Ethel M. Dell - The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories
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Ethel M. Dell >> The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories
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18 THE
SAFETY CURTAIN
AND OTHER STORIES
by
ETHEL M. DELL
AUTHOR OF:-
The Hundreth Chance
Greatheart
The Lamp in the Desert
The Tidal Wave
The Top of the World
The Obstacle Race
The Way of an Eagle
The Knave of Diamonds
The Rocks of Valpre
The Swindler
The Keeper of the Door
Bars of Iron
Rosa Mundi
Etc.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers
G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London
Made in the United States of America
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
The Safety Curtain
The Experiment
Those Who Wait
The Eleventh Hour
The Place of Honour
The Safety Curtain
CHAPTER I
THE ESCAPE
A great shout of applause went through the crowded hall as the
Dragon-Fly Dance came to an end, and the Dragon-Fly, with quivering,
iridescent wings, flashed away.
It was the third encore. The dance was a marvellous one, a piece of
dazzling intricacy, of swift and unexpected subtleties, of almost
superhuman grace. It must have proved utterly exhausting to any ordinary
being; but to that creature of fire and magic it was no more than a
glittering fantasy, a whirl too swift for the eye to follow or the brain
to grasp.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" asked a man in the front row.
"It's a boy, of course," said his neighbour, shortly.
He was the only member of the audience who did not take part in that
third encore. He sat squarely in his seat throughout the uproar,
watching the stage with piercing grey eyes that never varied in their
stern directness. His brows were drawn above them--thick, straight brows
that bespoke a formidable strength of purpose. He was plainly a man who
was accustomed to hew his own way through life, despising the trodden
paths, overcoming all obstacles by grim persistence.
Louder and louder swelled the tumult. It was evident that nothing but a
repetition of the wonder-dance would content the audience. They yelled
themselves hoarse for it; and when, light as air, incredibly swift, the
green Dragon-Fly darted back, they outdid themselves in the madness of
their welcome. The noise seemed to shake the building.
Only the man in the front row with the iron-grey eyes and iron-hard
mouth made no movement or sound of any sort. He merely watched with
unchanging intentness the face that gleamed, ashen-white, above the
shimmering metallic green tights that clothed the dancer's slim body.
The noise ceased as the wild tarantella proceeded. There fell a deep
hush, broken only by the silver notes of a flute played somewhere behind
the curtain. The dancer's movements were wholly without sound. The
quivering, whirling feet scarcely seemed to touch the floor, it was a
dance of inspiration, possessing a strange and irresistible fascination,
a weird and meteoric rush, that held the onlookers with bated breath.
It lasted for perhaps two minutes, that intense and trancelike
stillness; then, like, a stone flung into glassy depths, a woman's
scream rudely shattered it, a piercing, terror-stricken scream that
brought the rapt audience back to earth with a shock as the liquid music
of the flute suddenly ceased.
"Fire!" cried the voice. "Fire! Fire!"
There was an instant of horrified inaction, and in that instant a tongue
of flame shot like a fiery serpent through the closed curtains behind
the dancer. In a moment the cry was caught up and repeated in a dozen
directions, and even as it went from mouth to mouth the safety-curtain
began to descend.
The dancer was forgotten, swept as it were from the minds of the
audience as an insect whose life was of no account. From the back of the
stage came a roar like the roar of an open furnace. A great wave of heat
rushed into the hall, and people turned like terrified, stampeding
animals and made for the exits.
The Dragon-Fly still stood behind the footlights poised as if for
flight, glancing this way and that, shimmering from head to foot in the
awful glare that spread behind the descending curtain. It was evident
that retreat behind the scenes was impossible, and in another moment or
two that falling curtain would cut off the only way left.
But suddenly, before the dancer's hunted eyes, a man leapt forward. He
held up his arms, making himself heard in clear command above the
dreadful babel behind him.
"Quick!" he cried. "Jump!"
The wild eyes flashed down at him, wavered, and were caught in his
compelling gaze. For a single instant--the last--the trembling,
glittering figure seemed to hesitate, then like a streak of lightning
leapt straight over the footlights into the outstretched arms.
They caught and held with unwavering iron strength. In the midst of a
turmoil indescribable the Dragon-Fly hung quivering on the man's breast,
the gauze wings shattered in that close, sustaining grip. The
safety-curtain came down with a thud, shutting off the horrors behind,
and a loud voice yelled through the building assuring the seething crowd
of safety.
