The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 10

"But," I objected, "could you trust your seconds? They knew the time, the place----"

"But they did not know I was sheltering Monmouth's fugitives. Lukstein knew it."

"You told him?"

"No!"

He stopped abruptly, and his eyes fell from my face to the ground. And then he said, in a very sad and quiet voice:

"But I have none the less sure proof he knew."

He sat silent with bowed head, labouring his breath, and his hands lying clasped together upon his knees. I noticed that the tips of his fingers were pressed tight into the backs of his palms, so that the flesh about them looked dead.

I leaned forward and took him gently by the arm.

"You must deliver me that proof, Julian," said I. For I began to have a pretty sure inkling of the service he had it in his mind to require of me.

He s.h.i.+fted his eyes to my face and then back again to the floor.

"I know, I know," he replied unsteadily. "I disclosed my secret to but one person in the world." And as I held my peace wondering, he flashed on me a tortured face. "Don't force me to give the name!" he cried.

"Think! Think, Morrice! Who should I have told? Who should I have told?"

The words seemed wrung from his soul. I understood what that first outburst meant when the gaoler had bidden me enter, and my gorge rose against this woman who could make such foul sport of her lover's trust. He read my thought in my face, and though he might upbraid his mistress himself, he would not suffer me to do the same.

"You must not blame her," he said earnestly, laying a hand upon my knee. "Blame me! Blame us who wantoned the days away at Whitehall, and cloyed the very air with our flatteries. You chose the right part, Morrice, a man's part--work. As for us," he resumed his restless walk about the chamber, beating one clenched fist into the palm of the other, "as for us, a new fas.h.i.+on, a new dance, were our studies, cajoling women our work. The divine laws were sneered at, trampled down. They were meet for the ragged who had nought but hope in the next world to comfort them for their humiliation in this. But we--we who had silk to wear and money to spend, we needed a different creed.

Sin was our G.o.d, and we wors.h.i.+pped and honoured it openly. When I think of it I, a Catholic, can find it in my heart to wish that Monmouth's cause had won. No, Morrice, you must not blame her. The fault is ours, and I am rightly punished for my share in it. Constancy was a burgess virtue, fit for a tradesman. We despised it in ourselves; what right had we to expect it in the women we surrounded?"

He checked his vehement flow abruptly, and came and stood over me.

"And yet, Morrice," he said, with a smile that was infinitely tender and sad, "and yet I loved her, with a sweet purity in the love, and a humble thankfulness for the knowledge of it, loved her as any country b.u.mpkin might love the girl who rakes a furrow at his side."

"And in return," I said bitterly, "she betrayed you to Count Lukstein?"

He nodded "yes," and sat down again on his bench.

"Why?"

"Long before the duel. She had no suspicion of the consequences of her words," he said hastily. "She had no hand in this plot."

"Why?" I repeated.

He looked at me, imploring mercy.

"I understand," said I.

"Ah, no!" he said quickly; "your suspicions outstrip the truth. I think so," and again with a curiously pleading voice, "I think so. The man purred more softly than the rest, and so she----"

He broke off in the middle of the sentence and began anew.

"I must lay the whole truth bare, I see that. Only the shame of it cuts into me like a knife."

He paused, and great beads of sweat broke out upon his forehead.

"I have told you that my dispute with Lukstein was no more than the pretext of our quarrel. She was the cause. How long their acquaintance had lasted I know not, or to what length of intimacy it had gone.

Lukstein was as secret as a cat, and he taught her his duplicity.

