The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 38

Meanwhile the days slipped on and brought me no nearer to the fulfilment of my purpose. The time had come, moreover, when I must set off into Italy if I was to meet Larke at Venice as I had most faithfully promised. I resolved, then, to put an end to a visit which I saw brought no happiness to my mistress, and wasted me with impatience and despondency. I was minded to go down into Italy, and taking Jack with me to set sail for the Indies, and ease my heart, if so I might, with viewing of the many wonders of those parts. So choosing an occasion when we were all dining together in the great parlour on the first floor of the Castle, I thanked the Countess for the hospitality which she had shown me, and fixed my departure for the next day. For awhile there was silence, Ilga rising suddenly from the table and walking over to the wide-open windows, where she stood with her back turned, and looked out across the waving valley of the Adige.

"It seems that we have been guilty of some discourtesy, Mr. Buckler, since you leave us so abruptly," said Father Spaur with a great perturbation.

Upon that point I hastened to set him right; for indeed I had been so hedged in by attention and ceremony that I should have been well content with a little neglect.

"Then," he continued with an easy laugh, "we shall make bold to keep you. If we bring guests so far to visit us, we cannot speed them away so soon. Doubtless the Castle is dull to you who come fresh from London and Paris----"

"Nay," said I with some impatience, for I thought it unfair that he should attribute such motives to me. "Madame will bear me out that I have little liking for town pleasures." I turned towards her, but she made no sign or movement, and appeared not to have heard me. "I am pledged to meet a friend at Venice, and, as it is, I have overstayed my time."

"Oh! you have a friend awaiting you," said the priest slowly. "You are very prudent, Mr. Buckler."

The Countess turned swiftly about, her eyes wide open and staring like one dismayed.

"Prudent?" I exclaimed in perplexity.

"I mean," said the priest, flushing a dark red and dropping his voice, "I mean that if one fixes so precise a limit to one's visit, one guards against any inclination to prolong it." He spoke with a meaning glance in the direction of the Countess, who had turned away again.

"The heart says 'stay,' prudence 'go.' Is it not the case?" he whispered, and he smiled with an awkward effort at archness, which, upon his heavy face, was little short of grotesque.

Now his words and manner perplexed me greatly, for at the moment of my coming to Lukstein, he had seemed most plainly to warn me against encouraging any pa.s.sion for Ilga, and his conduct since in disparting us had a.s.sured me that I had rightly guessed his intention. Yet here was he urging me to extend my stay, and sneering at my prudence for not giving free play to that pa.s.sion.

"Besides," he continued, raising his voice again, "if you go to-morrow you will miss the best entertainment that our poor domain provides. We are to have a great hunt, wherein some of our neighbours will join us, and Otto informs us that you have great partiality for the sport, and extraordinary skill and nimbleness upon mountains. In a week, moreover, the headsman of our village is to marry. 'Tis a great event in Lukstein, and, indeed, to a stranger well worth witnessing, for there are many quaint and curious customs to be observed which are not met with elsewhere."

He added many other inducements, so that at last I felt some shame at persisting in my refusal. But, after all, the Countess was my hostess, and she had said never a word, but had turned back again to the window as though she would not meddle in the matter. At last, however, she broke in upon the priest, keeping, however, her face still set towards the landscape.

"Could you not send forward your servant, Mr. Buckler, to meet your friend, and remain with us this week? As Father Spaur says, the marriage will be well worth seeing, and since you are so pressed, you may leave here that very night."

There was, however, no heartiness in her invitation; the words dropped reluctantly from her lips, as if compelled by mere politeness towards her guest.

"The most suitable plan!" cried the priest, starting up. "Send your man to Venice, and yourself follow afterwards."

I explained that Udal was little accustomed to travelling in strange countries, and had no knowledge of either the German or Italian tongues; and to put a close to the discussion, I rose from my seat and walked away to the end of the apartment, where I busied myself over some weapons that hung upon the wall. In a minute or so I heard the door close softly, and facing about, I saw that the priest and Mdlle.

