The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 37

"Morrice, did you tell Countess Lukstein of your duel?"

"I had not the time," I replied. "But she said you told her."

"Ay, I told the story, though I gave not the reason for the encounter.

But did you say nothing to her, give her no hint by which she might guess it?"

"Nay," said I; "I swooned or ever I got a word of it out. I spoke but two words to her: 'Lady Tracy.' She could have guessed little enough from that."

"Strange!" said he, in a tone of some perplexity. "And yet, some way or another, she must needs have known. For when I came to seek you, Otto denied you were there. I was positive, however, and ran past him up the stairs. The parlour door was locked, and they only gave me entrance when I bawled my name through the keyhole and declared that I knew you were within, and for your own sake must have immediate speech with you. I fancied that the Countess was aware of the duel and meant to conceal you."

I thought no more of his words at the time, and went presently aboard.

A fair wind filled the sheets and hummed through the cordage of the rigging. The cliffs lessened and lessened until they shone in the sunlight like a silver rim about the bowl of the sea; the gulls swooped and circled in our wake; and thus I sailed out upon my strange pilgrimage, which was to last so many weary months and set me amid such perilous surroundings.

CHAPTER XVII.

FATHER SPAUR.

IT was on the sixth day of June that I arrived in London from c.u.mberland; it was on the sixteenth of July that I landed at Calais; and so much that was new and bewildering to me had happened within this brief inters.p.a.ce of time, that I cannot wonder how little I understood of all which it portended. For here was I, accustomed to solitude, with small knowledge of men and a veritable fear of women, plumped of a sudden amidst the gayest company of the town, where thought and wit were struck out of converse sharply as sparks from a flint not reached by my slow methods, which, to carry on my simile, more resembled the practice of the Indians who produce fire, so travellers tell, by the laborious attrition of stick upon stick.

From Calais I journeyed to Paris, where I stayed until a bill of exchange upon some French merchants, which I had asked Elmscott to procure for me, came to hand. With it was enclosed a letter from my cousin and yet another from Jack Larke.

"This letter," wrote Elmscott, "was brought to your lodging the day after you left London. L'affaire Marston has caused much astonishment.

Your friends almost refused to credit you with the exploit. The family, however, is raised to a clamorous pitch of anger against you; it has influence at Court, and the King has no liking for duels."

The letter from Larke recounted the homely details of the country-side, and dwelt in particular upon the plan of Sir J. Lowther of Stockbridge to appoint a new carrier between Kendal and Whitehaven, so that the shipment of Kendal cottons to Virginia might be facilitated. The obstacle to the scheme, he declared, was that the road ran over Hard Knott, which in winter and spring is frequently impa.s.sable for the snow. I wrote back to him that he should refund to Elmscott with all despatch the amount of the bill of exchange, and relating shortly the causes which kept me abroad, bade him, if he were so minded, join me towards the end of September at Venice. Of my visit to Lukstein I said never a word, the consequence of it was too doubtful. I shrank from setting out my hopes and fears openly upon paper. If I succeeded, I could better explain the matter to him in speech, and take him back with me again to the Castle. If I failed, I should avoid the need of making any explanation whatsoever.

From Paris I travelled into Austria; and so one sunset, in the latter days of August, drove up to the door of "Der Goldener Adler" at Glurns. From this inn I sent Udal forward with a note to Countess Lukstein, announcing my arrival in the neighbourhood, and asking whether she would be willing to receive me. The next day he returned with Otto Krax, and brought me a message of very kindly welcome. Otto himself, for once, unbent from his grave demeanour, saying that it was long since the Castle had been brightened with a guest, and that for his part he trusted I would be in no great hurry to depart.

I gathered no little comfort from his greeting, you may be sure, and I set off forthwith to the Castle. The valley which, when I last rode through it, showed stark and desolate in its snow drapery, now lay basking in the l.u.s.ty summer, and seemed to smile upon my visit. The lime-trees were in leaf along the road, wild strawberries, red as the lips of my mistress, peeped from the gra.s.ses, on either side cornfields spread up the lower slopes to meet the serried pines, which were broken here and there by a green gap, where the winter snows had driven a track. Behind the ridge of the hills I could see mountains towering up with bastions of ice, which had a look peculiarly rich and soft, like white velvet. The air was fragrant with the scent of flowers, and musical with the voices of innumerable streams. Even Lukstein, which had worn so bare and menacing an aspect in the grey twilight of that November afternoon, now nestled warmly upon its tiny plateau, the red pointed roofs of its turrets glowing against the green background of firs.

