FOREWARNED, BUT NOT FOREARMED.
"By Jove!" muttered Max. Then, with a sudden outburst of energy,
inspired by indignation at the trap in which he found himself, he dashed
across the floor to the zinc pail he had previously noticed, and
swinging it round his head, was about to make such an attack upon the
door as its old timbers could scarcely have resisted, when the girl
suddenly shot between him and the door, placing herself with her back to
it and her arms spread out, so quickly that he only missed by a hair's
breadth dealing her such a blow as would undoubtedly have split her
skull.
In the effort to avoid this, Max, checking himself, staggered and
slipped, falling on the brick floor, pail and all.
"Oh, I am sorry! So sorry!"
Again the oddly expressive face had changed completely. Her scarlet
lips--those vividly red lips which go with an opaque white skin--were
instantly parted with genuine terror. Her eyes looked soft and shining,
full of tender feminine kindness and sympathy. Down she went on her
knees beside him, asking anxiously:
"Are you hurt? Oh, I know your wrist is hurt!"
Max gave her a glance, the result of which was that he began to feel
more afraid of her than of the locked door. About this strange, almost
uncannily beautiful child of the riverside slum there was a fascination
which appealed to him more and more. The longer he looked at the wide,
light-blue eyes, listened to the hoarse but moving voice, the more
valiantly he had to struggle against the spell which he felt her to be
casting upon him.
"I've strained my wrist a little, I think. Nothing to matter," said he.
But as he moved he found that the wrist gave him pain. He got up from
the floor, and stood with his left hand clasping the injured right
wrist, not so eager as before to make his escape.
"Why don't you let me out?" he asked at last, sharply, with an effort.
The girl looked at him with yet a new expression on her mobile face--an
expression of desperation.
"Because I couldn't bear it any longer," she whispered. And as she spoke
her eyes wandered round the bare walls and rested for a moment on the
inner door. "Because when you've been all alone in the cold, without any
food, without any one to speak to for two days and two nights, you feel
you must speak to some one, whatever comes of it. If I'd had to wait out
there, listening, listening, for another night, I should have been mad,
raving mad in the morning."
"But I don't understand it at all," said Max, again inclining to belief
in the girl's story, impressed by her passionate earnestness. "Where has
your grandmother gone to? Why didn't she take you with her? Can't you
tell me the whole story?"
The girl looked at him curiously.
"Just now you only thought of getting away."
"I don't care to be detained by lock and key, certainly," said Max. "But
if you will unlock the door, I am quite ready to wait here until you
have unburdened your mind, if you want to do that."
She looked at him doubtfully.
"That's a promise, mind," said she at last. "And it's a promise you
wouldn't mind giving, I think, if you believed in half I've gone
through."
She took a key from her pocket, unlocked the outer door and set it ajar.
"Will that do for you?" asked she.
"Yes, that's all right."
She took up the candle, which she had put on a shelf while she knelt to
find out whether he was hurt, and crossing the brick floor with rapid,
rather stealthy steps, she put her fingers on the latch of the inner
door.
"Keep close!" whispered she.
Max obeyed. He kept so close that the girl's soft hair, which was of the
ash-fair color so common in English blondes who have been flaxen-headed
in their childhood, almost touched his face. She opened the door and
entered what was evidently the back room of the deserted shop.
A dark room it must have been, even in broadest daylight. Opposite to
the door by which they had entered was one which was glazed in the upper
half; this evidently led into the shop itself, although the old red
curtain which hung over the glass panes hid the view of what was beyond.
There was a little fireplace, in which were the burnt-out ashes of a
recent fire. There was a deal table in the middle of the room, and a
cloth of a common pattern of blue and red check lay in a heap on the
floor. A couple of plain Windsor chairs, and a third with arms and a
cushion, a hearth-rug, a fender and fire-irons, completed the furniture
of the room.
And the one window, a small one, which looked out upon the wharf, in a
corner formed by the outhouse on the one side and a shed on the other,
was carefully boarded up.
Grimly desolate the dark, bare room looked, small as it was; and a
couple of rats, which scurried over the floor as Max entered, added a
suggestion of other horrors to the deserted room. The girl had managed
to get behind Max, and he turned sharply with a suspicion that she meant
to shut him into the room by himself.
"It's all right--it's all right," whispered she, reassuringly. "He isn't
in here. But he's there."
And she pointed to the door with the red curtain.
