Chapter Seven.

The Monstrous Night

Back in her own room, with the light turned on and the door locked, she tried to think coolly.

“Of course, they may just have moved Uncle Rufus into another room,” she said to herself.

Then suddenly she rebelled.

“No!” she thought. “It’s cowardly and contemptible to go on this way, making up explanations for everything, pretending there can’t be anything wrong. Suppose there is, and I’m just letting it go on? I ought to make sure. I’ve got to see Uncle Rufus with my own eyes.”

There was a knock at her door.

“See here!” said Aunt Emma. “Will you be good enough to come down to your dinner at once? Doctor Coat and Mr. Purvis are hungry.”

“Then I’m sorry for them,” said Di, and opened the door. “Aunt Emma,” she said, “where’s Uncle Rufus? I went to his room, and he wasn’t there?”

“Nevertheless, he is in his room,” said Aunt Emma. “Perhaps with your customary ineptitude you went to the wrong room. It’s not likely that he’s gone out for a walk.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“Unfortunately, he wouldn’t like to see you. He never wants to see anyone but Wren in the course of these attacks. To-morrow, when he’s better, you can see him. And in the meantime, why not come downstairs and tell Doctor Coat and Mr. Purvis your suspicions? A doctor and a lawyer--you couldn’t ask for anything better.”

There was something in the older woman’s cold insolence, something in her voice, her look, that was beginning to tell heavily upon Di. She resented it, yet in her resentment there was a sort of despair, as if her spirit warned her that she was no match for this woman. In every encounter she was worsted; each time Aunt Emma was able to convince her that she was a fool.

And she felt herself a fool now, as she went downstairs. Her aunt introduced the two strangers to her, Doctor Coat, a courtly old fellow with a white mustache and a handsome face, and a pleasant, rather stupid smile; Mr. Purvis, stout, grave, and a little pompous. Was it likely, if there was anything wrong here, that Aunt Emma would ask them to come? It was utterly impossible to suspect them of anything even mildly irregular.

They all sat down to that atrocious dinner, and though the stout Mr. Purvis looked rueful, neither of them seemed surprised. They were apparently at home here, and accustomed to Aunt Emma’s style of living; and they talked, without constraint, of Uncle Rufus.

“Do you think there is any chance of his seeing me to-night, Emma?” asked Mr. Purvis. “If there is, of course I’ll wait as late as I can.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Anyhow, he asked for you, and he knows you’re here.”

“Poor Rufus!” he said, with a sigh.

“Well,” said Doctor Coat, in his comfortable and kindly way, “he’s been through a great many of these attacks. And with Emma’s splendid care, we’ll hope that he’ll come through this one. There’s really no need for me here. Although, of course, I quite understand how you feel about it, Emma. If anything should happen there’d be criticism… Yes… quite so… If he can be persuaded to make a will, he’ll feel very much better. Set his house in order… quite so!”

Then he turned to Diana.

“I hear he’s taken a great liking to you,” he said. “Very nice, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know,” said Di. “I’m afraid--”

“She’s almost morbidly self-distrustful,” said Aunt Emma, interrupting. “Like her poor mother.”

Mr. Purvis and Doctor Coat both looked at Di with a sort of sympathy.

“Come, come!” said the doctor. “Nothing so remarkable in his taking a liking to a charming young lady like you. He was really attached to your mother.”

A silence fell.

“I’m going to meet Mr. Fennel at nine o’clock,” Di was thinking. “I’m going to tell him every single thing, and get his opinion. I want to know if I’m just a morbid idiot, imagining things, or if there’s any reason for being--uneasy. He’s an outsider, he’ll be unprejudiced.”

Mr. Purvis began to talk now, about the League of Nations; he addressed himself entirely to Aunt Emma, and so did Doctor Coat. Occasionally they spoke to Di, amiably enough. Their manner toward Miles was one of distinct disapproval; he was evidently in disgrace. Peter Leonard they quite ignored.

Half-past eight, and they still sat at the table over the demi-tasses of astonishingly strong coffee Di had made. She was growing restless and impatient, looking down at her wrist watch under the table.

“But he said he’d wait an hour,” she thought. “There’s plenty of time.”

She had ceased to listen to the conversation that went on; she was lost in her own confused and displeasing thoughts. And suddenly she had a sort of vision of this scene, as if she were detached and viewing it from a distance. This abandoned hotel in the woods; that black empty room upstairs; those most unfortunate children shut up somewhere; down here this dismantled room with chairs and tables piled against the walls and at this one table, this group. Uncle Peter, incredibly trivial, the “grasshopper” his son had called him; Miles, half-base, half-fine, and wholly reckless; Doctor Coat with his courtly air and his stupid smile; Mr. Purvis with his pompous gravity--and herself… All fools…? All puppets of that composed, gray-haired woman?

