The Courtship of Morrice Buckler: A Romance
by A. E. W. Mason · English · Gutenberg #38665 · 543,781 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Courtship of Morrice Buckler: A Romance
Author: A. E. W. Mason
Release date: January 25, 2012 [eBook #38665]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER: A ROMANCE ***
Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/courtshipofmorri00masouoft
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
THE COURTSHIP
OF
MORRICE BUCKLER
THE COURTSHIP
OF
MORRICE BUCKLER
A Romance
_Being a Record of the Growth of an English Gentleman
during the years 1685-1687, under strange and difficult circumstances
written some while afterwards in his own hand, and now edited by_
A. E. W. MASON
AUTHOR OF "A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE"
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.
1896
_First Edition, February_, 1896.
_Second Edition, May_, 1896.
_Third Edition, June_, 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
TELLS OF AN INTERRUPTED MESSAGE.
CHAPTER II.
I REACH LONDON, AND THERE MAKE AN ACQUAINTANCE.
CHAPTER III.
TELLS HOW I REACH BRISTOL, AND IN WHAT STRANGE GUISE I GO TO MEET MY
FRIEND.
CHAPTER IV.
SIR JULIAN HARNWOOD.
CHAPTER V.
I JOURNEY TO THE TYROL, AND HAVE SOME DISCOURSE WITH COUNT LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER VI.
SWORDS TAKE UP THE DISCOURSE.
CHAPTER VII.
I RETURN HOME AND HEAR NEWS OF COUNTESS LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER VIII.
I MAKE A BOW TO COUNTESS LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER IX.
I RENEW AN ACQUAINTANCESHIP.
CHAPTER X.
DOUBTS, PERPLEXITIES, AND A COMPROMISE.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNTESS EXPLAINS, AND SHOWS ME A PICTURE.
CHAPTER XII.
LADY TRACY.
CHAPTER XIII.
COUNTESS LUKSTEIN IS CONVINCED.
CHAPTER XIV.
A GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK.
CHAPTER XV.
THE HALF-WAY HOUSE AGAIN.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCERNING AN INVITATION AND A LOCKED DOOR.
CHAPTER XVII.
FATHER SPAUR.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AT LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER XIX.
IN THE PAVILION. I EXPLAIN.
CHAPTER XX.
IN THE PAVILION. COUNTESS LUKSTEIN EXPLAINS.
CHAPTER XXI.
IN CAPTIVITY HOLLOW.
CHAPTER XXII.
A TALK WITH OTTO. I ESCAPE TO INNSPRUCK.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LAST.
THE
COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER
CHAPTER I.
TELLS OF AN INTERRUPTED MESSAGE.
It chanced that as I was shifting the volumes in my library this
morning, more from sheer fatigue of idleness than with any set
intention--for, alas! this long time since I have lost the savour of
books--a little Elzevir copy of Horace fell from the back of a shelf
between my hands. It lay in my palm, soiled and faded with the dust of
twenty years; and as I swept clean its cover and the edges of the
leaves, the look and feel of it unlocked my mind to such an inrush of
glistening memories that I seemed to be sweeping those years and the
overlay of their experience from off my consciousness. I lived again
in that brief but eventful period which laid upon the unaccustomed
shoulders of a bookish student a heavy burden of deeds, but gave him
in compensation wherewith to reckon the burden light.
The book fell open of its own accord at the Palinodia at Tyndaridem.
On the stained and fingered leaf facing the ode I could still decipher
the plan of Lukstein Castle, and as I gazed, that blurred outline
filled until it became a picture. I looked into the book as into a
magician's crystal. The great angle of the building, the level row of
windows, the red roofs of the turrets, the terrace, and the little
pinewood pavilion, all were clearly limned before my eyes, and were
overswept by changing waves of colour. I saw the Castle as on the
first occasion of my coming, hung disconsolately on a hillside in a
far-away corner of the Tyrol, a black stain upon a sloping wilderness
of snow; I saw it again under a waning moon in the stern silence of a
frosty night, as each window grew angry with a tossing glare of links;
but chiefly I saw it as when I rode thither on my last memorable
visit, sleeping peacefully above the cornfields in the droning sabbath
of a summer afternoon. I turned my eyes to the ode. The score of my
pencil was visible against the last verse:
Nunc ego mitibus
Mutare quaero tristia dum mihi
Fias recantatis amica
Opprobriis animumque reddas.
On the margin beside the first line was the date, Sept. 14, 1685, and
beneath the verse yet another date, Sept. 12, 1687. And as I looked,
it came upon me that I would set down with what clearness I might the
record of those two years, in the hope that my memories might warm and
cheer these later days of loneliness, much as the afterglow lingers
purple on yonder summit rocks when the sun has already sunk behind the
Cumberland fells. For indeed that short interspace of time shines out
in my remembrance like a thick thread of gold in a woof of homespun. I
would not, however, be understood to therefore deprecate the quiet
years of happiness which followed. The two years of which I speak in
their actual passage occasioned me more anxiety and suffering than
happiness. But they have a history of their own. They mark out a
portion of my life whereof the two dates in my Horace were the
beginning and the end, and the verse between the dates, strangely
enough, its best epitome.
It was, then, the fourteenth day of September, 1685, and the time a
few minutes past noon. Jack Larke, my fellow-student at the University
of Leyden, and myself had but just returned to our lodging in that
street of the town which they call the Pape-Graft. We were both fairly
wearied, for the weather was drowsy and hot, and one had little
stomach for the Magnificus Professor, the more particularly when he
discoursed concerning the natural philosophy of Pliny.
"'Tis all lies, every jot of it!" cried Larke. "If I wrote such
nonsense I should be whipped for a heretic. And yet I must sit there
and listen and take notes until my brain reels."
"You sit there but seldom, Jack," said I, "and never played yourself
so false as to listen; while as for the notes----!"
I took up his book which he had flung upon the table. It contained
naught but pictures of the Professor in divers humiliating attitudes,
with John Larke ever towering above him, his honest features twisted
into so heroical an expression of scorn as set me laughing till my
sides ached.
He snatched the book from my hand, and flung it into a corner.
"There!" said he. "It may go to the dust-hole and Pliny with it, to
rot in company." And the Latin volume followed the note-book.
Whereupon, with a sigh of relief, he lifted a brace of pistols from a
shelf, and began industriously to scour and polish them, though indeed
their locks and barrels shone like silver as it was. For my part, I
plumped myself down before this very ode of Horace; and so for a
while, each in his own way, we worked silently. Ever and again,
however, he would look up and towards me, and then, with an impatient
shrug, settle to his task again. At last he could contain no longer.
"Lord!" he burst out, "what a sick world it is! Here am I, fitted for
a roving life under open skies, and plucked out of God's design by the
want of a few pence."
"You may yet sit on the bench," said I, to console him.
"Ay, lad," he answered, "I might if I had sufficient roguery to supply
my lack of wits." Then he suddenly turned on me. "And here are you,"
he said, "who could journey east and west, and never sleep twice
beneath the same roof, breaking your back mewed up over a copy of
Horace!"
At that moment I was indeed stretched full-length upon a sofa, but I
had no mind to set him right. The tirade was passing old to me, and
replies were but fresh fuel to keep it flickering. However, he had not
yet done.
"I believe," he continued, "you would sooner solve a knot in Aristotle
than lead out the finest lady in Europe to dance a pavan with you."
"That is true," I replied. "I should be no less afraid of her than you
of Aristotle."
"Morrice," said he solemnly, "I do verily believe you have naught but
fish-blood in your veins."
Whereat I laughed, and he, coming over to me:
"Why, man," he cried, "had I your fortune on my back----"
"You would soon find it a ragged cloak," I interposed.
"And your sword at my side----"
"You would still lack my skill in using it."
Larke stopped short in his speech, and his face darkened. I had
touched him in the tenderest part of his pride. Proficiency in manly
exercises was the single quality on which he plumed himself, and so he
had made it his daily habit to repair to the fencing-rooms of a noted
French master, who dwelt in Noort-Eynde by the Witte Poort. Thither
also, by dint of much pertinacity, for which I had grave reason to
thank him afterwards, he had haled me for instruction in the art. Once
I got there, however, the play fascinated me. The delicate intricacy
of the movements so absorbed brain and muscle in a common service as
to produce in me an inward sense of completeness, very sweet and
strange to one of my halting diffidence. In consequence I applied
myself with considerable enthusiasm, and in the end acquired some
nimbleness with the rapier, or, to speak more truly, the foil. For as
yet my skill had never been put to the test of a serious encounter.
Now, on the previous day Larke and I had fenced together throughout
the afternoon, and fortune had sided with me in every bout; and it
was, I think, the recollection of this which rankled within him.
However, the fit soon passed--'twas not in his nature to be silent
long--and he broke out again, seating himself in a chair by the table.
"Dost never dream of adventures, Morrice?" he asked. "A life brimful
of them, and a quick death at the end?"
"I had as lief die in my bed," said I.
"To be sure, to be sure," he replied with a sneer. "Men ever wish to
die in the place they are most fond of;" and then he leant forward
upon the table and said, with a curious wonder: "Hast never a regret
that thy sword rusted in June?"
"Nay," I answered him quickly. "Monmouth was broken and captured
before we had even heard he had raised his flag. And, besides, the
King had stouter swords than mine, and yet no use for them."
But none the less I turned my face to the wall, for I felt my cheeks
blazing. My words were indeed the truth. The same packet which brought
to us the news of Monmouth's rising in the west, brought to us also
the news of his defeat at Sedgemoor. But I might easily have divined
his project some while ago. For early in the spring I had received a
visit from one Ferguson, a Scot, who, after uttering many fantastical
lies concerning the "Duke of York," as he impudently styled the King,
had warned me that such as failed to assist the true monarch out of
the funds they possessed might well find themselves sorely burdened in
the near future. At the time I had merely laughed at the menace, and
slipped it from my thoughts. Afterwards, however, the remembrance of
his visit came back to me, and with it a feeling of shame that I had
lain thus sluggishly at Leyden while this monstrous web of rebellion
was a-weaving about me in the neighbouring towns of Holland.
"'Art more of a woman than a man, Morrice, I fear me," said Jack.
I had heard some foolish talk of this kind more than once before, and
it ever angered me. I rose quickly from the couch; but Jack skipped
round the table, and jeered yet the more.
"'Wilt never win a wife by fair means, lad," says he. "The Muses are
women, and women have no liking for them. 'Must buy a wife when the
time comes."
Perceiving that his aim was but to provoke my anger, I refrained from
answering him and got me back to my ode. The day was in truth too hot
for quarrelling. Larke, however, was not so easily put off. He
returned to his chair, which was close to my couch.
"Horace!" he said gravely, wagging his head at me. "Horace! There are
wise sayings in his book."
"What know you of them?" I laughed.
"I know one," he answered. "I learnt it yesternight for thy special
delectation. It begins in this way:
"Quem si puellarum chore inseres."
He got no further in his quotation. For he tilted his chair at this
moment, and I thrusting at it with my foot, he tumbled over backwards
and sprawled on the ground, swearing at great length.
"'Wilt never win a wife by fair means for all that," he sputtered.
"Then 'tis no more than prudence in me to wed my books."
So I spake, and hot on the heels of my saying came the message which
divorced me from them for good and all. For as Larke still lay upon
the floor, a clatter of horse's hoofs came to us through the open
window. The sound stopped at our door. Larke rose hastily, and leaned
out across the sill.
"It is an Englishman," he cried. "He comes to us."
The next moment a noise of altercation filled the air. I could hear
the shrill speech of our worthy landlady, and above it a man's voice
in the English dialect, growing ever louder and louder as though the
violence of his tone would translate his meaning. I followed Larke to
the window. The quiet street was alive with peeping faces, and just
beneath us stood the reason of the brawl, a short, thick-set man,
whose face was hidden by a large flapping hat. His horse stood in the
roadway in a lather of spume. For some reason, doubtless the
excitement of his manner, our hostess would not let him pass into the
house. She stood solidly filling the doorway, and for a little it
amused us to watch the man's vehement gesticulations; so little
thought had we of the many strange events which were to follow from
his visit. In a minute, however, he turned his face towards us, and I
recognised him as Nicholas Swasfield, the body-servant of my good
friend, Sir Julian Harnwood.
"Let him up!" I cried. "Let him up!"
"Yes, woman, let him up!" repeated Larke, and turning to me: "He hath
many choice and wonderful oaths, and I fain would add them to my
store."
Thereupon the woman drew reluctantly aside, and Swasfield bounded past
her into the passage. We heard him tumble heavily up the dark
stairway, cursing the country and its natives, and then with a great
bump of his body he burst open the door and lurched into the room. At
the sight of me he brake into a glad cry:
"Sir Julian, my master," he gasped, and stopped dead.
"Well, what of him?" I asked eagerly.
But he answered never a word; he stood mopping his brows with a great
blue handkerchief, which hid his face from us. 'Tis strange how
clearly I remember that handkerchief. It was embroidered at the
corners with anchors in white cotton, and it recurred to me with a
quaint irrelevancy that the man had been a sailor in his youth.
"Well, what of him?" I asked again with some sharpness. "Speak, man!
You had words and to spare below."
"He lies in Bristol gaol," at last he said, heaving great breaths
between his words, "and none but you can serve his turn."
With that he tore at his shirt above his heart, and made a little
tripping run to the table. He clutched at its edge and swayed forward
above it, his head loosely swinging between his shoulders.
"Hurry!" he said in a thick, strangled voice.
"Assizes--twenty-first--Jeffries."
And with a sudden convulsion he straightened himself, stood for a
second on the tips of his toes, with the veins ridged on his livid
face like purple weals, and then fell in a huddled lump upon the
floor. I sprang to the stair-head and shouted for some one to run for
a doctor. Jack was already loosening the man's shirt.
"It is a fit," he said, clasping a hand to his heart.
Luckily my bedroom gave onto the parlour, and between us we carried
him within and laid him gently on my bed. His eyelids were open and
his eyes fixed, but turned inwards, so that one saw but the whites of
them, while a light froth oozed through his locked teeth.
"He will die," I cried.
A ewer of water stood by the bedside, and this I emptied over his head
and shoulders, drowning the sheets, but to no other purpose. Our
landlady fetched up a bottle of Dutch schnapps, which was the only
spirit the house contained, but his jaws were too fast closed for us
to open them. So we stood all three watching him helplessly, while
those last words of his drummed at my heart. Jeffries! I knew enough
of the bloody work he had taken in hand that summer to assure me there
would be short shrift for Julian had he meddled in Monmouth's affairs.
On the other hand, I reflected, if such indeed was my friend's case,
wherein could I prove of effectual help? "None but you can serve his
turn," the fellow had said. Could Julian have fallen under another
charge? I was the more inclined to this conjecture, for that Julian
had been always staunchly loyal to the King, and, moreover, a constant
figure at the Court.
However, 'twas all idle guess-work, and there before my eyes was
stretched the one man, who could have disclosed the truth, struck down
in the very telling of his story! I began to fear that he would die
before the surgeon came. For he breathed heavily with a horrid sound
like a dog snoring.
All at once a thought flashed into my mind. He might have brought a
letter from Julian's hand. I searched his pockets on the instant; they
held nothing but a few English coins and some metal charms, such as
the ignorant are wont to carry on their persons to preserve them from
misadventure.
While I was thus engaged, the doctor was ushered into the room, very
deliberate in manner, and magnificent in his dress. Erudition was
marked in the very cock of his wig. I sprang towards him.
"Make him speak, Mynheer!" I implored. "He hath a message to deliver,
and it cannot wait."
But he put me aside with a wave of his hand and advanced towards the
bed, pursing his lips and frowning as one sunk in a profundity of
thought.
"Can you make him speak?" I asked again with some impatience. But
again he merely waved his hand, and taking a gilt box from his pocket,
inhaled a large pinch of snuff. Then he turned to Larke, who stood
holding the bottle of schnapps.
"Tell me, young gentleman," he said severely, "what time the fit took
him, and the manner of his seizure!"
Larke informed him hastily of what had passed, and he listened with
much sage bobbing of his head. Then to our hostess:
"My assistant is below, and hath my instruments. Send him up!"
He turned to us.
"I will bleed him," he said. "For what saith the learned Hippocrates?"
Whereupon he mouthed out a rigmarole of Latin phrases, wherein I could
detect neither cohesion nor significance.
"Leave him to me, gentlemen!" he continued with a third flourish of
his wrist. "Leave him to me and Hippocrates!"
"Which we do," I replied, "with the more confidence in that
Hippocrates had so much foreknowledge of the Latin tongue."
And so we got us back to the parlour. How the minutes dragged! Through
the door I could still hear the noise of the man's breathing; and now
and again the light clink of instruments and a trickling sound as of
blood dripping into a bason. I paced impatiently about the room, while
Jack sat him down at the table and began loading his pistols.
"The twenty-first!" I exclaimed, "and this day is the fourteenth.
Seven days, Jack! I have but seven days to win from here to Bristol."
I went to the window and leaned out. Swasfield's horse was standing
quietly in the road, tethered by the bridle to a tree.
"'Canst do it, Morrice, if the wind holds fair," replied Jack. "Heaven
send a wind!" and he rose from the table and joined me. Together we
stretched out to catch the least hint of a breeze. But not a breath
came to us; not a tree shimmered, not a shadow stirred. The world
slumbered in a hot stupor. It seemed you might have felt the air
vibrate with the passage of a single bird.
Of a sudden Larke cried out:
"Art sure 'tis the fourteenth to-day?"
With that we scrambled back into the room and searched for a calendar.
"Ay, lad!" he said ruefully as he discovered it; "'tis the fourteenth,
not a doubt of it."
I flung myself dejectedly on the couch. The volume of Horace lay open
by my hand, and I took it up, and quite idly, with no thought of what
I was doing, I wrote this date and the name of the month and the date
of the year on the margin of the page.
"Lord!" exclaimed Jack, flinging up his hands. "At the books again?
Hast no boots and spurs?"
I slipped the book into my pocket, and sprang to my feet. In the heat
of my anxiety I had forgotten everything but this half-spoken message.
But, or ever I could make a step, the door of the bedroom opened and
the surgeon stepped into the room.
"Can he speak now?" I asked.
"The fit has not passed," says he.
"Then in God's name, what ails the man?" cries Larke.
"It is a visitation," says the doctor, with an upward cast of his
eyes.
"It is a canting ass of a doctor," I yelled in a fury, and I clapped
my hat on my head.
"Your boots?" cried Larke.
"I'll e'en go in my shoes," I shouted back.
I snatched up one of Jack's pistols, rammed it into my pocket, and so
clattered downstairs and into the street. I untied Swasfield's horse
and sprang on to its back.
"Morrice!"
I looked up. Jack was leaning out from the window.
"Morrice," he said whimsically, and with a very winning smile, "'art
not so much of a woman after all."
I dug my heels into the horse's flanks and so rode out at a gallop
beneath the lime-trees to Rotterdam.
CHAPTER II.
I REACH LONDON, AND THERE MAKE AN
ACQUAINTANCE.
At Rotterdam I was fortunate enough to light upon a Dutch skipper
whose ship was anchored in the Texel, and who purposed sailing that
very night for the Port of London. For a while, indeed, he scrupled to
set me over, my lack of equipment--for I had not so much with me as a
clean shirt--and my great haste to be quit of the country firing his
suspicions. However, I sold Swasfield's horse to the keeper of a
tavern by the waterside, and adding the money I got thereby to what I
held in my pockets, I presently persuaded him; and a light wind
springing up about midnight, we weighed anchor and stood out for the
sea.
That my purse was now empty occasioned me no great concern, since my
cousin, Lord Elmscott, lived at London, in a fine house in Monmouth
Square, and I doubted not but what I could instantly procure from him
the means to enable me to continue my journey. I was, in truth,
infinitely more distressed by the tardiness of our voyage, for towards
sunrise the wind died utterly away, and during the next two days we
lay becalmed, rocking lazily upon the swell. On the afternoon of the
third, being the seventeenth day of the month, a breeze filled our
sheets, and we made some progress, although our vessel, which was a
ketch and heavily loaded, was a slow sailer at the best. But during
the night the breeze quickened into a storm, and, blowing for twelve
hours without intermission or abatement, drove us clean from our
course, so that on the morning of the eighteenth we were scurrying
northwards before it along the coast of Essex.
This last misadventure cast me into the very bottom of despair. I knew
that if I were to prove of timely help in Julian's deliverance, I must
needs reach Bristol before his trial commenced, the which seemed now
plainly impossible; and, atop of this piece of knowledge, my ignorance
of the nature of his calamity, and of the service he desired of me,
worked in my blood like a fever.
For Julian and myself were linked together in a very sweet and
intimate love. I could not, and I tried, point to its beginning. It
seemed to have been native within us from our births. We took it from
our fathers before us, and when they died we counted it no small part
of our inheritance. Our estates, you should know, lay in contiguous
valleys of the remote county of Cumberland, and thus we lived out our
boyhood in a secluded comradeship. Seldom a day passed but we found a
way to meet. Mostly Julian would come swinging across the fells, his
otter-dogs yapping at his heels, and all the fresh morning in his
voice. Together we would ramble over the slopes, bathe in the tarns
and kelds, hunt, climb, argue, ay, and fight too, when we were
gravelled for lack of arguments; so that even now, each time that I
turn my feet homewards after a period of absence, and catch the first
glimpse of these brown hillsides, they become bright and populous with
the rich pageantry of our boyish fancies.
