The Motor Maid Part 22

If I could scramble up! I thought; and promptly tried.

It looked almost easy; but for me it was impossible. A very tall woman might have done it, perhaps, but I have only five foot four in my Frenchiest French heels; and the broken-off place was higher than my waist. With good hand-hold I might have dragged myself up, but the steps above did not come at the right height to give me leverage; and always, though I tried again and again, till my cut hands bled, I couldn't climb up. And how silly it seemed, the whole thing! I was just like a young fly that had come buzzing and b.u.mbling round an ugly old spider's web, too foolish to know that it was a web. And even now how lightly the fly's feet were entangled! A spring, and I should be out of prison.

"Oh, the little more, and how much it is!

And the little less, and what worlds away!"

The words came and spoke themselves in my ears, as if they were determined to make me cry.

I was desperately frightened and homesick--homesick even for Lady Turnour. I should have felt like kissing the hem of her dress if I could only have seen her now--and I wasn't able to smile when I thought what a rage she'd be in if I did it. She would have me sent off to an insane asylum: but even that would be much gayer and more homelike than an underground cellar in the Ghost City of Les Baux.

Dear old Sir Samuel, with his nice red face! I almost loved him. The car seemed like a long-lost aunt. And as for the chauffeur, my brother--I found that I dared not think of him. As in my imagination I saw his eyes, his good dark eyes, clear as a brook, and the lines his brown face took when he thought intently, the tears began running down my cheeks.

"Oh, Jack--Jack, come and help me!" I called.

That comes of _thinking_ people's Christian names. They will pop out of your mouth when you least expect it. But it mattered little enough now, except that the sound of the name and the echo of it fluttering back to me made my tears feel boiling hot--hotter than the punch which the Turnours must have finished by this time.

"Jack! Jack!" I called again.

Then I heard a stone rattle up above, somewhere, and a sick horror rushed over me, because of the gipsy men coming back with their wicked old mother.

It was only a very dark gray in the cellar, to my unaccustomed eyes, but suddenly it turned black, with purple edges. I knew then I was going to faint, because I've done it once or twice before, and things always began by being black with purple edges.

CHAPTER XV

"For heaven's sake, wake up--tell me you're not hurt!" a familiar voice was saying in my ear, or I was dreaming it. And because it was such a good dream I was afraid to break it by waking to some horror, so I kept my eyes shut, hoping and hoping for it to come again.

In an instant, it did come. "Child--little girl--wake up! Can't you speak to me?"

His hand, holding mine, was warm and extraordinarily comforting.

Suddenly I felt so happy and so perfectly safe that I was paid for everything. My head was on somebody's arm, and I knew very well now who the somebody was. He was real, and not a dream. I sighed cozily and opened my eyes. His face was quite close to mine.

"Thank G.o.d!" he said. "Are you all right?"

"Now you're here," I answered. "I thought they were coming to kill me."

"Who?" he asked, quite fiercely.

"An old gipsy woman and her sons."

"Those people!" he exclaimed. "Why, it was they who told me you were in this place. If it hadn't been for them I shouldn't have found you so soon--though I _would_ have found you. The wretches! What made you think--"

"The old woman was in the room above," I said, "waiting for her sons; and she begged me to look down here for a rosary she dropped. She must have known the bottom steps were gone. She _wanted_ me to fall; and though I called, she didn't answer, because she'd probably hobbled off to find her sons and bring them back to rob me. I haven't hurt myself much, but when I found I couldn't climb up I was so frightened! I thought no one would ever come--except those horrible gipsies. And when I heard a sound above I was sure they were here. I felt sick and strange, and I suppose I must have fainted."

"I heard you call, just as I got into the upper room. Then, though I answered, everything was still. Jove! I had some bad minutes! But you're sure you're all right now?"

"Sure," I answered, sitting up. "Did I call you 'Jack'? If I did, it was only because one can't shriek 'Mister,' and anyway you told me to."

