Could she too take the fighting chance? Could she too rise above this awful first fear: master it, scorn it, go her brave way in the face of it?
But before ever she found her answer, she found herself at the cabin door. It seemed to her that she had crossed the intervening distance on the wings of the wind. In as short a time more Doomsdorf could reach the newer cabin,—and the issue would be decided. Either they would be free, or under the immutable sentence of death; not just Bess and Ned, but herself too. She would pay the price with the rest. The wind would sweep over the island and never hear her voice mingling with its own. For her, the world would cease to be. The fire was warm and kindly in the hearth, but she was renouncing it, for she knew not what of cold and terror. Not just Ned and Bess would pay the price, but she too. Listless, terrified almost to the verge of collapse, she turned the knob and opened the door. Doomsdorf had not yet gone to his blankets; otherwise the great bolt of iron would be in place. He was still sitting before the great, glowing stove, dreaming his savage dreams. The girl halted before him, leaning against a chair.
At first her tongue could hardly shape the words. Her throat filled, her heart faltered in her breast. “Bess—asked to see you,” she told him at last. “She says for you to come—to her cabin.”
The man regarded her with quickening interest, yet without the slightest trace of suspicion. It seemed almost incredible that he did not see the withering terror behind those blanched cheeks and starting eyes and immediately guess its cause: only his own colossal arrogance saved the plot at the outset. He was simply so triumphant by what seemed to be Bess’s surrender, so drunk with his success in handling a problem that at first had seemed so difficult, that the idea of conspiracy could not even occur to him. He hardly saw the girl before him; if he had noticed her at first, she was forgotten at once in his exultation. Even the lifeless tone in which she spoke made no impression upon him: he only heard her words.
He got up at once. Lenore stared at him as if in a nightmare. She had hoped in her deepest heart that he would refuse to come, that the great test of her soul could be avoided, but already he was starting out the door. She had done her part; she could wait here, if she liked, till the thing was settled. In a few seconds more she would know her fate.
Yet she couldn’t stay here and wait. To Doomsdorf’s surprise, she followed him through the door, into the glare of the Northern Lights. She did not know what impulse moved her; she was only aware of the growing cold of terror. Not only Ned and Bess would pay the price if the plan failed. She must pay too. The thought haunted her, every step, every wild beat of her heart.
All her life her philosophy had been of Self. And now, that Self was once more in the forefront of her consciousness, she found her wild excitement passed away, her brain working clear and sure. The night itself terrified her no more. She was beyond such imaginative fears as that: remembrance of Self, her own danger and destiny, was making a woman of her again. Only a fool forgot Self for a dream. Only a madman risked dear life for an ideal. Once more she was down to realities: she was steadied and calmed, able to balance one thing with another. And now she had at her command a superlative craft, even a degree of cunning.
She must not forget that lately her position had been one of comparative comfort. She was a slave, fawning upon a brute in human form, but the cold had mostly spared her; and she knew nothing of the terrible hardships that had been the share of Ned and Bess. Yet she was taking equal risks with them. It is better to live and hate life than to die; it is better to be a living slave than a dead freeman. Besides, lately she had been awarded even greater comforts, won by fawning upon her master. Her privileges would be taken swiftly from her if the plan failed. She would not be able to persuade Doomsdorf that she was guiltless of the plot; she had been the agent in decoying him to the cabin, and likely enough, since her work took her among the various cabin stores, he would attribute to her the finding and smuggling out of the tin of snuff. If the plot failed, Doomsdorf would punish her part with death,—or else with pain and hardship hardly less than death. If Bess failed to reach his eyes with the blinding snuff, if Ned’s axe missed its mark, she as well as they would be utterly lost.
Doomsdorf was walking swiftly; already he was halfway from the door. The desperate fight for freedom was almost at hand. But what was freedom compared to the fear and darkness that is death?
The ideal sustained her no more. It brought no fire to her frozen heart. It was an empty word, nothing that could thrill and move one of her kind and creed. Its meaning flickered out for her, and terror, infinite and irresistible, seized her like a storm.