|I HAVE always loved pine trees since that desperate afternoon, for the
very practical reason that the needles prevent the growth of underbrush.
My skirts were left free, and my feet had their full opportunity for
speed, and I needed every ounce of strength and breath. Before I came to
the top of the last steep slope that plunged down to the stream, I heard
a hoarse, choking cry, that terrible cry for “Help! Help! Help!” It
was a man's voice, but so thick and weak and hollow that I could not
recognize it for Paul Dabney's. I did not dare to answer it, such was
my dread of being stopped by some murderess lurking in the gnarled and
stunted trees. But I fairly hurled myself down the path. There was the
bridge. I saw that a great gap yawned in the middle of it. I hurried to
the edge. Down below me in the gray, rotten-smelling shadows floated
a desperate, white face. Paul Dabney's straining eyes under his
mud-streaked hair looked up at me, and the faint hope in them went out.
“You again!” he gasped painfully. “You've come back to see the end...”
He smiled a twisted, ironical smile. “If I could get my hand out of this
infernal grave I'd let you wrap some of that hair of yours around my
fingers. That's your trade-mark, is n't it? Did you come back for
that?” He sank an inch lower, his chin had gone under. He lifted it out,
bearded with filthy mud, and leaned back as though against a pillow,
closing his eyes. He had given up hope.
All this, of course, took but a moment of time. I had been looking
about, searching the place for help. Near the edge of the horrible,
sluggish stream lay a board, left there by Henry after his devilish
work, or, else, fallen when Paul Dabney had broken through. It lay on
the farther bank. I stood up, measured the distance of the break in the
bridge, and, going back a few paces, ran and jumped across. It was
a good jump. I hardly looked to see, however, but hurried down the
opposite bank and shoved out the board towards Paul Dabney. Only his
face now glimmered like a death-mask on the surface of the mud.
“Paul,” I cried desperately, urgently, commandingly, “pull out your arm.
I have come to save you.”
His eyes opened. He stared at me. Then life seemed to come back to
his face. He made a frantic, choking, gasping struggle; once he went
altogether down; then, with a sucking sound his arm came up, the fingers
closed on my board. I caught his poor, cold, slimy hand. I pulled with
all my strength. His grip was like a convulsion. Inch by inch I dragged
him towards the bank. The stream surrendered its victim with a sort of
sticky sob, and he lay there on the ground beside me, lifeless as a log,
hardly to be recognized as a human being, so daubed and drenched was he
with the black ooze that had so nearly been his death. My attempts
to restore him were soon successful, for it was exhaustion, not
suffocation, that had made him faint. He had taken very little of the
mud into his mouth, but, struggling there in the bottomless, horrible
slough for nearly half an hour had taxed his strength to the last gasp.
He opened his eyes and looked up at me with an expression of grave
astonishment. I knew that he had not expected me to be such a serious
criminal as to make this deliberate attempt on his life, and, yet, I was
sure as his large, gray eyes searched me that he was deliberating the
possibility. He sat up presently, and, taking my handkerchief, he wiped
off his face and hair and hands.
“The rest is hopeless,” he said.
“The other man?” I asked him shudderingly, my eyes fixed on the smooth
and oily water.
He looked at me with a puzzled face. “The other man! There was not any
other man...” Then, stilt looking at me, a faint, unwilling flush stole
up his cheek.
“Miss Gale,” he said, “you are without doubt my guardian angel. And
yet, strangely enough, I had a dreadful vision of what you might be as
another kind of angel. When I was going down,”--he shivered all over and
glanced at the stream, whose surface was now as smooth as it would have
been had he sunk beneath it,--“when I was going down, and at the last of
my strength,--I was delirious, I suppose,--but I had a sort of vision. I
thought you stood there on the bank above me, and looked down with your
narrow face between its two wings of red hair, and mocked me. Just as
I was settling down to death, you disappeared. And, just a few moments
later, there you were again, this time with the aura of a saint... Miss
Gale,”--and here he looked at me with entire seriousness, dropping his
tone of mockery,--“do you believe in dual personalities?”
