The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 32

I started up in my bed.

"Lie down!" he snarled, with a sudden fierceness, and with a queer sense of helplessness I obeyed him.

"That's right," he continued, with a patronising smile. "Keep quiet and listen!"

For the moment, however, there was nothing for me to listen to, since Marston sat silent, watching with evident enjoyment the concern which I betrayed. He had chosen the easiest way with me. The least hint of condescension in another's voice always made me conscious in the extreme of my own shortcomings, and I felt that I lay helpless in some new toils of his weaving.

At last he spoke.

"You killed Count Lukstein."

I was prepared for the accusation by his previous words.

"Well?" I asked, in as natural a tone as I could command.

"Well," he returned, "I would not be too hard with you. What if you returned to c.u.mberland to-day, and stayed there? Your estates, I am sure, will thrive all the better for their master's supervision."

"My estates," I replied, "have a steward to supervise them. Their master will return to them at no man's bidding."

"It is a pity, a very great pity," said he thoughtfully, flicking his switch in the air. "For not only are you unwise in your own interests, but you drive me to a proceeding which I a.s.sure you is very repugnant and distasteful to my nature. Really, Mr. Buckler, you should have more consideration for others."

The smooth irony of his voice began to make my anger rise.

"And what is this proceeding?" I inquired.

"It would be my duty," he began, and I interrupted him.

"I can quite understand, then, that it is repugnant to your nature."

He smiled indulgently.

"It is a common fault of the very young to indulge in dialectics at inappropriate seasons. It would be my duty, unless you retired obediently to c.u.mberland, to share my knowledge with the lady you have widowed."

"I shall save you that trouble," said I, much relieved, "for I am in the mind to inform the Countess of the fact myself. Indeed, I called at her lodging the other day with that very object."

"But the Countess had left, and you didn't." He turned on me sharply; the words were more a question than a statement. I remained silent, and he smiled again. "As it is, I shall inform her. That will make all the difference."

I needed no arguments to convince me of the truth of what he said. The confession must come from me, else was I utterly undone. I sat up and looked at him defiantly.

"So be it, then! It is a race between us which shall reach her first."

"Pardon me," he explained, in the same unruffled, condescending tone; "there will be no race, for I happen to know where the Countess is a-visiting, and you, I fancy, do not. I have the advantage of you in that respect."

I glanced at him doubtfully. Did he seek to bluff me into yielding, I wondered? But he sat on the bedside, carelessly swinging a leg, with so easy a composure that I could not hesitate to credit his words.

However, I feigned not to believe him, and telling him as much, fell back upon my pillow with a show of indifference, and turned my face from him to the wall, as though I would go to sleep.

"You do believe me," he insisted suavely. "You do indeed. Besides, I can give you proof of my knowledge. I am so certain that I know the lady's whereabouts, and that you do not, that I will grant you four days' grace to think the matter over. As I say, I have no desire to press you hard, and to be frank with you, I am not quite satisfied as to how my information would be received." I turned back towards him, and noticing the movement, he continued: "Oh, make no mistake, Mr.

Buckler! The disclosure will ruin your chance most surely. But will it benefit me? That is the point. However, I must take the risk, and will, if you persist in your unwisdom."

I lay without answering him, turning over in my mind the only plan I could think of, which offered me a chance of outwitting him.

"You might send word to me, four days from now, which alternative you prefer. To-day is Monday. On Thursday I shall expect to hear from you."

He uncrossed his legs as he spoke, and the scabbard of his sword rattled against the frame of the bed. The sound, chiming appositely to my thoughts, urged me to embrace my plan, and I did embrace it, though reluctantly. After all, I thought, 'twas a dishonourable wooing that Marston was about. So I said, with a sneer:

"Men have been called snivelling curs for better conduct than yours."

"By pedantic schoolboys," he replied calmly. "But then the schoolboys have been whipped for their impertinence."

With that he drew the bed-clothes from my chest, and raised his whip in the air. I clenched my fists, and did not stir a muscle. I could have asked for nothing that was more like to serve me. I made a mistake, however, in not feigning some slight resistance, and he suddenly flung back the clothes upon me.

"The ruse was ingenious," he said, with a smile, "but I cannot gratify you to the extent you wish. In a week's time I shall have the greatest pleasure in crossing swords with you. But until then we must be patient."

My patience was exhausted already, and raising myself upon my elbow, I loaded him with every vile epithet I could lay my tongue to. He listened with extraordinary composure and indifference, stripping off his gloves the while, until I stopped from sheer lack of breath.

"It's all very true," he remarked quietly. "I have nothing to urge against the matter of your speech. Your voice is, I think, unnecessarily loud, but that is a small defect, and easily reformed."

The utter failure of my endeavour to provoke him to an encounter, combined with the contemptuous insolence of his manner, lifted me to the highest pitch of fury.

"You own your cowardice, then!" I cried, fairly beside myself with rage. "You have plotted against me from the outset like a common, rascally intriguer. No device was too mean for you to adopt. Why, the mere lie about the miniature----"

I stopped abruptly, seeing that he turned on me a sudden questioning look.

"Miniature?" he exclaimed. "What miniature?"

I remembered the pledge which I had given to Ilga, and continued hurriedly, seeking to cover up my slip:

"I could not have believed there was such underhand treachery in the world."

"Then now," said he, "you are better informed," and on the instant his composure gave way. It seemed as though he could no longer endure the strain which his repression threw on him. Pa.s.sion leaped into his face, and burned there like a flame; his voice vibrated and broke with the extremity of feeling; his very limbs trembled.

"'Tis all old talk to me--ages old and hackneyed. You are only repeating my thoughts, the thoughts I have lived with through this d.a.m.ned night. But I have killed them. Understand that!" His voice shrilled to a wild laugh. "I have killed them. Do you think I don't know it's cowardly? But there's a prize to be won, and I tell you"--he raised his hands above his head, and spoke with a sort of devilish exaltation--"I tell you, were my mother alive, and did she stand between Ilga and me, I would trample her as surely as I mean to trample you."

"d.a.m.n you!" I cried, wrought to a very hysteria by his manner. "Don't call her by that name!"

"And you!" he said, and with an effort he recovered his self-control.

"And you, are your hands quite clean, my little parson? You kill the husband secretly, and then woo the wife with all the innocence and timidity in the world. Is there no treachery in that?"

I was completely staggered by his words and the contempt with which they were spoken. That any one should conceive my lack of a.s.surance in paying my addresses to be a deliberate piece of deceit, had never so much as entered my head. I had always been too busy upbraiding myself upon that very score. Yet I could not but realise now how plausible the notion appeared. 'Twas plain that Marston believed I had been carefully playing a part; and I wondered: Would Ilga imagine that, too, when I told her my story? Would she believe that my deference and hesitation had been a.s.sumed to beguile her? I gazed at Marston, horror-stricken by the conjecture.

"Ay!" said he, nodding an answer to my look, "we have found each other out. Come, let us be frank! We are just a couple of dishonest scoundrels, and preaching befits neither of us."

He moved away from the bedside, and picked up his whip which he had dropped on to the floor. It lay close to the window, and as he raised himself again, he looked out across the garden.

"You overlook the Park," he said in an altered tone. "It is very strange."

At the time I was so overwhelmed by the construction which he had placed upon my behaviour, that I did not carefully consider what he meant. Thinking over the remark subsequently, however, I inferred from it, what indeed I had always suspected, that Marston had no knowledge his interviews and promenades with the Countess had taken place within sight of my windows.