THE policeman’s epigrammatic assertion that it was difficult for a known man to struggle with the police, is still more true when it is only a door which stands before a couple of men excited and exasperated by failure and a probable discovery. The door was a strong door, it was partially plated with iron, and its lock was cunningly devised, but after a while it began to give way.
Meredith, altogether absorbed in this new turn of affairs, and carried away by the prospect which it opened to him as well as to its assailants, seemed to the bystanders to have altogether gone over to the enemy. He stood by them, encouraging them in a low tone, suggesting how to strike, examining into the weak points with the keenest critical eye; in fact, in the excitement of the moment, forgetting all his precautions and pretence of indifference, and throwing himself on the side of the assailants. He had, it is true, the safe ground to fall back upon that, as he had always been assured there was nothing there, he could do no possible harm in helping to prove that fact to the men who would not be convinced in any other way.
Mrs. Harwood sat with her face to the door, her arms crossed upon her breast, her whole frame swaying and moving with the strokes that rained upon it. When a crash came she shivered and shrank into herself as if the blow had struck her—a low moan came involuntarily to her lips. Gussy, who had abandoned Meredith after trying in vain to restrain him, came and stood by her mother’s chair, with a hand upon her shoulder.
“Oh, mamma, for God’s sake,” said Gussy, in her ear, “don’t! Don’t let them see you mind it so.”
The mother half turned to her a face which was livid in its terror. Her eyes, so clear usually, had lost their color even, and seemed to float in a sort of liquefication, the iris disappearing into the watery black globe—her mouth was open. She uttered a murmur of inarticulate passion, and made as though she would have struck the soothing hand. But the men at this exciting work took no notice of Mrs. Harwood. The officer of the law was more fit to break down a resisting door than to draw subtle deductions from the looks of the besieged family. The practical matter was within his sphere. He only looked round with an exclamation of triumph when the door at last burst from its holdings, and the dark passage gaped open before them with its curtains drawn back.
“There!” he shouted, turning round for a moment, “there’s your door that never was used,” and would have dashed in had not his attendant held him back.
“I say,” said the man who had hitherto followed him like a shadow, “how do ye know that he hasn’t got a revolver up there?”
The detective fell back for a moment.
“We’ve got to risk it,” he said, with the professional stoicism of a man bound to meet danger at any time. He was not of much use in scenting out a mystery, but he could face a possible revolver with the stolid courage of his class. He made a pause, however, and added, with a rare effort of reflection, “And this one’s new to it; he’s not up to their dodges——” They were the criminal class with which a straightforward policeman is accustomed to deal.
Meredith followed with an excitement which made him forget everything, even the group of women bewildered in the hall. He knew his way, though he dared not show that he did. He followed the burly figure, and the smaller ill-trained one of the attendant informer and witness, as they wound themselves up in the curtains and came to a pause opposite every obstacle. The passage was perfectly dark, but the inner doors were not closed, notwithstanding the sounds of assault which those within must have heard. It turned out that the only individual within who had his wits about him had been too closely occupied to be able to look to those means of defence.
For a moment the group of the ladies below hung together in bewildered horror. Then Julia launched herself after the men into the dark passage, drawn by inextinguishable curiosity and the excitement of a child in sight of the unknown. Mrs. Harwood had covered her face with her hands, and lay back in her chair, fallen upon herself like a fallen house, lying, so to speak, in ruins. Gussy, with her arm round her mother’s shoulders, whispered, with tears and a little gasping, frightened crying, some words that were intended to be consolatory in her inattentive ears.
“It is nothing wrong,” Gussy said; “it is nothing wrong. It was to save him. It is nothing wrong.”
But by-and-bye the strong attraction of that open way along which the unseen party were stumbling seized upon her also. And her patient, who had to be taken care of—who was throwing himself back! Gussy cast a piteous glance upon her mother, lying there with her face upon her hands, paying no attention, whatever comfort might be poured into her ear, and presently impatience got the better of her sympathy, and she too followed in the train. She knew the secret of the wing. She was the only other in the house, except Mrs. Harwood, to whom that secret was known. But in how innocent and simple a way! She was troubled, but she had no sense of guilt; and Gussy said to herself that it was her duty to go and explain, to make it known to the others how simple it all was, when the fascination became too much for her to resist, and, with one glance at her mother, she too stole away. As for Dolff, he had disappeared from their minds, and the incredible suspicion attached to him, as if he had never been born. From the moment that the search began it had been to Mrs. Harwood a search for her secret, and nothing more.
