She took up the candle, which she had put on a shelf while she knelt to find out whether he was hurt, and crossing the brick floor with rapid, rather stealthy steps, she put her fingers on the latch of the inner door.
"Keep close!" whispered she.
Max obeyed. He kept so close that the girl"s soft hair, which was of the ash-fair color so common in English blondes who have been flaxen-headed in their childhood, almost touched his face. She opened the door and entered what was evidently the back room of the deserted shop.
A dark room it must have been, even in broadest daylight. Opposite to the door by which they had entered was one which was glazed in the upper half; this evidently led into the shop itself, although the old red curtain which hung over the gla.s.s panes hid the view of what was beyond.
There was a little fireplace, in which were the burnt-out ashes of a recent fire. There was a deal table in the middle of the room, and a cloth of a common pattern of blue and red check lay in a heap on the floor. A couple of plain Windsor chairs, and a third with arms and a cushion, a hearth-rug, a fender and fire-irons, completed the furniture of the room.
And the one window, a small one, which looked out upon the wharf, in a corner formed by the outhouse on the one side and a shed on the other, was carefully boarded up.
Grimly desolate the dark, bare room looked, small as it was; and a couple of rats, which scurried over the floor as Max entered, added a suggestion of other horrors to the deserted room. The girl had managed to get behind Max, and he turned sharply with a suspicion that she meant to shut him into the room by himself.
"It"s all right--it"s all right," whispered she, rea.s.suringly. "He isn"t in here. But he"s there."
And she pointed to the door with the red curtain.
Max stopped. The farther he advanced into this mysterious house the less he liked the prospect presented to his view. And the girl herself seemed to have forgotten her pretext of wanting something fetched out of that mysterious third room. She remained leaning against the wall, close by the door by which she and Max had entered, still holding the candlestick and staring at the red curtain with eyes full of terror. Max found his own eyes fascinated by the steady gaze, and he looked in the same direction.
Staring intently at the bit of faded stuff, he was almost ready to imagine, in the silence and gloom of the place, that he saw it move. His breath came fast. Overcome by the uncanny influences of the dreary place itself, of the hideous story he had heard, of the girl"s white face, Max began to feel as if the close, cold air of the unused room was like the touch of clammy fingers on his face.
Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out.
In the first impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp exclamation, but remained immovable. Indeed, in the darkness, in this unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible. He stood listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him.
All he heard was the scurrying of the rats as they ran, disturbed by the noise, across the room and behind the wainscot in the darkness.
At last he turned and tried to find the door by which he had come in. He found it, and had his hand upon the latch, when his right foot touched something soft, yielding. He opened the door, which was not locked, as he had feared, and was about to make his way as fast as he could into the open air, when another moan, fainter than before, reached his ears.
No light came into the room through the open door; so he struck a wax match. His nerves were not at their best, and it was some time before he could get a light. When he did so, he discovered that the thing his foot had touched was the body of the girl, lying in a heap on the floor close to the wainscot.
Now Max was divided between his doubts and his pity; but it was not possible that doubt should carry the day in the face of this discovery.
Whether she had fainted, or whether this was only a ruse on her part to detain him, to interest him, he could not leave her lying there.
The tin candlestick had rolled away on the floor, and the candle had fallen out of it. The first thing Max had to do was to replace the one in the other, and to get a serviceable light. By the time he had done so he saw a movement in the girl"s body. She was lying with her head on the floor. He put his arm under her head to raise it, when she started up, so suddenly as to alarm him, leaned back against the wall, still in her cramped, sitting position, and glared into his face.
"Look here," she said faintly, "I couldn"t help it. You know--I think--I"m almost--starving."
"Heavens! Why didn"t I think of it! Poor child! Get up; let me help you.
Come to this chair. Wait here, only a few minutes. I"ll get you something to eat and drink."
He was helping her up; had got her on her feet, indeed, when she suddenly swung round in his arms, clinging to his sleeve and staring again with the fixed, almost vacant look which made him begin to doubt whether her reason had not suffered.
