The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

“I presume your daily visits are to be a part of the torture I am to endure?”

  His smile, as he shook his head in response, incensed her to the point of tears, and she was vastly relieved when he turned abruptly and left the apartment. When the maid came in she found Miss Garrison asleep on the couch, her cheeks stained with tears. Tired, despairing, angry, she had found forgetfulness for the while. Sleep sat lightly upon her troubled brain, however, for the almost noiseless movements of the maid awakened her and she sat up with a start.

  “Oh, it is you!” she said, after a moment. “What is your name?’

  “Baker, Miss.”

  The captive sat on the edge of the couch and for many minutes watched, through narrow eyes, the movements of the servant. A plan was growing in her brain, and she was contemplating the situation in a new and determined frame of mind.

  “Baker,” she said, finally, “come here.” The maid stood before her, attentively.

  “Would you like to earn a thousand pounds?”

  Without the faintest show of emotion, the least symptom of eagerness, Baker answered in the affirmative.

  “Then you have but to serve me as I command, and the money is yours.”

  “I have already been instructed to serve you, Miss.”

  “I don’t mean for you to dress my hair and to fasten my gown and all that. Get me out of this place and to my friends. That is what I mean,” whispered Dorothy, eagerly.

  “You want to buy me, Miss?’ said Baker, calmly.

  “Not that, quite, Baker, but just—”

  “You will not think badly of me if I cannot listen to your offer, Miss? I am to serve you here, and I want you to like me, but I cannot do what you would ask. Pardon me if I speak plainly, but I cannot be bought.” There was no mistaking the honest expression in the maid’s eyes. “Lady Saxondale is my mistress, and I love her. If she asks me to take you to your friends, I will obey.”

  Dorothy’s lips parted and a look of incredulity grew in her eyes. For a moment she stared with unconcealed wonder upon this unusual girl, and then wonder slowly changed to admiration.

  “Would that all maids were as loyal, Baker. Lady Saxondale trusts you and so shall I. But,” wonder again manifesting itself, “I cannot understand such fidelity. Not for £5,000?”

  “No, Miss; thank you,” respectfully and firmly.

  “Ask Lady Saxondale if I may come to her.”

  The maid departed, and soon returned to say that Lady Saxondale would gladly see her. Dorothy followed her down the long, dark hall and into the boudoir of Castle Craneycrow’s mistress. Lady Jane sat on the broad window seat, looking pensively out at the blue sky. There was in the room such an air of absolute peace and security that Dorothy’s heart gave a sharp, wistful throb.

  “I’m glad you’ve come, Dorothy,” said Lady Saxondale, approaching from the shadowy side of the room. Dorothy turned to see the hands of her ladyship extended as if calling her to friendly embrace. For a moment she looked into the clear, kindly eyes of the older woman, and then, overcome by a strange, inexplicable longing for love and sympathy, dropped her hands into those which were extended.

  “I’ve come to beg, Lady Saxondale—to beg you to be kind to me, to have pity for my mother. I can ask no more,” she said, simply.

  “I love you, dear; we all love you. Be content for a little while, a little while, and then you will thank Heaven and thank us.”

  “I demand that you release me,” cried the other. “You are committing a crime against all justice. Release me, and I promise to forget the part you are taking in this outrage. Trust me to shield you and yours absolutely.”

  “You ask me to trust you. Now, I ask you to trust me. Trust me to shield you and to—”

  “You are cruel!”

  “Forgive me,” said Lady Saxondale, simply. She pressed the hands warmly, and passed from the room. Dorothy felt her head reel, and there was in her heart the dread of losing something precious, she knew not what.

  “Come up into the tower with me, Dorothy,” said Lady Jane, coming to her side, her voice soft and entreating. “The view is grand. Mr. Savage and I were there early this morning to see the sun rise.”

  “Are you all against me? Even you, Lady Jane? Oh, how have I wronged you that I should be made to suffer so at your hands? Yes, yes! Take me to the tower! I can’t stay here.”

  “I shall ask Mr. Savage to go with us. He will hold you. It would be too bad to have you try to fly from up there, because it’s a long way to the crags, and you’d never fly again—in this world, at least. I believe I’ll call Dickey, to be on the safe side.”

