A PORTENT
One evening the monotony of the Herriard’s delightful existence under
the shadow of the grey old Schloss was broken by the appearance
of a company of poor strolling players. They were, it appeared, a
band of humble comedians and pantomimists who, in the more rural
and remote districts, went from village to village, to gain a
precarious livelihood by giving a crude medley of melodrama and farce,
interspersed with singing and acrobatic feats. To gain permission
for a short performance at a great house naturally was, when such an
opportunity presented itself, much to be desired. It meant probably
less work for a greater reward, compared with the two or three hours’
toil, required to conjure kreutzers from the thrifty peasants’
pockets. Alexia knew this, and persuaded her husband to join with her
in sanctioning the humble show. Herriard had at first shown himself
a little dubious as to the wisdom of inviting strangers within the
precincts of the castle. But Alexia quickly laughed away his doubts;
these strolling mummers were familiar visitors. They had made their
appearance there at more or less regular intervals ever since she could
remember; she would like to hear their bombastic nonsense and the old
songs once again for the sake of old times, and she called Gollmar, the
ancient steward, to bear witness that there was no harm in the poor
fellows.
So it came that Herriard readily fell in with Alexia’s wish; he ordered
the troupe to be admitted to the inner courtyard, and for an hour they
laughed together at the strange, half-incomprehensible performance of
the strollers.
Certainly they were, for the most part, a strange, weird, almost
forbidding dozen of human beings; but then in stage-struck peasants
from the wild regions of Austro-Hungary one would scarcely expect to
find the graces of players drawn from more civilized surroundings. When
the performance was over, Herriard sent them a liberal fee, and they
were given a substantial meal under the superintendence of Gollmar,
who was directed to keep his eye upon them until they were once more
outside the gates.
“It was, perhaps, as well, _gnädiger Herr_,” the old man observed
afterwards, “to keep the fellows under observation. Our countrymen
have a saying, ‘One coat suffices to keep warm a player and a thief.’
Not but what these scoundrels are good honest mountebanks for their
sort; still, there was no harm in keeping them from the temptation to
pilfer. Old Karonsek, the leader, I have known for well-nigh forty
years: he has, naturally, a reputation to preserve, since he boasts he
has never seen the inside of a prison; but the younger men--” he gave
a shrug, “what would you have? A man does not often turn player till
every respectable calling is closed to him, and our proverb says a man
who has no home has no neighbours to call him thief when he steals.
But,” he added, by way of softening his strictures upon the average
morality of theatrical strollers, “your honour’s kindness has given
untold pleasure to the household. Few amusements come our way in this
remote spot, and in the late Count’s time we always made the humblest
strollers welcome.”
Two nights later Herriard was roused from his sleep by the furious
barking of a dog, followed by a man’s angry cry. Snatching up his
revolver, he ran downstairs, and, guided by the sounds, rushed into
the library. The moonlight, streaming in through the half-open window,
showed him one of the men servants, Jan Martin, leaning over a writing
table, his hand held to his chest, while he was almost inarticulate
with rage and fear. As Herriard’s approach he pointed excitedly to the
window. “There! He has gone that way. A robber, Excellency: the wretch
has stabbed me. Quick! he cannot be far away. Fritz has gone after him.”
With a word to the wounded man, Herriard passed out by the window.
He could hear Fritz, the wolf-hound, still barking savagely, but now
there came from him a howl of pain, and then all was silent. He hurried
forward, and about a hundred yards away came upon the poor animal
bleeding, and quite disabled. No sign of the midnight robber was to
be seen, although Herriard ran in pursuit of him. But the plantation
at which he had arrived was large, its paths devious; unless he came
upon him by chance it was almost hopeless to expect to overtake the
man. Herriard stopped and listened. Not a sound was to be heard except
presently that of running footsteps of men from the castle who, headed
by Gollmar, were coming in pursuit. But half-an-hour’s energetic search
by the party brought no result; the miscreant, whoever he was, had made
good his escape.
As Herriard took his way back to the castle his apprehensions, which
had been lulled, returned in full strength. In the courtyard the
poor dog, Fritz, lay moaning in pain. Herriard examined his hurt,
which he found to be a punctured wound just below the throat. On the
ground beside him lay an object which Herriard eagerly picked up and
scrutinized. It was a small piece of coarse cloth, evidently torn by
the dog from the intruder’s coat. He showed it to Gollmar.
“Ah,” said the old steward, looking critically at the fragment, “it is
as I suspected. Certainly one of the play-actor fellows who were here
on Tuesday. I noticed one or two knavish faces among the new members of
the troupe. He has been tempted to earn a year’s pay in a single night.
A daring, beggarly villain. His after-thought is likely to mean death
to Jan Martin, if not to poor Fritz as well. Well, if Fritz dies there
will be a reckoning to pay with the Count.”
“You think, then, it was one of those wretched fellows, the players?”