But my clearest recollections of those days centre about Scafell, and
a certain rock upon the Pillar Mountain in Ennerdale. A common share
of peril is surely the stoutest bond of comradeship. You may find
exemplars in the story of well-nigh every battle. But to hang half-way
up a sheer cliff in the chill eerie silence, where a slip of the heel,
a falter of the numbed fingers, would hurl both your companion and
yourself upon the stones a hundred yards below--ah, that turns the
friend into something closer than even a _frere d'armes_. At least, so
it was with Julian and me.
I think, too, that the very difference between us helped to fortify
our love. Each felt the other the complement of his nature. And in
later times, when Julian would come down from the Court to Oxford,
tricked out in some new French fashion, and with all sorts of
fantastical conceits upon his tongue, my rooms seemed to glow as with
a sudden shaft of sunlight; and after that he had gone I was ever in
two minds whether to send for a tailor, and follow him to Whitehall.
But to return to my journey. On the nineteenth we changed our course,
and tacked back to the mouth of the Thames. But it was not until the
evening of the twentieth that we cast anchor by London Bridge. From
the ship I hurried straight to the house of my cousin, Lord Elmscott,
who resided in Monmouth Square, to the north of the town, being minded
to borrow a horse of him and some money, and ride forthwith to
Bristol. The windows, however, were dark, not a light glimmered
anywhere; and knock with what noise I might, for a while I could get
no answer to my summons.
At last, just as I was turning away in no little distress of mind--for
the town was all strange to me, and I knew no one else to whom I could
apply at that late hour--a feeble shuffling step sounded in the
passage. I knocked again, and as loudly as I could; the steps drew
nearer, the bolts were slowly drawn from their sockets, and the door
opened. I was faced by an old man in a faded livery, who held a
lighted candle in his hand. Behind him the hall showed black and
solitary.
"I am Mr. Morrice Buckler," said I, "and I would have a word with my
cousin, Lord Elmscott."
The old man shook his head dolefully.
"Nay, sir," he replied in a thin, quavering voice, "you do ill to seek
him here. At White's perchance you may light on him, or at Wood's, in
Pall Mall--I know not. But never in his own house while there is a
pack of cards abroad."
I waited not to hear the rest of his complaint, but dashed down the
steps and set off westwards at a run. I crossed a lonely and noisome
plain which I have since heard is named the pest-field, for that many
of the sufferers in the late plague are buried there, and came out at
the top of St. James' Street. There a stranger pointed out to me
White's coffeehouse.
"Is Lord Elmscott within?" I asked of an attendant as I entered.
For reply he looked me over coolly from head to foot.
"And what may be your business with Lord Elmscott?" he asked, with a
sneer.
In truth I must have cut but a sorry figure in his eyes, for I was all
dusty and begrimed with my five days' travel. But I thought not of
that at the time.
"Tell him," said I, "that his cousin, Morrice Buckler, is here, and
must needs speak with him." Whereupon the man's look changed to one of
pure astonishment. "Be quick, fellow," I cried, stamping my foot; and
with a humble "I crave your pardon," he hurried off upon the message.
A door stood at the far end of the room, and through this he entered,
leaving it ajar. In a moment I heard my cousin's voice, loud and
boisterous:
"Show him in! 'Od's wounds, he may change my luck."
With that I followed him. 'Twas a strange sight to me. The room was
small, and the floor so thickly littered with cards that it needed the
feel of your foot to assure you it was carpeted. A number of gallants
in a great disorder of dress stood about a little table whereat were
seated a youth barely, I should guess, out of his teens, his face
pale, but very indifferent and composed, and over against him my
cousin. Elmscott's black peruke was all awry, his cheeks flushed, and
his eyes bloodshot and staring.
"Morrice," he cried, "what brings you here in this plight? I believe
the fellow took you for a bailiff, and, on my life," he added,
surveying me, "I have not the impudence to blame him." Thereupon he
addressed himself to the company. "This, gentlemen," says he, "is my
cousin, Mr. Morrice Buckler, a very worthy--bookworm."
They all laughed as though there was some wit in the ill-mannered
sally; but I had no time to spare for taking heed of their
foolishness.
"You can do me a service," I said eagerly.
"You give me news," Elmscott laughed. "'Tis a strange service that I
can render. Well, what may it be?"
"I need money for one thing, and----" A roar of laughter broke in upon
my words.
"Money!" cries Elmscott. "Lord, that any one should come to me for
money!" and he leaned back in his chair laughing as heartily as the
best of them. "Why, Morrice, it's all gone--all gone into the devil's
whirlpool. Howbeit," he went on, growing suddenly serious, "I will
make a bargain with you. Stand by my side here. I have it in my mind
that you will bring me luck. Stand by my side, and in return, if I
win, I will lend you what help I may."
"Nay, cousin," said I, "my business will not wait."
"Nor mine," he replied, "nor mine. Stand by me! I shall not be long.
My last stake's on the table."
He seized hold of my arm as he spoke with something of prayer in his
eyes, and reluctantly I consented. In truth, I knew not what else to
do. 'Twas plain he was in no mood to hearken to my request, even if he
had the means to grant it.
"That's right, lad!" he bawled, and then to the servant: "Brandy!
Brandy, d'ye hear! And a great deal of it! Now, gentlemen, you will
see. Mr. Buckler is a student of Leyden. 'Tis full time that some good
luck should come to us from Holland."
And he turned him again to the table. His pleasantry was received with
an uproarious merriment, which methought it hardly merited. But I have
noted since that round a gaming-table, so tense is the spirit which it
engenders, the poorest jest takes the currency of wit.
I was at first perplexed by the difference of the stakes. Before my
cousin lay a pair of diamond buckles, but no gold, not so much as a
single guinea-piece. All that there was of that metal lay in scattered
heaps beside his opponent.
Lord Elmscott dealt the hands--the game was ecarte--and the other
nodded his request for cards. Looking over my cousin's shoulder I
could see that he held but one trump, the ten, and a tierce to the
king in another suit. For a little he remained without answering,
glancing indecisively from his cards to the face of his player. At
last, with a touch of defiance in his voice:
"No!" he said. "Tis no hand to play on, but I'll trust to chance."
"As you will," nodded the other, and he led directly into Elmscott's
suit. Every one leaned eagerly forward, but each trick fell to my
cousin, and he obtained the vole.
"There! I told you," he cries.
His opponent said never a word, but carelessly pushed a tinkling pile
of coins across the table. And so the play went on; at the finish of
each game a stream of gold drifted over to Lord Elmscott. It seemed
that he could not lose. If he played the eight, his companion would
follow with the seven.
"He hath the devil at his back now," said one of the bystanders.
"Pardon me!" replied my cousin very politely. "You insult Mr. Buckler.
I am merely fortified with the learning of Leyden;" and he straightway
marked the king. After a time the room fell to utter silence, even
Elmscott stopped his outbursts. A strange fascination caught and
enmeshed us all; we strained forward, holding our breaths as we
watched the hands, though each man, I think, was certain what the end
would be. For myself, I honestly struggled against this devilish
enchantment, but to little purpose. The flutter of the cards made my
heart leap. I sought to picture to myself the long dark road I had to
traverse, and Julian in his prison at the end of it. I saw nothing but
the faces of the players, Elmscott's flushed and purple, his
opponent's growing paler and paler, while his eyes seemed to retreat
into his head and the pupils of them to burn like points of fire. I
loaded myself with reproaches and abuse, but the words ran through my
head in a meaningless sequence, and were tuned to a clink of gold.
And then an odd fancy came over me. In the midst of the yellow heap,
ever increasing, on our side of the table, lay the pair of diamond
buckles. I could see rays of an infinite variety of colours spirting
out like little jets of flame, as the light caught the stones, and I
felt a queer conviction that Elmscott's luck was in some way bound up
with them. So strongly did the whim possess me that I lifted them from
the table to test my thought. For so long as took the players to play
two games, I held the buckles in my hands; and both games my cousin
lost. I replaced them on the table, and he began to win once more with
the old regularity, the heaps dwindling there and growing here, until
at length all the money lay silted at my cousin's hand. You might have
believed that a spell had been suddenly lifted from the company. Faces
relaxed and softened, eyes lost their keen light, feet shuffled in a
new freedom, and the heavy silence was torn by a Babel of voices.
Strangely enough, all joined with Elmscott in attributing his change
of fortune to my presence. Snuff-boxes were opened and their contents
pressed upon me, and I think that I might have dined at no cost of
myself for a full twelve months had I accepted the invitations I
received. But the cessation of the play had waked me to my own
necessities, and I turned to my cousin.
"Now," said I, but I got no further, for he exclaimed:
"Not yet, Morrice! There's my house in Monmouth Square."
"Your house?" I repeated.
"There's the manor of Silverdale."
"You have not lost that?" I cried.
"Every brick of it," says he.
"Then," says I in a quick passion, "you must win them back as best you
may. I'll bide no longer."
"Nay, lad!" he entreated, laying hold of my sleeve. "You cannot mean
that. See, when you came in, I had but these poor buckles left. They
were all my fortune. Stay but for a little. For if you go you take all
my luck with you. 'Am deadly sure of it."
"I have stayed too long as it is" I replied, and wrenched myself free
from his grasp.
"Well, take what money you need! But you are no more than a stone," he
whimpered.
"The philosopher's stone, then," said I, and I caught up a couple of
handsfull of gold and turned on my heel. But with a sudden cry I
stopped. For as I turned, I glanced across the table to his opponent,
and I saw his face change all in a moment to a strangely grey and
livid colour. And to make the sight yet more ghastly, he still sat
bolt upright in his chair, without a gesture, without a motion, a
figure of marble, save that his eyes still burned steadily beneath his
brows.
"Great God!" I cried. "He is dying."
"It is the morning," he said in a quiet voice, which had yet a very
thrilling resonance, and it flashed across me with a singular
uneasiness that this was the first time that he had spoken during all
those hours.
I turned towards the window, which was behind my cousin's chair.
Through a chink of the curtains a pale beam of twilight streamed full
on to the youth's face. So long as I had stood by Elmscott's side, my
back had intercepted it; but as I moved away I had uncovered the
window, and it was the grey light streaming from it which had given to
him a complexion of so deathly and ashen a colour. I flung the
curtains apart, and the chill morning flooded the room. One shiver ran
through the company like a breeze through a group of aspens, and it
seemed to me that on the instant every one had grown old. The heavy
gildings, the yellow glare of the candles, the gaudy hangings about
the walls, seen in that pitiless light, appeared inexpressibly
pretentious and vulgar; and the gentlemen with their leaden cheeks,
their disordered perukes, and the soiled finery of their laces and
ruffles, no more than the room's fitting complement. A sickening qualm
of disgust shot through me; the very air seemed to have grown acrid
and stale; and yet, in spite of all I stayed--to my shame be it said,
I stayed. However, I paid for the fault--ay, ten times over, in the
years that were to come. For as I halted at the door to make my
bow--my fingers were on the very handle--I perceived Lord Elmscott
with one foot upon his chair, and the buckles in his hand. My
presentiment came back to me with the conviction of a creed. I knew--I
knew that if he failed to add those jewels to his stake, he would
leave the coffeehouse as empty a beggar as when I entered it. I strode
back across the room, took them from his hand, and laid them on the
table. For a moment Elmscott stared at me in astonishment. Then I must
think he read my superstition in my looks, for he said, clapping me on
the back:
"You will make a gambler yet, Morrice," and he sat him down on his
chair. I took my former stand beside him.
"You will stay, Mr. Buckler?" asked his opponent.
"Yes," I replied.
"Then," he continued, in the same even voice, "I have a plan in my
head which I fancy will best suit the purposes of the three of us.
Lord Elmscott is naturally anxious to follow his luck; you, Mr.
Buckler, have overstayed your time; and as for me--well, it is now
Wednesday morning, and a damned dirty morning, too, if I may judge
from the countenances of my friends. We have sat playing here since
six by the clock on Monday night, and I am weary. My bed calls for me.
I propose then that we settle the bout with two casts of the dice. On
the first throw I will stake your house in Monmouth Square against the
money you have before you. If I win there's an end. If you win, I will
set the manor of Silverdale against your London house and your
previous stake."
A complete silence followed upon his words. Even Lord Elmscott was
taken aback by the magnitude of the stakes. The youth's proposal
gained, moreover, on the mind by contrast with his tone of tired
indifference. He seemed the least occupied of all that company.
"I trust you will accept," he continued, speaking to my cousin with
courteous gentleness. "As I have said, I am very tired. Luck is on
your side, and, if I may be permitted to add, the advantage of the
stakes."
Elmscott glanced at me, paused for a second, and then, with a forced
laugh:
"Very well; so be it," he said. The dice were brought; he rattled them
vigorously, and flung them down.
"Four!" cried one of the gentlemen.
"Damn!" said my cousin, and he mopped his forehead with his
handkerchief. His antagonist picked up the dice with inimitable
nonchalance, barely shook them in the cup, and let them roll idly out
on to the table.
"Three!"
Elmscott heaved a sigh of relief. The other stretched his arms above
his head and yawned.
"'Tis a noble house, your house in Monmouth Square," he remarked.
At the second throw, Elmscott discovered a most nervous anxiety. He
held the cup so long in his hand that I feared he would lose the
courage to complete the game. I felt, in truth, a personal shame at
his indecision, and I gazed around with the full expectation of seeing
a like feeling expressed upon the features of those who watched. But
they wore one common look of strained expectancy. At last Elmscott
threw.
"Nine!" cried one, and a low murmur of voices buzzed for an instant
and suddenly ceased as the other took up the dice.
"Two!"
Both players rose as with one motion. Elmscott tossed down his throat
the brandy in his tumbler--it had stood by his side untasted since the
early part of the night--and then turned to me with an almost
hysterical outburst.
"One moment."
It was the youth who spoke, and his voice rang loud and strong. His
weariness had slipped from him like a mask. He bent across the table
and stretched out his arm, with his forefinger pointing at my cousin.
"I will play you one more bout, Lord Elmscott. Against all that you
have won back from me to-night--the money, your house, your estate--I
will pit my docks in the city of Bristol. But I claim one condition,"
and he glanced at me and paused.
"If it affects my cousin's presence----" Elmscott began.
"It does not," the other interrupted. "'Tis a trivial condition--a
whim of mine, a mere whim."
"What is it, then?" I asked, for in some unaccountable way I was much
disquieted by his change of manner, and dreaded the event of his
proposal.
"That while your cousin throws you hold his buckles in your hands."
It were impossible to describe the effect which this extraordinary
request produced. At any other time it would have seemed no more than
laughable. But after these long hours of play we were all tinder to a
spark of superstition. Nothing seemed too whimsical for belief. Luck
had proved so tricksy a sprite that the most trivial object might well
take its fancy and overset the balance of its favours. The fierce
vehemence of the speaker, besides, breaking thus unexpectedly through
a crust of equanimity, carried conviction past the porches of the
ears. So each man hung upon Elmscott's answer as upon the arbitrament
of his own fortune.
For myself, I took a quick step towards my cousin; but the youth shot
a glance of such imperious menace at me that I stopped shamefaced like
a faulty schoolboy. However, Elmscott caught my movement and, I think,
the look which arrested me.
"Not to-day," he said, "if you will pardon me. I am over-tired myself,
and would fain keep to our bargain." Thereupon he came over to me.
"Now, Morrice," he exclaimed, "it is your turn. You have the money.
What else d'ye lack? What else d'ye lack?"
"I need the swiftest horse in your stables," I replied.
Elmscott burst into a laugh.
"You shall have it--the swiftest horse in my stables. You shall e'en
take it as a gift. Only I fear 'twill leave your desires unsatisfied."
And he chuckled again.
"Then," I replied, with some severity, for in truth his merriment
struck me as ill-conditioned, "then I shall take the liberty of
leaving it behind at the first post on the Bristol Road."
"The Bristol Road?" interposed the youth. "You journey to Bristol?"
I merely bowed assent, for I was in no mood to disclose my purpose to
that company, and caught up my hat; but he gently took my arm and drew
me into the window.
"Mr. Buckler," he said, gazing at me the while with quiet eyes,
"Fortune has brought us into an odd conjunction this night. I have so
much of the gambler within me as to believe that she will repeat the
trick, and I hope for my revenge."
He held out his hand courteously. I could not but take it. For a
moment we stood with clasped hands, and I felt mine tremble within
his.
"Ah!" he said, smiling curiously, "you believe so, too." And he made
me a bow and turned back into the room.
I remained where he left me, gazing blindly out of the window; for the
shadow of a great trouble had fallen across my spirit. His words and
the concise certainty of his tone had been the perfect voicing of my
own forebodings. I did indeed believe that Fortune would some day pit
us in a fresh antagonism; that somewhere in the future she had already
set up the lists, and that clasp of the hands I felt to be our bond
and surety that we would keep faith with her and answer to our names.
"Morrice," said Elmscott at my elbow, and I started like one waked
from his sleep, "we'll go saddle your horse."
And he laughed to himself again as though savouring a jest. He slipped
an arm through mine and walked to the door.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he said. "Marston, _au revoir!_" And with a
twirl of his hat, he stepped into the outer room. His servant was
sleeping upon a bench, and he woke him up and bade him fetch the money
and follow home.
The morning was cold, and we set off at a brisk pace towards Monmouth
Square, Elmscott chatting loudly the while, with ever and again, I
thought, a covert laugh at me.
I only pressed on the harder. It was not merely that I was vexed by
his quizzing demeanour; but the moment I was free from that tawdry
hell, and began to breathe fresh air in place of the heavy reek of
perfumes and wine, the fulness of my disloyalty rolled in upon my
conscience, so that Elmscott's idle talk made me sicken with
repulsion; for he babbled ever about cards and dice and the feminine
caprice of luck.
"What ails you, Morrice?" at length he inquired, seeing that I had no
stomach for his mirth. "You look as spiritless as a Quaker."
"I was thinking," I replied, in some irritation, for he clapped me on
the back as he spoke, "that it must be sorely humiliating for a man of
your age either to win money or lose it when you have a mere stripling
to oppose you."
"A man of my age, indeed!" he exclaimed. "And what age do you take to
be mine, Mr. Buckler?"
He turned his face angrily towards me, and I scanned it with great
deliberation.
"It would not be fair," I answered, with a shake of the head. "It
would not be fair for me to hazard a guess. Two nights at play may
well stamp middle-age upon youth, and decrepitude upon middle-age."
At this he knew not whether to be mollified or yet more indignant, and
so did the very thing I had been aiming at--he held his tongue. Thus
we proceeded in a moody silence until we were hard by Soho. Then he
asked suddenly:
"What drags you in such a scurry to Bristol?"
"I would give much to know myself," I answered. "I journey thither at
the instance of a friend who lies in dire peril. But that is the whole
sum of my knowledge. I have not so much as a hint of the purport of my
service."
"A friend! What friend?" he inquired with something of a start, and
looked at me earnestly.
"Sir Julian Harnwood," said I, and he stopped abruptly in his walk.
"Ah!" he said; then he looked on the ground, and swore a little to
himself.
"You know what threatens him?" said I; but he made me no answer and
resumed his walk, quickening his pace. "Tell me!" I entreated. "His
servant came to me at Leyden six days ago, but was seized by a
fit or ever he could out with his message. So I learnt no more than
this--that Julian lies in Bristol gaol and hath need of me."
"But the assizes begin to-day," he interrupted, with an air of
triumph. "You are over-late to help him."
"Ah, no!" I pleaded. "I may yet reach there in time. Julian may haply
be amongst the last to come to trial?"
"'Twere most unlikely," returned he, with a snap of his teeth. "My
Lord Jeffries wastes no time in weighing evidence. Why, at Taunton,
but a fortnight ago, one hundred and forty-five prisoners were
disposed of within three days. The man does not try; he executes.
There's but one outlook for your friend, and that's through the noose
of a rope. Jeffries holds a strict mandate from the King, I tell you,
for the King's heart is full of anger against the rebels."
"But Julian was no rebel," I exclaimed.
"Tut, tut, lad!" he replied. "If he was no rebel himself, he harboured
rebels. If he didn't flesh his sword at Sedgemoor, he gave shelter to
those that did. And 'tis all one crime, I tell you. Hair-splitting is
held in little favour at the Western Assizes."
"But are you sure of this?" I asked. "Or is it pure town gossip?"
"Nay," said he, "I have the news hot from Marston. He should know,
eh?"
"Marston?" said I.
"Yes! The"--and he paused for a second, and smiled at me--"the _man_
who played with me. 'Tis his sister that's betrothed to Harnwood."
