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 someone must be standing in the doorway quietly watching us, and that someone 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 halfway 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 cheek 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, how ever, but glanced through the window. To my horror I saw the 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 gray upon the garden, with the snow underfoot 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 farther 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 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 horses’ flanks and galloped madly down the road in the direction of Italy. A quarter of a mile farther, 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.