14. CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIDER'S WEB.
NOW that Humphreys had his prey he did not
know just what to do with it. Not knowing
what to say, he said nothing, in which he
showed his wisdom. But he felt that saying nothing
was almost as bad as saying something. And he
was right. For with people of impulsive temperament reactions
are sudden, and in one minute after Julia had said yes,
there came to her memory the vision of August standing in the
barn and looking into her eyes so purely and truly and loyally,
and vowing such sweet vows of love, and she looked back upon
that perfect hour with some such feeling perhaps as Dives
felt looking out of torment across the great gulf into paradise.
Only that Dives had never known paradise, while she had. For
the man or woman that knows a pure, self-sacrificing love,
returned in kind, knows that which, of all things in this world,
lies nearest to God and heaven. There be those who have ears
to hear this, and for them is it written. Julia thought of
August's love with a sinking into despair. But then returned
the memory of his faithlessness, of all she had been compelled
to believe and suffer. Then her agony came back, and she was
glad that she had taken a decided step. Any escape was a
relief. I suppose it is under some such impulse that people
kill themselves. Julia felt as though she had committed suicide
and escaped.
Humphreys on his part was not satisfied. I used the
wrong figure of speech awhile ago. He was not a cat with
paw upon the prey. He was only an angler, and had but
hooked his fish. He had not landed it yet. He felt how slender
was the thread of committal by which he held Julia. August
had her heart. He had only a word. The slender vantage
that he had, he meant to use adroitly, craftily. And he
knew that the first thing was to close this interview
without losing any ground. The longer she remained bound,
the better for him. And with his craft against the country
girl's simplicity it would have fared badly with Julia had it not
been for one defect which always inheres in a bad man's plots
in such a case. A man like Humphreys never really understands
a pure woman. Certain detached facts he may know, but he can
not “put himself in her place.”
Humphreys remarked with tenderness that Julia must not stay
in the night air. She was too precious to be exposed. This
flattery was comforting to her wounded pride, and she found
his words pleasant to her. Had he stopped here he might have
left the field victorious. But it was very hard for an affianced
lover to stop here. He must part from her in some other way
than this if he would leave on her mind the impression that
she was irrevocably bound to him. He stooped quickly with a
well-affected devotion and lifted her hand to kiss it. That act
awakened Julia Anderson. She must have awaked anyhow,
sooner or later. But when one is in the toils of such a man,
sooner is better. The touch of Humphreys's hand and lips sent
a shudder through her frame that Humphreys felt. Instantly
there came to her a perception of all that marriage with a repulsive
man signifies.
Not suicide, but perdition.
She jerked her hand from his as though he were a snake.
“Mr. Humphreys, what did I say? I can't have you. I don't
love you. I'm crazy to-night. I must take back what
I said.”
“No, Julia. Let me call you my Julia. You must not
break my heart.” Humphreys had lost his cue, and every
word of tenderness he spoke made his case more hopeless.
“I never can marry you—let me go in,” she said, brushing
past him. Then she remembered that her door was fast on
the inside. She had climbed out the window. She turned back,
and he saw his advantage.
“I can not release you. Take time to think before you
ask it. Go to sleep now and do not act hastily.” He stood
between her and the window, wishing to get some word to
which he could hold.
Julia's two black eyes grew brighter. “I see. You took advantage
of my trouble, and you want to hold me to my
words, and you are bad, and now—now I hate you!” Then
Julia felt better. Hate is the only wholesome thing in such a
case. She pushed him aside vigorously, stepped upon the settee,
slipped in at the window, and closed it. She drew the curtain,
but it seemed thin, and with characteristic impulsiveness she
put out her light that she might have the friendly drapery of
[ILLUSTRATION]
"NOW I HATE YOU!"
[Description: 555EAF. Illustration page. Page 097. Engraving with arched top of a man and a woman
standing on a porch.]
darkness about her. She heard the soft—for the first time it
seemed to her stealthy—tread of Humphreys, as he returned to
his room. Whether she swooned or whether she slept after
that she never knew. It was morning without any time intervening,
she had a headache and could scarcely walk, and there
was August's note lying on the floor. She read it again—
if not with more intelligence, at least with more suspicion.
She wondered at her own hastiness. She tried to go about the
house, but the excitement of the previous night, added to all
she had suffered beside, had given her a headache, blinding
and paralyzing, that sent her back to bed.
And there she lay in that half-asleep, half-awake mood which
a nervous headache produces. She seemed to be a fly in a
web, and the spider was trying to fasten her. A very polite spider,
with that smile which went half-way up his face but which
never seemed able to reach his eyes. He had straps to his
pantaloons, and a reddish mustache, and she shuddered as he
wound his fine webs about her. She tried to shake off the
illusion. But the more absurd an illusion, the more it will not
be shaken off. For see! the spider was kissing her hand!
Then she seemed to have made a great effort and to have
broken the web. But her wings were torn, and her feet were
shackled by the fine strands that still adhered. She could not
get them off. Wouldn't somebody help her, even as she had
many a time picked off the webs from a fly's feet out of sheer
pity? And all day she would perpetually return into these
half-conscious states and feel the spider's web about her feet,
and ask over and over again if somebody wouldn't help her to
get out of the meshes.
Toward evening her mother brought her a cup of tea and a
piece of toast; and for the first time in the remembered life
of the daughter made an endeavor to show a little tenderness for
her. It was a clumsy endeavor, for when the great gulf is once
fixed between mother and child it is with difficulty bridged. And
finding herself awkward in the new role, Mrs. Anderson dropped it
and resumed her old gait, remarking, as she closed the door,
that she was glad to know that Julia was coming to her senses,
and “had took the right road.” For Mrs. Abigail was more
vigorous than grammatical.
Julia did not see anything significant in this remark at first.
But after a while it came to her that Humphreys must have told
her mother of something that had passed during the preceding
night, something on which this commendation was founded.
Then she fell into the same torpor and was in the same old
spider's web, and there was the same spider with the limited
smile and the mustache and the watch-seals and the straps!
And he was trying to fasten her, and she said “yes.” And
she could see the little word. The spider caught it and spun
it into a web and fastened her with it. And she could break
all the other webs but those woven out of that one little word
from her own lips. That clung to her, and she could neither
fly nor walk. August could not help her—he would not come.
Her mother was helping the spider. Just then Cynthy Ann came
along with her broom. Would she see her and sweep her free?
She tried to call her, but alas! she was a fly. She tried to buzz,
but her wings were fast bound with the webs. She was being
smothered. The spider had seized her. She could not move.
He was smiling at her!
Then she woke shuddering. It was after midnight.
