Lawrence Clavering Part 18

I was looking down the terraces across the parterres to the brown figure moving away, but I did not see that. It was as though a black curtain had swung down between the garden and myself. What I saw was a very different scene--a little twilight room far away in Paris and a stern face that warned me. I heard a voice telling me of a supreme hour wherein G.o.d would put me to His touchstone, an hour for which I must stand sentinel. Well, the hour had pa.s.sed me and I had not challenged it; and I might have foreseen its coming had I watched. I lifted my head; the garden again floated into view. Anthony Herbert was marching through the long gra.s.s of the Wilderness, with never a look backwards. In a moment he reached the fringe of trees. The trees were spa.r.s.e at the border, and I knew that he would not stop there, but would rather advance until he arrived at some little dingle closely wooded about from view of the house. In and out amongst the boles of the trees I saw him wind. Then for a second he disappeared and came to sight again upon a little patch of unshadowed gra.s.s. I remember that the sun gleamed of a sudden through an interstice of the cloud as he stepped into the open. The patch of gra.s.s shone like an emerald and the dull strip of lead in his hand turned gold; and a larch upon the far rim where the trees grew dense, taking some stray breath of wind, rippled and shook the sunlight from its leaves. In some unaccountable way my spirits rose at the sight. I still was sensible of that saying, "Payment must be made for this," but it took a colour from the sunlight. It became rather, "Payment can be made for this."

I slipped out of the window. Mrs. Herbert started forward to detain me.

"A duel," she exclaimed, in a tone as though the idea became yet more inconceivable to her. "Oh no! Not a duel."

"No, not a duel," I replied across my shoulder, "only the pretence of one;" and while my head was thus turned a pistol-shot rang from the Wilderness.

It sounded like the crack of a whip, and I might have counted it no more than that but I saw a wisp of blue smoke float upwards above a shrubbery and hang curling this way and that in the sunlight.

"G.o.d save us," I cried, "but he carried a pistol!" and I made as though I would run across the terrace towards him. But or ever I could move, I felt a hand tighten and tighten upon my arm. I tried to shake it off.

"You do not understand," I exclaimed. "He carried a pistol. It was a pistol that we heard. Maybe he was looking to the priming. Maybe he is wounded I must go to him;" and I seized Mrs. Herbert's hand at the wrist and sought to drag it away from my sleeve. I felt her fingers only grip more closely. I dropped her wrist and began to unclasp them, one by one.

"It is you who do not understand," she said, "and he is not wounded."

She spoke in a dry, pa.s.sionless voice, which daunted me more than the words she uttered. I turned and looked at her in perplexity. Her face was like paper, even her lips were white--and her eyes shone from it sunken and black; I was reminded of them afterwards by the sight of a black tarn set in a moor of snow, which I was destined to look upon one sad November afternoon in this same year. They seemed to have grown bigger, the better to express the horror which she felt.

"He is not wounded. Be sure--be very sure of that!" she continued, nodding her head at me in a queer, matter-of-fact way, which, joined with the contrast of her face, had something, to my thinking, awsomely grotesque.

"What do you mean?" I gasped, and in a momentary weakness staggered back against the framework of the window. I felt her clasp strengthen upon my arm, drawing me within the parlour.

"He carried a pistol--yes, but why should he look to the priming since you were to fight with swords?" she whispered, shaking my arm with a little impatient movement. "Did you not see? His walk grew slow, his head drooped--drooped. He was tired, you see, so tired;" and she uttered a low, mirthless laugh while her eyes burned into me. It was a sound which, I thank G.o.d, I have never heard but the once. It was as though a preternatural horror claimed a preternatural expression. "It was not worth while," she resumed.

"Ah, no," I cried, as her meaning broke in upon me. "I'll not believe that. I'll not believe it;" and once or twice I thrust out with my hands as if that way I could keep belief aloof.

"But you do," she returned, and the whisper of her voice took on a certain eagerness. It seemed that she must have a partner in her thought. "You do believe it. Look, am I pale? Then I am your mirror.

Do I tremble? It is an ague caught from you. You do believe it. We know, you and I--guilt binds us in knowledge. We heard this morning.

