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.
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 honneursViennent d'armes et d'amours.
Que toutes joies et toutes honneursViennent 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.
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 Phœbe."
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.
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 Phœbe."
"Phœbe?" simpered Lord Culverton. "I remember no Phœbe. 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 aje ne sçay quoiin 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 naïvely, "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 graciously, in a voice that was exquisitely sweet, and she let her eyes fall upon my face with a quick and watchful scrutiny.
The next instant, however, the alertness died out of them.
"Mr. Buckler is very welcome," she said quietly, and it struck me that there was some hint of disappointment in her tone, and maybe a touch of weariness. If, indeed, what Culverton had said was true, and she had a passion for fresh faces, 'twas evident that mine was to be exempted from the rule.
It might have been the expression of her indifference, or perchance the mere sound of her voice broke the spell upon me, but all at once I became sensible to the full of my sober, sad-coloured clothes. I looked about me. Coats and dresses brilliant with gold and brocade mingled their colours in a flashing rainbow, jewels sparkled and winked as they caught the light, and I felt that every eye in this circle of elegant courtiers was fixed disdainfully upon the awkward intruder.
I faltered through a compliment, conscious the while that I had done better to have held my tongue. I heard a titter behind me, and here and there some fine lady or gentleman held a quizzing-glass to the eye, as though I was some strange natural from over-seas. All the blood in my body seemed to run tingling into my face. I half turned to flee away and take to my heels, but a second glance at the sneering countenances around me stung my pride into wakefulness, and resolving to put the best face on the matter I could, I attempted a sweeping bow. Whether my foot slipped, whether some one tripped me purposely with a sword, I know not--I was too flustered to think at the time or to remember afterwards--but whatever the cause, I found myself plumped down upon my knees before her, with the titter changed into an open laugh.
"Hush!" lisped one of the bystanders, "don't disturb the gentleman; he is saying his prayers."
I rose to my feet in the greatest confusion.
"Madame," I stammered, "I come to my knees no earlier than the rest of your acquaintance. Only being country-bred, I do it with the less discretion."
She laughed with a charming friendliness which lifted me somewhat out of my humiliation.
"The adroitness of the recovery, Mr. Buckler," she said, "more than atones for the maladresse of the attack."
"Nay," I protested, with what may well have appeared excessive earnestness, "the simile does me some injustice, for it hints of an antagonism betwixt you and me."
She glanced at me with some surprise and more amusement in her eyes.
"Are not all men a woman's antagonists?" she said lightly.
But to me it seemed an ill-omened beginning. There was something too apposite in her chance phrase. I remembered, besides, that I had stumbled to the ground in much the same way before her husband, and I bethought me what had come of the slip.
'Twas but for a little, however, that these gloomy forebodings possessed me, and I retired to the outer edge of the throng, whence I could observe her motions and gestures undisturbed. And with a growing contentment I perceived that ever and again her eyes would stray towards me, and she would drop some question into Elmscott's ear.
The Countess wore, I remember, a gown of purple velvet fronted with yellow satin, which to my eyes hung a trifle heavily upon her young figure and so emphasized its slenderness, imparting even to her neck and head a certain graceful fragility. The rich colour of her hair was hidden beneath a mask of powder after the fashion, and below it her face shone pale, pale indeed as when I saw her last, but with a wonderful clarity and pureness of complexion, so that as she spoke the blood came and went very prettily about her cheeks and temples. The two attributes, however, which I noted with the greatest admiration were her eyes and voice. For it seemed to me well-nigh beyond belief that the eyes which I now saw flashing with so lively a fire were the same which had stared vacantly into mine at Lukstein Castle, and that the voice which I now heard musical with all the notes of laughter was that which had sent the shrill, awful scream tearing the night.
After a while the company sat down to basset and quadrille, and I was left standing disconsolately by myself. I looked around for Elmscott, being minded to depart, when her voice sounded at my elbow, and I forgot all but the sweetness of it.
"Mr. Buckler," she asked, "you do not play?"
"No," I replied. "I have seen but little of either cards or dice, and that little has given me no liking for them."
"Then I will make bold to claim your services, for the room is hot, and my ears, perchance, a little tired."
'Twas with no small pride, you may be sure, that I gave my arm to the Countess; only I could have wished that she had laid her hand less delicately upon my sleeve. Indeed, I should hardly have known that it rested there at all had I not felt its touch more surely on the strings of my heart.
We went into a smaller apartment at the end of the room, which was dimly lit, and very cool and peaceful. The window stood open and showed a little balcony with a couch. The Countess seated herself upon it with a sigh of relief, and leaning forward, plucked a sprig of flowers which grew in a pot at her side.
"I love these flowers," said she, holding the spray towards me.
'Twas the blue flower of the aconite plant, and I answered:
"They remind you of your home."
