For the moment the door closed I was filled with an appalling sense of loneliness and isolation. Heart and brain it seized and possessed me. ’Twas the closing of a door upon all the hopes which had chattered and laughed and nestled at my heart for so long; and into such a vacancy of mind did I fall, that I did not trouble to speculate upon the nature of the story which Countess Lukstein believed to be true. That she had been led by I knew not what suspicions into some strange error, that she had got but a misshapen account of the duel between her husband and myself, was, of course, plain to me. But since her former kindliness and courtesy had been part of a deliberate and ordained plan for securing me within her power, since, in a word, she had cherished no favourable thoughts of me at any time, I deemed it idle to consider of the matter.
Moreover, the remoteness of these parts made my helplessness yet more bitter and overpowering; though, indeed, I was not like to forget my helplessness in any case, for the cords about my ankles and wrists bit into my flesh like coils of hot wire. “A sequestered nook of the world,” so I remembered, had Ilga called this corner of the Tyrol, and for a second time that night my thoughts went back to my own distant valley. I saw it pleasant with the domestic serenity which a man discovers nowhere but in his native landscape.
And to crown, as it were, my loneliness, now and again a few stray notes of music or a noise of laughter would drift through the chinks into the pitch-dark hut, and tell of the lighted Hall and of Ilga, now, maybe, dancing among her guests.
’Twas a little short of eleven when she returned to the pavilion. I am able to fix the time from an incident which occurred shortly afterwards. At first, the steps falling light as they approached, I bethought me my visitor was either Otto or Groder coming stealthily upon his toes to complete his work with me; for I never expected to look upon her face again.
She carried no light with her, and paused on the sill of the door, her slight figure outlined against the twilight. She bent her head forward, peering into the gloom of the room, but she said no word; neither did I address her. So she stood for a little, and then, stepping again outside, she unbarred and opened the shutters of the window. Returning, she latched the door, locked it from within, and, fetching the stool from the corner, sat her down quietly before me.
The moon, which had previously shone into the room almost in a level bar, now slanted its beams, so that the Countess was bathed in them from head to foot, while I, being nearer to the window, lay half in shadow, half on the edge of the light.
She sat with her chin propped upon her hands, and her eyes steadily fixed upon mine, but she betrayed no resentment in her looks nor, indeed, feeling of any kind. Then, in a low, absent voice, she began to croon over to herself that odd, wailing elegy which I had once heard her sing in London. The tune had often haunted me since that day from its native melancholy, but now, as Ilga sang it in the moonlight, her eyes very big and dark, and fastened quietly upon mine, it gained a weird and eerie quality from her manner, and I felt my flesh begin to creep.
I shifted uneasily upon the settle, and Ilga stopped. I must think she mistook the reason of my restlessness, for a slow smile came upon her face, and, reaching out a hand, she freed the knots wherewith I was bound.
“It may well be,” she suggested, “that you are better inclined to speak the truth, since now you know to what falsehood has brought you.”
“Madame,” I replied wearily, “I know not what you believe nor what you would have me say. It matters little to me, nor can I see, since you have reached the end for which you worked, that it need greatly concern you. This only I know, that I have already told you the truth.”
“And the miniature you left behind you?” she asked, with an ironic smile. “Am I to understand it has no bearing on the duel?”
“Nay, madame,” said I; “’tis the key to the cause of our encounter.”
“Ah!” she interrupted, with a satisfaction which I did not comprehend. “You have drawn some profit from the reflection of these last hours.”
“For,” I continued, “it contained the likeness of my friend, Sir Julian Harnwood, as, indeed, Otto must needs have told you. ’Twas in his cause that I came to Lukstein.”
“’Twas the likeness of a woman,” she replied patiently.
I stared at her in amazement. “Of a woman!” I exclaimed.
She laughed with a quiet scorn.
“Of a woman,” she repeated. “I showed it to you in my apartments at London.”
“The portrait of Lady Tracy? It is impossible!” I cried, starting up. “Why, Marston gave it you. You told me so.”
“Oh, is there no end to it?” She burst out into sudden passion, beating her hands together as though to enforce her words. “Is there no end to it? I never told you so. ’Tis you who pretended that. You pretended you believed it, and like a weak fool, I let your cunning deceive me. I was not sure then that you had killed the Count, and I believed you had never seen the likeness till that day. But now I know. You own you left the miniature behind you.”
