THE SPIDER'S WEB.
Storms turned at once and led the way to the dilapidated old
summer-house where so many of his interviews with the girl had taken
place.
There was something secretly sinister in the man's voice that might
have warned Judith of danger; but for his previous expressions of
tenderness, she would have been on her guard. As it was, she hurried
past him, and went into the little building first; then flinging off
her scarlet jacket, she tossed her pretty hat, with its cluster of
red poppies, upon the bench, and pushed the black masses of hair away
from her temples, with the dash of a prize-fighter going into action.
"It is so warm," she said, "and we have walked so fast. Ah! how
natural the old place looks!"
Storms paused at the door, and looked back along the path he had trod,
and around the lake cautiously.
"You needn't trouble yourself. If a gamekeeper should see us they'll
take me for that Jessup girl," she said, laughing.
"While we are here," he said, with soft insinuation, "let me read that
letter you spoke of--Jessup's last. There is moonlight enough, and I
haven't seen it yet."
There was something in the man's face, or in his voice, that warned
Judith, who pressed both hands to her bosom in quick alarm.
"No, no, not here--the light is not strong enough. I have promised to
give it up on our wedding-day, and I will."
"And not before?"
"No, I will not give it up before."
Judith Hart drew toward the dilapidated window that opened upon that
balcony which overhung the deepest portion of the lake. She made a
singularly wild figure, standing there, with her bloodless face, and
all the thick masses of her hair thrust back, while the rays of a
fitful moon streamed over her.
Storms came close to her, speaking low, and with unusual gentleness.
"Judith, I thought that you loved me."
"So I do; better than myself; better than my own soul!"
"Yet you keep a paper from me that might destroy me."
"It never shall. You could not keep it safer than I will."
"What if I never marry you?"
"But you will."
"Never while you hold that paper."
"Ah, I see it was for that you brought me here. I have been a fool!"
"Exactly."
The man was looking out on the lake as he spoke, and did not see the
flash of those black eyes, or the rage that curved those lips till the
teeth gleamed menacingly through.
"A miserable fool," he went on, "or you would have known that a man
who had the chance of a girl like Ruth Jessup would never think of
you."
"Ah, it is Ruth Jessup, then?"
"Yes, it is Ruth Jessup--the only girl I ever cared a straw for. The
letter you gave me gets her with the rest. That is the grandest part
of my bargain. She cannot help herself."
"But I can help her and punish you. The letter you want, but shall
never have--William Jessup's last letter, written when his head was
clear and his memory good, taking back the lines written in his
fever--a letter charging _you_ with the murder I saw done with my own
eyes--this letter, and all that I know, shall be in Sir Noel's hands
before he goes to bed to-night."
Judith had drawn the pocket-book that held this letter from her bosom,
unseen by her assailant, and made a movement as if to depart; but
Storms leaped upon her like a wild beast, and when she struggled
fiercely with him, hurled her against the window.
A loud crash, a storm of shattered glass and splintered wood, and,
through the great ragged opening, Judith Hart reeled into the balcony,
hurling the pocket-book over her murderer's shoulder. He did not see
the act, of which the girl herself was almost unconscious. His arm was
coiled around her, and though holding backward with all her might, she
was forced to the edge of the rickety structure, that began to reel
under them. Here the man held her a moment, looking down into her
white face with his keen, cruel eyes.
"This is how I forgive--this is how I love you--this is the way you
will keep me from a fortune!"
The girl was mute with terror. She could not even cry out, but clung
to him in a dumb agony of entreaty.
"You meant to force me into marrying you, poor fool! Give me that
letter!"
The wretched girl had flung the letter from her and she could not tell
where. It might be in the water or among the rushes.
"I have not got it--I have not; but I loved you! Oh, I did love you!"
"Lying with your last breath. The accursed thing is in your bosom."
"No! no! no!"
She held on to him now, though he had lifted her from her feet, and
covering his cruel face with desperate kisses, clung to him with a
grasp that even his wiry strength could not tear away.
"You did love me. I know that. It was her money. You did love
_me_--you _do_. It is only to frighten me. Let me down, let me down.
Do you know I am on the very edge? It is dangerous fun--cruel fun!"
"Fun!" sneered the fiend, wrenching her arms away and drawing back to
give more deadly force to the action. "Fun, is it?"
He was pushing backward, his white face was close to hers, his hoarse
curse hissed in her ear. With a terrible effort to save herself, she
wound her arms around his neck, dragging him down to the rickety
railing, over which he was straining all his powers to hurl her.
"Oh, Dick! Dick! Don't kill me! Do--"
Another crash. The railing gave way. He strove madly to free his neck
from her clinging arms, but they clasped him like iron. The struggle
was terrible. Under it the whole balcony began to quiver and break.
Their two faces were close together, their eyes burning with hate and
fear, met. One desperate effort the man put forth to free himself; but
the grip on his neck grew closer, and choked him. With the might of
despair he dragged her half-way up from the reeling timbers; but her
weight baffled his strength, and brought him down with an awful thud.
Down, down, they plunged, through the rotten timbers, into the black
depths of the lake.
