"So it was true. There were such things. But at least his limbs were
free, and to his joy he discovered that he was not afraid. No; he
had a dull feeling of coming disaster, but no fear. She was a young
woman, with big shadowy eyes and a strange mouth. She had on a long,
loose white nightgown, open at the throat, and she carried a little
lamp. 'Go!' he saw in her eyes as plainly as if she said it. He looked
about the room--he could have sworn it was changed. It had the air of
a woman's room, that she is living in and keeps her things in. He had
no right there--none. He should have gone. But he was proud because
he wasn't afraid, and he answered her with his eyes that he would not
go. A tired, puzzled look came into her face, a kind of frown, and she
leaned over the footboard and begged him with those big dark eyes,
begged him hard to go. He had his chance--oh, yes, the fool had his
chance!
"But he was so proud that he could master her, master a returned
soul--for lovely as she was, he knew she wasn't human--that he only set
his teeth and started up to come nearer her. But she raised her hand
and he fell back, feeling queer and drowsy. Then she came to the edge
of the bed and sat down and took from behind her a soft red silk sash
and drew it across his face. A sweet, languid feeling stole over him;
the bed seemed like a cloud of down, her sash smelled like spice and
sandalwood in a warm wind. He felt he was being drugged and weakened,
and he tried to stumble up, but the soft silk smothered him, and he
became almost unconscious.
"He only wanted one thing--to feel her fingers touch his face and to
hold her long brown hair. And while she drew the sash across his mouth
he stretched out his hands on either side to catch it and reach her
fingers. There was nothing ghostly about her--she was only a lovely
dream-woman. Maybe he was asleep....
"And then she pulled the sash away, and he caught her eye and awoke
with a start--her look was full of triumph. She didn't beg him any
longer. This was no helpless, gentle spirit of a woman; this was a
weird elemental creature; she hadn't any soul or any pity; something
made her act out all this dreadful tragedy, without any regard for
human life or reason. He knew somehow that she couldn't help his
weakness; that though in some fiendish way she had bound him hand
and foot, she did it not of herself, but in obedience to some awful
law that she couldn't help any more than he. And then he began to be
afraid. Slowly great waves of horror rose and grew and broke over
him. He tried to move his feet and hands, but he could not so much as
will the muscles to contract. He strained till the drops stood on his
forehead, but still his arms lay stretched motionless across the bed.
"Just then he met her eyes again, and his heart sank, they were so
mocking and bitter. 'Fool! fool!' they said. They were so malignant,
and yet so impersonal--he could have sworn that she was afraid too.
What was to happen? Would she kill him? His tongue was helpless. He
worked his lips weakly, but they made no words. And she turned down her
mouth scornfully and played with the sash. Why did she wait? For she
was waiting for a time to come--her eyes told that. What was that time?
A great joy that Darby was safe outdoors came to him, and he remembered
that Darby would come at twelve! He would break the spell. And just
then she left the bed and bent down over the little lamp, and when she
took it up it was lighted. She moved across to the window and set it
in the sill. Then she glided to the door and locked it. Joan heard the
bolt slip.
"Steps sounded on the ladder outside. Into Joan's half-dulled thought
came a kind of comfort. Darby was coming. Some one knocked on the pane
and the window was raised from the outside.
"'Joan! Joan!' whispered Darby, 'are you all right? Why did you light
the lamp? Where are you?' And then Joan, the fool, forgot that if he
had not answered, Darby would surely have come in. It seemed to him
that if he did not speak now, he was lost. He strained his throat to
say four words--only four: 'All right. Come in.' Just that. The first
two to reassure Darby, the second to bring him. He made a mighty
effort. 'All--all right!' he shouted, 'c--c--,' and then her eyes were
on him and he faded into unconsciousness. He saw in them a terror and
surprise. He understood that she wondered at his speaking. There was a
stinging pain in his throat, and he heard Darby whisper angrily,
"'Keep still, can't you? Don't howl so! It's quarter to one. I looked
in at twelve, and didn't want to wake you. You'd better get up
now--who's that down there?' and with a sickening despair he heard
Darby hurry down the ladder.
"The leaves rustled a little and then all was still. He didn't struggle
any longer. It was clear to him now. He was to play the lover in this
ill-fated tragedy, whose actors offered themselves, fools that they
were, unasked, each time. And what happened to the lover? Why, he was
killed. Well, rather that he should die than Darby. It seemed to him so
reasonable, now. No one had asked him to suffer. He had had his chance
to go and refused it. No one could help him now. Not even she. They
must play it out, puppets of an inexorable drama.
"And then the girl dashed to the bed, and sank beside it as if to pray.
And he felt her hair on his face, as he had hoped, but it brought no
joy to him. For something was coming up from the floor below. Something
that sent a thrill before it, that advanced, slowly, slowly, surely.
