eyes, I looked rather pretty. I believe that was the last
evening when I took any particular pleasure in my own looks. I was
rather nervous over my impending interview with Paul Dabney and it was
with a certain relief that I heard from Mrs. Brane in the diningroom
that our guest had gone out and would not be back that night.
“How queer it seems to be alone again!” she said, but I thought she
looked more alarmed than relieved.
That night, however, in spite of her timidity, she was in better spirits
than I had seen her since Robbie's death. Her listlessness was not quite
so extreme as usual, she even chatted about her youth and dances she
used to go to. She must have been as pretty as a fairy and she had
evidently been something of a belle, though I have noticed that all
Southern women see themselves in retrospect as the center of a little
throng of suitors. Mary waited on us, for Henry had the toothache and
had gone to bed. It was quite a cozy and cheerful meal. In spite of
myself, the disagreeable impression produced by the Baron faded a little
from my mind and, as it faded, another feeling began to strengthen.
In other words, I began to be acutely curious about the hollow sound
produced by tapping on the back of that bookcase.
“I think you made a great impression on the Baron, Miss Gale,” said Mrs.
Brane teasingly as we sat at our coffee in the drawing-room; “he really
seemed unable to take his eyes off you. I don't wonder. You are really
extraordinarily pretty in an odd way.”
“In an odd way?” I could n't help asking.
“Why, yes, you are the strangest-looking pretty girl I've ever seen. You
know, my dear, if I should catalogue your features no one would think
it the portrait of an angelic-looking creature. It would sound like a
vixen. Now, stiffen up your vanity and listen.” She looked me over and
gave me this description. “You have fiery hair, in the first place,
which is the right color for a vixen, you know, and you have a long,
slender, pale face, and green-blue eyes, though they do look black at
night and gray sometimes, but still they are the real Becky Sharp color
and no mistake. You have very thin, red lips, and, if their expression
was not so unmistakably sweet, I should say they were frightfully
capable of looking cruel and--well, yes--mean.”
“Oh, Mrs. Brane, what a dreadful portrait!”
“What did I tell you? It is true, too, line by line, and yet you are
quite the loveliest-looking woman I have ever seen. Miss Gale, come,
now, you must see the impression you make. Are you not concerned over
the condition of poor Paul Dabney?”
“I have not noticed his condition,” said I bitterly.
She shook her head at me. “Fibs!” she said. “The poor boy is as restless
as a hawk. He is getting pale and thin and gaunt. He eats nothing. He
can't let you out of his sight.”
“If he is consumed by love of me,” I said, “it is strange that he has
never confided to me as to his sufferings.”
“But has n't he really, Janice?--I am just going to call you by your
first name, may I?” I was so grateful to her for the pretty way she said
it and for the sweet look she gave me, that I kissed the hand she held
out.
“Has n't he really made love to you, Janice? I could have sworn that,
during all those hours you two have spent in the bookroom, something of
the sort was going on.”
“Nothing of the sort at all. In fact, Mrs. Brane, I think that Paul
Dabney dislikes me very much.”
She thought this over, stirring her coffee absently and staring into the
coalfire. “It is rather mysterious, but, sometimes, I have thought that
too. At least, his feeling for you is very strong, one way or the other.
Sometimes it has seemed to me that he both hates and loves you. How do
you treat him, Janice?”
I tried to avoid her eyes. “Not any way at all,” I stammered. “That is,
just the way I feel, with polite indifference.”
Mrs. Brane gave a little trill of sad laughter. “Oh, how I am enjoying
this nonsense, Janice! I have n't talked such delicious stuff for years.
No, dear, you don't treat him with polite indifference at all. You treat
him with the most dreadful and crushing and stately hauteur imaginable.
Now, you were much more affable with the Baron.”
I gave a little involuntary shiver.
“How ridiculous that creature was, was n't he?” laughed Mrs. Brane. “I
could hardly keep my face straight as I looked at him. He was like a
make-up of some kind. He did n't seem real, do you know what I mean? I
wish he had stayed to dinner. He would have amused me.”
“He did n't amuse me,” I said positively; “I thought he was detestable.”
“Poor Baron Borff! And he was _so_ enamoured. You have a very hard
heart, Janice. Never mind, when I get rich, I'll set you up like a
queen. You must not be a housekeeper always even if you do refuse to be
a baroness. You did n't know I had hopes of wealth, did you?” She looked
rather sly as she put this question.
“I had fancied it, Mrs. Brane,” I said.
She looked about the room nervously and lowered her voice.
“It is so queer, Janice,” she said; then she moved over to the sofa
where I sat and spoke very low indeed: “It is so queer to have a fortune
and--_not to know where it is_.”
I, too, looked anxiously about me, even behind me where there was no
possible space for a listener.
“If you would only tell me, Mrs. Brane,” I began earnestly,--“if you
would only tell me something, about this fortune of yours, I feel that I
might be able to help you. Mrs. Brane, does any one know? Mr. Dabney, for
instance?”
“No,” she murmured. “I have never told any one; I ought not to tell
you.--Oh, Mary, is that you? How you made me jump! I suppose it's
bedtime.”
“Yes'm,” said Mary, “and past bedtime. Don't you want to get strong and
well, Mrs. Brane?”
She laughed and stood up obediently, gave me a look that said “Hush,”
and followed Mary out. I took up a book and began to read.
After an hour or two, oppressed by the dead stillness of the house, I
went upstairs to my own room.
But I did not undress. The most overwhelming desire possessed me
suddenly to go down to the bookroom and to discover, if I could, the
secret of the bookcase. There is no doubt about it, there is the blood
of adventurers in my veins. Danger is a real temptation to me, danger
and the devious way. I would rather, I believe, be playing with peril
than not.
The house was very silent. I was alone in the old wing. My nerves had
been badly shaken only that afternoon, but I was keen for adventure.
Curiosity was far stronger than my fears. I took off my shoes and opened
the door. A faint light shone at the far end of the passage, the night
light that Mrs. Brane had been burning there since Robbie's death. I
walked along the hallway to the stairs. I had never realized before how
noiseless one may be in stocking feet, nor how noisy an old floor is
of itself under the quietest step. Boards snapped under me like pistol
shots. But no one in the sleeping house seemed the wiser for my stealthy
passing. I got down the stairs and found my way into the bookroom, saw
that the shutters were all tightly fastened and the shades drawn down.
Then I lighted the gas-jet near the Russian collection and knelt before
it on the floor.
I began quietly to take out the books, as I had seen the Baron take
them. I had removed perhaps half a dozen from the middle shelf when the
strangest feeling made me look around.
The door of the bookroom was open and I had left it shut. I rose to my
feet. At the same instant something just outside the threshold of the
door seemed to rise to its feet. I looked at it. _It was myself._
There is no way of describing the horror of such a sight.
This figure wore my dress of gray with its Quaker collar and cuffs, its
long, slender face was framed in fiery hair, its green-blue eyes, narrow
and long-lashed, were fixed on mine. There was no mirror outside of
that door; besides, no mirror could have reflected the look of white
damnation that possessed this face. Haggard and hard and vile, with a
wicked, stony leer in the eyes, with a wicked, tight smile on the lips,
with a blasted, devastated look too dreadful to describe, it faced me.
And it was myself, as I might have been after a lifetime of crime and
cruelty.
I stood and looked at it till a black cloud seemed to roll up over it,
from which for a second its evil countenance smiled imperturbably at me.
Then the face, too, was blotted out and I fell down on the floor.