The Brick Moon, and Other StoriesHale, Edward Everett
Science
The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
Hale, Edward Everett
Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
She tried to go out to the door to find even the
Dane who had brought her there, but she was given to
understand that he was coming again for her, and that she
must wait till he came. As for her brother, there was no
brother there, nor had been any. The poor girl had been
trapped, and saw that she had been trapped; she had been
spirited away from everybody who ever heard of her
mother, and was in the clutches, as she said to my mother
afterward, of a crew of devils who knew nothing of love
or of mercy.
They did try to make her eat and drink,--tried to
make her drink champagne, or any other wine; but they had
no fool to deal with. The girl did not, I think, let her
captors know how desperate were her resolutions. But her
eyes were wide open, and she was not going to lose any
chance. She was all on the alert for her escape when, at
eleven o'clock, the Dane came at last whom she had been
expecting so anxiously.
The girl asked him for her brother, only to be put
off by one excuse or another, and then to hear from him
the most loathsome talk of his admiration, not to say his
passion, for her.
They were nearly alone by this time, and he led her
unresisting, as he thought, into another smaller room,
brilliantly lighted, and, as she saw in a glance, gaudily
furnished, with wine and fruit and cake on a side-
table,--a room where they would be quite alone.
She walked simply across and looked at herself in the
great mirror. Then she made some foolish little
speech about her hair, and how pale she looked. Then she
crossed to the sofa, and sat upon it with as tired an air
as he might have expected of one who had lived through
such a day. Then she looked up at him and even smiled
upon him, she said, and asked him if he would not ask
them for some cold water.
The fellow turned into the passage-way, well pleased
with her submission, and in the same instant the girl was
at the window as if she had flown across the room.
Fool! The window was made fast, not by any moving
bolt, either. It was nailed down, and it did not give a
hairs-breadth to her hand.
Little cared she for that. She sat on the window-
seat, which was broad enough to hold her; she braced her
feet against the foot of the bedstead, which stood just
near enough to her; she turned enough to bring her
shoulder against the window-sash, and then with her whole
force she heaved herself against the sash, and the entire
window, of course, gave way.
The girl caught herself upon the blind, which swung
open before her. She pulled herself free from the sill
and window-seat, and dropped fearless into the street.
The fall was not long. She lighted on her feet and
ran as only fear could teach her to run. Where to, she
knew not; but she thought she turned a corner before she
heard any voices from behind.
Still she ran. And it was when she came to the
corner of the next street that she heard for the first
time the screams of pursuers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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