’Twas about seven of the clock when the villagers flocked up to the Castle and began their antic dances in the Hall and in the ball-room which fronted the terrace. They aimed at a display of agility rather than of elegance, leaping into the air and falling crack upon their knees, slapping their thighs and the soles of their feet, with many other barbaric gambols; and all the while they kept up such a noise of shouting, whistling, and singing, as fairly deafened one.
Ilga, I observed with some heart-sinking, had once more robed herself in black, and very simply; but the colour so set off the brightness of her hair, which was coiled in a coronal upon her head, and the white beauty of her arms, that for all my fears I could not but think she had never looked so exquisitely fair. However, I had thought the same upon so many different occasions that I would not now assert it as an indisputable fact.
As you may be certain, I had not copied Ilga’s simplicity, but had rather dressed in the opposite extreme. ’Twas no part of my policy to show her the disrespect of plain apparel. I had so little to offer that I must needs trick that little out to the best advantage; indeed, even at this distance of time, I fairly laugh when I recall the extraordinary pains I spent that evening upon my adornment. My Lord Culverton could never have bettered them. A coat of white brocaded velvet, ruffles that reached to the tips of my fingers, a cravat of the finest Mechlin, pink breeches, silk stockings rolled above the knees, with gold clocks and garters, white Spanish leather shoes with red heels and Elmscott’s buckles, a new heavy black peruke; so I attired myself for this momentous interview.
Father Spaur greeted me with a sour smile and a sneering compliment; but ’twas not his favour that I sought, and I cared little that he showed so plainly his resentment.
“A carriage,” he added, “will be in waiting for you at eleven, if you are still minded to leave us.”
I thanked him shortly, and passed on to Ilga, but for some while I could get no private speech with her. For though she took no part in the dancing, even when a quieter measure made a break in the boisterous revelry, she moved continually from one to the other of her villagers with a kindly smile and affable word for each in a spirit of so sweet a condescension, that I had no doubt that she had vaunted their loyalty most truthfully. ’Twould have been strange, indeed, if they had not greatly worshipped her.
In the midst of the clatter, however, and near upon the hour of nine, a man burst wildly into the room, faltering out that the “Wildthurm” bell was now even ringing its message to Lukstein.
On the instant the music was stopped; a great awe fell upon the noisy throng; women clung in fear to men, and men crossed themselves with a muttering of tremulous prayers; and then Ilga led the way through the Hall into the courtyard of the Castle.
The ice-fields of the mountain glittered like silver in the moonlight, and we gazed upwards towards them with our ears strained to catch the sound. Many, I know, will scoff at and question what I relate. Many have already done so, attributing it to a delusion of the senses, a heated imagination, or any other of the causes which are held to absolve the spirits of the air from participation in men’s affairs.
Against such unholy disbelief it is not for me to argue or dispute, nor is this the fitting place and opportunity. But this I do attest, and to it I do solemnly put my name. ’Twas not I alone who heard the bell; every man and woman who danced that night at Lukstein Castle heard it. The sound was faint, but wonderfully pure and clear, the strokes of the hammer coming briskly one upon the other as though the bell was tossed from side to side by willing hands.
“It speaks of happiness for Lukstein,” said Father Spaur, with an evil glance towards me.
For my part I just looked at Ilga.
“Come!” she said.
And we walked back through the empty echoing hall, and across the lawn to the terrace.
A light wind was blowing from the south, but there were no clouds in the sky, and the valley lay beneath us with all its landmarks merged by the gray, tender light, so that it seemed to have widened to double its breadth.
The terrace, however, was for the most part in shadow, since the moon, hanging behind a cluster of trees at the east corner of the wall, only sprinkled its radiance through a tracery of boughs, and drew a dancing pattern about our feet. As I leaned upon the parapet there came before my eyes, raised by I know not what chance suggestion, a vivid picture of my little far-away hamlet in the country of the English lakes.
“You are thoughtful, Mr Buckler!” said Ilga.
