And from Minna, not a sign of solicitude.
CHAPTER XII
When a human being has not slept for five or six nights, especially if that human being is a woman of romantic temperament, many queer things are bound to happen. The sensory nerves become susceptible to impression from all influences that exist, and from many that do not. The head swells to an enormous size with its unrelieved store. Bells and music and the voice of an invisible person reading aloud an interminable and unintelligible book throb on the tympanum. Men and women have an uncomfortable way of growing suddenly large and then suddenly small before the eyes. The flesh seems disintegrated into elemental and quivering molecules. A sixth sense riotously develops, and makes the sufferer aware of a murderous devil dogging the footsteps. Under these conditions, to join in the small-talk of a family dinner table, do fancy work in the drawing-room and play Grieg on the piano to a virtuoso, argues a considerable reserve fund of moral power. And this is found more commonly in women than in men.
Until the day of Hugh’s trial at the Old Bailey, Minna had successfully concealed her state from the friendly eyes of the Bebros. She looked wretchedly ill, but a cunning shade of carmine relieved her haggardness and caused her to appear nothing more than interestingly afflicted. When the pains of hell gat more closely round about her, she forced her lips into a photographic smile, thereby impressing the motherly Mrs. Bebro with a sense of her patience under tribulation. It was a gruesome comedy.
At first pure terror and avarice, bitter resentment of the wrongs Hugh had done her, and consequent blindness to the imminent peril in which he stood, had paralysed the moral sense. But later, after she had given evidence before the magistrates, she knew to the full that she was playing the most desperate game that ever woman played for money. The gambler’s instinct kept her mind clear; strength of will saved her from collapse. Hugh acquitted, all her money would be her own. Everything would be well. She would seek fresh scenes, blot this nightmare for ever from her life. Hugh condemned, she would do some mad deed to save him, summon Anna Cassaba from Syria, cast herself at the feet of the Home Secretary, surrender her thousands, and—throw herself over Waterloo Bridge. This was a doom, inevitable, meted out to her, rather than a scheme which her brain had devised. All the passionate yet stubborn racial energies of her nature were concentrated upon the supreme effort of making her last bid for fortune.
It was a fixed idea, focussing the distempered mind and magnetising the exhausted flesh.
Her last bid for fortune. She had made it. She found herself in Mrs. Bebro’s carriage, with the motherly lady by her side. How she had been transported thither from the swaying, reeling court, she did not know. Mrs. Bebro, with veil raised above red eyes, was holding her hand. Yet she had a vague knowledge that she had not fainted.
“There, there, it is over now, dear,” said her companion, kindly. “It has been a trying time for you. We’ll soon get home, now, and a cup of tea and a lie down will do you good.”