It was not utterly dark in the room, though Robin, after passing
her hands carefully over the walls, had found no electric buttons
within reach nor any signs of candles or matches elsewhere. The
night sky was clear and brilliant with many stars, and this gave
her an unshadowed and lighted space to look at. She went to the
window and sat down on the floor, huddled against the wall with
her hands clasped round her knees, looking up. She did this in the
effort to hold in check a rising tide of frenzy which threatened
her. Perhaps, if she could fix her eyes on the vault full of
stars, she could keep herself from going out of her mind. Though,
perhaps, it would be better if she DID go out of her mind, she
found herself thinking a few seconds later.
After her first entire acceptance of the hideous thing which
had happened to her, she had passed through nerve breaking phases
of terror-stricken imaginings. The old story of the drowning man
across whose brain rush all the images of life, came back to her.
She did not know where or when or how she had ever heard or read
of the ghastly incidents which came trooping up to her and staring
at her with dead or mad eyes and awful faces. Perhaps they were
old nightmares-perhaps a kind of delirium had seized her. She tried
to stop their coming by saying over and over again the prayers
Dowie had taught her when she was a child. And then she thought,
with a sob which choked her, that perhaps they were only prayers
for a safe little creature kneeling by a white bed-and did not
apply to a girl locked up in a top room, which nobody knew about.
Only when she thought of Mademoiselle Valle and Dowie looking for
her--with all London spread out before their helplessness--did
she cry. After that, tears seemed impossible. The images trooped
by too close to her. The passion hidden within her being--which
had broken out when she tore the earth under the shrubbery, and
which, with torture staring her in the face, had leaped in the
child's soul and body and made her defy Andrews with shrieks--leaped
up within her now. She became a young Fury, to whom a mad fight
with monstrous death was nothing. She told herself that she was
strong for a girl--that she could tear with her nails, she could
clench her teeth in a flesh, she could shriek, she could battle
like a young madwoman so that they would be FORCED to kill her. This
was one of the images which rose op before her again yet again,
A hideous-hideous thing, which would not remain away.
She had not had any food since the afternoon cap of tea and she
began to feel the need of it. If she became faint-! She lifted
her face desperately as she said it, and saw the immense blue
darkness, powdered with millions of stars and curving over her--as
it curved over the hideous house and all the rest of the world.
How high--how immense--how fathomlessly still it was--how it seemed
as if there could be nothing else--that nothing else could be
real! Her hands were clenched together hard and fiercely, as she
scrambled to her knees and uttered a of prayer--not a child's--rather
the cry of a young Fury making a demand.
"Perhaps a girl is Nothing," she cried, "-a girl locked up in a
room! But, perhaps, she is Something--she may he real too! Save
me-save me! But if you won't save me, let me be killed!"
She knelt silent after it for a few minutes and then she sank down
and lay on the floor with her face on her arm.
How it was possible that even young and worn-out as she was, such
peace as sleep could overcome her at such a time, one cannot say.
But in the midst of her torment she was asleep.
But it was not for long. She wakened with a start and sprang to
her feet shivering. The carriages were still coming and going with
guests for the big house opposite. It could not be late, though
she seemed to have been in the place for years--long enough to feel
that it was the hideous centre of the whole earth and all sane and
honest memories were a dream. She thought she would begin to walk
up and down the room.
But a sound she heard at this very instant made her stand stock
still. She had known there would be a sound at last--she had
waited for it all the time--she had known, of course, that it would
come, but she had not even tried to guess whether she would hear
it early or late. It would be the sound of the turning of the
handle of the locked door. It had come. There it was! The click
of the lock first and then the creak of the turned handle!
She went to the window again and stood with her back against it,
so that her body was outlined against the faint light. Would the
person come in the dark, or would he carry a light? Something
began to whirl in her brain. What was the low, pumping thump she
seemed to hear and feel at the same time? It was the awful thumping
of her heart.
The door opened--not stealthily, but quite in the ordinary way.
The person who came in did not move stealthily either. He came
in as though he were making an evening call. How tall and straight
his body was, with a devilish elegance of line against the background
of light in the hall. She thought she saw a white flower on his
lapel as his overcoat fell back. The leering footman had opened
the for him.
"Turn on the lights." A voice she knew gave the order, the leering
footman obeyed, touching a spot high on the wall.
She had vaguely and sickeningly felt almost sure that it would
be either Count von Hillern or Lord Coombe--and it was not Count
von Hillern! The cold wicked face--the ironic eyes which made her
creep--the absurd, elderly perfection of dress--even the flawless
flower-made her flash quake with repulsion. If Satan came into
the room, he might look like that and make one's revolting being
quake so.
"I thought--it might be you," the strange girl's voice said to
him aloud.
"Robin," he said.
He was moving towards her and, as she threw out her madly clenched
little hands, he stopped and drew back.
"Why did you think I might come?" he asked.
"Because you are the kind of a man who would do the things only
devils would do. I have hated-hated-hated you since I was a baby.
Come and kill me if you like. Call the footman back to help you,
if yon like. I can't get away. Kill me--kill me--kill me!"
She was lost in her frenzy and looked as if she were mad.
One moment he hesitated, and then he pointed politely to the sofa.
"Go and sit down, please," he suggested. It was no more then a
courteous suggestion. "I shall remain here. I have no desire to
approach you--if you'll pardon my saying so."
But she would not leave the window.
"It is natural that you should be overwrought," he said.
