The Strollers Part 19

"What more can I do?"

"Undo what you have done. Take me back!"

"I would cut a nice figure doing that! No; you shall stay here."

He spoke angrily; her disdain at his proposal not only injured his pride but awoke his animosity. On the other hand, his words demonstrated she had not improved her own position. If he meant to keep her there he could do so, and opposition made him only more obstinate, more determined to press his advantage. Had she been more politic--Juliana off the stage as well as on--she, whose artifice was glossed by artlessness--

Her lashes drooped; her att.i.tude became less aggressive; her eyes, from beneath their dark curtains, rested on him for a moment. What it was in that glance so effective is not susceptible to a.n.a.lysis. Was it the appeal that awakened the quixotic sense of honor; the helplessness arousing compa.s.sion; the irresistible quality of a br.i.m.m.i.n.g eye so fatal to masculine calculation and positiveness? Whatever it was, it dispelled the contraction on the land baron's face, and--despite his threats, vows!--he was swayed by a look.

"Forgive me," he said, tenderly.

"You will drive back?"

"Yes; I will win you in your own way, fairly and honestly! I will take you back, though the whole country laughs at me. Win or lose, back we go, for--I love you!" And impetuously he threw his arm around her waist.

Simulation could not stand the test; it was no longer acting, but reality; she had set herself to a role she could not perform. Hating him for that free touch, she forcibly extricated herself with an exclamation and an expression of countenance there was no mistaking.

From Mauville's face the glad light died; he regarded her once more cruelly, vindictively.

"You dropped the mask too soon," he said, coldly. "I was not prepared for rehearsal, although you were perfect. You are even a better actress than I thought you, than which"--mockingly--"I can pay you no better compliment."

She looked at him with such scorn he laughed, though his eyes flashed.

"Bravo!" he exclaimed.

While thus confronting each other a footfall sounded without, the door burst open, and the driver of the coach, with features drawn by fear, unceremoniously entered the room. The patroon turned on him enraged, but the latter without noticing his master's displeasure, exclaimed hurriedly:

"The anti-renters are coming!"

The actress uttered a slight cry and stepped toward the window, when she was drawn back by an irresistible force.

"Pardon me," said a hard voice, from which all pa.s.sing compunction had vanished. "Be kind enough to come with me."

"I will follow you, but--" Her face expressed the rest.

"This way then!"

He released her and together they mounted the stairway. For a long time a gentle footfall had not pa.s.sed those various landings; not since the ladies in hoops, with powdered hair, had ascended or descended, with attendant cavaliers, bewigged, beruffled, bedizened.

The land baron conducted his companion to a distant room up stairs, the door of which he threw open.

"Go in there," he said curtly.

She hesitated on the threshold. So remote was it from the main part of the great manor, the apartment had all the requirements of a prison.

"You needn't fear," he continued, reading her thoughts. "I'm not going to be separated from you--yet! But we can see what is going on here."

Again she mutely obeyed him, and entered the room. It was a commodious apartment, where an excellent view was offered of the surrounding country on three sides. But looking from the window to discern his a.s.sailants, Mauville could see nothing save the fields and openings, fringed by the dark groves. The out-houses and barns were but dimly outlined, while scattered trees here and there dotted the open s.p.a.ces with small, dark patches. A single streak of red yet lingered in the west. A tiny spot, moving through the obscurity, proved to be a cow, peacefully wandering over the dewy gra.s.s. The whirring sound of a diving night-hawk gave evidence that a thing of life was inspecting the scene from a higher point of vantage.

From that narrow, dark crimson ribbon, left behind by the flaunting sun, a faint reflection entered the great open windows of the chamber and revealed Mauville gazing without, pistol in hand; Constance leaning against the curtains and the driver of the coach standing in the center of the room, quaking inwardly and shaking outwardly. This last-named had found an old blunderbuss somewhere, useful once undoubtedly, but of questionable service now.

