Under these speculations, bolster them up as I might, there lurked none the less a heavy and disheartening fear. ’Twas all vain labour to reckon up, as I did again and again, the few good qualities which I possessed, and to add to them those others which my friends attributed to me. I could not shut my eyes to the disparity between us; I could not believe but that she must be sensible of it herself. Such a woman, I conceived, should wed a warrior and hero; though, indeed, ’twas doubtful whether you could find even amongst them one whose deserts made him a fit mate for her. As for me, ’twas as though a clown should run a-wooing after a princess.
“Twill be readily understood that I had in consequence no great inclination for the hearty fellowship of the neighbours who joined in the hunt; and since my anxiety grew with every hour, by the time we came back to Lukstein—for many of them returned thither instead of to their own homes, meaning to stay over until the following night—’twas as much as I could do to answer with attention any civil question that was addressed to me.
The Countess, I found, was in an agitation no whit inferior to my own. I observed her that afternoon at dinner. At times she talked with a feverish excitement at times she relapsed into long silence; but even during these pauses I noticed that her fingers were never still, but continually twitched and plucked at the cloth. I inferred from her manner that she had not yet decided on the course she would take, the more particularly because she sedulously avoided speech with me. If I spoke to her she replied politely enough, but at once drew those about her into the conversation, and herself with drew from it; and if by accident our eyes met, she hastily turned her head away. I knew not what to make of these signs, and as soon as the company was risen from table I slipped away out of the Castle that I might con them over quietly and weigh whether they boded me good or ill.
The Castle, as I have said, stood upon a headland at the mouth of the Senner Thal, and turning a corner of this bluff, I wandered by a rough track some way along the side of the ravine, and flung myself down on my back on the turf. The sun had already sunk below the crest of the mountains, and the glow was fast fading out of the sky. The pines on the hillside opposite grew black in the deepening twilight; a star peeped over the shoulder of the Wildthurm; and here and there a gray scarf of cloud lay trailed along the slopes. From a hut high above came clear and sweet the voice of a woman singing a Tyrolese melody, and so softly did the evening droop upon the mountains, shutting as it were the very peace of the heavens into the valleys, that the brooks seemed to laugh louder and louder as they raced among the stones. The air itself never stirred, save when some bat came flapping blindly about my face. I became the more curious, therefore, concerning a bush some twenty yards below me, which now and again shivered and bent as though with a gust of wind. I had been lying on the grass some ten minutes before I noticed this movement. The dwarf oaks and beeches which studded the slopes about me were as still and noiseless as though their leaves had been carved from metal; only this one bush rustled and shook. In a direct line with it, and within reach of my foot, a small boulder hung insecurely on the turf. I stretched out my foot and pushed it; the stone rocked a little on its base. I pushed again and harder; the stone tilted, forwards and stuck. I brought my other foot to help, set them both flat against the stone, slid down on my back until my legs were doubled, and then kicked with all my strength. The boulder flew from the soles of my feet, rolled over and over, bounded into the air, dropped on to the slope about ten yards from the bush, and then sprang at it like a dog at the throat. I heard a startled cry; I saw the figure of a man leap up from the centre of the bush. The stone took him full in the pit of the stomach, and toppled him backwards like a nine-pin. He fell on the far side of the shrub, and I heard the boulder go crash-crashing down the whole length of the incline. Who the man was I had not the time to perceive, and I made no effort to discover. The Countess had retired a few moments before I slipped away from the Hall, and I judged that he was no more than a spy sent by Father Spaur to ascertain whether I had some tryst with her. So deeming that he had got no more than his deserts, I left him lying where he fell and loitered back to the Castle.
The company I found gathered about a huge fire of logs at the end of the Great Hall. Beyond the glow of the flames the Hall was lost in shadow, and now and again from some corner would come a soft scuffling sound, as a dog moved lazily across the flags. Thereupon with one movement the heads would huddle closer together, and for a moment the voices would sink to a whisper. They were speaking, as men will who are girt with more of God’s handiwork than of man’s, concerning the spirits that haunted the countryside, and told many stories of the warnings they had vouchsafed to unheeding ears. In particular, they dwelt much upon a bell, which they declared rang out from the Wildthurm when good or ill fortune approached the House of Lukstein, tolling as the presage of disaster, pealing joyously in the forefront of prosperity. One, indeed—with frequent glances across his shoulder into the gloom—averred that he had heard it tolling on the eve of Count Lukstein’s marriage, and from that beginning the talk slid to the manner of his death. ’Twas altogether an eerie experience, and one that I would not willingly repeat, to listen to them debating that question in hushed whispers, with the darkness closing in around us, and the firelight playing upon mature, weather-hardened faces grown timorous with the awe of children. For this I remarked with some wonder, that no one made mention either of the things which I had left behind me, or of the track which I had fogged in the snow about the rim of the precipice. ’Twas evident that these details of the story had been kept carefully secret, though with what object I could not understand.
