The Hollow of Her Hand Part 12

She looked about her, the wild light still in her eyes. She was like a rat in a trap.

Her lips parted, but the word of thanks did not come forth. A strange, inarticulate sound, almost a gasp, came instead. Pallid as a ghost, she dropped limply to the divan, and dug her fingers into the satiny seat. As if fascinated, she stared over the black heads of the three women immediately in front of her at the full length portrait hanging where the light from the hall fell full upon it: the portrait of a dashing youth in riding togs.

A moment later Sara Wrandall came over and sat beside her. The girl shivered as with a mighty chill when the warm hand of her friend fell upon hers and enveloped it in a firm clasp.

"His mother kissed me," whispered Sara. "Did you see?"

The girl could not reply. She could only stare at the open door.

A small, hatchet-faced man had come up from below and was nodding his head to Leslie Wrandall,--a man with short side whiskers, and a sepulchral look in his eyes. Then, having received a sign from Leslie, he tiptoed away. Almost instantly the voices of people singing softly came from some distant, remote part of the house.

And then, a little later, the perfectly modulated voice of a man in prayer.

Back of her, Wrandalls; beside her, Wrandalls; beneath her, friends of the Wrandalls; outside, the rabble, those who would join with these black, raven-like spectres in tearing her to pieces if they but knew!

Sitting, with his hand to his head, Leslie Wrandall found himself staring at the face of this stranger among them; not with any definable interest, but because she happened to be in his line of vision and her face was so singularly white that it stood out in cameo-like relief against all this ebony setting.

The droning voice came up from below, each well-chosen word distinct and clear: tribute beautiful to the irreproachable character of the deceased. Leslie watched the face of the girl, curiously fascinated by the set, emotionless features, and yet without a conscious interest in her. He was dully sensible to the fact that she was beautiful, uncommonly beautiful. It did not occur to him to feel that she was out of place among them, that she belonged downstairs. Somehow she was a part of the surroundings, like the spectre at the feast.

If he could have witnessed all that transpired while Sara was in the room below with her guest--her companion, as he had come to regard her without having in fact been told as much,--he would have been lost in a maze of the most overwhelming emotions.

To go back: The door had barely closed behind the two women when Hetty's trembling knees gave way beneath her. With a low moan of horror, she slipped to the floor, covering her face with her hands.

Sara knelt beside her.

"Come," she said gently, but firmly; "I must exact this much of you. If we are to go on together, as we have planned, you must stand beside me at his bier. Together we must look upon him for the last time. You must see him as I saw him up there in the country.

I had my cruel blow that night. It is your turn now. I will not blame you for what you did. But if you expect me to go on believing that you did a brave thing that night, you must convince me that you are not a coward now. It is the only test I shall put you to.

Come; I know it is hard, I know it is terrible, but it is the true test of your ability to go through with it to the end. I shall know then that you have the courage to face anything that may come up."

She waited a long time, her hand on the girl's shoulder. At last Hetty arose.

"You are right," she said hoa.r.s.ely. "I should not be afraid."

Later on, they sat over against the wall beyond the casket, into which they had peered with widely varying emotions. Sara had said:

"You know that I loved him."

The girl put her hands to her eyes and bowed her head.

"Oh, how can you be so merciful to me?"

"Because he was not," said Sara, white-lipped. Hetty glanced at the half-averted face with queer, indescribable expression in her eyes.

Then her nerves gave way. She shrank away from the casket, whimpering like a frightened child, mouttering, almost gibbering in the extremity of despair. She had lived in dread of this ordeal; it had been promised the day before by Sara Wrandall, whose will was law to her. Now she had come to the very apex of realisation.

She felt that her mind was going, that her blood was freezing. In response to a sudden impulse she sprang up and ran, blindly and without thought, bringing up against the wall with such force that she dropped to the floor, quite insensible.

When she regained her senses, she was lying back in Sara Wrandall's arms, and a soft faraway voice was pleading with her to wake, to say something, to open her eyes.