“But the case was locked,” I said, “and I had not the key.”
“I know not that.”
I could have informed her who had possessed the key, but refrained, bethinking me that the knowledge might only add to her distress and yet do no real service to me.
“And so,” I observed instead, “all your anxiety that I should not tax Marston with the giving of it was on your own account, and not at all on mine.”
She was taken aback by the unexpected rejoinder. But to me ’twas no more than a corollary of my original thought that the Countess had been playing me like a silly fish during the entire period of our acquaintance.
“I showed you the portrait as a test,” she said hurriedly. “I believed you guiltless, and I knew Mr Marston and yourself had little liking for each other. Any pretext would have served you for a quarrel. Besides—besides—”
“Besides,” I took her up, “you allowed me to believe that Marston had given you the miniature, and had I spoken of the matter to him I should have discovered you were playing me false.”
“But you knew,” she cried, whipping herself to anger, as it seemed to me, to make up for having given ground: “You knew how the miniature came into my hands. All the while you knew it, and you talk of my playing you false!”
Suddenly she resumed her seat, and continued in a quieter voce,—“But the brother found out the shameful secret. You could overreach me, but not the brother; and fresh from accounting to him for your conduct, you must needs stumble into my presence with Lady Tracy’s name upon your lips, and doubtless some new explanation ready.”
“Madame, that is not so. I came that evening to tell you what I have told you to-night, but you would not hear me. You bade me come to Lukstein. I know now why, and ’twas doubtless for the same reason that you locked the door when I had swooned.” She started as I mentioned that incident. “’Twas not on Lady Tracy’s account, or because of any conduct of mine towards her, that I fought Marston. Against his will I compelled him to fight, as Lord Elmscott will bear out. He had learned by whose hand Count Lukstein died, and rode after you to Bristol that he might be the first to tell you; and I was minded to tell you the story myself.”
“Or, at all events, to prevent him telling it,” she added, with a sneer. “But how came Mr Marston to learn this fact?”
I was silent. I could not but understand that the Countess presumed her husband, Lady Tracy, and myself to be bound together by some vulgar intrigue, and I saw how my answer must needs strengthen her suspicions.
“How did he find out?” she repeated. “Tell me that!”
“Lady Tracy informed him,” I answered, in despair.
“Then you admit that Lady Tracy knew?”
“I told her of the duel myself, on the very morning that that I first met her—on the morning that I introduced her into your house.”
“And why did she carry the news to her brother?”
Again I was silent, and again she pressed the question.
“She was afraid of you, and she sought her brother’s protection.” Every word I uttered seemed to plead against me. “I understand now why she was afraid. I did not know her miniature was in that case, but doubtless she did, and she was afraid you should connect her with Count Lukstein’s death.”
“Whereas,” replied the Countess, “she had nothing to do with it?”
I had made up my mind what answer I should make to this question when it was put. Since I had plainly lost Ilga beyond all hope. I was resolved to spare her the knowledge of her husband’s treachery. ’Twould not better my case—for in truth I cared little what became of me—to relate that disgraceful episode to her, and ’twould only add to her unhappiness. So I answered boldly,—“She had nothing to do with it.”
The Countess sat looking at me without a word, and I was bethinking of me of some excuse by which I might explain how it came about that Lady Tracy’s portrait and not Julian’s was in the box, when she bent forward, with her face quite close to mine, so that she might note every change in my expression.
“And the footsteps in the snow; how do you account for them? The woman’s footsteps that kept side by side with yours from the parapet to the window, and back again from the window to the parapet?”
I uttered a cry, and setting my feet to the ground, raised myself up in the settle.
“The footsteps in the snow? They were your own.”
The Countess stared at me vacantly, and then I saw the horror growing in her eyes, and I knew that at last she believed me.
