The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 19

She dropped her voice at the end of the sentence, and leaned wearily back upon the cus.h.i.+ons.

"You see, Mr. Buckler," she explained, "I live amongst the hills," and there was a certain wistfulness in her tone as of one home-sick.

"Then there is a second bond between us, for I live amongst the hills as well."

"It is that," said she, "which makes us friends," and just for a second she laid a hand upon my sleeve. It seemed to me that no man ever heard sweeter words or more sweetly spoken from the lips of woman.

"But since you are here," I questioned eagerly, "you will stay--you will stay for a little?"

"I know not," she replied, smiling at my urgency; and then with a certain sadness, "some day I shall go back, I hope, but when, I know not. It might be in a week, it might be in a year, it might be never."

Of a sudden she gave a low cry of pain. "I daren't go home," she cried, "I daren't until--until----"

"Until you have forgotten." The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I caught them back in time, and for a while we sat silent. The Countess appeared to grow all unconscious of my presence, and gazed steadily down the quiet street as though it stretched beyond and beyond in an avenue of leagues, and she could see waving at the end of it the cedars and pine-trees of her Tyrol.

Nor was I in any hurry to arouse her. A noisy rattle of voices streamed out on a flood of yellow light from the further windows on my left, and here she and I were alone in the starlit dusk of a summer night. Her very silence was sweet to me with the subtlest of flatteries. For I looked upon it as the recognition of a tie of sympathy which raised me from the general throng of her courtiers into the narrow circle of her friends.

So I sat and watched her. The pure profile of her face was outlined against the night, the perfume of her hair stole into my nostrils, and every now and then her warm breath played upon my cheek. A fold of her train had fallen across my ankle, and the soft touch of the velvet thrilled me like a caress; I dared not move a muscle for fear lest I should displace it.

At length she spoke again--'twas almost in a whisper.

"I have told you more about myself than I have told to any one since I came to England. It is your turn now. Tell me where lies your home!"

"In the north. In c.u.mberland."

"In--in c.u.mberland," she repeated, with a little catch of her breath.

"You have lived there long?"

"'Twas the home of my fathers, and I spent my boyhood there. But between that time and this year's spring I have been a stranger to the countryside. For I was first for some years at Oxford, and thence I went to Leyden."

She rose abruptly from the couch, drawing her train clear of me with her hand, and leaned over the balcony, resting her elbow on its bal.u.s.ter, and propping her chin upon the palm of her hand.

"Leyden!" she said carelessly. "'Tis a town of great beauty, they tell me, and much visited by English students."

"There were but few English students there during the months of my residence," said I. "I could have wished there had been more."

A second period of silence interrupted our talk, and I sat wondering over that catch in her breath and the tremor of her voice when she repeated "c.u.mberland." Was it possible, I asked myself, that she could have learnt of Sir Julian Harnwood and of his quarrel with her husband? If she did know, and if she attributed the duel in which her husband fell to a result of it, why, then--c.u.mberland was Julian's county, and the name might well strike with some pain upon her hearing. But who could have informed her? Not the Count, surely; 'twas hardly a matter of which a man could boast to his wife. I remembered, besides, that he had asked me to speak English, and to speak it low.

There could have been but one motive for the request--a desire to keep the subject of our conversation a secret from the Countess.

I glanced towards her. Without changing her att.i.tude she had turned her head sideways upon her palm, and was quietly looking me over from head to foot. Then she rose erect, and with a frank and winning smile, she said, as if in explanation:

"I was seeking to discover, Mr. Buckler, what it was in you that had beguiled me to forget the rest of my guests. However, if I have shown them but scant courtesy, I shall bid them reproach you, not me."

"Prithee, madame, no! Have some pity on me! The statement would get me a thousand deadly enemies."

"Hus.h.!.+" said she, with a playful menace. "You go perilous near to a compliment;" and we went back into the glare and noise of the drawing-room.

"Ah, Ilga! I have missed you this half-hour."

'Twas a little woman of, I should say, forty years who bustled up to us on our entrance.

"You see?" said the Countess, turning to me with a whimsical reproach.

"You must blame Mr. Buckler, Clemence, and I will make you acquainted that you may have the occasion."

She presented me thus to Mademoiselle Durette, and left us together.

But I fear the good woman must have found me the poorest company, for I paid little heed to what she said, and carried away no recollection beyond that her chatter wearied me intolerably, and that once or twice I caught the word "convenances," whence I gather she was reading me a lecture.

I got rid of her as soon as I decently could, and took my leave of the Countess. She gave me her hand, and I bent over and kissed it. 'Twas only the glove I kissed, but the hand was within the glove, as I had reason to know, for I felt it tremble within my fingers and then tug quickly away.

"One compliment I will allow you to pay me," she said, "and that is a renewal of your visit."

"Madame permits," I exclaimed joyfully.

"Madame will be much beholden to you," says she, and drops me a mocking curtsey.

I walked down the staircase in a prodigious elation. Six steps from the floor of the hall it made a curve, and as I turned at the angle I stopped dead of a sudden with my heart leaping within my breast. For at the foot of the stairs, and looking at me now straight in the face, as he had looked at me in the archway of Bristol Bridewell, I saw Otto Krax, the servant of Count Lukstein. The unexpected sight of his ma.s.sive figure came upon me like a blow. I had forgotten him completely. I staggered back into the angle of the wall. He must know me, I thought. He _must_ know me. But he gazed with no more than the stolid attention of a lackey. There was not a trace of recognition in his face, not a start of his muscles; and then I remembered the difference in my garb. 'Twould have been strange indeed if he had known me.

I recovered my composure, drew a long breath of relief, and was about to step down to him when I happened to glance up the stairway.

The Countess herself was leaning over the rail at its head, with the light from the hall-lamp below streaming up into her face. I had not heard her come out on the landing.

"I knew not whether Otto Krax was there to let you out" She smiled at me. "Good night!"

"Good night," said I, and looking at Otto, I understood whence she might have got some knowledge of Sir Julian Harnwood.

Once outside, I stood for a while loitering in front of the house, and wondering how much 'twould cost to buy it up. For I believed that it would be a degradation should any other woman lodge in those same rooms afterwards.

In a few minutes Elmscott came out to me.

"You have seen the Countess Lukstein before?" he asked, and the words fairly startled me.

"What in Heaven's name makes you think that?"

"I fancied I read it in your looks. Your eyes went straight to her before ever I presented you."

"That proves no more than the merit of your description."

"Well, did I exaggerate? What think you?"

I drew a long breath. 'Twas the only description I could give. There were no words in the language equal to my thoughts.

"That will suffice," said Elmscott, and he turned away.

"One moment," I cried. "I need a service of you."

He burst out into a laugh.

"A thousand pounds to a guinea I know the service. 'Tis the address of my tailor you need. I saw you looking down at your clothes as though the wearing of them sullied you. Very well, one of my servants shall be with you in the morning with a complete list of my tradesmen." And he swung off in the direction of Piccadilly, laughing as he went, while I, filled with all sorts of romantical notions, walked back to my lodging. Though, indeed, to say that I walked, falls somewhat short of the truth; to speak by the book, I fairly scampered, and arrived breathless at my doorstep.