Leatherface Part 28

"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed gaily. "I should be laughed at for a malingerer. Shall we return to the tavern, Madonna? and will you not take mine arm?"

He held his right arm out to her, but as he did so she noticed that he kept the other behind his back.

She did take his arm, however. It was obviously best--since he was more severely hurt than he cared to admit--to go at once back to the tavern, and dress the wound there with water and clean linen.

They walked in silence side by side. It was only a matter of an hundred yards or so, and after a very few moments they reached the porch of the "Merry Beggars," and as the buxom hostess was standing there, vaguely wondering what had happened to her guests, Lenora at once despatched her off for a basin of clean warm water and her very softest linen towels.

Then she went into the _tapperij_, and Mark followed her.

The room was as peaceful, as deserted as it had been awhile ago. The host himself had in the interval made up the fire, and it was blazing brightly, lighting up the little ingle-nook, with the high-backed chair wherein Lenora had sat and the low one drawn so close to it.

Turning to Mark, she noticed that he still kept his left arm resolutely behind his back.

"Our good hostess won't be long with the water," she said, "in the meanwhile, I pray you let me tend to your wound."

"It was nothing, Madonna, I entreat you," he said with marked impatience, "a blow from a halberd caught me on the arm. I scarcely feel it now."

"Let me see," she commanded.

Then as he made no movement to obey, she--half crying with anxiety, and half-laughing with excitement--ran swiftly round him, and in an instant she had hold, of his left hand, and with gentle pressure compelled him to yield it to her. He tried to struggle, but the pain in his arm rendered it somewhat helpless.

"I insist!" she said gently, and clung to his hand supporting the fore-arm as she did so.

"Your sleeve is covered with blood!" she exclaimed.

"It is nothing!" he persisted obstinately.

But for the moment she was the stronger of the two. Short of doing her violence he could not prevent her from holding his hand with one of hers, and with the other undoing the b.u.t.tons at his wrist; then with utmost gentleness she detached the shirt which was sticking to a deep, gaping wound, that stretched from the wrist right up to the elbow.

"Oh! but this is terrible!" she cried. "No blow from a halberd could have inflicted such a wound! ... Oh! why does not that woman hurry?" she added, whilst tears of vexation and impatience rose to her eyes. There was nothing to hand wherewith she could staunch the wound, even momentarily--every second was precious!...

"I have a knowledge of such matters," she said gently. "At the convent we tended on many wounded soldiers, when they came to us hurt from the wars. This is no fresh wound, Messire," she added slowly, "but an old and very severe one, dealt not so very long ago ... by a dagger probably, which tore the flesh and muscle right deeply to the bone ...

it had not healed completely ... the blow from the halberd caused it to reopen ... and..."

But the next words remained frozen on her lips: even whilst she spoke she had gradually felt a deathlike feeling--like an icy hand gripping her heart and tearing at its strings. An awful dizziness seized her.

She looked up--still holding Mark's hand--and gazed straight into his face. He too was as pale as the dead ashes in the grate--his whole face had become wax-like in its rigidity, only his eyes remained alive and glowing, fixed into her own now with a look which held a world of emotion in its depths: pa.s.sionate tenderness and mute appeal, an avowal and a yearning and with it all an infinity of despair.

And she, thus looking into that face which only lived through the eyes, saw all around her the narrow white-washed walls of the _tapperij_ fading away into darkness. In their stead she saw a narrow pa.s.sage, dark and gloomy, and in its remotest and darkest corner a figure cowered, clad in dark clothes from head to foot and wearing a mask of leather upon its face--the a.s.sa.s.sin waiting for his prey. And she saw Ramon--handsome, light-hearted, debonnaire Ramon--her kinsman and her lover, standing unsuspecting by. She saw it all--the picture as her father had painted it for her edification. The a.s.sa.s.sin lying in wait--Ramon unsuspecting. She saw the murder committed there in the dark, the stealthy, surrept.i.tious blow. She saw Ramon totter and fall--but before falling turn on the dastardly murderer, and with hand already half paralysed by oncoming death, deal him a deep and gashing wound ... in the left fore-arm ... with his dagger which tore flesh and muscle between elbow and wrist right through to the bone.

And while she looked straight into his eyes and yet saw nothing but the vision of that awful deed, her lips murmured automatically the four accusing words:

"Then it was you!"

He had not for one second lost his hold upon himself, since that awful moment when he realised that she guessed. He had no idea that don Ramon, at the point of death, had spoken of the wound which he had inflicted on the man who had meted out summary justice to him for his crimes. But now he knew that the secret which he would have buried with him in a bottomless grave was known to her--to the woman whom he had learned to love with his whole soul. She knew now, and henceforth they must be not only strangers but bitter enemies. Nothing--not even perhaps his own death--would ever wipe away the sense of utter abhorrence wherewith she regarded him now. He took his last look of her as one does of one infinitely dear, who sinks into the arms of Death.