“I was thinking of the valley of Wastdale,” I replied, “and of a carrier’s cart stuck in a snowdrift on Hard Knot.”
“Of your home? ’Twas of your home that you were thinking?” she asked curiously, and yet with something more than curiosity in her voice, with something of regret something almost of pity.
“Not so much of my home,” I replied, “but rather from what distant points our two lives have drawn together.” I was emboldened to the words by the tone in which she had spoken. “A few weeks ago you were here at Lukstein in the Tyrol, I was at the Hall in Cumberland, and we had never spoken to one another. How strange it all seems!”
“Nay,” she answered simply; “it was certain you and I should meet. Is not God in His heaven?”
My heart gave a great leap. We had now come to the pavilion, which leaned against the Castle wall, and Ilga opened the door and entered it. I followed her, and closed the latch behind me.
In the side of the room there was a square window with shutters, but no glass. The shutters were open, and through a gap of the trees the moonlight poured into the pavilion.
We stood facing one another silently. The time had come for me to speak.
“Well,” said she, and her voice was very calm, “what is it, Mr Buckler?”
All my fine arguments and protestations flew out of my head like birds startled from a nest. I forgot even the confession I had to make to her, and “I love you!” I said humbly, looking down on the floor.
She gave me no answer. My heart fainted within me; I feared that it would stop. But in a little I dared to raise my eyes to her face. She stood in the pillar of moonlight, her eyes glistening, but with no expression on her face which could give me a clue to her thoughts, and she softly opened and shut her fan, which hung on a girdle about her waist.
“How I do love you!” I cried, and I made a step towards her. “But you know that.”
She nodded her head.
“I took good care you should,” she said.
I did not stop to consider the strangeness of the speech. My desire construed it without seeking help from the dictionary of thought.
“Then you wished it,” I cried joyfully, and I threw myself down on my knee at her feet, and buried my face in my hands. “Ilga! Ilga!”
She made no movement, but replied in a low voice,—“With all my heart I wished it. How else could I have brought you to the Tyrol?”
I felt the tears gathering into my eyes and my throat choking. I lifted my face to hers! and taking courage from her words, clipped my arms about her waist.
She gave a little trembling cry, and plucked at my fingers. I but tightened my clasp.
“IIga!” I murmured. ’Twas the only word which came to my lips, but it summed the whole world for me then—ay, and has done ever since. “Ilga!”
Again she plucked at my fingers, and for all the calmness, which she had shown, I could feel her hands burning through her gloves. Then a shadow darkened for an instant across the window, the moonlight faded, and her face was lost to me. ’Twas for no longer than an instant. I looked towards the window, but Ilga bent her head down between it and me.
“’Tis only the branches swinging in the wind,” she said softly.
I rose to my feet and chew her towards me. She set her palms against my chest as if to repulse me, but she said no word, and I saw the necklace about her throat flashing and sparkling with the heave of her bosom.
It seemed to me that a light step sounded without the pavilion, and I turned my head aside to listen.
“’Tis only the leaves blowing along the terrace,” she whispered, and I looked again at her and drew her closer.
For a time she resisted; then I heard her sigh, and her hand stole across my shoulder. Her head drooped forward until her hair touched my lips. I could feel her heart beating on my breast. Gently I turned her face upwards, and then with a loud clap the shutters were flung to and the room was plunged in darkness.
Ilga started away from me, drawing a deep breath as for some release. I groped my way to the window. The shutters opened outwards, and I pushed against them. They were held close and fast.
A wooden settle stood against the wall just beneath the window, and I knelt on it and drove at the shutters with my shoulder. They gave a little at first, and I heard a whispered call for help. The pressure from without was redoubled; I was forced back; a bar fell across them out side and was fitted into a socket. Thrust as I might I could not break it; the window was securely barricaded
Meanwhile Ilga had not spoken.
“Ilga!” I called.
She did not answer me, nor in the blackness of the pavilion could I discover where she stood.
“Ilga!”
