“If we must live together within its battered walls, let us hoist a flag of truce, pick up the gauntlet and tie up the dogs of war,” added bluff Lord Bob.
Dorothy smiled, and said: “There is one here who is not and can never be included in our truce. I ask you to protect me from him. That is the one condition I impose.”
“You have no enemies here, my dear.”
“But I have a much too zealous friend.”
“Last call for dinner in the dining-car,” shouted Dickey Savage, corning down the stairs hurriedly. “I was afraid I’d be late. Glad to see you. I haven’t had a chance to ask how you enjoyed that view from the tower the other day.” She had given him her hand and he was shaking it rapturously.
“It was glorious, and I haven’t had the opportunity to ask if you have explored the hills and forest.”
“I’m afraid of snakes and other creeping things,” he said, slyly.
They had gone to the dining-room when Quentin entered. He was paler than usual, but he was as calm, as easy and as self-possessed as if he had never known a conscience in all his life. She was not looking at him when he bowed to her, but she heard his clear voice say:
“I am glad to see you, Dorothy.”
He sat across the table, beside Lady Jane, who was opposite Dorothy. If he noticed that she failed to return his greeting, he was not troubled. To his credit be it said, however, he did not again address a remark to her during the meal. Within the sound of his voice, under the spell of his presence, in such close proximity to his strong, full-blooded body, she could not but give a part of her thought to this man who, of all others, the mob would slay if they had the chance.
She could not conceal from herself the relief she felt in mingling with friends. A willful admiration grew full in the face of resentful opposition, and there was a reckless downfall of dignity. They treated her without restraint, talked as freely of their affairs as if she were not there, boldly discussed the situation in Brussels, and laughed over the frantic efforts of the authorities. Helplessly she was drawn into the conversation, and, at last, to her dismay, joined with them in condolences to the police.
“But some day they will find the right trail and pounce upon you like so many wild beasts,” she said, soberly. “What then? You may be laughing too soon.”
“It would be hard luck to have to break up such an awfully nice house party,” said Dickey, solemnly.
“And the papers say they will kill us without compunction,” added Lady Jane.
“It wouldn’t be the first slaughter this old house has known,” said Lord Bob. “In the old days they used to kill people here as a form of amusement.”
“It might amuse some people even in our case, but not for me, thanks,” said Quentin. “They’d execute me first, however, and I wouldn’t have to endure the grief of seeing the rest of you tossed out of the windows.”
“Do you really believe they would kill poor little me?” demanded Lady Jane, slowly, her eyes fastened on her brother’s face.
“Good Heaven, no!” cried Dorothy, at the possibility of such a calamity. “Why should they kill a helpless girl like you?”
“But I am one of the wretches they are hunting for. I’m a desperado,” argued Lady Jane.
“I’d insist on their killing Lady Jane just the same as the rest of us. It would be all wrong to discriminate, even if she is young and—and—well, far from ugly,” declared Dickey, decidedly.
“You might try to save my life, Mr. Savage; it would be the heroic thing to do,” she said.
“Well I’ll agree to let ’em kill me twice if it will do any good. They’d surely be obliging if I said it was to please a lady. Couldn’t you suggest something of the kind to them, Miss Garrison? You know the whole massacre is in your honor, and I imagine you might have a good bit to say about the minor details. Of course, Lady Jane and I are minor details—purely incidentals.”
“We are in the chorus, only,” added Lady Jane, humbly.
“If you persist in this talk about being killed, I’ll go upstairs and never come down again,” cried Dorothy, wretchedly, and the company laughed without restraint.
“Dickey, if you say another word that sounds like ‘kill’ I’ll murder you myself,” threatened Lord Bob.
Lady Jane began whetting a silver table knife on the edge of her plate.
