THE COUNT AND HIS SHADOW
On leaving the farm Count Zarka rode straight to Rozsnyo. In the hall
he encountered Royda d’Ivady, and they went into the library together.
“I, too, have been riding in the forest,” the girl said, “and met your
friend, Lieutenant Von Tressen.”
Zarka looked at her sharply. “Ah? Where?”
“He was coming from the direction of the farm, where your friends the
Harlbergs are staying.”
Watching him expectantly, she saw his face grow dark. “He had not been
to the farm,” he said, for once off his guard.
“Ah, then you have been there, Aubray?” she returned, forcing a laugh.
“I had good reason to go there,” he replied. “A serious thing has
happened to Fräulein Harlberg. She was attacked by a wild boar in the
forest.”
“So! Then that is what the Lieutenant meant.”
“The Lieutenant?” Zarka exclaimed sharply. “What did he know? What did
he say?”
Jealous herself, Royda divined the same feeling in him, and, though it
stung her, she rejoiced at it.
“Only that I was wise to ride rather than walk, since there was danger
from wild boars.”
“You think he knew that the Fräulein had been attacked?”
She delighted in feeding his jealousy since it soothed her own and
seemed, vaguely, to work towards the end she desired.
“I did not understand then,” she answered, “but now have no doubt the
Lieutenant knew all about it. Who was privileged to rescue the poor
Fräulein?” she went on, with a touch of banter. “You or he?”
“Neither,” he returned curtly.
“She vanquished the animal herself, unaided?”
“What nonsense, Royda!” he exclaimed impatiently. “A stranger shot the
brute.”
“A stranger!” she echoed incredulously. “A providential stranger. Did
the Fräulein tell you so?”
“Certainly,” he snapped. Then suspiciously: “Did the Lieutenant say he
shot it?”
“Oh, no. He said nothing about the affair, except to warn me.”
“But you think he knew of it?”
“I am sure of that,” she answered. All the same she was not quite so
sure as her tone implied.
Zarka walked to the window and stood looking out. For a while there
was silence, then Royda said, half timidly--
“Aubray, what is this mystery about the Harlbergs?”
He looked round sharply, then turned his head away again. “Mystery?
There is no mystery. What makes you think so?”
“It is odd for them to live at that half-ruined farmhouse.”
“They are poor.”
“But none the less attractive.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are there every day, Aubray.”
“I have business with Herr Harlberg.”
She gave a sigh. “It is a strange business----”
“How?” he interrupted sharply.
“That can change you and make you so unkind to me.” A tear glistened in
her eye; her pride made her dash it away swiftly ere he turned. He came
towards her, the deceitful face smoothed into tenderness, although the
irritation was not quite successfully obliterated.
“Unkind, little one?” he protested caressingly. “You are mistaken.
I could not be that. Only I have been worried lately by political
matters. A man who plays for a great stake must not expect to have
command either of his time or his moods. You must forgive me, Royda.”
He spoke in a tone of easy confidence, very different to his strenuous
pleading with Philippa Harlberg. He put his arm round his cousin’s
shoulders, drew her to him and kissed her. “Am I forgiven, little
one?” To a third person the tone of the question would have sounded
indifferent as to its answer.
“Aubray, I feared she was trying to take you from me.”
“No; you are utterly wrong,” he assured her quite truthfully. “That is
the last thing she would try to do! I swear it, Royda. There is no love
between us.”
She gave a sigh of relief.
“Now I must be off again,” he said, releasing her. “You need not be
afraid,” he added with a smile. “I am going in the opposite direction
to the farm.”
Royda would have liked him to stay, but she knew by experience that he
was not to be turned from his intentions, and so forbore to try and
keep him. When the door had closed behind him she walked to the window,
intent on watching his departure. On a table lay his riding whip.
Impulsively she caught it up and kissed it, pressing to her lips that
part where his hand must have held it. Then from the window she waved
her hand to him, and stood watching till the wood hid him from sight.
“Aubray, Aubray, my darling!” she cried, as she turned away; “you shall
be mine. If this woman had come between us and taken your love I would
have killed her.”