But panic had set in. The heat was terrific. People fought and struggled
to reach the exits.
The dancer turned in the man's arms and raised a deathly face, gripping
his shoulders with clinging, convulsive fingers. Two wild dark eyes
looked up to his, desperately afraid, seeking reassurance.
He answered that look briefly with stern composure.
"Be still! I shall save you if I can."
The dancer's heart was beating in mad terror against his own, but at his
words it seemed to grow a little calmer. Quiveringly the white lips
spoke.
"There is a door--close to the stage--a little door--behind a green
curtain--if we could reach it."
"Ah!" the man said.
His eyes went to the stage, from the proximity of which the audience had
fled affrighted. He espied the curtain.
Only a few people intervened between him and it, and they were
struggling to escape in the opposite direction.
"Quick!" gasped the dancer.
He turned, snatched up his great-coat, and wrapped it about the slight,
boyish figure. The great dark eyes that shone out of the small white
face thanked him for the action. The clinging hands slipped from his
shoulders and clasped his arm. Together they faced the fearful heat that
raged behind the safety-curtain.
They reached the small door, gasping. It was almost hidden by green
drapery. But the dancer was evidently familiar with it. In a moment it
was open. A great burst of smoke met them. The man drew back. But a
quick hand closed upon his, drawing him on. He went blindly, feeling as
if he were stepping into the heart of a furnace, yet strangely
determined to go forward whatever came of it.
The smoke and the heat were frightful, suffocating in their intensity.
The roar of the unseen flames seemed to fill the world.
The door swung to behind them. They stood in seething darkness.
But again the small clinging hand pulled upon the man.
"Quick!" the dancer cried again.
Choked and gasping, but resolute still, he followed. They ran through a
passage that must have been on the very edge of the vortex of flame, for
behind them ere they left it a red light glared.
It showed another door in front of them with which the dancer struggled
a moment, then flung open. They burst through it together, and the cold
night wind met them like an angel of deliverance.
The man gasped and gasped again, filling his parched lungs with its
healing freshness. His companion uttered a strange, high laugh, and
dragged him forth into the open.
They emerged into a narrow alley, surrounded by tall houses. The night
was dark and wet. The rain pattered upon them as they staggered out into
a space that seemed deserted. The sudden quiet after the awful turmoil
they had just left was like the silence of death.
The man stood still and wiped the sweat in a dazed fashion from his
face. The little dancer reeled back against the wall, panting
desperately.
For a space neither moved. Then, terribly, the silence was rent by a
crash and the roar of flames. An awful redness leapt across the darkness
of the night, revealing each to each.
The dancer stood up suddenly and made an odd little gesture of
farewell; then, swiftly, to the man's amazement, turned back towards the
door through which they had burst but a few seconds before.
He stared for a moment--only a moment--not believing he saw aright, then
with a single stride he reached and roughly seized the small,
oddly-draped figure.
He heard a faint cry, and there ensued a sharp struggle against his
hold; but he pinioned the thin young arms without ceremony, gripping
them fast. In the awful, flickering glare above them his eyes shone
downwards, dominant, relentless.
"Are you mad?" he said.
The small dark head was shaken vehemently, with gestures curiously
suggestive of an imprisoned insect. It was as if wild wings fluttered
against captivity.
And then all in a moment the struggling ceased, and in a low, eager
voice the captive began to plead.
"Please, please let me go! You don't know--you don't understand. I
came--because--because--you called. But I was wrong--I was wrong to
come. You couldn't keep me--you wouldn't keep me--against my will!"
"Do you want to die, then?" the man demanded. "Are you tired of life?"
His eyes still shone piercingly down, but they read but little, for the
dancer's were firmly closed against them, even while the dark cropped
head nodded a strangely vigorous affirmative.
"Yes, that is it! I am so tired--so tired of life! Don't keep me! Let
me go--while I have the strength!" The little, white, sharp-featured
face, with its tight-shut eyes and childish, quivering mouth, was
painfully pathetic. "Death can't be more dreadful than life," the low
voice urged. "If I don't go back--I shall be so sorry afterwards. Why
should one live--to suffer?"
It was piteously spoken, so piteously that for a moment the man seemed
moved to compassion. His hold relaxed; but when the little form between
his hands took swift advantage and strained afresh for freedom he
instantly tightened his grip.
"No, No!" he said, harshly. "There are other things in life. You don't
know what you are doing. You are not responsible."
