Behind the shrubberies, which lay at the back of the holly hedge that
surrounded the little enclosed garden outside the library, beyond the
end of the battlements, and reached by a disused footpath, a great tree
stood upon the edge of the steep hillside and thrust its sweeping
branches over the void.
Its trunk was grey and moss-grown; moss carpeted the ground between its
protruding roots, but the bracken and heather held back, and left a
half-circle beneath it, untenanted by their kind. It would seem that all
vegetation fears to venture beneath the shade of the beech; and for the
most part it stands solitary, shunned by other growing things except
moss, which creeps undaunted where its more vigorous brothers lack the
courage to establish themselves.
Here came Juliet that morning.
A week ago, David Southern had shown her the path to the tree. It had
been a favourite haunt of his when he was a boy, he told her. It was a
private chamber to which he resorted on the rare occasions when he was
disposed to solitude; when something had gone wrong with his world he had
been used to retire there with his dog, or, more seldom, a book. There he
had been accustomed to lie, his back supported by the tree, and hold
forth to the dog upon the troubles and difficulties of life and the
general crookedness of things; or, if a book were his companion, he
would gaze out, between the pages, at distant Crianan clinging faintly to
the knees of Ben Ghusy, and watch the swift change of passing cloud and
hanging curtain of mist upon the faces of the hills and loch.
It had been a place all his own; secret from every one, even from Mark,
his companion during all those holidays that he had spent at Inverashiel.
Somehow, David told Juliet--and it was a confidence he had seldom before
imparted to anyone--he had never quite managed to hit it off with Mark.
He couldn't say why, exactly. No doubt it was his own fault; but there
was no accounting for one's likes and dislikes.
And with quick regret at having betrayed his carefully suppressed
feelings in regard to his cousin, David had laughed apologetically, and
spoken of other things.
Here, then, just as the steamer _Rob Roy_ was drawing close to the wooden
landing-stage at the edge of the loch, with Julia Romaninov still
standing in the bows; here, because she had once been to this place with
him, because without her he had so often sat upon these mossy roots, came
Juliet to dream of her love.
Like him, she seated herself against the tree trunk at the giddy brink of
the precipitous rock; like him, her eyes rested on the smooth waters
below her, or on the far-away misty distance where Crianan slumbered;
but, unlike him, her eyes, as they looked, were filled with tears. Where
was he now? Oh, David, poor unjustly treated David! In what narrow cell,
lighted only by a high, iron-barred window--for so the scene shaped
itself in her mind--with uncovered floor of stone, bare walls and a bench
to lie on, was the man she loved wearing away his days under the burden
of so frightful an accusation?
For the thousandth time Juliet's blood boiled within her at the
thought, and she grew hot with anger and indignant scorn. That anyone
should have dared to suspect him! Why were such fools, such wicked,
evil-working imbeciles as the police allowed to exist for one moment
upon the face of the globe? But no doubt they had some hidden motive in
arresting him, for it was quite incredible that they really imagined he
had committed this appalling crime. She could not understand their
motive, to be sure, but without doubt there must have been some reason
which was not clear to her.
Oh, David, David! Was he thinking of her, as she was thinking of him? Did
he know, by instinct, that she would be doing all that could be done to
bring about his release? But was she? Again her mind was filled with the
disquieting question, was there nothing that might be done, that she was
leaving undone? Had she forgotten something, neglected something? She was
sure Gimblet did not believe David to be guilty, but was he certain of
being able to prove his innocence? He did not seem to have discovered
much at present.
Suddenly, in the midst of her distress, she smiled to herself.
At least Miss Tarver had shown herself in her true colours, and was no
more to be considered. Juliet felt that she could almost forgive her for
her readiness to believe the worst. It was dreadful, yes, and shameful
that anyone else should think for a moment that David could be capable of
such a deed, but in Miss Tarver, perhaps, the thought had not been
inexcusable. On the whole, it was so nice of her to break the engagement
that she might be forgiven the ridiculous reason she had advanced for
doing it. Of course, Juliet assured herself, it was a mere pretext,
because _no_ one could possibly believe it. And in this manner she
continued to reiterate her conviction that the suspicions entertained of
her lover were all assumed for some darkly obscure purpose.
