The Laughing Mill and Other Stories Part 19

"'I am sure of it!'

"'I know better! Someone knows it now: he made it happen!'

"'Don't kneel there, dear. You're not yourself yet. You don't know what you're saying.' I said this rea.s.suringly, but her words had inspired me with a vague alarm that I ventured not to define. I brought a chair and made her sit upon it, and sat down beside her.

"'Not here!' she whispered, drawing back out of the moonlight into the shadow. 'Come here, Tom. He may be looking!'

"'Why, Kate, who can see us here? The door is shut.'

"'Oh--why was not the door bolted?'

"'It was. I can't conceive how you opened it.'

"'Oh the villain! how I hate him!'

"'Kate, I love you, and whoever you hate must have to do with me.'

"'You can do nothing--no one can do anything!--unless you'll help me to kill him!'

"'Whom? Do you mean Slurk?--tell me that!'

"'Yes!' she answered with a s.h.i.+ver; not looking me in the face, but with her hands clasped tight between her knees. 'I do mean--him!'

"'Now tell me all that he has done, dear,' said I, quietly. 'I must know everything; and then I promise you that you shall be freed from him.'

"'He is my master!' she said, in a frightened whisper. 'He has been so ever so long! He makes me do what he will--he sent me here to-night. He shames me and destroys me--he loves to do it! He makes me sleep, and then I cannot help myself. I wake, and find it done; and he has no mercy.'

"'Why does he do this?'

"'It was when I was only a little girl that he first got that power over me. He knew my father was rich, and he wanted me to be promised to him for his--wife, Tom. Then my father put me in the convent, and I stayed there seven years, till we thought he had lost the power, or was dead perhaps. But he found me in America, and made me come back; and now it's worse than ever.'

"'Why doesn't your father have him arrested and imprisoned? It can be done.'

"'Oh my poor father! He cannot, Tom; do not ask me that!'

"'I must ask it, Kate. Remember, I love you! Why is it?'

"'My father is afraid of him too,' she said, chafing one hand with the other with a piteous expression of pain. 'If he did anything against him, he would be ruined. My father cannot help me, Tom.'

"'But I do not understand. What has your father done that he should be afraid of such a scoundrel as Slurk?' I demanded sternly.

"She hesitated long before answering, moving her hands and head restlessly and fetching many troubled sighs. At last she laid her hand shrinkingly on mine, and I grasped it firmly. 'I will tell you, Tom,'

she said in a faltering voice; 'but you know I would tell no one in the world but you. My dear papa did not do wrong himself; but there were people connected with him who did, and made the blame seem to be his.

And there were some papers of papa's which--which--oh----'

"'Yes, yes, I understand, darling; and Slurk stole the papers?'

"'Yes--that is--no; it was worse than that, for he didn't know where the papers were kept; no one knew that but I. Tom, he made me sleep, and in my sleep he made me go to the place where they were, and take them out, and give them to him. He made me rob my own father--put my own dear papa in his hateful power. I would rather have died! And papa forgave me--think of that!'

"'Then Slurk has the papers in his possession? and he uses them for blackmail? But have you never thought of trying to--it sounds badly, but it would be perfectly justifiable--to steal them back again?'

"'I can do nothing. He can make me helpless by a look; and he always carries them with him. But, Tom, if it could be done without being found out, I would tell papa to kill him. But I cannot let my dear papa be hanged for that wretch; and, you see, we have no evidence.'

"'Good G.o.d! What a fearful thing it is!' I muttered. What help, what consolation could I offer? A refined and sensitive girl under the mesmeric control of a ruffian; her father subject to his extortions and insults; and the only escape a worse misery even than this--Kate to yield herself to him in marriage! Faugh! the thought sickened me; but it enraged me, too! Kate was right; death, sudden and merciless, was the proper measure to be meted out to Slurk. If he had appeared at that moment, I believe I would have shot him unhesitatingly, and rejoiced in the deed. Murder would be a righteous work when wrought on such as he; and if the murder were brought home to me, could I suffer in a better cause?

