III
BELA THE REDOUBTABLE
CATALEPSY!
A dread word to the ignorant.
Imperceptibly the crowd dwindled; the most discreet among them quitecontent to leave the house; others, with their curiosity inflamed anew,to poke about and peer into corners and curtained recesses while theopportunity remained theirs and the man of whom they stood in fear satlapsed in helpless unconsciousness. A few, and these the mostthoughtful, devoted all their energies to a serious quest for the womanand child whom they continued to believe to be in hiding somewhereinside the walls she had so audaciously entered.
Among these was Miss Weeks whose importance none felt more than herself,and it was at her insistence and under her advice (for she only, of allwho remained, had ever had a previous acquaintance with the house) thatthe small party decided to start their search by a hasty inspection ofthe front hall. As this could not be reached from the room where itsowner's motionless figure sat at its grim watch, they were sidlinghastily out, with eyes still turned back in awful fascination upon thoseother eyes which seemed to follow all their movements and yet gave notoken of life, when a shout and scramble in the passages beyond cutshort their intent and held them panting and eager, each to his place.
"They've seen her! They've found her!" ran in quick, whisperedsuggestion from lip to lip, and some were for rushing to see.
But Miss Weeks' trim and precise figure blocked the doorway, and she didnot move.
"Hark!" she murmured in quick admonishment; "what is that other sound?Something is happening--something dreadful. What is it? It does not seemto be near here yet, but it is coming--coming."
Frightened in spite of themselves, both by her manner and tone, theydrew their gaze from the rigid figure in the chair, and, with batedbreaths and rapidly paling cheeks, listened to the distant murmur on thefar-off road, plainly to be heard pulsing through the nearer sounds ofrushing feet and chattering voices in the rooms about.
What was it? They could not guess, and it was with unbounded relief theypressed forward to greet the shadowy form of a young girl hurryingtowards them from the rear, with news in her face. She spoke quickly andbefore Miss Weeks could frame her question.
"The woman is gone. Harry Doane saw her sliding out behind us just afterwe came in. She was hiding in some of the corners here, and slipped outby the kitchen-way when we were not looking. He has gone to see--"
But interesting as this was, the wonder of the now rapidly increasinghubbub was more so. A mob was at the gates! Men, women and childrenshouting, panting and making loud calls.
Breathlessly Miss Weeks cut the girl's story short; breathlessly sherushed to the nearest window, and, helped by willing hands, succeeded inforcing it up and tearing a hole in the vines, through which they oneand all looked out in eager excitement.
A motley throng of people were crowding in through the double gateway.Some one was in their grasp. Was it the woman? No; it was Bela! Bela,the giant! Bela, the terror of the town, but no longer a terror now buta struggling, half-fainting figure, fighting to free itself and get inadvance, despite some awful hurt which blanched his coal-black featuresinto an indescribable hue and made his great limbs falter and hisgasping mouth writhe in anguish while still keeping his own and makinghis way, by sheer force of will, up the path and the two steps ofentrance--his body alternately sinking back or plunging forward as thosein the rear or those in front got the upper hand.
It was an awful and a terrifying sight to little Miss Weeks and,screaming loudly, she left her window and ran, scattering her smallparty before her like sheep, not into the near refuge of the front halland its quiet parlours, but into the very spot towards which this mobseemed headed--the great library pulsing with its own terror, in theshape of the yet speechless and unconscious man to whom the loudestnoise and the most utter silence were yet as one, and the worst struggleof human passion a blank lost in unmeaning chaos.
Why this instinctive move? She could not tell. Impulse prevailed, andwithout a thought she flew into Judge Ostrander's presence, and, gazingwildly about, wormed her way towards a heavily carved screen guarding adistant corner, and cowered down behind it.
What awaited her?
What awaited the judge?
As the little woman shook with terror in her secret hiding-place shefelt that she had played him false; that she had no right to saveherself by the violation of a privacy she should have held in awe. Shewas paying for her temerity now, paying for it with every terriblemoment that her suspense endured. The gasping, struggling men, thefrantic negro, were in the next room now--she could catch the sound ofthe latter's panting breath rising above the clamour of strangeentreaties and excited cries with which the air was full; then a quick,hoarse shout of "Judge! Judge!" rose in the doorway, and she becameconscious of the presence of a headlong, rushing force struck midwayinto silence as the frozen figure of his master flashed upon the negro'seyes;--then,--a growl of concentrated emotion, uttered almost in herear, and the screen which had been her refuge was violently thrust awayfrom before her, and in its place she beheld a terrible being standingover her, in whose eyes, dilating under this fresh surprise, she beheldher doom, even while recognising that if she must suffer it would besimply as an obstacle to some goal at her back which he mustreach--now--before he fell in his blood and died.
What was this goal? As she felt herself lifted, nay, almost hurledaside, she turned to see and found it to be a door before which thedevoted Bela had now thrown himself, guarding it with every inch of hispowerful but rapidly sinking body, and chattering defiance with hisbloodless, quivering lips--a figure terrible in anger, sublime inpurpose, and piteous in its failing energies.