Max stopped. The farther he advanced into this mysterious house the less
he liked the prospect presented to his view. And the girl herself seemed
to have forgotten her pretext of wanting something fetched out of that
mysterious third room. She remained leaning against the wall, close by
the door by which she and Max had entered, still holding the candlestick
and staring at the red curtain with eyes full of terror. Max found his
own eyes fascinated by the steady gaze, and he looked in the same
direction.
Staring intently at the bit of faded stuff, he was almost ready to
imagine, in the silence and gloom of the place, that he saw it move. His
breath came fast. Overcome by the uncanny influences of the dreary place
itself, of the hideous story he had heard, of the girl's white face, Max
began to feel as if the close, cold air of the unused room was like the
touch of clammy fingers on his face.
Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding
sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out.
In the first impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp
exclamation, but remained immovable. Indeed, in the darkness, in this
unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible. He stood
listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him.
All he heard was the scurrying of the rats as they ran, disturbed by the
noise, across the room and behind the wainscot in the darkness.
At last he turned and tried to find the door by which he had come in. He
found it, and had his hand upon the latch, when his right foot touched
something soft, yielding. He opened the door, which was not locked, as
he had feared, and was about to make his way as fast as he could into
the open air, when another moan, fainter than before, reached his ears.
No light came into the room through the open door; so he struck a wax
match. His nerves were not at their best, and it was some time before he
could get a light. When he did so, he discovered that the thing his foot
had touched was the body of the girl, lying in a heap on the floor close
to the wainscot.
Now Max was divided between his doubts and his pity; but it was not
possible that doubt should carry the day in the face of this discovery.
Whether she had fainted, or whether this was only a ruse on her part to
detain him, to interest him, he could not leave her lying there.
The tin candlestick had rolled away on the floor, and the candle had
fallen out of it. The first thing Max had to do was to replace the one
in the other, and to get a serviceable light. By the time he had done so
he saw a movement in the girl's body. She was lying with her head on the
floor. He put his arm under her head to raise it, when she started up,
so suddenly as to alarm him, leaned back against the wall, still in her
cramped, sitting position, and glared into his face.
"Look here," she said faintly, "I couldn't help it. You know--I
think--I'm almost--starving."
"Heavens! Why didn't I think of it! Poor child! Get up; let me help you.
Come to this chair. Wait here, only a few minutes. I'll get you
something to eat and drink."
He was helping her up; had got her on her feet, indeed, when she
suddenly swung round in his arms, clinging to his sleeve and staring
again with the fixed, almost vacant look which made him begin to doubt
whether her reason had not suffered.
"No, no, no," cried she, gasping for breath; "I can't stay here. I know,
I know you wouldn't come back. If you once got out, got outside in the
air, you would go back to your home, and I should be left
here--alone--with the rats--and--_that_!"
And again she pointed to the curtained door.
Max felt his teeth chattering as he tried to reassure her.
"Come, won't you trust me? I'll only be a minute. I want to get you some
brandy."
"Brandy? No. I dare not."
And she shook her head. But Max persisted.
"Nonsense--you must have it. There's a public-house at the corner, of
course. Come out on to the wharf, if you like and wait for me."
It was pitiful to see the expression of her eyes as she looked in his
face without a word. She was leaning back in the wooden arm-chair, one
hand lying in her lap, the other hanging limply over the side of the
chair. Her hair, which had been fastened in a coil at the back of her
head, had been loosened in the fall, and now drooped about her head and
face in disorder, which increased her pathetic beauty. And it was at
this point that Max noticed, with astonishment, that her hands, though
not specially beautiful or small or in any way remarkable, were not
those of a woman used to the roughest work.
She made an attempt to rise, apparently doubting his good faith and
afraid to lose sight of him, as he retreated toward the door. But she
fell back again, and only stared at him dumbly.
The mute appeal touched Max to the quick. He was always rather
susceptible, but it seemed to him that he had never felt, at the hands
of any girl, such a variety of emotions as this forlorn creature roused
in him with every movement, every look, every word.
He hesitated, came back a step and leaned over the table, looking at
her.
"I'll come back," said he, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "Of course
I'll come back. You don't think I'd leave you like this, do you?"
For a moment she stared at him with doubt in her eyes; then, as if
reassured, her lips parted in a very faint smile, and she made a slight
motion with her head which he was fain to take as a sign of her trust.
He had reached the door, when by a weak gesture she called him back
again.
