IV
"AND WHERE WAS I WHEN ALL THIS HAPPENED?"
The intensity of the question, the compelling, self-forgetful passion ofthe man, had a startling effect upon the crowd of people huddled beforehim. With one accord, and without stopping to pick their way, they madefor the open doorway, knocking the smaller pieces of furniture about andcreating havoc generally. Some fled the house; others stopped to peer inagain from behind the folds of the curtain which had been only partiallytorn from its fastenings. Miss Weeks was the only one to stand herground.
When the room was quite cleared and the noise abated (it was a frightfulexperience to see how little the judge had been affected by all thishubbub of combined movement and sound), she stepped within the line ofhis vision and lifted her feeble and ineffectual hand in an effort toattract his attention to herself.
But he did not notice her, any more than he had noticed the others.Still looking in the one direction, he cried aloud in troubled tones:
"She stood there! the woman stood there and I saw her! Where is shenow?"
"She is no longer in the house," came in gentle reply from the only onein or out of the room courageous enough to speak. "She went out when shesaw us coming. We knew that she had no right to be here. That is why weintruded ourselves, sir. We did not like the looks of her, and sofollowed her in to prevent mischief."
"Ah!"
The expletive fell unconsciously. He seemed to be trying to adjusthimself to some mental experience he could neither share with others norexplain to himself.
"She was here, then?--a woman with a little child? It wasn't anillusion, a--." Memory was coming back and with it a realisation of hisposition. Stopping short, he gazed down from his great height upon thetrembling little body of whose identity he had but a vague idea, andthundered out in great indignation:
"How dared you! How dared she!" Then as his mind regained its fullpoise, "And how, even if you had the temerity to venture an entrancehere, did you manage to pass my gates? They are never open. Bela sees tothat."
Bela!
He may have observed the pallor which blanched her small, tense featuresas this name fell so naturally from his lips, or some instinct of hisown may have led him to suspect tragedy where all was so abnormallystill, for, as she watched, she saw his eyes, fixed up to now upon herface, leave it and pass furtively and with many hesitations from objectto object, towards that spot behind him, where lay the source of hergreat terror, if not of his. So lingeringly and with such dread was thisdone, that she could barely hold back her weak woman's scream in theintensity of her suspense. She knew just where his glances fell withoutfollowing them with her own. She saw them pass the door where so manyfaces yet peered in (he saw them not), and creep along the wall beyond,inch by inch, breathlessly and with dread, till finally, with fatalprecision, they reached the point where the screen had stood, and notfinding it, flew in open terror to the door it was set there toconceal--when that something else, huddled in oozing blood, on the floorbeneath, drew them unto itself with the irresistibleness of grimreality, and he forgot all else in the horror of a sight for which hisfears, however great, had failed to prepare him.
Dead! BELA! Dead! and lying in his blood! The rest may have been nodream, but this was surely one, or his eyes, used to inner visions, wereplaying him false.
Grasping the table at his side to steady his failing limbs, he pulledhimself along by its curving edge till he came almost abreast of thehelpless figure which for so many years had been the embodiment offaithful and unwearied service.
Then and then only, did the truth of his great misfortune burst upon hisbewildered soul; and with a cry which tore the ears of all hearers andwas never forgotten by any one there, he flung himself down beside thedead negro, and, turning him hastily over, gazed in his face.
Was that a sob? Yes; thus much the heart gave; but next moment thepiteous fact of loss was swallowed up in the recognition of its manner,and, bounding to his feet with the cry, "Killed! Killed at his post!" heconfronted the one witness of his anguish of whose presence he wasaware, and fiercely demanded: "Where are the wretches who have donethis? No single arm could have knocked down Bela. He has been setupon--beaten with clubs, and--" Here his thought was caught up byanother, and that one so fearsome and unsettling that bewilderment againfollowed rage, and with the look of a haunted spirit, he demanded in avoice made low by awe and dread of its own sound, "AND WHERE WAS I, WHENALL THIS HAPPENED?"
"You? You were seated there," murmured the little woman, pointing at thegreat chair. "You were not--quite--quite yourself," she softlyexplained, wondering at her own composure. Then quickly, as she saw histhoughts revert to the dead friend at his feet, "Bela was not hurt here.He was down town when it happened; but he managed to struggle home andgain this place, which he tried to hold against the men who followedhim. He thought you were dead, you sat there so rigid and so white, and,before he quite gave up, he asked us all to promise not to let any oneenter this room till your son Oliver came."
Understanding partly, but not yet quite clear in his mind, the judgesighed, and stooping again, straightened the faithful negro's limbs.Then, with a side-long look in her direction, he felt in one of thepockets of the dead negro's coat, and drawing out a small key, held itin one hand while he fumbled in his own for another, which found, hebecame on the instant his own man again.
Miss Weeks, seeing the difference in him, and seeing too, that thedoorway was now clear of the wondering, awestruck group which hadpreviously blocked it, bowed her slight body and proceeded to withdraw;but the judge, staying her by a gesture, she waited patiently near oneof the book-racks against which she had stumbled, to hear what he had tosay.
"I must have had an attack of some kind," he calmly remarked. "Will yoube good enough to explain exactly what occurred here that I may morefully comprehend my own misfortune and the death of this faithfulfriend?"
Then she saw that his faculties were now fully restored, and came a stepforward. But before she could begin her story, he added this searchingquestion:
"Was it he who let you in--you and others--I think you said others? Wasit he who unlocked my gates?"
Miss Weeks sighed and betrayed fluster. It was not easy to relate herstory; besides it was wofully incomplete. She knew nothing of what hadhappened down town, she could only tell what had passed before her eyes.But there was one thing she could make clear, to him, and that was howthe seemingly impassable gates had been made ready for the woman'sentrance and afterwards taken such advantage of by herself and others. Apebble had done it all,--a pebble placed in the gateway by Bela's hands.
As she described this, and insisted upon the fact in face of the judge'salmost frenzied disclaimer, she thought she saw the hair move on hisforehead. Bela a traitor, and in the interests of the woman who hadfronted him from the other end of the room at the moment consciousnesshad left him! Evidently this intrusive little body did not know Bela orhis story, or--
Why should interruption come then? Why was he stopped, when in thepassion of the moment, he might have let fall some word of enlightenmentwhich would have eased the agitated curiosity of the whole town! MissWeeks often asked herself this question, and bewailed the sudden accessof sounds in the rooms without, which proclaimed the entrance of thepolice and put a new strain upon the judge's faculty of self-control andattention to the one matter in hand.
The commonplaces of an official inquiry were about to supersede the playof a startled spirit struggling with a problem of whose complexities hehad received but a glimpse.