The Lady Evelyn Part 29

"What are you going to do, Gavin?"

"To lead you from this house, Arthur--do not speak to me; some one is calling us, Arthur."

He pa.s.sed out into the bare stone corridor leading to the banqueting hall. From the shadows one of the gypsies appeared with the swiftness of an apparition. He carried a lantern in his hand and lifted it while he spoke.

"Master!" he cried, and then reeled back, the words broken upon his lips.

They pa.s.sed him by, leaving him cowering by the wall; he did not cry after them or raise an alarm. And Gavin went on swiftly, still toward the gate, as though his will would open it.

"No man could cross the hill road to-night," Kenyon said presently. He was thinking that if they pa.s.sed the gates, their allies would be the wolves. Gavin did not answer him at all this time. He had come to the gate by which you reach the courtyard, and, lifting the latch, he went out unquestioned.

"You see," he said, "that fellow has just unlocked it. I knew it must be so, Arthur."

"He has gone to bring the others, Gavin."

"They will not hear him. Or if they come, they will be powerless to harm us, Arthur. It must be so. I hear Evelyn's voice. She would not call me if the gates were shut."

Kenyon knew not what to say. Once or twice before he had known and seen Gavin in such a mood as this, led by unseen hands and speaking with another's voice. Never had he scoffed at it or misunderstood his friend. He took it to be a force within that was beyond his own experience. To-night, at least, it had led them out of the death-chamber to look once more upon the heaven of stars above.

"I will follow wherever you lead, Gavin," he said in a whisper, "only tell me what I must do."

"We are going to the bridge, Arthur. Tap as the old Chevalier did. I shall cry 'Open!' when we come there. They will let us out and we shall cross the mountains."

The idea in his head remained there ineradicably. Despite the horde of gypsies that was concealed somewhere in the darkened rooms of that weird house, Gavin pushed his way toward the portcullis and demanded that the keeper should open to him. This was the first time he had spoken aloud since he quitted the room where the dead man lay; and instantly at his words the courtyard became alive with the murmur of voices and the sounds of shuffling footsteps.

"Quick, Gavin, they are after us," Kenyon cried, holding his friend's arm and trying to draw him aside to a place of safety.

Gavin would not move, however. Imitating, as well as he could, the voice he had heard so often challenging the keeper of the bridge, he continued to shout, "Open--I wait!" None the less, he knew that armed men were all about him and that any moment might bring them at his throat.

"Open--I wait!"

The gate-keeper, awakened from a heavy sleep, came from the rude watch-tower above the bridge and stood there with a lantern in his hand. Raising it he looked upon the faces of the men, and drew back with hand uplifted.

"Why do you call to me in my master's voice?" he asked.

They could not answer him. A great shouting in the courtyard behind them warned them that the truth was known. The gypsies had discovered the dead man's body and pell-mell they began to swarm about those they believed to be his a.s.sa.s.sins. Haggard, in the weird light, their figures in phantom shapes, they pressed on, searching every nook and cranny with the naked blade of sword and scimitar, wailing their doleful lament and encouraging one another to the pursuit. Nor had Gavin any belief that he could escape them. Called by the peril from the unnatural trance which had fallen upon him, he swung round upon his heel as though to protect his friend whose life he had thus jeopardized; but in his heart he believed that nothing could save them.

This was the moment when the uttermost penalty of folly must be paid.

It found him ready with a dogged courage, but lacking all ideas except that supreme determination too fight for his life to the end.

"Give me the bludgeon, Arthur--I am the stronger."

"Don't think of that--there's something left in my locker still. Side by side, old chap, unto the end. What luck! We'd have been across the bridge in another ten seconds."

"Some of them are going to remember us anyway. Stand close to me, Arthur--it won't be long now."

Indeed one of the gypsies discovered him as he spoke and with a loud cry to the others made known his news. The horde swept on with the ferocity of wolves. Knives gleaming, eyes bright in the darkness, some voices cursing, some howling in brutish anger, they came pell-mell toward the gate. And then, as suddenly, they halted and a silence as of the dead of night fell upon the house.

Some one upon the mountain road without had fired a rifle. The report of it, echoing in the lonely hills, was like a sharp peal of thunder, rattling from peak to peak with monstrous sounds near by and low rumblings far away. To the gypsies it spoke a message which they alone understood. They stood altogether, shivering and gibbering in the darkness. Their muttered words were unintelligible to Gavin. Beyond the sound of the rifle-shot he could hear nothing--or when the silence was broken again, it was by the tongue of wolves indescribably haunting and long drawn as a dirge of woe.

"There is some one on the mountain road and they are afraid of him," he said quickly to Kenyon.

The idea of profit to come by the truce occurred to him in the same breath; and, crying loudly, again he bade the doorkeeper to open.

"Open, open!"

Twenty voices took up the cry. The gypsies vied with each other in shouting the summons. For they understood the signal. The rope was about their own necks, they said. The last chance was to open the gate to their prisoners. When the doorkeeper hesitated, trembling and afraid, they stabbed him to the heart and he rolled headlong to the foot of the bridge near by which his life had been lived.