Janet had been all this time hanging about unseen. She could not rest, she who knew so much more than any one else in the house—both the mystery of the wing and the miserable story of Dolff and his guilt, both of them—as nobody else did: neither Mrs. Harwood, whose thoughts were concentrated upon one, nor Meredith, who had discovered or divined the other, but did not know as Janet did, who knew everything, what had been the cause of Dolff’s terrible folly, and what its results, and even when and how he had disappeared. She had been hanging about now in one room, now in another, terrified to show herself, incapable of concealing herself, her very terror of being mixed up in it yielding to the fellow-felling of a general misery in which she had but her share, and that not so great a share as the others.
When she saw that the mother of the house, who was the most to be pitied of all in this dreadful emergency, was left there forlorn and alone, lying helpless, unable to go after the others, to confront the catastrophe, at least, as her children could, Janet’s heart was touched. She stole down the stairs where she had been watching, looking down upon them all, and came to Mrs. Harwood’s side. It was not for her to console or comfort. Janet was aware that she had been more or less the cause of all the trouble. She had found out the family secret, without in the least understanding it, and this was no blame of hers; but she had betrayed it to one who did understand it, and who might, for all she knew, use his knowledge unmercifully, being, as she knew him to be, a man with very little truth or inclination to spare another. And she had been, without any doubt, the cause of Dolff’s misfortune in every way. She had taken him into her toils innocently enough, with no more guiltiness than that of any other girl who had let a foolish young man fall in love with her, and then had driven him mad by her falsehood, and led him into crime—almost to the crime of murder. All this was in Janet’s mind as she stole down the stairs to his mother’s side. She had plenty of excuse for herself had any one accused her, but in her heart she was impartial, and knew very well how much she was to blame. Her heart beat loudly in consonance with the sounds of that exploring party in the dark passage, going to find out—how much more than they sought! She understood it all better than anyone. Meredith’s keen satisfaction in unveiling the mystery, and the stupid astonishment of the strangers, who had no suspicion, and Gussy——but what Gussy would feel was the one thing that Janet did not divine, for she was unaware how much or how little Gussy knew.
She stood by the chair in which Mrs. Harwood lay, all sunken upon herself like a fallen tower, her face hidden, her shoulders drawn together, sinking to her knees. Janet dared not say anything. She put her hand upon the arm of the chair, not even upon the unhappy lady’s arm, which she felt that she dared not touch—and stood by her. It was all that any one could do. The two were left there like wrecks on the shore, from, which everything had ebbed away, even the tumult and the storm which had been raging round. The sounds went on getting fainter, the voices dropped, the footsteps seemed to mount and then grow still, stumbling at first a little, gradually dying out. Mrs. Harwood did not move, nor did Janet, standing by her, scarcely breathing. Were they both following, in imagination, the darkling way which both knew, or had the mother, at last, fallen into a blind insensibility, hearing and knowing no more?
This imagination was, however, suddenly put an end to by a moaning from the chair.
“I can’t bear this any longer; I can’t bear this!” said Mrs, Harwood. “Oh, my God! my God! Have they got there?” Then she cried, loudly, “I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” and with a sudden wrench, as if she were tearing herself like a limb from its socket, the disabled woman rose.
Janet, terrified, gave a cry of dismay as, stumbling and tottering, she flung herself out of the chair. Whether Mrs. Harwood had been aware of her presence before this she could not tell; but, at all events, now she was beyond all sentiment of displeasure or reproof. She put out her shaking hand and grasped at Janet’s arm as if it had been a post. The girl’s slight figure swayed and almost gave way at the sudden weight flung upon it; but the burden steadied her after the first moment’s uncertainty. Mrs. Harwood’s face had collapsed with the extreme anguish of the crisis past; her features seemed blurred, like the half-liquid, vaguely floating eyes, which did not seem to see anything. She made a heavy, uncertain step forward, carrying her prop with her by mere momentum of weight and weakness.
“Come,” she said, hoarsely, “come!”
Janet never knew how these dark passages were got through. She was herself enfolded, carried away in the burden of the helpless woman who leaned upon her guidance for every step. Their progress was wildly devious and uneven, every step being a sort of falling forward, which nevertheless carried them on with spasmodic rapidity, though terrible effort. The voices and steps in front of them grew audible again, but before they reached the last door, which stood open with curtains drawn aside, disclosing a warm blaze of light, there arose a sudden tumult, a roar as of some wild creature, with answering cries of panic and dismay. The opened doorway suddenly darkened with a crowd of retreating figures, and Julia darted out from the midst and came blindly flying upon the tottering group that was struggling forward.
“Go back, go back!” cried Julia, “whoever you are. There’s a madman there!” and then she gave a shriek as wild as the sounds that came from the room, “Oh,” cried the girl, her shrill voice dominating even that riot, “it’s mamma! My mother’s here!”