"This is a damnable thing. You are too young to know the worst of
it."
"You are the worst of it!" she cried. "You."
"No" as the chill of his even voice struck her, she wondered if
he were really human. "Von Hillern would have been the worst of
it. I stopped him at the front door and knew how to send him away.
Now, listen, my good child. Hate me as ferociously as you like.
That is a detail. You are in the house of a woman whose name
stands for shame and infamy and crime."
"What are YOU doing in it--" she cried again, "--in a place where
girls are trapped-and locked up in top rooms--to be killed?"
"I came to take you away. I wish to do it quietly. It would be
rather horrible if the public discovered that you have spent some
hours here. If I had not slipped in when they were expecting von
Hillern, and if the servants were not accustomed to the quiet
entrance of well dressed men, I could not have got in without an
open row and the calling of the policemen,--which I wished to avoid.
Also, the woman downstairs knows me and realized that I was not
lying when I said the house was surrounded and she was on the
point of being 'run in'. She is a woman of broad experience, and
at once knew that she might as well keep quiet."
Despite his cold eyes and the bad smile she hated, despite his
almost dandified meticulous attire and the festal note of his
white flower, which she hated with the rest--he was, perhaps, not
lying to her. Perhaps for the sake of her mother he had chosen
to save her--and, being the man he was, he had been able to make
use of his past experiences.
She began to creep away from the window, and she felt her legs,
all at once, shaking under her. By the time she reached the
Chesterfield sofa she fell down by it and began to cry. A sort of
hysteria seized her, and she shook from head to foot and clutched
at the upholstery with weak hands which clawed. She was, indeed,
an awful, piteous sight. He was perhaps not lying, but she was
afraid of him yet.
"I told the men who are waiting outside that if I did not bring
you out in half an hour, they were to break into the house. I do
not wish them to break in. We have not any time to spare. What
you are doing is quite natural, but you must try and get up." He
stood by her and said this looking down at her slender, wrung body
and lovely groveling head.
He took a flask out of his overcoat pocket--and it was a gem of
goldsmith's art. He poured some wine into its cup and bent forward
to hold it out to her.
"Drink this and try to stand on your feet," he said. He knew better
than to try to help her to rise--to touch her in any way. Seeing
to what the past hours had reduced her, he knew better. There was
mad fear in her eyes when she lifted her head and threw out her
hand again.
"No! No!" she cried out. "No, I will drink nothing!" He understood
at once and threw the wine into the grate.
"I see," he said. "You might think it might be drugged. You are
right. It might be. I ought to have thought of that." He returned
the flask to his pocket. "Listen again. You must. The time will
soon be up and we must not let those fellows break in and make
a row that will collect a crowd We must go at once. Mademoiselle
Valle is waiting for you in my carriage outside. You will not be
afraid to drink wine she gives you."
"Mademoiselle!" she stammered.
"Yes. In my carriage, which is not fifty yards from the house. Can
you stand on your feet?" She got up and stood but she was still
shuddering all over.
"Can you walk downstairs? If you cannot, will you let me carry
you? I am strong enough-in spite of my years."
"I can walk," she whispered.
"Will you take my arm?"
She looked at him for a moment with awful, broken-spirited eyes.
"Yes. I will take your arm."
He offered it to her with rigid punctiliousness of manner. He
did not even look at her. He led her out of the room and down the
three flights of stairs. As they passed by the open drawing-room
door, the lovely woman who had called herself Lady Etynge stood
near it and watched them with eyes no longer gentle.
"I have something to say to you, Madam," he said; "When I place
this young lady in the hands of her governess, I will come back
and say it."
"Is her governess Fraulein Hirsch?" asked the woman lightly.
"No. She is doubtless on her way back to Berlin--and von Hillern
will follow her."
There was only the first floor flight of stairs now. Robin could
scarcely see her way. But Lord Coombe held her up firmly and, in
a few moments more, the leering footman, grown pale, opened the
large door, they crossed the pavement to the carriage, and she
was helped in and fell, almost insensible, across Mademoiselle
Valle's lap, and was caught in a strong arm which shook as she
did.
"Ma cherie," she heard, "The Good God! Oh, the good--good God!--And
Lord Coombe! Lord Coombe!"
Coombe had gone back to the house. Four men returned with him, two
in plain clothes and two heavily-built policemen. They remained
below, but Coombe went up the staircase with the swift lightness
of a man of thirty.
He merely stood upon the threshold of the drawing-room. This was
what he said, and his face was entirely white his eyes appalling.
"My coming back to speak to you is--superfluous--and the result of
pure fury. I allow it to myself as mere shameless indulgence. More
is known against you than this--things which have gone farther and
fared worse. You are not young and you are facing years of life
in prison. Your head will be shaved--your hands worn and blackened
and your nails broken with the picking of oakum. You will writhe
in hopeless degradation until you are done for. You will have
time, in the night blackness if of your cell, to remember--to see
faces--to hear cries. Women such as you should learn what hell on
earth means. You will learn."
When he ended, the woman hung with her back to the wall she had
staggered against, her mouth opening and shutting helplessly but
letting forth no sound.
He took out an exquisitely fresh handkerchief and touched his
forehead because it was damp. His eyes were still appalling, but
his voice suddenly dropped and changed.
"I have allowed myself to feel like a madman," he said. "It has
been a rich experience--good for such a soul as I own."
He went downstairs and walked home because his carriage had taken
Robin and Mademoiselle back to the slice of a house.