But Gavin and Arthur Kenyon pa.s.sed out to the mountain road, and looking down to the valley they perceived the flame of bivouac fires in the wood below; and they understood immediately that cavalry had been sent from Bukharest to their aid and that the hour of their peril had pa.s.sed.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

DJALA

Evelyn recovered consciousness after that which seemed a very night of evil dreaming, but which was in reality no more than a brief half-hour of insensibility. Greatly weakened by the struggle and the swoon attending it, she lay for some while unable to lift herself upon the bed where they had laid her or to take any notice of the room to which she had been carried. When her strength returned somewhat, and a sudden memory of the circ.u.mstances of her visit recurred to her, she sat up immediately, a great fear at her heart and a dread upon her such as she had never suffered before.

What house was it? Who was its owner? What was the meaning of the insult placed upon her? The questions raced through her brain so quickly that she found an answer to none of them. At one time she could almost believe that her own father was privy to the outrage and had led to this desperate course by his detestation of the role she played in London. Rejecting this immediately because of her love for him, she was then tempted to say that Odin relied upon his threats and believed that she would submit to him to save Gavin's life. This appeared the more plausible story. Was not the man from the East a Roumanian with but primitive ideas of a modern civilization and the son of a country wherein women were still little better than the silent victims of men's pa.s.sions? Perhaps he believed that he could carry her out of England. It might be even that.

She was in a s.p.a.cious bedroom, furnished, so far as the dim light would permit her to see, in a modern style and with many evidences of later-day luxury. A fresh fire, burning with a light flame in an open grate, cast flashing rays upon darkly-papered walls and the heavy pictures which ornamented them. A sofa had been drawn up before the fire and showed its pattern in the fitful beams; there was an electric chandelier above a dressing-table and a single reading lamp upon a little table by the bedside. Afraid of the darkness in a degree unknown to her, Evelyn tried to find the switch by which the lamp might be lighted; but her cold hands bungled it and, despairing, she rose from the bed and crossed the room toward the heavily-curtained window.

Was escape to be thought of? In sober reason, no; but sober reason says nothing to a woman driven by the supreme dread of wrong and guarding her courage even while she is afraid. Evelyn knew in her own mind that so shrewd and daring a schemer as Count Odin would leave her no loophole, neglect no precaution, nor spare any insult by which his own safety might be a.s.sured. She knew it and yet must go to the window and draw the curtains back and touch the heavy shutters and feel her heart sink when she came to see that they were twice barred and that no woman's hand could open them. Despair alone could have led her to believe that the Count would be so foolish; but despair did not mock her twice and she left the door untried lest she should brand her own intelligence with contempt. Let it be sufficient that she was the prisoner of the house, far from any human aid, alone with her own courage for her friend. She admitted it and sank down upon the sofa, to stretch her hands to the warming blaze, and to breathe that simple prayer to G.o.d for aid which is the supreme pathos of womanhood.

The night was silent without the silence of mid-winter; the fire blazed as though in enmity to the cold of the early morning hours. Evelyn had no watch, nor did she know what hour it might be. When a distant bell chimed, she caught a faint sound upon the still air, but it told her nothing. And with the pa.s.sing hours there came upon her a desperation she could not master; a desire to kill this man who had so affronted her, to brave him at whatever cost, even if it were to die at his feet.

Etta Romney lived again in this, the Etta of the East, the child of the mountains which knew few laws but those of might. She was her mother's daughter now; the voice of heritage spoke, and she would not still it.

The distant church clock chimed again and she counted three strokes upon its bells. It was three o'clock in the morning then, and another four hours must pa.s.s before dawn came. Or would it ever come in that shuttered and curtained room which she must call her prison? Sometimes she could have wished that the Count would throw down the challenge to her and that she might answer him there and then. Suspense as ever tortured her nerves; but in her case also contributed to the victory of reason. For Gavin's sake the evil in her heart must die, she said.

She must act not only as a brave woman but as a wise one. Moreover, her true self, beginning to speak, reminded her that there would be an outcry through all London to-morrow, and that such a man as Count Odin would never face the publicity of it; his one sure weapon was his threat against her lover. At this she cowed and knew that her heart had grown cold again.

Could she, indeed, save Gavin by a word? Had she believed it she would have spoken that word, so greatly did she love. But she did not believe it. Her faith in a brave man's resolution, in his daring and success, remained unshaken. Gavin might even come to this house, she thought; and dreamingly she sat very still by the fireside and listened for the sound of his footstep. A profound silence followed upon the foolish act. When next she moved it was with agitation and a sudden spasm of fear she could not quell.

She was no longer alone in the room. How she had come to believe herself so she could not even imagine. Out of the darkness a pair of jet black eyes were looking up to her own. The wavering firelight becoming stronger as the coal reddened and burst into brighter flame, showed her the huddled figure of a young girl crouching by the grate and watching her so intently that the very glance seemed a tragedy.

"Djala!" she cried in spite of herself--"Djala, the gypsy girl!"

She knew it was no other and her fear pa.s.sed with the knowledge. Many a day had she seen this child with the gypsies who had followed the Count to England. That she should be in this house at such a time was the greater mystery. Evelyn knew not whether the omen were good or bad.

"Why do you not speak to me?" she said; "why are you silent?"

The gypsy started up as though the sound of a voice had waked her also from reverie.

"Excellency," she answered, speaking in such broken English that Evelyn caught her meaning with difficulty; "excellency, I wait for my brother and then we will go away."

"Who are you, child--how did you come here?"

"I am Zallony's daughter, excellency--my brother brought me across the sea from my own country."