“They were your own,” I went on. “I knew nothing of Count Lukstein’s marriage. I had never set eyes on him at all. I knew not ’twas your wedding-day. I came hither hot-foot from Bristol to serve thy friend Sir Julian Harnwood. He had quarrelled with the Count, and since he lay condemned to death as one of Monmouth’s rebels, he charged me to take the quarrel up. In furtherance of that charge, I forced Count Lukstein to fight me. In the midst of the encounter you came down the little staircase into the room. I saw you across the Count’s shoulder. The curtain by the window hangs now half-torn from the valance. I tore it clutching its folds in my horror. We started asunder, and you passed between us. You walked out across the garden and to the Castle wall. Madame, as God is my witness, when once I had seen you, I wished for nothing so much as to leave the Count in peace. But—but—”
“Well?” she asked breathlessly.
“’Twas Count Lukstein’s turn to compel me,” I went on, recovering from a momentary hesitation. I had indeed nearly blurted out the truth about his final thrust. “And when you came back into the room, you passed within a foot of the dead body of your husband, and of myself, who was kneeling—”
She flung herself back, interrupting me with a shuddering cry. She covered her face with her hands, and swayed to and fro upon the stool, as though she would fall.
“Madame!” I exclaimed. “For God’s sake! For if you swoon, alas! I cannot help you.”
She recovered herself in a moment, and taking her hands from before her face, looked at me with a strangely softened expression. She rose from her seat, and took a step or two thoughtfully towards the door. Then she stopped and turned to me.
“Lady Tracy, you say, had nothing to do with this quarrel, and yet her likeness was in the miniature case.”
I had no doubt in my mind as to how it came there. ’Twas the case which Lady Tracy had given to Count Lukstein, and doubtless she had substituted her portrait for that of Julian. But this I could not tell to the Countess.
“’Twas a mistake of my friend,” said I. “He gave me the case as a warrant and proof, which I might show to Count Lukstein, that I came on his part, telling me his portrait was within it. But ’twas on the night before he was executed, and his thoughts may well have gone astray.”
“But since the case was locked, and you had not the key, who was to open it?”
“Count Lukstein,” I replied, being thrown for a moment off my guard.
“Count Lukstein?” she asked, coming back to me. “Then he possessed the key. You fought for your friend, Sir Julian Harnwood. Lady Tracy was betrothed to Sir Julian The case was given to you as a warrant of the cause in which you came. It contained Lady Tracy’s likeness, and Count Lukstein held the key.”
She spoke with great slowness and deliberation, adding sentence to sentence as links in a chain of testimony. I heard her with a great fear, perceiving how near she was to-the truth. There was, however, one link missing to make the chain complete. She did not know that Lady Tracy had owned the case and had given it to Count Lukstein, and of that fact I was determined she should still remain ignorant.
“My husband loved me,” she said quickly, with a curious challenge in her voice.
“I believe most sincerely that he did,” I answered with vehemence. I was able to say so honestly, for I remembered how his face and tone had softened when he made mention of his wife.
“Then tell me the cause of this quarrel that induced you to break into this house at midnight, and, on a friend’s behalf, force a stranger to fight you without even a witness?”
There was a return of suspicion in her tone, and she came back into the moonlight. The temptation to speak out grew upon me as I watched her. I longed to assure her that I was bound to no other woman, but pledged heart and soul to her, and the fear that if I kept silent she would once more set this duel down to some rivalry in intrigue, urged me wellnigh out of all restraint. Why should I be so careful of the reputation of Count Lukstein? ’Twas an unworthy thought, and one that promised to mislead me; for after all, ’twas not his good or ill repute that I had to consider, but rather whether Ilga held his memory in such esteem and respect that my disclosures would inflict great misery upon her and a lasting distress. This postulate I could hardly bring myself to question. Had I not, indeed, ample surety in the care and perseverance wherewith she had sought to avenge his death? However, being hard pressed by my inclinations, I determined to test that point conclusively if by any means I might.
“Madame,” I said, “last night, as I lay in my bed, bethinking me of the morrow, and wondering what it held in store for me, I heard the sound of a woman weeping. It rose from the little room beneath me; from the room wherein I fought Count Lukstein. ’Twas the most desolate sound that ever my ears have hearkened to—a woman weeping alone in the black of night. I stole down the staircase and opened the door. I saw that the woman who wept was yourself.”
“’Twas for my husband,” she interposed, very sharp and quick, and my heart sank.
Yet her words seemed to quicken my desire to reveal the truth. They awoke in me a strange and morbid jealousy of the man. I longed to cry out: “He was a coward; false to you, false to his friend, false to me.”
