Stiff and sore, he raised himself from the ground, he groped for his boots and coat, and putting them on moved cautiously through the trees, supporting himself from stem to stem. He came to the borders of a wide, smooth lawn, and on the farther side stood the house,—a long, two-storeyed house with level tiers of windows stretching to the right and the left, and a bowed tower in the middle. Through one of the windows in the ground-floor Wogan saw the spark of a lamp, and about that window a fan of yellow light was spread upon the lawn.
Wogan at this moment felt in great need of companionship. He stole across the lawn and looked into the room. An old gentleman with a delicate face, who wore his own white hair, was bending over a book at a desk. The room was warmly furnished, the door of the stove stood open, and Wogan could see the logs blazing merrily. A chill wind swept across the lawn, very drear and ghostly. Wogan crept closer to the window. A great boar-hound rose at the old man’s feet and growled; then the old man rose, and crossing to the window pressed his face against the panes with his hands curved about his eyes. Wogan stepped forward and stood within the fan of light, spreading out his arms to show that he came as a supplicant and with no ill intent.
The old man, with a word to his hound, opened the window.
“Who is it?” he asked, and with a thrill not of fear but of expectation in his voice.
“A man wounded and in sore straits for his life, who would gladly sit for a few minutes by your fire before he goes upon his way.”
The old man stood aside, and Wogan entered the room. He was spattered from head to foot with mud, his clothes were torn, his eyes sunken, his face was of a ghastly pallor and marked with blood.
“I am the Chevalier Warner,” said Wogan, “a gentleman of Ireland. You will pardon me. But I have gone through so much these last three nights that I can barely stand;” and dropping into a chair he dragged it up to the door of the stove, and crouched there shivering.
The old man closed the window.
“I am Count Otto von Ahlen, and in my house you are safe as you are welcome.”
He went to a sideboard, and filling a glass carried it to Wogan. The liquor was brandy. Wogan drank it as though it had been so much water. He was in that condition of fatigue when the most extraordinary events seem altogether commonplace and natural. But as he felt the spirit warming his blood, he became aware of the great difference between his battered appearance and that of the old gentleman with the rich dress and the white linen who stooped so hospitably above him, and he began to wonder at the readiness of the hospitality. Wogan might have been a thief, a murderer, for all Count Otto knew. Yet the Count, with no other protection than his dog, had opened his window, and at that late hour of the night had welcomed him without a word of a question.
“Sir,” said Wogan, “my visit is the most unceremonious thing in the world. I plump in upon you in the dark of the morning, as I take it to be, and disturb you at your books without so much as knocking at the door.”
“It is as well you did not knock at the door,” returned the Count, “for my servants are long since in bed, and your knock would very likely have reached neither their ears nor mine.” And he drew up a chair and sat down opposite to Wogan, bending forward with his hands upon his knees. The firelight played upon his pale, indoor face, and it seemed to Wogan that he regarded his guest with a certain wistfulness. Wogan spoke his thought aloud,—
“Yet I might be any hedgerow rascal with a taste for your plate, and no particular scruples as to a life or two lying in the way of its gratification.”
The Count smiled.
“Your visit is not so unexampled as you are inclined to think. Nearly thirty years ago a young man as you are came in just such a plight as you and stood outside this window at two o’clock of a dark morning. Even so early in my life I was at my books,” and he smiled rather sadly. “I let him in and he talked to me for an hour of matters strange and dreamlike, and enviable to me. I have never forgotten that hour, nor to tell the truth have I ever ceased to envy the man who talked to me during it, though many years since he suffered a dreadful doom and vanished from among his fellows. I shall be glad, therefore, to hear your story if you have a mind to tell it me. The young man who came upon that other night was Count Philip Christopher von Königsmarck.”
Wogan started at the mention of this name. It seemed strange that that fitful and brilliant man, whose brief, passionate, guilty life and mysterious end had made so much noise in the world, had crossed that lawn and stood before that window at just such an hour, and maybe had sat shivering in Wogan’s very chair.
“I have no such story as Count Philip von Königsmarck no doubt had to tell,” said Wogan.
“Chevalier,” said Count Otto, with a nod of approval, “Königsmarck had the like reticence, though he was not always so discreet, I fear. The Princess Sophia Dorothea was at that time on a visit to the Duke of Würtemberg at the palace in Stuttgart, but Königsmarck told me only that he had snatched a breathing space from the wars in the Low Countries and was bound thither again. Rumour told me afterwards of his fatal attachment. He sat where you sit, Chevalier, wounded as you are, a fugitive from pursuit. Even the stains and disorder of his plight could not disguise the singular beauty of the man or make one insensible to the charm of his manner. But I forget my duties,” and he rose. “It would be as well, no doubt, if I did not wake my servants?” he suggested.
“Count Otto,” returned Wogan, with a smile, “they have their day’s work to-morrow.”