* * * * *
Gun on shoulder, Zarka had set off on foot towards the higher mountain
range which backed with abrupt and majestic elevation the dark forest
uplands as they rose towards it. He strode resolutely on, soon leaving
the warmer and more smiling valley behind him, following a scarcely
perceptible path through the superb terraces of woods, making his way
through dense thickets, and taking all the while little heed of the
furred and feathered inhabitants of those regions as they scampered
or whirred away on his approach. His course was continually on an
ascending gradient, and after a good half-hour’s walking it became
quite steep. Presently the woods grew thinner and lighter, the air
cooler. A quarter of an hour more brought the Count to the verge of the
forest on the greatest height at which it grew, and he emerged into the
blood-red sunshine and keen, cold air above the summit of the great
timber-line. Beneath him, as he stood for a few moments to gain breath,
stretched away downwards the vast pine forests, like a green velvet
robe reaching to the bosom of the mountain; above him majestically
towered the bust and head in the dazzling complexion of their eternal
snows, and just then brilliantly decked with prismatic gems under the
glittering sunlight.
But Zarka seemed in no mood that day for sight-seeing. After his
impatient halt he went on, no longer straight upwards, but by a jagged
path formed by a ledge on the side of the mountain. There was no fear
about the man; his nerves were as strong as the rock he was climbing.
Taking his way up the slippery and uneven mountain track, having on one
hand a wall of rock and on the other space with a sheer precipice below
him, he never seemed in any danger even when most surrounded by it: his
character manifestly dominated the inert threatenings of Nature around
him. He was master of his fate and, humanly speaking, could defy it to
run counter to his will.
Presently his path broadened, descended abruptly, and finally led on to
a mountain road evidently the approach to a pass, one of the few points
of communication from one side of the great range to the other. Here
were, at least, some signs of life and occasional traffic, although
dreary and primitive enough. A walk of a few hundred yards towards
the pass brought Zarka to a wretched building which served in that
desolate region for an inn. He walked into its one public room, called
for a glass of brandy, and threw himself on a bench. A bearded man
in a rough country dress, sitting with his head resting on his arm,
seemingly half asleep over his glass, was the only other occupant of
the room.
“A fine autumn day, friend, but cold,” Zarka observed to him carelessly.
Scarcely troubling to change his attitude, the man replied: “On the
mountains, where ’tis never hot, we know not cold.”
When he had spoken he raised his head, and the two men glanced
keenly at one another. Then they nodded significantly, resuming
their indifferent attitude as the innkeeper came in with the Count’s
refreshment. When they were alone again the man rose, crossed the floor
with heavy step, and flung himself down on the other end of the bench
on which Zarka was sitting. He slid his hand stealthily along the
space between them; the Count’s came out furtively to meet it, both
men the while looking in front of them across the room. When the hands
were raised a little two small envelopes lay on the bench. Talking the
casual gossip of an inn, each man moved his hand to the paper which the
other’s had held, and so drew it back and slipped it into his pocket.
The Count sipped his brandy, or at least made a pretence of doing so,
for the rough spirit was not likely to be to his taste.
“We live in dangerous times,” observed the man in a casual tone, which,
however, was contradicted by the intense meaning in the look he gave
his companion; “dangerous times, and there are many events happening
and going to happen which may not be written.”
“That is true enough,” Zarka assented, responding to the look, but
speaking in the same phlegmatic tone. “When once it is certain that it
is nobody’s business to inquire into matters, why, anything, be it ever
so desperate, may be done with impunity.”
“You are right, friend,” the man replied. “But not till then. They who
take forbidden paths must walk warily. They know better than to hurry.
To rush forward is to court discovery and its consequences.”
Looking straight in front of him Zarka nodded twice, and the action
was calculated to leave no doubt in his companion’s mind that he
comprehended the drift of his somewhat general remarks, and was fully
able to apply them to a particular case. “Whereas,” he said with a
half-yawn, “by taking his time a man may tire out the vigilance of his
watchers and get through unseen. Yes, my friend, that is very true, and
is, no doubt, perfectly understood by those whose secret actions make
our history.”
The man, affecting to change his position, touched him sharply.
Zarka glanced at him, and then at the door. Probably none but an eye
sharpened by suspicion would have detected a form behind it as it stood
slightly open. With an alert movement of the arm Zarka knocked over his
glass.
“Landlord!” he called, watching the door.
It was pushed open and the man who had stood behind it came in,
followed by the innkeeper. Zarka ordered his glass to be refilled, then
carelessly turned his attention to the newcomer, and conceived a shrewd
idea as to his identity. The astute Count was right in his surmise. It
was the man who had shot the boar, he who called himself Abele d’Alquen.
“I always maintain,” Zarka observed, as though resuming a subject
interrupted by the accident with the glass, “that the less a man speaks
the safer he is. It is best to know nothing; it is next best to keep
others ignorant of what we know.”
“A wise saying, friend,” his companion responded. “Since we never know
who are our friends and who are our enemies.”
Zarka turned quickly to him, his mouth drawn back in a sinister smile.
