The Hosts of the Air Part 30

"Suzanne! Suzanne!"

She stood attentive, glanced about, and, seeing that no one observed her, came to the edge of the deep shadow.

"Suzanne! Suzanne!" called John again. "It is I, John Scott! Have you any message for me from Mademoiselle Julie?"

She looked again to see that none was near, and then stepped boldly into the shrubbery, where John seized her arm half in entreaty and half to hurry her.

"O, Suzanne! Suzanne!" he repeated, with fierce insistence. "Have you any word for me?"

They were completely in the heavy shadow now, between the short clipped pines, where no one, even but a few feet away, could see, and before replying she looked at him, her grim face relaxing into a smile. She had always watched him before with a sort of angry jealousy, but John believed that he now read welcome and gladness in her eyes.

"Suzanne! Suzanne!" he repeated, his insistence ever growing stronger.

"Is there no word for me?"

"Aye," she said, "my mistress bids me tell you that she is grateful, that she understands all you have risked for her sake, that she can never repay you sufficiently for your great service, and that she feels safer because you are near."

"Ah," breathed John, "it is worth every risk to hear that."

"But she fears for you. She knows that you are in great danger here. If they discover who you are, you perish at once as a spy. So she bids me tell you to go away. It is easy to escape from here to the Italian frontier. She would not have you lose your life for her."

"Is it because my life is of more value to her than that of any other man? Oh, tell me, I pray you?"

Another of her rare smiles pa.s.sed over the grim face of the woman.

"It is a question that Mademoiselle Julie alone can answer," she said.

"But when she went to her room she wept a little and her tears were not those of sorrow."

"Oh, then, Suzanne, she is indeed glad that I am here. Tell her that I came for her, and that I will not go away until she goes too."

"She is in no great danger here; she is a prisoner, but they treat her as a guest, one of high degree."

"Auersperg would force her to marry him."

Suzanne smiled once more, but gravely.

"The prince would marry her," she said, "and he is not the only one who wishes to do so. But fear not. Auersperg cannot force her to marry him.

She is of the same tempered steel as her brother, the great Monsieur Philip. Were she a man as he is, she would dare as much as he does, and being a woman she will dare in a woman's way none the less."

"And the others, Kratzek and Pappenheim, and von Arnheim if he should come, they are young and brave and true! Might she not, as the only way of escape from the high-handed baron, marry one of them?"

For the fourth time Suzanne smiled. Never before had she permitted herself that luxury so many times in a month, but there was an odd glint in this latest smile of hers, which gave to her face a rare look of softness.

"Nor will she marry any of them," she said, "although they are brave and honest and true and love her. Mademoiselle Julie has her own reasons which she does not tell to me, but I know. She will not marry Prince Karl of Auersperg. She will not marry Prince Wilhelm von Arnheim, she will not marry Count Leopold Kratzek, she will not marry Count Maximilien Pappenheim. Do I not know her well, I who have been with her all her life?"

And once more that smile with the odd glint in it pa.s.sed over her stern face. But John in the thickening dusk could not see it, although her low earnest voice carried conviction.

"Tell her for me, will you, Suzanne," he said, "that I think I can take her from the castle of Zillenstein. Tell her, too, that I am in little danger in my peasant's clothes. I have been face to face with the prince himself and he has shown no sign of recognition, nor has Count Kratzek who was my prisoner once. Tell her that I will not go. Tell her that my heart is light because she fears for my safety and, O Suzanne, tell her that I will watch over her the best I can, until all of us escape from this hateful castle."

"It is much to tell. How can I remember it alt?"

"Then tell her all you remember."

"That I promise. And now it's time for me to go back. We cannot risk too much."

She turned away, but John had another question to ask her. His heart smote him that he had not thought of Picard.

"Your father, Suzanne?" he said. "I have not heard of him. Is he here?"

"They left him a prisoner at Munich. Doubtless he will escape and he, too, will reach Zillenstein."

"Tell Mademoiselle Julie that her brother did not come to the appointed meeting at Chastel, because he was wounded. Not badly. Don't be alarmed, Suzanne. He'll be as well as ever soon."

"Then he, too, will come to Zillenstein. You are not the only one who seeks, Monsieur Scott."

"But I am the first to arrive. Nothing can take that from me."

"It is true. Now I must hasten back to the castle. If I stay longer they will suspect me."

She slipped from the shrubbery and was gone, and, John, afire with new emotions, strolled in a wide circuit back to the stables.

A week went by. Twice every day he saw Julie on the terrace, but no word pa.s.sed between them, the chance never came. But the hosts of the air were at work. The invisible currents were pa.s.sing between the girl on the terrace who was treated like a princess and the young peasant who walked the horses in the road.

"Be not afraid. I have a strength more than my own to save you," came on a wave of air.

"I fear not for myself, only for you lest they discover you," came the answering wave.

"I love you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world and the bravest. It's cause for pride to risk death for you."

"I know that you are here for me. I knew that you would come, when I saw you in Metz. I know that under your peasant's garb you are a prince, more of a real prince than any Auersperg that ever lived."

John was outside of himself. He felt sometimes as if he had left his body behind. The spirit of the crusader was still upon him, and in sight of his beloved, the prize that he had reached but not yet won, he cast aside all thought of danger or failure and awaited the event, whatever it might be, with the supreme confidence of youth. It is but truth to say that he was happy in those days, filled with a stolen delight, all the sweeter because it was stolen under the very eyes of the medieval baron, lord almost of life and death, who was master there.

He steadily advanced in the good graces of Walther. No other such industrious and skillful groom had appeared at Zillenstein in many a day, and he rapidly acquired dexterity also with the automobiles. None could send them spinning with more certainty along the curving mountain roads. He practiced with diligence because he had a vague premonition that all this knowledge would be of use to him some day.

Pappenheim went away, but returned after four days. John fancied that he had been in Vienna, but he knew the magnet that had brought him back. He saw the young Austrian's eyes flame more than once when Julie appeared in her favorite place on the terrace. And yet John neither hated nor feared him.

Kratzek was well enough to go back to the battle front, but he lingered.

John did not know what excuses he gave, but he was there, and his eyes, too, burned when Julie pa.s.sed.

Often in the evening he watched for the grim Suzanne and the word that she would bring, but she did not come. Day by day he saw her, the long black shadow behind her mistress, but she never looked toward him, however intensely he wished it.

The prince went forth occasionally, but he always used an automobile and he was never gone longer than a day. John wondered why he remained so long at Zillenstein, knowing that he was a general in the German army and a man of weight at the battle front. He concluded at last that he must be waiting there for a conference of some kind between important men of Germany and Austria. He had heard through the gossip in the castle that Italy was threatening war on Austria, and the Teutonic powers must now face also toward the southwest. Much might be decided at Zillenstein.

Ilse and Olga were still his best sources of information. Very little that pa.s.sed in the castle missed their shrewd inquiring minds, and they had found in the handsome young peasant from Lorraine one with whom they liked to talk. He jested and laughed with them but there was a certain reserve on his part that they could not break down but which drew them on. He would not flirt with them. None was readier than he for light words and airy compliments, but nothing that he said permitted either of the trim young Austrian girls to think that he might become a lover.

"I think, Herr Johann," said Ilse, "that you have left behind in Lorraine a maid whom you love."

"It may be so," said John vaguely. "I saw one in Metz whom anybody could love."