The dark eyes opened upon him then--wide, reproachful, mysteriously
far-seeing. "I shall not be responsible--if you make me live," said the
Dragon-Fly, with the air of one risking a final desperate throw.
It was almost an open challenge, and it was accepted instantly, with
grim decision. "Very well. The responsibility is mine," the man said
briefly. "Come with me!"
His arm encircled the narrow shoulders. He drew his young companion
unresisting from the spot. They left the glare of the furnace behind
them, and threaded their way through dark and winding alleys back to the
throbbing life of the city thoroughfares, back into the whirl and
stress of that human existence which both had nearly quitted--and one
had strenuously striven to quit--so short a time before.
CHAPTER II
NOBODY'S BUSINESS
"My name is Merryon," the man said, curtly. "I am a major in the Indian
Army--home on leave. Now tell me about yourself!"
He delivered the information in the brief, aggressive fashion that
seemed to be characteristic of him, and he looked over the head of his
young visitor as he did so, almost as if he made the statement against
his will.
The visitor, still clad in his great-coat, crouched like a dog on the
hearthrug before the fire in Merryon's sitting-room, and gazed with
wide, unblinking eyes into the flames.
After a few moments Merryon's eyes descended to the dark head and
surveyed it critically. The collar of his coat was turned up all round
it. It was glistening with rain-drops and looked like the head of some
small, furry animal.
As if aware of that straight regard, the dancer presently spoke, without
turning or moving an eyelid.
"What you are doesn't matter to any one except yourself. And what I am
doesn't matter either. It's just--nobody's business."
"I see," said Merryon.
A faint smile crossed his grim, hard-featured face. He sat down in a low
chair near his guest and drew to his side a small table that bore a tray
of refreshments. He poured out a glass of wine and held it towards the
queer, elfin figure crouched upon his hearth.
The dark eyes suddenly flashed from the fire to his face. "Why do you
offer me--that?" the dancer demanded, in a voice that was curiously
vibrant, as though it strove to conceal some overwhelming emotion. "Why
don't you give me--a man's drink?"
"Because I think this will suit you better," Merryon said; and he spoke
with a gentleness that was oddly at variance with the frown that drew
his brows.
The dark eyes stared up at him, scared and defiant, for the passage of
several seconds; then, very suddenly, the tension went out of the white,
pinched face. It screwed up like the face of a hurt child, and all in a
moment the little, huddled figure collapsed on the floor at his feet,
while sobs--a woman's quivering piteous sobs--filled the silence of the
room.
Merryon's own face was a curious mixture of pity and constraint as he
set down the glass and stooped forward over the shaking, anguished form.
"Look here, child!" he said, and whatever else was in his voice it
certainly held none of the hardness habitual to it. "You're
upset--unnerved. Don't cry so! Whatever you've been through, it's over.
No one can make you go back. Do you understand? You're free!"
He laid his hand, with the clumsiness of one little accustomed to
console, upon the bowed black head.
"Don't!" he said again. "Don't cry so! What the devil does it matter?
You're safe enough with me. I'm not the sort of bounder to give you
away."
She drew a little nearer to him. "You--you're not a bounder--at all,"
she assured him between her sobs. "You're just--a gentleman. That's what
you are!"
"All right," said Merryon. "Leave off crying!"
He spoke with the same species of awkward kindliness that characterized
his actions, and there must have been something strangely comforting in
his speech, for the little dancer's tears ceased as abruptly as they had
begun. She dashed a trembling hand across her eyes.
"Who's crying?" she said.
He uttered a brief, half-grudging laugh. "That's better. Now drink some
wine! Yes, I insist! You must eat something, too. You look
half-starved."
She accepted the wine, sitting in an acrobatic attitude on the floor
facing him. She drank it, and an odd sparkle of mischief shot up in her
great eyes. She surveyed him with an impish expression--much as a
grasshopper might survey a toad.
"Are you married?" she inquired, unexpectedly.
"No," said Merryon, shortly. "Why?"
She gave a little laugh that had a catch in it. "I was only thinking
that your wife wouldn't like me much. Women are so suspicious."
Merryon turned aside, and began to pour out a drink for himself. There
was something strangely elusive about this little creature whom Fortune
had flung to him. He wondered what he should do with her. Was she too
old for a foundling hospital?
"How old are you?" he asked, abruptly.
She did not answer.
He looked at her, frowning.
"Don't!" she said. "It's ugly. I'm not quite forty. How old are you?"
"What?" said Merryon.
