For the moment she still did not realize, then her eyes filled with
tears, and when she spoke reproach and disappointment throbbingly
disclosed themselves in her voice. "He is afraid of being betrayed!
How could he think that, when there is not one of us here who would
not sooner die than expose him to the Communists? Does he not trust
us?"
"Mademoiselle, do not think that of him. Of course he trusts you.
Could he do otherwise?" Skilfully he endeavoured to change the
current of her thoughts by the implied compliment, but the hurt
rankled in her heart.
"Then what other reason has he for taking such precautions?"
"Why, plenty.... I--I mean, I do not know! I do not question him!"
Arnold floundered, and silently cursed as he foresaw too well what
her next words would be.
"So he is not the only one who does not trust me," she replied
coldly. "I am sorry, monsieur."
"Mademoiselle!" Desperately he appealed to her. "I did not mean
that; you are twisting my words. Why--I--I would lay down my life to
serve you. I--I----" He stopped suddenly as he realized that his
heart was overpowering his head, thoughts which he supposed to be
locked in the deepest recesses of his being were forcing themselves
to utterance. "Mademoiselle, I must go at once," he muttered.
"Very well!" She shook her shoulders and turned aside. With a
despairing look at her he slowly moved away, and so missed the
bewitching smile which sprang into her eyes as she watched him
disappearing down the passage.
_CHAPTER VIII_
An unrelieved blackness settled over the countryside before Arnold
intimated to Wenzel that everything was ready. Only from the mansion
itself was there any illumination, for, despite all possible
precautions, from two or three windows came the dull gleam of
candlelight. There were no curtains by which the unfortunate
refugees could conceal the light, so overcoats, cloaks, and other
articles of wearing apparel were made to serve instead.
Wenzel proceeded toward the _château_ until he was near enough to
glance in turn through several peep-holes. The scene was anything
but cheering, and despite his hardened heart he could not help
feeling a tinge of pity for those inside.
The rooms within were bare of any semblance of furniture or
decoration other than what the occupiers themselves had made. Naked
walls grimly frowned down upon bare floors, and in the general decay
one room was no better than the next. In the majority of the
bedrooms the only beds consisted of dried leaves over which were
flung ladies' petticoats as sheets, men's overcoats as blankets.
Wenzel soon noted that the hands of the fairer sex had not remained
idle any more than those of the men. Here and there were bunches of
wild flowers, their beautiful colours serving, in some cases, to help
hide some of the worst patches on the walls. Pieces of fantastically
shaped wood had been tied round with pieces of ribbon, lace, or other
trimmings, and these were placed in positions where they could best
ornament the rooms.
In several cases the scene had been brightened by cleverly executed
charcoal drawings portrayed on the walls, and here and there Wenzel
glimpsed colours, though how the artist had obtained them he could
not guess.
The men had apparently set to work with a will, aided by what
carpenter's tools Arnold had managed to obtain for them, for there
were crudely fashioned chairs scattered about, or else uneven
three-legged stools. In one room was a rough table.
Somehow Wenzel was grotesquely reminded of the _Swiss Family
Robinson_, of _Crusoe_, and other similar tales of boyhood days. As
he looked in upon the _château_ it seemed to him as though the people
inside might also have been cast away on some desert island. To
think that they were in the centre of a supposedly civilized
continent....
Arnold was waiting for him by the door.
"Everyone is madly anxious to speak to you," he said.
"I can see only a few," Wenzel answered curtly.
He knew beforehand that he was going to be embarrassed by their
gratitude, and it annoyed him. "Haven't you told them, Arnold," he
continued testily, "that I am doing all this purely for revenge, and
to have a chance of killing some of the Communist brutes? Haven't
you explained that their lives mean nothing to me?"
Arnold grinned in the darkness. Perhaps he knew his leader better
than the White Knight knew himself. "No, I haven't. I have left
that for you to do. However, who will you see first?"
"I think--Francis Bakocz! Now take me to the room."
To the White Knight came Francis.
"Monsieur," he said to Wenzel, "I want to become one of your
lieutenants."
"Lieutenants! Who told you I have assistants?"
Curtly the words were hurled at him through the dark, and Francis
started with surprise. The mysterious White Knight's voice was hard
and cruel.