That evening I had no Michael Groder to assist me in my toilet, and so got me to bed with the saving of half an hour. I cannot say, however, that I gained half an hour’s sleep thereby, for the thought of the morrow, and all that hung upon it, kept me tossing from side to side in a turmoil of unrest. It must have been near upon two hours that I lay thus uneasily cushioned upon disquiet before a faint sound came to my ears, and made me start up in the darkness, with my heart racing.
’Twas the sound that a man can never forget or mistake when once he has heard it—the sound of a woman sobbing. It rose from the little sitting-room immediately beneath me. The staircase door was close to my bedside, and I reached out my hand and, turning the handle cautiously, opened it. The sound was louder now, but still muffled, and I knew that the door at the bottom of the staircase was closed. For a little I remained propped on my elbow, and straining my ears to listen. The mourner must be either Clemence Durette or Ilga, and I could not doubt which of them it was. Why she wept, I did not consider. ’Twas the noise of her weeping, made yet more lonesome and sad by the black dead of night, that occupied my senses and filled me with an unbearable pain.
I got quietly out of my bed, and slipping on some clothes crept down the staircase in my stockings. ’Twas pitch dark in this passage, and I felt before me with my hands as I descended, fearing lest I might unawares stumble against the door. At the last step I paused and listened again. Then very gently I groped for the handle. I had good reason to know how noiselessly it turned, and I opened the door for the space of an inch. A feeble light flickered on the wall of the room at my side. I waited with my fingers on the handle, but there was no check in the sobbing. I pushed the door wider open; the light upon the wall wavered and shook, as though a draught took the flame of a candle. But that was all. So I stepped silently forward and looked into the room.
The sight made my heart bleed. Ilga lay face downwards and prone upon the floor, her arms outstretched, her hair unbound and rippling about her shoulders. From head to foot she was robed in black. It broke upon me suddenly that I had never seen her so clad before, and I remembered a remark that Elmscott had passed in London upon that very score.
The window was open, and from the garden a light wind brought the soughing of trees into the room. A single candle guttered on the mantelshelf and heightened its general aspect of neglect. Thus Ilga lay, abandoned to—what? Grief for her husband, or remorse at forgetting him? That black dress might well be the fitting symbol of either sentiment. ’Twas for neither of these reasons that she wept, as I learned long afterwards, but for another of which I had no suspicion then.
I closed the door softly and sat me down in the darkness on the stairs, hearkening to that desolate sound of tears and praying for the morning to come and for the day to pass into night, that I might say my say and either bring her such rest and happiness as a man’s love can bring to a woman, or slip out of her life and so trouble her no more.
’Twas a long while before she ceased from her distress, and to me it seemed far longer than it was. As soon as I heard her move I got me back to my room. The dawn was just breaking when, from a corner of my window, I saw her walk out across the lawn, and the dew was white upon the grass like a hoar-frost. With a weary, dragging step, and a head adroop like a broken flower, she walked to the parapet of the terrace, and hung on it for a little, gazing down upon the roofs of her sleeping village. Then she turned and fixed her eyes upon my window. I was hidden in the curtains so that she could not see me. For some minutes she gazed at it, her face very tired and sad. ’Twas her bridal chamber, or rather, would have been but for me, and I wondered much whether she was thinking of the husband or the guest. She turned away again, looked out across the valley paved with a gray floor of mist, and so walked back to the main wing of the Castle.
The light broadened out; starlings began to twitter in the trees, and far away a white peak blushed rosy at the kiss of the sun. The one day of my life had come. By this time to-morrow, I thought, the world would have changed its colours for me, one way or another; and tired out with my vigil, I tumbled into bed and slept dreamlessly until Michael Groder roused me.
I asked I him why he had failed me the night before. “I was unwell,” he replied.
“True” said I, with great friendliness. “You got a heavier load upon your stomach than it would stand.”
The which was as unwise a remark as I could have made; for Groder’s ill will towards me needed no stimulus to provoke it.