“She wanted me to come here and I came,” thought Di. “She wanted me to stay and I’m staying. Is everything I do really what she has planned…?”

It was a singularly disturbing thought. More and more did she long to see Fennel, the outsider who could give her an unprejudiced opinion. She thought of him; how kindly he had spoken to poor Wren, remembered his air of quiet confidence, his steady glance…

“I didn’t realize how nice it was of him to come all this way with Mrs. Frick’s letter,” she thought. “I didn’t even thank him…”

Aunt Emma had risen and everyone else rose too, and proceeded toward the lounge. Twenty minutes to nine now.

“Come, Diana!” said Aunt Emma.

“I’ll just wash the dishes first--”

“There’s no need for that. Wren will come down early to-morrow morning.”

“Then I’ll just clear the table--”

“No,” said Aunt Emma. “Leave everything as it is.”

For a moment Diana stood looking at her.

“I ought to take things in my own hands,” she thought. “I ought to say I’m going out for a few minutes. She couldn’t stop me, before all these people. This is the time. This is the time to speak.”

It was curiously difficult to speak, but she did speak.

“I think I’ll go out--and get a breath of fresh air,” she said.

“Miles will go with you.”

This was a battle.

“No, thanks,” said Di. “I’d rather go alone.”

She was aware that everyone was listening; she was aware that her wish to go out alone surprised them all. But she was desperate. It seemed to her a matter of vital importance that she should conquer, should go out openly and freely.

“I’m sorry,” said Aunt Emma, composedly. “But I can’t permit it, my dear. This is a very lonely spot. If you object to Miles’ conversation, he can walk behind you.”

She was beaten. She _could_ not say before all these people, that she was going out to meet a man--“like a servant wench” Uncle Rufus had said. And what is more, she did not need to tell Aunt Emma that. Aunt Emma knew already.

They all passed into the lounge and sat down; all except Diana.

“I _will_ go!” she thought. “And I’ll go openly, too.”

As she stood by the window, Miles came over to her and offered her a cigarette. She was glad to accept one now, and as she took it, she looked at him, anxiously, half hoping that he might understand, and help her. But his face was white with anger; his glance was filled with anger and bitterness. He knew too, why she wanted to go.

“I’ll pop up and see how the invalid’s getting on!” said Uncle Peter, brightly, and rising went running up the stairs, two steps at a time.

No one else spoke, a stiff silence had fallen upon the little company. Miles had gone to his seat near the lamp.

Di opened the front door and stepped out, closed the door behind her and began to run toward the hill; she did not stop until she had reached the dark shelter of the trees. As she paused here a moment, she heard someone coming after her, running. She stopped behind a tree and waited.

It was too dark to see, but she was certain that the figure which ran past her was Miles. He went on plunging down the hill-side.

“Suppose he meets Mr. Fennel?” she thought, in alarm. “And tells him I can’t come?”

Into her heart came the quiet conviction that Fennel wouldn’t believe him, wouldn’t believe anyone. He had come to speak to her; he had said he would wait for an hour and then come to the house, and he would do that. She trusted Fennel as she had never yet in her life trusted anyone. Miles would not be able to send him away. Fennel would not go until he had seen her.

The night wind was sharp; hatless and coatless, in her thin dress, she shivered. The pines rustled in the dark and, close to her, a little owl gave its trembling cry.

She waited and listened.

“It must be nine o’clock,” she thought. “He’s there and Miles will see him. Perhaps he’ll pretend to go away, and then come back. Or perhaps he’ll insist upon seeing me…”

“Perhaps he didn’t go to look for Mr. Fennel at all,” she thought. “He may simply have gone to the village--or rushed back to New York in a rage.”

She began cautiously to descend the hill, straining her ears to catch any sound. But there was nothing but the rustle of the pines in the wind, and the cry of the little owl. She thought of Uncle Rufus coming down here this afternoon, and she shivered.

At last she was in sight of the clearing and the faint starlight showed it empty. But anyone could be standing in the shadows… She did not like the thought of Miles, standing there waiting. She remembered his white, angry face…

She waited and waited. If Fennel had pretended to go away, he would come back. Was Miles here, waiting for that?

Her teeth began to chatter with cold.

“Suppose I caught cold?” she thought. “Got ill--in that horrible house?”

She felt chilled to the bone already.