“And in London?” I asked, temporising again. “The morning I came to you unannounced. You were at the spinet.”
“’Twas for my husband,” she repeated, with a certain stubbornness. “But we will keep to the question we have in hand, if you please—the cause of your dispute with Count Lukstein.”
“I will not tell you it.”
I spoke with no great firmness, and on that account most like I helped to confirm her reawakened suspicions.
“Will not?” says she, her voice cold and sneering. “They are brave words though unbravely spoken. You forget I have the advantage and can compel you.”
“Madame,” I replied, “you overrate your powers. Your servants can bind me hand and foot, but they cannot compel me to speak what I will not.”
“Have you no lie ready? What? Does your invention fail?” and she suddenly rose from the stool in a whirlwind of passion. “God forgive me!” she cried. “For even now I believed you.”
She ceased abruptly and pushed her head forward, listening. The creak of wheels came faintly to our ears.
“You hear that? It is Mr Buckler’s carriage, and Mr Buckler rides within it. Do you understand? The carriage takes you to Meran; you will not be the first traveller who has disappeared on the borders of Italy. I am afraid your friend at Venice will wait for you in vain.”
The carriage rumbled down the hill, and we both listened until the sound died away.
“For the future you shall labour as my peasant on the hillside among the woods, with my peasants for companionship, until your thoughts grow coarse with your body, and your soul dwindles to the soul of a peasant. So shall you live, and so shall you die, for the wrong which you have done to me.” She towered above me in her outburst, her eyes flashing with anger. “And you dared to charge me with trickery! Why, what else has your life been? From the night you went clothed as a woman to Bristol Bridewell, what else has your life been? A woman! The part fitted you well; you have all the cunning. You need but the addition of a petticoat!”
The bitterness of her speech stung me into a fury, and, forgetful of the continence I owed to her,—“Madame!” I said, “I proved the contrary to your husband.”
“Silence!” she cried, and with her open hand she stuck me on the face. And then a strange thing happened. It seemed as though we changed places. For all my helplessness, I seemed to have won the mastery over her. A feeling of power and domination, such as I had never experienced before, grew stronger and stronger within me, and ran tingling through every vein. I forgot my bonds; I forgot the contempt which she had poured on me; I forgot the very diffidence with which she had always inspired me. I felt somehow that I was her master, and exulted in the feeling. Whatever happened to me in the future, whether or no I was to labour as her bondslave for all my days, for that one moment I was her master. She could never hold me in lower esteem, in greater scorn than she did at this hour, and yet I was her master. Some thing told me indeed that she would never hold me in contempt at all again. She stood before me, her face dark with shame, her attitude one of shrinking humiliation. Twice she stove to raise her eyes to mine; twice she let them fall to the ground. She began a sentence, and broke off at the second word. She pulled fretfully at the laces of her gloves. Then she turned and walked to the door. She walked slowly at first, constraining herself; she quickened her pace, fumbled with the key in her hurry to unlock the door, and once out of the pavilion, without pausing to latch or lock it, fled like one pursued towards the house. And from the bottom of my heart I pitied her.
In a little while Father Spaur, with the two Tyrolese, returned, and they carried me quickly through the little parlour and up the staircase to my bedroom. There they flung me on the bed and locked the door and left me. Through the open window the dance-melodies rose to my ears. It seemed to me that I could distinguish particular tunes which I had heard when I crouched in the snow upon that November night.
Que toutes joies et toutes honneurs Viennent d’armes et d’amours.
Jack’s refrain, which he had hummed so continually during our ride to Austria, came into my head, and set itself to the lilt of the music. Well, I had made essay of both arms and love, and I had got little joy and less honour therefrom, unless it be joy to burn with anxieties, and honour to labour as a peasant and be deemed a common trickster!
The music ceased; the guests went homewards down the hill, laughing and singing as they went; the Castle gradually grew silent The door of my room was unlocked and flung open, and Groder entered, bearing a candle in his hand. He set it down upon the table, and drew a long knife from a sheath which projected out of his pocket. This he held and flourished before my eyes, seeking like a child to terrify me with his antics, until Father Spaur, following in upon his heels, bade him desist from his buffoonery.