"Back! all of you!" he cried, and stopped, clutching at the door-casingon either side to hold himself erect. "You cannot come in here. This isthe judge's--"
Not even his iron resolve or once unequalled physique could stand thesapping of the terrible gash which disfigured his forehead. He had beenrun over by an automobile in a moment of blind abstraction, and his hurtwas mortal. But though his tongue refused to finish, his eye stillpossessed its power to awe and restrain. Though the crowd had followedhim almost into the centre of the room, they felt themselves held backby the spirit of this man, who as long as he lived and breathed wouldhold himself a determined barrier between them and what he had been setto guard.
As long as he lived and breathed. Alas! that would be but a little whilenow. Already his head, held erect by the passion of his purpose, wassinking on his breast; already his glazing eye was losing its power ofconcentration, when with a final rally of his decaying strength, hestarted erect again and cried out in terrible appeal:
"I have disobeyed the judge, and, as you see, it has killed him. Do notmake me guilty of giving away his secret. Swear that you will leave thisdoor unpassed; swear that no one but his son shall ever turn this lock;or I will haunt you, I, Bela, man by man, till you sink in terror toyour graves. Swear! sw--"
The last adjuration ended in a moan. His head fell forward again and inthat intense moment of complete silence they could hear the splash ofhis life-blood as it dropped from his forehead on to the polished boardsbeneath; then he threw up his arms and fell in a heap to the floor.
They had not been driven to answer. Wherever that great soul had gone,his ears were no longer open to mortal promise, nor would any oath fromthe lip of man avail to smooth his way into the shadowy unknown.
"Dead!" broke from little Miss Weeks as she flung herself down inreckless abandonment at his side. She had never known an agitationbeyond some fluttering woman's hope she had stifled as soon as born, andnow she knelt in blood. "Dead!" she again repeated. And there was no onethis time to cry: "You need not be frightened; in a few minutes he willbe himself again." The master might reawaken to life, but never more theman.
A solemn hush, then a mighty sigh of accumulated emotion swept from lipto lip, and the crowd of later invaders, already abashed if notterrified by the unexpected spectacle of suspended a
nimation whichconfronted them from the judge's chair, shrank tumultuously back aslittle Miss Weeks advanced upon them, holding out her meagre arms inlate defence of the secret to save which she had just seen a man die.
"Let us do as he wished," she prayed. "I feel myself much to blame. Whatright had we to come in here?"
"The fellow was hurt. We were just bringing him home," spoke up a voice,rough with the surprise of unaccustomed feeling. "If he had let us carryhim, he might have been alive this minute; but he would run and struggleto keep us back. He says he killed his master. If so, his death is aretribution. Don't you say so, fellows? The judge was a good man---"
"Hush! hush! the judge is all right," admonished one of the party;"he'll be waking up soon"; and then, as every eye flew in fresh wondertowards the chair and its impassive occupant, the low whisper washeard,--no one ever could tell from whose lips it fell: "If we are everto know this wonderful secret, now is the time, before he wakes andturns us out of the house."
No one in authority was present; no one representing the law, not even adoctor; only haphazard persons from the street and a few neighbours whohad not been on social terms with the judge for years and never expectedto be so again. His secret!--always a source of wonder to everyinhabitant of Shelby, but lifted now into a matter of vital importanceby the events of the day and the tragic death of the negro! Were they tomiss its solution, when only a door lay between it and them--a doorwhich they might not even have to unlock? If the judge should rouse,--iffrom a source of superstitious terror he became an active one, how pattheir excuse might be. They were but seeking a proper place--a couch--abed--on which to lay the dead man. They had been witness to his hurt;they had been witness to his death, and were they to leave him lying inhis blood, to shock the eyes of his master when he came out of his longswoon? No tongue spoke these words, but the cunning visible in many aneye and the slight start made by more than one eager foot in thedirection of the forbidden door gave Miss Weeks sufficient warning ofwhat she might expect in another moment. Making the most of herdiminutive figure,--such a startling contrast to the one which had justdominated there!--she was about to utter an impassioned appeal to theirhonour, when the current of her and their thoughts, as well as thedirection of all looks, was changed by a sudden sense common to all, ofsome strange new influence at work in the room, and turning, they beheldthe judge upon his feet, his mind awakened, but his eyes still fixed--anawesome figure; some thought more awesome than before; for the terrorwhich still held him removed from all about, was no longer passive butactive and had to do with what no man there could understand oralleviate. Death was present with them--he saw it not. Strangers weremaking havoc with his solitude--he was as oblivious of their presence ashe had been unconscious of it before. His faculties and all hisattention were absorbed by the thought which had filled his brain whenthe cogs of that subtle mechanism had slipped and his faculties pausedinert.
This was shown by his first question:
"WHERE IS THE WOMAN?"
It was a cry of fear; not of mastery.