The policeman’s epigrammatic assertion that it was difficult for a known
man to struggle with the police, is still more true when it is only a
door which stands before a couple of men excited and exasperated by
failure and a probable discovery. The door was a strong door, it was
partially plated with iron, and its lock was cunningly devised, but
after a while it began to give way.
Meredith, altogether absorbed in this new turn of affairs, and carried
away by the prospect which it opened to him as well as to its
assailants, seemed to the bystanders to have altogether gone over to the
enemy. He stood by them, encouraging them in a low tone, suggesting how
to strike, examining into the weak points with the keenest critical eye;
in fact, in the excitement of the moment, forgetting all his precautions
and pretence of indifference, and throwing himself on the side of the
assailants. He had, it is true, the safe ground to fall back upon that,
as he had always been assured there was nothing there, he could do no
possible harm in helping to prove that fact to the men who would not be
convinced in any other way.
Mrs. Harwood sat with her face to the door, her arms crossed upon her
breast, her whole frame swaying and moving with the strokes that rained
upon it. When a crash came she shivered and shrank into herself as if
the blow had struck her--a low moan came involuntarily to her lips.
Gussy, who had abandoned Meredith after trying in vain to restrain him,
came and stood by her mother’s chair, with a hand upon her shoulder.
“Oh, mamma, for God’s sake,” said Gussy, in her ear, “don’t! Don’t let
them see you mind it so.”
The mother half turned to her a face which was livid in its terror. Her
eyes, so clear usually, had lost their color even, and seemed to float
in a sort of liquefication, the iris disappearing into the watery black
globe--her mouth was open. She uttered a murmur of inarticulate passion,
and made as though she would have struck the soothing hand. But the men
at this exciting work took no notice of Mrs. Harwood. The officer of the
law was more fit to break down a resisting door than to draw subtle
deductions from the looks of the besieged family. The practical matter
was within his sphere. He only looked round with an exclamation of
triumph when the door at last burst from its holdings, and the dark
passage gaped open before them with its curtains drawn back.
“There!” he shouted, turning round for a moment, “there’s your door that
never was used,” and would have dashed in had not his attendant held him
back.
“I say,” said the man who had hitherto followed him like a shadow, “how
do ye know that he hasn’t got a revolver up there?”
The detective fell back for a moment.
“We’ve got to risk it,” he said, with the professional stoicism of a man
bound to meet danger at any time. He was not of much use in scenting out
a mystery, but he could face a possible revolver with the stolid courage
of his class. He made a pause, however, and added, with a rare effort of
reflection, “And this one’s new to it; he’s not up to their dodges----”
_They_ were the criminal class with which a straightforward policeman is
accustomed to deal.
Meredith followed with an excitement which made him forget everything,
even the group of women bewildered in the hall. He knew his way, though
he dared not show that he did. He followed the burly figure, and the
smaller ill-trained one of the attendant informer and witness, as they
wound themselves up in the curtains and came to a pause opposite every
obstacle. The passage was perfectly dark, but the inner doors were not
closed, notwithstanding the sounds of assault which those within must
have heard. It turned out that the only individual within who had his
wits about him had been too closely occupied to be able to look to those
means of defence.
For a moment the group of the ladies below hung together in bewildered
horror. Then Julia launched herself after the men into the dark passage,
drawn by inextinguishable curiosity and the excitement of a child in
sight of the unknown. Mrs. Harwood had covered her face with her hands,
and lay back in her chair, fallen upon herself like a fallen house,
lying, so to speak, in ruins. Gussy, with her arm round her mother’s
shoulders, whispered, with tears and a little gasping, frightened
crying, some words that were intended to be consolatory in her
inattentive ears.
“It is nothing wrong,” Gussy said; “it is nothing wrong. It was to save
him. It is nothing wrong.”
But by-and-bye the strong attraction of that open way along which the
unseen party were stumbling seized upon her also. And her patient, who
had to be taken care of--who was throwing himself back! Gussy cast a
piteous glance upon her mother, lying there with her face upon her
hands, paying no attention, whatever comfort might be poured into her
ear, and presently impatience got the better of her sympathy, and she
too followed in the train. She knew the secret of the wing. She was the
only other in the house, except Mrs. Harwood, to whom that secret was
known. But in how innocent and simple a way! She was troubled, but she
had no sense of guilt; and Gussy said to herself that it was her duty to
go and explain, to make it known to the others how simple it all was,
when the fascination became too much for her to resist, and, with one
glance at her mother, she too stole away. As for Dolff, he had
disappeared from their minds, and the incredible suspicion attached to
him, as if he had never been born. From the moment that the search began
it had been to Mrs. Harwood a search for her secret, and nothing more.