Groder cut the girdle which hound my ankles.
“March!” said he.
But my legs were so numbed with the tightness of the cord that they refused their office. Father Spaur ordered him to chafe my limbs with his hands, which he did very unwillingly, and after a little I was able to walk, though with uncertain and wavering steps.
“Should you suffer at all at Groder’s hands,” said the priest pleasantly, “I beg you to console yourself with certain reflections which I shared with you one afternoon that we rode together.”
We proceeded along the corridor and turned into the gallery which ran round the hall. But at the head of the great staircase I stopped and drew back. The priest’s taunts and Groder’s insolence I had endured in silence. What they had bidden me to do, that I had done; for in the miscarriage of my fortunes I was minded to bear myself as a gentleman should, without pettish complaints or an unavailing resistance which could only entail upon me further indignities. But from this final humiliation I shrank.
Below me the entire household of servants was ranged in the hall, leaving a lane open from the foot of the stairs to the door. Every face was turned towards me—except one. One face was held aside and hidden in a handkerchief, and since that hour I have ever felt a special friendliness and gratitude for the withered little Frenchwoman, Clemence Durette. Alone of all that company she showed some pity for my plight. None the less, however, my eyes went wandering for another sight. What with the uncertain glare of the torches, that sent waves of red light and shadow in succession sweeping across the throng of faces, ’twas some while or ever I could discover the Countess. That she was present I had no doubt, and at last I saw her, standing by the door apart from her servants, her face white, and her eyelids closed over her eyes.
Groder pushed me roughly in the small of the back, and I stumbled down the topmost steps. There was no escape from the ordeal, and glancing neither to the right nor to the left, I walked between the silent rows of servants. I passed within a yard of Countess Lukstein, but she made no movement; she never even raised her eyes. A carriage stood in the courtyard, and I got into it, and was followed by Michael Groder and Otto. As we drove off a hubbub arose within the hall, and it seemed to me that a ring was formed about the doorway, as though some one had fallen. But before I had time to take much note of it, a cloth was bound over my eyes, and the carriage rolled down the hill.
At the bottom, where the track from Lukstein debouches upon the main road, we turned eastwards in the direction of Meran, and thence again to the left, ascending an incline: so that I gathered we were entering a ravine parallel to the Senner Thal, but further east.
In a while the carriage stopped, and Otto, opening the door, told me civilly enough to descend. Then he took in by the arm and led me across a threshold into a room. A woman’s voice was raised in astonishment.
“Wait till he’s plucked of his feathers!” laughed Groder, and bade her close the shutters.
The bandage was removed from my eyes, and by the gray morning light which pierced through the crevices of the window, I perceived that I was in some rough cottage. An old woman stood gaping open-mouthed before me. Groder sharply bade her go and prepare breakfast. Otto unbound my wrists, and pointed to a heap of clothes which lay in a corner, and so they left me to myself.
I had some difficulty in putting on these clothes, since my wrists were swollen and wellnigh useless from their long confinement. Indeed, but for a threat which Groder shouted through the door, saying that he would come and assist me to make my toilet, I doubt whether I should have succeeded at all.
For breakfast they brought me a pannikin full of a greasy steaming gruel, which I constrained myself to swallow. Then they bound my hands again. Groder wrapped up the clothes which I had taken off in a bundle, and slung it on his back. Otto replaced the bandage on my eyes, and we set out, mounting upwards by a rough mountain track, along which they guided me. About noon Otto called a halt, and none too soon for I was ready to drop with fatigue and pain. There we made a meal of some dry coarse bread, and washed it down with spirit of a very bitter flavour. ’Twas new to me at the time, but I know now that it was distilled from the gentian flower. Groder lit a fire and burned the bundle of clothes which he had brought with him, the two men sharing my jewels between them.
From that point we left the track and climbed up a grass slope, winding this way and that in the ascent. ’Twas as much as I could do to keep my feet, though Otto and Groder supported me upon either side. At the top we dipped down again for a little, crossed a level field of heather, but in what direction I know not, for by this I had lost all sense of our bearings, mounted again, descended again, and towards nightfall came to a hut. Groder thrust me inside, plucked the cloth from my face and unbound my hands.
“’Tis a long day’s journey,” said he; “but what matters that if you make it only once?”