“I am sure of it, _gnädiger Herr_. Look at this scrap of cloth. It is
of the coarsest description. Such as would be worn only by a peasant or
a strolling mountebank. And no peasant, in his mind or out of it, would
dare to plan a midnight robbery, with murder if need be, at the Schloss
Rohnburg. It is out of the question. No; this evidence points to one of
those ranting tatterdemalions, who have the wits of a drunkard and the
reverence of a pig.”
Gollmar’s manifest conviction of the man’s identity somewhat reassured
Herriard, and he was able to relate the affair to Alexia without
communicating to her the fears he had at first entertained. The doctor
who had been sent for reported Jan Martin’s wound as not dangerous;
with a week’s quiet he would recover from its effects. Fritz, too, had
had a wonderful escape; the evidently hasty stab he had received having
just missed being mortal.
Still, although, providentially, not much harm had been done, the
affair gave Herriard considerable uneasiness. He made light of it,
since there seemed no object to be gained by taking it, outwardly
at least, more seriously. Yet, somehow, it contrived to give him an
ever-present conviction of impending danger. When he reasoned the
matter out with himself he was bound to admit that the common-sense
arguments pointed to the confirmation of Gollmar’s simple theory.
What more likely, he asked himself, than that a member of a lawless,
homeless, strolling party of mountebanks, recruited probably from
the dregs of society, if not, indeed, from the jails, should use the
opportunity of admittance to a house of wealth to plan an attempt which
promised a tempting haul? Had Herriard’s mind, as he admitted, not
been full of Gastineau and his methods, he would not have thought to
question the obvious explanation. As it was, the affair, unpleasant
enough in itself, gave a disagreeable shock, the effects of which did
not leave him when he found that the harm done by the midnight marauder
was far less than it might have been.
But the days went by, resuming their uneventful course. A week passed,
and at its end both man and dog had quite recovered from their wounds.
Herriard began to think that it had, after all, been a case of
attempted robbery by one of the strolling prayers. Enquiries in the
district had quite failed to identify the scrap of cloth, and the idea
that the culprit belonged to the neighbourhood was scouted by every
one in the place. A watch was now kept every night in the castle, but
no sign was detected of a renewal of the attempt. Naturally, they said,
the players were now far away. On the night in question they had been
performing at a village but a few miles from Rohnburg.
So Herriard’s uneasiness, having nothing new to feed upon, gradually
subsided, and he gave himself up once more to all the charm of
existence which that romantic domain afforded him.
One day it was announced to him that Fritz, the wolf-hound, had
mysteriously disappeared. He had been always a domesticated animal,
content for the most part to lie basking in the sun on the terrace
or in the courtyard, and had never been known to stray far from the
castle. But now he had not been seen for twenty-four hours, and every
one was at a loss to account for his absence. His wound was quite
healed, and he had seemed in perfect health, although one of the men
had noticed that he was unusually restless. Herriard was at first
inclined to be somewhat perturbed by the occurrence, till one of the
foresters, having a peculiar knowledge of animals, adduced a theory
which tended to set his mind at rest. The dog’s behaviour, he declared,
was perfectly explicable. In his natural state he would be a fierce,
marauding, dangerous animal. His real character had been tamed and
held in suspension by the luxury and kindness of a domestic life. Now
the hurt he had received had roused the animal’s fiercer nature which
had but slumbered. That this was the case had been indicated by the
dog’s noticeable restlessness; he had now assuredly gone off on a wild
hunting prowl; the taste of live blood (he had doubtless bitten the
robber) had quickened his instinct, and induced a craving for living
prey.
With this explanation Herriard had to be satisfied. He ordered,
however, a thorough search to be made for the dog, and it was with a
certain sense of relief that he heard this was unsuccessful; he had
feared the finding of the animal dead by that mysterious hand which his
fancy would picture as stretched forth against him and his.
But Alexia laughed him out of his fear of the unknown. Was not the
world smiling on them with all the delights of an ideal existence? What
sign was there, save in imagination, of the danger they had dreaded? It
was a sin to let the memory of a trouble, now past and gone, destroy
the delight of the present hour. Paul Gastineau was not a fool to
waste, in pursuing them with his hatred, time which might be spent to
more advantage in opening out his new career. Probably he had for once
spoken the frank truth, and was by that time across the ocean, eager to
put into practice the fresh schemes and projects of his busy, ambitious
brain. In the weeks they had spent at the Schloss Rohnburg what
tangible sign had there been of the presence or machinations of their
arch enemy? None. If he had meant to strike, why this delay? He was,
above all things, a man of swift action. No. Geoffrey should not worry
himself any more with those fancies. The danger was now a myth, opposed
by common sense; if it were real, the worry would not keep it away. So
Herriard resolved to be guided by Alexia’s counsel, and to give himself
up thenceforward to the full enjoyment of the new life he had entered
upon. After the stuffy turmoil of the Courts it was indeed a change
full of delight, a life never even dreamt of a month before.