The girl shuddered and grasped the bed and tried to pull herself up,
but she sank helplessly back. And slowly the bolt of the door pushed
back. No one pushed it, but it slipped back. Then slowly, inch by inch,
the door opened. Joan grew stiff and cold, and would not have looked
but that his eyes were fixed. Wider, wider, till it stood flat against
the wall.
"Then up the stairs came steps. And with them others, quick and
pattering. What was that? Who walked so quickly, with padding, thudding
feet? He longed for them to come in--he dreaded their coming. The door
was ready for them. The room was swept and clean.
"Up, up, they came, the heavy steps and the scratching, pattering feet.
Nearer, nearer--they came in. The man, large, dark, heavy-jawed; the
stone-grey, snarling hound, licking its frothing jaws, straining at its
chain. The girl writhed against the bed in terror--she opened her lips,
but with a stride the man was upon her, his heavy hand was over her
mouth. He dragged her up, shaking and sinking, he snatched the sash and
bound her mouth, he held her at arm's length and stared once in her
eyes. Scorn and rage and murder were in his.
"Joan forgot his own danger in terrified pity. He struggled a moment,
but it was useless. His dreadful bonds still held. The man came to the
bed, dragging the hound, and Joan shut his eyes, not to see the dark
evil face. He would die in the dark, alone, unaided. Oh! to call once!
To hear a human voice! But there was no sound but the panting of the
great, eager dog.
"The man seemed not to see him. He seized the girl, and turning her
toward the light that burned at the pane, he bound her to the bed-post
with the silken sash. She writhed and bent and tried to grasp his feet;
she pleaded with her eyes till their agony cut Joan like a knife, but
the man tied her straight and fast. Then he walked to the pane and
crouched down by it and held the dog's muzzle, and became like a stone
image.
"And suddenly it flashed across Joan's mind, with a passion of fear to
which all that had gone before was as nothing, that Darby was coming up
that ladder to that light! Darby, whom he had thought so safe, was to
come unknowing, unwarned, to that straining, panting beast. He turned
faint for a moment. And then with all the power of his soul he tried
to scream. He felt his throat strain and bend and all but burst with
the tremendous effort. He tried again, and the pain blinded him. At
his feet there the girl strained and twisted, great tears rolling down
her cheeks. And yet there was a ghastly silence. The stifled panting
of that hound echoed in a deadly quiet. It was horrible, pitiful! The
girl's white gown was torn and mussed; her soft naked shoulder quivered
when she strained against the cruel sash. He could see that her arm was
red where it was tied.
"She trembled and bent and bit her lip till the blood stained her chin.
He cursed and prayed and shrieked till the sound, had it come, would
have deafened him--but it was all a ghastly mockery! It was as still as
a quiet summer afternoon--and the dog and the man waited at the window.
"There was a sound of scraping. Someone was coming up the
ladder--someone who whistled softly under his breath, and came nearer
every moment. Up, up--the ladder rattled against the window-frame.
The man at the window slipped his hand slowly, slowly from the dog's
muzzle. The dog stiffened and drew back his black, dripping jaws from
his yellow teeth. The man's fingers sunk in the beast's wrinkled neck
and he held him back, while he threw one look of hate and triumph at
the tortured woman behind him.
"The man bound to the bed couldn't bear it any longer. As a hand
grasped the window-sill from outside, he summoned all his iron will,
and with a rasping, rending effort that brought a sickly, warm taste to
his mouth, he gave a hoarse cry.
"Then the woman leaned over till the sash sunk into her soft flesh, and
shrieked with a high, shrill note that cut the air like a knife. But
even as she shrieked, a form rose over the sill, there was a rush from
inside, and their voices were drowned in a cry of terror, a scream so
broken and despairing that Joan could not recognise the voice. And then
there was a horrid crashing fall, and the light went out, and something
snapped in the brain of the man chained to the bed, and he dropped for
miles into a deep, black gulf."
* * * * *
There was a dead silence in the room. No one dared to speak. The
stranger's voice had quavered and broken, and in a hoarse whisper he
said, rising and stumbling to the door while they made way for him
silently:
"And when he knew his friends again, Darby had been buried a long time.
Joan did not know whether a broken neck is so much worse than anything
else in the world. He hadn't any curiosity about the mill--he didn't
care to hear the details of how they burned it to the ground. Perhaps
after a while he will be too tired to contradict ignorant people. But
he thinks--he has said, that when a man has not slept five hours in a
week, nor spoken for days together without agony, much may be forgiven
him in the line of intolerance of other people's ignorance--a blessed
ignorance gentlemen, a blessed ignorance."
The door closed behind him and the men drew a long breath. No one
turned out the gas and it burned till morning, for they took their
keys in silence and went upstairs, for the most part arm in arm,
haunted by the hoarse, rough voice of the stranger, whom they never saw
again.
And indeed they did not care to see him. "For what could one say?"
as young Sanford demanded, the next day. "It either happened, or it
didn't. If it didn't, he can say no more; if it did, then he is right,
and we are in blessed ignorance." And no one of the circle but nodded
and looked for a moment at the chair behind the stove.