The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 15

"I have named it," I muttered, locking my teeth, for I was fast losing my temper, and feared lest I might raise my voice sufficiently to be heard beyond the room.

"Let me prove to you that you are wasting time," said he with insolent patience. "You have been ill-primed for your work. You say that you visited Sir Julian on the night of the 22nd. You say that you were Sir Julian's friend. I would not hurt your feelings, Mr. Buckler, but both those statements are, to put it coa.r.s.ely, lies. You were never Sir Julian's friend, or you would have known better than to have fixed that date. But two people visited him on the 22nd, a priest and a woman, the most edifying company possible for a dying man." He ended with a smooth scorn. I looked up at him and laughed.

"Ah!" said he, "we are beginning to understand each other."

I laughed a second time.

"She was over-tall for a woman, my lord," said I, "though of no great stature for a man."

I rose as I spoke the words and confronted him. We were standing on opposite sides of the little table. The smile died off his face; he leaned his hands upon the table and bent slowly over it, searching my looks with horror-stricken eyes.

"What do you mean?" he asked in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"I was the woman. How else should I have got that box?"

"You, you!" He spoke in a queer matter-of-fact tone of a.s.sent. All his feeling and pa.s.sion seemed to have gathered in his eyes.

So we stood waging a battle of looks. And then of a sudden I noticed a crafty, indefinable change in his expression, and from the tail of my eye I saw his fingers working stealthily across the table. I dropped my hand on to the b.u.t.t of my pistol. With a ready cunning he picked up the gold box and began to examine it with so natural an air of abstraction that I almost wondered whether I had not mistaken his design.

"And so," says he at length, "you would fight with me?"

"If it please you, yes," says I.

"Miss Marston, it seems, has more admirers than I knew of," he returned, with a cunning leer which made my stomach rise at him.

He seemed incapable of conceiving a plain open purpose in any man. Yet for all that I could not but admire the nimbleness of his wits. Not merely had he recovered his easy demeanour, but he was already, as I could see, working out another issue from the impa.s.se. I clung fast to the facts.

"I have never seen Miss Marston," said I. "I fight for my friend."

"For your friend? For your dead, useless friend?" He dropped the words slowly, one by one, with a smiling disbelief. "Come, come, Mr.

Buckler! Not for your friend! We are both men of the world. Be frank with me! Is it sensible that two gentlemen should spill honest blood for the sake of a feather-headed wanton?"

"If the name fits her, my lord," I replied, "who is to blame for that?

And as for the honest blood, I have more hope of spilling it than faith in its honesty."

The Count's face grew purple, and the veins swelled out upon his ample throat. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pistol, and we both stood trembling with pa.s.sion. The next moment, I think, must have decided the quarrel, but for a light sound which became distinctly audible in the silence. It descended from the room above. We both looked up to the ceiling, the Count with a sudden softness on his face, and I understood, or rather I thought I understood, why he had not raised the alarm before I produced my pistol, and why he bade me subsequently speak in English.

For the sound was a tapping, such as a woman's heels may make upon a polished floor.

I waited, straining my ears to hear the little stairway creak behind the door at my back, and cudgelling my brains to think what I should do. If she came down into the room, it was all over with my project and, most likely, with my life, too, unless I was prepared to shoot my opponent in cold blood and make a bolt for it. After a while, however, the sound ceased altogether, to my indescribable relief. The Count was the first to break the silence.

"Very well, Mr. Buckler," said he; "send your friends to me in the morning. Let them come like men to the door and give me a.s.surance that I may meet you without loss of self-respect, and you shall have your way."

"You force me to repeat," said I, "that the matter must be disposed of to-night."

"To-night!" he said, and stared at me incredulously. "Mr. Buckler, you must be mad."

"To-night," I repeated stubbornly. For, apart from all considerations of safety, I felt that such courage as I possessed was but the froth of my anger, and would soon vanish if it were left to stand. The Count began to pace the room between the writing-table and the window. I set my chair against the wall and leaned against the chimney, and I noted that at each turn in his walk he drew, as though unconsciously, nearer and nearer to the bell.

"Mr. Buckler," he said, "what you propose is quite out of the question. I can but attribute it to your youth. You take too little thought of my side of the case. To fight with one whom I have never so much as set eyes on before, who forces his way into my house in the dead of night--you must see for yourself that it fits not my dignity."

"You are too close to the bell, Count Lukstein, and you raise your voice," I broke in sharply. "That fits not my safety."

He stood still in the middle of the room and raised a clenched fist to his shoulder, glaring at me. In a moment, however, he resumed his former manner.

"Besides," he went on, "there is a particular reason why I would have no disturbance here tonight. You got some inkling of it a moment ago."

He nodded to the ceiling.

I blush with shame now when I remember what I answered him. I took a leaf from his book, as the saying is, and could conceive no worthy strain in him.

"The good lady," I said, "whom you honour with your attentions now must wait until the affairs of her predecessor are arranged."

The Count came sliding over the floor with a sinuous movement of his body and a very dangerous light in his eyes.

"You insult my wife," he said softly, and as I reeled against the hood of the fireplace, struck out of my wits by his words, he of a sudden gave a low bellowing cry, plucked his sword from his sheath, and lunged at my body. I saw the steel flash in a line of light and sprang on one side. The sword quivered in the wood level with my left elbow.

My leap upset the table, the pistol clattered on the floor. I whipped out my sword, Count Lukstein wrenched his free, and in a twinkling we were set to it. I think all fear vanished from both of us, for Count Lukstein's face was ablaze with pa.s.sion, and I felt the blood in my veins running like strong wine.

CHAPTER VI.

SWORDS TAKE UP THE DISCOURSE.