The same empty silence. I could not even hear her breathing, and yet she was in the pavilion, within a few feet of me. There was something horrible in her quietude, and a great fear of I knew not what caught at my heart and turned my blood cold.
“This is the priest’s doing,” I cried, and I drew my sword and made towards the door.
A startled cry burst from the gloom behind me.
“Stop! If you open it, you will be killed.”
I stopped as she bade me, body and brain numbed in a common inaction. I could hear her breathing now plainly enough.
“This is not the priest’s doing,” she said, at length. “It is the wife’s.” Her voice steadied and became even as she spoke. “From the hour I found Count Lukstein dead I have lived only for this night.”
I let my sword slip from my grasp, and it clattered and rang on the floor.
’Twas not surprise that I felt; ever since the shutters had been slammed I seemed to have known that she would speak those words. And ’twas no longer fear. Nor did I as yet wonder how she came by her knowledge. Indeed. I had but one thought, one thought of overwhelming sadness, and I voiced it in utter despondency.
“So all this time—in London, here, a minute ago, you were tricking me! Tricking me into loving you; then tricking my love for you!”
“A minute ago!” she caught me up, and there was a quiver in her voice of some deep feeling. Then she broke off, and said, in a hard, clear tone: “I was a woman, and alone. I used a woman’s weapons.”
Again she paused, but I made no answer. I had none to make. She resumed, with a flash of anger, as though my silence accused her,—“And was there no trickery on your side, too?”
They were almost the same words as those which Marston had levelled at me, and I imagined that they conveyed the same charge. However, it seemed of little use or I to defend myself at length, and I answered;—“I have played no part. It might have fared better with me if I had. What deceit I have practised may be set down to love’s account. ’Twas my fear of losing you that locked my lips. Had I not loved you, what need to tell you my secret? ’Twas no crime that I committed. But since I loved you, I was bound in very truth to speak. I have known that from the first, and I pledged myself to speak at the moment that I told you of my love. I dared not disclose the matter before. There was so little chance that I should win your favour, even had every circumstance seconded my suit. But this very night I should have told you the truth.”
“No doubt! no doubt!” she answered, with the bitterest irony, and I understood what a fatal mistake I had made in pleading my passion before disclosing the story of the duel. I should have begun from the other end. “And no doubt you meant also to tell me, with the same open frankness, of the woman for whose sake you killed my—my husband?”
“I fought for no woman, but for my friend.”
She laughed; surely the hardest, most biting laugh that ever man heard. “Tell me your fine story now.”
I sank down on the settle, feeling strangely helpless in the face of her contempt.
“This is the priest’s doing,” I repeated, more to myself than to her.
“It is my doing,” she said again; “my doing from first to last.”
“Then what was it?” I asked, with a dull, involuntary curiosity. “What was it you had neither the weakness to yield to nor the strength to resist?”
She did not answer me, but it seemed as though she suddenly put out a hand and steadied herself against the wall.
“Tell me your story,” she said briefly; and sitting there in the darkness, unable to see my mistress, I began the history of that November night.
“It is true that I killed Count Lukstein; but I killed him in open encounter. I fought him fairly and honourably.”
“At midnight!” she interrupted. “Without witnesses, upon his wedding-day.”
“There was blood upon Count Lukstein’s sword,” I went on doggedly, “and that blood was mine. I fought him fairly and honourably. I own I compelled him to fight me.”
“You and your—companion.”
She stressed the word with an extraordinary contempt.
“My companion!” I repeated in surprise. “What know you of my companion? My companion watched our horses in the valley.”
“You dare to tell me that?” she cried, ceasing from her contempt, and suddenly lifting her voice in an inexplicable passion.
“It is the truth.”
“The truth! The truth!” she exclaimed, and then, with a stamp of her foot, and in a ringing tone of decision “Otto!”
The door was flung open. Otto Krax and Michael Groder blocked the opening, and behind them stood Father Spaur, holding a lighted torch above his head. The Tyrolese servants carried hangers in their hands. I can see their blades flashing in the red light now!