_His_ sister! The blood chilled in my veins. I had been aware, of
course, that Julian was affianced to a certain Miss Marston of the
county of Gloucestershire. But I had never set eyes upon her person
and knew little of her history, beyond that she had been one of the
ladies in attendance upon the Queen prior to her accession to the
throne; I mean when she was still the Duchess of York. Miss Marston
was, in fact, a mere name to me; and since consequently she held no
place in my thoughts, it had not occurred to me to connect her in any
way with this chance acquaintance of the gaming-table. Now, however,
the relationship struck me with a peculiar and even menacing
significance. It recalled to me the few words Marston had spoken in
the window; and, lo! not half an hour after their utterance, here was,
as it were, a guarantee of their fulfilment. Between Marston and
myself there already existed, then, a certain faint accidental
connection. I felt that I had caught a glimpse of the cord which was
to draw us together.
Elmscott's voice broke in upon my imaginings.
"So, Morrice, I have sure knowledge to back my words. No good can come
of your journey, though harm may, and it will fall on you. 'Twere best
to stay quietly in London. You may think your hair grey, but you will
never save Julian Harnwood from the gallows."
My cheeks burned as I heard him, for my thoughts had been humming
busily about my own affairs, and not at all about Julian's; and with a
bitter shame, "God!" I cried, "that I should fail him so! Surely never
was a man so misused as my poor friend! He is the very sport and
shuttlecock of disaster. First his messenger must needs fall sick;
then my boat must take five days to cross to England. And to cap it
all, I must waste yet another night in a tavern or ever I can borrow a
horse to help me on my way."
By this time we had got to Elmscott's house. He drew a key from his
pocket and mounted the steps thoughtfully, and I after him. On the
last step, however, he turned, and laying a hand upon my shoulder, as
I stood below him, said, with a very solemn gravity: "There is God's
hand in all this. He doth not intend you should go. In His great
wisdom He doth not intend it. He would punish the guilty, and He would
spare you who are innocent."
"But what harm can come to me?" I cried, with a laugh; though, indeed,
the laugh was hollow as the echo of an empty house.
"That lies in the dark," said he. "But 'tis no common aid Julian
Harnwood asks from you. He has friends enough in England. Why should
he send to Holland when his time's so short?" And then he added with
more insistent earnestness: "Don't go, lad! If any one could avail,
'twould be Marston. He has power in Bristol. And you see, he bides
quietly in London."
"But methinks he was never well-disposed to Julian," said I,
remembering certain half-forgotten phrases of my friend. "He looked
but sourly on the marriage."
"Very well," said he, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Must make your
own bed;" and he opened the door, and led me through the hall and into
a garden at the back. At the far end of this the stables were built,
and we crossed to them. "The rascals are still asleep," he remarked,
and proceeded to waken them with much clanging of the bell and shouts
of abuse. In a while we heard a heavy step stumbling down the stair.
"I had meant to have a fine laugh at you over this," said Elmscott,
with a rueful smile. "But I have no heart for it now that I know your
errand."
An ostler, still blinking and drowsy, opened the door. He rubbed his
eyes at the sight of his master.
"Don't stand gaping, you fish!" cried my cousin. "Whom else did you
expect to see? Show us to the stables."
The fellow led us silently into the stables. A long row of boxes stood
against the wall, all neatly littered with straw, but to my
astonishment and dismay, so far as I could see, not one of them held a
horse.
"She's at the end, sir," said the groom; and we walked down the length
of the boxes, and halted before the last.
"Get up, lass!" and after a few pokes the animal rose stiffly from its
bed. For a moment I well-nigh cried from sheer mortification. Never in
all my comings and goings since have I seen such a parody of Nature,
not even in the booths of a country fair. 'Twas of a piebald colour,
and stood very high, with long thin legs. Its knees were, moreover,
broken. It had a neck of extraordinary length, and a huge, absurd head
which swung pendulous at the end of it, and seemed by its weight to
have dragged the beast out of shape, for the line of its back slanted
downwards from its buttocks to its shoulders.
"This is no fair treatment," I exclaimed hotly. "Elmscott, I deserve
better at your hands. 'Tis an untimely jest, and you might well have
spared yourself the pleasure of it."
"And the name of her's Ph[oe]be," he replied musingly. "'Tis her one
good point."
He spoke with so droll a melancholy that I had some ado to refrain
from laughing, in spite of my vexation.
"But," said I, "surely this is not all your equipage?"
"Nay," returned he proudly, "I have its saddle and bridle. But for the
rest of my horses, I lost them all playing basset with Lord Culverton.
He took them away only yesterday morning, but left me the mare, saying
that he had no cart for her conveyance."
"Well," said I, "I must e'en make shift with her. She may carry me one
stage."
And I walked out of the stables and back into the hall. Elmscott bade
his groom saddle the mare and followed me, but I was too angry to
speak with him, and seated myself sullenly at a table. However, he
fetched a pie from the pantry and a bottle of wine, and set them
before me. I had eaten nothing since I had disembarked the night
before, and knowing, besides, that I had a weary day in store, I fell
to with a good appetite. Elmscott opened the door. The sun had just
risen, and a warm flood of light poured into the hall and brightened
the dark panels of the walls. With that entered the sound of birds
singing, the rustle of trees, and all the pleasant garden-smells of a
fresh September morning. And at once a great hope sprang up in my
heart that I might yet be in time to prove the minister of Julian's
need. I heard the sound of hoofs on the road outside.
"Lend me a whip!" I cried.
"You are still set on going?"
"Lend me a whip!"
He offered me an oak cudgel.
"Ph[oe]be has passed her climacteric, and her perceptions are dull,"
he said; and then with a sudden change of manner he laid his hand on
my shoulder. "'Twere best not to go," he declared earnestly. "Those
who bring luck to others seldom find great store of it themselves."
But in the sweet clearness of the morning such thoughts seemed to me
no more than night vapours, and I sprang down the steps with a laugh.
The mare shivered as I mounted, and swung her head around as though
she would ask me what in the devil's name I was doing on her back. But
I thwacked her flanks with the cudgel, and she ambled heavily through
the square. I turned to look behind me. Elmscott was still standing on
the steps.
"Morrice," he called out, "be kind to her! She is an heirloom."
CHAPTER III.
TELLS HOW I REACH BRISTOL, AND IN WHAT
STRANGE GUISE I GO TO MEET MY FRIEND.
At length, then, I was fairly started on my way to Bristol. For my
direction over this first stage of my journey I had made inquiries of
Elmscott, and I rode westwards towards the village of Knightsbridge,
thanking Providence most heartily for that the city still slept. For
what with my disordered dress, my oak cudgel, and the weedy screw
which I bestrode--I scruple to dignify her with the name of mare, for
I have owned mares since which I loved, and would not willingly
affront them--I could not hope to pass unnoticed were any one abroad,
and, indeed, should esteem myself well-used to be counted no worse
than a mountebank. Thus I crossed Hounslow Heath and reached Brentford
without misadventure. There I joyfully parted with my Rosinante, and
hiring a horse, rode post. The way, however, was ill-suited for speedy
travelling, and my hope of seeing Julian that night dwindled with my
shadow as the sun rose higher and higher behind my shoulders. Ruts
deep and broad as new furrows trenched the road, and here and there
some slough would make a wide miry gap, wherein my horse sank over the
fetlocks. Some blame, moreover, must attach to me, for I chose a false
turn at the hamlet of Colnbrook, and journeyed ten miles clean from my
path to Datchet; so that in the end night found me blundering on the
edge of Wickham Heath, some sixty-one miles from London. I had changed
horses at Newbury, and I determined to press on at least so far as
Hungerford. But I had not counted with myself. I was indeed
overwrought with want of sleep, and the last few stages I had ridden
with dulled senses in a lethargy of fatigue. At what point exactly I
wandered from the road I could not tell. But the darkness had closed
in before I began to notice a welcome ease and restfulness in the
motion of the gallop. I was wondering idly at the change, when of a
sudden my horse pops his foot into a hole. The reins were hanging
loose on his neck; I myself was rocking in the saddle, so that I shot
clean over his shoulder, turned a somersault in mid-air, and came down
flat on my back in the centre of the Heath. For a while I lay there
without an effort or desire to move. I felt as if Mother Earth had
taken pity on my weariness, and had thus unceremoniously put me to
bed. The trample of hoofs, however, somewhat too close to my legs,
roused me to wakefulness, and I started up and prepared to remount. To
my dismay I found that my horse was badly lamed; he could barely set
his foreleg to the ground. The accident was the climax of my
misfortunes. I looked eagerly about me. The night was moonless, but
very clear and soft with the light of the stars. I could see the
common stretching away on every side empty and desolate; here a
cluster of trees, there a patch of bushes, but never a house, never
the kindly twinkle of a lamp, never a sign of a living thing. What it
behoved me to do, I could not come at, think as hard as I might. But
whatever that might have been, what I did, alas! was far different.
For I plumped myself down on the grass and cried like a child. It
seemed to me that God's hand was indeed turned against my friend and
his deliverance.
But somehow into the midst of my lament there slipped a remembrance of
Jack Larke. On the instant his face took shape and life before me,
shining out as it were from a frame of darkness. I saw an honest scorn
kindle in his eyes, and his lips shot "woman" at me. The visionary
picture of him braced me like the cut of a whip. At all events, I
thought, I would make a pretence of manhood, and I ceased from my
blubbering, and laying hold of the horse by the bridle, led him
forward over the Heath.
I kept a sharp watch about me as I walked, but it must have been a
full two hours afterwards when I caught a glimpse of a light far away
on my left hand, glimmering in a little thicket upon a swell of the
turf. At first I was minded to reckon it a star, for the Heath at that
point was ridged up against the sky. But it shone with a beam too warm
and homely to match the silver radiance of the planets. I turned
joyfully in its direction, and quickening my pace, came at length to
the back of a house. The light shone from a window on the ground floor
facing me. I looked into it over a little paling, and saw that it was
furnished as a kitchen. Plates and pewter-pots gleamed orderly upon
the shelves, and a row of noble hams hung from the rafters.
I hurried round the side of the house and found myself, to my great
satisfaction, on a bank which overlooked the road. I scrambled down
the side of it and knocked loudly at the door. It was opened by an
elderly man, who stared at me in some surprise.
"You travel late, young sir," said he, holding the door ajar.
"I have need to," I replied. "I should have been in Bristol long ere
this."
"'Tis strange," he went on, eyeing me a thought suspiciously. "I
caught no sound of your horse's hoofs upon the road."
"'Twould have been stranger if you had," said I. "For I missed my way
soon after sundown, and have been wandering since on the Heath. I saw
the light of your house some half an hour agone over yonder," and I
pointed in the direction whence I had come.
"Then you are main lucky, sir," he returned, but in a more civil tone.
"This is the 'Half-way House,' and it has no neighbours. In another
hour we should have gone to bed--for we have no guests to-night--and
you might have wandered until dawn."
With that he set the door back against the wall, and stood aside for
me to pass.
"You must pardon my surliness," he said. "But few honest travellers
cross Wickham Heath by dark, and at first I mistook you. I have never
held truck with the gentry of the road, though, indeed, my pockets
suffer for the ease of my conscience. However, if you will step
within, my wife will get you supper while I lead your horse to the
stables."
"The beast is lame," said I, "and I would fain continue my way
to-night. Have you a horse for hire?"
"Nay, sir," said he, shaking his head. "I have but one horse here
besides your own, and that is not mine."
"I need it only for a day," I urged eagerly; "for less than a day. I
could reach Bristol in the morning, and would send it you back
forthwith."
I plunged my hand into my fob, and pulled out a handful of money as I
spoke.
"It is no use," he declared. "The horse is not mine. 'Twas left here
for a purpose, and I may not part with it."
"It would be with you again to-morrow," I repeated.
"It may be needed in the meanwhile," said he. "It may be needed in an
hour. I know not."
I let the coins run from my right hand into the palm of my left, so
that they fell clinking one on the top of the other. For a second he
stood undecided; then he spoke in a low voice like a man arguing with
himself.
"I will not do it. The horse was left with me in trust--in trust.
Moreover, I was well paid for the trust." And he turned to me.
"Put up your money, sir," said he stubbornly. "You should think shame
to tempt poor folk. You will get no horse 'twixt here and Hungerford."
I slipped the money back into my pocket while he moved away with the
horse. It limped worse than ever, and he stopped and picked up its
foreleg.
"It is no more than a strain, I think," he called out. "The wife shall
make a poultice for it to-night, and you can start betimes in the
morning."
It was a poor consolation, but the only one. So I made the best of it,
and, taking my supper in the kitchen, went forthwith to bed. I was
indeed so spent and tired that I fell asleep in the corner by the fire
while my ham was being fried, and after it, was almost carried
upstairs in the arms of my landlord. I had not lain in a bed since I
left Leyden, and few sights, I think, have ever affected me with
so pleasant a sense of rest and comfort as that of the little
inn-chamber, with its white dimity curtains and lavender-scented
sheets. I have, in truth, always loved the scent of lavender since.
The next morning I was early afoot, and, despatching a hasty
breakfast, made my way to the stables. The innkeeper had preceded me
in order to have all ready for my start; but he stood in the yard with
the horse unsaddled.
"'Tis no use, sir," he said. "You must e'en walk to Hungerford."
I had but to see the horse take one step to realise the truth of his
words, for it limped yet worse than the evening before. The foot,
moreover, was exceeding hot and inflamed.
"Take it back," said I. "The poor beast must bide here till I return."
I followed him into the stable, and inquired of the road.
"You go straight," he said, "till you come to Barton Court, opposite
the village of Kintbury--" when of a sudden I stopped him. There were
but two stalls in the building, and I had just caught a glimpse of the
horse which was tied up in the second. It was of a light chestnut in
colour, with white stockings, and a fleck of white in its coat at the
joint of the hip. The patch was like a star in shape, and very
unusual.
"Why, this is Sir Julian Harnwood's horse," I cried, leaping towards
it--"his favourite horse!"
"Yes," he said, looking at me with some surprise, "that was the
name--Sir Julian Harnwood. 'Tis the horse I told you of last night."
And in a flash the truth came upon me.
"It waits for me," I said. "Quick, man, saddle it! Sir Julian's life
hangs upon your speed."
But he planted himself sturdily before me.
"Not so fast, young master," he said. "That trick will not serve your
turn. 'Tis Sir Julian's horse, sure enough, and it waits its rider,
sure enough; but that you are he, I must have some better warrant than
your word."
"My name may prove it," I replied. "It is Buckler--Morrice Buckler.
Sir Julian's servant came to me in Holland."
"Buckler!" the man repeated, as though he heard it for the first time.
"Morrice Buckler! Yes, sir, that may be your name. I have nothing
against it beyond that it is unfamiliar in these parts. But a strange
name is a poor thing to persuade a man to forego his trust."
I looked at the man. Though elderly and somewhat bent, he was of a
large frame, and the sinews stood out in knots upon his bared arms.
Plainly I was no match for him if it came to a struggle; and a
sickening feeling of impotence and futility surged up within me. At
every turn of the road destiny had built up its barrier. I understood
that the clue to the matter lay hidden in that untold message which
had been vainly conveyed to Leyden; that Swasfield had some pass-word,
some token to impart whereby I might make myself known along the road.
"The horse waits for me," I cried, my voice rising as I beseeched him.
"In very truth it waits for me. Doubtless I should have some proof of
that. But the man that bid me come fell in a swoon or ever he could
hand it me."
The innkeeper smiled, and sat him down on a corn-bin. Indeed, the
explanation sounded weak enough to me, who was witness of its truth. I
should hardly have credited it from another's lips.
"Oh, can't you see," I entreated, in an extremity of despair, "can't
you feel that I am telling you God's truth?"
"No, master," he answered slowly, shaking his head, "I feel nought of
that sort."
His words and stolid bumpkin air threw me into a frenzy of rage.
"Then," cried I, "may the devil's curse light on you and yours! That
horse was left with you in trust. You have dinned the word into my
ears; there's no gainsaying it. And I claim the fulfilment of your
trust. Understand, fellow!" I went on, shaking my hand at him, for I
saw his mouth open and his whole face broaden out into a laugh. "It's
not a horse you are stealing; it is a life--a man's innocent life!"
Thereupon he broke in upon my passion with a great gust of mirth that
shook him from head to foot.
"Lord, master!" said he, "that be mighty fine play-acting. I don't
know that I ever saw better in Newberry Market"--and he slapped a
great fist upon his thigh. "No, I'll be danged if I did. Go on! go on!
Lord, I could sit here and laugh till dinner." And he thrust his feet
forward, plunged his hands in his breeches pockets, and rolled back
against the wall. I watched him in an utter vacancy of mind. For his
stupid laughter had quenched me like a pailful of cold water. I
searched for some device by which I might outwit his stubbornness. Not
the smallest seed of a plan could I discover. I sent my thoughts back
to the morning of the fourteenth, and cudgelled my memory in the hope
that Swasfield might have dropped some hint which had passed
unnoticed. But he had said so little, and I remembered his every word.
Then in a twinkling I recollected the charms which I had found upon
his person. Perchance one of them was the needed token. No idea was
too extravagant for me to grasp at it. What had I done with them? I
thought. I clapped my hand into the pocket of my coat, and my fingers
closed, not on the charms, but on the barrel of the pistol which Larke
had handed to me at the moment of my setting out. In an instant my
mind was made up. I must have that horse, cost what it might. 'Twas
useless to argue with my landlord. Money I had made trial of the night
before. And here were the minutes running by, and each one of them, it
might be, a drop of Julian's blood!
I walked quickly to the door, at once to disengage the pistol secretly
and to hide any change in my countenance. But the cock must needs
catch in the flap of my pocket as I drew the weapon out. I heard a
startled cry behind me, a rattle of the corn-bin, and a clatter of
heavy shoes on the ground. I took one spring out of the stable,
turned, and levelled the barrel through the doorway. For a moment we
stood watching one another, he crouched for a leap, I covering his
eyes with the pistol.
"Saddle that horse," I commanded, "and bring it out into the road!"
It was his turn now to argue and entreat, but I had no taste at the
moment for "play-acting."
"Be quick, man!" I said. "You have wasted time enough. Be quick, else
I'll splatter your head against the wall!"
The fellow rose erect and did as I bid, while I stood in the doorway
and railed at him. For, alas! I was never over-generous by nature.
"Hurry, you potatoe!" I exclaimed. Why that word above all other and
more definite terms of abuse should have pained him I know not. But so
it was; "Potatoe" grieved him immeasurably, and noting that, I
repeated it more often, I fear me, than fitted my dignity. At length
the horse was saddled.
"Lead it out!" I said, and walked backwards to the road with my pistol
still levelled.
He followed me with the horse, and I bade him go back into the stable
and close the door. Then I put up my pistol, sprang into the saddle,
and started at a gallop past the inn. I had ridden little more than a
hundred yards when I chanced to look back. My host was standing in the
centre of the way, his legs firmly apart, and a huge blunderbuss at
his shoulder. I flung my body forward on the neck of the horse, and a
shower of slugs whistled through the air above my head. I felt for my
pistol to return the compliment, but 'twould have been mere waste of
the shot; I should never have hit him. So I just curved my hand about
my mouth and bawled "Potatoe" at the top of my voice. It could have
done no less hurt than his slugs.
The horse, fresh from its long confinement, answered gladly to my call
upon its speed, and settled into a steady gallop. But for all that,
though I pressed on quickly through Marlborough and Chippenham, the
nearer I came to Bristol the more lively did my anxieties become. I
began to ponder with an increasing apprehension on the business which
Julian might have in store for me. The urgency of his need had been
proved yet more clearly that morning. The horse which I bestrode was a
fresh and convincing evidence; and I could not but believe that
similar relays were waiting behind me the whole length of the road
from London.
At the same time, as Elmscott had urged, I could bring him no solace
of help in the matter of his trial. It would need greater authority
than mine to rescue him from Jeffries' clutches. I realised that there
must be some secret trouble at the back, and the more earnestly I
groped after a hint of its nature, the more dark and awesome the
riddle grew.
For, to my lasting shame I own it, Elmscott's forebodings recurred to
me with the mystical force of a prophecy:
"There is God's hand in all this. He doth not mean you should go."
The warning seemed traced in black letters on the air before me; fear
whispered it at my heart, and the very hoofs of the horse beat it out
in a ringing menace from the ground.
At last, when I was well-nigh in the grips of a panic, over the brow
of a hill I saw a cluster of church-spires traced like needles against
the sun, and in a sudden impulse to outstrip my cowardice I drove my
heels into my horse's flanks, and an hour later rode through Lawford's
Gate into Bristol town. I inquired of the first person I met where the
Court was sitting. At the Guildhall, he told me, and pointed out the
way. A clock struck four as he spoke, and I hurriedly thanked him and
hastened on.
About the Guildhall a great rabble of people swung and pressed, and I
reined up on the farther side of the street, but as nearly opposite to
the entrance as I could force my way. In front of the building stood a
carriage very magnificently equipped, with four horses, and footmen in
powdered wigs and glistening liveries.