"No, no, no," cried she, gasping for breath; "I can"t stay here. I know, I know you wouldn"t come back. If you once got out, got outside in the air, you would go back to your home, and I should be left here--alone--with the rats--and--_that_!"
And again she pointed to the curtained door.
Max felt his teeth chattering as he tried to rea.s.sure her.
"Come, won"t you trust me? I"ll only be a minute. I want to get you some brandy."
"Brandy? No. I dare not."
And she shook her head. But Max persisted.
"Nonsense--you must have it. There"s a public-house at the corner, of course. Come out on to the wharf, if you like and wait for me."
It was pitiful to see the expression of her eyes as she looked in his face without a word. She was leaning back in the wooden arm-chair, one hand lying in her lap, the other hanging limply over the side of the chair. Her hair, which had been fastened in a coil at the back of her head, had been loosened in the fall, and now drooped about her head and face in disorder, which increased her pathetic beauty. And it was at this point that Max noticed, with astonishment, that her hands, though not specially beautiful or small or in any way remarkable, were not those of a woman used to the roughest work.
She made an attempt to rise, apparently doubting his good faith and afraid to lose sight of him, as he retreated toward the door. But she fell back again, and only stared at him dumbly.
The mute appeal touched Max to the quick. He was always rather susceptible, but it seemed to him that he had never felt, at the hands of any girl, such a variety of emotions as this forlorn creature roused in him with every movement, every look, every word.
He hesitated, came back a step and leaned over the table, looking at her.
"I"ll come back," said he, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "Of course I"ll come back. You don"t think I"d leave you like this, do you?"
For a moment she stared at him with doubt in her eyes; then, as if rea.s.sured, her lips parted in a very faint smile, and she made a slight motion with her head which he was fain to take as a sign of her trust.
He had reached the door, when by a weak gesture she called him back again.
"If--if you should meet anybody--I"m expecting Granny all the time--I"m sure she wouldn"t leave me altogether like this--you will come back all the same, won"t you?"
Her earnestness over this matter had given her back a little strength.
She leaned forward over one arm of the chair, impressing her words upon him with a bend of the head.
"Oh, no, I shan"t mind Granny," replied Max, confidently.
"Well, you wouldn"t mind her if she was in a good humor," went on the girl, doubtfully, "but when she"s in a bad one, oh, well, then," in a lowered voice of deep confidence, "_I"m afraid of her myself!_"
"That"s all right. It would take more than an old woman to frighten me!
Tell me what she"s like and what her name is, and I can present myself to her as a morning caller."
The girl seemed to have recovered altogether from her attack of faintness, since she was able to detain him thus from his proposed errand on her behalf. She smiled again, less faintly than before, and shook her head.
"I don"t think there"s much to describe about Granny. She was a housekeeper at old Mr. Horne"s house in the city, you know, and she looks just as old housekeepers always look. Her name"s Mrs. Higgs. But,"
and the girl looked frightened again, "don"t tell her you"ve come to see _me_. She"s very particular. At least--I mean--"
A pretty confusion, a touch of hesitancy, the first sign of anything girlish which Max had seen in this strange creature, made her stop and turn her head away. And, the effort of speaking over, she drooped again.
"I won"t be long."
And Max, puzzled himself by the feelings he had toward this strange little white-bodied being, went through the outhouse into the open air.
Outside, he found himself staggering, he didn"t know why--whether from the emotions he had experienced or from the clammy, close hair of the shut-up room; all he knew was that by the time he reached the public-house, which he had correctly foreseen was to be found at the corner, he felt quite as much in want of the brandy as his patient herself.
It occurred to him, as he stood in the bar, swallowing some fiery liquid of dubious origin which the landlord had sold to him as brandy, to make a casual inquiry about Mrs. Higgs.
"Yes," said the landlord, "I do know a Mrs. Higgs. She comes in here sometimes; she likes her gla.s.s. But they know more about her at The Admiral"s Arms, Commercial Road way," and he gave a nod of the head to indicate the direction of that neighborhood.