That evening Dorothy did not listen to Dickey Savage’s rag-time music from an upstairs room. She stood, with Lady Jane, beside the piano bench and fervently applauded, joined in the chorus and consoled herself with the thought that it was better to be a merry prisoner than a doleful one. She played while Dickey and Jane danced, and she laughed at the former’s valiant efforts to teach the English girl how to “cake walk.”
Philip Quentin, with his elbows on the piano, moodily watched her hands, occasionally relaxing into a smile when the laughter became general. Not once did he address her, and not once did she look up at him. At last he wandered away, and when next she saw him he was sitting in a far corner of the big room, his eyes half closed, his head resting comfortably against the high back of the chair.
Lord and Lady Saxondale hovered about the friendly piano, and there was but one who looked the outcast. Conditions had changed. She was within a circle of pleasure, he outside. She gloated in the fact that he had been driven into temporary exile, and that he could not find a place in the circle as long as she was there. Occasionally one or the other of his accomplices glanced anxiously toward the quiet outsider, but no one asked him to come into the fold. In the end, his indifference began to irritate her. When Lady Saxondale rang for the candles near the midnight hour, she took her candlestick from the maid, with no little relief, and unceremoniously made her way toward the hall. She nervously uttered a general good-night to the party and flushed angrily when Quentin’s voice responded with the others:
“Good-night, Dorothy.”
CHAPTER XXV
DOWN AMONG THE GHOSTS
“I cannot endure it,” she cried to herself a dozen times before morning. “I shall go mad if I have to see his face and hear his voice and feel that he is looking at me. There must be a way to escape from this place, there must be a way. I will risk anything to get away from him!”
At breakfast she did not see him; he had eaten earlier with Lord Bob. The others noted the hunted look in her eye and saw that she had passed a sleepless night. The most stupendous of Dickey’s efforts to enliven the dreary table failed, and there was utter collapse to the rosy hopes they had begun to build. Her brain was filled by one great thought—escape. While they were jesting she was wondering how and where she could find the underground passages of which they had spoken and to what point they would lead.
“I’d give a round sum if I could grow a set of whiskers as readily and as liberally as Turk,” commented Dickey, sadly. “He came out of Phil’s room this morning, and I dodged behind a door post, thinking he was a burglar. Turk looks like a wild man from Borneo, and his whiskers are not ten days out. He’s letting ’em grow so that he can venture outside the castle without fear of recognition. I’d like to get outside these walls for half a day.”
“I detest whiskers,” decided Lady Jane.
“So do I, especially Turk’s. But they’re vastly convenient, just the same. In a couple of days Turk won’t know himself when he looks in the mirror. I believe I’ll try to cultivate a bunch.”
“I’m sure they would improve you very much,” said Lady Jane, aggressively. “What is your idea as to color?”
“Well, I rather fancy a nice amber. I can get one color as easily as another. Have you a preference?”
“I think pink or blue would become you, Dickey. But don’t let my prejudices influence you. Of course, it can’t make any difference, because I won’t recognize you, you know.”
“In other words, if I don’t cut my whiskers you’ll cut me?”
“Dead.”
“Lots of nice men have whiskers.”
“And so do the goats.
”
“But a brigand always has a full set—in the opera, at least.”
“You are only a brigand’s apprentice, and, besides, this isn’t an opera. It is a society tragedy.”
“Won’t you have another egg?” he asked, looking politely at her plate. Then he inquired if Miss Garrison would like to join him in a climb among the rocks. She smiled wistfully and said she would be charmed to do so if she were not too feeble with age when the time came to start.
Consumed with a desire to acquaint herself with her surroundings, she begged her companions to take her over the castle from turret to cellar. Later in the day, with Turk carrying the lantern, she was eagerly taking notes in the vast, spooky caves of Craneycrow.