He told us, he warned us. If his wife proved false, he would not count it worth his while to punish the betrayer. But he has--he has punished us, so perfectly that he himself would pity us, were he alive to do it. Would G.o.d we both were dead!" And again she laughed, and letting drop my arm she moved away into the room.

I had no doubt her words were true, and from the bottom of my heart I echoed her vain prayer. I remembered the conviction with which he had spoken--all the more a.s.sured for the very quietude of his voice. Yes, those trees, motionless under a leaden sky, in a leaden silence, were the watchers about his bed. I braced myself to descend, but as my first step crunched the gravel of the terrace, Mrs. Herbert was again as my side.

"No," she cried. "Not yet, not without me, and I dare not go."

"Nay, madam," I replied, "do you stay here. There is no need for you to come."

"But there is--there is," she insisted, looking at me wildly, like one distraught "Step by step we must go together. And so it will be always. You will see, you and I are fettered each to each by sin, and there's no breaking the locks." She shook her hands piteously.

"Nay," I said, "I will go alone."

"I dare not be left alone," she replied. "For what if he pa.s.sed you while you searched for him!" and she gave a shuddering cry and recoiled into the room. "What if he came striding from the thicket across the gra.s.s to where I waited here! No! No! Wait, wait until it's dark. I will go down with you. But now, in the daylight! His eyes will be open; I dare not."

She stood with her hands clasped before her, toppling towards madness.

I dared not leave her. There was no choice for me; between the dead man and the living woman there was no choice. I returned to the room.

"You will wait?" she asked.

"Until it is dark."

She moved into the alcove of the fireplace and crouched down upon the seat, with her back against the wall nearest to the garden. I remained by the window, looking down the garden with the valley on my right. I saw the strip of cloud unfold across the valley and lower upon the hilltops like a solid roof, The hillsides darkened, the bed of the valley grew black--it seemed to me with the shadow of the wings of death. Here a tree s.h.i.+vered; from another there, the birds of a sudden chattered noisily. I turned and gazed across to Eagle Crag. The dale of Langstrath sloped upwards, facing me between the mountains; and as I gazed I saw the rain drive down from the Stake Pa.s.s to the mouth in a great slanting column. It deployed along the hillsides;--the mountains became unsubstantial behind it--it swept across the valley, las.h.i.+ng the house, bending the trees in the garden.

"And his eyes will be open," said Mrs. Herbert behind my shoulder.

I started round. Her white face was like a wax mask in the gloom of the chamber. But as I turned she moved back again to the fireplace.

"It is cold," she said with a s.h.i.+ver. I set fire to the wood upon the hearth, and as the logs crackled and blazed, she bent forward and spread out her hands to the flame.

I dropped into the seat opposite to her, and so we sat for a long while in silence. Once, it seemed to me, that I heard the hoofs of a horse upon the gravel of the drive--galloping up to the house, and in a little galloping away from it. But what with the beating of the rain and the turmoil of the wind I could not make sure--nor, indeed, did I feel any concern to know. Once Mrs. Herbert raised her head to me and said, as if answering some objection which I had urged:

"It _was_ because he loved me that he told the steward. That was his way. G.o.d made him so;" and her voice as she spoke was very soft. Her face, too, softened, as I could see from the glow of the fire, and I knew that her husband in his death was drawing her more surely towards him than he had ever done in life.

"He was very good to me," she said to herself. "It was I that plagued him. He was very good to me, and I--I love him."

It was as though she had forgotten he was dead, and more than one remark of the kind she made while the room darkened behind as and the night fell upon the world without, and the raindrops hissed down the chimney into the fire. I dared not rouse her, though the forgetfulness struck me as horrible, but once, I know, I s.h.i.+fted restively upon my seat, and she looked at me suddenly as though she had forgotten that I was there, as though, indeed, she did not know me. But in a little, recognition gleamed in her eyes, and they hardened slowly to hatred.

However, she said nothing, but turned her face again to the fire, and so stared into it with eyes like pebbles.

After a while the wind lulled, the rain-drops hissed less often down the chimney and finally ceased altogether. A line of moonlight shot into the room and lay upon the carpet like a silver rod. The room became mistily luminous and then pitilessly bright. Meanwhile no one seemed as yet to be astir within the house.

