SWORDS TAKE UP THE DISCOURSE.
By these movements we had completely reversed our positions, so that
now I stood with my back to the window, while the Count held that end
of the room in which the doors were set. Not that I took any thought
of this alteration at the time, for the Count attacked me with
extraordinary fury, and I needed all my wits to defend myself from his
violence. He was, as I had dreaded, a skilled swordsman, and he
pressed his skill to the service of his anger. Now the point of his
rapier twirled and spun like a spark of fire; now the blade coiled
about mine with a sharp hiss like some lithe, glittering serpent.
Every moment I expected it to bite into my flesh. I gave ground until
my hindmost foot was stopped against the framework of the window; and
there I stayed parrying his thrusts until he slackened from the ardour
of his assault. Then in my turn I began to attack; slowly and
persistently I drove him back towards the centre of the room, when
suddenly, glancing across his shoulder, I saw something that turned my
blood cold. The door leading to the staircase was ajar. I had heard no
click of the handle; it must have been open before, I argued to
myself, but I knew the argument was false. The door had been shut; I
noted that from the garden, and it could not have opened so silently
of itself. I renewed my attack upon the Count, pressing him harder and
harder in a veritable panic. I snatched a second glance across his
shoulder. The door was not only ajar; 'twas opening--very slowly, very
silently, and a yellow light streamed through onto the wall beside the
door. The sight arrested me at the moment of lunging--held me
petrified with horror. A savage snarl of joy from Lukstein's lips
warned me; his sword darted at my heart, I parried it clumsily, and
the next moment the point leapt into my left shoulder. The wound
quickened my senses, and I settled to the combat again, giving thrust
for thrust. Each second I expected a scream of terror, a rush of feet.
But not a sound came to me. I dared not look from the Count's face any
more; the hit which he had made seemed to have doubled his energies. I
strained my ears to catch the fall of a foot, the rustle of a dress.
But our own hard breathing, a light rattle of steel as swords lunged
and parried, a muffled stamp as one or the other stepped forward upon
the rugs--these were the only noises in the room, and for me they only
served to deepen and mark the silence. Yet all the while I felt that
the door was opening--opening; I knew that some one must be standing
in the doorway quietly watching us, and that some one a woman, and
Count Lukstein's wife. There was something horrible, unnatural in the
silence, and I felt fear run down my back like ice, unstringing my
muscles, sucking my heart. I summoned all my strength, compressed all
my intelligence into a despairing effort, and flung myself at
Lukstein. He drew back out of reach, and behind him I saw a flutter of
white. Through the doorway, holding a lighted candle above her head,
Countess Lukstein advanced noiselessly into the room. Her eyes, dark
and dilated, were fixed upon mine; still she spoke never a word. She
seemed not to perceive her husband; she seemed not even to see me,
into whose face she gazed. 'Twas as though she was looking through me,
at something that stood in the window behind my head.
The Count, recovering from my assault, rushed at me again. I made a
few passes, thinking that my brain would crack. I could feel her eyes
burning into mine. I was certain that some one was behind me, and I
experienced an almost irresistible desire to turn my head and discover
who it might be. The strain had become intolerable. There was just
room for me to leap backwards.
"Look!" I gasped, and I leaned back against the window-pane, clutching
at the folds of the curtain for support.
Count Lukstein turned; the woman was close behind him. A couple of
paces more, and she must have touched him. He dropped his sword-point
and stepped quickly aside.
"My God!" he said in a hoarse whisper. "She is asleep!"
My whole body was dripping with sweat. It seemed to me that a full
hour must have passed since I had seen her first, and yet so brief had
been the interval that she was not half-way across the room.
Had she come straight towards me I could not have moved from her path.
But she walked betwixt Count Lukstein and myself direct to the open
window. She wore a loose white gown, gathered in a white girdle at the
waist, and white slippers on her naked feet. Her face even then showed
to me as incomparably beautiful, and her head was crowned with masses
of waving hair, in colour like red corn. She passed between us without
check or falter; her gown brushed against the Count. Through the open
window she walked across the snowy terrace towards the pavilion by the
Castle wall. The night was very still, and the flame of the candle
burnt pure and steady.
I looked at the Count. For a moment we gazed at one another in
silence, and then without a word we stepped side by side to follow
her. Our dispute appeared to have been swallowed up in this
overmastering event, and I experienced almost a revulsion of
friendliness for my opponent.
"'Tis not the first time this has happened, I am told," said he, and
as I looked at him inquiringly, he added, very softly: "We were only
married to-day."