'Twas I, myself, presented him to her formally when he came first to the Hotwell, but I think now the pair had met before in London. 'Twere too long to describe how my fears were aroused--an exchange of glances noted here, a letter in his hand dropped from a sachet there, a certain guarded hesitation she evinced when Lukstein and I were both with her, a word carelessly dropped showing knowledge of his movements; all trifles in themselves, but summed together a very weighty argument. So on the morning of the ninth, worn out with disquiet, I resolved to bring the matter to an issue, and I rode over to St. Vincent's rock. Lukstein was seated at an escritoire as I entered the room. I saw his face blanch and his hand fly to an open drawer, close, and lock it. He rose to greet me, and drew me to the window, which pleased me the more for that a bell stood upon the escritoire. I got between him and the bell and taxed him with his treachery. He denied it, larding me with friendly protestations. I backed to the escritoire and repeated the charge. He laughed at me for my unmanly lack of faith. With a sudden wrench I tore open the locked drawer. He bounded towards the bell; my sword was at his breast, and we stood watching one another while I rummaged with my left hand in the drawer.

"'You shall pay for this,' says he, very softly.

"'One of us will pay,' says I.

"'Yes, you! You!' and he smiled, with his lips drawn back so that I saw the gums of his teeth on both jaws. If only I had known what he meant! I had him there at my sword's point. I had but to lean forward on my arm!

"'Get back to the window!' I ordered, and he obeyed me with an affected jauntiness. Out of the drawer I drew a small gold box of an oval shape. I had given it but a fortnight agone to--to----you will understand; and it contained my miniature. The box fastened with a lock, and I forgot to ask him for the key. He has it still. There were letters besides in the drawer, and I made him burn them before my eyes. Then I took my leave, and sent my seconds."

"Are you sure the box was the same?" I asked, when he had done. He slipped his hand into his pocket, and brought it out and placed it in my hand. His coat of arms was emblazoned on the cover.

"Keep it!" he said. I tried the lid, but the box was locked.

"Until I recover the key," I answered, and we clasped hands.

"Thank you!" he said simply. "Thank you!"

The smell of the c.u.mberland gorse was in my nostrils, my friend lay before me traitorously fettered, and this poor, belated adjustment of his wrong seemed the very right and fitting function of the love I bore for him. There was, however, still one point on which I still felt need to be a.s.sured.

For I knew the timidity of my nature, and I was minded to leave no fissure in this wall of evidence through which after-doubts might leak to sap my resolution.

"And the proof?" I asked. "The proof that she informed Count Lukstein."

"She confessed that to me herself. She came to me here on the evening of the day that I was taken."

I placed the gold box in the fob of my waistcoat, and as I did so I felt a book. I drew it out, wondering what it might be. 'Twas the small copy of Horace which I had thrust there unwittingly when I waited for the doctor's report at Leyden. I held it in my hands and turned over the pages idly.

"Count Lukstein has left Bristol," I said.

"Ay; he got little good out of his treachery beyond the saving of his carcase. But he left his servant here--Otto Krax. That is why I bade you come disguised. He knew I could not make the matter public for--for her sake. But I suppose that he feared I might reveal it to some friend if the trial went against me, entrust to him the just work I am forced to leave undone. Perchance he had some hint of Swasfield's departure; I know not. This only I know: Krax has been at Vincott's heels, keeping close watch on all who pa.s.sed in with him to me; and should he find out that you had come from Holland in this great haste, it might prove an ill day's work for you, and, in any case, Lukstein would be forewarned."

"He lives in the Tyrol?"

"At Schloss Lukstein, six miles to the east of Glurns, in the valley of the Adige. But, Morrice, he is master there. The spot is remote, there's no one to gainsay him. You must needs be careful. He hath no love for honest dealing, and you had best take him privately."

He spoke with so sombre a warning in his tone that the shadows appeared to darken about the room.

"He is cunning," Julian went on; "you must match him in cunning. Nay, over-match him, for he has power as well."

"You have visited this castle?"

"Yes. 'Tis built in two wings which run from east to west, and north to south, and form a right angle at the north-east corner. At the extreme end of the latter wing there is a tower; a window opens on to the terrace from a small room in this tower. There are but two doors in the room; that on the left gives on to a pa.s.sage which leads to the main hall. The servants sleep on the far side of the hall. The other door opens on to a narrow stairway which mounts to the Count's bedroom. 'Tis his habit of a night to sit in this small room."