"Kate had risen slowly from her chair, and was now fronting me, scanning my face and bearing with curious eagerness. She held her hands across her bosom, alternately interlacing the tips of the fingers and pulling them free again. Her lips moved as if in speech, but no sound came from them.

"I got up presently, looking I daresay very solemn, as indeed I felt.

Her eyes followed mine as I rose; and now we gazed straight at each other for some moments.

"'I promised you that you should be freed,' I said, 'and you shall be.

I shall be sorry to have any man's blood on my hands; but if you can be saved in no other way, it must be so.'

"'You do love me, indeed!' she murmured, with a sort of sad exultation in her tone. But she added: 'I cannot let you do it. I cannot lose you, even to be freed from him. It is my father's fault, after all.

Besides----'

"'I take it upon myself,' interrupted I, with a dignity which may have been absurd, but which did not seem so to me at the time.

"'But it would be murder--at any rate, the law would call it so. No, you must not be called a murderer, Tom. But I--they would not hang a woman: let me do it! I should love to do it!'

"And she spoke with a look that confirmed the words.

"Before I could reply, however, her expression changed again. She appeared to think intensely for a few moments, and then her face lighted up. Suddenly she caught my hand and kissed it!

"'And kiss me, Tom!' she cried, excitedly. 'Kiss me, for I deserve it!

I have thought of a way that will save us all!'

"Much startled, and half fearing that the girl's mind had given way under the pressure of trouble, I was attempting to quiet her; but she silenced me by an impetuous gesture, and went on speaking eagerly and rapidly.

"'To-morrow we had planned to go to Kohlstein for a picnic. It's a great, immense rock, where robbers lived hundreds of years ago. Hardly anyone ever goes there now. I have been there, and I remember that on the top it is full of deep clefts and holes; and I thought how, if anyone were to fall into one, they might lie there for months without being found; and they could never get out of themselves. So now--listen!

We will go up there--you and I and--he; and I will lead him near the brink of one of those clefts, and then you must rush forward and take him, and drop him down--down to the bottom! So we shall get what we want, and yet there need be no murder.'

"'Not be murder, Kate?'

"'It need not be; for when he was safe down there, rather than be left to starve, he would give up those papers. Don't you think he would?'

"She was trembling with excitement, and her state communicated itself in some degree to me, so that I was scarcely able to think coherently.

But there certainly seemed to be plausibility in her scheme; at the worst, it would be better than shooting the man outright. But would the recovery of the papers put an end to Slurk's persecution of Kate as well as of her father? Would not his power over her remain?

"'But we can have him imprisoned then, you see,' was her answer to my objection; 'and for fear of that, he would never dare to trouble me again. He would have been in prison long ago but for the papers.'

"'It certainly seems a good plan,' I said, after a confused attempt to turn the matter over in my mind. 'We'll ask your father's opinion to-morrow.'

"'Oh, he must know nothing of it!' she exclaimed, with a gesture of vehement dissent. 'He would betray it. You don't know how--what a power that villain has over him. Slurk treats him like a child when they are alone. No, Tom; we must do it all ourselves, or it will fail. Only when it is done will dear papa get back his courage.'

"I knew more about how Mr. Birchmore was treated by his valet in private than Kate was aware; but I made no allusion to this. The more I reflected upon the enterprise, the more inclined I was to a.s.sent to it.

It was wild, fantastic, unconventional; but it had important practical merits nevertheless. Moreover, it possessed the powerful recommendation (as I deemed it) of allowing for a fair man-to-man struggle between Slurk and myself. I was to overpower him by main strength; and from what I had observed of the fellow, I fancied he would be able to make resistance enough to save my self-respect. On the other hand, he might be able to do more than this; and if the worst came to the worst, of course I might be compelled to maim him with my revolver. But altogether, the prospect kindled my imagination; I was stimulated by the thought of distinguis.h.i.+ng myself by my personal prowess before my mistress's eyes, in conflict with her dastardly oppressor. And as I looked at her standing there before me, so lovely and so full of courageous fire, I said to myself that no knight of yore ever did battle in the lists for a worthier lady-love!