THE MAN IN THE MASK.
Dizzily Mollie opened her eyes. Confused, bewildered, she strove to sit
up and catch her breath in broken gasps.
"So sorry, Mollie," said an odious voice in her ear. "Quite shocked, I
am sure, to have you faint; but you've not been insensible half an hour.
It wasn't my fault, you know. You would scream, you would struggle, you
would exhaust yourself! And what is the consequence of all this
excitement? Why, you pop over in a dead swoon."
Mollie raised herself up, still dazed and confused. She put her hand to
her forehead and strove to recall her drifting senses.
They were still bowling along at a sharp pace over a muddy country road;
still fell the rain; still howled the wind; still pitch darkness wrapped
all without. Were they going on forever? Was it a reality or a horrible
nightmare?
"We are almost at our journey's end," said the man, soothingly. "Come,
cheer up, Cricket. I love you, and I won't hurt a hair of your head."
"Where are we?" Mollie faintly asked.
"Rattling over a beastly country road," answered her companion, "under
a sky as black as Erebus, and in a down-pour that threatens a second
flood. There's the sea. We're down by the sad sea waves now, Mollie."
Mollie listened. Above the roar of the elemental strife she could hear
the deep and mighty bass of the roaring sea.
"We will be there in ten minutes more," said the man, briskly.
"Where is there?" inquired Mollie, in the same faint accent.
"Home, my pretty wife--our cottage by the sea, and all that, you know.
Don't droop, my charming Cricket. We'll be as happy together as the days
are long. I love you with all my soul--I swear it by all that's good and
gracious; and I'll make you the best husband ever bright-eyed little
girl had. Trust me, Mollie, and cheer up. Yoicks! Here we are."
The carriage stopped with a jerk that precipitated Mollie into her
captor's arms; but, with an angry push, she was free again directly.
The man opened the door and sprung out. Wind howling, rain tailing,
trees surging, sea roaring, and a big dog barking, made the black night
hideous.
"Down, Tiger! Down, you big, noisy brute!" cried the man. "Here, Mollie,
let me help you out."
There was no escape--Mollie let him. The salt breath of the sea blew in
her face--its awful thunder on the shore drowned all lesser noises.
Through the blackness of the black night she could see the blacker
outline of a house, from one or two windows of which faint lights
shone. Tossing trees surrounded it--a high board fence and a tall,
padlocked gate inclosed it.
"All right, Mollie," the man said. "This is home!"
He drew her arm within his and hurried her up a long, graveled path,
under dripping, tossing trees.
The storm of wind and rain nearly beat the breath out of the girl's
body, and she was glad when the shelter of a great front porch was
gained.
"I hope you're not very wet, my little wife," said the man: "because I
don't know as there is a change of garments in this establishment that
will fit you. However, as you will retire directly, it doesn't so much
matter."
He knocked with his knuckles a thundering reveille that echoed and
re-echoed ghostily through the rumbling old house. In a moment there was
a shuffling of footsteps inside, a rattling of a chain, and the noisy
undoing of rusty bolts.
"Who's there?" asked a cracked old voice. "Is it the young master?"
"Yes, you old idiot! Didn't I send you word? Open the door at once, and
be hanged to you!"
A key turned gratingly in the ponderous lock--bolts and chains fell, and
the massive door swung back on creaky old hinges.
"Like an ancient castle in a story book," thought Mollie, in the midst
of her trouble. "Where in the wide world am I? Oh, what an unfortunate
little wretch I am! A stolen princess couldn't be abducted and
imprisoned oftener."
The opening of the door showed a long, black, gloomy entrance
hall--bare, bleak and draughty. Two people stood there--a grizzly old
man, stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who had opened the door, and
a grizzly old woman, just a shade less stooping, and bleared, and
wrinkled, who held a sputtering tallow candle aloft.
"How are you, Peter? How are you, Sally?" said Mollie's conductor,
nodding familiarly to these two antediluvians. "Is the room ready?
Here's the lady."
He drew Mollie, whose arm he retained in a close grasp, a little closer
to him, and Mollie noticed that, for some reason, the ancient pair
shrunk back, and looked as though they were a little afraid of her.