From such converse as went on about me, I sought to learn what
prisoners had been tried that day. But so great was the confusion of
voices, curses, lamentations, and rejoicings being mixed and blended
in a common uproar, that I could gather no knowledge that was
particular to my purpose. Then from the shadow of the vestibule shot a
gleam of scarlet and white, and at once a deep hush fell upon the
crowd. Preceded by his officers, my lord Jeffries stepped out to his
carriage, a man of a royal mien, with wonderfully dark and piercing
eyes, though the beauty of his face was much marred by spots and
blotches, and an evil smile that played incessantly about his lips. He
seemed in truth in high good-humour, and laughed boisterously with
those that attended him; and bethinking me of his savage cruelty, and
the unholy lustfulness wherewith he was wont to indulge it, my heart
sank in fear for Julian.
The departure of his carriage seemed to lift a weight from every
tongue, and the clamour recommenced. I cast about for some one to
approach, when I beheld a little man with a face as wrinkled and
withered as a dry pippin, pressing through the throng in my direction.
I thought at first that he intended speech with me, for he looked me
over with some care. But he came straight on to the horse's head, and
without pausing walked briskly along its side to my right hand and
disappeared behind me. A minute after I heard the noise of a dispute
on my left. There was my little friend again. He had turned on his
steps, and moving in the contrary direction had come up with me once
more. In the hurry of his movements he had knocked up against a
passer-by, and the pair straightway fell loudly to argument, each one
accusing the other of clumsiness. I turned in my saddle to watch the
quarrel, and immediately the little man, with profuse apologies, took
the blame upon himself and continued his way. I followed him with my
eyes. He had proceeded but ten yards when his pace began to slacken,
then he dropped into a saunter, and finally stood still in a musing
attitude with his eyes on the ground, as though he was debating some
newly-remembered question. Of a sudden he raised his head, shot one
quick glance towards me, and resumed his walk. The street was thinning
rapidly, and I was able to pursue him without difficulty. For half a
mile we went on, keeping the same distance between us, when he sharply
turned a corner and dived into a narrow side-street. I checked my
horse, thinking that I had mistaken his look; for he had never so much
as turned round since. But the next minute he reappeared, and stood
loitering in his former attitude of reflection. There could be no
doubt of the man's intention, and I gathered up the reins again and
followed him. This side-street was narrow and exceeding dark, for the
storeys of the houses on each side projected one above the other until
the gables nearly met at the top. The little man was waiting for me
about twenty yards from the entrance, in an angle of the wall.
"It is Mr. Buckler?" he asked shortly.
"Yes," I answered. "What news of Julian?"
"You have but just arrived?"
"The clock struck four as I rode through Law-ford's Gate. What news of
Julian?"
He gave a sharp, sneering laugh.
"Ay, ay," he said. "No one so flustered as your loiterer." And he
stepped out from the shadow of the house. "Sir Julian?" he cried
hastily. "Sir Julian will be hanged at noon to-morrow."
I swayed in the saddle; the houses spun round me. I felt the man's arm
catch at and steady me.
"It is my fault?" I whispered.
"No, lad!" he returned, with a new touch of kindliness in his tone.
"Nothing could have saved him. I should know; I am his attorney. Maybe
I spoke too harshly, but this last week he has been eating his heart
out for the sight of you, and your tardiness plagued me. There, there!
Lay hold of your pluck! It is a man your friend needs, not a weak
girl."
There was a pitying contempt in the tone of these last words which
stung me inexpressibly. I sat up erect, and said, with such firmness
as I could force into my voice:
"Where does Sir Julian lie?"
"In the Bridewell to-night. But you must not go there in this plight,"
he added quickly, for I was already turning the horse. "You would ruin
all."
He glanced sharply up and down the lane, and went on:
"We have been together over-long as it is." Then he tapped with his
foot for a moment on the pavement. "I have it," said he. "Go to the
'Thatched House Tavern,' in Lime Kiln Lane. I will seek you there.
Wait for me; and, mind this, let no one else have talk with you! Tell
the people of the house I sent you--Mr. Joseph Vincott. It will
commend you to their care."
With that he turned on his heel, ran up to the opening of the street,
and after a cautious look this side and that, strolled carelessly
away. I gave him a few moments' grace, and then hurried with all
despatch to the tavern, asking my direction as I went. There I ordered
a private room, and planting myself at the window, waited impatiently
for Vincott's coming.
It must have been an hour afterwards that I saw him turn into the lane
from a passage almost opposite to where I stood. I expected him to
cross the road, but he cast not so much as a glance towards the inn,
and walked slowly past on the further side. I flung up the window,
thinking that he had forgotten his errand, and leaned out to call him.
But or ever I could speak he banged his stick angrily on the ground,
raised it with a quick jerk and pointed twice over his shoulder behind
him. The movement was full of significance, and I drew back into the
shadow of the curtain. Mr. Vincott mounted the steps of a house,
knocked at the door, and was admitted. No sooner had he entered than a
man stepped out from the passage. He was of a large, heavy build, and
yet, as I surmised from the litheness of his walk, very close-knit.
His face was swarthy and bronzed, and he wore ear-rings in his ears. I
should have taken him for an English sailor but that there was a
singular compactness in his bearing, and his gait was that of a man
perfectly balanced. For awhile he stood loitering at the entrance to
the passage, and then noticing the inn, crossed quickly over and
passed through the door beneath me.
My senses were now strained into activity, and I watched with a
quivering eagerness for the end of this strange game of hide-and-seek.
I had not long to wait. The little lawyer came down the steps, stopped
at the bottom, took a pinch of snuff with great deliberation, and
blowing his nose with unnecessary noise and vehemence, walked down the
street. He had nearly reached the end of it before his pursuer lounged
out of the inn and strolled in the same direction. The moment Vincott
turned the corner, however, he lengthened his stride; I saw him pause
at the last house and peep round the angle, draw back for a few
seconds, and then follow stealthily on the trail.
The incident reawakened all my perplexed conjectures as to the
business on which I was engaged. Why should the fact of my arrival in
the town be so studiously concealed? Or again, what reason could there
be for any one to suspect or fear it? The questions circled through my
mind in an endless repetition. There was but one man who could answer
them, and he lay helpless in his cell, adding to the torture of his
last hours the belief that his friend had played him false. The
thought stung me like Ino's gadfly. I paced up and down the room with
my eyes ever on the street for Vincott's return. My heart rose on each
sound of a nearing step, only to sink giddily with its dying
reverberation. The daylight fell, a fog rolled up from the river in
billows of white smoke, and still Vincott did not come. The very clock
by the chimney seemed to tick off the seconds faster and faster until
I began to fancy that the sounds would catch one another and run by in
one continuous note. At last I heard a quick pattering noise of feet
on the pavement below, and Vincott dashed up the stairs and burst into
the room.
"I have shaken the rascal off," he gasped, falling into a chair; "but
curse me if it's lawyer's work. We live too sedentary a life to go
dragging herrings across a scent with any profit to our bodies."
"Then we can go," said I, taking my hat. But he struck it from my
hands with his cane.
"And you!" he blazed out at me. "You must poke your stupid yellow head
out of the window as if you wanted all Bristol to notice it! Sit
down!"
"Mr. Vincott!" I exclaimed angrily.
"Mr. Buckler!" he returned, mimicking my tone, and pulling a grimace.
There was indeed no dignity about the man. "It may not have escaped
your perceptions that I have some desire to conceal your visit to this
town. Would it be too much to ask you to believe that there are
reasons for that desire?"
He spoke with a mocking politeness, and waited for me to answer him.
"I suppose there are," I replied; "but I am in the dark as to their
nature."
"The chief of them," said he, "is your own security."
"I will risk that," said I, stooping for my hat. "'Tis not worth the
suffering which it costs Julian."
"Dear, dear!" he gibed. "Tis strange that so much heart should tarry
so long. Let me see! It must be full eight days since Swasfield came
to you at Leyden." And he struck my hat once more out of my grasp.
"Mr. Vincott," said I--and my voice trembled as I spoke--"if you have
a mind to quarrel with me, I will endeavour to gratify you at a more
seasonable time. But I cannot wrangle over the body of my friend. I
came hither with all the speed that God vouchsafed me." And I informed
him of my journey, and the hindrances which had beset my path.
"Well, well," he said, when I had done, "I perceive that my thoughts
have done you some injustice. And, after all, I am not sure but what
your late coming is for the best. It has caused your friend no small
anxiety, I admit. But against that we may set a gain of greater
secrecy."
He picked up my hat from the floor, and placed it on the table.
"So," he continued, "you will pardon my roughness, but I have formed
some affection for Sir Julian. 'Tis an unbusinesslike quality, and I
trust to be well ashamed of it in a week's time. At the present,
however, it angered me against you." He held out his hand with a
genuine cordiality, and we made our peace.
"Now," said he, "the gist of the matter is this. It is all-essential
that you be not observed and marked as a visitor to Sir Julian.
Therefore 'twere best to wait until it is quite dark; and meanwhile we
must think of some disguise."
"A disguise?" I exclaimed.
"Yes," said he. "You must have noticed from that window that there are
others awake beside ourselves."
I stood silent for a moment, reluctantly considering a plan which
had just flashed into my head. Vincott drew a flint and steel from
his pocket, and lighted the candles--for the dusk was filling the
room--and drew the curtains close. All at once the dizzy faintness
which had come over me in the side-street near the Guildhall returned,
and set the room spinning about me. I clutched at a chair to save
myself from falling. Vincott snatched up a candle, and looked shrewdly
into my face.
"When did you dine?" he asked.
"At breakfast-time," said I.
He opened the door, and rang a bell which stood on a side-table.
"Lucy!" he bawled over the bannisters.
A great buxom wench with a cheery face answered the summons, and he
bade her cook what meats they had with all celerity.
"Meantime," said he, "we will while away the interval over a posset of
Bristol milk. You have never tasted that, Mr. Buckler? I would that I
could say the same. I envy you the pleasure of your first acquaintance
with its merit."
The "milk," as he termed it, was a strong brewage of Spanish wine,
singularly luxurious and palatable. Mr. Vincott held up his glass to
the light, and the liquid sparkled like a clear ruby.
"'Tis a generous drink," he said. "It gives nimbleness to the body,
wealth to the blood, and lightness to the heart. The true Promethean
fire!" And he drained the glass, and smacked his lips.
"That is a fine strapping wench," said I. "She must be of my height,
or thereabouts."
The lawyer cocked his head at me. "Ah!" said he drily, "a wonderful
thing is Bristol milk."
But I was thinking of something totally different.
The girl fetched in a stew of beef, steaming hot, and we sat down to
it, though indeed I had little inclination for the meal.
"Now, Mr. Vincott," said I, "I will pray you, while we are eating, to
help me to the history of Julian's calamities." I think that my voice
broke somewhat on the word, for he laid his hand gently upon my arm.
"I know nothing of it myself beyond what you have told me, and a
rumour that came to me in London."
The lawyer sat silent for a time, drumming with his fingers on the
table.
"Your story," I urged, "will save much valuable time when I visit
Julian."
"I was thinking," he replied, "how much I should tell you. You see,
merely the facts are known to me. Of what lies underneath them--I mean
the motives and passions which have ordered their sequence--I may have
surmised something" (here his eyes twinkled cunningly), "but I have no
certitude. That part of the business concerns you, not me. 'Twere
best, then, that I show you no more than the plain face of the
matter."
He pushed away his plate, leaned both arms upon the table, and, with a
certain wariness in his manner, told me the following tale:
"In the spring of the year, Miss Enid Marston fell sick at Court. The
air of St. James's is hardly the best tonic for invalids, and she came
with her uncle and guardian to the family house at Bristol to recruit.
Sir Julian Harnwood must, of course, follow her; and, in order that he
may enjoy her company without encroaching upon her hospitality, he
hires him a house in the suburbs, upon Brandon Hill. One night, during
the second week of August, came two fugitives from Sedgemoor to his
door. Sir Julian had some knowledge of the men, and the story of their
sufferings so worked upon his pity that he promised to shelter them
until such time as he could discover means of conveying them out of
the country. To that end he hid them in one of his cellars, brought
their food with his own hands, and generally used such precautions as
he thought must avert suspicion. But on the morning of the 10th
September he was arrested, his house searched, and the rebels
discovered. The rest you know. Sir Julian was tried this afternoon
with the two fugitives, and pays the penalty to-morrow. 'Tis the only
result that could have been looked for. His best friends despaired
from the outset--even Miss Marston."
"I had not thought of her," I broke in. "Poor girl!"
"Poor girl!" he repeated, gazing intently at the ceiling. "She was
indeed so put back in her health, that her physician advised her
instant removal to a less afflicting neighbourhood."
As he ended, he glanced sideways at me from under half-closed lids;
but I chanced to be watching him, and our eyes crossed. It seemed to
me that he coloured slightly, and sent his gaze travelling idly about
the room, anywhere, in short, but in my direction, the while he hummed
the refrain of a song.
"You mean she has deserted Julian?" I exclaimed.
"I have no recollection that I suggested that, or indeed anything
whatsoever," he returned blandly. "As I mentioned to you before, I
merely relate the facts."
"There is one fact," said I, after a moment's thought, "on which you
have not touched."
"There are two," he replied; "but specify if you please. I will
satisfy you to the limit of my powers."
"The part which I shall play in this business."
He wagged his head sorrowfully at me.
"I perceive," says he, "with great regret that they teach you no logic
at the University of Leyden. You are speaking, not of a fact, but of
an hypothesis. The part which you will play, indeed! You ask me to
read the future, and I am not qualified for the task."
It became plain to me that I should win no profit out of my
questioning; there could be but one result to a quibbling match with
an attorney; so I bade him roughly tell me what he would.
"There are two facts," he resumed, "which are perhaps of interest. But
I would premise that they are in no way connected. I would have you
bear that in mind, Mr. Buckler. The first is this: it has never been
disclosed whence the information came which led to the discovery of
the fugitives. Sir Julian, as I told you, used great precautions. His
loyalty, moreover, had never been suspected up till then."
"From his servants, most like," I interposed.
"Most like!" he sneered. "The remark does scanty credit to your
perspicacity, and hardly flatters me. I examined them with some care,
and satisfied myself on the score of their devotion to their master.
'Tis doubtful even whether they were aware of Sir Julian's folly. 'Tis
most certain that they never betrayed him. Besides, my lord Jeffries
rated them all most unmercifully this afternoon. He would not have
done that had they helped the prosecution. No, the secret must have
leaked out if the information had come from them."
"And you could gather no clue?"
"Say, rather, that I did gather no clue. For my client forbad me to
pursue my inquiries. 'Tis strange that, eh? 'Tis passing strange. It
points, I think, beyond the servants."
"Then Julian himself must know," I cried.
"Tis a simple thought," said he. "If you will pardon the hint, you
discover what is obvious with a singular freshness."
I understood that I had brought the rejoinder upon myself by my
interruption, and so digested it in silence.
"The second point," he continued, "is interesting as a----" he made
the slightest possible pause--"a coincidence. Sir Julian Harnwood was
arrested at six o'clock in the morning, not in his house, but
something like a mile away, on the King's down. 'Tis a quaint fancy
for a gentleman to take it into his head to stroll about the King's
down in the rain at six o'clock of the morning; almost as quaint as
for an officer to go thither at that hour to search for him."
An idea sprang through my mind, and was up to the tip of my tongue.
But I remembered the fate of my previous suggestions, and checked it
on the verge of utterance.
"You were about to proffer a remark," said Mr. Vincott very politely.
"No!" said I, in a tone of indifference, and he smiled.
Then his manner changed, and he began to speak quickly, rapping with
his fist upon the table as though to drive home his words.
"The truth of the matter is, Mr. Buckler, Sir Julian went out that
morning to fight a duel, and his antagonist was Count Lukstein, who
came over to England six months ago in the train of the Emperor
Leopold's ambassador. Ah! you know him!"
"No!" I replied. "I know of him from Julian."
"They were friends, it appears."
"Julian made the Count's acquaintance some while ago in Paris, and
has, I believe, visited his home in the Tyrol."
"However that may be, they quarrelled in Bristol. Count Lukstein came
down from London to take the waters at the Hotwell, by St. Vincent's
rock, and has resided there for the last three months. 'Twas a
trumpery dispute, but nought would content Sir Julian but that they
must settle it with swords. He was on the way to the trysting-place
when he was taken."
And with a final rap on the table, Mr. Vincott leaned back in his
chair, and froze again to a cold deliberation.
"That," said he, "is the second fact I have to bring to your notice."
"And the first," I cried, pressing the point on him, "the first is
that no one knows who gave the information!"
"I observed, I believe," he replied, returning my gaze with a mild
rebuke, "that between those two facts there is no connection."
At the time it seemed to me that he was bent on fobbing me off. But I
have since thought that he was answering after his fashion the
innuendo which my words wrapped up. He took out his snuff-box as he
spoke, and inhaled a great pinch. The action suddenly recalled to me
the man[oe]uvres which I had watched from the window.
"It was a foreigner," I said, starting up in my excitement, "it was a
foreigner who dogged your steps this afternoon."
"I like the ornaments of the ceiling," says he (for thither had his
eyes returned); and, as though he were continuing the sentence: "I may
tell you, Mr. Buckler, that Count Lukstein left Bristol eleven days
ago."
"Did he take his servants with him?" I asked; and then, a new thought
striking me: "Eleven days ago! That is, Mr. Vincott, the day after
Julian's arrest."
"Mr. Buckler," says he, "you appear to me to lack discretion."
"I only re-state your facts," I answered, with some heat.
"The facts themselves are perhaps a trifle indiscreet," he admitted.
"I shall certainly have that ceiling copied in my own house." And with
that he rose from his chair. "'Tis close on eight by the clock, and we
must hit upon some disguise. But, Lord! how it is to be contrived with
that canary poll of yours I know not, unless you shave your head and
wear my peruke."
"I have a better device than that," said I.
"Well, man, out with it!"
For I spoke with hesitation, fearing his irony.
"You can trust the people of the inn?"
He nodded his head.
"Else I should not have sent you hither. They are bound to me in
gratitude. I saved them last year from some pother with the Excise."
"And Lucy--what of her?"
"She is the landlord's daughter."
Thus assured, I delivered to him my plan--that I would mask my person
beneath one of Lucy's gowns.
Vincott leapt at the notion, "'Od rabbit me!" he cried, "I misliked
your face at first, but I begin to love it dearly now. For I see 'twas
given you for some purpose."
Once more he summoned Lucy, invented some story of a jest to be
played, and bound her to the straitest secrecy. She gained no inkling
from him, you may be sure, of the business which we had in hand. I
stripped off my coat, and with much lacing and compressing, much
exercise of vigour on Vincott's part, much panting on mine, and more
roguish giggling upon Lucy's, I was at last squeezed into the girl's
Sunday frock. It had a yellow bodice bedecked with red ribbons, and a
red canvas skirt.
"But, la!" she exclaimed, "your feet! Sure you must have a long cloak
to hide them." And she whipped out of the room and fetched one. My
feet did indeed but poorly match the dress, which descended no lower
than my ankles.
By good fortune the cloak had a hood attached, which could be drawn
well forward, and blurred my features in its shadow.
"So!" said I. "I am ready." And I strode quickly to the door. For
Lucy's glee and my masquerading weighed with equal heaviness upon me.
I was full-charged with sorrow for the coming interview. The old days
in Cumberland lived and beat within my heart; the old dreams of a
linked future voiced themselves again with a very bitter irony. 'Twas
the last time my eyes were to be gladdened with the sight of my loved
friend and playmate. I looked upon this visit as the sacred visit to a
death-bed; nay, as something yet more sad than that, for Julian lay
a-dying in the very bloom of health and youth, and the grotesque guise
in which I went forth to him seemed to mock and flout the solemnity of
the occasion.
"Stop, lad!" said Vincott. "You must never walk like that. Your first
step would betray you. Watch me!"
With a peacock air, which at another time would have appeared to me
inimitably ludicrous, the little attorney minced across the room on
the tips of his toes. Lucy leaned against the wall holding her sides,
and fairly screamed with delight.
"What ails you, lass?" said he very sternly.
"La, Mr. Vincott," she gulped out between bubbles of laughter, "I
think you have but few honest women among your clients."
Mr. Vincott rebuked her at some length for her sauciness, and would
have prolonged his lecture yet further, but that my impatience
mastered me and I haled him from the room. The girl let us out by a
small door which gave on to an alley at the back of the house. The
night was pitch-dark, and the streets deserted; not even a lamp swung
from a porch.
"Stay here for a moment," whispered Vincott. "I will move ahead and
reconnoitre."
His feet echoed on the cobbles with a strange lonely sound. In a
minute or so a low whistle reached my ears, and I followed him.
"All's clear," he said. "I little thought the time would ever come
when I should bless his late Majesty King Charles for forbidding the
citizens of Bristol to light their streets."
We stepped quickly forward, threading the quiet roads as noiselessly
as we could, until Vincott stopped before a large building. Lights
streamed from the windows, piercing the mirk of the night with
brownish rays, and a dull muffled clamour rang through the gateway.
"The Bridewell," whispered Vincott. "Keep your face well shrouded, and
for God's sake hide your feet!"
He drew a long breath. I did the same, and we crossed the road and
passed beneath the arch.