"Then you know the Tyrol, and have travelled there." She turned to me with a lively interest.
"I learnt that much of botany at school."
"There should be a fellow-feeling between us, Mr. Buckler," she said after a pause; "for we are both strangers to London, waifs thrown together for an hour."
"But there is a world of difference, for you might have lived amongst these gallants all your days, while I, alas! have no skill even to hide my awkwardness."
"Nay, no excuses, for I like you the better for the lack of that skill."
"Madame," I began, "such words from you----"
She turned to me with a whimsical entreaty.
"Prithee, no! To tell the honest truth, I am surfeited with compliments, and 'twould give me a great pleasure if during these few minutes we are together you would style me neither nymph, divinity, nor angel, but would treat me as just a woman. The fashion, indeed, is not worth copying, the more especially when, to quote your own phrase, one copies it without discretion."
She laughed pleasantly as she spake, and the words conveyed not so much a rebuke as the amiable raillery of an intimate.
"'Tis true," I replied, "I do envy these townsmen. I envy them their grace of bearing and the nimbleness of their wits, which ever reminds me of the sparkle in a bottle of Rhenish wine."
She shook her head, and made room for me by her side.
"The bottle has stood open for me these two months since, and I begin to find the wine is very flat."
She dropped her voice at the end of the sentence, and leaned wearily back upon the cushions.
"You see, Mr. Buckler," she explained, "I live amongst the hills," and there was a certain wistfulness in her tone as of one home-sick.
"Then there is a second bond between us, for I live amongst the hills as well."
"It is that," said she, "which makes us friends," and just for a second she laid a hand upon my sleeve. It seemed to me that no man ever heard sweeter words or more sweetly spoken from the lips of woman.
"But since you are here," I questioned eagerly, "you will stay--you will stay for a little?"
"I know not," she replied, smiling at my urgency; and then with a certain sadness, "some day I shall go back, I hope, but when, I know not. It might be in a week, it might be in a year, it might be never." Of a sudden she gave a low cry of pain. "I daren't go home," she cried, "I daren't until--until----"
"Until you have forgotten." The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I caught them back in time, and for a while we sat silent. The Countess appeared to grow all unconscious of my presence, and gazed steadily down the quiet street as though it stretched beyond and beyond in an avenue of leagues, and she could see waving at the end of it the cedars and pine-trees of her Tyrol.
Nor was I in any hurry to arouse her. A noisy rattle of voices streamed out on a flood of yellow light from the further windows on my left, and here she and I were alone in the starlit dusk of a summer night. Her very silence was sweet to me with the subtlest of flatteries. For I looked upon it as the recognition of a tie of sympathy which raised me from the general throng of her courtiers into the narrow circle of her friends.
So I sat and watched her. The pure profile of her face was outlined against the night, the perfume of her hair stole into my nostrils, and every now and then her warm breath played upon my cheek. A fold of her train had fallen across my ankle, and the soft touch of the velvet thrilled me like a caress; I dared not move a muscle for fear lest I should displace it.
At length she spoke again--'twas almost in a whisper.
"I have told you more about myself than I have told to any one since I came to England. It is your turn now. Tell me where lies your home!"
"In the north. In Cumberland."
"In--in Cumberland," she repeated, with a little catch of her breath. "You have lived there long?"
"'Twas the home of my fathers, and I spent my boyhood there. But between that time and this year's spring I have been a stranger to the countryside. For I was first for some years at Oxford, and thence I went to Leyden."
She rose abruptly from the couch, drawing her train clear of me with her hand, and leaned over the balcony, resting her elbow on its baluster, and propping her chin upon the palm of her hand.
"Leyden!" she said carelessly. "'Tis a town of great beauty, they tell me, and much visited by English students."
"There were but few English students there during the months of my residence," said I. "I could have wished there had been more."
A second period of silence interrupted our talk, and I sat wondering over that catch in her breath and the tremor of her voice when she repeated "Cumberland." Was it possible, I asked myself, that she could have learnt of Sir Julian Harnwood and of his quarrel with her husband? If she did know, and if she attributed the duel in which her husband fell to a result of it, why, then--Cumberland was Julian's county, and the name might well strike with some pain upon her hearing. But who could have informed her? Not the Count, surely; 'twas hardly a matter of which a man could boast to his wife. I remembered, besides, that he had asked me to speak English, and to speak it low. There could have been but one motive for the request--a desire to keep the subject of our conversation a secret from the Countess.
I glanced towards her. Without changing her attitude she had turned her head sideways upon her palm, and was quietly looking me over from head to foot. Then she rose erect, and with a frank and winning smile, she said, as if in explanation:
"I was seeking to discover, Mr. Buckler, what it was in you that had beguiled me to forget the rest of my guests. However, if I have shown them but scant courtesy, I shall bid them reproach you, not me."
