Dark Hollow | Page 9

just dominated there!--she was about to
utter an impassioned appeal to their honour, when the current of her
and their thoughts, as well as the direction of all looks, was changed by
a sudden sense common to all, of some strange new influence at work
in the room, and turning, they beheld the judge upon his feet, his mind
awakened, but his eyes still fixed--an awesome figure; some thought
more awesome than before; for the terror which still held him removed
from all about, was no longer passive but active and had to do with
what no man there could understand or alleviate. Death was present
with them--he saw it not. Strangers were making havoc with his
solitude--he was as oblivious of their presence as he had been
unconscious of it before. His faculties and all his attention were
absorbed by the thought which had filled his brain when the cogs of
that subtle mechanism had slipped and his faculties paused inert.
This was shown by his first question:
"WHERE IS THE WOMAN?"
It was a cry of fear; not of mastery.

IV
"AND WHERE WAS I WHEN ALL THIS HAPPENED?"
The intensity of the question, the compelling, self-forgetful passion of
the man, had a startling effect upon the crowd of people huddled before
him. With one accord, and without stopping to pick their way, they
made for the open doorway, knocking the smaller pieces of furniture
about and creating havoc generally. Some fled the house; others

stopped to peer in again from behind the folds of the curtain which had
been only partially torn from its fastenings. Miss Weeks was the only
one to stand her ground.
When the room was quite cleared and the noise abated (it was a
frightful experience to see how little the judge had been affected by all
this hubbub of combined movement and sound), she stepped within the
line of his vision and lifted her feeble and ineffectual hand in an effort
to attract his attention to herself.
But he did not notice her, any more than he had noticed the others. Still
looking in the one direction, he cried aloud in troubled tones:
"She stood there! the woman stood there and I saw her! Where is she
now?"
"She is no longer in the house," came in gentle reply from the only one
in or out of the room courageous enough to speak. "She went out when
she saw us coming. We knew that she had no right to be here. That is
why we intruded ourselves, sir. We did not like the looks of her, and so
followed her in to prevent mischief."
"Ah!"
The expletive fell unconsciously. He seemed to be trying to adjust
himself to some mental experience he could neither share with others
nor explain to himself.
"She was here, then?--a woman with a little child? It wasn't an illusion,
a--." Memory was coming back and with it a realisation of his position.
Stopping short, he gazed down from his great height upon the
trembling little body of whose identity he had but a vague idea, and
thundered out in great indignation:
"How dared you! How dared she!" Then as his mind regained its full
poise, "And how, even if you had the temerity to venture an entrance
here, did you manage to pass my gates? They are never open. Bela sees
to that."

Bela!
He may have observed the pallor which blanched her small, tense
features as this name fell so naturally from his lips, or some instinct of
his own may have led him to suspect tragedy where all was so
abnormally still, for, as she watched, she saw his eyes, fixed up to now
upon her face, leave it and pass furtively and with many hesitations
from object to object, towards that spot behind him, where lay the
source of her great terror, if not of his. So lingeringly and with such
dread was this done, that she could barely hold back her weak woman's
scream in the intensity of her suspense. She knew just where his
glances fell without following them with her own. She saw them pass
the door where so many faces yet peered in (he saw them not), and
creep along the wall beyond, inch by inch, breathlessly and with dread,
till finally, with fatal precision, they reached the point where the screen
had stood, and not finding it, flew in open terror to the door it was set
there to conceal--when that something else, huddled in oozing blood,
on the floor beneath, drew them unto itself with the irresistibleness of
grim reality, and he forgot all else in the horror of a sight for which his
fears, however great, had failed to prepare him.
Dead! BELA! Dead! and lying in his