CHAPTER IV.
SIR JULIAN HARNWOOD.
Mr. Vincott knocked at the great door within the arch, and we were
presently admitted and handed over to the guidance of a gaoler.
The fellow led us across a courtyard and into a long room clouded and
heavy with the smoke of tobacco.
"Keep the hood close!" whispered my companion a second time.
I muffled my face and bent my head towards the ground. For a noisy
clamour of drunken songs and coarse merriment, and, mingled with that,
a ceaseless rattle of drinking-cans, rose about me on all sides. It
seemed that the Bridewell kept open house that night.
We traversed the room, picking out a path among the captives, for even
the floor was littered with men in all imaginable attitudes, some
playing cards, some asleep, and most of them drunk. My presence served
to redouble the uproar, and each moment I feared that my disguise
would be detected. I felt that every eye in the room was centred upon
my hood. One fellow, indeed, that sat talking to himself upon a bench,
got unsteadily to his feet and reeled towards us. But or ever he came
near, the gaoler cut him across the shoulders with his stick and sent
him back howling and cursing.
"Back to your kennel!" he shouted. "'Tis an uncommon wench that would
visit the lousy likes o' you."
At the far end of the room he unlocked a door which opened on to a
narrow flight of stairs. On the landing above he halted before a
second door of a more solid make, the panels being strengthened by
cross-beams, and secured with iron bars and a massive lock. The gaoler
unfastened it and threw it open.
"You have half an hour, mistress," he said, civilly enough. A startled
cry of pain broke from the inside, I heard a sharp clink of fetters,
and Julian confronted me through the doorway, his eyes ablaze with
passion, and every limb strained and quivering.
"What more? What more, madam?" he asked, in a hoarse, trembling voice.
"Are you not satisfied?"
He stopped suddenly with a gasping intake of the breath, and let his
head roll forward on his breast like a fainting man. Vincott pushed me
gently within the room, and I heard the door clang behind me. For a
moment I could not speak. The tears rose in my throat and drowned the
words. Julian was the first to recover his composure.
"I crave your pardon," he said, and his voice sounded in my ears with
a sad familiarity like the echo of our boyhood. "I mistook you for
another." And he sat down on a bench and covered his face with his
hands.
"Julian!" I said, finding at length my voice, and I held out my hands
to him. He uncovered his face and stared at me in sheer incredulity.
Then with a cry of joy he sprang forwards, stumbling pitifully from
the hindrance of his fetters.
"Morrice at last!" He lifted his hands and clapped them down into
mine, and the quick movement jerked the chain between his handlocks so
that it fell cold across my wrists. So we stood silent, memory
speeding to and fro between our eyes and telling the same wistful tale
within the heart of each of us. But in that brumous cell, lit only by
a smoky lamp which served rather to deepen the shadows of the space
which it left obscure than to illumine the circle immediately about
it, such thoughts could not beguile one long; and a strange,
unaccountable fear began to creep up in my mind like a mist. It seemed
to me that the chain pressed ever tighter and tighter about my wrists,
and grew cold like a ring of ice. The chill of it slipped into the
marrow of my bones. I came almost to believe that I myself was
manacled, and with that I felt once again that premonition of evil
drawing near, which had numbed my spirit in the grey dawn at London.
Now, however, the warning came to me with a clearer and more
particular message. I had a penetrating conviction that this cell
prefigured some scene in the years to come wherein I should fill the
place of Julian; and, seeing him, I saw a dim image of myself as when
a man looks into a clouded mirror. So thoroughly, indeed, did the
fancy master me that I too became, as it were, the shadow and reflex
of another, a mere counter and symbol representing one as yet unknown
to me.
"I thought you would never come," said my friend, and I woke out of my
trance.
"I started at once from Leyden," I replied; but Julian cut short my
explanation.
"I am sure of it. I never doubted you. We have but half an hour, and I
have much to tell."
He turned away and flung himself down on the bench, which was broad
and had a rail at the back, such as you may see outside a village
alehouse.
"Vincott has told you the history of my arrest?"
"Yes!" said I. The lamp stood upon a stool beside the bench, and I
lifted it up and placed it on a rough bracket which was fixed to the
wall above. The light fell full upon his face, which had grown
extraordinary thin, with the skin very bloodless and tight about his
jaws, so that the bones looked to have sharpened. Only around his eyes
was there any colour, and that of a heavy purple. I sat down upon the
stool, and Julian gave something like a sigh of content.
"I am glad you have come, Morrice," he said. "It has tired me so,
waiting for you."
He closed his eyes wearily, and appeared to be falling asleep. I
touched him on the shoulder, and he sprang to his feet like one dazed,
brushing against the bracket and making the flame of the lamp spirt up
with a sudden flare. Once or twice he walked to and fro in the room,
as though ordering his speech.
"Here is the kernel of the matter," said he at last, coming back to
the bench. "I was arrested to serve no ends of justice, but the vilest
treachery and cowardice that man ever heard of. The tale, in truth,
seems well-nigh inconceivable. Even I, who have sounding evidence of
its truth," and he kicked one of his feet, so that the links of the
fetters rattled on the floor, "even I find it hard to believe that
'tis more than a monstrous fable. The man called himself my friend."
"It was Count Lukstein, then?"
"How did you find out that? Vincott could not have told you."
"He did not tell me, but yet he gave me to know it."
"Yes, it was Count Lukstein. He laid the information to spare himself
a duel and to get rid of--well, of an obstacle. I meant to kill him. I
should have killed him, and he knew it. The duel was arranged secretly
on the afternoon of Saturday, the ninth; the spot chosen--a dip in the
hill, solitary and unfrequented even at midday, for the descent is
steep--and the time six o'clock on the Sunday morning. And yet
there I was taken, on the very ground, at six o'clock on a Sunday
morning--raining, too!"
"There seems little doubt."
"There is no doubt. 'Twas his life or mine. The dispute was the mere
pretext and occasion of the duel."
"So I understood."
I was beginning to understand, besides, that the facts which Mr.
Vincott had intended to impart to me were somewhat more numerous than
he thought fit to admit.
"The cause--but I can't speak of that. In any case, 'twas his life or
mine, and he knew it, so deemed it prudent to take mine, since he had
the power, without risking his own."
"But," I objected, "could you trust your seconds? They knew the time,
the place----"
"But they did not know I was sheltering Monmouth's fugitives. Lukstein
knew it."
"You told him?"
"No!"
He stopped abruptly, and his eyes fell from my face to the ground. And
then he said, in a very sad and quiet voice:
"But I have none the less sure proof he knew."
He sat silent with bowed head, labouring his breath, and his hands
lying clasped together upon his knees. I noticed that the tips of his
fingers were pressed tight into the backs of his palms, so that the
flesh about them looked dead.
I leaned forward and took him gently by the arm.
"You must deliver me that proof, Julian," said I. For I began to have
a pretty sure inkling of the service he had it in his mind to require
of me.
He shifted his eyes to my face and then back again to the floor.
"I know, I know," he replied unsteadily. "I disclosed my secret to but
one person in the world." And as I held my peace wondering, he flashed
on me a tortured face. "Don't force me to give the name!" he cried.
"Think! Think, Morrice! Who should I have told? Who should I have
told?"
The words seemed wrung from his soul. I understood what that first
outburst meant when the gaoler had bidden me enter, and my gorge rose
against this woman who could make such foul sport of her lover's
trust. He read my thought in my face, and though he might upbraid his
mistress himself, he would not suffer me to do the same.
"You must not blame her," he said earnestly, laying a hand upon my
knee. "Blame me! Blame us who wantoned the days away at Whitehall, and
cloyed the very air with our flatteries. You chose the right part,
Morrice, a man's part--work. As for us," he resumed his restless walk
about the chamber, beating one clenched fist into the palm of the
other, "as for us, a new fashion, a new dance, were our studies,
cajoling women our work. The divine laws were sneered at, trampled
down. They were meet for the ragged who had nought but hope in the
next world to comfort them for their humiliation in this. But we--we
who had silk to wear and money to spend, we needed a different creed.
Sin was our God, and we worshipped and honoured it openly. When I
think of it I, a Catholic, can find it in my heart to wish that
Monmouth's cause had won. No, Morrice, you must not blame her. The
fault is ours, and I am rightly punished for my share in it. Constancy
was a burgess virtue, fit for a tradesman. We despised it in
ourselves; what right had we to expect it in the women we surrounded?"
He checked his vehement flow abruptly, and came and stood over me.
"And yet, Morrice," he said, with a smile that was infinitely tender
and sad, "and yet I loved her, with a sweet purity in the love, and a
humble thankfulness for the knowledge of it, loved her as any country
bumpkin might love the girl who rakes a furrow at his side."
"And in return," I said bitterly, "she betrayed you to Count
Lukstein?"
He nodded "yes," and sat down again on his bench.
"Why?"
"Long before the duel. She had no suspicion of the consequences of her
words," he said hastily. "She had no hand in this plot."
"Why?" I repeated.
He looked at me, imploring mercy.
"I understand," said I.
"Ah, no!" he said quickly; "your suspicions outstrip the truth. I
think so," and again with a curiously pleading voice, "I think so. The
man purred more softly than the rest, and so she----"
He broke off in the middle of the sentence and began anew.
"I must lay the whole truth bare, I see that. Only the shame of it
cuts into me like a knife."
He paused, and great beads of sweat broke out upon his forehead.
"I have told you that my dispute with Lukstein was no more than the
pretext of our quarrel. She was the cause. How long their acquaintance
had lasted I know not, or to what length of intimacy it had gone.
Lukstein was as secret as a cat, and he taught her his duplicity.
'Twas I, myself, presented him to her formally when he came first to
the Hotwell, but I think now the pair had met before in London. 'Twere
too long to describe how my fears were aroused--an exchange of glances
noted here, a letter in his hand dropped from a sachet there, a
certain guarded hesitation she evinced when Lukstein and I were both
with her, a word carelessly dropped showing knowledge of his
movements; all trifles in themselves, but summed together a very
weighty argument. So on the morning of the ninth, worn out with
disquiet, I resolved to bring the matter to an issue, and I rode over
to St. Vincent's rock. Lukstein was seated at an escritoire as I
entered the room. I saw his face blanch and his hand fly to an open
drawer, close, and lock it. He rose to greet me, and drew me to the
window, which pleased me the more for that a bell stood upon the
escritoire. I got between him and the bell and taxed him with his
treachery. He denied it, larding me with friendly protestations. I
backed to the escritoire and repeated the charge. He laughed at me for
my unmanly lack of faith. With a sudden wrench I tore open the locked
drawer. He bounded towards the bell; my sword was at his breast, and
we stood watching one another while I rummaged with my left hand in
the drawer.
"'You shall pay for this,' says he, very softly.
"'One of us will pay,' says I.
"'Yes, you! You!' and he smiled, with his lips drawn back so that I
saw the gums of his teeth on both jaws. If only I had known what he
meant! I had him there at my sword's point. I had but to lean forward
on my arm!
"'Get back to the window!' I ordered, and he obeyed me with an
affected jauntiness. Out of the drawer I drew a small gold box of an
oval shape. I had given it but a fortnight agone to--to----you will
understand; and it contained my miniature. The box fastened with a lock,
and I forgot to ask him for the key. He has it still. There were letters
besides in the drawer, and I made him burn them before my eyes. Then I
took my leave, and sent my seconds."
"Are you sure the box was the same?" I asked, when he had done. He
slipped his hand into his pocket, and brought it out and placed it in
my hand. His coat of arms was emblazoned on the cover.
"Keep it!" he said. I tried the lid, but the box was locked.
"Until I recover the key," I answered, and we clasped hands.
"Thank you!" he said simply. "Thank you!"
The smell of the Cumberland gorse was in my nostrils, my friend lay
before me traitorously fettered, and this poor, belated adjustment of
his wrong seemed the very right and fitting function of the love I
bore for him. There was, however, still one point on which I still
felt need to be assured.
For I knew the timidity of my nature, and I was minded to leave no
fissure in this wall of evidence through which after-doubts might leak
to sap my resolution.
"And the proof?" I asked. "The proof that she informed Count
Lukstein."
"She confessed that to me herself. She came to me here on the evening
of the day that I was taken."
I placed the gold box in the fob of my waistcoat, and as I did so I
felt a book. I drew it out, wondering what it might be. 'Twas the
small copy of Horace which I had thrust there unwittingly when I
waited for the doctor's report at Leyden. I held it in my hands and
turned over the pages idly.
"Count Lukstein has left Bristol," I said.
"Ay; he got little good out of his treachery beyond the saving of
his carcase. But he left his servant here--Otto Krax. That is why I
bade you come disguised. He knew I could not make the matter public
for--for her sake. But I suppose that he feared I might reveal it to
some friend if the trial went against me, entrust to him the just work
I am forced to leave undone. Perchance he had some hint of Swasfield's
departure; I know not. This only I know: Krax has been at Vincott's
heels, keeping close watch on all who passed in with him to me; and
should he find out that you had come from Holland in this great haste,
it might prove an ill day's work for you, and, in any case, Lukstein
would be forewarned."
"He lives in the Tyrol?"
"At Schloss Lukstein, six miles to the east of Glurns, in the valley
of the Adige. But, Morrice, he is master there. The spot is remote,
there's no one to gainsay him. You must needs be careful. He hath no
love for honest dealing, and you had best take him privately."
He spoke with so sombre a warning in his tone that the shadows
appeared to darken about the room.
"He is cunning," Julian went on; "you must match him in cunning. Nay,
over-match him, for he has power as well."
"You have visited this castle?"
"Yes. 'Tis built in two wings which run from east to west, and north
to south, and form a right angle at the north-east corner. At the
extreme end of the latter wing there is a tower; a window opens on to
the terrace from a small room in this tower. There are but two doors
in the room; that on the left gives on to a passage which leads to the
main hall. The servants sleep on the far side of the hall. The other
door opens on to a narrow stairway which mounts to the Count's
bedroom. 'Tis his habit of a night to sit in this small room."
"I understand. And the entrance to this terrace?"
"That is the danger, for the place is built upon a rock sheer and
precipitous. However, there is one spot where the ascent may be
contrived. I discovered the way by chance. The climb is hazardous, yet
not more so than some that we attacked out of mere sport on Scafell
crags. Ah, me! Morrice, those were the best days of my life. I wonder
whether 'twill be the same with you!"
Something like a shiver ran through me, but before I could answer him
the key grated in the lock and the door was flung open. I turned, and
saw in the shadow of the entrance the sombre figure of a priest. He
was tall, and the cassock which robed him in black from head to foot
made him show yet taller. In his hand he held a gleaming crucifix. He
raised it above his head as he crossed the threshold, and in the
twilight of the room it shone like a silver flame.
Julian sprang from his bench; his shoulder caught the bracket, the
lamp rocked once or twice, and then crashed to the ground. In the
darkness no one spoke; the rustle of our breathing was marked like the
ticking of a clock.
After a while the gaoler fetched in a taper. Julian looked at me in
some embarrassment The priest waited patiently by the door, and it was
impossible for us to renew our discourse. In rising, however, I had
let fall the Horace on to the floor, and the book lay open at my feet.
Julian caught sight of it, and a plan occurred to him. He fumbled in
his pocket for a pencil, picked the volume up, and drew a rapid sketch
upon the open page.
"That will make all clear," he remarked.
I took the book from him, and we clasped hands for the last time.
"At this hour to-morrow?" he said, with a little catch in his voice. I
was still holding his hand. I could feel the blood beating in his
fingers. At this hour to-morrow! It seemed incredible. "Morrice!" he
cried, clinging to me, and his voice was the voice of a child crying
out in the black of the night. In a moment he recovered his calm, and
dropped my hand. I made my reverence to the priest, and the door
clanged to between us.
Vincott was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, and we hurried
silently to the gates. The porter came forward to let us out, but I
noticed that he fumbled with his keys which he carried upon an iron
ring. He tried first one and then another in the lock, as though he
knew not which fitted it. His ignorance struck me as strange until
Vincott pulled me by the sleeve.
"Turn your back to the hutch," he whispered suddenly. Instinct made me
face it instead, and I perceived, gazing curiously into my face, the
very man who had tracked Vincott in the afternoon: Otto Krax, as I now
knew him to be, Count Lukstein's servant. So startled was I by the
unexpected sight of him that I let the volume of Horace fall from my
fingers to the ground. On the instant he ran forward and picked it up.
I snatched it from his hand before he could do more than glance at its
cover, whereupon he made me a polite bow and returned to the
embrasure. At last the porter succeeded in opening the door, and we
got us into the street. Vincott was for upbraiding me at first in that
I followed not his directions, but I cut him short roughly, and bade
him hold his peace. For the world seemed very strange and empty, and I
had no heart for talking. So we walked in silence back towards the
inn.
Of a sudden, however, Vincott stopped.
"Listen!" he whispered.
I strained my ears until they ached. Behind us, in the quiet of the
night, I could hear footsteps creeping and stealthy, not very far
away. Vincott drew me into an angle of the wall, and we waited there
holding our breaths. The footsteps slid nearer and nearer. Never since
have I heard a sound which so filled me with terror. The haunting
secrecy of their approach had something in it which chilled the
blood--the sound of a man on the trail. He passed no more than six
feet from where we stood. It was Otto Krax; and we remained until we
could hear him no more. Vincott wiped his forehead.
"If he had stopped in front of us," I said, "I should have cried out."
"And by the Lord," said he, "I should have done no less."
A hundred yards further on, Vincott stopped again.
"He has found out his mistake," he exclaimed in a low, quavering
voice.
We listened again; the footsteps were returning swiftly, but with the
same quiet stealth.
"Quick!" said Vincott, "against the wall!"
"No," said I, "he is tracking along the side of it. Let us face and
pass him."
We walked on at a good pace, and made no effort at concealment. The
man stopped as soon as we had gone by, turned, and came after us. My
heart raced in my breast. He quickened his pace and drew level.
"Tis a strange time for women to run these streets." He spoke with a
guttural accent, and his face leered over my shoulder. In a passion of
fear I swung my arm free from the cloak, and hit at the face with all
my strength. The dress I was wearing ripped at the shoulder as though
you had torn a sheet of brown paper. My blow by good fortune caught
him in the neck at the point where the jaw curves up into the cheek,
and he fell heavily to the ground, his head striking full upon a
rounded cobble. I waited to see no more, but tucked up my skirts and
ran as though the fiend were at my heels, with Vincott panting behind
me. We never halted until we had reached the alley which led to the
back-door of the inn.
I invited Vincott to come in with me and recruit his energies with a
second dose of Bristol milk.
"No! no!" he returned. "'Tis late already, and you have to start
betimes in the morning."
"There is the ceiling," I suggested.
He laughed softly.
"Mr. Buckler, I exaggerated its beauties," he said, "and I fear me if
I went in with you I should be forced to repeat my error. It is just
that which I wish to avoid."
"There are other and indifferent topics," I replied, "on which we
might speak frankly." For a change had come over my spirit, and I
dreaded to be left alone. Vincott shook his head.
"We should not find our tongues would talk of them."
However, he made no motion of departure, but stood scraping a toe
between the stones. Then I heard him chuckle to himself.
"That was a good blow, my friend," he said; "a good, clean blow, pat
on the angle of the jaw. I would never have credited you with the
strength for it. The man has been a plaguy nuisance to me, and the
blow was a very soothing compensation. Only conduct your undertaking
with the like energy throughout, and I do believe----" He pulled
himself up suddenly.
"What do you believe?" I asked.
"I believe," he replied sententiously, "that Lucy will need a new
Sunday gown;" and he turned on his heel and marched out of the alley.
The next morning came a foreigner to the inn, and made inquiry
concerning a woman who had stayed there over-night. Lucy, faithful to
her promise, stoutly declared that no woman had rested in the house
for so little as an hour, and, not content with that asseveration, she
must needs go on to enforce her point by assuring him that the inn had
given shelter to but one traveller, and that traveller a man. But the
traveller by this time was well upon his way to London, and so learnt
nothing of the inquiry until long afterwards.
CHAPTER V.
I JOURNEY TO THE TYROL AND HAVE SOME
DISCOURSE WITH COUNT LUKSTEIN.
Dew jewelling the grasses in the fields, the chatter of birds among
the trees, a sparkling freshness in the air, and before me the road,
running white into the gold of the rising sun. But behind! On the top
of St. Michael's hill, outlined black against the pearly western sky,
rose the gaunt cross-trees of the gallows. 'Twas the last glimpse I
had of Bristol, and I lingered as one horribly fascinated until the
picture was embedded in my heart.
In London I tarried but so long as sufficed for me to repair the
deficiencies of my dress, since my very linen was now become unsightly
and foul, and, riding to Gravesend, took ship for Rotterdam.
I had determined to join Larke with me in my undertaking, for I
bethought me of his craving for strange paths and adventures, and
hoped to discover in him a readiness of wit which would counteract my
own scrupulous hesitancy. For this I implicitly believed: that it was
not so much the wariness that Julian bespoke which would procure
success, as the instinct of opportunity, the power, I mean, at once to
grasp the fitting occasion when it presented, and to predispose one's
movements in the way best calculated to bring about its presentment.