“Sometimes we do,” he remarked, and the other understood him.
D’Alquen had taken his seat at the long narrow table opposite. He was
clearly watching them with hardly a pretence of doing otherwise; there
was nothing furtive about those fierce, eager, reckless eyes. Zarka
took out a cigar and lighted it.
“How long,” he asked his companion, as he lay back lazily puffing the
smoke to the low ceiling, “may we expect the present unsettled weather
to last?”
“Who knows?” the other answered. “Come back here this day week, then
ask me again,”--he laughed--“and I may tell you for certain.”
After a few casual remarks Zarka rose. “I must be going,” he observed,
“if I would be home by nightfall. Luckily my way is downhill. Good-day
to you, friend.”
As the Count took up his gun, D’Alquen spoke for the first time. “Have
you had sport, sir?”
“Very fair,” Zarka answered, with a particularly courteous bow. “In the
forest.”
“You have not brought your bag with you!” D’Alquen remarked, and Zarka
thought he understood the half sneer on his face.
“I shoot for sport, not for food,” he retorted. “Good-day.”
As he came out upon the wild road the autumn sun was already well
on its downward course, and the mountain peaks had begun to grow
indistinct in the gathering mist. Walking at a brisk pace, he soon
reached the rocky spur which interposed between him and the great
forest. Gaining the precipitous path that led round the chasm he
followed it as familiar ground in its windings, its sudden falls and
rises. At one point it ran for a few dozen paces across an open plateau
where for a short space the wall of rocks was broken. As Zarka advanced
across this, suddenly there rose from the great abyss a gigantic
figure terrible in its size, awful in its weirdness, a very horror in
its human image yet ghostly form, more terrible still in its spectral
likeness to the man whom it confronted.
Zarka, startled by the suddenness of the apparition, stopped dead with
an involuntary gesture, then laughed aloud, and his laugh was half that
of self-derision, half of greeting; a laugh in crescendo, and it seemed
as though the spectre joined in and flung back its loud ending.
“An omen!” Zarka cried, and his voice was carried and re-echoed far
away, in and out of the rocks and chasms. “My _alter ego_! Have you
come to bid me take courage in answer to my prayer? Have you known my
thoughts, and risen to the bidding that was in my heart? Then you are
more than mere shadow of mortal man, bugbear of timid ignorance; you
are more than this, you must be. You are he that serves us when we
have the courage to call you; you are myself! Zarka--Aubray Zarka in
the forces of Nature, outside this puny flesh; you are my ministering
familiar to give me my heart’s desire. Now you will grant it! Give this
girl to me in the teeth of my rival, in spite of herself. Turn her
heart to me, and let her will be as nothing matched with mine!”
The wild reckless spirit of the superstitious gambler was on him. The
habit of speculation, added to the fire in the blood, had changed the
sane shrewd schemer to an almost childish omen-seeker.
He stretched out his hands passionately towards the spectre. “Am I
not your child--your very self on earth? Shall I not be merged in
you, and be as you are when this clay lies cold in the ground? I
have power; power of will, power of gold! And my power shall not be
mocked. In me the heart to desire is one with the power to have. So,
my genius--angel--devil, whate’er you be, in these desperate passes,
give me my desire; the brain, the will, the courage--for fair or foul,
harden my heart, strengthen my hand. Be with me now, as I shall be with
you hereafter. Zarka!”
He shouted the last word in half mocking exaltation, and as he ended
the apostrophe the spectral form seemed to bend over him and the cloudy
presence to surround and envelop him. It was but the vapour descending
as the sun gradually lost its power, just as the apparition had been
but the familiar spectre of the mountains.
Nevertheless Zarka seemed, with a gambler’s superstition, to regard it
as an omen and an answer to his profane prayer. He threw back his head
and stretched his arms as though he would embrace what was but his own
shadow. Then, with a more practical impulse, he snatched up his gun,
and ran quickly on along the path, racing the great cumuli which were
rolling down from the mountain tops. He had started only just in time,
and, familiar with the way, was able to keep in front of the pursuing
obscurity. Soon he reached in safety the dividing ground between the
snow and the commencing line of vegetation. Here all was bright and
warm once more. Zarka, pausing with the air of a man who has won his
race, looked backwards up towards the rolling mists and laughed.
“Just in time! A few seconds more of apostrophizing, and not even my
tutelar deity or demon could have saved me from an uncomfortable night.
Well, I shall enjoy my dinner all the more from the knowledge that I
very nearly missed it. May I be as lucky elsewhere!”
He went on, soon plunging down into the sloping forest, and leisurely
making his way homewards.