The old man nodded, and taking a lamp from a table by the door went out of the room.
Wogan remained alone; the dog nuzzled at his hand; but it seemed to Wogan that there was another in the room besides himself and the dog. The sleeplessness and tension of the last few days, the fatigue of his arduous journey, the fever of his wounds, no doubt, had their effect upon him. He felt that Königsmarck was at his side; his eyes could almost discern a shadowy and beautiful figure; his ears could almost hear a musical vibrating voice. And the voice warned him,—in some strange unaccountable way the voice warned and menaced him.
“I fought, I climbed that wall, I crossed the lawn, I took refuge here for love of a queen. For love of a queen all my short life I lived. For love of a queen I died most horribly; and the queen lives, though it would have gone better with her had she died as horribly.”
Wogan had once seen the lonely castle of Ahlden where that queen was imprisoned; he had once caught a glimpse of her driving in the dusk across the heath surrounded by her guards with their flashing swords.
He sat chilled with apprehensions and forebodings. They crowded in upon his mind all the more terrible because he could not translate them into definite perils which beyond this and that corner of his life might await him. He was the victim of illusions, he assured himself, at which to-morrow safe in Schlestadt he would laugh. But to-night the illusions were real. Königsmarck was with him. Königsmarck was by some mysterious alchemy becoming incorporate with him. The voice which spoke and warned and menaced was as much his as Königsmarck’s.
The old Count opened the door and heard Wogan muttering to himself as he crouched over the fire. The Count carried a basin of water in his hand and a sponge and some linen. He insisted upon washing Wogan’s wounds and dressing them in a simple way.
“They are not deep,” he said; “a few days’ rest and a clever surgeon will restore you.” He went from the room again and brought back a tray, on which were the remains of a pie, a loaf of bread, and some fruit.
“While you eat, Chevalier, I will mix you a cordial,” said he, and he set about his hospitable work. “You ask me why I so readily opened my window to you. It was because I took you for Königsmarck himself come back as mysteriously as he disappeared. I did not think that if he came back now his hair would be as white, his shoulders as bent, as mine. Indeed, one cannot think of Königsmarck except as a youth. You had the very look of him as you stood in the light upon the lawn. You have, if I may say so, something of his gallant bearing and something of his grace.”
Wogan could have heard no words more distressing to him at this moment.
“Oh, stop, sir. I pray you stop!” he cried out violently, and noting the instant he had spoken the surprise on Count Otto’s face. “There, sir, I give you at once by my discourtesy an example of how little I merit a comparison with that courtly nobleman. Let me repair it by telling you, since you are willing to hear, of my night’s adventure.” And as he ate he told his story, omitting the precise object of his journey, the nature of the letter which he had burned, and any name which might give a clue to the secret of his enterprise.
The Count Otto listened with his eyes as well as his ears; he hung upon the words, shuddering at each danger that sprang upon Wogan, exclaiming in wonder at the shift by which he escaped from it, and at times he looked over towards his books with a glance of veritable dislike.
“To feel the blood run hot in one’s veins, to be bedfellows with peril, to go gallantly forward hand in hand with endeavour,” he mused and broke off. “See, I own a sword, being a gentleman. But it is a toy, an ornament; it stands over there in the corner from day to day, and my servants clean it from rust as they will. Now you, sir, I suppose—”
“My horse and my sword, Count,” said Wogan, “when the pinch comes, they are one’s only servants. It would be an ill business if I did not see to their wants.”
The old man was silent for a while. Then he said timidly, “It was for a woman, no doubt, that you ran this hazard to-night?”
“For a woman, yes.”
The Count folded his hands and leaned forward.
“Sir, a woman is a strange inexplicable thing to me. Their words, their looks, their graceful, delicate shapes, the motives which persuade them, the thoughts which their eyes conceal,—all these qualities make them beings of another world to me. I do envy men at times who can stand beside them, talk with them without fear, be intimate with them, and understand their intricate thoughts.”
“Are there such men?” asked Wogan.
“Men who love, such as Count Königsmarck and yourself.”
Wogan held up his hand with a cry.
“Count, such men, we are told, are the blindest of all. Did not Königsmarck prove it? As for myself, not even in that respect can I be ranked with Königsmarck. I am a mere man-at-arms, whose love-making is a clash of steel.”
“But to-night—this risk you ran; you told me it was for a woman.”
“For a woman, yes. For love of a woman, no, no, no!” he exclaimed with surprising violence. Then he rose from his chair.
“But I have stayed my time,” said he, “you have never had a more grateful guest. I beg you to believe it.”
Count Otto barely heard the words. He was absorbed in the fanciful dreams born of many long solitary evenings, and like most timid and uncommunicative men he made his confidence in a momentary enthusiasm to a stranger.