So the morning wore away. A shower or two passed down the valley, but
under the thick tent of the beech leaves she scarcely felt it. She was,
besides, dressed for bad weather; and the grey and mournful face of the
day was in harmony with her mood.
There was something comforting in this high perch. She seemed more aloof
from the troubles and despair of the last few days than she had imagined
possible. There was a calm, a remoteness, about the grey mountains,
disappearing and reappearing from behind their screen of cloud but
unchanged and unmoved by what went on around and among them, that was in
some way reassuring.
The burn that ran at the bottom of the hill on which she sat, hurrying
down to the loch in such turbulent foaming haste, she was able to
compare, with a sad smile, to herself. The loch, she thought, was wide
and impassive as justice, which did not allow itself to be influenced by
the emotions. The burn would get down just the same without so much
turmoil and fuss; and she would see David's name cleared, equally surely,
if she waited calmly on events, instead of burning her heart out in
hopeless impatience and anxiety.
As she gazed, with some such thoughts as these, down to the stream
that splashed on its way below her, her attention was caught by a
movement in the bushes half-way down the steep slope at the top of
which she was sitting.
The day was windless and no leaf moved on any tree. There must be some
animal among the shrubs that covered the embankment, some large animal,
since its movements caused so much commotion; for, as she watched, first
one bush and then another stirred and bent and was shaken as if by
something thrusting its way through the dense growth.
What could it be? A sheep, perhaps; there were many of them on the
hillsides. This must be one that had strayed far from the rest. And yet
would a sheep make so much stir? Juliet drew back a little behind the
trunk of the beech-tree. Could it be a deer? She could not hear any sound
of the creature's advance, for the air was full of the clamour of the
burn, but she could trace the direction of its progress by shaking leaves
and swinging boughs. It seemed to be gradually mounting the slope.
Suddenly a head emerged from the waving mass of a rhododendron, and with
astonishment Juliet saw that it was that of Julia Romaninov.
Her first impulse was to lean forward and call her, but as she did so the
cry died unheard upon her lips. For the manner of Julia's advance struck
her as very odd. The girl was bending nearly double, and moving with a
caution that seemed very strange and unnecessary. What was the matter?
Was she stalking something? Crouching as she was in the bushes, she would
not be seen by anyone on the path below. Did she not want to be seen? It
looked more and more like it. But why in the world should Julia creep
along as if she feared to be observed? Where was she going, and why?
Suddenly Juliet came to a quick decision: she would find out what Julia
Romaninov was doing.
She backed hurriedly into the bracken, and made her way slowly and
cautiously around the clearing under the beech-tree to the edge of the
hill again, keeping under cover of the fern and heather. When she peered
over, Julia had disappeared from view beneath the rhododendrons.
For a minute Juliet's eyes searched the side of the slope below. Then she
drew back her head quickly, for she had caught sight of another bush
shaking uneasily a little way beyond the gap in which she had had her
first glimpse of the cause of the disturbance. Cowering low in the
bracken she crept along the top, keeping a foot or two from the edge,
where the rock fell nearly perpendicularly for a few yards before its
angle changed to the comparatively gradual, though actually steep slope
of the hill which Julia was climbing.
From time to time she looked cautiously between clumps of fern or heath,
to make sure that she was keeping level with her unconscious quarry.
The front of the hill swung round in a bold curve till it reached the
castle; and it soon became evident that, if both girls continued to
advance along the lines they were following, they would converge at a
point where the end of the battlemented wall met the great holly hedge
that formed two sides of the garden enclosure.
Juliet perceived this when she was not more than a dozen yards from the
corner, and dropped at full length to the soft ground, at a spot where
she could see between the stalks and under the leaves, and yet herself
remain concealed. She had not long to wait. In a minute, Julia's face
appeared over the brow of the hill. She pulled herself up by a young fir
sapling that hung over the brink, and stood for a moment, flushed and
panting after her long climb. She was dressed in a greenish tweed, which
blended with the woodland surroundings, and her shoulder was turned to
the place where Juliet lay wondering whether she would be discovered.