Durette, who had taken no part in any of this talk, had departed out of the room. The Countess came towards me.

"I sent them away," she said, with a wan smile, and a voice subdued to great gentleness. "I have no thought to--to part with you so soon.

Stay out this week. You--you told me that you had something which you wished to say."

"Madame," said I, s.n.a.t.c.hing eagerly at her hand, "you also told me that you had guessed it."

"Not now; not now." She slipped her hand from my grasp with an imploring cry, and held it outspread close before my face to check my words. "Not now. I could not bear it. Oh, I would that I had more strength to resist, or more weakness to succ.u.mb."

Never have I heard such pain in a human voice: never have I seen features so wrung with suffering. The sight of her cut me to the heart.

"Listen," she went on, controlling herself after a moment, though her voice still trembled with agitation, and now and again ran upwards into an odd laugh, the like of which I have never hearkened to before or since. 'Twas the most pitiful sound that ever jarred on a man's ears. "On the night of the marriage the villagers will come to the Castle to dance in the Great Hall. That night you shall speak to me, and a carriage shall be ready to take you away afterwards, if you will. Until that night be 'prudent.'"

She gave me no time to answer her, but ran to the door, and so out of the room. I could hear her footsteps falling uncertainly along the gallery, as though she stumbled while she ran, and a great anger against the priest flamed up in my breast. "Strength to resist, or weakness to succ.u.mb." Doubtless the words would have bewildered me, like the oracles of old Greece, but for what I suspicioned in the priest Now, however, in the blindness of my thoughts, I construed them as the confirmation of my belief that he was practising all his arts upon Ilga to secure Lukstein for the Church. 'Twas Father Spaur, I imagined, whom she had neither the strength to resist nor the weakness to yield to, and I fancied that I was set upon a second contest for the winning of her, though this time with a more subtle and noteworthy antagonist.

And yet for all my fears, for all Ilga's trouble, with such selfish pertinacity do a lover's reflections seek to enhearten his love, I could not but feel a throb of joy for that she had so plainly shown to me what the struggle cost her.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AT LUKSTEIN.

In accordance, then, with the suggestion of Ilga, I despatched Udal to Venice, bearing a letter wherein I requested Jack to bide there until such time as I arrived. To supply my servant's place Father Spaur offered me one, Michael Groder, whose a.s.sistance at the first sight I was strongly in a mind to decline; for he was more than common uncouth even for those parts, and with his scarred knees, tangled black hair, and gaunt, weather-roughened face, seemed more fitted for hewing wood upon the hillside than for the neater functions of a valet. The priest, however, pressed his services upon me with so importunate a courtesy that I thought it ungracious to persist in a refusal. Indeed, Michael Groder, though of a slight and wiry build, was the unhandiest man with his fingers that ever I had met with. There was not a servant in the Castle who could not have done the work better; and I came speedily to the conclusion that Father Spaur had selected him particularly out of some motive very different from a desire to oblige me; I mean, in order that he might keep a watch upon my actions, and see that I gained no secret advantage with the Countess.

However, had I entertained any such design, the hunting expedition would have effectually prevented its fulfilment. It lasted the greater part of the week, and we did not return to Lukstein until the eve of my departure. By this time my anxiety as to the answer which Ilga would make to my suit when she knew all that I had to tell her, had well-nigh worked me into a fever. I was for ever rehearsing and picturing the scene, inventing all sorts of womanly objections for her to urge, and disproving them succinctly to her satisfaction by Barbara, Celarent and all the rules of logic.

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 silences; 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 withdrew 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 grey 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 gra.s.s 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 ninepin. 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 G.o.d'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 flogged 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 a.s.sist 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 m.u.f.fled, 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 pa.s.sage, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 p.r.o.ne 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.s like a h.o.a.r-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 grey 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 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.