“I won’t stand this!” she said to herself. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t see Mr. Fennel or anyone else, if I want to. I won’t hide. I won’t be--secret. If Miles is there, very well! I’ll tell him what I think of him for spying on me.”

And she stepped down into the clearing. Was that something stirring among the trees?

“Mr. Fennel!” she cried.

No one came, no one answered.

“Mr. Fennel!” she called, again, her voice rising to a high note of fear.

This would not do, panic lay this way. With an effort, she stopped calling, and stood there, waiting. In the faint light of the stars, she could not see the dial of her watch. She did not know how long she had waited or must wait. Only she would endure it for as long as she could, for surely he would come.

She sat down on that fallen log, where she had seen him this afternoon, curled up her feet as best she could under her short skirt, folded her arms about her chest, and kept her vigil; in supreme physical misery, cold and cramped, in dread, in dismay. Sometimes she imagined she heard someone coming, and called his name, but there was never any answer. And at last she began to see that he was not coming.

She would have to go back to that house, to face Aunt Emma, to endure another scene with Miles. And after all she had no friend.

“If I had that ten dollars with me,” she thought, “I’d never go back. I’d take a train for New York _now_. There’s nothing illegal in not wearing a hat and coat.”

But she had left the money in the pocket of her jersey when she had changed her dress before dinner. And there was her promise to Uncle Rufus.

Again she had forgotten Uncle Rufus. She got up, sick at heart, numb with cold, and began to climb the hill. She had promised to stand by him, and she could not leave him there, ill and helpless.

Light was shining from the windows of the lounge; she had no desire to go in there. She went round to the back of the house and quietly opened the kitchen door. The kitchen was dark, but the gas stove was lighted, under a singing kettle; it was blessedly warm. She sat down in a chair near the stove, to wait until this wretched chilliness was gone, before she must pass through the lounge on her way to the stairs.

“He didn’t come,” she thought. “But I know he meant to come. I know he _will_ come soon. He knew there was something wrong. He’ll come.”

She was weary, almost exhausted; she nearly went to sleep there by the stove. But she heard that footstep. She sat up straight, her heart beating fast. Had he come to the house, as he had said he would? Surely that was someone coming up the back steps…

Then a door opened beside her, the door which led to the cellar, and clearly outlined in the bright light that shone behind him she saw Uncle Peter, pallid, grimy, without a collar, breathing hard, and on his face, a wild terrible look.

She gave a cry, and he leaped forward like a cat. His hand was pressed across her mouth, holding her head against the back of the chair. She struggled but she could not rise, could not make any sound. Then he drew back; she was about to cry out again when his fist shot out and caught her on the point of the jaw and she collapsed unconscious.

* * *

When she opened her eyes again she was lying on a bed. Her head ached cruelly; she felt deathly sick and giddy. It was utterly dark, she could see nothing, hear nothing; for a few minutes she could not remember.

Then it came back to her… Uncle Peter, the trivial, the cheerful, the one person in this house she had thought negligible…

She sat up. At first giddiness and the pain in her head forced her back on the pillow again, but the second time she felt better. She put her feet on the floor and still faint and dizzy, stood upright, holding by the head of the bed. She must find out where she was, what this dark prison was.

Her groping hand touched a little table, and a great hope sprang up in her. Moving nearer, she felt the lamp; it was there; she turned the switch and the light came. And with a sob of relief she found herself in her own room.

A little Paradise, it seemed to her, the safest, cosiest place in the world. She looked about her at her own belongings with the delight of one who has made a long and terrible journey and is at last home again.

Then she heard a noise in the corridor outside; a dragging, shuffling sound. She leaned forward in her chair. The wind had risen; that sound could be the branch of a tree brushing her window… Only it was coming nearer.

She knew now that this room was not safe and snug, but desperately exposed and that there was no corner where she could hide; she was sick and shaken, and defenseless.

Something scratched at her door. And not near the knob, but close to the floor, like an animal. She did not stir.

“Miss!” whispered Wren’s voice. “Oh, Miss! For God’s sake, let me in!”

She went to the door, but with her hand on the knob, she hesitated.

“What’s the matter?” she whispered back.

“Miss! Oh, let me in, quick! For God’s sake!”

But his voice came from below, as if he were at her feet…

“Miss!” he screamed, suddenly. “Quick!”

She turned the knob. The door was locked.

“Miss!” he screamed again. “For--”

His voice ceased abruptly. She heard nothing at all now.

“Wren!” she called, rattling the knob. “I can’t! I can’t!…”

Her knees gave way and she sank on the floor by the locked door. Her hand touched something wet, she raised it, stared at it with dilated eyes, saw it red with blood, and fell backward in a faint.