I was received at the Castle by a priest, who informed me that the Countess was indisposed, and wished him to express her regrets that she was unable to welcome me in person. I was much chapfallen and chilled by this vicarious greeting, since on the way from Glurns I had given free play to all sorts of foolish imaginings. The priest, who was a kinsman of the Countess, conducted me very politely to the rooms prepared for me.

"Mr. Buckler," said he, "it is only your face that is strange to me; for I have heard so much of you from your hostess that I made your acquaintance some while ago." Whereat I recovered something of my spirits.

He led me through the great hall, paved with roughish slabs of stone, and up a wide staircase to a gallery which ran round the four sides of the hall. From that he turned off into a corridor, which ran, as I guessed, through the smaller wing of the building towards the tower.

At the extreme end he opened a door and bowed me into a large room lit by two windows opposite to one another. One of these commanded the little ravine which pierced backwards into the hills beside the Castle, and was called the Senner Thal; the other window looked out on to the garden. Moving towards this last, I perceived, on the left hand, the arbour of pinewood and the parapet on which I had lain concealed; the main wing of the Castle stretched out upon the right, and I realised, with an uneasy shiver, that I had been given the bedroom of Count Lukstein. The moment I realised this my eyes went straight to that corner, where I knew the little staircase to be. The door of it stood by the head of the bed, and was almost concealed in the hangings.

"It leads," said the priest, interpreting my glance, "to a little room below; but the room gives only on to the garden, and the door has not been used this many a month."

He went over to it as he spoke, and tried the handle. The door was locked, but the key remained in the lock. It creaked and grated when he turned it, as though it had rusted in the keyhole. Together we went down the little winding stairway and into the chamber at the bottom.

What wonder that I hesitated on the last step with a failing heart, and needed the invitation of the priest to nerve me to cross the threshold! Not a single thing had been moved since I stood there last.

But for the clouds of dust, which rose at each movement that we made, I could have believed this day was the morrow of our deadly encounter.

The table still lay overturned upon the floor, the rugs and skins were heaped and disordered by the trampling of our feet, the curtain hung half-torn from the vallance, where I had cowered in it with clutching hands as the Countess pa.s.sed through the window on to the snow.

Nothing had been touched. Yes, one thing; for as I glanced about the room, I saw my pistol dangling from a nail upon the hood of the fireplace.

"The room, you think, Mr. Buckler, does little credit to our housekeeping?" said the priest. "But 'tis unswept and uncleansed of a set purpose. As you see it now, so it was on the fifteenth night of last November, and the Countess our mistress wills that so it shall remain."

"There is some story," I replied, with such indifference as I could a.s.sume, "some story connected with the room."

"Ay, a story of midnight crime--of crime that struck at the roots of the Lukstein race, that breaks the line of a family which has ruled here for centuries, and must in a few years make its very name to perish off the earth. Count Lukstein was the last of his race, and in this room was he slain upon his bridal night."

Sombre as were the words, the priest's voice seemed to have something of exultation in its tone, and unwarily I remarked on it.

"G.o.d works out His purposes by ways we cannot understand," he explained, with a humility that struck me as exaggerated and insincere. "Unless Countess Lukstein marries again, the Castle and its demesne will pa.s.s into the holy keeping of the Church."

He looked steadily at me while he spoke, and I wondered whether he meant his utterance to convey a menace and warning.

"What if the Countess married a true son of the Church?" I hastened to answer. "Would he not second and further her intention?"

"I think, Mr. Buckler, that you have more faith in mankind than knowledge of the world. But 'twas of the room that we were speaking.

Until that crime is brought to light, the room may neither be swept nor cleansed."

"You hope, then, to discover----" I began.

"Nay, nay!" said he. "'Tis not with us that the discovery rests. Look you, sin is not a dead thing like these tables, to which each day adds a covering of dust; it is rather a plant that each day throws out fibres towards the sun, bury it deep as you will in the earth. Surely, surely it will make itself known--this very afternoon, maybe, or maybe in years to come; maybe not until the Day of Wrath. G.o.d chooses His own time."

Very solemnly he crossed himself, and led the way back to the bedroom above.

This conversation increased my anxiety to unburden myself to Ilga. For it was no crime that I had committed, but an act of common justice.

But although the household, apart from the servants and retainers, who made indeed a veritable army, consisted only of the Countess, Mdlle.

Durette, and Father Spaur, as the priest was named, I found it impossible to hit upon an occasion.

