CHAPTER VI.
SWORDS TAKE UP THE DISCOURSE.
By these movements we had completely reversed our positions, so thatnow I stood with my back to the window, while the Count held that endof the room in which the doors were set. Not that I took any thoughtof this alteration at the time, for the Count attacked me withextraordinary fury, and I needed all my wits to defend myself from hisviolence. He was, as I had dreaded, a skilled swordsman, and hepressed his skill to the service of his anger. Now the point of hisrapier twirled and spun like a spark of fire; now the blade coiledabout mine with a sharp hiss like some lithe, glittering serpent.Every moment I expected it to bite into my flesh. I gave ground untilmy hindmost foot was stopped against the framework of the window; andthere I stayed parrying his thrusts until he slackened from the ardourof his assault. Then in my turn I began to attack; slowly andpersistently I drove him back towards the centre of the room, whensuddenly, glancing across his shoulder, I saw something that turned myblood cold. The door leading to the staircase was ajar. I had heard noclick of the handle; it must have been open before, I argued tomyself, but I knew the argument was false. The door had been shut; Inoted that from the garden, and it could not have opened so silentlyof itself. I renewed my attack upon the Count, pressing him harder andharder in a veritable panic. I snatched a second glance across hisshoulder. The door was not only ajar; 'twas opening--very slowly, verysilently, and a yellow light streamed through onto the wall beside thedoor. The sight arrested me at the moment of lunging--held mepetrified with horror. A savage snarl of joy from Lukstein's lipswarned me; his sword darted at my heart, I parried it clumsily, andthe next moment the point leapt into my left shoulder. The woundquickened my senses, and I settled to the combat again, giving thrustfor thrust. Each second I expected a scream of terror, a rush of feet.But not a sound came to me. I dared not look from the Count's face anymore; the hit which he had made seemed to have doubled his energies. Istrained my ears to catch the fall of a foot, the rustle of a dress.But our own hard breathing, a light rattle of steel as swords lungedand parried, a muffled stamp as one or the other stepped forward uponthe rugs--these were the only noises in the room, and for me they onlyserved to deepen and mark the silence. Yet all the while I felt thatthe door was opening--opening; I knew that some one must be standingin the doorway quietly watching us, and that some one a woman, andCount Lukstein's wife. There was something horrible, unnatural in thesilence, and I felt fear run down my back like ice, unstringing mymuscles, sucking my heart. I summoned all my strength, compressed allmy intelligence into a despairing effort, and flung myself atLukstein. He drew back out of reach, and behind him I saw a flutter ofwhite. Through the doorway, holding a lighted candle above her head,Countess Lukstein advanced noiselessly into the room. Her eyes, darkand dilated, were fixed upon mine; still she spoke never a word. Sheseemed not to perceive her husband; she seemed not even to see me,into whose face she gazed. 'Twas as though she was looking through me,at something that stood in the window behind my head.
The Count, recovering from my assault, rushed at me again. I made afew passes, thinking that my brain would crack. I could feel her eyesburning into mine. I was certain that some one was behind me, and Iexperienced an almost irresistible desire to turn my head and discoverwho it might be. The strain had become intolerable. There was justroom for me to leap backwards.
"Look!" I gasped, and I leaned back against the window-pane, clutchingat the folds of the curtain for support.
Count Lukstein turned; the woman was close behind him. A couple ofpaces more, and she must have touched him. He dropped his sword-pointand stepped quickly aside.
"My God!" he said in a hoarse whisper. "She is asleep!"
My whole body was dripping with sweat. It seemed to me that a fullhour must have passed since I had seen her first, and yet so brief hadbeen the interval that she was not half-way across the room.
Had she come straight towards me I could not have moved from her path.But she walked betwixt Count Lukstein and myself direct to the openwindow. She wore a loose white gown, gathered in a white girdle at thewaist, and white slippers on her naked feet. Her face even then showedto me as incomparably beautiful, and her head was crowned with massesof waving hair, in colour like red corn. She passed between us withoutcheck or falter; her gown brushed against the Count. Through the openwindow she walked across the snowy terrace towards the pavilion by theCastle wall. The night was very still, and the flame of the candleburnt pure and steady.
I looked at the Count. For a moment we gazed at one another insilence, and then without a word we stepped side by side to followher. Our dispute appeared to have been swallowed up in thisovermastering event, and I experienced almost a revulsion offriendliness for my opponent.
"'Tis not the first time this has happened, I am told," said he, andas I looked at him inquiringly, he added, very softly: "We were onlymarried to-day."