  There was something so merry, so free and unrestrained about her that Dorothy smiled in spite of herself. With a new sensation in her heart, she followed her guide to the top of the broad stairway. Here her ladyship paused, placed two pink fingers between her teeth, and sent a shrill whistle sounding down between the high walls.

  “All right!” came a happy voice from below. There was a scramble of feet, two or three varied exclamations in masculine tones, and then Mr. Savage came bounding up the stairs. “Playing chess with your brother and had to break up the game. When duty calls, you know. Morning, Miss Garrison. What’s up?”

  “We’re just on the point of going up,” said Jane, sweetly. “Up in the tower. Miss Garrison wants to see how far she can fly.”

  “About 800 feet, I should say, Miss Garrison. It’s quite a drop to the rocks down there. Well, we’re off to the top of Craneycrow. Isn’t that a jolly old name?”

  “Chick o’ me, Chick o’ me, Craneycrow, Went to the well to wash her toe, When she got back her chicken was dead—chick o’ me, Chick o’ me, chop off his head—What time is it, old witch?”

  “Who gave the castle such an odd, uncanny name?” asked Dorothy, under the spell of their blithesome spirits.

  “Lady Jane—the young lady on your left, an’ may it please you, Miss,” said Dickey.

  “Bob couldn’t think of a name for the old thing, so he commissioned me. Isn’t Craneycrow delightful? Crane—that’s a bird, you know, and crow is another bird, too, you know; isn’t it a joy? I’m so proud of it,” cried Lady Jane, as she scurried up the narrow, winding stone steps that led to the top of the tower. Dorothy followed more sedately, the new-born smile on her lips, the excitement of a new emotion surging over the wall of anger she had thrown up against these people.

  “I wish I could go out and explore the hills and rocks about this place,” said Dickey, wistfully.

  “Why can’t you? Is it dangerous?” queried Dorothy.

  “Heavens, no! Perfectly safe in that respect. Oh, I forgot; you don’t know, of course. Phil Quentin and your devoted servant are not permitted to show their faces outside these walls.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you see, we’re in America. Don’t you understand? You’re not the only prisoner, Miss Garrison. Behold two bold, bad bandits as your fellow captives. Alas! that I should have come to the cruel prison cell!”

  “I had not thought of that,” said Miss Garrison, reflectively, and then she looked upon Dickey with a new interest. They crawled through the trap door and out upon the stone-paved, airy crown of the tower. She uttered an exclamation of awe and shrank back from the sky that seemed to press down upon her. Nothing but sky—blue sky! Then she peered over the low wall, down upon the rocks below, and shuddered.

  “Hello, Phil! Great, isn’t it?” exclaimed Dickey, and Dorothy realized that Quentin was somewhere behind her in the little rock-bound circle among the clouds. A chill fell upon her heart, and she would not turn toward the man whose very name brought rage to her heart.

  “Magnificent! I have been up here in the sun and the gale for half an hour. Here are the newspapers, Lady Jane; Bob’s man brought them an hour ago. There is something in them that will interest you, Dorothy. Pardon me, but I must go down. And don’t fall off the tower, Lady Jane.”

  “Don’t worry, grandfather; I’ll be a good little girl and I
shan’t fall off the tower, because I’m so afraid you’d find it out and beat me and send me to bed without my supper. Won’t you stay up just a wee bit longer?”

  “Now, don’t coax, little girl. I must go down.”

  “See you later,” Dickey called after him as he disappeared through the narrow opening. Dorothy turned her stony face slightly, and quick, angry eyes looked for an instant into the upturned face of the man who was swallowed in the darkness of the trap hole almost in the same second.

  “Don’t fall off the tower, Lady Jane,” came the hollow voice from the ladders far below, and, to Dorothy’s sensitive ears, there was the most devilish mockery in the tones.

  “I can forgive all of you—all of you, but—but—never that inhuman wretch! Oh, how I hate him!” cried she, her face ablaze, her voice trembling with passion.

  “Oh, Dorothy!” cried Lady Jane, softly, imploringly.