In this quality I knew myself to be deficient. 'Twas ever my
misfortune to confuse the by-ways with the high-road. I would waste
the vital moment in deliberation as to which was shortest, and alas!
the path I chose in the end more often than not turned out to be a
_cul-de-sac_.
In the particular business in which I was engaged such overweening
prudence would be like to nullify my purpose, and further, destroy
both Jack and myself. For beyond a description of Count Lukstein's
person which I had from Julian some while ago, I knew nothing but what
he had told me in the prison; and that knowledge was too scanty to
serve as the foundation for even the flimsiest plan. The region, the
Castle, the aggregate of servants, and their manner of life--it
behoved me to have certain information on all these particulars were I
to prearrange a mode of attack. As things were, I must needs lie in
ambush for chance, and seize it with all speed when it passed our way.
At Leyden I found Jack, very glum and melancholy, poring over a folio
of Shakespeare. 'Twas the single author whom he favoured, and he read
his works with perpetual interest and delight. "This is the book of
deeds," he would say, smacking a fist upon the cover. "There is but
one bad play in it, and that is the tragedy of _Hamlet_. The good
Prince is too speculative a personage."
"You reached Bristol in time?" he asked, springing up as I entered the
room.
"In time; but not a moment too soon," I replied, and sat mum.
"Then Sir Julian Harnwood is safe?"
"No! There was never a hope of that."
The old smile, half amusement, half contempt, flashed upon his lips;
the old envy looked out from his eyes. I, of course, had bungled where
a man of vigour might have accomplished.
"It was not for that end that he sent for me," I hastened to add, and
then I stuck. I had determined to relate to Jack forthwith the story
of my mission, and to engage his assistance, but the actual sight of
him overturned my intentions. I felt tongue-tied; I dared not tell him
lest my resolution should trickle away in the telling; for I read upon
his face his poor estimation of my powers, and I dreaded the ridicule
of his comments upon my unfitness for the task to which I had set my
hand. I had sufficient doubts of my own upon that score. Indeed, since
I had entered the room, they had buzzed about me importunate as a
cloud of gnats; for Larke had never been sparing of his homilies upon
my incapacity. I think every article I possessed, at one time or
another, had been twisted into a text for them; and now they all came
flocking back to me, as my eyes ranged over the familiar objects they
had been based upon. They seemed, in truth, to saturate the very air.
Hence, I confided to Larke no more than the fact of our journey into
the Tyrol; its reason and purpose I kept secret to myself. And to this
self-distrust, trivial matter though it was, I owed my subsequent
misfortunes. It was the first link in the chain of disaster, and I
forged it myself unwittingly.
"Jack," said I, "you were ever fond of adventures. One lies at your
door."
"Of what kind?" he asked.
"A journey into the Tyrol."
"For what purpose?"
"I cannot tell you. You must trust me if you come."
He looked at me doubtfully.
"Your life will be risked," I urged; "I can gratify you so far."
He closed the Shakespeare with a bang.
"When do we start?"
"As soon as ever we are prepared. To-morrow."
"'Twere a pity to waste a day."
I assured him that so far from wasting it, we should have much ado to
get off even the next morning. For there were a couple of stout horses
to be purchased, besides numberless other arrangements to be made. The
horses we bought of a dealer in the Rapenburg, and then, enlisting the
fencing-master to aid us, we sought the shop of an armourer in the
Hout-Straat. From him we bought a long sword and a brace of pistols
each, whereupon Larke declared that we were equipped cap-a-pie, and
loudly protested against further hindrance. I insisted, however, in
adding a pair of long cloaks of a heavier cloth than any we possessed,
and divers other warm garments. For we were now in the last days of
September, and I knew that winter comes apace in upland countries like
the Tyrol. Then there were maps to be procured, and a route to be
pricked out, so that it was late in the evening before we had
completed our preparations.
Meanwhile I inquired of Larke how it had fared with Swasfield. It
appeared that it was not until some hours after I had ridden off that
the man regained his senses, and then he was still too weak to amplify
his tidings; in fact, he had only recovered sufficiently to depart
from Leyden two days before I returned. Doubtless to some extent his
convalescence was retarded by grief for that he had not fulfilled his
errand. For he was ever lamenting the omission of his message, and
more particularly of that portion which referred to the road between
Bristol and London. For swift horses had been stabled at intervals of
fifteen miles along the whole stretch, and in order to make sure that
no one but myself should have the profit of them, as Swasfield said,
or rather, as I think, in order that my name might not transpire if
Count Lukstein's spies were watching the road and became suspicious at
this posting of relays, it was arranged that they should be delivered
only to the man who passed the word "Wastwater," that being the name
of the lake in Cumberland on which my lands abutted.
Of our journey into the Tyrol I have but faint recollections. We set
off the next morning with no more impediments than we could carry in
valises fixed upon our saddles. Even Udal, my body-servant, I left
behind, for he had neither liking nor aptitude for foreign tongues, a
few scraps of French and a meagre knowledge of Dutch forced on him by
his residence in the country, being all that he possessed. He would,
therefore, have only hindered our progress, and, besides, I had no
great faith in his discretion. I was minded, accordingly, to secure
some foreigner in Strasbourg who would think we were engaged upon a
tour of pleasure; which I did, and dismissed him at Innspruck.
For the rest I rode with little attention or regard for the provinces
through which we passed. The very cities wherein we slept seemed the
cities of a dream, so that now I am like one who strives to piece
together memories of a journey taken in early childhood. An alley of
trees recurs to me, the shine of stars in a midnight sky, or, again,
the comfortable figure of a Boniface; but the images are confused and
void of suggestion, for I rode eyes shut and hands clenched, as a
coward rides in the press of battle.
At times, indeed, when we halted, I would turn industriously to my
Horace. The book had fallen open at the Palinodia when I dropped it in
the prison, so that Julian's sketch was on the page opposite to the
date September 14. I append here the diagram which was to enable me to
find an entrance into the Castle, and it will be seen that I had much
excuse for studying it. In truth, I could make neither head nor tail
of its signification.
[Illustration: Outline of Lukstein Castle]
'Twas ever this outline of Lukstein Castle that I pondered, though
Jack knew it not, and when he beheld the book in my hands would gaze
at me with a troubled look of distrust. On the instant I would fall
miserably to taking count of myself. "Here are you," I would object to
myself, "a bookish student of a mean stature and a dilatory mind. You
have faced no weapon more deadly than a buttoned foil, and you would
compel a man of great strength and indubitable cunning to a mortal
encounter in the privacy of his own house, that is, supposing you are
not previously done to death by his serfs, which is most like to
happen." Then would my courage, a very ricketty bantling, make weak
protest: "You faced a blunderbuss and a volley of slugs, and you were
not afraid." "But," I would answer hotly, "you did not face them, you
were running away. Besides, you had called your assailant a potatoe,
and therefore had already a contempt for him. This time it is you who
will be the potatoe, as you will most surely discover when Count
Lukstein spits you on his skewer;" and so I would get me wretchedly to
bed.
There were, indeed, but two thoughts which served to console me. In
the first place, I was sensible that I had acquired some dexterity
with the foils, and if I could but imagine a button on the point of
the Count's sword I might hope to hold my own. In the second, I
remembered very clearly a remark of Julian's. "The man's a coward," he
had said, and I hugged the sentence to my breast. I repeated the
words, indeed, until they fell into the cadence of a rhythm and lost
all meaning and comfort for me, sounding hollow, like the tapping of
an empty nut.
Of what Larke suffered during that period I had no suspicion, but from
subsequent hints I gather that his distress, though based upon far
other grounds, was no whit inferior to my own. His behaviour, indeed,
when I came to consider it, revealed to me new and amiable aspects of
his character; for while he firmly disbelieved in my ability to
captain an expedition, he never once pestered me for an explanation. I
had entrusted the purse to his care, and at each town he made the
arrangements for our stay, looked after the welfare of our horses, and
in short, took modestly upon himself the troublesome conduct of our
travels. Knowing nothing of my purpose but its danger, and distrustful
of its achievement, he yet rode patiently forward, humming ever a
French song, of which the refrain ran, I remember:
Que toutes joies et toutes honneurs
Viennent d'armes et d'amours.
For he possessed that delicate gift of sympathy which keeps the friend
silent when the acquaintance multiplies his questions.
Thus we journeyed for over a month. It was, I fancy, on the 12th
November that we reached the town of Innspruck, the weather very
shrewd and bitter, for snow had fallen in great quantities, and a
cutting wind blew from the hills. That night I told my companion of
our destination, but disclosed no more of the business than that I had
a private message for Count Lukstein's ear, which must needs be
delivered secretly if we were to save our lives. We stayed here for
two days that we might rest our horses, and early on the 14th set off
for Glurns, which lay some eighty miles away in a broad valley they
called the Vintschgau. The snow, however, was massed very deep, and
though the road was sound, for it was the highway into Italy, we did
not come up with the village until two o'clock on the third afternoon.
Beyond Glurns the road traversed the valley in a diagonal line through
a dreary avenue of stunted limes, which in their naked leaflessness
looked in the distance like a palisade. Into this avenue we passed,
and were well-nigh across the dale and under its northern barrier of
mountains, when Larke suddenly reined up.
"'Childe Roland to the dark tower came,'" he sang out. "Heaven send
there be no one to complete the quotation!"
I followed the direction of his gaze. Right ahead of us the Castle,
the rock whereon it was pinnacled, and the village, huddled on a
little plateau at its base, stood out from the hillside like a black
stain upon the snow. A carriage-way, diverging from our road a hundred
yards farther on, ran up towards it in long zigzags, and to this point
we advanced.
"Look!" suddenly cried Larke. "We are not the first to visit the
worthy Count to-day."
From both directions carriages or sledges had turned into this track,
so that the snow at its entrance was trampled by the hoofs of horses,
and cut by intersecting curves.
"'Tis not certain," I said, "that the marks were made to-day."
"It is," he replied, "else would the ruts have frozen."
The thought that the Count had company doubled my disquiet. For there
was the less chance of finding him alone, and I was anxious to have
done with the matter.
The first angle made by the zigzags was thickly covered with a boskage
of pines. Into this we led our horses, and fastening them in the heart
of it where the trees were most dense, we crept towards the west
corner. At this point the track bent back upon itself and mounted
eastwards to the border of the village, turned again, threading the
houses at the bottom of the cliff, struck up thence at a right angle
in a clear, open stretch beneath the west face of the rock, and
finally curved round at the back to the gates. For the entrance to the
Castle fronted the hillside and not the valley.
I took my Horace from my pocket, and in an instant the diagram became
intelligible to me. The long curving line represented the road, and
the way of ascent, marked by the cross, was to be found on the western
wall of rock, and above the open stretch of road. Of this we now
commanded an unimpeded view, for the corner of the road at which we
stood was situate to the west of the Castle.
"I see it!" I exclaimed, and I handed the book to Larke.
"So this is the secret of the poet's fascination," he answered. "But I
see no path. The cliff is as smooth as an egg-shell, save for that one
projecting rib."
"That is the path," I replied.
A shoulder of rock with a ribbon of snow upon its ridge jutted out
from the summit of the cliff, and descended in an unbroken line to the
road.
"'Tis impossible to ascend that," said he. "We should break our necks
for a surety or ever we were half-way up."
"It shows steeper than it is," I answered. "We are not well-placed for
judging of its incline; for that we should see it in profile. But
where snow lies, there a man may climb."
Jack raised no further objection; but ever and again I noticed him
gazing at me with a puzzled expression upon his face. We crouched down
in the undergrowth until such time as the night should fall, blowing
on our fingers and pressing close against each other for warmth's
sake. But 'twas of little use; my body tingled with cold, and I began
to think my muscles would be frozen stiff, before the darkness gave us
leave to move. The valley, moreover, looked singularly mournful and
desolate in its shroud of white. As far as the eye could travel not a
living thing could be seen, nor could the ear detect a sound. The
region brooded in a sinister silence. I verily believe that I should
have loosed my horse and fled but for the presence of my companion.
Jack, however, was in no higher spirits than myself, and from the
continual glances of his eyes I think that he was infected with a
wholesome fear of the rib of rock. At last the dusk fell; the lights
began to twinkle in the village and in the upper windows of the
Castle. For a wall, broken here and there by round turrets, circled
about the edge of the cliff and hid the lower storey from our sight.
We looked to the priming of our pistols, buckled our swords tighter
about the waist, shook the snow from our cloaks, and cautiously
stepped out on to the path. At the edge of the village we stopped.
'Twas but one street; but that very narrow and busy. Not a moment
passed but a door opened, and a panel of orange light was thrown
across the gloom, and the figures of men and women were seen passing
and repassing. The village was astir and humming like a hive. But
there was no other way. For on our right rose the tooth of rock in a
sheer scarp; on our left the ground broke steeply away at the backs of
the houses.
"We must make a dash for it," said Larke. We waited until the street
cleared for a moment, and then ran between the houses as fast as our
legs would carry us. The snow deadened the sound of our feet, and we
were well-nigh through the village when Larke tripped over a hillock
and stumbled forward on his face with a curse. The next instant I
dropped down beside him, and covering his mouth with my hand, forced
him prone to the ground. For barely twenty feet ahead a door had
suddenly opened, and a man dressed in the jacket and short breeches of
the Tyroler came out on to the path. He stood with his back towards us
and exchanged some jest with the inmates of the house, and I
recognised his voice. I had heard it no more than once, it is true,
but the occasion had fixed the sound of it for ever in my memories. It
was the voice of the spy who had tracked us in the streets of Bristol.
He turned towards the door, so that the light streamed full upon his
face, shouted a "God be with you," and strode off in the direction of
the Castle. The sight of him left me no room for doubt. That he had
outstripped us caused me, indeed, little surprise, for we had
travelled by a devious way, and had, moreover, delayed here and there
upon the road.
Larke commenced to sputter and cough.
"Quiet!" I whispered, for the man was yet within hearing.
"Loose your hand, then!" he returned. "Tis easy enough to say quiet,
but 'tis not so easy to choke quietly."
In my fluster I was holding his head tightly pressed into the snow, so
that he could only have caught the barest glimpse of the man.
"Who was it?" he asked.
"One of Lukstein's servants."
"You know him?"
"I have seen him, and he has seen me. Maybe he would know me again."
We got safely quit of the houses and turned into the upward stretch of
road, towards the buttress of rock. It jutted out across our path, and
was plainly distinguishable, for the night was pure and clean, and
appeared to be tinctured with a vague light from the snow-fields. I
noticed, too, that on the far side of the valley a pale radiance was
welling over the brim of the hills with promise of the moon. 'Twas a
very sweet sight to me, since climbing an unknown rock-ridge in the
dark hath little to commend it, unless it be necessity.
At the foot of the rib we halted and prepared to ascend. But nowhere
could I find a cranny for my fingers or a knob for my boot. The
surface was indeed, as Jack had said, as smooth as an egg-shell. I
stepped back to the outer edge of the road and examined it as
thoroughly as was possible.
For the first twelve feet it was absolutely perpendicular; above that
point it began to slope. It was as though the lowest portion of the
rib had been cut purposely away.
And then I remembered! Julian had spoken only of a descent. Now a man
may drop twelve feet and come to no harm, but once at the bottom he
must bide there. There was but one way out of the difficulty, and
luckily Larke's shoulders were broad.
"You must lend me your back," I said. "I will haul you up after me."
He planted himself firmly against the rock, with his legs apart, and I
climbed up his back on to his shoulders.
"You teach me mercy to my horse," he said quietly.
"Why? What have I done?" I asked. "Jabbed your spurs into my thighs
and stood on them," he replied in a matter-of-fact voice. "But 'tis
all one. Blood was meant to be spilled."
Being now more than five feet from the ground, I was able to worm my
fingers into a crack at the point where the ridge began to incline,
and so hoist myself on to an insecure footing. But it was utterly
beyond my power to drag Larke after me, for the snow was thin and
shallow, and underneath it the rock loose and shattered. I should most
surely have been pulled over had I made the attempt. I ascended the
ridge in the hope of discovering a more stable position, whence I
could lower my cloak to my companion. But 'twas all slabs at a pretty
steep slope, with here and there little breaks and ledges. I could
just crawl up on my belly, but I could do no more. There was never a
yard of level where you could secure a solid grip of the feet. So I
climbed back again and leaned over the edge.
"Jack," I said, "I can't give you a helping hand. It would mean a
certain fall."
"I shall need little help, Morrice--very little," he answered, in a
tone of entreaty.
"I can't even give you that. The ridge is too insecure."
"Ah! Don't say that!" he burst out "You have not come all these miles
to be turned back by a foot or two of rock. It is absurd! It is worse
than absurd. It is cowardly."
"Hush!" I whispered gently. For I could gauge his disappointment, and
gauging it, could pardon his railing, "I have no thought of turning
back."
"Then what will you do? Morrice, this is no time for dreaming! What
will you do?"
"Jack," I said, "you and I must part company. I must win through this
trouble by myself."
I heard something like a sob; it was the only answer he made.
"Wait for me by the horses in the wood! Give me till dawn, but not a
moment longer! If I am not with you then--well, 'tis the long good-bye
betwixt you and me, Jack, and you had best ride for your life."
Again he made no answer. For a moment I fancied that he had stolen
away in a fury, and I craned my head over the rock, so that I could
look down into the road. He was standing motionless with bent
shoulders just beneath me.
"Jack!" I called. For it might well be the last time I should speak to
him. We had been good friends, and I would not have him part from me
in anger. "There is no other way. It can't be helped."
He turned up his face towards me, but it was too dark for me to read
its expression.
"Very well, Morrice," he said, and there was no resentment in his
tone. "I will wait for your coming, and God send you come!"
And with a dull, heavy step he walked back along the path.
I turned and set my face to the cliff. After a while the ridge widened
out, and the snow overlaid it more firmly, insomuch that a surefoot
might have walked along by day. In the uncertain light, however--for
the moon as yet hung low in a gap of the hills--I dared not venture
it, and crept up on my hands and knees, testing carefully each tooth
of rock or ever I trusted my weight to its stability. Towards the
summit the rib thinned again to a sharp edge, and I was forced to
straddle up it as best I could, with a leg dangling on either side.
Altogether, what with the obstacles which the climb presented, and the
numbing of my fingers, since the snow quickly soaked through my
gloves, I made my way but slowly.
At the top I found myself face to face with the Castle wall, which was
some ten feet in height, and quite solid and uncrumbled. Between it
and the rim of the crag, however, was a strip of level ground about
half a yard broad, and I determined to follow it round until I should
reach some angle at which it would be possible to climb the wall. On
this strip the snow was heavily piled, and for security's sake I got
me again to my hands and knees, flogging a path before me with the
scabbard of my sword. I began to fear that I might be foiled in my
endeavour for want of a companion; for again I bethought me, Julian
only descended, and a man might drop from any portion of the wall,
whereas the scaling of it was a different matter. I proceeded in the
opposite direction to the Castle gates, and so came out above the
south face of the precipice. Below me the houses of Lukstein village
glimmered like a cluster of glow-worms; I had merely to roll over to
fall dump among the roof-tops. I could even hear a faint murmur of
brawling voices, and once I caught a plaintive snatch of song. For in
that still, windless air sounds rose like bubbles in a clear pool of
water.
The wall on my left curved and twisted with the indents of the cliff,
and a little more than halfway across the face I came to a spot where
it ran in and out at a sharp angle. Moreover, one of the turrets which
I had remarked from the wood bulged out from the line, and made of
this angle a sort of crevice. Into the corner I thrust my back, and
working my elbows and knees, with some help from the roughness of the
stones, I managed to mount on to the parapet. The Castle lay stretched
before me. In front stood the main body of the building; to my right a
shorter wing, ending in a tower, jutted off towards the wall on which
I lay. A broad terrace, enclosing in the centre a patch of lawn,
separated me from the building.
I fixed my eyes upon the tower. The window of the lower room was dark,
and, strangely enough, 'twas the only window dark in the house. From
the upper room there shone a faint gleam as of a lamp ill-trimmed. But
all the other windows in the chief facade and the more distant part of
this wing blazed out into the night. I could see passing figures
shadowed upon the curtains, and music floated forth on a ripple of
laughter, gavotte being linked to minuet and pavane in an endless
melody.
Every now and then some couple dainty with ribbons and jewels would
step out from the porch, and with low voices and pensive steps pace
the terrace until the cold froze the sweetness from their talk. They
were plain to me, for the moon was riding high, and revealed even the
nooks of the garden. Indeed, the only obscure corner was that in which
I lay concealed. For a little pavilion leaned against the wall hard by
me, and cast a deep shadow over the coping.
But I hardly needed even that protection to screen me from these
truants. I might have stood visible in the lawn's centre, and yet been
asked no question. For such as braved the frost came not out to spy
for strangers; their eyes sought each other with too intimate an
insistance.
I had indeed timed my visit ill. The revels of the village were being
repeated in the Castle.