"Only to-day," I exclaimed, and not noticing where I trod, I stumbledover a wolf-skin that lay on the floor with the head attached. My footslipped on the polished boards beside it, and I fell upon my leftknee. The Count stopped and faced me, an ugly smile suddenly flashingabout his mouth. I saw him draw back his arm as I was rising. Idropped again upon hand and knee, and his sword whizzed an inch abovemy shoulder. I was still holding my own sword in my right hand, and orever he could recover I lunged upwards at his breast with all myforce, springing from the ground as I lunged, to drive the thrusthome. The blade pierced through his body until the hilt rang againstthe buttons of his coat. He fell backwards heavily, and I let go of mysword. The point stuck in the floor behind him as he fell, and he sliddown the blade on to the ground. Something dropped from his hand androlled away into a corner, where it lay shining. I gave no thought tothat, however, but glanced through the window. To my horror I saw thatCountess Lukstein was already returning across the lawn. The Count hadfallen across the window, blocking it. I plucked my sword free, andlugged the body into the curtains at the side, cowering down myselfbehind it. I had just time to gather up his legs and so leave theentrance clear, when she stepped over the sill. A little stream ofblood was running towards her, and I was seized with a mad terror lestit should reach her feet. She moved so slowly and the stream ran soquickly. Every moment I expected to see the white of her slippers growred with the stain of it. But she passed beyond the line of itschannel just a second before it reached so far. With the same even andsteady gait she recrossed the room and turned into the littlestairway, latching the door behind her.
For a while I remained kneeling by the body of the Count in a numbedstupor, All was so quiet and peaceful that I could not credit what hadhappened in this last hour, not though I held the Count within myarms. Then from the floor of the room above there came once more thelight tapping sound of a woman's heels. I looked about me. The tablelay overturned, the rugs were heaped and scattered, and the barrel ofmy pistol winked in the sputtering light of the fire. I rose, snatchedup my sword, and fled out on to the snow.
The moon was setting and the moonlight grey upon the garden, with thesnow under foot very crisp and dry.
I sheathed my sword and clambered on to the coping. I turned to lookat the Castle--how quietly it slept, and how brightly burned thelights in those two rooms!--and then dropped to the ledge upon thefurther side of the wall.
I had reached the top of the ridge of rock, when a cry rang out intothe night--a cry, shrill and lonesome, in a woman's voice--a cryfollowed by a great silence. I halted in an agony. 'Twas not fear thatI felt; 'twas not even pity. The cry spoke of suffering too great forpity, and I stood aghast at the sound of it, aghast at the thoughtthat my handiwork had begotten it. 'Twas not repeated, however, and Itore down the ridge in a frenzy of haste, taking little care where Iset my hands or my feet. How it was that I did not break my neck Ihave never been able to think.
The village, I remember, was dark and lifeless save just at one house,whence came a murmur of voices, and a r
ed beam of light slippedthrough a chink in the shutter and lay like a rillet of blood acrossthe snow.
Once clear of the houses. I ran at full speed down the track. At thecorner of the wood, I stopped and looked upwards before I plungedamong the trees. The moon had set behind the mountains while I wasdescending the ridge, and the Castle loomed vaguely above me as thoughat that spot the night was denser than elsewhere. 'Twas plain that noalarm had been taken, that the cry had not been heard. I understoodthe reason of this afterwards. The two rooms in the tower wereseparated by a great interval from the other bedrooms. But what of theCountess, I thought? I pictured her in a swoon upon the corpse of herhusband.
Within the coppice 'twas so black that I could not see my hand when Iraised it before me, and I went groping my way by guesswork towardsthe trees to which we had tethered our horses. I dared not call out toLarke; I feared even the sound of my footsteps. Every rustle of thebushes seemed to betray a spy. In the end I began to fancy that Ishould wander about the coppice until dawn, when close to my elbowthere rose a low crooning song:
Que toutes joies et toutes honneurs Viennent d'armes et d'amours.
"Jack!" I whispered.
The undergrowth crackled as he crushed it beneath his feet.
"Morrice, is that you? Where are you?"
A groping hand knocked against my arm and tightened on it. I gave agroan.
"Are you hurt, Morrice? Oh, my God! I thought you would never come!"
"You have heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Not a sound? Not--not a cry?"
"Nothing."
"Quick, then!" said I. "We must be miles away by morning."
He led me to where our horses stood, and we untied them and threadedthrough the trees to the road.
"Help me to mount, Jack!" said I.
He pulled a flask from his pocket and held it to my lips. 'Twas neatbrandy, but I gulped a draught of it as though it were so much water.Then he helped me into the saddle and settled my feet in the stirrups.
"Why, Morrice," he asked, "what have you done with your spurs?"
"I left them on the terrace," said I, remembering. "I left my spurs,my pistol, and--and something else. But quick, Jack, quick!"
'Twould have saved me much trouble had I brought that "something else"with me, or at least examined it more closely before I left it there.
He swung himself on to the back of his horse, and we set off at acanter. But we had not gone twenty yards when I cried, "Stop!" 'Twasas though the windows of the Castle sprang at us suddenly out of thedarkness, each one alive with a tossing glare of links. It seemed tome that a hundred angry eyes were searching for me. I drove my heelsinto my horse's flanks and galloped madly down the road in thedirection of Italy. A quarter of a mile further, and a bend of thevalley hid the Castle from our sight; but I knew that I should neverget the face of Countess Lukstein from before my eyes, or the sound ofher cry out of my ears.