"Now I _know_ you're all right, or you wouldn't bother about conventionalities. I wish I had some brandy for you--"

"I wouldn't take it if you had."

"That sounds like you. That's encouraging! Are you strong enough to let me get you up into the light and air?"

"Quite!" I replied briskly, letting him help me to my feet. "But how are we to get up?"

"I'll show you. It will be easy."

"Let's look first for the wicked old creature's rosary. If it isn't here, it's certain she's a fraud."

"I should think it's certain without looking. I'd like to put the old serpent in prison."

"I wouldn't care to trouble, now I'm safe. And anyway, how could we prove she meant her sons to rob me, since they hadn't begun the act, and so couldn't be caught in it?"

"She didn't know you had a man to look after you. When the guide and I came this way, searching, we met a gipsy woman with two awful brutes, and asked if they'd seen a young lady in a gray coat. They were all three on their way here, as you thought; but when they saw us close to this house, of course, they dared not carry out their plan, and the old woman made the best of a bad business. No doubt they're as far off by this time as they could get. It might be difficult to prove anything, but I'd like to try."

"_I_ wouldn't," I said. "But let's look for that rosary. Have you any matches?"

"Plenty." He took out a match-case, and held a wax vesta for me to peer about in the neighbourhood of the broken stairway.

"Here's something glittering!" I exclaimed, just as I had been about to give up the search in vain. "She said there was a silver crucifix."

I slipped my fingers into a crack where the rock had been split in breaking off the lower steps. A small, bright thing was there, almost buried in debris, but I could not get my fingers in deep enough to dislodge it. Impatiently I pulled out a hat-pin, and worked until I had unearthed--not the rosary, but a silver coin.

"Somebody else has been down here, dropping money," I said, handing the piece up for Mr. Dane to examine.

"Then it was a long time ago," he replied, "for the coin has the head of Louis XIII. on it."

"Oh, then she was right!" I cried. "I _can_ find lost treasure. I'm going to look for more. I believe that piece must have fallen out of a hole I've found here, which goes back ever so far into the rock. I can get my arm in nearly to the elbow."

"_Who_ was 'right'?" my brother wanted to know.

"The gipsy. She told my fortune. That was why I didn't refuse to look for her rosary."

"I should have thought a child would have known better," he remarked, scornfully; and his tone hurt my sensitiveness the more because his voice had been so anxious and his words so kind when I was fainting. He had called me "child" and "little girl." I remembered well, and the words had been saying themselves over in my mind ever since. I rather thought that they betrayed a secret--that perhaps he had been getting to care for me a little. That idea pleased me, because he had been abrupt sometimes, and I hadn't known what to make of him. Every girl owes it to herself to understand a man thoroughly--at least, as much of his character and feelings as may concern her. Besides, it is not soothing to one's vanity to try--well, yes, I may as well confess that!--to _try_ and please a man, yet to know you've failed after days of a.s.sociation so constant and intimate that hours are equal to the same number of months in an ordinary acquaintance. Now, after thinking I'd made the discovery that he really had found me attractive, it was a shock to be spoken to in this way.

"Oh, you _are_ cross!" I exclaimed, still poking about in the hole under the stairway.

"I'm not cross," he said, "but if I were, you'd deserve it, because you know you've been foolish. And if you don't know, you ought to, so that you may be wiser next time. The idea of a sensible young woman chumming up in a lonely cave, with a dirty old gipsy certain to be a thief, if not worse, letting her tell fortunes, and then falling into a trap like this. I wouldn't have believed it of you!"

"I think you're perfectly horrid," said I. "I wish you had let the guide find me. He would have done it just as well, and been much more polite."

"Doubtless he would have been more polite, but he isn't as young, and might have had trouble in getting you out. There! that's my last match, and you mustn't waste any more time looking for treasure which you won't find."

"Which I _have_ found!" I announced. "I've got something more--away at the back of the hole. Not that you deserve to see it!"