Vaulted chambers here, narrow passages there, spider-ridden ceilings that awoke to life as the stooping visitors rustled beneath them, slimy walls and ringing floors, all went to make up the vast grave in which she was to bury all hope of escape. Immense were the iron-bound doors that led from one room to another; huge the bolts and rusty the hinges; gruesome and icy the atmosphere; narrow the steps that led to regions deeper in the bowels of the earth. Dorothy’s heart sank like lead as she surveyed the impregnable walls and listened to the mighty groans of long-sleeping doors as the shoulder of the sturdy Turk awoke them to torpid activity. There was surprise and resentment in the creak of grim old hinges, in the moans of rheumatic timbers, in the jangle of lazy chains and locks. The stones on which they trod seemed to snap back in the echo of their footfalls a harsh, strident laugh of derision. Every shadow grinned mockingly at her; the very darkness ahead of the lantern’s way seemed to snort angrily at the approach of the intruders. The whole of that rockbound dungeon roared defiance in answer to her timid prayer, and snarled an ugly challenge to her courage.
Lady Saxondale and Dickey confronted two rather pale-faced girls when the party of explorers again stood in the sunlit halls above. Across their shrinking faces cobwebs were lashed, plastered with the dank moisture of ages; in their eyes gleamed relief and from their lips came long breaths of thankfulness. Turk, out of sight and hearing, was roundly cursing the luck that had given him such a disagreeable task as the one just ended. From the broad, warm windows in the south drawing-room, once the great banquet hall, the quartet of uncomfortable sight-seekers looked out upon the open courtyard that stretched down to the fort-like wall, and for the moment Dorothy envied Philip Quentin. He was briskly pacing the stone-paved inclosure, smoking his pipe and basking in the sunshine that had never penetrated to the horrors of Castle Craneycrow. Lord Bob was serenely lounging on a broad oaken bench, his back to the sun, reading from some musty-backed book.
“Oh, won’t you let me go out in the sun for just a little while?” she cried, imploringly. A mist came over Lady Saxondale’s eyes and Dickey turned away abruptly.
“As often as you like, Dorothy. The courtyard is yours as much as it is ours. Jane, will you take her through our fort? Show her the walls, the parapets, the bastions, and where the moat and drawbridge were when the place was young. It is very interesting, Dorothy.”
With Dickey and Lady Jane, Dorothy passed into the courtyard and into the open air for the first time in nearly a week. She felt like a bird with clipped wings. The most casual inspection convinced her that there was no possible chance of escape from the walled quadrangle, in the center of which loomed the immense, weather-painted castle. The wall was high and its strength was as unbroken as in its earliest days. Lord Saxondale joined them and explained to her all the points of interest about the castle as viewed from the outside, but Quentin quietly abandoned his walk and disappeared.
“It is as difficult to get out of Castle Craney-crow as it is to get in, I dare say,” observed Dorothy, looking with awe upon the grim old pile of rocks, they called a castle. Far above their heads stood the tower, from which she had seen earth and sky as if in a panorama, three days before.
“One might be able to get out if he could fly. It seems the only way, provided, of course, there were opposition to his departure,” said Lord Bob, smiling.
“Alas, I cannot fly,” she said, directly.
At the rear of the castle, where the stonework had been battered down by time, man and the elements, she saw several servants at work. “You have trustworthy servants, Lord Saxondale. I have tried to bribe one of them.”
“You see, Miss Garrison, they love Lady Frances. That is the secret of their loyalty. The chances are they’d sell me out tomorrow, but they’d die before they’d cut loose from my wife. By Jove, I don’t understand how it is that everybody is won over by you American women.”
During the trip through the cellars, Dorothy had learned that the secret passages to the outside world began in the big chamber under the tower. Lady Saxondale had unwittingly confessed, while they were in the room, that two of the big rocks in the wall were false and that they were in reality doors which opened into the passages. One of the passages was over a mile long, and there were hundreds of steps to descend before one reached a level where walking was not laborious. The point of egress was through a hidden cave up the valley, near the ruins of an old church. Where the other passage had once led to she did not know, for it had been closed by the caving in of a great pile of rocks.