"No one," he faltered; "but there is yourself, and Monsieur Terhune,
and I believed there might be others."
"Why should you believe so?"
"I--I---- Monsieur, I do not understand you! I imagined what I did
because the escapes you arranged were so wonderful, so marvellous.
It seemed to me that you must have many more to aid you. Do you not
want me to--to--speak thus?"
Wenzel laughed grimly. "I questioned you to discover whether they
were your ideas or some you might have heard."
"They were my own," Francis said quickly. "No one knows anything of
you, though we often discuss you when Monsieur Terhune is away," he
admitted frankly.
"And you think I am a supernatural being?"
"Almost, monsieur! My father, for instance! When that hideous brute
of a jailer was put to guard him he gave up all hope. Only you,
monsieur, could have got the better of that monster."
There was a brief silence, broken eventually by Wenzel: "You think
so?"
"I am certain of it," replied Francis, with boyish enthusiasm. "From
what my father says of the jailer the man must have been an ogre.
Ugh! the very description of him makes the ladies shudder." He
laughed slightly. "Father's description might be that of the missing
link. If ever he and I meet I shall kill him for all he did to my
father."
Again a silence, so long that Francis could not maintain his
composure. "Monsieur!" he said.
"Go, go!" Wenzel spoke in a muffled voice. "I will let you know if
you can help me. Only go now, and tell Terhune to come to me in ten
minutes' time."
The boy went, and Wenzel was left to thoughts which seared and
blistered. "The missing link!" He, who had once been handsome, who
could have once looked at himself in the mirror, and been satisfied
with its reflection of healthy, youthful virility, now "an ogre"!
Not even could he pretend to himself that his ugliness had been
exaggerated in the Count's eyes by the ghastly surrounding of the
prison, the apparent cruelty of the jailer. He was not blind; there
were times when he was himself appalled by the picture thrown at him
out of the looking-glass.
Yet the hurt of Francis' words, though they cut deep into his
sensibilities, did not compare with the mental pain of his own
thoughts. If a man thought that of him, what would be a woman's
feelings, how much worse would be the reaction on the more fragile
ideals of a young girl?
A seething disgust of himself swept upward from his heart; soon it
seemed to him that such a monstrosity, such a caricature of a man,
ought not to live. Grimly it occurred to him that one day he might
be held up as an example to bad children, the threat of becoming like
him being used as a means of inducing them to yield to parental
authority.
His thoughts became more self-accusative and gruesome. When the door
opened and some one entered he cursed that he had not said half an
hour to Francis instead of ten minutes.
"Arnold! For God's sake leave me alone, man, for another twenty
minutes."
"Monsieur, it is not Arnold."
Wenzel sat perfectly still. The low, vibrant intonation echoed the
music of the voice which had persistently rung in his ears the last
few days.
"Mademoiselle! I did not expect you,"
'You know who it is then, monsieur?"
"You are Elizabeth Kiss."
She laughed softly. "You must be able to see in the dark, monsieur.
My eyes cannot pierce the veil of blackness to observe even my hand,
and yet you recognize me!"
"It is not your face I recognize, mademoiselle, but your voice."
"But you heard it for so short a time that--that awful night."
"Yet I have not forgotten it. It reminded me of some one I knew many
years ago." A surging memory of his last day with Zita carried him
quickly back into the past, but it hurt so that he forced himself to
forget, to think only of the present. "How came you here? I was
expecting Terhune."
"I know," she replied softly. "I overheard Francis telling Monsieur
Terhune. I was afraid that perhaps you would refuse to see me, so I
slipped in beforehand."
"You did wrong! Why did you?"
"Because I shall never rest with an easy conscience until I have told
you of the gratitude which is in my heart for all that you have done
for my father and for me."
"Stop! Mademoiselle, believe me, I do not doubt that gratitude for
one minute, and if you wish to express it you can do so in no better
way than by dropping the subject immediately and never renewing it
again."
"But, monsieur, it seems so--so callous, so cold, to let it pass in
that way. Yet, if you will not listen to all I would like to say in
regard to what you have done personally for my father and me, will
you at least let me tell you of what you have done for the nation?