  “I wish from my soul, that this tower might tumble down and kill him this instant, and that his bones could never be found!” wailed the other.

  “There’s an awful weight above him, Miss Garrison—the weight of your wrath,” said Dickey, without a smile.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE WHITE FLAG

  After returning to her room later on, Dorothy eagerly devoured the contents of the newspapers, which were a day or two old. They devoted columns to the great abduction mystery; pictured the grief of the mother and marvelled at her courage and fortitude; traced the brigands over divers streets to the deserted house; gave interviews with the bride’s fiance, her uncle and the servants who were found in the stables; speculated on the designs of the robbers, their whereabouts and the nature of their next move; drew vivid and terrifying visions of the lovely bride lying in some wretched cave, hovel or cellar, tortured and suffering the agony of the damned. Opinions of police officers disclosed some astonishing solutions to the mystery, but, withal, there was a tone of utter bewilderment in the situation as they pictured it. She read the long and valiant declaration of Prince Ugo Ravorelli, the frantic, broken-hearted bridegroom, in which he swore to rescue the fair one from the dastards, “whoever and wherever they might be.” Somehow, to her, his words, in cold print, looked false, artificial, theatrical—anything but brave and convincing.

  She stared in amazement at the proclamation offering 100,000 francs for her restoration. The general opinion, however, was that the abductors might reasonably be expected to submit a proposition to give up their prize for not less than twice the amount. To a man the police maintained that Miss Garrison was confined somewhere in the city of Brussels. There were, with the speculations and conjectures, no end of biographical sketches and portraits. She found herself reading with a sort of amused interest the story of how one of the maids had buckled her satin slippers, another had dressed her hair, another had done something and another something else. It was all very entertaining, in spite of the conditions that made the stories possible. But what amused her most of all were the wild guesses as to her present whereabouts. There was a direful unanimity of opinion that she was groveling in her priceless wedding-gown on the floor of some dark, filthy cellar. The papers vividly painted her as haggard, faint, despairing of succor, beating her breast and tearing her beautiful hair in the confines of a foul-smelling hole in the ground, crying for help in tones that would melt a heart of stone, and guarded by devils in the guise of men.

  Then she came to the paragraph which urged the utmost punishment that law could inflict upon the desperadoes. The outraged populace could be appeased with nothing save death in its most ignominious, inglorious form. The trials would be short, the punishment swift and sure. The people demanded the lives of the villains.

  For a long time she sat with expressionless eyes, staring at the wall opposite, thinking of the five persons who kept her a prisoner, thinking of the lives the people longed to take, thinking of death. Death to pretty Lady Jane, to Lady Saxondale, to Lord Bob, to Dickey Savage—the hunted—and to Philip Quentin, the arch conspirator! To kill them, to butcher them, to tear them to pieces—that was what it meant, if they were taken before the maddened people. When Baker brought in the tea, Dorothy was shivering as one with a chill, and there was a new terror in her soul. What if they were taken? Could she endure the thought that death was sure to come to them, or to two of them, at least? Two of the men? Two Americans?

  During the next three days she refused to leave her room, coldly declining the cordial invitations to make one of a very merry house party, as Lady Jane called it. Her meals were sent to her room, and Baker was her constant attendant. Into her cheek came the dull white of loneliness and despair, into her eye the fever of unrest. The visits met with disdain, and gradually they became less frequent. On the third day of this self-inflicted separation she sat alone from early morn until dusk without the first sign of a visit from either Lady Saxondale or Lady Jane.

  All day long she had been expecting them, and now she was beginning to hunger for them. A ridiculous, inconsistent irritation had been building itself in her heart since midday, and at dusk it reached its limit in unmistakable rage. That they might be willing to ignore her entirely had not entered her mind before. Her heart was very bitter toward the disagreeable creatures who left her alone all day in a stuffy room, and in a most horrid temper to boot.