Fronting them, the end of the little turret, with which the wall of the
old fortress now came to a sudden termination, could be seen rearing its
grey stones above the dark glossy foliage of the hedge, which grew here
with peculiar vigour and continued to the extreme edge of the cliff, and
even farther.
What was Juliet's surprise to see Julia, when she had found her breath,
and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was
unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth,
and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves,
begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared
under it. What in the world could she be doing?
Minutes passed, and she did not reappear. Juliet waited, her nerves
stretched in expectation, but nothing happened. Overhead little birds,
tomtits and creepers, played about the bark of the fir-trees; a robin
came and looked at her consideringly, with a bright sensible eye; from
two hundred feet below, the murmur of the burn rose constant and
insistent; but no other sound broke the stillness, nor was there any sign
of human life upon the top of the cliff.
At last the girl could stand it no longer. Her patience was exhausted.
Curiosity urged her like a goad; and, if she had not much expectation of
making any important discovery, she was at least determined to solve the
mystery that now perplexed her.
Without more ado she got to her feet, and ran to the holly hedge. There,
throwing herself down once more, she parted the leaves with a cautious
hand, and followed the path taken by the Russian.
The hedge was old and very thick, more than three yards in width at this
end of it. In the middle, the trunks of the trees that formed it rose in
a close-growing, impassable barrier; but just opposite the place where
Julia had vanished Juliet found that there was a gap, caused, perhaps, by
the death in earlier days of one of the trees, or, as she afterwards
thought more likely, by the intentional omission or destruction of one of
the young plants. It was a narrow opening, but she managed to wriggle
through it.
On the other side, progress was bounded by the wall, whose massive
granite blocks presented a smooth unbroken surface. Where, then, had
Julia gone? The branches did not grow low on this, as on the outer side
of the hedge, and there was room to stand, though not to stand upright.
Stooping uncomfortably, the girl looked about her, and saw in the soft
brown earth the plain print of many footsteps, both going and coming,
between the place where she crouched and the end of the wall. She looked
behind her, and there were no marks. Clearly, Julia had gone to the end;
but what then? The corner of the wall was at the very edge of the
precipice; from what she remembered to have seen from below, the rock
was too sheer to offer any foothold; besides why, having just climbed to
the summit should anyone immediately descend again, and by such an
extraordinary route? While these thoughts followed one another in her
mind, Juliet had advanced along the track of the footsteps, and clinging
tightly to the trunk of the last holly bush she leant forward and looked
down.
As she thought, the descent was impossible: the rock fell away at her
feet, sheer and smooth; there was no path there that a cat could take. It
made her giddy to look, and she drew back hurriedly.
Where, then, could Julia have gone? Not to the left, that was certain,
for then she would have emerged again into view. To the right? That
seemed impossible. Still, Juliet leant forward again, and peered round
the corner of the wall.
There, not more than a couple of feet away, was a small opening, less
than eighteen inches wide by about a yard in height. Hidden by the
overhanging end of the hedge, it would be invisible from below. Here was
the road Julia had taken.
Juliet did not hesitate. She could reach the aperture easily, and it
would have been the simplest thing in the world to climb into it, but
for the yawning chasm beneath. Holding firmly to the friendly holly, and
resisting, with an effort, the temptation to look down, she swung
herself bravely over the edge and scrambled into the hole with a gasp of
relief. It was, after all, not very difficult. She found herself
standing within the entrance of a narrow passage built into the
thickness of the wall. Beside the opening through which she had come, a
little door of oak, grey with age and strengthened with rusty bars and
cross-pieces of iron, drooped upon its one remaining hinge. Two huge
slabs of stone leaning near it, against the wall, showed how it had
been the custom in former centuries to fortify the entrance still more
effectively in time of danger.
Juliet did not wait to examine these fragments, interesting though they
might be to archaeologists, but hurried down the passage as quickly as
she could in the darkness that filled it, feeling her way with an
outstretched hand upon the stones on either side. As her eyes became
accustomed to the obscurity, she saw that though the way was dark it was
yet not entirely so: a gloomy light penetrated at intervals through
ivy-covered loopholes pierced in the thickness of the outer wall; and she
imagined bygone McConachans pouring boiling oil or other hospitable
greeting through those slits on to the heads of their neighbours. But
surely, she reflected, no one would ever have attacked the castle from
that side, where the precipice already offered an impregnable defence;
the passage must have been used as a means of communication with the
outer world, or, perhaps, as a last resort, for the purpose of escape by
the beleaguered forces.