"The room's all ready," said the old woman, with a pair of glittering
little eyes fixed, as if fascinated, on Mollie's pretty face. "The
missis and me's been a-tidying of it all day long. Poor creeter! so
young and so pretty! What a pity!"
This last was _sotto voce_, but Mollie's quick ear caught it. She looked
up at her conductor, but cloak and hat and whiskers disguised him as
effectually as the mask had done on other occasions. She looked back at
the old woman and held out her supplicating hands.
"My good woman, whoever you are, if you have a woman's heart, take pity
on me. I have been brought here against my will by this man."
"Ah, poor creeter!" sighed the old woman, shaking her grizzly old head;
"as if I didn't know that. Poor little creeter!"
"Help me!" Mollie cried. "Don't aid this man to keep me here. I don't
know who he is--I have been wickedly entrapped. I am a little, helpless
girl, but I have rich and powerful friends who will liberally reward
you. Don't help this, bad, bold man to keep me a prisoner here."
"Ah, poor creeter!" sighed the old woman, plaintively, a second time;
"only hear her talk now. And such a pretty little thing, too! Dear,
dear! It goes to one's heart. Don't keep her standing in them wet
clothes, sir. Come upstairs. Such a pity, such a pity!"
She hobbled away, muttering to herself and shaking her head. The
disguised man laughed--a low, deriding laugh.
"You see, my dear little Mollie, you'll get any amount of pity, but
nothing else. Old Sally will be very sincerely sorry for you, but she
won't help you to escape. On the contrary, she'll keep you under lock
and key as faithfully as though you were the Koh-i-noor. Come in, you
may take cold in this nasty, draughty passage."
He drew her with him. Mollie seemed in a sort of dreamy swoon, and went
passively. They ascended the stairs into another dark and draughty hall,
flanked on either side by a couple of doors. One of these the old dame
opened, and quite a new picture burst on Mollie's sight.
The apartment was not at all like the mysterious padded room of former
experience; the four bare walls were plastered and blankly bare; the
boarded floor was strewn with rags; the two big square windows were
draped with paper-blinds. A huge fire of logs, such as Mollie had never
beheld in her life before, roared gloriously in the old-fashioned
fire-place, and lighted the room with a lurid glow. A four-post
bedstead, the bed covered with a gaudy patch-work or counterpane, stood
in one corner, a table with a white cloth stood in another, a chest of
drawers in a third, and the door by which they entered in the fourth.
This was Mollie's new prison.
"Elegant simplicity," observed the man, leading her in; "but we will
do our best to make you comfortable during your stay. It need not be
long--you know it depends on yourself, Mollie."
"On myself?"
She turned her pale face and angry, eyes upon him.
"I am your husband by a secret marriage, you know. Let that marriage be
solemnized over again in public--no one need know of the other: consent
to be my wife openly and above-board, and your prison doors will fly
open that hour."
"In Heaven's name, who are you?" cried Mollie, impatiently. "End this
ridiculous farce--remove that disguise--let me see who I am speaking to.
This melodramatic absurdity has gone on long enough--the play is played
out. Talk to me, face to face, like a man, if you dare!"
Her eyes blazed, her voice rose. The old woman looked from one to the
other, "far wide" but in evident curiosity. The man had persisted in
speaking to her in French, and Mollie had answered him in that language.
"Be it as you say!" cried her captor, suddenly; "only remember, Mollie,
whether I am the person you prefer to see under this disguise or not, I
am nevertheless your husband as fast as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh
can tie the knot. You shall know who I am, since it is only a question
of to-night or to-morrow at the most. Sally, you can go."
Sally looked from one to the other with sharp, suspicious old eyes.
"Won't the young lady want me, sir? Is she able to 'tend to herself?"
"Quite able, Sally; she's not so bad as you think. Go away, like a good
soul. I have a soothing draught to administer to my patient."
"Your patient!" said Mollie, turning the flashing light of her great
blue eyes full upon him.
The man laughed.
"I had to invent a little fable for these good people. Didn't you notice
they looked rather afraid of you? Of course you did. Well, my dear
Mollie, they think you're mad."
"Mad?"
"Exactly. You are, a little, you know. They think you've come here under
medical orders to recruit by the sea-shore. I told them so. One hate's
to tell lies, but, unfortunately, white ones are indispensable at
times."