"For years my father has been engaged in a stupendous literary task,
that of writing up the personal history of the Apostolic Kings of
Hungary, and the evolution of our race. He has nearly finished--a
year, two years may see his task completed. If he--he had died, the
history would have perished with him, for only he knows where the
work is hidden. Monsieur, do you not feel proud that you have done
this for the nation?"
He was deeply stirred by the story she told him.
"I am glad you have told me," he said simply.
Beneath the thrall of her presence it did not occur to him then that
the saving of the history, or ten histories, should have meant
nothing compared with one human life, but at that moment he was
conscious only that she was speaking to him, and that slowly,
inexorably, he was beginning to fall in love with her.
This meeting only served to emphasize the attraction for her which,
almost against his will, had pulled him to the _château_, away from
Budapest. He wished he could see her, watch her ever-changing
expressions, behold her again as he had beheld her outside the
_château_, and begrudged the cloak of darkness which blacked out her
marvellous eyes from his vision, the eyes which, close to, he had
seen covered by alabaster eyelids.
"Mademoiselle, there is a chair just here. Will you not come closer
so that I can put you into it?" Even to himself it was obvious that
his voice was deeper, more alive, and throbbing with an emotion he
could not control.
Elizabeth was conscious of the change, for she hesitated. "I do not
mind standing, monsieur."
"Come! I should feel more easy if you would sit." He heard her move
slightly, then his outstretched hand came into contact with her arm.
Gently he slid his hand down to her wrist, and guided her to the
seat. He felt her quivering gently within his grasp, and, aware of
her lack of fear, his heart leaped when it seemed to him that there
could be but one reason for her nervousness.
Reluctantly he withdrew his hand, and in doing so experienced a
sensation of chilling self-abnegation, and forcibly realized that
roseate-hued dreams were blinding his sense of reality. The voice of
conscience interpolated its everlasting chant: to feel thus was
disloyalty to Zita; while revealed in a colder light the suggestion
that Elizabeth could reciprocate his sudden feelings in so short a
time became impossible.
His heart cried out in protest, so that when he next spoke there was
an unshed tear in his voice.
"Won't you tell me of yourself, mademoiselle? Elizabeth Kiss! It is
a pretty name."
"It is an old Hungarian name."
"It is prettier still in my language. You know it?" he questioned.
She answered him in English. "A little. I learned it many years ago
when I was still at school."
The music of her voice seemed to echo and re-echo in the quietness of
the room. Never had his own language sounded so exquisite. Behind
each carefully pronounced word whispered a faint suggestion of an
accent, liquid and sibilant, like the ripple of a pure mountain
rivulet. Each passing moment revealed to him a new charm in her, and
every new discovery wrapped him deeper in the meshes of a growing
adoration.
"You speak it splendidly, mademoiselle. You must continue to talk to
me in English. You were telling me of yourself."
"Was I?" She laughed softly. "There is so little to tell you.
Until the night you rescued us my life had been uneventful, monsieur.
I have lived all my life at the Castle Gisella, except only during my
schooldays, or whenever my father journeyed to Berlin, Paris, or
London. Then he took me with him.
"I have been shut off from the world since 1914, though I have been
happy and content, except when hearing of the wounds my unhappy
country has suffered. Not even of the Commune had my father and I
heard anything until a few minutes before we were invaded by the
villagers."
"You must suffer all the more then, now that your eyes are open?"
"Indeed, yes. It has been terrible! Each day we hear worse news,
until it seems that the woes of Hungary are unending." Suddenly she
choked. "Yesterday I received the worst information of all."
Wenzel frowned, wondering why he had not been informed by Terhune of
fresh facts. Then he remembered that he had seen his lieutenant for
a few minutes only.
"Yes, yes," he impatiently prompted her.
"Yesterday Monsieur Terhune arrived at the _château_ with a fresh
visitor from Budapest----"
"Dregely?"
"Yes. Poor Gobor Dregely. He too has lost everything like the rest
of us. This morning he and I were talking together of old times. He
knew all my relations in Budapest, and--and--oh, monsieur, he told me
of the murder in the streets of my cousin, Coloman. Coloman and his
friend were walking home one night; they met a group of drunken
Communists who demanded of them to hack the royal crown from their
uniforms. Coloman refused and--and then--oh! it seems
impossible--one of the Communists snatched a revolver from his pocket
and shot down my cousin and his friend." Her voice broke, and Wenzel
heard the sound of a stifled sob.