"Not--quite--forty," she said again, with extreme distinctness. "I'm
small for my age, I know. But I shall never grow any more now. How old
did you say you were?"
Merryon's eyes regarded her piercingly. "I should like the truth," he
said, in his short, grim way.
She made a grimace that turned into an impish smile. "Then you must
stick to the things that matter," she said. "That is--nobody's
business."
He tried to look severe, but very curiously failed. He picked up a plate
of sandwiches to mask a momentary confusion, and offered it to her.
Again, with simplicity, she accepted, and there fell a silence between
them while she ate, her eyes again upon the fire. Her face, in repose,
was the saddest thing he had ever seen. More than ever did she make him
think of a child that had been hurt.
She finished her sandwich and sat for a while lost in thought. Merryon
leaned back in his chair, watching her. The little, pointed features
possessed no beauty, yet they had that which drew the attention
irresistibly. The delicate charm of her dancing was somehow expressed in
every line. There was fire, too,--a strange, bewitching fire,--behind
the thick black lashes.
Very suddenly that fire was turned upon him again. With a swift, darting
movement she knelt up in front of him, her clasped hands on his knees.
"Why did you save me just now?" she said. "Why wouldn't you let me die?"
He looked full at her. She vibrated like a winged creature on the verge
of taking flight. But her eyes--her eyes sought his with a strange
assurance, as though they saw in him a comrade.
"Why did you make me live when I wanted to die?" she insisted. "Is life
so desirable? Have you found it so?"
His brows contracted at the last question, even while his mouth curved
cynically. "Some people find it so," he said.
"But you?" she said, and there was almost accusation in her voice, "Have
the gods been kind to you? Or have they thrown you the dregs--just the
dregs?"
The passionate note in the words, subdued though it was, was not to be
mistaken. It stirred him oddly, making him see her for the first time as
a woman rather than as the fantastic being, half-elf, half-child, whom
he had wrested from the very jaws of Death against her will. He leaned
slowly forward, marking the deep, deep shadows about her eyes, the vivid
red of her lips.
"What do you know about the dregs?" he said.
She beat her hands with a small, fierce movement on his knees, mutely
refusing to answer.
"Ah, well," he said, "I don't know why I should answer either. But I
will. Yes, I've had dregs--dregs--and nothing but dregs for the last
fifteen years."
He spoke with a bitterness that he scarcely attempted to restrain, and
the girl at his feet nodded--a wise little feminine nod.
"I knew you had. It comes harder to a man, doesn't it?"
"I don't know why it should," said Merryon, moodily.
"I do," said the Dragon-Fly. "It's because men were made to boss
creation. See? You're one of the bosses, you are. You've been led to
expect a lot, and because you haven't had it you feel you've been
cheated. Life is like that. It's just a thing that mocks at you. I
know."
She nodded again, and an odd, will-o'-the-wisp smile flitted over her
face.
"You seem to know--something of life," the man said.
She uttered a queer choking laugh. "Life is a big, big swindle," she
said. "The only happy people in the world are those who haven't found it
out. But you--you say there are other things in life besides suffering.
How did you know that if--if you've never had anything but dregs?"
"Ah!" Merryon said. "You have me there."
He was still looking full into those shadowy eyes with a curious,
dawning fellowship in his own.
"You have me there," he repeated. "But I do know. I was happy enough
once, till--" He stopped.
"Things went wrong?" insinuated the Dragon-Fly, sitting down on her
heels in a childish attitude of attention.
"Yes," Merryon admitted, in his sullen fashion. "Things went wrong. I
found I was the son of a thief. He's dead now, thank Heaven. But he
dragged me under first. I've been at odds with life ever since."
"But a man can start again," said the Dragon-Fly, with her air of
worldly wisdom.
"Oh, yes, I did that." Merryon's smile was one of exceeding bitterness.
"I enlisted and went to South Africa. I hoped for death, and I won a
commission instead."
The girl's eyes shone with interest. "But that was luck!" she said.
"Oh, yes; it was luck of a sort--the damnable, unsatisfactory sort. I
entered the Indian Army, and I've got on. But socially I'm practically
an outcast. They're polite to me, but they leave me outside. The man who
rose from the ranks--the fellow with a shady past--fought shy of by the
women, just tolerated by the men, covertly despised by the
youngsters--that's the sort of person I am. It galled me once. I'm used
to it now."
Merryon's grim voice went into grimmer silence. He was staring sombrely
into the fire, almost as if he had forgotten his companion.