Silently they filed into the pavilion. Father Spaur lifted his torch into a bracket, latched the door, and leaned his back against the panels. All three looked at the Countess, waiting her orders. ’Twas plain, from the priest’s demeanour, that Ilga had spoken no more than truth. In this matter she was the mistress and the priest the servitor.
I turned and gazed at her. She stood erect against the wall opposite to me, meeting my gaze, her face stern and set, as though carven out of white marble, her eyes dark and glittering with menace.
For, my part, I rose from the settle and stood with folded arms. I did not even stoop to pick up my rapier; it seemed to me not worth while.
“The proper attitude of heroical endurance,” sneered Father Spaur. “Perhaps a little more humility might become “a true son of the Church.” Was not that the phrase?”
The Countess nodded to Otto. He took Groder’s sword and stood it with his own, by a low stool in the corner near the door.
“’Tis your own fault,” she said sternly. “Even now I would have spared you had you told me the truth. But you presume too much upon my folly.”
The next moment the two men sprang at me. The manner of their attack took me by surprise, and in a twinkling they had me down upon the bench. Then, however, a savage fury flamed up within me. ’Twas one thing to be run through at the command of Ilga, and so perish decently by the sword; ’twas quite another to be handled by her servants, and I fought against the indignity with all my strength. But the struggle was too unequal. I should have proved no match for Otto had he stood alone, and I before him, fairly planted on my legs. With the pair of them to master me I was well as powerless as a child. Moreover, they had already forced me down by the shoulders, so that the edge of the settle cut across my back just below the shoulder-blades, and I could get no more purchase or support than the soles of my feet on the rough flooring gave me.
My single chance lay in regaining possession of my rapier. It lay just within my reach, and struggling violently with my left arm, in order to the better conceal my design, I stretched out the other cautiously towards it.
My fingers were actually on the pommel, I was working it nearer to me so that I might grasp the blade short, before Groder perceived my intention. With an oath he kicked it behind him. Otto set a huge knee calmly upon my chest, and pressed his weight upon it until I thought my spine would snap. Then he seized my arms, jerked them upwards, and held them outstretched above my head, keeping his knee the while jammed down upon my ribs. Groder drew a cord from his pocket, and turning back my sleeves with an ironic deliberation, bound my wrists tightly together.
“’Twas not for nothing Groder went a-valeting,” laughed Father Spaur; and then, seeing that I was assisted in my struggle by the pressure which I got from the floor, “’Twere wise to repeat the ceremony with his ankles.”
“You, Groder!” said Otto.
“I have no more cord,” growled Michael, as he tied the knots viciously about my wrists.
Something rattled lightly on the ground. ’Twas the girdle of the Countess, with the fan attached to the end of it. Groder plucked the fan off, struck my heels from under me, and bound the girdle round and round my ankles until they jarred together and I felt the bones cracking.
Otto took his knee from my chest, and the two men went back to their former stations by the door.
Father Spaur came over to where I lay, rubbing his hands gently together.
“Really, really!” said he in a silky voice, “so the cockatoo has been caged after all.”
The words, recalling that morning in London when first I allowed myself to take heart in my hopes, so stung me that, tied as I was, I struggled on to my feet, and so stood tottering. Father Spaur drew back a pace and glanced quickly about him.
“Michael!” he called. But the next instant I fell heavily forward upon his breast. He burst into a loud laugh of relief, and flung me back upon the settle.
I looked towards Ilga.
“What have you not told him?” I asked.
“Nothing!” she said coldly. “I, at all events, had nothing to conceal.”
She motioned Father Spain to fall back. Otto and Groder picked up their swords. Father Spaur unlatched the door, rubbed out the torch upon the boards, and one after another they stepped from the pavilion. Ilga followed last, but she did not turn her head as she went out. Through the open doorway I could see the shadows dancing on the terrace, I could hear the music pouring from the Castle in a lilting measure. The door closed, the pavilion became black once more, and I heard their footsteps recede across the pavement and grow silent upon the grass.