He breathed hoarsely. Suddenly all other feelings were gone save
those of blind, murderous hate. His hands clenched till the nails of
his fingers bit into the flesh of his palm, but he felt nothing of
the physical pain, only an overpowering mental anguish at the thought
of the brutal murder. Always he felt thus upon hearing fresh
Communist horrors; this time it was intensified by the fact that one
of the victims was Elizabeth's cousin.
"Dregely--knows he who was that Communist, by any chance?" Fiercely
he put the question to her, not daring to hope that she would be able
to reply in the affirmative.
Her voice hardened: "Yes. Dregely was Coloman's friend, and by some
means found out. He wanted revenge, but the Communist left Budapest."
"Yes, yes; but who was the murderer?"
"He was a People's Commissary, by name Comrade Gonnard. When Dregely
searched for him he heard that Gonnard was touring the country,
preaching on behalf of the Commune for sanguinary measures against
the _bourgeoisie_. Dregely would have followed, but he was
proscribed an outlaw, and so had to flee himself from the clutches of
the Communists. Only now is he safe, thanks to the White Knight."
"Yes, I heard of Dregely's danger, and sent Terhune to help him. But
this Comrade Gonnard"--his voice boomed with fury--"for what he has
done he will have to settle with the White Knight. Do not worry,
mademoiselle; the White Knight will avenge your cousin, I swear by
the blood that Gonnard shed that the Communist shall die if I have to
follow him from one end of Hungary to another!"
"Oh, monsieur!" She sighed. "I believe I am gentle-natured, it
hurts me to see a fly struggling to escape the ruthless clutches of
the spider, yet my heart leaps with joy to hear you say that. If
only I could be of assistance to you!"
"Perhaps you can," he breathed softly.
"Tell me quickly," she said eagerly.
He had not meant to let the words slip out, they were an echoing
murmur from his heart, and now he felt embarrassed, unable to think
what to say. Once again the battle between his desires and his
sensitive conscience waged fiercely. There was much he wished to
tell her, but all the time a mocking voice taunted him on his
forgetfulness. What was his love worth, it asked, that he could
forget Zita so soon? Less than two months ago he had stood over her
dead body and vowed remorseless revenge, and yet already his heart
was stirring at the proximity of another woman!
With pitiless insistency the hammer-strokes of his self-inflicted
arguments flayed his soul till he writhed in agony. He forced
himself to thrust away the mental pictures of Elizabeth which
constantly depicted themselves in his imagination, and hardened his
voice in an endeavour to deceive himself as well as her.
He had nearly led himself into a trap. There seemed to him only one
way out of it. "You can help me by never mentioning a word to anyone
that I am going after Gonnard."
"Monsieur!" Reproach battled with anger in her voice.
"I am sorry, but prattling tongues, even in this _château_, can do
inestimable damage. Already some one, who, I do not know, has in
his--or her--gratitude kindly betrayed the fact to my enemies that I
am an Englishman. Whether by accident or design I do not know. In
any event, a word in English now is sufficient to raise a horde of
amateur and professional trackers on the trail of the unfortunate
speaker."
Elizabeth bit her lip, and wished it were within her power to
understand her mysterious rescuer. In the first place, from what
little she had seen of him, he was utterly unlike the evenly
balanced, phlegmatic Englishmen whom she had previously met. His
moods changed with the rapidity of a temperamental woman: he was
tender, fierce, calm, and tempestuous by turns. At one moment his
voice throbbed with sympathy, the next it grated with bitter cynicism.
His lack of trust hurt her. The pitch-dark room! She tried to
persuade herself that there was some other reason, but in vain. It
could only be that he feared to reveal his face even to her, in case
of treachery. She rose to her feet.
"I must go, monsieur. There are others who wish to express their
gratitude to you beside myself." With an effort she kept her tone at
an even level, concealing the disappointment which she felt.
His thoughts were chaotic. He did not want her to go so
quickly--there were still many questions he wished to put to her,
anything to keep her near him; but his lips seemed paralysed.
He was saved a final decision. The door opened and Terhune's voice
rang out:
"Geoffrey, I am sorry to interrupt, but Apor is here with grave news."