“Really, Mr. Dabney,” I said, “I don't think it's a very good time to
take up the subject.”
He looked away from me, and spoke low with an air of confusion. “You
called me 'Paul' when you shoved out that blessed board, which has gone
down in my place...”
I paid no attention to this remark, but stood up. Silently he, too, rose
and we laid a log across the deadly opening of the bridge and balanced
carefully back to safety. I could not think of my leap of a few minutes
before without a feeling of deathly sickness.
“You risked your life,” murmured Paul Dabney; “you risked your life to
save me...” He stopped me as we climbed up the hill. It was very dark
there amongst the trees. He took me by the wrists, and, “Janice Gale,”
he said desperately, speaking through his teeth, “look up at me, for the
love of God.”
I did look up, and he plunged his eyes into mine as though he were
diving for a soul.
I put up no barriers between my heart and his searching eyes. It was so
dusky there that he could not read any of my secrets. I let him search
till at last he sighed from the bottom of his soul, and let my hands
fall, passing his own across his forehead with a pitiful air of
confusion and defeat.
“'La belle dame sans merci has thee in thrall,'” he murmured, and
we went up into the glimmering twilight of the open spaces where the
swallows were still wheeling high in search of the falling sun.
When we reached the house, I asked Paul Dabney timidly if he did not
think it best to change and not to alarm Mrs. Brane by any sight of his
condition. He agreed with a wry sort of smile, and went slowly up the
stairs. I saw that he held tight to the railing, and that his feet
dragged. He was very near, indeed, to collapse; the walk up the hill had
been almost too much for him.
Nevertheless, he appeared at dinner-time as trim and neat as possible,
with the air of demure boyishness, which was so disarming, completely
restored.
Not only was he neat and trim in person, but he was mentally alert and
gay. He ate hardly anything, to be sure, drank not at all, and sat,
tight-strung, leaning a little forward in his chair, his hand in
his pocket, as he laughed and talked. His eyes held, beneath bright,
innocent surfaces, rather a harried, hunted look. But he was very
entertaining, so much so that his pallor, the little choking cough that
bothered him, and my own condition of limp reaction to the desperate
excitement of the afternoon, passed entirely unnoticed by Mrs. Brane.
Her better spirits of the morning had returned in force. She was very
glad to see Paul Dabney, so glad that I suffered a twinge of heart.
“Oh,” she laughed, “but it's good to have a man in the house.
Shakespeare is right, you know, when he says, 'a woman naturally born to
fears.'”
“I don't think he was right at all,” Paul Dabney took her up. “I believe
that the man is naturally the more fearful animal. Shakespeare ought to
have said, 'a woman naturally feigning fear.' I'm with the modern poet,
'the female of the species is more deadly than the male.' Take the lady
spider, for instance.”
“What does the lady spider do?” asked Mrs. Brane.
“She devours her lover while she is still in his embrace.”
“How horrible!”
“Horrible, but the creature is a very faithful and devoted mother. I
think there are many women”--here his hunted and haggard look
rested upon me--“who would be glad to rid themselves of a lover when
his--particular--usefulness is over.”
“All women kill the thing they love,” I smiled, and I had a dreadful
feeling that my smile was like the cruel and thin-lipped smile of the
woman who had planned Paul Dabney's death.
That was one of the most terrifying consequences of the nervous shock I
had suffered, that I had quite often now this obsession, as though
the vixen were using me, obsessing my body with her blackened soul,
as though gradually I were becoming her instrument. The smile left my
shaken lips, and I saw a sort of reflection of it draw Dabney's mouth
stiffly across his teeth. His pallor deepened; he looked away and began
to crumble his bread with restless fingers.