In the first place, the Countess herself was, without doubt, ailing and indisposed. She would come down late in the morning with heavy eyes and a weariful face, as though she slept but little. 'Twas no better, moreover, when she joined us, for she treated me, though ever with courtesy as befitted a hostess, still with a certain distance; and at times, when she thought I was interested in some talk and had no eyes for her, I would catch a troubled look upon her face wherein anger and sorrow seemed equally mixed. Nor, indeed, could I ever come upon her alone, and such hints as I put forward to bring such a consummation about were purposely misunderstood. In truth, the priest stood between us. I set the changed manner of Countess Lukstein entirely to his account, believing that he was studiously poisoning her mind against me, and maybe persuading her that I did but pursue her wealth like any vulgar adventurer. I suggested as much to Mdlle.

Durette, who showed me great kindness in this nadir of my fortunes.

"I know not what to make of it," she replied, "for Ilga has shut me from her confidence of late. But there is something of the kind afoot, I fear, for Father Spaur is continually with her, and 'twas ever his fashion to ascribe a secret and underhand motive for all one's doings."

The Father, indeed, was perpetually with either Ilga or myself. If he chanced not to be closeted with the Countess, he would dance indefatigable attendance upon me, devising excursions into the mountains or in pursuit of the chamois, which abounded in great numbers among the higher forests of the ravine.

On these latter occasions he would depute Otto Krax, who was, as I soon learned, the chief huntsman of the Castle, to take his place with me, pleading his own age with needless effusion as an excuse for his absence. In the company of Otto, then, I gained much knowledge of the locality, and in particular of the great ice-clad mountain which blocked the head of the ravine. For the chase led us many a time high up the slopes above the trees to where the ice lay in great tongues all cracked and ridged across like waves frozen at the crest; and at times, growing yet more adventurous with the heat of our pursuit, we would ascend still higher, making long circuits and detours about the cliffs and gullies to get to windward of our quarry; so that I saw this mountain from many points of view, and gained a knowledge of its character and formation which was afterwards to stand me in good stead.

The natives termed it the "Wildthurm," and approached it ever with the greatest reluctance and with much commending of their souls to G.o.d.

For the spirits of the lost, they said, circled in agony about its summit, and might be heard at noonday no less often than at night piercing the air with a wail of lamentation. It may be even as they held; but I was spared the manifestation of their presence when I invaded their abode, and found no denizens of that solitary region more terrible than the eagles which built their nests upon the topmost cliffs. Towards the ravine the "Wildthurm" towered in a stupendous wall of rock of thousands of feet, but so sheer that even the chamois, however encompa.s.sed, never sought escape that way. From the apex of this wall a ridge of ice ran backwards in a narrow line and sloped outwards on either side, so that it looked like nothing so much as a gipsy's tent of white canvas.

When we sought diversion upon lower ground, hawking or riding in the valley, Father Spaur himself would bear me company. In fact, I never seemed to journey a mile from the Castle without either Otto or the priest to keep me in surveillance.

Father Spaur, though past his climacteric, was of a tall, ma.s.sive build, and, I judged, of great muscular strength. His hair was perfectly white, and threw into relief his broad, tanned face, which wore as a rule an uninterested bovine expression, as of one whom neither trouble nor thought had ever touched. One afternoon, however, as we were riding up the hillside towards the Castle, I chanced to make mention of the persecution of the Protestants in France, whereof I had been a witness during my stay at Paris, and ventured, though a Catholic, to criticise the French King's action in abrogating the edict of Nantes.

"Cruelty, Mr. Buckler!" he exclaimed, reining in his horse, with his eyes aglare, and his fleshy face of a sudden shining with animation.

'Twas as though some one had lit a lamp behind a curtain. "Cruelty!

'Tis the idlest name that was ever invented. Look you: a general throws a thousand troops upon certain death. Is not that cruelty? Yet if he faltered he would fail in his duty. If the men shrank, they in theirs. Cruelty is the law of life. Nay, more, for with that word the wicked stigmatise the law of G.o.d. Never a spring comes upon these hills but it buries numbers of our villagers beneath its slipping snowdrifts. You have seen the crosses on the slopes yourself. They perish, and through no foolhardiness of their own. Is not that what you term cruelty? Take a wider view. Is there not cruelty in the very making of man? We are born with minds curious after knowledge, and yet we only gain knowledge by much suffering and labour--an infinitesimal drop after years of thirst. Take it yet higher. The holy Church teaches us that G.o.d upon His throne is happy; yet He condemns the guilty to torment. With a smile, we must believe He condemns the guilty. Judge that by our poor weak understanding; is it not cruelty?

What you term cruelty is a law of G.o.d--difficult, unintelligible, but a law of G.o.d, and therefore good."

'Twas a strange discourse, delivered with a ringing voice of exaltation, and thereafter my thoughts did more justice to the subtlety of his intellect.