“Königsmarck spoke for an hour, mentioning no names, so that I who from my youth have lived apart could not make a guess. He spoke with a deal of passion; it seemed that one hour his life was paradise and the next a hell. Even as he spoke he was one instant all faith and the next all despair. One moment he was filled with his unworthiness and wonder that so noble a creature as a woman should bend her heart and lips from her heaven down to his earth. The next he could not conceive any man should be such a witless ass as to stake his happiness on the steadiness of so manifest a weathercock as a woman’s favour. It was all very strange talk; it opened to me, just as when a fog lifts and rolls down again, a momentary vision of a world of colours in which I had no share; and to tell the truth it left me with a suspicion which has recurred again and again, that all my solitary years over my books, all the delights which the delicate turning of a phrase, or the chase and capture of an elusive idea, can bring to one may not be worth, after all, one single minute of living passion. Passion, Chevalier! There is a word of which I know the meaning only by hearsay. But I wonder at times, whatever harm it works, whether there can be any great thing without it. But you are anxious to go forward upon your way.”
He again took up his lamp, and requesting Wogan to follow him, unlatched the window. Wogan, however, did not move.
“I am wondering,” said he, “whether I might be yet deeper in your debt. I left behind me a sword.”
Count Otto set his lamp down and took a sword from the corner of the room.
“I called it an ornament, and yet in other hands it might well prove a serviceable weapon. The blade is of Spanish steel. You will honour me by wearing it.”
Wogan was in two minds with regard to the Count. On the one hand, he was most grateful; on the other he could not but think that over his books he had fallen into a sickly way of thought. He was quite ready, however, to wear his sword; moreover, when he had hooked the hanger to his belt he looked about the room.
“I had a pistol,” he said carelessly, “a very useful thing is a pistol, more useful at times than a sword.”
“I keep one in my bedroom,” said the Count, setting the lamp down, “if you can wait the few moments it will take me to fetch it.”
Mr. Wogan was quite able to wait. He was indeed sufficiently generous to tell Count Otto that he need not hurry. The Count fetched the pistol and took up the lamp again.
“Will you now follow me?”
Wogan looked straight before him into the air and spoke to no one in particular.
“A pistol is, to be sure, more useful than a sword; but there is just one thing more useful on an occasion than a pistol, and that is a hunting knife.”
Count Otto shook his head.
“There, Chevalier, I doubt if I can serve you.”
“But upon my word,” said Wogan, picking up a carving-knife from the tray, “here is the very thing.”
“It has no sheath.”
Wogan was almost indignant at the suggestion that he would go so far as to ask even his dearest friend for a sheath. Besides, he had a sheath, and he fitted the knife into it.
“Now,” said he, pleasantly, “all that I need is a sound, swift, thoroughbred horse about six or seven years old.”
Count Otto for the fourth time took up his lamp.
“Will you follow me?” he said for the fourth time.
Wogan followed the old man across the lawn and round a corner of the house until he came to a long, low building surmounted by a cupola. The building was the stable, and the Count Otto roused one of his grooms.
“Saddle me Flavia,” said he. “Flavia is a mare who, I fancy, fulfils your requirements.”
Wogan had no complaint to make of her. She had the manners of a courtier. It seemed, too, that she had no complaint to make of Mr. Wogan. Count Otto laid his hand upon the bridle and led the mare with her rider along a lane through a thicket of trees and to a small gate.
“Here, then, we part, Chevalier,” said he. “No doubt to-morrow I shall sit down at my table, knowing that I talked a deal of folly ill befitting an old man. No doubt I shall be aware that my books are the true happiness after all. But to-night—well, to-night I would fain be twenty years of age, that I might fling my books over the hedge and ride out with you, my sword at my side, my courage in my hand, into the world’s highway. I will beg you to keep the mare as a token and a memory of our meeting. There is no better beast, I believe, in Christendom.”
Wogan was touched by the old gentleman’s warmth.
“Count,” said Wogan, “I will gladly keep your mare in remembrance of your great goodwill to a stranger. But there is one better beast in Christendom.”
“Indeed? And which is that?”
“Why, sir, the black horse which the lady I shall marry will ride into my city of dreams.” And so he rode off upon his way. The morning was just beginning to gleam pale in the east. Here was a night passed which he had not thought to live through, and he was still alive to help the chosen woman imprisoned in the hollow of the hills at Innspruck. Wogan had reason to be grateful to that old man who stood straining his eyes after him. There was something pathetical in his discontent with his secluded life which touched Wogan to the heart. Wogan was not sure that in the morning the old man would know that the part he had chosen was, after all, the best. Besides, Wogan had between his knees the most friendly and intelligent beast which he had ridden since that morning when he met Lady Featherstone on the road to Bologna. But he had soon other matters to distract his thoughts. However easily Flavia cantered or trotted she could not but sharply remind him of his wounds. He had forty miles to travel before he could reach Schlestadt; and in the villages on the road there was gossip that day of a man with a tormented face who rode rocking in his saddle as though the furies were at his back.