"Prithee, madame, no! Have some pity on me! The statement would get me a thousand deadly enemies."
"Hush!" said she, with a playful menace. "You go perilous near to a compliment;" and we went back into the glare and noise of the drawing-room.
"Ah, Ilga! I have missed you this half-hour."
'Twas a little woman of, I should say, forty years who bustled up to us on our entrance.
"You see?" said the Countess, turning to me with a whimsical reproach. "You must blame Mr. Buckler, Clemence, and I will make you acquainted that you may have the occasion."
She presented me thus to Mademoiselle Durette, and left us together. But I fear the good woman must have found me the poorest company, for I paid little heed to what she said, and carried away no recollection beyond that her chatter wearied me intolerably, and that once or twice I caught the word "convenances," whence I gather she was reading me a lecture.
I got rid of her as soon as I decently could, and took my leave of the Countess. She gave me her hand, and I bent over and kissed it. 'Twas only the glove I kissed, but the hand was within the glove, as I had reason to know, for I felt it tremble within my fingers and then tug quickly away.
"One compliment I will allow you to pay me," she said, "and that is a renewal of your visit."
"Madame permits," I exclaimed joyfully.
"Madame will be much beholden to you," says she, and drops me a mocking curtsey.
I walked down the staircase in a prodigious elation. Six steps from the floor of the hall it made a curve, and as I turned at the angle I stopped dead of a sudden with my heart leaping within my breast. For at the foot of the stairs, and looking at me now straight in the face, as he had looked at me in the archway of Bristol Bridewell, I saw Otto Krax, the servant of Count Lukstein. The unexpected sight of his massive figure came upon me like a blow. I had forgotten him completely. I staggered back into the angle of the wall. He must know me, I thought. Hemustknow me. But he gazed with no more than the stolid attention of a lackey. There was not a trace of recognition in his face, not a start of his muscles; and then I remembered the difference in my garb. 'Twould have been strange indeed if he had known me.
I recovered my composure, drew a long breath of relief, and was about to step down to him when I happened to glance up the stairway.
The Countess herself was leaning over the rail at its head, with the light from the hall-lamp below streaming up into her face. I had not heard her come out on the landing.
"I knew not whether Otto Krax was there to let you out" She smiled at me. "Good night!"
"Good night," said I, and looking at Otto, I understood whence she might have got some knowledge of Sir Julian Harnwood.
Once outside, I stood for a while loitering in front of the house, and wondering how much 'twould cost to buy it up. For I believed that it would be a degradation should any other woman lodge in those same rooms afterwards.
In a few minutes Elmscott came out to me.
"You have seen the Countess Lukstein before?" he asked, and the words fairly startled me.
"What in Heaven's name makes you think that?"
"I fancied I read it in your looks. Your eyes went straight to her before ever I presented you."
"That proves no more than the merit of your description."
"Well, did I exaggerate? What think you?"
I drew a long breath. 'Twas the only description I could give. There were no words in the language equal to my thoughts.
"That will suffice," said Elmscott, and he turned away.
"One moment," I cried. "I need a service of you."
He burst out into a laugh.
"A thousand pounds to a guinea I know the service. 'Tis the address of my tailor you need. I saw you looking down at your clothes as though the wearing of them sullied you. Very well, one of my servants shall be with you in the morning with a complete list of my tradesmen." And he swung off in the direction of Piccadilly, laughing as he went, while I, filled with all sorts of romantical notions, walked back to my lodging. Though, indeed, to say that I walked, falls somewhat short of the truth; to speak by the book, I fairly scampered, and arrived breathless at my doorstep.
My servants had unpacked my baggage, and with a momentary pang of misgiving, I observed, lying on the table, my ill-omened copy of Horace.
"How comes this here?" I inquired sharply of Udal, taking the book in my hands.
It opened at once at the diagram, and the date upon the leaf opposite. So often had this outline been scanned and examined that the merest fingering of the cover served to make the book fall open at this particular page. I doubt, indeed, whether it had been possible to lift or move the volume at all without noticing the diagram.
Udal told me that Jack himself had placed the book in my trunk. He intended it as a hint for my conduct, I made certain, and, newly come as I was from the presence of Countess Lukstein, I felt no gratitude for his interference. I tossed the book on to a side-table by the chimney, where it lay henceforward forgotten, and proceeded to light my pipe.
'Twas late when I mounted to my bedroom. The moon was in its last quarter, and the park which my window overlooked lay very fair and quiet in the soft light. What nonsense does a man con over and ponder at such times! Yet 'tis very pleasant nonsense, and though it keeps him out of bed o' nights, he may yet draw good from it--ay, and more good than from quartos of philosophy.