I rose unsteadily from my seat; she followed my example,

"Yes, let us go," she said, and we went out on to the terrace.

CHAPTER IX.

THE NIGHT OF THE 23RD: IN THE GARDEN.

As we descended the terrace-steps, the horror of this task on which we were set broke in upon me in its full significance. Above our heads, it is true, the moon sailed through a clear sky; upon the trees in the Wilderness the rain-drops glistened with a sprightly brilliancy like the silver lamps of fairies; but beneath us, on the floor of the garden, a white mist smoked and writhed, and somewhere--somewhere under that mist lay the dead body slain by me.

We met the mist at the line where the parterre borders on the Wilderness, and walked through it knee-deep until the trees grew dense. At that point, however, we separated and moved forwards thenceforth with an interval between us that we might the sooner end our search, and so doing we quickly lost sight of one another. I made directly so far as I could guess for the bushes above which I had seen the smoke of the pistol float, but, being come near to the spot, what with the delusive light and the many shrubs crowding thereabouts, I could by no means determine which was the particular one I sought.

Moreover, since I walked, as I say, knee-deep in mist, it was a very easy and possible thing for me to pa.s.s within an inch of the body and be never a jot the wiser unless my foot chanced to knock on it. I walked, therefore, very slowly and in a great agony and desolation of remorse. It seemed to me that his wraith was a presence in the garden, and the garden its most fitting habitation. For now that I had left the open, and was circled about with the boskage, I moved through a world shadowy and fantastic. The shadows of the branches laced the floor of mist in a grotesque pattern, and amongst them my shadow moved and moved alone, swelling and dwindling as I turned this way and that in the moonlight; and now and again invisible beneath the mist a creeping plant would twine of a sudden about my ankle, and I would stop with a cry half-checked upon my lips, fancying for a moment that it was the dead man's fingers clutching me.

Moreover, as I brushed against the boughs, the raindrops would patter from the leaves with the most melancholy sound that ever a man heard.

To me I know they sounded like the pattering feet of little children.

I remember that when the thought first struck me I groaned aloud in the anguish of my spirit. The pattering of little children's feet, and here was the young husband dead through me as surely as though my hand had pulled the trigger and the young wife as surely widowed! And when I rose and continued my search, that sound pursued me. It was as though the children ran after me, with many steps to my one stride. I was like the Dutch piper they tell of in story-books, who led the little children in a long train from Hamlin town; only those children laughed and sang and played as they went, merriment in their voices, rosy expectation in their looks; but those who followed me that night, followed in the saddest silence. The only noise they made was the pattering of their feet, unborn children mutely accusing me for that they would never see the day. Indeed, I drank my fill of punishment that night.

How long it was that I wandered thus I do not know, but all at once a cry rang out through the quiet. It came from some distance upon my right and was the cry of a woman. I hurried in that direction as quickly as the long wet gra.s.s allowed, and in a little I came to an open s.p.a.ce. Mrs. Herbert was kneeling in the centre with her arms in front of her, buried in the mist. I ran towards her, but she did not perceive me until I was within a few yards of her.

"No!" she cried suddenly, and she lifted up her arms and held them towards me to keep me off. "Not you! Not you!" and with that she dipped her arms again into the mist and began to croon over to herself a little tender lullaby such as mothers will sing about a cradle. I noticed that she moved her hands, and I fancied that I understood the significance of the movements. For now they seemed to caress a face, now to repose upon a breast.

"Madam," I said gently, "I know that my help must be the most unwelcome thing to you in all the world. Yet I must offer it and you must accept it. There is no other way;" and I bent down towards the ground.

"No," she cried, and with all her strength she thrust my arms aside, repulsing me. The moonlight shone in her eyes, and they glared at me wild with hatred.

"No!"--she leaned forwards over the spot protecting it--"your touch would stain;" and with a sudden movement she caught hold of a hand, of mine, and peered at it as though she thought to see blood there. "No, you must not----"

"But I must," I interrupted her, for her wits seemed all distraught, and I could endure this evidence of her suffering no longer. "I must,"