The blue eyes shone full upon him, blazing with magnificent disdain.
"You are a poorer creature than even I took you to be, and you have
acted a mean and dastardly part from the first--the part of a schemer
and a coward. Pray, let me see the face of our modern Knight of
Romance."
Old Sally had hobbled from the room and they stood alone, half the width
of the apartment between them.
"Hard words, my pretty one! You forget it was all for love of you.
I didn't want to see you the wife of an old dotard you didn't care
a fillip for."
"So, to mend matters, you've made me the wife of a scoundrel. I must
forever hate and despise--yourself."
"Not so, Mollie! I mean you to be very fond of me one of these days. I
don't see why you shouldn't. I'm young; I'm well off; I'm clever; I'm
not bad-looking. There's no reason why you shouldn't be very fond of me,
indeed. Love begets love, they say, and I love you to madness."
"So it appears. A lunatic asylum would be the fitter place for you, if
you must escape state prison. Are we to stand here and bandy words all
night? Show me who you are and go."
The man laid his hand on his hat.
"Have you no suspicions, Mollie? Can't you meet me half-way--can't you
guess?"
"I don't want to guess."
She spoke defiantly; but her heart was going in great, suffocating
plunges against her side, now that the supreme moment had come.
"Then, Mollie, behold your husband!"
With a theatrical flourish he whipped off slouched hat, flowing beard
and wig, dropped the disguising cloak, and stood before her
revealed--Dr. Guy Oleander!
She gave one gasping cry, no more. She stood looking at him as if
turning to stone, her face marble white--awfully rigid--her eyes
starting from their sockets. The man's face was lighted with a sinister,
triumphant glow.
"Look long, Mollie," he said, exultantly, "and look well. You see your
husband for the first time."
And then Mollie caught her gasping breath at the taunt, and the blood
rushed in a dark, red torrent of rage and shame to her fair face.
"Never!" she cried, raising her arm aloft--"never, so help me Heaven! I
will sit in this prison and starve to death! I will throw myself out of
yonder window into the black, boiling sea! I would be torn to pieces by
wild horses! I will die ten thousand deaths, but I will never, never,
never be wife of yours, Guy Oleander!"
Her voice rose to a shriek--hysterical, frenzied. For the instant she
felt as though she were going mad, and she looked it, and the man
recoiled before her.
"Mollie!" he gasped, in consternation.
The girl stamped her foot on the floor.
"Don't call me Mollie:" she screamed, passionately. "Don't dare to speak
to me, to look at me, to come near me! I have heard of women murdering
men, and if I had a loaded pistol this moment, God help you, Doctor
Oleander!"
She looked like a mad thing--like a crazed pythoness. Her wild, fair
hair fell loose about her; her blue eyes blazed steely flame; her face
was crimson with the intensity of her rage, and shame, and despair, from
forehead to chin.
"Go!" she cried, fiercely, "you snake, you coward, you felon, you
abductor of feeble girls, you poisoner! Yes, you poison the very air I
breathe! Go, or, by all that is holy, I will spring at your throat and
strangle you with my bare hands!"
"Good Heaven!" exclaimed the petrified doctor, retreating precipitately,
"what a little devil it is! Mollie, Mollie, for pity's sake--"
Another furious stamp, a spring like a wild cat toward him, and the
aghast doctor was at the door.
"There, there, there, Mollie! I'm going. By Jove! what a little fiend
you are! I didn't think you would take it like this. I--Great powers!
Yes, I'm going!"
He flew out, closing the door with a bang. Then he opened it an inch and
peeped in.
"I'll come again to-morrow, Mollie. Try, for goodness' sake, to calm
yourself in the meantime. Yes, yes, yes, I'm going!"
For, with a shriek of madness, she made a spring at him, and the doctor
just managed to slam the door and turn the key before her little, wiry
hands were upon his throat.
"Great Heaven!" Dr. Oleander cried to himself, pale and aghast, wiping
the cold perspiration off his face; "was ever such a mad creature born
on the earth before? She looked like a little yellow-haired demon,
glaring upon me with those blazing eyes. Little tiger-cat! I told them
she was a raving lunatic, and, by George! she's going to prove me a
prophet. It's enough to make a man's blood run cold."