The sharp contrast of my particular purpose forced its reality grimly
upon me, and made this vigil one long agony. I had planned to tell
Larke the true object of my coming during the hour or so we should
have to wait, and to draw some solace from his companionship. Now,
however, I was planted there alone with a message of death for my foe
or for myself, and the glamour of life in my eyes, and it seemed to me
that all the tedium of my journey had been held over for these hours
of waiting.
To cap my discomfort I found occasion to prove to myself that I was a
most indisputable prig. I had often discoursed to Larke concerning the
consolations to be drawn from the classics in moments of distress. Now
I sought to practise the precept, and to that end lowered a bucket
into the well of my memories. But alas! I hauled up naught but tags
about Cerberus and Charon, and passages from the sixth book of Vergil.
To tell the honest truth, I was dismally afraid. The very stars in the
sky flashed sword-points at my breast, and the ice upon the hills
glittered like breastplates of steel. Moreover, my hands were swollen
and clumsy with the cold, and I dreaded lest I might lose the nervous
flexibility of their muscles, and so the nice command of my sword. I
stripped off my gloves which were freezing on my fingers, and thrust
my hands inside my shirt to keep them warm against my skin.
Somehow or another, however, the night wore through. The stars and the
moon shifted across the mountains, the music began to falter into
breaks, and the murmurs grew louder from the village. I heard sledges
descend the road with a jingle of bells, first one, then another, then
several in quick succession. Iron gates clanked on the far side of the
Castle, the windows darkened, and finally a light sprang up in the
lower of the chambers which I watched.
I turned over on my face and dropped on to the snow. But my spurs
rattled and clinked as I touched the ground, and I stooped down and
loosed them from my feet. I cast a hurried glance around me. Not a
shadow moved; the world seemed frozen to an eternal immobility. I
crept across the lawn, up the terrace steps to the sill of the window,
and peered into the room. It was small and luxuriously furnished, the
roof, panels, and floor, being all of a polished and mellow pine-wood.
Warm-coloured rugs and the skins of chamois were scattered on the
floor, and four candles in heavy sconces blazed on the mantel. Sunning
himself before the log-fire sat Count Lukstein. I knew him at once
from Julian's account: a big, heavy-featured man with a loose dropping
mouth. He was elaborately dressed in a suit of grey satin richly laced
with silver, which seemed somewhat too airy and fanciful to befit the
massive girth of his limbs. These he displayed to their full
proportions, and the sight did little to enhearten me. For he sat with
his legs stretched out and his arms clasped behind his head, the
firelight playing gaily upon a sparkle of diamonds in his cravat.
I noted the two doors of which Julian had spoken--that on my right
leading to the bedroom, that on my left to the hall--and in particular
a small writing-table which stood against the wall facing me. For a
silver bell upon it caught the light of the candles and reflected it
into my eyes. And I remembered Julian's story of his visit to the
Hotwell.
Whether it was that I rattled the frame of the window, or that chance
turned the Count's looks my way, I know not; but he suddenly turned
full towards me, My face was pressed flat to the glass. I drew back
hastily into the shadow of the wall. One minute passed, two, three;
the window darkened, and the Count, lifting his hands to his temples
to shut out the light at his back, laid his forehead to the pane.
Instinctively I clapped my hand to the pistol in my pocket and cocked
it. The click of the hammer sounded loud in my ears as though I had
exploded the charge. Count Lukstein flung open the window and set one
foot outside.
"Who is it?" he cried; and yet again, "who is it?"
I drew a deep breath, stepped quickly past him into the room, and
turned about. The two doors and the writing-table were now behind me.
He staggered back from the window, and his hand dived at the hilt of
his sword. But before he could draw it he raised his eyes to my face;
he let go of his sword and stared in sheer bewilderment.
"And in the devil's name," he asked, "who are you?"
'Twas a humiliating moment for me. He spoke as a master might to an
impudent schoolboy, and it was with a quavering schoolboy's treble
that I answered him.
"I am Morrice Buckler."
"An Englishman?" he questioned, bending his brows suddenly; for we
were speaking in German.
"Of the county of Cumberland," I replied meekly. I felt as if I was
repeating my catechism.
"Then, Mr. Morrice Buckler, of the county of Cumberland," he began,
with an exaggerated politeness. But I broke in upon him.
"I have some knowledge of the county of Bristol, too," I said, with as
much bravado as I could muster. But 'twas no great matter. The display
would have disgraced a tavern bully.
The words, however, served their turn. Just for a second, just long
enough for me to perceive it, a startled look of fear flashed into his
eyes, and his body seemed to shrink in bulk. Then he asked suddenly:
"How came you here?"
"By a path Sir Julian Harnwood told me of," says I.
He stretched a finger towards the window.
"Go!" he cried in a low voice. "Go!"
I stood my ground, for I noted with a lively satisfaction that the
quaver had passed from my voice into his.
"Have a care, Master Buckler!" he continued. "You are no longer in
England. You would do well to remember that. There are reasons why I
would have no disturbance here to-night. There are reasons. But on my
life, if you refuse to obey me, I will have you whipped from here by
my servants."
"Ah!" says I, "this is not the first time, Count Lukstein, that some
one has stood between you and the bell."
He cast a glance over my shoulder. I saw that he was going to shout,
and I whipped out the pistol from my pocket.
"If you shout," I said, "the crack of this will add little to the
noise."
"It would go ill with you if you fired it," he blustered.
"It would go yet worse with you," I answered.
And there we stood over against one another, the finest brace of
cowards in Christendom, each seeking to overcome the other by a wordy
braggadocio. Indeed, my forefinger so trembled on the trigger that I
wonder the pistol did not go off and settle our quarrel out of hand.
"What does it mean?" he burst out, screwing himself to a note of
passion. "What does it mean? You skulk into my house like a thief."
"The manner of my visit does in truth leave much to be desired," I
conceded. "But for that you must thank your reputation."
"It does, in truth," he returned, ignoring my last words. "It leaves
much--very much. You see that yourself, Mr. Buckler. So, to-morrow!
Return by the way you came, and come to me again tomorrow. We can talk
at leisure. It is over-late to-night."
"Nay, my lord," said I, drawing some solid comfort from the wheedling
tone in which he spake. "Your servants will be abroad in the house
tomorrow, and, as you were careful to remind me, I am not in England.
I have waited for some six hours upon the parapet of your terrace, and
I have no mind to let the matter drag to another day."
His eyes shifted uneasily about the room; but ever they returned to
the shining barrel of my pistol.
"Well, well," said he at length, with a shrug of the shoulders, and a
laugh that rang flat as a cracked guinea, "one must needs listen when
the speaker holds a pistol at your head. Say your say and get it
done."
He flung himself into a chair which stood in the corner by the window.
I sat me in the one from which he had risen, drawing it closer to the
fire. A little table stood within arm's reach, and I pulled it up
between us and laid my pistol on the edge.
"I have come," said I, "upon Sir Julian Harnwood's part."
"Pardon me!" he interrupted. "You will oblige me by speaking English,
and by speaking it low."
The request seemed strange, but 'twas all one to me what language we
spoke so long as he understood.
"Certainly," I answered. "I am here to undertake his share in the
quarrel which he had with you, and to complete the engagement which
was interrupted on the Kingsdown."
"But, Mr. Buckler," he said, with some show of perplexity, "the
quarrel was a private one. Wherein lies your right to meddle with the
matter?"
"I was Sir Julian's friend," I replied. "He knew the love I bore him,
and laid this errand as his last charge upon it."
"Really, really," said he, "both you and your friend seem strangely
ill-versed in the conduct of gentlemen. You say Sir Julian laid this
errand upon you. But I have your bare word for that. It is not enough.
And even granting it to be true, my quarrel was with Sir Julian, not
with you. One does not fight duels by proxy."
He had recovered his composure, and spoke with an easy
superciliousness.
"My lord," I answered, stung by his manner, "I must ask you to get the
better of that scruple, as I have of one far more serious, for, after
all, one does not as a rule fight duels with murderers."
He started forward in his chair as though he had been struck. I seized
the butt of my pistol, for I fancied he was about to throw himself
upon me.
"I know more than you think," said I, nodding at him, "and this will
prove it to you."
I drew the oval gold box from my fob and tossed it on to his knees.
His hands darted at it, and he turned it over and over in his palms,
staring at the cover with white cheeks.
"How got you this?" he asked hoarsely, and then remembering himself,
"I know nothing of it. I know nothing of it."
"Sir Julian gave it into my hands," said I. "I visited him in his
prison on the evening of the 22nd September."
He stared at me for a while, repeating "the 22nd September" like one
busy over a sum.
"The 22nd September," said I, "the 22nd September. It was the day of
his trial."
At the words his face cleared wonderfully. He rose with an
indescribable air of relief, flung the box carelessly on the table,
and said with a contemptuous smile:
"Ah, Mr. Buckler! Mr. Buckler! You would have saved much time had you
mentioned the date earlier. How much?" and he shook some imaginary
coins in the cup of his hand.
"Count Lukstein!" I exclaimed.
I had not the faintest notion of what he was driving at, and the
surprise which his change of manner occasioned me obscured the insult.
"Tut, tut, man!" he resumed, with a wave of the hand. "How much?
Surely the farce drags."
"The farce," I replied hotly, "is one of those which are best played
seriously. Remember that, Count Lukstein!"
"Well, well," he said indulgently, "have your own way. But, believe
me, you are making a mistake. I have no wish to cheapen your wares.
That you have picked up some fragments of the truth I am ready to
agree; and I am equally ready to buy your silence. You have but to
name your price."
"I have named it," I muttered, locking my teeth, for I was fast losing
my temper, and feared lest I might raise my voice sufficiently to be
heard beyond the room.
"Let me prove to you that you are wasting time," said he with insolent
patience. "You have been ill-primed for your work. You say that you
visited Sir Julian on the night of the 22nd. You say that you were Sir
Julian's friend. I would not hurt your feelings, Mr. Buckler, but both
those statements are, to put it coarsely, lies. You were never Sir
Julian's friend, or you would have known better than to have fixed
that date. But two people visited him on the 22nd, a priest and a
woman, the most edifying company possible for a dying man." He ended
with a smooth scorn. I looked up at him and laughed.
"Ah!" said he, "we are beginning to understand each other."
I laughed a second time.
"She was over-tall for a woman, my lord," said I, "though of no great
stature for a man."
I rose as I spoke the words and confronted him. We were standing on
opposite sides of the little table. The smile died off his face; he
leaned his hands upon the table and bent slowly over it, searching my
looks with horror-stricken eyes.
"What do you mean?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.
"I was the woman. How else should I have got that box?"
"You, you!" He spoke in a queer matter-of-fact tone of assent. All his
feeling and passion seemed to have gathered in his eyes.
So we stood waging a battle of looks. And then of a sudden I noticed a
crafty, indefinable change in his expression, and from the tail of my
eye I saw his fingers working stealthily across the table. I dropped
my hand on to the butt of my pistol. With a ready cunning he picked up
the gold box and began to examine it with so natural an air of
abstraction that I almost wondered whether I had not mistaken his
design.
"And so," says he at length, "you would fight with me?"
"If it please you, yes," says I.
"Miss Marston, it seems, has more admirers than I knew of," he
returned, with a cunning leer which made my stomach rise at him.
He seemed incapable of conceiving a plain open purpose in any man. Yet
for all that I could not but admire the nimbleness of his wits. Not
merely had he recovered his easy demeanour, but he was already, as I
could see, working out another issue from the impasse. I clung fast to
the facts.
"I have never seen Miss Marston," said I. "I fight for my friend."
"For your friend? For your dead, useless friend?" He dropped the words
slowly, one by one, with a smiling disbelief. "Come, come, Mr.
Buckler! Not for your friend! We are both men of the world. Be frank
with me! Is it sensible that two gentlemen should spill honest blood
for the sake of a feather-headed wanton?"
"If the name fits her, my lord," I replied, "who is to blame for that?
And as for the honest blood, I have more hope of spilling it than
faith in its honesty."
The Count's face grew purple, and the veins swelled out upon his ample
throat. I snatched up the pistol, and we both stood trembling with
passion. The next moment, I think, must have decided the quarrel, but
for a light sound which became distinctly audible in the silence. It
descended from the room above. We both looked up to the ceiling, the
Count with a sudden softness on his face, and I understood, or rather
I thought I understood, why he had not raised the alarm before I
produced my pistol, and why he bade me subsequently speak in English.
For the sound was a tapping, such as a woman's heels may make upon a
polished floor.
I waited, straining my ears to hear the little stairway creak behind
the door at my back, and cudgelling my brains to think what I should
do. If she came down into the room, it was all over with my project
and, most likely, with my life, too, unless I was prepared to shoot my
opponent in cold blood and make a bolt for it. After a while, however,
the sound ceased altogether, to my indescribable relief. The Count was
the first to break the silence.
"Very well, Mr. Buckler," said he; "send your friends to me in the
morning. Let them come like men to the door and give me assurance that
I may meet you without loss of self-respect, and you shall have your
way."
"You force me to repeat," said I, "that the matter must be disposed of
to-night."
"To-night!" he said, and stared at me incredulously. "Mr. Buckler, you
must be mad."
"To-night," I repeated stubbornly. For, apart from all considerations
of safety, I felt that such courage as I possessed was but the froth
of my anger, and would soon vanish if it were left to stand. The Count
began to pace the room between the writing-table and the window. I set
my chair against the wall and leaned against the chimney, and I noted
that at each turn in his walk he drew, as though unconsciously, nearer
and nearer to the bell.
"Mr. Buckler," he said, "what you propose is quite out of the
question. I can but attribute it to your youth. You take too little
thought of my side of the case. To fight with one whom I have never so
much as set eyes on before, who forces his way into my house in the
dead of night--you must see for yourself that it fits not my dignity."
"You are too close to the bell, Count Lukstein, and you raise your
voice," I broke in sharply. "That fits not my safety."
He stood still in the middle of the room and raised a clenched fist to
his shoulder, glaring at me. In a moment, however, he resumed his
former manner.
"Besides," he went on, "there is a particular reason why I would have
no disturbance here tonight. You got some inkling of it a moment ago."
He nodded to the ceiling.
I blush with shame now when I remember what I answered him. I took a
leaf from his book, as the saying is, and could conceive no worthy
strain in him.
"The good lady," I said, "whom you honour with your attentions now
must wait until the affairs of her predecessor are arranged."
The Count came sliding over the floor with a sinuous movement of his
body and a very dangerous light in his eyes.
"You insult my wife," he said softly, and as I reeled against the hood
of the fireplace, struck out of my wits by his words, he of a sudden
gave a low bellowing cry, plucked his sword from his sheath, and
lunged at my body. I saw the steel flash in a line of light and sprang
on one side. The sword quivered in the wood level with my left elbow.
My leap upset the table, the pistol clattered on the floor. I whipped
out my sword, Count Lukstein wrenched his free, and in a twinkling we
were set to it. I think all fear vanished from both of us, for Count
Lukstein's face was ablaze with passion, and I felt the blood in my
veins running like strong wine.
CHAPTER VI.
SWORDS TAKE UP THE DISCOURSE.
By these movements we had completely reversed our positions, so that
now I stood with my back to the window, while the Count held that end
of the room in which the doors were set. Not that I took any thought
of this alteration at the time, for the Count attacked me with
extraordinary fury, and I needed all my wits to defend myself from his
violence. He was, as I had dreaded, a skilled swordsman, and he
pressed his skill to the service of his anger. Now the point of his
rapier twirled and spun like a spark of fire; now the blade coiled
about mine with a sharp hiss like some lithe, glittering serpent.
Every moment I expected it to bite into my flesh. I gave ground until
my hindmost foot was stopped against the framework of the window; and
there I stayed parrying his thrusts until he slackened from the ardour
of his assault. Then in my turn I began to attack; slowly and
persistently I drove him back towards the centre of the room, when
suddenly, glancing across his shoulder, I saw something that turned my
blood cold. The door leading to the staircase was ajar. I had heard no
click of the handle; it must have been open before, I argued to
myself, but I knew the argument was false. The door had been shut; I
noted that from the garden, and it could not have opened so silently
of itself. I renewed my attack upon the Count, pressing him harder and
harder in a veritable panic. I snatched a second glance across his
shoulder. The door was not only ajar; 'twas opening--very slowly, very
silently, and a yellow light streamed through onto the wall beside the
door. The sight arrested me at the moment of lunging--held me
petrified with horror. A savage snarl of joy from Lukstein's lips
warned me; his sword darted at my heart, I parried it clumsily, and
the next moment the point leapt into my left shoulder. The wound
quickened my senses, and I settled to the combat again, giving thrust
for thrust. Each second I expected a scream of terror, a rush of feet.
But not a sound came to me. I dared not look from the Count's face any
more; the hit which he had made seemed to have doubled his energies. I
strained my ears to catch the fall of a foot, the rustle of a dress.
But our own hard breathing, a light rattle of steel as swords lunged
and parried, a muffled stamp as one or the other stepped forward upon
the rugs--these were the only noises in the room, and for me they only
served to deepen and mark the silence. Yet all the while I felt that
the door was opening--opening; I knew that some one must be standing
in the doorway quietly watching us, and that some one a woman, and
Count Lukstein's wife. There was something horrible, unnatural in the
silence, and I felt fear run down my back like ice, unstringing my
muscles, sucking my heart. I summoned all my strength, compressed all
my intelligence into a despairing effort, and flung myself at
Lukstein. He drew back out of reach, and behind him I saw a flutter of
white. Through the doorway, holding a lighted candle above her head,
Countess Lukstein advanced noiselessly into the room. Her eyes, dark
and dilated, were fixed upon mine; still she spoke never a word. She
seemed not to perceive her husband; she seemed not even to see me,
into whose face she gazed. 'Twas as though she was looking through me,
at something that stood in the window behind my head.
The Count, recovering from my assault, rushed at me again. I made a
few passes, thinking that my brain would crack. I could feel her eyes
burning into mine. I was certain that some one was behind me, and I
experienced an almost irresistible desire to turn my head and discover
who it might be. The strain had become intolerable. There was just
room for me to leap backwards.
"Look!" I gasped, and I leaned back against the window-pane, clutching
at the folds of the curtain for support.
Count Lukstein turned; the woman was close behind him. A couple of
paces more, and she must have touched him. He dropped his sword-point
and stepped quickly aside.
"My God!" he said in a hoarse whisper. "She is asleep!"
My whole body was dripping with sweat. It seemed to me that a full
hour must have passed since I had seen her first, and yet so brief had
been the interval that she was not half-way across the room.
Had she come straight towards me I could not have moved from her path.
But she walked betwixt Count Lukstein and myself direct to the open
window. She wore a loose white gown, gathered in a white girdle at the
waist, and white slippers on her naked feet. Her face even then showed
to me as incomparably beautiful, and her head was crowned with masses
of waving hair, in colour like red corn. She passed between us without
check or falter; her gown brushed against the Count. Through the open
window she walked across the snowy terrace towards the pavilion by the
Castle wall. The night was very still, and the flame of the candle
burnt pure and steady.
I looked at the Count. For a moment we gazed at one another in
silence, and then without a word we stepped side by side to follow
her. Our dispute appeared to have been swallowed up in this
overmastering event, and I experienced almost a revulsion of
friendliness for my opponent.
"'Tis not the first time this has happened, I am told," said he, and
as I looked at him inquiringly, he added, very softly: "We were only
married to-day."
"Only to-day," I exclaimed, and not noticing where I trod, I stumbled
over a wolf-skin that lay on the floor with the head attached. My foot
slipped on the polished boards beside it, and I fell upon my left
knee. The Count stopped and faced me, an ugly smile suddenly flashing
about his mouth. I saw him draw back his arm as I was rising. I
dropped again upon hand and knee, and his sword whizzed an inch above
my shoulder. I was still holding my own sword in my right hand, and or
ever he could recover I lunged upwards at his breast with all my
force, springing from the ground as I lunged, to drive the thrust
home. The blade pierced through his body until the hilt rang against
the buttons of his coat. He fell backwards heavily, and I let go of my
sword. The point stuck in the floor behind him as he fell, and he slid
down the blade on to the ground. Something dropped from his hand and
rolled away into a corner, where it lay shining. I gave no thought to
that, however, but glanced through the window. To my horror I saw that
Countess Lukstein was already returning across the lawn. The Count had
fallen across the window, blocking it. I plucked my sword free, and
lugged the body into the curtains at the side, cowering down myself
behind it. I had just time to gather up his legs and so leave the
entrance clear, when she stepped over the sill. A little stream of
blood was running towards her, and I was seized with a mad terror lest
it should reach her feet. She moved so slowly and the stream ran so
quickly. Every moment I expected to see the white of her slippers grow
red with the stain of it. But she passed beyond the line of its
channel just a second before it reached so far. With the same even and
steady gait she recrossed the room and turned into the little
stairway, latching the door behind her.
For a while I remained kneeling by the body of the Count in a numbed
stupor, All was so quiet and peaceful that I could not credit what had
happened in this last hour, not though I held the Count within my
arms. Then from the floor of the room above there came once more the
light tapping sound of a woman's heels. I looked about me. The table
lay overturned, the rugs were heaped and scattered, and the barrel of
my pistol winked in the sputtering light of the fire. I rose, snatched
up my sword, and fled out on to the snow.