Janet had been all this time hanging about unseen. She could not rest,
she who knew so much more than any one else in the house--both the
mystery of the wing and the miserable story of Dolff and his guilt,
both of them--as nobody else did: neither Mrs. Harwood, whose thoughts
were concentrated upon one, nor Meredith, who had discovered or divined
the other, but did not know as Janet did, who knew everything, what had
been the cause of Dolff’s terrible folly, and what its results, and even
when and how he had disappeared. She had been hanging about now in one
room, now in another, terrified to show herself, incapable of concealing
herself, her very terror of being mixed up in it yielding to the
fellow-felling of a general misery in which she had but her share, and
that not so great a share as the others.
When she saw that the mother of the house, who was the most to be pitied
of all in this dreadful emergency, was left there forlorn and alone,
lying helpless, unable to go after the others, to confront the
catastrophe, at least, as her children could, Janet’s heart was touched.
She stole down the stairs where she had been watching, looking down upon
them all, and came to Mrs. Harwood’s side. It was not for her to console
or comfort. Janet was aware that she had been more or less the cause of
all the trouble. She had found out the family secret, without in the
least understanding it, and this was no blame of hers; but she had
betrayed it to one who did understand it, and who might, for all she
knew, use his knowledge unmercifully, being, as she knew him to be, a
man with very little truth or inclination to spare another. And she had
been, without any doubt, the cause of Dolff’s misfortune in every way.
She had taken him into her toils innocently enough, with no more
guiltiness than that of any other girl who had let a foolish young man
fall in love with her, and then had driven him mad by her falsehood, and
led him into crime--almost to the crime of murder. All this was in
Janet’s mind as she stole down the stairs to his mother’s side. She had
plenty of excuse for herself had any one accused her, but in her heart
she was impartial, and knew very well how much she was to blame. Her
heart beat loudly in consonance with the sounds of that exploring party
in the dark passage, going to find out--how much more than they sought!
She understood it all better than anyone. Meredith’s keen satisfaction
in unveiling the mystery, and the stupid astonishment of the strangers,
who had no suspicion, and Gussy----but what Gussy would feel was the
one thing that Janet did not divine, for she was unaware how much or how
little Gussy knew.
She stood by the chair in which Mrs. Harwood lay, all sunken upon
herself like a fallen tower, her face hidden, her shoulders drawn
together, sinking to her knees. Janet dared not say anything. She put
her hand upon the arm of the chair, not even upon the unhappy lady’s
arm, which she felt that she dared not touch--and stood by her. It was
all that any one could do. The two were left there like wrecks on the
shore, from, which everything had ebbed away, even the tumult and the
storm which had been raging round. The sounds went on getting fainter,
the voices dropped, the footsteps seemed to mount and then grow still,
stumbling at first a little, gradually dying out. Mrs. Harwood did not
move, nor did Janet, standing by her, scarcely breathing. Were they both
following, in imagination, the darkling way which both knew, or had the
mother, at last, fallen into a blind insensibility, hearing and knowing
no more?
This imagination was, however, suddenly put an end to by a moaning from
the chair.
“I can’t bear this any longer; I can’t bear this!” said Mrs, Harwood.
“Oh, my God! my God! Have they got _there_?” Then she cried, loudly, “I
can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” and with a sudden wrench, as if she
were tearing herself like a limb from its socket, the disabled woman
rose.
Janet, terrified, gave a cry of dismay as, stumbling and tottering, she
flung herself out of the chair. Whether Mrs. Harwood had been aware of
her presence before this she could not tell; but, at all events, now she
was beyond all sentiment of displeasure or reproof. She put out her
shaking hand and grasped at Janet’s arm as if it had been a post. The
girl’s slight figure swayed and almost gave way at the sudden weight
flung upon it; but the burden steadied her after the first moment’s
uncertainty. Mrs. Harwood’s face had collapsed with the extreme anguish
of the crisis past; her features seemed blurred, like the half-liquid,
vaguely floating eyes, which did not seem to see anything. She made a
heavy, uncertain step forward, carrying her prop with her by mere
momentum of weight and weakness.
“Come,” she said, hoarsely, “come!”
* * * * *
Janet never knew how these dark passages were got through. She was
herself enfolded, carried away in the burden of the helpless woman who
leaned upon her guidance for every step. Their progress was wildly
devious and uneven, every step being a sort of falling forward, which
nevertheless carried them on with spasmodic rapidity, though terrible
effort. The voices and steps in front of them grew audible again, but
before they reached the last door, which stood open with curtains drawn
aside, disclosing a warm blaze of light, there arose a sudden tumult, a
roar as of some wild creature, with answering cries of panic and dismay.
The opened doorway suddenly darkened with a crowd of retreating figures,
and Julia darted out from the midst and came blindly flying upon the
tottering group that was struggling forward.
“Go back, go back!” cried Julia, “whoever you are. There’s a madman
there!” and then she gave a shriek as wild as the sounds that came from
the room, “Oh,” cried the girl, her shrill voice dominating even that
riot, “it’s mamma! My mother’s here!”