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Page 33
It would be difficult to find a woman upon whom superstition has so
slight a hold as it has upon Gwen Darrow, yet, for all that, it
required an effort for her to turn and gaze toward the centre of
the room. A dim, ill-defined stain of light fell momentarily upon
the chair in which the dead man had sat, and then flickered
unsteadily across the room and, as it seemed to her, out through
its western side, the while a faint, rustling sound caught her ear.
She was plainly conscious, too, of a something swishing by her, as
if a strong draught had just fallen upon her. She was not naturally
superstitious, as I have said before, yet there was something in the
gloom, the deserted house, and this fatal room with its untold story
of death which, added to her weird perceptions and that indescribable
conviction of an unseen presence, caused even Gwen to press her hand
convulsively upon her throbbing heart. For the first time in her
life the awful possibilities of darkness were fully borne in upon
her and she knew just how her father had felt.
In a moment, however, she had recovered from her first shock and had
begun to reason. Might not the sound she had heard, and the movement
she had felt, both be explained by an open window? She knew she had
closed and locked all the windows of the room when she had finished
airing it after the funeral, and she was not aware that anyone had
been there since, yet she said to herself that perhaps one of the
servants had come in and opened a window without her knowledge. She
turned and looked. The lower sash of the eastern window--the one
through which she felt sure death had approached her father--was
raised to its utmost.
"How fortunate," she murmured, "that I discovered this before
leaving."
She was all but fully reassured now, as she stepped to the window
to close it. Remembering how the sash stuck in the casing she
raised both hands to forcibly lower it. As she did so a strong
arm caught the sash from the outer side, and a stalwart masculine
form arose directly in front of her. His great height brought his
head almost to a level with her own, despite the fact that he was
standing upon the ground outside. He was so near that she could
feel his breath upon her face. His eyes, like two great coals of
fire, blazed into hers with a sinister and threatening light. His
countenance seemed to utterly surpass any personal malignancy and
to exhibit itself as a type of all the hatreds that ever poisoned
human hearts.
Only a moment before Gwen had felt a creepy, sickening sensation
stealing over her as the result of an ill-defined and apparently
causeless dread. Now an actual, imminent, and fearful peril
confronted her. Under such circumstances most women would have
fainted, and, indeed, if Gwen had herself been asked how she would
have acted under such a supreme test, she would have prophesied the
same maidenly course as her own, yet, in the real exigency--how
little do we know of ourselves, save what actual experience has
taught us!--this is precisely what she did not do. When the
horrible apparition first rose in her very face, as it were, a
momentary weakness caught her and she clung to the sash for support.
Then the wonderful fire of the malignant eyes, green, serpentine,
opalescent, with the wave-like flux of a glowworm's light seen
under a glass, riveted her attention. She had ceased to tremble.
Our fear of death varies with our desire for life. Dulled by a
great grief, she did not so very much care what became of her. The
future's burden was heavy, and if it were necessary she now put it
down, there would still be a sense of relief. As this thought
passed like a shadow over her consciousness she felt herself
irresistibly attracted to the awful face before her. Her assailant's
gaze seemed to have wound itself about her own till she could not
disentangle it. She was dimly conscious that she was falling under
a spell and summoned all her remaining strength to break it. Quick
as the uncoiling of a released spring, and without the slightest
movement of warning, she threw her entire weight upon the sash in
a last endeavour to close the window, but the man's upraised arm
held both her weight and it, as if its muscles had been rods of
steel. Gwen saw a long knife in his free hand,--saw the light
shimmer along its blade, saw him raise it aloft to plunge it into
her bosom, yet made no movement to withdraw beyond his reach and
uttered no cry for help. It seemed to her that all this was
happening to another and that she herself was only a fascinated
spectator. She was wondering whether or not the victim would try
to defend herself when the knife began its descent. It seemed
ages in its downward passage,--so long, indeed, that it gave her
time to think of most of the main experiences of her life. At last
it paused irresolutely within an inch of her bosom. She wondered
that the victim made no attempt to escape, uttered no cry for help.
Suddenly she felt something whirling and buzzing in her brain, while
a wild fluttering filled both her ears; then the swirling, fluttering
torment rose in a swift and awful crescendo which seemed to involve
all creation in its vortex; then a pang like a lightning-thrust and
a crash like the thunder that goes with it, and she saw a tall man
striding rapidly from the window. She was still sure it was no
personal concern of hers, yet an idle curiosity noted his great
height, his dark, mulatto-like skin, and a slight halt in his walk
as he passed through a narrow beam of light and off into the
engulfing darkness.
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