After this the stillness was appalling. Over the place where those two
had gone down, linked together in that death-clasp, bits of broken
wood floated, drearily, like reptiles driven from their holes; and
from their midst a human head appeared, lifted itself from the water,
and went down again. Twice after this the head rose, each time nearer
the shore. Then two gleaming hands seized upon the strong rushes,
forsook them for a rooted vine, and Judith Hart lifted herself to the
bank; where she fell helpless, with the ends of her long hair
streaming into the water, and mingling with the grasses that swayed to
and fro on their dark disturbance.
In this position the girl lay exhausted for some minutes, then she
struggled to her feet, swept the dank hair back from her face, and,
stooping forward, searched the waters with her clouded eyes.
She saw nothing. If any object, living or dead, was on that inky
surface the darkness concealed it. Then her hands were flung out and
her voice struggled into cries:
"Richard! Richard! Here! here! The water is shallow here. Oh, my God!
Light a little light that I may see where he is!"
There was no answer--only a faint lapse of water against the bank.
"Richard! Richard!"
Again and again that sharp, wild voice rang out on the night, only
answered by more awful stillness and the silence of hopeless
listening.
Thus, for one dark hour, that poor creature, shivering, pallid, and
wet, paced up and down the shore, dragging her sodden garments through
the dense herbage, and calling out whenever she paused in her moaning,
"Richard! Richard! Richard!"
At length this cry sounded for the last time, long and low, like the
plaint of a wounded night-bird; but there was no reply, and if
anything, living or dead, arose to the surface of those inky waters
after that, God alone saw it.
Judith Hart had wandered there, it might have been a minute, or an
eternity, for anything she knew of time; but the black silence drove
her away at last. She went into the denser portion of the wilderness,
and came out by the farm-house in which the parents of Richard Storms
lay sleeping peacefully, for their son had left them for the fair
held in a neighboring town that morning, and they did not expect him
home before another day.
Judith turned from her route, for she took no path, and went up to the
door of this house, beating against it with her hands. After a while a
bolt was drawn, and an old woman, wearing a shawl over her night
dress, looked out, but half closed the door again when she saw a
strange female, with a face like death, and long wet hair streaming
down her back, staring at her. Twice this figure attempted to speak,
but that which she tried to say choked her until the words broke out
in spasms:
"You are his mother. He tried to save me. I was in the Black Lake,
sinking; he plunged after me, but went down, down. I tried to drag him
up. Three times, three times I went headforemost into the darkness.
All night long I have been calling for him, but he would not answer.
Do not think he was angry with me. No one must think that. It was to
save me. Only to save me, he was trying."
The old woman held a candle in her hand. It began to shake as she
said:
"Who are you speaking of? Who are you?"
"Of him--he loved me--I was to be his wife, and he was bringing me
here, only we stopped at the lake and I fell in. After that, I could
not find him; dive down as I would, he went deeper still. I called out
till my breath failed; but he would not answer. My husband--you know."
The old woman shaded her light with one hand while she scrutinized
that wild face.
"A face I have never seen," she thought; "some poor crazed thing."
"Come in from the cold. You are shivering," she said, in great
kindliness, "your teeth knock together."
"No, I'm not cold, but he is. Go seek for him. He will not answer me;
but you are his mother. He is not angry with you. I will get out of
the way. He will not show himself while I am there; but when you call,
it will be different. What are you standing there for? Call up your
men; get lanterns. He is hiding away from me; but you are his mother."
Before old Mrs. Storms could answer these words, crowded each upon the
other, the girl stepped from the door-stone and was gone.
"Poor thing, poor thing, her face is strange, and she talks of a
husband as if I were his mother. I was frightened in spite of that, as
if it were Richard she spoke of. So like my own dear lad, to risk his
life for another. It was that which set me trembling, nothing else;
for I knew well enough that he was safe at the fair."
"What is it?" questioned the farmer, when his wife came back to her
bed-room.
"Only a woman that has lost her mind, I think," answered the wife,
blowing out her candle. "I would fain have had her come in, but she is
gone."
"Then what makes ye tremble and shake so, woman? Have ye found another
corpse-light in the candle?" The old man said this with a low,
chuckling laugh; for he delighted in ridiculing his wife's
superstitions.
"No; I had not thought of that," answered the dame. But all that
night, while Judith Hart was travelling the road to her father's
house, unconscious of fatigue and fleeing, as it were, from herself,
this loving mother lay restlessly awake by the side of her husband;
for he, in his good-natured jeering, had frightened sleep from her.
Twenty miles away, another weary soul had been kept awake with loving
anxiety. The old man whom Judith had deserted a second time lay in
that humble home bemoaning his loneliness, wondering what had drawn
the only creature left to him on earth from the shelter of his roof,
where she had for some days seemed so cheerfully content. Would she
ever return?
The old man was asking himself this question almost in hopelessness,
when the first gray of morning broke into his room. Leaving his bed,
weary as when he sought it, the old man dressed himself and went to
the front door. There, sitting in the porch, with her limbs huddled
together, and her hair all afloat, was the young creature whose
absence he had bewailed--his daughter Judith.
When she saw her father, the poor girl stood up unsteadily. She was
shivering all over; but on her cheeks was a flame of coming fever, and
her hot hands shook as she held them toward him.
"Father, I have come back to you. Take me home. I have come back to
you. Take me home."
The old man reached forth his arms, drew her within them, and with her
head falling helplessly on his shoulder, led her into the house.