He drank in every line of her exquisite face, the child-like contour of chin and throat, her alabaster-like skin, the exquisite mouth which he was destined now never to touch with his yearning lips. In this supreme moment, his love for her--only just in its infancy--rose to its full effulgence; he knew now that he worshipped her, and knew that never while the shadow of her dead kinsman stood between them would he hold her in his arms.

"Then it was you!" she murmured again, and with those fateful words p.r.o.nounced his condemnation and her own indomitable hate.

"Madonna," he entreated, speaking with the infinite tenderness and pity which filled his heart, "will you deign to listen, if I try to plead mine own cause?"

But no look of softness came into her eyes: they were glowing and dry and unseeing: she did not see him--not Mark, her husband as he stood there now before her--she saw him cowering in a dark corner, clad in sombre clothes and wearing a leather mask--she saw him with an a.s.sa.s.sin's dagger in his hand and she saw Ramon lying dead at his feet.

"Then it was you!" she said for the third time.

And he bent his head in mute avowal.

For a few seconds longer she stood there, rigid and silent: slowly her fingers opened and his hand which she had held dropped away to his side.

A shudder went right through her, she tottered and nearly fell, only saving herself by holding on to the corner of the table. He made a movement as if he would try and support her, as if he would put his arms around her and pillow her against his breast, but with an exclamation of supreme loathing, she drew away from him, and with a pitiable cry half of hatred and wholly of misery, she turned and fled from the room.

CHAPTER XI

UTTER LONELINESS

I

What happened directly after that, Lenora did not know. Consciousness mercifully left her, and when she woke once more she found herself sitting in a small room which smelt of lavender and warm linen, beside a fire which burned low in a wide-open hearth.

She opened her eyes and looked enquiringly around her. The room was dark--only faintly lighted by the lamp which hung from a beam in the ceiling. A young girl was busy in a corner of the room bending over an ironing board.

"Does the n.o.ble lady feel better?" she asked kindly but with all the deference which those of the subject race were expected to show to their superiors.

She spoke in broken French--most women and men who served in the inns and taverns in the cities of the Low Countries were obliged to know some other language besides their own, seeing that the _tapperijen_ were frequented by Spanish, French and German soldiery.

"I am quite well, I thank thee," replied Lenora gently, "but wilt thou tell me where I am and how I came to be sitting here when..."

She paused; for with a rush the recollection of the past terrible moments came sweeping back upon her, and it seemed as if consciousness would flee from her once again.

"The n.o.ble lady must have felt dizzy," said the girl quietly. "Aunt sent me in with the warm water for the n.o.ble seigneur's wound, and I saw the n.o.ble lady just running out of the _tapperij_ to the porch and then fall--in a swoon. I was frightened, but the n.o.ble seigneur ordered me quickly to tie a towel around his wounded arm and then he carried the n.o.ble lady up here to a nice warm room, where he told me that mayhap she should deign to pa.s.s the night. Oh! the n.o.ble seigneur is grievously wounded, he..."

"Silence, girl," cried Lenora suddenly, for indeed with every word the child seemed to be touching an aching place in her heart. "No, no," she added more gently, seeing that the girl, abashed and not a little frightened, had gone back in silence to her ironing-board, "I did not mean to be unkind ... but ... as thou seest, I am not well. Come! tell me what happened after ... after the n.o.ble seigneur carried me up here."

"Aunt waited on him, n.o.ble lady," said the girl, "for the wound in his arm bled grievously ... but he was impatient and soon ordered her to leave him alone ... then I came up here, and did all I could to bring the n.o.ble lady round.... I tried vinegar and burned feathers under the n.o.ble lady's nose ... but I was not frightened ... I knew the n.o.ble lady would revive ... and the leech lives but two doors off.... We were all of us anxious about the n.o.ble seigneur ... because of his wound ... and he looked so pale and haggard ... so aunt and I soon ran down to him again.... We found him sitting by the table ... just sealing down a letter which he had been writing. 'I am going, mevrouw,' he says to aunt quite curtly. 'Take thine orders from the n.o.ble lady. She will tell thee her own wishes.' He gave her some money and a letter which he ordered her to give to the n.o.ble lady as soon as she deigned to wake.

And then he took his hat and mantle and went out by the porch ... just like that ... all alone ... into the darkness ... whither he did not deign to say.... We are just poor people and we did not dare to ask, but the wind has sprung up and it hath begun to rain ... the night will be rough ... and the n.o.ble seigneur is not fit to hold a horse with his arm in such a grievous state."

"Where is the letter?" asked Lenora curtly.

From the pocket of her ap.r.o.n the girl produced a letter folded into four and sealed down with wax which she handed to the n.o.ble Spanish lady with a respectful curtsey.

"Aunt told me to give it to the n.o.ble lady," she said, "as soon as she deigned to wake."

"Is thine aunt the hostess of this inn?" queried Lenora. She was fingering the letter, feeling a curious hesitancy and reluctance to read its contents, and asked a few idle questions whilst she made an effort to control her nerves.