"If--if you should meet anybody--I'm expecting Granny all the time--I'm
sure she wouldn't leave me altogether like this--you will come back all
the same, won't you?"
Her earnestness over this matter had given her back a little strength.
She leaned forward over one arm of the chair, impressing her words upon
him with a bend of the head.
"Oh, no, I shan't mind Granny," replied Max, confidently.
"Well, you wouldn't mind her if she was in a good humor," went on the
girl, doubtfully, "but when she's in a bad one, oh, well, then," in a
lowered voice of deep confidence, "_I'm afraid of her myself!_"
"That's all right. It would take more than an old woman to frighten me!
Tell me what she's like and what her name is, and I can present myself
to her as a morning caller."
The girl seemed to have recovered altogether from her attack of
faintness, since she was able to detain him thus from his proposed
errand on her behalf. She smiled again, less faintly than before, and
shook her head.
"I don't think there's much to describe about Granny. She was a
housekeeper at old Mr. Horne's house in the city, you know, and she
looks just as old housekeepers always look. Her name's Mrs. Higgs. But,"
and the girl looked frightened again, "don't tell her you've come to see
_me_. She's very particular. At least--I mean--"
A pretty confusion, a touch of hesitancy, the first sign of anything
girlish which Max had seen in this strange creature, made her stop and
turn her head away. And, the effort of speaking over, she drooped again.
"I won't be long."
And Max, puzzled himself by the feelings he had toward this strange
little white-bodied being, went through the outhouse into the open air.
Outside, he found himself staggering, he didn't know why--whether from
the emotions he had experienced or from the clammy, close hair of the
shut-up room; all he knew was that by the time he reached the
public-house, which he had correctly foreseen was to be found at the
corner, he felt quite as much in want of the brandy as his patient
herself.
It occurred to him, as he stood in the bar, swallowing some fiery liquid
of dubious origin which the landlord had sold to him as brandy, to make
a casual inquiry about Mrs. Higgs.
"Yes," said the landlord, "I do know a Mrs. Higgs. She comes in here
sometimes; she likes her glass. But they know more about her at The
Admiral's Arms, Commercial Road way," and he gave a nod of the head to
indicate the direction of that neighborhood.
"Do you know her address?" asked Max.
The landlord smiled.
"It 'ud take a clever head to keep the addresses of all the chance
customers as comes in here. For the matter of that, very few of 'em have
any addresses in particular; it's one court one week, and t'other the
next."
"But she's a very respectable woman, the Mrs. Higgs I mean," said Max,
tentatively.
"Oh, yes, sir; I've nothin' to say ag'inst her," and the landlord, with
a look which showed that he objected to be "pumped," turned to another
customer.
Max took the brandy he had bought for the girl and hurried back to the
place where he had left her. As he went, an instinct of curiosity,
natural enough, considering his recently acquired knowledge, made him go
down the passage and try to look in through the grim, dusty window of
the shop. But this also was boarded up on the inner side, so that no
view could be obtained of what was within.
It seemed to Max, however, as he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the
planks, trying to discover an aperture, that between the cracks of the
boards there glimmered a faint light. It seemed to flicker, then it died
out.
Surely, he thought, the girl has not summoned enough courage to go into
the room by herself?
He hurried back down the passage, and made his way as before to the
wharf. Stumbling round the piles of timber, he found the lane by which
he had entered and left the house. It seemed to him, though he told
himself it must be only fancy, that some of the loose planks had been
disturbed since his last journey over them. Reaching the door of
outhouse, which he had left ajar, he found it shut.
He was now sure that some one had gone in, or come out, since he left;
and for a moment the circumstance seemed to him sufficiently suspicious
to make him pause. The next moment, however, the remembrance of the
girl's white face, of the pleading blue eyes, returned to him vividly,
calling to him, drawing him back by an irresistible spell. He pushed
open the door boldly, crossed the brick floor and reentered the inner
room. The candle was still burning on the table, but the girl was not
there.
Max looked round the room. He was puzzled, suspicious. As he stood by
the table staring at the wall opposite the fireplace, wondering whether
to go out or to explore further, he found his eyes attracted to a spot
in the wall-paper where, in the feeble light, something like two
glittering beads shone out uncannily in the middle of the pattern. With
a curious sensation down his spine, Max took a hasty step back to the
door, and the beads moved slowly.
It was a pair of eyes watching him as he moved.