"Only to-day," I exclaimed, and not noticing where I trod, I stumbled
over a wolf-skin that lay on the floor with the head attached. My foot
slipped on the polished boards beside it, and I fell upon my left
knee. The Count stopped and faced me, an ugly smile suddenly flashing
about his mouth. I saw him draw back his arm as I was rising. I
dropped again upon hand and knee, and his sword whizzed an inch above
my shoulder. I was still holding my own sword in my right hand, and or
ever he could recover I lunged upwards at his breast with all my
force, springing from the ground as I lunged, to drive the thrust
home. The blade pierced through his body until the hilt rang against
the buttons of his coat. He fell backwards heavily, and I let go of my
sword. The point stuck in the floor behind him as he fell, and he slid
down the blade on to the ground. Something dropped from his hand and
rolled away into a corner, where it lay shining. I gave no thought to
that, however, but glanced through the window. To my horror I saw that
Countess Lukstein was already returning across the lawn. The Count had
fallen across the window, blocking it. I plucked my sword free, and
lugged the body into the curtains at the side, cowering down myself
behind it. I had just time to gather up his legs and so leave the
entrance clear, when she stepped over the sill. A little stream of
blood was running towards her, and I was seized with a mad terror lest
it should reach her feet. She moved so slowly and the stream ran so
quickly. Every moment I expected to see the white of her slippers grow
red with the stain of it. But she passed beyond the line of its
channel just a second before it reached so far. With the same even and
steady gait she recrossed the room and turned into the little
stairway, latching the door behind her.
For a while I remained kneeling by the body of the Count in a numbed
stupor, All was so quiet and peaceful that I could not credit what had
happened in this last hour, not though I held the Count within my
arms. Then from the floor of the room above there came once more the
light tapping sound of a woman's heels. I looked about me. The table
lay overturned, the rugs were heaped and scattered, and the barrel of
my pistol winked in the sputtering light of the fire. I rose, snatched
up my sword, and fled out on to the snow.
The moon was setting and the moonlight grey upon the garden, with the
snow under foot very crisp and dry.
I sheathed my sword and clambered on to the coping. I turned to look
at the Castle--how quietly it slept, and how brightly burned the
lights in those two rooms!--and then dropped to the ledge upon the
further side of the wall.
I had reached the top of the ridge of rock, when a cry rang out into
the night--a cry, shrill and lonesome, in a woman's voice--a cry
followed by a great silence. I halted in an agony. 'Twas not fear that
I felt; 'twas not even pity. The cry spoke of suffering too great for
pity, and I stood aghast at the sound of it, aghast at the thought
that my handiwork had begotten it. 'Twas not repeated, however, and I
tore down the ridge in a frenzy of haste, taking little care where I
set my hands or my feet. How it was that I did not break my neck I
have never been able to think.
The village, I remember, was dark and lifeless save just at one house,
whence came a murmur of voices, and a red beam of light slipped
through a chink in the shutter and lay like a rillet of blood across
the snow.
Once clear of the houses. I ran at full speed down the track. At the
corner of the wood, I stopped and looked upwards before I plunged
among the trees. The moon had set behind the mountains while I was
descending the ridge, and the Castle loomed vaguely above me as though
at that spot the night was denser than elsewhere. 'Twas plain that no
alarm had been taken, that the cry had not been heard. I understood
the reason of this afterwards. The two rooms in the tower were
separated by a great interval from the other bedrooms. But what of the
Countess, I thought? I pictured her in a swoon upon the corpse of her
husband.
Within the coppice 'twas so black that I could not see my hand when I
raised it before me, and I went groping my way by guesswork towards
the trees to which we had tethered our horses. I dared not call out to
Larke; I feared even the sound of my footsteps. Every rustle of the
bushes seemed to betray a spy. In the end I began to fancy that I
should wander about the coppice until dawn, when close to my elbow
there rose a low crooning song:
Que toutes joies et toutes honneurs
Viennent d'armes et d'amours.
"Jack!" I whispered.
The undergrowth crackled as he crushed it beneath his feet.
"Morrice, is that you? Where are you?"
A groping hand knocked against my arm and tightened on it. I gave a
groan.
"Are you hurt, Morrice? Oh, my God! I thought you would never come!"
"You have heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Not a sound? Not--not a cry?"
"Nothing."
"Quick, then!" said I. "We must be miles away by morning."
He led me to where our horses stood, and we untied them and threaded
through the trees to the road.
"Help me to mount, Jack!" said I.
He pulled a flask from his pocket and held it to my lips. 'Twas neat
brandy, but I gulped a draught of it as though it were so much water.
Then he helped me into the saddle and settled my feet in the stirrups.
"Why, Morrice," he asked, "what have you done with your spurs?"
"I left them on the terrace," said I, remembering. "I left my spurs,
my pistol, and--and something else. But quick, Jack, quick!"
'Twould have saved me much trouble had I brought that "something else"
with me, or at least examined it more closely before I left it there.
He swung himself on to the back of his horse, and we set off at a
canter. But we had not gone twenty yards when I cried, "Stop!" 'Twas
as though the windows of the Castle sprang at us suddenly out of the
darkness, each one alive with a tossing glare of links. It seemed to
me that a hundred angry eyes were searching for me. I drove my heels
into my horse's flanks and galloped madly down the road in the
direction of Italy. A quarter of a mile further, and a bend of the
valley hid the Castle from our sight; but I knew that I should never
get the face of Countess Lukstein from before my eyes, or the sound of
her cry out of my ears.