If Leslie Wrandall could have looked in upon them at that moment, or at any time during the half an hour that followed, he would have known who was the slayer of his brother, but it is doubtful if he could have had the heart to denounce her to the world.

When they were ready to leave the room, Hetty had regained control of her nerves to a most surprising extent, a condition unmistakably due to the influence of the older woman.

"I can trust myself now, Mrs. Wrandall," said Hetty steadily as they hesitated for an instant before turning the k.n.o.b of the door.

"Then, I shall ask YOU to open the door," said Sara, drawing back.

Without a word or a look, Hetty opened the door and permitted the other to pa.s.s out before her. Then she followed, closing it gently, even deliberately, but not without a swift glance over her shoulder into the depths of the room they were leaving.

Of the two, Sara Wrandall was the paler as they went up the broad staircase with Leslie.

The funeral oration by the Rev. Dr. Maltby dragged on. Among all his hearers there was but one who believed the things he said of Challis Wrandall, and she was one of two persons who, so the saying goes, are the last to find a man out; his mother and his sister.

But in this instance the mother was alone. The silent, attentive guests on the lower floor listened in grim approval: Dr. Maltby was doing himself proud. Not one but all of them knew that Maltby KNEW. And yet how soothing he was.

Thus afterwards, to his wife, on the way home after a fruitful silence, spoke Colonel Berkimer, well known to the Tenderloin:

"When I die, my dear, I want you to be sure to have Maltby in for the sermon. He's really wonderful."

"You don't mean to say you BELIEVED all that he said," cried his wife.

"Certainly NOT," he snapped. "That's the point."

Once at the end of a beautifully worded sentence, eulogistic of the dead man's character as a son and husband, the tense silence of the room upstairs was shattered by the utterance of a single, poignant word:

"G.o.d!"

It was so expressive of surprise, of scorn, of contempt, although spoken in little more than a whisper, that every one in the room caught his or her breath in a sharp little gasp, as if cringing from the effect of an unexpected shock to a sensitive nerve.

Each looked at his neighbour and then in a shocked sort of way at every one else, for no one could quite make out who had uttered the word, and each wondered if, in a fit of abstraction, he could have done it himself. It unmistakably had been the voice of a woman, but whose? Hetty knew, but not by the slightest sign did she betray the fact that the woman who sat beside her was the one to utter the brief but scathing estimate of the minister's eulogy.

The hatchet-faced little undertaker stood in the open door again and solemnly bowed his head to Leslie, lifting his dolorous eyebrows in lieu of the verbal question. Receiving a simple nod in reply, he announced that as soon as the guests had departed he would be pleased to have the family descend to the carriages.

Outside, the shivering, half-frozen mult.i.tude edged its way up to the line of blue-coats and again whispered the names of the departing guests, and every neck was craned in the effort to secure the first view of the casket, the silk-hatted pall-bearers and the weeping members of the family.

"They'll be out with 'im in a minute now," said a hoa.r.s.e-voiced man who clung to the ornamental face of the tall gate and pa.s.sed back the word, for he could see beyond the stream of guests into the hallway of the house.

"Git down out o' that," commanded a policeman tapping him sharply with his night-stick.

"Aw, I ain't botherin' anybody--"

"Git down, I say!"

Grumbling, the man slunk back, and a woman took his place. This was better for the crowd, as her voice was shriller and she had less compunction about making herself heard.

A small boy crept beyond the line and peered, round-eyed, up the carpeted steps. He received a sharp push from a night-stick and went blubbering back into the crowd.

And all through the eager, seething mob went sharp-eyed men in plain clothes, searching each face with crafty eyes, looking for the sign that might betray the woman who had brought all this about.

They were men from the central office. Another of their ilk had the freedom of the house in the guise of an undertaker's a.s.sistant. He watched the favoured few!

There is a saying that a strange, mysterious force drags the murderer to the scene of his crime, whether he will or no, to look with others upon the havoc he has wrought. He has been known to sit beside the bier of his victim; he has been known to follow him to the tomb; he has been known to betray himself at the very edge of the grave. A grim, fantastic thing is conscience!