THE FIRES OF HELL
She had never before so fully realized the grim, uncompromising strength
of the man as at that moment. The day before he had lifted and borne her
as though she had been a child. To-night she was a pigmy in the grasp of
a giant.
He carried her without words to the kitchen and set her down there in
the leathern arm-chair. She had a glimpse of his face as he did so, and
it was as it had been earlier in the day—a mask of anger.
He did not speak to her, but went to a cupboard in the wall and took
therefrom a bottle and a glass. Weak and trembling from her fall, she
watched him pour out a small dose of spirit and add thereto water from a
jug on the dresser. Then he came back to her, stooped and put it to her
lips. His arm was behind her head as she drank. She felt the strong
support of it, the compulsion of the hand that held the glass. But she
could not raise her eyes to his. She drank in mute submission.
The dose steadied her, and she sat up. His silence oppressed her like a
crushing weight. She felt it must be broken at all costs.
“I am so sorry to have given you this trouble,” she said. “You will
think me very strange, but I am afraid I can’t explain anything. I will
go back to my room.”
He set down the glass with decision and spoke. “I am sorry to appear
unreasonable—or anything else unpleasant. But I am afraid I can’t let
you go back to your room at present.”
She turned and gazed at him. “What on earth do you mean?”
His look came to her, and his anger seemed to smite her as with physical
force. “My reasons—like yours—won’t bear explanation,” he said.
She gripped the arms of her chair. Had she heard him aright? The thing
was unbelievable. “Are you mad?” she said.
He was standing squarely in front of her. He smiled—a smile that turned
her cold. “That I can’t tell you. What is madness? I know I have got you
here—in my power. And I know I mean to keep you. If that is madness,
well—” he lifted his shoulders slightly, the old characteristic
movement—“then I am mad.”
She stared at him in growing apprehension. Was the man sober? The doubt
flashed through her mind and vanished. He was so deadly calm in his
anger. He had locked away his fury as if it were a flaming furnace
behind iron doors. But his strength was terrible, unsparing. It menaced
her, whichever way she turned.
But her spirit was reviving. It was not her way to submit meekly to the
mastery of any man. Very suddenly she rose and faced him. “This is more
than I will endure,” she said, speaking briefly and clearly. “Nothing on
earth shall keep me in this room against my will!”
She needed to pass him to reach the door into the passage. He stood
squarely in her path. She heard him draw a hard breath.
“There is such a thing as brute force,” he said.
She looked him straight in the eyes. “You wouldn’t dare!”
His eyes leaped to flame, holding hers. “Don’t tempt me!” he said,
between his teeth.
That checked her for a moment. Something seemed to clutch at her heart.
Then pride leaped up full-armed, and she flung it from her. She laughed
in his face.
“Do you think you are going to treat me as one of your slaves?” she said
contemptuously, and made to pass him.
He flung out an arm before her. His voice came, low and passionate. It
was as if the locked doors were opening. She felt the scorching heat
behind.
“If you attempt to pass me—you do it at your own risk,” he said.
She stopped. His eyes seemed to be consuming her. In spite of herself,
she shrank, averting her own.
“At your own risk,” he said again, and very slowly his arm fell.
There followed a silence that was somehow appalling. She stood as one
paralysed. She would have returned to her chair, but lacked the
strength. So he was in earnest, this extraordinary man. He actually
meant to hold her against her will. And wherefore? She almost challenged
him with the question, but something held her back—perhaps it was the
consciousness of that intolerable heat of which she had been aware with
the utterance of his last words.
She spoke at length. “I don’t understand you. What is the matter?”
He made a harsh sound in his throat; it was as though he choked a laugh.
“Do you really wish me to be more explicit? If so, by all means let us
drop all subterfuge and come down to bare facts! Why are you trying to
creep out of the house by stealth? Answer me!”
It was he then who meant to force a battle. The sudden knowledge gave
her back her courage, but she knew it for the courage of desperation.
She lifted her head and faced him. “What is that to you? Does the fact
that I have been your guest—your helpless and involuntary
guest—entitle you to control my movements or to demand an account of
them? I resent your attitude, and I absolutely repudiate your authority.
You may keep me here against my will—if you are coward enough. But you
will never—however long you wait—induce me to confide my affairs to
you. And let me tell you this! When I leave this house, I shall
never—no, never—enter it again!”
Fiercely she flung the words, answering challenge with challenge,
realizing that it was only by launching herself on the torrent of her
anger that she could hope to make any headway against him. For he stood
in her path like an opposing force, waiting to hurl her back.
Panting, she ceased to speak. The effort of her defiance was beginning
to cost her dear. Almost by instinct she groped for the table and
supported herself against it, conscious of a whirling tumult in her
brain that she was powerless to still. Too late she realized that the
power to which she had entrusted herself had betrayed her.
She saw it in his face—the sudden mockery that gleamed in his eyes. He
spoke, and his words cut with a stabbing accuracy straight through the
armour of her indignation. “Had I known—what I now know,” he said,
“What I might have known from the beginning from the manner of your
coming, I certainly would not have entertained you in this house. I have
my sisters to think of.”
“Ah!” she said, and no more; for words failed her. The horror of it
overwhelmed her utterly and completely. It seemed to her that she had
never known the meaning of pain until that moment—pain that bereft her
of all normal self-control—pain that made her gasp in sheer agony.
The walls of the room seemed to be closing in upon her. She felt her
feet slip away from under her. Desperately she tried to recover her
balance, failed, sought to cling to the table but felt her hands could
find no hold upon the hard wood.
And then there came the consciousness of his arms surrounding her. He
lifted her, he held her to him, and she felt again the awful flame of
his look, consuming her.
“And I loved you!” he said. “I—loved you!”
She fought against him breathlessly, feeling that if his lips touched
hers life would never be endurable again. But he mastered her without
apparent effort. He conquered her slowly, with a fiendish precision that
was as iron to her soul. With that dreadful smile upon his face he
overcame her spasmodic struggles for freedom. He kissed her, and by his
kiss he quelled her resistance; for she felt the fires of hell, and
fainted in his hold.