By these movements we had completely reversed our positions, so that now I stood with my back to the window, while the Count held that end of the room in which the doors were set. Not that I took any thought of this alteration at the time, for the Count attacked me with extraordinary fury, and I needed all my wits to defend myself from his violence. He was, as I had dreaded, a skilled swordsman, and he pressed his skill to the service of his anger. Now the point of his rapier twirled and spun like a spark of fire; now the blade coiled about mine with a sharp hiss like some lithe, glittering serpent.

Every moment I expected it to bite into my flesh. I gave ground until my hindmost foot was stopped against the framework of the window; and there I stayed parrying his thrusts until he slackened from the ardour of his a.s.sault. Then in my turn I began to attack; slowly and persistently I drove him back towards the centre of the room, when suddenly, glancing across his shoulder, I saw something that turned my blood cold. The door leading to the staircase was ajar. I had heard no click of the handle; it must have been open before, I argued to myself, but I knew the argument was false. The door had been shut; I noted that from the garden, and it could not have opened so silently of itself. I renewed my attack upon the Count, pressing him harder and harder in a veritable panic. I s.n.a.t.c.hed a second glance across his shoulder. The door was not only ajar; 'twas opening--very slowly, very silently, and a yellow light streamed through onto the wall beside the door. The sight arrested me at the moment of lunging--held me petrified with horror. A savage snarl of joy from Lukstein's lips warned me; his sword darted at my heart, I parried it clumsily, and the next moment the point leapt into my left shoulder. The wound quickened my senses, and I settled to the combat again, giving thrust for 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 any more; the hit which he had made seemed to have doubled his energies. I strained 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 lunged and parried, a m.u.f.fled stamp as one or the other stepped forward upon the rugs--these were the only noises in the room, and for me they only served to deepen and mark the silence. Yet all the while I felt that the door was opening--opening; I knew that some one must be standing in the doorway quietly watching us, and that some one a woman, and Count Lukstein's wife. There was something horrible, unnatural in the silence, and I felt fear run down my back like ice, unstringing my muscles, sucking my heart. I summoned all my strength, compressed all my intelligence into a despairing effort, and flung myself at Lukstein. He drew back out of reach, and behind him I saw a flutter of white. Through the doorway, holding a lighted candle above her head, Countess Lukstein advanced noiselessly into the room. Her eyes, dark and dilated, were fixed upon mine; still she spoke never a word. She seemed 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 a.s.sault, rushed at me again. I made a few pa.s.ses, thinking that my brain would crack. I could feel her eyes burning into mine. I was certain that some one was behind me, and I experienced an almost irresistible desire to turn my head and discover who it might be. The strain had become intolerable. There was just room for me to leap backwards.

"Look!" I gasped, and I leaned back against the window-pane, clutching at the folds of the curtain for support.

Count Lukstein turned; the woman was close behind him. A couple of paces more, and she must have touched him. He dropped his sword-point and stepped quickly aside.

"My G.o.d!" he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "She is asleep!"

My whole body was dripping with sweat. It seemed to me that a full hour must have pa.s.sed since I had seen her first, and yet so brief had been 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 open window. She wore a loose white gown, gathered in a white girdle at the waist, and white slippers on her naked feet. Her face even then showed to me as incomparably beautiful, and her head was crowned with ma.s.ses of waving hair, in colour like red corn. She pa.s.sed between us without check or falter; her gown brushed against the Count. Through the open window she walked across the snowy terrace towards the pavilion by the Castle wall. The night was very still, and the flame of the candle burnt pure and steady.

I looked at the Count. For a moment we gazed at one another in silence, and then without a word we stepped side by side to follow her. Our dispute appeared to have been swallowed up in this overmastering event, and I experienced almost a revulsion of friendliness for my opponent.

"'Tis not the first time this has happened, I am told," said he, and as I looked at him inquiringly, he added, very softly: "We were only married to-day."

"Only to-day," I exclaimed, and not noticing where I trod, I stumbled over a wolf-skin that lay on the floor with the head attached. My foot slipped on the polished boards beside it, and I fell upon my left knee. The Count stopped and faced me, an ugly smile suddenly flas.h.i.+ng about his mouth. I saw him draw back his arm as I was rising. I dropped again upon hand and knee, and his sword whizzed an inch above my shoulder. I was still holding my own sword in my right hand, and or ever he could recover I lunged upwards at his breast with all my force, springing from the ground as I lunged, to drive the thrust home. The blade pierced through his body until the hilt rang against the b.u.t.tons of his coat. He fell backwards heavily, and I let go of my sword. The point stuck in the floor behind him as he fell, and he slid down the blade on to the ground. Something dropped from his hand and rolled away into a corner, where it lay s.h.i.+ning. I gave no thought to that, however, but glanced through the window. To my horror I saw that Countess Lukstein was already returning across the lawn. The Count had fallen across the window, blocking it. I plucked my sword free, and lugged the body into the curtains at the side, cowering down myself behind it. I had just time to gather up his legs and so leave the entrance clear, when she stepped over the sill. A little stream of blood was running towards her, and I was seized with a mad terror lest it should reach her feet. She moved so slowly and the stream ran so quickly. Every moment I expected to see the white of her slippers grow red with the stain of it. But she pa.s.sed beyond the line of its channel just a second before it reached so far. With the same even and steady gait she recrossed the room and turned into the little stairway, latching the door behind her.

For a while I remained kneeling by the body of the Count in a numbed stupor, All was so quiet and peaceful that I could not credit what had happened in this last hour, not though I held the Count within my arms. Then from the floor of the room above there came once more the light tapping sound of a woman's heels. I looked about me. The table lay overturned, the rugs were heaped and scattered, and the barrel of my pistol winked in the sputtering light of the fire. I rose, s.n.a.t.c.hed up my sword, and fled out on to the snow.