  From below, at different times during the afternoon, came the happy laughter of men and women, rollicking songs, the banging of a piano in tantalizing “rag-time” by strong New York fingers, the soft boom of a Chinese dinner gong and—oh! it was maddening to sit away up there and picture the heartless joy that reigned below. When Baker left the room, Dorothy, like a guilty child, sneaked—actually sneaked—to the hall door, opened it softly, and listened with wrathful longing to the signs of life and good cheer that came to her ears. Desolate, dispirited, hungry for the companionship of even thieves and robbers, she dragged herself to the broad window and looked darkly down upon the green and gray world.

  Her pride was having a mighty battle. For three long days had she maintained a stubborn resistance to all the allurements they could offer; she had been strong and steadfast to her purpose until this hour came to make her loneliness almost unendurable—the hour when she saw they were mean enough to pay her in the coin of her own making. Now she was crying for them to come and lift the pall of solitude, to brighten the world for her, to drive the deadly sickness out of her heart. They had ignored her for a whole day, because, she was reasonable enough to see, they felt she did not want them to be near her. Would they never come to her again? Pride was commanding her to scorn them forever, but a lonely heart was begging for fellowship.

  “Baker!” she called, suddenly, turning from the window, her face aglow, her breath coming fast, her heart bounding with a new resolution—or the breaking of an old one. Baker did not respond at once, and the now thoroughly aroused young lady hurried impatiently to the bedchamber in quest of her. The maid was seated in a window, with ears as deaf as a stone, reading the harrowing news from the latest newspaper that had come to Castle Craneycrow. Dorothy had read every line of the newest developments, and had laughed scornfully over the absurd clews the police were following. She had been seen simultaneously in Liverpool and in London and in Paris and in Brussels. And by reputable witnesses, too.

  “Baker!”

  “Yes, Miss,” and the paper rattled to the floor, for there was a new tone in the voice that called to her.

  “You may go to Lady Saxondale and say that I accept yesterday’s invitation to dine with her and Lord Saxondale.”

  “Yesterday’s invitation—you mean today’s, Miss—” in bewildered tones.

  “I mean yesterday’s, Baker. You forget that I have no invitation for today. Tell her that Miss Garrison will be delighted to dine with her.”

  Baker flew out of the room and downstairs with the message, the purport of which did not sift through her puzzled head until Lady Saxondale smiled and instructed her to inform Miss Garrison that she would be char
med to have her dine with her both yesterday and today.

  In the meantime Dorothy was reproaching herself for her weakness in surrendering. She would meet Quentin, perhaps be placed beside him. While she could not or would not speak to him, the situation was sure to be uncomfortable. And they would think she was giving in to them, and he would think she was giving in to him—and—but anything was better than exile.

  While standing at the window awaiting Baker’s return, her gaze fell upon a solitary figure, trudging along the white, snake-like road, far down among the foothills—the figure of a priest in his long black robe. He was the first man she had seen on the road, and she watched him with curious, speculative eyes.

  “A holy priest,” she was thinking; “the friend of all in distress. Why not me? Would he, could he help me? Oh, good father, if you could but hear me, if I could but reach your ears! How far away he is, what a little speck he seems away down there! Why, I believe he is—yes, he is looking up at the castle. Can he see me? But, pshaw! How could he know that I am held here against my will? Even if he sees my handkerchief, how can he know that I want him to help me?” She was waving her handkerchief to the lonely figure in the road. To her amazement he paused, apparently attracted by the signal. For a brief instant he gazed upward, then dropped his cowled head and moved slowly away. She watched him until the trees of the valley hid his form from view, and she was alone with the small hope that he might again some day pass over the lonely road and understand.

  When the dinner gong rang, she was ready to face the party, but there was a lively thumping in her breast as she made her way down the steps. At the bottom she was met by Lady Saxondale, and a moment later Lord Bob came up, smiling and good-natured. There was a sudden rush of warmth to her heart, the bubbling over of some queer emotion, and she was wringing their hands with a gladness she could not conceal.

  “I am so lonely up there, Lady Saxondale,” she said, simply, unreservedly.

  “Try to look upon us as friends, Dorothy; trust us, and you will find more happiness here than you suspect. Castle Craneycrow was born and went to ruin in the midst of feud and strife; it has outlived its feudal days, so let there be no war between us,” said her ladyship, earnestly.