Athwart the thick timber, going as one pursued--in a track straight as
the underwood will allow--breaking through it like a chased bear--now
stumbling over a fallen log, now caught in a trailing grape-vine--
Richard Darke flees from the place where he has laid his rival low.
He makes neither stop, nor stay. If so, only for a few instants, just
long enough to listen, and if possible learn whether he is being
followed.
Whether or not, he fancies it; again starting off, with terror in his
looks, and trembling in his limbs. The _sangfroid_ he exhibited while
bending over the dead body of his victim, and afterwards concealing it,
has quite forsaken him now. Then he was confident, there could be no
witness of the deed--nothing to connect him with it as the doer. Since,
there is a change--the unthought-of presence of the dog having produced
it. Or, rather, the thought of the animal having escaped. This, and
his own imagination.
For more than a mile he keeps on, in headlong reckless rushing. Until
fatigue overtaking him, his terror becomes less impulsive, his fancies
freer from exaggeration; and, believing himself far enough from the
scene of danger, he at length desists from flight, and comes to a dead
stop.
Sitting down upon a log, he draws forth his pocket-handkerchief, and
wipes the sweat from his face. For he is perspiring at every pore,
panting, palpitating. He now finds time to reflect; his first
reflection being the absurdity of his making such precipitate retreat;
his next, its imprudence.
"I've been a fool for it," he mutters. "Suppose that some one has seen
me? 'Twill only have made things worse. And what have I been running
away from? A dead body, and a living dog! Why should I care for
either? Even though the adage be true--about a live dog better than a
dead lion. Let me hope the hound won't tell a tale upon me. For
certain the shot hit him. That's nothing. Who could say what sort of
ball, or the kind of gun it came from? No danger in that. I'd be
stupid to think there could be. Well, it's all over now, and the
question is: what next?"
For some minutes he remains upon the log, with the gun resting across
his knees, and his head bent over the barrels. He appears engaged in
some abstruse calculation. A new thought has sprang up in his mind--a
scheme requiring all his intellectual power to elaborate.
"I shall keep that tryst," he says, in soliloquy, seeming at length to
have settled it. "Yes; I'll meet her under the magnolia. Who can tell
what changes may occur in the heart of a woman? In history I had a
royal namesake--an English king, with an ugly hump on his shoulders--as
he's said himself, `deformed, unfinished, sent into the world scarce
half made up,' so that the `dogs barked at _him_,' just as this brute of
Clancy's has been doing at me. And this royal Richard, shaped `so
lamely and unfashionable,' made court to a woman, whose husband he had
just assassinated--more than a woman, a proud queen--and more than
wooed, he subdued her. This ought to encourage me; the better that I,
Richard Darke, am neither halt, nor hunchbacked. No, nor yet
unfashionable, as many a Mississippian girl says, and more than one is
ready to swear.
"Proud Helen Armstrong may be, and is; proud as England's queen herself.
For all that, I've got something to subdue her--a scheme, cunning as
that of my royal namesake. May God, or the Devil, grant me like
success!"
At the moment of giving utterance to the profane prayer, he rises to his
feet. Then, taking out his watch, consults it.
It is too dark for him to see the dial; but springing open the glass, he
gropes against it, feeling for the hands.
"Half-past nine," he mutters, after making out the time. "Ten is the
hour of her assignation. No chance for me to get home before, and then
over to Armstrong's wood-ground. It's more than two miles from here.
What matters my going home? Nor any need changing this dress. She
won't notice the hole in the skirt. If she do, she wouldn't think of
what caused it--above all it's being a bullet. Well, I must be off! It
will never do to keep the young lady waiting. If she don't feel
disappointed at seeing me, bless her! If she do, I shall curse her!
What's passed prepares me for either event. In any case, I shall have
satisfaction for the slight she's put upon me. By God I'll get that!"
He is moving away, when a thought occurs staying him. He is not quite
certain about the exact hour of Helen Armstrong's tryst, conveyed in her
letter to Clancy. In the madness of his mind ever since perusing that
epistle, no wonder he should confuse circumstances, and forget dates.
To make sure, he plunges his hand into the pocket, where he deposited
both letter and photograph--after holding the latter before the eyes of
his dying foeman, and witnessing the fatal effect. With all his
diabolical hardihood, he had been awed by this--so as to thrust the
papers into his pocket, hastily, carelessly.
They are no longer there!
He searches in his other pockets--in all of them, with like result. He
examines his bullet-pouch and gamebag. But finds no letter, no
photograph, not a scrap of paper, in any! The stolen epistle, its
envelope, the enclosed _carte de visite_--all are absent.
After ransacking his pockets, turning them inside out, he comes to the
conclusion that the precious papers are lost.
It startles, and for a moment dismays him. Where are they? He must
have let them fall in his hasty retreat through the trees; or left them
by the dead body.
Shall he go back in search of them?
No--no--no! He does not dare to return upon that track. The forest
path is too sombre, too solitary, now. By the margin of the dank
lagoon, under the ghostly shadow of the cypresses, he might meet the
ghost of the man murdered!
And why should he go back? After all, there is no need; nothing in the
letter which can in any way compromise him. Why should he care to
recover it?
"It may go to the devil, her picture along! Let both rot where I
suppose I must have dropped them--in the mud, or among the palmettoes.
No matter where. But it does matter, my being under the magnolia at the
right time, to meet her. Then shall I learn my fate--know it, for
better, for worse. If the former, I'll continue to believe in the story
of Richard Plantagenet; if the latter, Richard Darke won't much care
what becomes of him."
So ending his strange soliloquy, with a corresponding cast upon his
countenance, the assassin rebuttons his coat--thrown open in search for
the missing papers. Then, flinging the double-barrelled fowling-piece--
the murder-gun--over his sinister shoulder, he strides off to keep an
appointment not made for him, but for the man he has murdered!