After fifty yards or so of comparatively easy progress, the shafts of
twilight from the loopholes ceased to permeate the murky darkness in
which she walked, and she was obliged to go more slowly, and to feel her
way dubiously by the touch of hands and feet.
The floor appeared to her to be sloping away beneath her, and as she
advanced the descent became more and more rapid, till she could hardly
keep her feet. She went very gingerly, with a vague fear lest the path
should stop unexpectedly, and she herself step into space.
Presently she found herself once more upon level ground, when another
difficulty confronted her: the walls came suddenly to an end. Feeling
cautiously about her in the darkness, she made out that she had come to a
point where another passage crossed the one she was following, a sort of
cross-road in this unknown country of shade and stone. Here, then, were
three possible routes to take, and no means of knowing which of them
Julia Romaninov had gone by.
After a little hesitation, she decided to keep straight on. It would at
all events be easier to return if she did, and she would be less likely
to make a mistake and lose her way. So on she stumbled; and who shall say
that Fate had not a hand in this chance decision?
Though the distance she had traversed was inconsiderable, the darkness
and uncertainty made it appear to her immense, and each moment she
expected to come upon the Russian girl. At every other step she paused
and listened, but no sound met her ears except a slight, regular,
thudding noise, which she presently discovered, with something of a
shock, to be the beating of her own heart. The sound of her progress was
almost inaudible. As the day was damp, she was wearing goloshes, and her
small, rubber-shod feet fell upon the stone floor with a gentle patter
that was scarcely perceptible.
At last she nearly fell over the first step of a flight of stairs.
She mounted them one by one with every precaution her fears could
suggest. For by now the first enthusiasm of the chase had worn off, and
the solitude and darkness of this strange place had worked upon her
nerves till she was terrified of she knew not what, and ready to scream
at a touch.
Already she bitterly regretted having started out upon this enterprise
of spying. Why had she not gone and reported what she had seen to Mr.
Gimblet? That surely would have been the obvious, the sensible course. It
was, she reflected, a course still open to her; and in another moment she
would have turned and taken it, but even as the thought crossed her mind
she was aware that the darkness was sensibly decreased, and in another
second she had risen into comparative daylight. As she stood still,
debating what she should do, and taking in all that could now be
distinguished of her surroundings, she saw that the stairs ended in an
open trap-door, leading to a high, black-lined shaft like the inside of a
chimney, in which, some two feet above the trap, an odd, narrow curve of
glass acted as a window, and admitted a very small quantity of light. A
streak of light seemed to come also from the wall beside it.
Juliet drew herself cautiously up, till her head was in the chimney, and
her eyes level with the slip of glass.
With a sudden shock of surprise she saw that she was looking into the
room which, above all others, she had so much cause to remember ever
having entered.
It was, indeed, the library of the castle, and she was looking at it from
the inside of that clock into which Gimblet had once before seen Julia
Romaninov vanish.
The curtains were drawn in the room, but after the absolute blackness of
the stone corridors the semi-dusk looked nearly as bright as full
daylight to Juliet, and she had no difficulty in distinguishing that
there was but one person in the library, and that person Julia.
She was standing by a bookshelf at the far end, near the window, and
seemed to be methodically engaged in an examination of the books. Juliet
saw her take out first one, then another, musty, leather-bound volume,
shake it, turn over the leaves, and put it back in its place after
groping with her hand at the back of the shelf. Plainly she was hunting
for something. But for what? She had no business where she was, in any
case, and Juliet's indignation gathered and swelled within her as she
watched this unwarrantable intrusion.
She would confront the girl and ask her what she meant by such behaviour.
But how to get into the library?
Looking about her, she saw that the streak of light in the wall beside
her came through a perpendicular crack which might well be the edge of a
little door.
She pushed gently and the wood yielded to her fingers.