The moon was setting and the moonlight grey upon the garden, with the
snow under foot very crisp and dry.
I sheathed my sword and clambered on to the coping. I turned to look
at the Castle--how quietly it slept, and how brightly burned the
lights in those two rooms!--and then dropped to the ledge upon the
further side of the wall.
I had reached the top of the ridge of rock, when a cry rang out into
the night--a cry, shrill and lonesome, in a woman's voice--a cry
followed by a great silence. I halted in an agony. 'Twas not fear that
I felt; 'twas not even pity. The cry spoke of suffering too great for
pity, and I stood aghast at the sound of it, aghast at the thought
that my handiwork had begotten it. 'Twas not repeated, however, and I
tore down the ridge in a frenzy of haste, taking little care where I
set my hands or my feet. How it was that I did not break my neck I
have never been able to think.
The village, I remember, was dark and lifeless save just at one house,
whence came a murmur of voices, and a red beam of light slipped
through a chink in the shutter and lay like a rillet of blood across
the snow.
Once clear of the houses. I ran at full speed down the track. At the
corner of the wood, I stopped and looked upwards before I plunged
among the trees. The moon had set behind the mountains while I was
descending the ridge, and the Castle loomed vaguely above me as though
at that spot the night was denser than elsewhere. 'Twas plain that no
alarm had been taken, that the cry had not been heard. I understood
the reason of this afterwards. The two rooms in the tower were
separated by a great interval from the other bedrooms. But what of the
Countess, I thought? I pictured her in a swoon upon the corpse of her
husband.
Within the coppice 'twas so black that I could not see my hand when I
raised it before me, and I went groping my way by guesswork towards
the trees to which we had tethered our horses. I dared not call out to
Larke; I feared even the sound of my footsteps. Every rustle of the
bushes seemed to betray a spy. In the end I began to fancy that I
should wander about the coppice until dawn, when close to my elbow
there rose a low crooning song:
Que toutes joies et toutes honneurs
Viennent d'armes et d'amours.
"Jack!" I whispered.
The undergrowth crackled as he crushed it beneath his feet.
"Morrice, is that you? Where are you?"
A groping hand knocked against my arm and tightened on it. I gave a
groan.
"Are you hurt, Morrice? Oh, my God! I thought you would never come!"
"You have heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Not a sound? Not--not a cry?"
"Nothing."
"Quick, then!" said I. "We must be miles away by morning."
He led me to where our horses stood, and we untied them and threaded
through the trees to the road.
"Help me to mount, Jack!" said I.
He pulled a flask from his pocket and held it to my lips. 'Twas neat
brandy, but I gulped a draught of it as though it were so much water.
Then he helped me into the saddle and settled my feet in the stirrups.
"Why, Morrice," he asked, "what have you done with your spurs?"
"I left them on the terrace," said I, remembering. "I left my spurs,
my pistol, and--and something else. But quick, Jack, quick!"
'Twould have saved me much trouble had I brought that "something else"
with me, or at least examined it more closely before I left it there.
He swung himself on to the back of his horse, and we set off at a
canter. But we had not gone twenty yards when I cried, "Stop!" 'Twas
as though the windows of the Castle sprang at us suddenly out of the
darkness, each one alive with a tossing glare of links. It seemed to
me that a hundred angry eyes were searching for me. I drove my heels
into my horse's flanks and galloped madly down the road in the
direction of Italy. A quarter of a mile further, and a bend of the
valley hid the Castle from our sight; but I knew that I should never
get the face of Countess Lukstein from before my eyes, or the sound of
her cry out of my ears.
CHAPTER VII.
I RETURN HOME AND HEAR NEWS OF
COUNTESS LUKSTEIN.
From Lukstein we rode hot-foot down the Vintschgau Thal to Meran, and
thence by easy stages to Verona, in Italy. I had no great fear of
pursuit or detection after the first day, since the road was much
frequented by travellers, and neither my spurs, nor my pistol, nor the
miniature of Julian bore any marks by which Jack or myself could be
singled out. At Verona an inflammation set up in my wounded shoulder,
very violent and severe, so that I lay in that town for some weeks
delirious and at death's door. Indeed, but for Jack's assiduous care
in nursing me, I must infallibly have lost my life.
At length, however, being somewhat recovered, I was carried southwards
to Naples, and thence we wandered from town to town through the
provinces of Italy until, in the year 1686, the fulness of the spring
renewed my blood and set my fancies in a tide towards home. Jack
accompanied me to England and took up his abode in my house in
Cumberland, being persuaded without much difficulty to abandon his
pretence of studying the law, and to throw in his lot with me for good
and all.
"My estates need a steward," said I, "and I--God knows I need a
friend." And with little more talk the bargain was struck.
During all this time, however, I had not so much as breathed a word to
him concerning the doings of that night in Castle Lukstein. At first
the matter was too hot in my thoughts, and even afterwards, when the
horror of my memories had dimmed, I could not bring myself to the
point of speech. Had it not been for the appearance and intervention
of the Countess, doubtless I should have blurted out the tale long
before. But with her face ever fixed within my view, I could not
speak; I could only picture it desolate with grief, and washed with a
pitiful rain of tears. Moreover, I knew that Jack would account my
story as the story of a worthy exploit, and I shrank from his praise
as from a burning iron.
'Twould have, nevertheless, been strange had not my ravings in my
delirium disclosed some portion of the night's incidents, and that
they did so I understood from a certain speech Jack once made me.
'Twas when I was yet lying sick at Verona. One morning, when I was
come to my senses after a feverish night, he walked over to my bedside
from the chair where he had been watching.
"I have been a common fool," says he, and repeats the remark, shifting
a foot to and fro on the floor; and then he claps his hand upon mine.
"God send me such a friend as you, Morrice, if ever trouble comes to
me!" says he, and so gets him quickly from the room.
Often did I wonder how much I had betrayed, but I had reason
subsequently to believe that 'twas very little; just enough to assure
him that I had not flinched from the conflict, with probably some
revelation of the fear in which I engaged upon it.
'Twas in the last days of March that I saw once more the rolling
slopes of Yewbarrow, streaked here and there with a ribbon of snow,
and my house at the base of it, its grey tiles shining in the sunset
like glass; and a homely restfulness settled upon my spirit, and
looking back upon the last months of purposeless wandering, I resolved
to pass my days henceforward in a placid ordering of my estate.
This feeling of peace, however, stayed with me no great while, the
very monotony of a quiet life casting me back upon my troubled
recollections. As a relief, I sought diversion with Jack's ready
assistance in the pleasures of the field. Hawking, hunting,
and climbing--for which somehow my companion never acquired a
taste--filled out the hours of daylight We chased the fox on foot
along ridges of the hills; we hunted the red deer in the forests
about Styhead; we walked miles across fell and valley to watch a
wrestling-match or attend a fair. In a word, we lived a clean,
open-air life of wholesome activity.
But alas! 'Twas of little profit to me. I would get me tired to bed
only to plunge into a whirlpool of unrestful dreams, and toss there
until the morning. Sometimes it would be the door of the little
staircase to the Count's bedroom. I would see it opening and opening
perpetually, and yet never wide open; or again, it would grow gigantic
in size, and swing back across the world as though it was hinged
betwixt the poles. Most often, however, it would be Count Lukstein's
wife. I beheld her now, tall and stately, with her glorious aureole of
hair and her dark, unseeing eyes eating through me like a slow fire as
she advanced across the room; now I followed her as she moved through
the moonlit garden with the taper burning clear and steady in her
hand. But, however the dream began, 'twould always end the same way.
The fiery windows of Castle Lukstein would leap upon me out of the
darkness, and I would wake in a cold sweat, my body a-quiver, and her
lone cry knelling in my ears.
A strange feature of these nightmare fancies, and a feature that
greatly perplexed me, was that the Count himself played no part in
them. Were my dreams the test and touchstone of the truth, I could
never so much as have set eyes upon him. The encounter, the
conversation which preceded it, the last cowardly thrust, and the dead
form huddled up in my arms among the curtains--of these things I had
not even a hint. They became erased from my memory the moment that I
fell asleep. Then 'twas always the woman who was pictured to me; in no
single instance the man. I wondered at this omission the more,
inasmuch as I frequently thought of Count Lukstein during the
day-time, remembering with an odd sense of envy the softness of his
voice when he spoke concerning his wife.
Spent with the double fatigue of the day's exertions and the night's
phantasmal horrors, I betook myself at length to my library, seeking
rest, if not forgetfulness, among my old companions. But the delight
and joy of books had gone out from me, and nowise could I recover it.
Once the very covers had seemed to me to answer the pressure of my
fingers with a friendly welcome; now I applied myself straightway to
the text as to a laborious and uncongenial task. I had looked so
deeply into a tragic reality that these printed images of life
appeared false and distorted, like reflections thrown from a convex
mirror; and I understood how it is that those who act are but seldom
their own historians, and when they are, content themselves with a
simple register of deeds. However, I persevered in this course for a
while, hoping that some time my former zest and liking would return to
me, and I should taste again the fine flavour of a nicely-ordered
sentence or of a discriminate sequence of thoughts.
But one May morning, coming into the study shortly after sunrise, I
sat me down, with my limbs unrefreshed and aching, before the "Religio
Medici" of the Norwich doctor, and I fell immediately across this
passage:
"I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero;
others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of
Alexandria. For my own part, I think there be too many in the world,
and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could
I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon."
The words chimed so appositely with my thoughts that I resolved there
and then to put the theory into practice, and closing the book, I made
a beginning with Sir Thomas Browne. Outside the window the birds piped
happily from vernal branches; the shadows played hide-and-seek upon
the grass, and the beck babbled and laughed as it raced down behind
the house. I locked the door of the library, and taking the key in my
hand, walked to the side of the beck. At this point the stream spouted
in a fountain from a cleft of rock, and fell some twelve feet into a
deep bason. A group of larches overhung the pool, and the sunlight,
sprinkling between the leaves, dappled the clear green surface with an
ever-shifting pattern. Into this bason I dropped the key, and watched
it sink with a sparkling tail of bubbles to the bottom. 'Twas of a
bright metal, so that I could still see it distinctly as it rested on
the rock-bed. A large stone lay upon the bank beside me, and with a
sudden, uncontrollable impulse I stripped off my clothes, picked up
the stone, and diving into the cool water, set it carefully atop of
the key. Many months passed before I came again to the pool, and found
the key still hidden safe beneath the stone; and during those months
so much that was strange occurred to me, and I wandered along such new
and devious paths, that when I held it again, all rusty and corroded,
in my hand, I felt as though it could not have been myself who had
dropped it there, but some one whose memories had been transmitted to
me and incorporated in my being by a mysterious alchemy.
It was on that very afternoon that the letter was brought to me. Jack
and I were sitting at dinner in the big oak dining-room about four of
the clock; the great windows were open, and the sunny air streamed in
laden with fresh perfumes. I can see Jim Ritson now as he rode up the
drive--'twas part of his duty to meet the mail at the post-town of
Cockermouth--I can almost hear his voice as he gave in the letter at
the hall-door. "There's a letter for t' maister," he said.
Jim is grown to middle age by this time, and owns a comfortable fat
face and a brood of children. But whenever I pass him in the lanes and
fields I ever experience a lively awe and respect for him as for the
accredited messenger of fate.
The letter came from Lord Elmscott and urged me to visit him in town.
"Come!" he wrote. "To the dust of Leyden you are superadding the mould
of Cumberland. Come and brush yourself clean with the contact of wits!
There is much afoot that should interest you. What with Romish priests
and English bishops, the town is in ferment. Moreover, a new beauty
hath come to Court. There is nothing very strange in that. But she is
a foreigner, and her rivals have as yet discovered no scandal to
smirch her with. There is something very strange in that. Such a
miracle is well worth a man's beholding. She hails from the Tyrol and
is the widow of one Count Lukstein, who was in London last year. She
wears no mourning for her husband, and hath many suitors. I have of
late won much money at cards, and so readily forgive you for that you
were the death of Ph[oe]be."
The letter ran on to some considerable length, but I read no more of
it. Indeed, I understood little of what I had read. The face of
Countess Lukstein seemed stamped upon the page to the obscuring of the
inscription. I passed it across to Jack without a word, and he perused
it silently and tossed it back. All that evening I sat smoking my pipe
and pondering the proposal. An overmastering desire to see her
features alive with the changing lights of expression, began to
possess me. The more I thought, the more ardently I longed to behold
her. If only I could see her eyes alert and glancing, if only I could
hear her voice, I might free myself from the picture of the blank,
impassive mask which she wore in my dreams. That way, I fancied, and
that way alone, should I find peace.
"I shall go," I said at last, knocking the ashes from my pipe. "I
shall go to-morrow."
"You shan't!" cried Jack vehemently, springing up and facing me. "She
knows you. She has seen you."
"She has never seen me," I replied steadily, and he gazed into my face
with a look of bewilderment which gradually changed into fear.
"Are you mad, Morrice?" he asked, in a broken whisper, and took a step
or two backwards, keeping his eyes fixed upon mine.
"Nay, Jack," said I; "but unless God helps me, I soon shall be. He may
be helping me now. I trust so, for this visit alone can save me."
"She has never seen you?" he repeated. "Swear it! Morrice! Swear it!"
I did as he bade me.
"What brings her to England?" he mused.
"What kept us wandering about Italy?" I answered. "The fear to return
home."
"'Twill not serve," said he. "She wears no mourning for her husband."
I wondered at this myself, but could come at no solution, and so got
me to bed. That night, for the first time since I left Austria, I
slept dreamlessly. In the morning I was yet more determined to go. I
felt, indeed, as though I had no power to stay, and, hurrying on my
servants, I prepared to set out at two of the afternoon. Udal and two
other of my men I took with me.
"Morrice," said Jack, as he stood upon the steps of the porch, "don't
stay with your cousin! Hire a lodging of your own!"
"Why?" I asked, in surprise.
"You talk overmuch in your sleep. Only two nights ago I heard you
making such an outcry that I feared you would wake the house. I rushed
into your room. You were crouched up among the bed-curtains at the
head of the bed and gibbering: 'It will touch her. It flows so fast.
Oh, my God! My God!'"
I made no answer to his words, and he asked again very earnestly:
"The Countess has never seen you? You are sure?"
"Quite!" said I firmly, and I shook him by the hand, and so started
for London.
CHAPTER VIII.
I MAKE A BOW TO COUNTESS LUKSTEIN.
In London I engaged a commodious lodging on the south side of St.
James' Park, and with little delay, you may be sure, sought out my
cousin in Monmouth, or rather Soho, Square--for the name had been
altered since the execution of the Duke. 'Twas some half an hour after
noon, and my cousin, but newly out of bed, was breakfasting upon a
bottle of Burgundy in his nightcap and dressing-gown.
"So you have come, Morrice," said Elmscott languidly. "How do ye? Lord
Culverton, this is my cousin of whom I have spoken."
He turned towards a little popinjay man who was fluttering about the
room in a laced coat, and powdered periwig which hung so full about
his face that it was difficult to distinguish any feature beyond a
thin, prominent nose.
"You should know one another. For if you remember, Morrice, it was
Culverton you robbed of Ph[oe]be."
"Ph[oe]be?" simpered Lord Culverton. "I remember no Ph[oe]be. But in
truth the pretty creatures pester one so impertinently that burn me if
I don't jumble up their names. What was she like, Mr. Buckler?"
"She was piebald," said I gravely, "and needed cudgelling before she
would walk."
"And Morrice killed her," added Elmscott, with a laugh.
"Then he did very well to kill her, strike me speechless! But there
must be some mistake. I have met many women who needed cudgelling
before they would walk, but never one that was piebald."
Elmscott explained the matter to him, and then, with some timidity, I
began to inquire concerning the Countess Lukstein.
"What! bitten already?" cried my cousin. "Faith, I knew not I had so
smart a hand for description."
"The most rapturous female, pink me!" broke in Lord Culverton. "She is
but newly come to London, and hath the town at her feet already. Egad!
I'm half-soused in love myself, split my windpipe!" and he flicked a
speck of powder from his velvet coat, and carefully arranged the curls
of his periwig. "The most provoking creature!" he went on. "A widow
without a widow's on-coming disposition."
"Ay, but she hath discarded the weeds," said Elmscott
"She is a widow none the less. And yet breathe but one word of tender
adoration in her ear, and she strikes you dumb, O Lard! with the most
supercilious eyebrow. However, time may do much with the obstinate
dear--time, a tolerable phrase, and a _je ne scay quoi_ in one's
person and conversation." He pointed a skinny leg before the mirror,
and languished with a ludicrous extravagance at his own reflection.
I had much ado to restrain myself from laughing, the more especially
when Elmscott cried, with a wink at me:
"Oh, if you have entered the lists, the rest of us may creep out with
as little ignominy as we can. They say that every pretty woman has a
devil at her elbow, and 'tis most true, so long as Culverton lives."
"You flatter me! A devil, indeed! You flatter me," replied the fop,
skipping with delight. "You positively flatter me. The ladies use
me--no more. I am only their humble servant in general, and the
Countess Lukstein's in particular."
The remark had more truth in it than Culverton would have cared for us
to believe. For the Countess did in very truth use this gossipy
tittle-tattler, and with no more consideration than she showed to the
humblest of her servants. However, he was born for naught else but to
fetch and carry, and since he delighted in the work, 'twas common
kindness to employ him.
"Then we'll drink a health to your success," says Elmscott, pouring
out three glasses of his Burgundy.
"I never drink in the morning," objected Culverton. "'Tis a most
villainous habit, and ruins the complexion irretrievably, stap my
vitals!"
However, I was less squeamish on the subject of mine, and draining the
glass, I asked:
"Is she come to London alone?"
"She hath a companion, a very faded, nauseous person: a Frenchwoman,
Mademoiselle Durette. She serves as a foil;" and Culverton launched
forth into an affected estimation of Countess Lukstein's charms. Her
eyes dethroned the planets, the brightness of her hair shamed the
sunlight; for her mouth, 'twas a Cupid's bow that shot a deadly arrow
with every word. When she danced, her foot was a snow-flake upon the
floor, and the glint of the buckle on her instep, a flame threatening
to melt it; when she played upon the harp, her fingers were the ivory
plectrums of the ancients.
"You make me curious," I interrupted him, "to become acquainted with
the lady."
"Then let me present you!" said he eagerly.
"You see, Morrice," said Elmscott, "he has such solid grounds for
confidence that he has no fear of rivals."
"Nay, the truth is, she has a passion for fresh faces."
"Indeed!" said I.
"Oh, most extraordinary! A veritable passion, and no one so graciously
received as he who brings a stranger to her side. For that reason," he
added naively, "I would fain present you;" and then he suddenly
stopped and surveyed me, shaking his head doubtfully the while.
"But Lard! Mr. Buckler," he said, "you must first get some new
clothes."
"The clothes are good enough," I laughed, for I was dressed in my best
suit, and though 'twas something more modest than my Lord Culverton's
attire, I was none the less pleased with it on that account.
"Rabbit me, but I daren't!" he said. "I daren't introduce you in that
suit. I daren't, indeed! My character would never survive the
imputation, strike me purple if it would! 'Tis a very yeoman's habit,
and reeks of the country. I can smell onions and all sorts of horrible
things, burn me!"
"I will run the risk, Morrice," interposed Elmscott. "Dine with me
to-day at Lockett's, and I will take you to the Countess' lodging in
Pall Mall afterwards. But Culverton's right. You do look like a
Quaker, and that's the truth."
However, I paid little attention to what they said or thought
concerning my appearance. The knowledge that I was to meet Countess
Lukstein and have speech with her no later than that very evening,
engendered within me an indescribable excitement. I got free from my
companions as speedily as I could, and passed the hours till
dinnertime in a vague expectancy; though what it was that I expected,
I could not have told even to myself.
About seven of the clock we repaired to her apartments. The rooms were
already filled with a gay crowd of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the
extreme of fashion, and at first I could get no glimpse of the
Countess. But I looked towards the spot where the throng was thickest,
and the tripping noise of pleasantries most loud, and then I saw her.
Elmscott advanced; I followed close upon his heels, the circle opened,
magically it seemed to me, and I stood face to face with her at last.
Yet for all that I was prepared for it, now that I beheld her but six
steps from me, now that I looked straight into her eyes, a strange
sense of unreality stole over me, dimming my brain like a mist; so
incredible did it appear to me that we who had met before in such a
tragic conjunction in that far-away nook of the Tyrol, should now be
presented each to the other like the merest strangers, amidst the
brightness and gaiety of London town. I almost expected the candles to
go out, and the company to dissolve into air. I almost began to dread
that I should wake up in a moment to find myself in the dark, crouched
up upon my bed in Cumberland. So powerfully did this fear possess me
that I was on the point of crying aloud, "Speak! speak!" when Elmscott
took me by the arm.
"Madame," said he, "I have taken the liberty of bringing hither my
cousin, Mr. Morrice Buckler, who is anxious--as who is not?--for the
honour of your acquaintance."
"It is no liberty," she replied grac
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