Henry passed through, and we followed him into the drawing-room, where
coffee was always served. When Paul Dabney had first come into the
dining-room I had glanced shrewdly at Henry. The jaw behind the whiskers
had dropped, the eyes had blinked, then discretion was perfectly
restored. But I felt a threatening sort of gloom emanate from the man
towards me, and I realized that my position was doubly dangerous. There
was a spirit of mutiny in my supposed accomplices. I trusted my double,
however, to control the pair. Their fear of her was doubtless greater
than their dread of detection, and Henry probably was relieved of some
portion of his fears by the non-appearance of the Hovey, whom Sara had
so befouled with epithets, and whom she evidently so greatly feared.
Mrs. Brane excused herself early, and I, too, rose shortly after she had
left the room. I moved slowly towards the door. Paul Dabney stood by the
high mantel, one hand in his pocket, the other resting on the shelf,
his head a little bent, looking somberly at me from under his handsome
brows. He looked very slim and young. The thought of his loneliness, of
his danger, so much greater than he suspected, smote my heart. I wanted
to go back and tell him everything, even my love. I was hesitating,
ready to turn, when he spoke. The voice, sharp and stinging as a lash,
fell with a bite across my heart.
“Good-night, _sleep-walker_,” he said.
My hand flew to my breast because of the pain he caused me. He watched
me narrowly. His pale face was rigid with the guard he kept upon some
violent feeling. My hurt turned to anger.
“You suspect me of sinister things, Paul Dabney,” I said hotly; “you
think that I prowl about Mrs. Brane's house while she sleeps, in search
of something valuable, perhaps.” I laughed softly. “Perhaps you are
right. I give you leave to pursue your investigations, though I can't
say I consider you a very ingenious detective.”
He started, and the color came in a wave across his face. For some
reason the slight upon his amateur detecting seemed to sting. I was
glad. I would have liked to strike him, to cause him physical pain. I
came in a sort of rush straight over to him, and he drew warily back
till he stood against the wall, his eyes narrowed upon me, his head
bent, as I have seen the eyes and heads of men about to strike.
“Listen to me,” I said; “I give you fair warning. This afternoon I saved
your life at the risk of my own. I may not be able to do that again.
I advise,”--here I threw all the contempt possible into my voice,--“I
advise you to keep out of this, to stay in your room and lock your
door at night. Don't smile. It is a very serious warning. Good-night,
_dreamer_, and--_lover without faith_.”
At this he put his hand to his eyes, and I left him standing with this
gesture of ashamed defeat.
It was a night of full and splendid moon; my room was as white as the
calyx of a lily, so white that its very radiance made sleep impossible.
Besides, I was excited by my battle with Paul Dabney, and by the thought
of that paper in my dress. God willing, now, the struggle would soon be
over. If I lived through the next twenty-four hours, I would find the
treasure, capture the thieves, confront Paul Dabney with my innocence
and my achievement, and leave “The Pines” forever. My ordeal was not
so nearly over as I hoped. There were further tangles in the female
spider's web. It makes me laugh now and blush to think how, all the
while, the creature made her use of me, how the cat let the little
mouse run hither and thither in its futile activity; no, not altogether
futile, I did play an extraordinary rôle. I did that very afternoon save
Paul Dabney's life; I did bewilder the queen spider and disturb and tear
her web, but, when all is said and done, it was she who was mistress of
“The Pines” that night.
I did not light my gas, so splendid was the moon, but crouching near my
open window on the floor, I took out the paper and spread it open on my
knee. It was covered with close lines in the Russian script. The writing
was so fine and delicate that, to read it, I should need a stronger
light. I rose, drew my shade and lit the gas. Again I spread out the
paper, then gave a little exclamation of dismay. It was the Russian
script, perfectly legible to me, but, alas! the language was not that of
modern Russian speech. It was the old Slavonic language of the Church.
The paper was as much a mystery to me as though it were still hidden in
the bookcase.