With a determined spirit and a quaking courage, Dorothy vowed that she would sooner or later find this passage-way and make a bold dash for liberty. Her nerves were tingling with excitement, eagerness and a horror of the undertaking, and she could scarcely control herself until the opportunity might come for a surreptitious visit to the underground regions. Her first thought was to locate, if possible, the secret door leading into the passage. With that knowledge in her possession she could begin the flight at once, or await a favorable hour on some later day.
That very afternoon brought the opportunity for which she was waiting. The other women retired for their naps, and the men went to the billiard room. The lower halls were deserted, and she had little difficulty in making her way unseen to the door that led to the basement. Here she paused irresolutely, the recollection of the dismal, grasping solitude that dwelt beyond the portal sending again the chill to her bones.
She remembered that Turk had hung the lantern on a peg just inside the door, and she had provided herself with matches. To turn the key, open the door, pass through and close it, required no vast amount of courage, for it would be but an instant until she could have a light. Almost before she knew what she had done, she was in the drafty, damp stairway, and the heavy door was between her and her unsuspecting captors. With trembling, agitated fingers she struck a match. It flickered and went out. Another and another met the same fate, and she began to despair. The darkness seemed to choke her, a sudden panic rushed up and overwhelmed her fainting courage, and with a smothered cry of terror she turned to throw open the door. But the door refused to open! A modern spring lock had set itself against her return to the coveted security of the halls above.
A deathly faintness came over her. She sobbed as she threw herself against the stubborn door and pounded upon its panels with her hands. Something dreadful seemed to be crawling up from behind, out of the cavernous hole that was always night. The paroxysms of fear and dread finally gave way to despair, and despair is ever the parent of pluck. Impatiently she again undertook the task of lighting the lantern, fearing to breathe lest she destroy the wavering, treacherous flame that burnt inside her bleeding hands. Her pretty knuckles were bruised and cut in the reckless pounding on the door.
At last the candle inside the lantern’s glass began to flicker feebly, and then came the certainty that perseverance had been rewarded. Light filled the narrow way, and she looked timidly down the rickety stone steps, dreading to venture into the blackness beyond. Ahead lay the possibility of escape, behind lay failure and the certainty that no other opportunity would be afforded her. So she bravely went down the steps, her knees weakly striking against each other, the lantern jangling noisily against the stone wall.
How she mana
ged to reach the chamber under the tower she could not have told afterward; she did not know at the time. At last, however, she stood, with blood chilled to the curdling point, in the center of the room that knew the way to the outside world. Pounding on the rocky walls with a piece of stone against which her foot had struck, she at length found a block that gave forth the hollow sound she longed to hear. Here, then, was the key to the passage, and it only remained for her to discover the means by which the osbtruction could be moved from the opening.
For half an hour, cold with fear and nervousness, she sought for the traditional spring, but her efforts were in vain. There was absolutely no solution, and it dawned upon her that she was doomed to return to the upper world defeated. Indeed, unless she could make those in the castle hear her cries, it was possible that she might actually die of starvation in the pitiless cavern. The lantern dropped from her palsied fingers, and she half sank against the stubborn door in the wall. To be back once more in the rooms above, with cheery human beings instead of with the spirits of she knew not how many murdered men and women, was now her only desire, her only petition.
The contact of her body with the slab in some way brought about the result for which she had striven. The door moved slowly downward and a dash of freezing air came from the widening aperture at the top, blowing damp across her face. Staggering away from the ghostlike hole that seemed to grin fiendishly until it spread itself into a long, black gulf with eyes, a voice, and clammy hands, she grabbed up the still lighted lantern and cried aloud in a frenzy of fear. The door slowly sank out of sight and the way was open but her courage was gone. What was beyond that black hole? Could she live in the foul air that poured forth from that dismal mouth? Trembling like a leaf, she lifted the lantern and peered into the aperture, standing quite close to the edge.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 152