There was plenty of sport to be had in the forest which stretched away
from the Schloss, and Herriard, with the enjoyment of one for whom
struggle and danger had suddenly ceased, threw himself with zest into
the novel, emancipated life, and wandered every day farther in pursuit
of game. In the still depths of the forest, in a fairy-land which
seemed far from the ken of worldly strife and schemes, Herriard felt
he had left the events of a few weeks back years behind him; he could
laugh at his fears. Paul Gastineau was no longer a haunting terror, but
merely a strange episode.
What creatures of our impressions, our surroundings we are. How one
mind, determined, inscrutable, can dominate a weaker: how long the
paralyzing effect of a stronger will lingers, to be weakened and at
last banished not by a human effort but by the external agency of a
changed environment.
Reflections such as these were passing through Herriard’s mind as,
after a full day’s sport, he sat, tranquilly smoking a cigar, on the
platform of an ancient hunting-tower which stood in the forest depths
some two or three miles from the castle. The two foresters who had
accompanied him he had sent home with the heavy bag of game; being
himself somewhat tired with his long tramp, he had thought to rest
awhile before resuming his homeward walk.
The tower was situated in an open clearing where three glades met. To
Herriard, as he stretched himself comfortably on the old weather-beaten
benches, it seemed the most tranquilly romantic spot in the world.
All round him from the sunlit dell rose majestically the dark
violet masses of the vast forest; its density pierced by the three
moss-carpeted roads which the tower commanded. The day had been hot;
a hazy film seemed to hang over the dark, illimitable battalions of
pines, standing motionless in the windless atmosphere. On either side
of the long vista which lay before Herriard’s idle observation, the
haze seemed to line the dark walls, fringing the avenue beyond the line
of trees, and leaving a narrow road still bright and clear.
Presently Herriard became conscious that far down this glade, perhaps
half an English mile away, a figure had appeared. For a while he
watched it lazily, as a break in that magnificent monotony it had
become the most interesting object in sight, and it amused the watcher
to observe whether the figure was moving towards the tower or away
from it. Nearer, surely; but with a progress so slow as to be scarcely
perceptible. Herriard took out his stalking glasses and brought them
to bear on the object of his curiosity. A man, a bent old man, he
seemed, carrying a load, probably a faggot-gatherer crawling on his
daily round. Herriard put back the glasses--he was never quite free
now from suspicion--and contentedly resumed his cigar. Then he fell to
moralizing, as an idle man will, over the lot of such an one as the
solitary peasant who was creeping slowly towards him. Presently as
he looked, the figure bore to one side of the track, and next moment
vanished in the curtain of mist that hung before the line of trees.
He had crept off by some forest path, Herriard conjectured, with a
slight feeling of an ended companionship. For in that place, surrounded
by the almost oppressive loneliness compelled by nature in all her
unchallenged predominance and autocracy, even the distant presence of
an obscure peasant creeping laboriously through the forest ways to his
primitive hovel, gave a welcome touch of company. But he was gone now,
passed out of his observer’s life, in all probability never to cross
his way again.
With that thought in his mind Herriard gave an exclamation of surprise.
There again was the man he had seen and who was still furnishing a text
for his moralizing; he had reappeared as abruptly as he had vanished.
He was close at hand now, almost under the tower; the same bent figure,
bowed beneath a bundle of faggots, and using one as a staff to aid his
steps.
The old man seemed to have come quickly from the point where he had
disappeared not many minutes before; if, perhaps, more time had not
passed in the interval than Herriard was conscious of. The man came on
until he was under the tower, and so out of sight from the platform.
Herriard was debating with himself whether he should accost the
solitary creature and brighten the day for him with a present of a few
florins, when, somewhat to his surprise, he heard the slow footsteps
ascending the winding stairs of the tower. Perhaps, he thought, the old
fellow is accustomed to billet himself here; the half-ruinous building
is useless enough; one could scarcely complain.
At the floor below the footsteps stopped for a while: if the poor
man was resting there comfortably Herriard would not disturb him
unnecessarily. No; he was moving about softly; now, surely he was on
the stairs again, coming up to the roof platform. It seemed a strange
thing to do; the reason was not quite obvious, unless the man had
noticed a stranger there, and was coming up to beg. Herriard watched
for his appearance with some curiosity. The ascent sounded hard and
laboured, and when at length the expected figure emerged from the
trap-door the man’s back was, by the trend of the steps, turned towards
the place where Herriard sat. For a few moments he seemed to fumble
with his neck-cloth, apparently unaware that he was not alone, since he
took no notice of him.
“What in the world is he doing?” As the remark was uttered half aloud,
the man turned quickly. The unkempt beard was gone; and, with a great
leap of the heart, Herriard found himself staring at the face of Paul
Gastineau.