There fell a pause; then, "You poor dear!" said the Dragon-Fly,
sympathetically. "But I expect you are like that, you know. I expect
it's a bit your own fault."
He looked at her in surprise.
"No, I'm not meaning anything nasty," she assured him, with that quick
smile of hers whose sweetness he was just beginning to realize. "But
after a bad knockout like yours a man naturally looks for trouble. He
gets suspicious, and a snub or two does the rest. He isn't taking any
more. It's a pity you're not married. A woman would have known how to
hold her own, and a bit over--for you."
"I wouldn't ask any woman to share the life I lead," said Merryon, with
bitter emphasis. "Not that any woman would if I did. I'm not a ladies'
man."
She laughed for the first time, and he started at the sound, for it was
one of pure, girlish merriment.
"My! You are modest!" she said. "And yet you don't look it, somehow."
She turned her right-hand palm upwards on his knee, tacitly inviting
his. "You're a good one to talk of life being worth while, aren't you?"
she said.
He accepted the frank invitation, faintly smiling. "Well, I know the
good things are there," he said, "though I've missed them."
"You'll marry and be happy yet," she said, with confidence. "But I
shouldn't put it off too long if I were you."
He shook his head. His hand still half-consciously grasped hers. "Ask a
woman to marry the son of one of the most famous swindlers ever known? I
think not," he said. "Why, even you--" His eyes regarded her,
comprehended her. He stopped abruptly.
"What about me?" she said.
He hesitated, possessed by an odd embarrassment. The dark eyes were
lifted quite openly to his. It came to him that they were accustomed to
the stare of multitudes--they met his look so serenely, so impenetrably.
"I don't know how we got on to the subject of my affairs," he said,
after a moment. "It seems to me that yours are the most important just
now. Aren't you going to tell me anything about them?"
She gave a small, emphatic shake of the head. "I should have been dead
by this time if you hadn't interfered," she said. "I haven't got any
affairs."
"Then it's up to me to look after you," Merryon said, quietly.
But she shook her head at that more vigorously still. "You look after
me!" Her voice trembled on a note of derision. "Sure, you're joking!"
she protested. "I've looked after myself ever since I was eight."
"And made a success of it?" Merryon asked.
Her eyes shot swift defiance. "That's nobody's business but my own," she
said. "You know what I think of life."
Merryon's hand closed slowly upon hers. "There seems to be a pair of
us," he said. "You can't refuse to let me help you--for fellowship's
sake."
The red lips trembled suddenly. The dark eyes fell before his for the
first time. She spoke almost under her breath. "I'm too old--to take
help from a man--like that."
He bent slightly towards her. "What has age to do with it?"
"Everything." Her eyes remained downcast; the hand he held was trying
to wriggle free, but he would not suffer it.
"Circumstances alter cases," he said. "I accepted the responsibility
when I saved you."
"But you haven't the least idea what to do with me," said the
Dragon-Fly, with a forlorn smile. "You ought to have thought of that.
You'll be going back to India soon. And I--and I--" She stopped, still
stubbornly refusing to meet the man's eyes.
"I am going back next week," Merryon said.
"How fine to be you!" said the Dragon-Fly. "You wouldn't like to take me
with you now as--as _valet de chambre_?"
He raised his brows momentarily. Then: "Would you come?" he asked, with
a certain roughness, as though he suspected her of trifling.
She raised her eyes suddenly, kindled and eager. "Would I come!" she
said, in a tone that said more than words.
"You would?" he said, and laid an abrupt hand on her shoulder. "You
would, eh?"
She knelt up swiftly, the coat that enveloped her falling back,
displaying the slim, boyish figure, the active, supple limbs. Her
breathing came through parted lips.
"As your--your servant--your valet?" she panted.
His rough brows drew together. "My what? Good heavens, no! I could only
take you in one capacity."
She started back from his hand. For a moment sheer horror looked out
from her eyes. Then, almost in the same instant, they were veiled. She
caught her breath, saying no word, only dumbly waiting.
"I could only take you as my wife," he said, still in that
half-bantering, half-embarrassed fashion of his. "Will you come?"
She threw back her head and stared at him. "Marry you! What, really?
Really?" she questioned, breathlessly.
"Merely for appearances' sake," said Merryon, with grim irony. "The
regimental morals are somewhat easily offended, and an outsider like
myself can't be too careful."
The girl was still staring at him, as though at some novel specimen of
humanity that had never before crossed her path. Suddenly she leaned
towards him, looking him full and straight in the eyes.
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