IV
WHAT SINCLAIR HAD TO SHOW ME
This scream seemed to come from the room where we had just heard voices.With a common impulse, Sinclair and I both started down the hall, onlyto find ourselves met by a dozen wild interrogations from behind as manyquickly opened doors. Was it fire? Had burglars got in? What was thematter? Who had uttered that dreadful shriek? Alas! that was thequestion which we of all men were most anxious to hear answered. Who?Gilbertine or Dorothy?
Gilbertine's door was reached first. In it stood a short, slight figure,wrapped in a hastily-donned shawl. The white face looked into ours as westopped, and we recognized little Miss Lane.
"What has happened?" she gasped. "It must have been an awful cry towaken everybody so!"
We never thought of answering her.
"Where is Gilbertine?" demanded Sinclair, thrusting his hand out as ifto put her aside.
She drew herself up with sudden dignity.
"In bed," she replied. "It was she who told me that somebody hadshrieked. I didn't wake."
Sinclair uttered a sigh of the greatest relief that ever burst from aman's overcharged breast.
"Tell her we will find out what it means," he replied kindly, drawing merapidly away.
By this time Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were aroused, and I could hear theslow and hesitating tones of the former in the passage behind us.
"Let us hasten," whispered Sinclair. "Our eyes must be the first to seewhat lies behind that partly-opened door."
I shivered. The door he had designated was Dorothy's.
Sinclair reached it first and pushed it open. Pressing up behind him, Icast a fearful look over his shoulder. Only emptiness confronted us.Dorothy was not in the little chamber. With an impulsive gestureSinclair pointed to the bed--it had not been lain in; then to thegas--it was still burning. The communicating room, in which Mrs. Lansingslept, was also lighted, but silent as the one in which we stood. Thislast struck us as the most incomprehensible fact of all. Mrs. Lansingwas not the woman to sleep through a disturbance. Where was she, then?and why did we not hear her strident and aggressive tones rising inangry remonstrance at our intrusion? Had she followed her niece from theroom? Should we in another minute encounter her ponderous figure in thegroup of people we could now hear hurrying toward us? I was forretreating and hunting the house over for Dorothy. But Sinclair, withtruer instinct, drew me across the threshold of this silent room.
Well was it for us that we entered there together, for I do not knowhow either of us, weakened as we were by our forebodings and all thealarms of this unprecedented night, could have borne alone the sightthat awaited us.
On the bed situated at the right of the doorway lay a form--awful,ghastly, and unspeakably repulsive. The head, which lay high but inertupon the pillow, was surrounded with the gray hairs of age, and theeyes, which seemed to stare into ours, were glassy with reflected lightand not with inward intelligence. This glassiness told the tale of theroom's grim silence. It was death we looked on; not the death we hadanticipated and for which we were in a measure prepared, but one fullyas awful, and having for its victim not Dorothy Camerden nor evenGilbertine Murray, but the heartless aunt, who had driven them both likeslaves, and who now lay facing the reward of her earthly deeds, _alone_.
As a realization of the awful truth came upon me, I stumbled against thebedpost, looking on with almost blind eyes as Sinclair bent over therapidly whitening face, whose naturally ruddy color no one had everbefore seen disturbed. And I was still standing there when Mr. Armstrongand all the others came pouring in. Nor have I any distinct remembranceof what was said or how I came to be in the ante-chamber again. Allthought, all consciousness even, seemed to forsake me, and I did notreally waken to my surroundings till some one near me whispered:
"Apoplexy!"
Then I began to look about me and peer into the faces crowding up onevery side, for the only one which could give me back myself-possession. But though there were many girlish countenances to beseen in the awestruck groups huddled in every corner, I beheld noDorothy, and was therefore but little astonished when in another momentI heard the cry go up:
"Where is Dorothy? Where was she when her aunt died?"
Alas! there was no one there to answer, and the looks of those about,which hitherto had expressed little save awe and fright, turned towonder, and more than one person left the room as if to look for her. Idid not join them. I was rooted to the place. Nor did Sinclair stir afoot, though his eye, which had been wandering restlessly over the facesabout him, now settled inquiringly on the doorway. For whom was helooking? Gilbertine or Dorothy? Gilbertine, no doubt, for he visiblybrightened as her figure presently appeared clad in a _negligee_, whichemphasized her height and gave to her whole appearance a womanlysobriety unusual to it.
She had evidently been told what had occurred, for she asked noquestions, only leaned in still horror against the door-post, with hereyes fixed on the room within. Sinclair, advancing, held out his arm.She gave no sign of seeing it. Then he spoke. This seemed to rouse her,for she gave him a grateful look, though she did not take his arm.
"There will be no wedding to-morrow," fell from her lips inself-communing murmur.
Only a few minutes had passed since they had started to find Dorothy,but it seemed an age to me. My body remained in the room, but my mindwas searching the house for the girl I loved. Where was she hidden?Would she be found huddled but alive in some far-off chamber? Or wasanother and more dreadful tragedy awaiting us? I wondered that I couldnot join the search. I wondered that even Gilbertine's presence couldkeep Sinclair from doing so. Didn't he know what, in all probability,this missing girl had with her? Didn't he know what I had suffered, wassuffering--ah, what now? She is coming! I can hear them speaking to her.Gilbertine moves from the door, and a young man and woman enter withDorothy between them.
But what a Dorothy! Years could have made no greater change in her. Shelooked and she moved like one who is done with life, yet fears the fewremaining moments left her. Instinctively we fell back before her;instinctively we followed her with our eyes as, reeling a little at thedoor, she cast a look of inconceivable shrinking, first at her own bed,then at the group of older people watching her with serious looks fromthe room beyond. As she did so I noted that she was still clad in herevening dress of gray, and that there was no more color on cheek or lipthan in the neutral tints of her gown.
Was it our consciousness of the relief which Mrs. Lansing's death,horrible as it was, must bring to this unhappy girl and of theinappropriateness of any display of grief on her part, which caused thesilence with which we saw her pass with forced step and dreadanticipation into the room where that image of dead virulence awaitedher? Impossible to tell. I could not read my own thoughts. How, then,the thoughts of others!
But thoughts, if we had any, all fled when, after one slow turn of herhead toward the bed, this trembling young girl gave a choking shriek andfell, face down, on the floor. Evidently she had not been prepared forthe look which made her aunt's still face so horrible. How could shehave been? Had it not imprinted itself upon my mind as the one revoltingvision of my life? How, then, if this young and tender-hearted girl hadbeen insensible to it! As her form struck the floor Mr. Armstrong rushedforward; I had not the right. But it was not by his arms she was lifted.Sinclair was before him, and it was with a singularly determined look Icould not understand and which made us all fall back, that he raised herand carried her in to her own bed, where he laid her gently down. Then,as if not content with this simple attention, he hovered over her for amoment arranging the pillows and smoothing her disheveled hair. When atlast he left her, the women rushed forward.
"Not too many of you," was his final adjuration, as, giving me a look,he slipped out into the hall.
I followed him immediately. He had gained the moon-lighted corridor nearhis own door, where he stood awaiting me with something in his hand. AsI approached, he drew me to the window and showed me what it was. Itwas the amethyst box, open and
empty, and beside it, shining with ayellow instead of a purple light, the little vial void of the one dropwhich used to sparkle within it.
"I found the vial in the bed with the old woman," said he. "The box Isaw glittering among Dorothy's locks before she fell. That was why Ilifted her."