Meanwhile Oly-koeks had not returned. Having faithfully closed and locked all the iron shutters, he had crept out of a cellar window and voluntarily resigned as care-taker of the manor, with its burden of dangers and vexations. With characteristic prudence, he had timed the period of his departure with the beginning of the end in the fortunes of the old patroon princ.i.p.ality. The storm-cloud, gathering during the life of Mauville's predecessor, was now ready to burst, the impending catastrophe hastened by the heir's want of discretion and his failure to adjust difficulties amicably. That small shadow, followed by a smaller shadow, pa.s.sing through the field, were none other than Oly-koeks and Oloffe, who grew more and more imperceptible until they were finally swallowed up and seemingly lost forever in the darkness of the fringe of the forest.

A branch of a tree grated against the window as Mauville looked out over the peaceful vale to the ribbon of red that was being slowly withdrawn as by some mysterious hand. Gradually this adornment, growing shorter and shorter, was wound up while the shadows of the out-houses became deeper and the meadow lands appeared to recede in the distance. As he scanned the surrounding garden, the land baron's eye fell upon an indistinct figure stealing slowly across the sward in the partial darkness. This object was immediately followed by another and yet another. To the observer's surprise they wore the headgear of Indians.

Suddenly the patroon heard the note of the whippoorwill, the nocturnal songster that mourns unseen. It was succeeded by the sharp tones of a saw-whet and the distinct mew of a cat-bird. A wild pigeon began to coo softly in another direction and was answered by a thrush. The listener vaguely realized that all this unexpected melody came from the Indians, who had by this time surrounded the house and who took this method of communicating with one another.

An interval of portentous silence was followed by a loud knocking at the front door, which din reverberated through the hall, echoing and re-echoing the vigorous summons. Mauville at this leaned from the window and as he did so, there arose a hooting from the sward as though bedlam had broken loose. Maintaining his post, the heir called out:

"What do you want, men?"

At these words the demonstration became more turbulent, and, amid the threatening hubbub, voices arose, showing too well the purpose of the gathering. Aroused to a fever of excitement by the shooting of the tenants, they were no longer skulking, stealthy Indians, but a riotous a.s.semblage of anti-renters, expressing their determination in an ominous chorus:

"Hang the land baron!"

In the midst of this far from rea.s.suring uproar a voice arose like a trumpet:

"We are the messengers of the Lord, made strong by His wrath!"

"You are the messenger of the devil, Little Thunder," Mauville shouted derisively.

A crack of a rifle admonished the land baron that the jest might have cost him dear.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ATTACK ON THE MANOR

After this brief hostile outbreak in the garden below the right wing, Mauville prepared to make as effective defense as lay in his power and looked around for his aid, the driver of the coach. But that quaking individual had taken advantage of the excitement to disappear. Upon hearing the threats, followed by the singing of bullets, and doubting not the same treatment accorded the master would be meted out to the servant, the coachman's fealty so oozed from him that he dropped his blunderbuss, groping his way through the long halls to the cellar, where he concealed himself in an out-of-the-way corner beneath a heap of potato sacks. In that vast subterranean place he congratulated himself he would escape with a whole skin, his only regret being certain unpaid wages which he considered as good as lost, together with the master who owed them.

Mauville, however, would have little regretted the disappearance of this poor-spirited aid, on the theory a craven follower is worse than none at all, had not this discovery been followed quickly by the realization that the young girl, too, had availed herself of the opportunity while he was at the window and vanished.

"Why, the slippery jade's gone!" he exclaimed, staring around the room, confounded for the moment. Then recovering himself, he hurriedly left the chamber, more apprehensive lest she should get out of the manor than that the tenants should get in.

"She can't be far off," he thought, pausing doubtfully in the hall.

For the moment he almost forgot the anti-renters and determined to find her at all hazard. He hastily traversed the upper hall, but was rewarded with no sight of her. He gazed down the stairs eagerly, with no better result; the front door was still closed, as he had left it.

Evidently she had fled toward the rear of the house and made good her escape from one of the back or side entrances.

"Yes; she's gone," he repeated. "What a fool I was to have trusted her to herself for a moment!"

A new misgiving arose, and he started. What if she had succeeded in leaving the manor? He knew and distrusted Little Thunder and his cohorts. What respect would they have for her? For all he had done, it was, nevertheless, intolerable to think she might be in possible danger--from others save himself! A wave of compunction swept over him. After all, he loved her, and, loving her, could not bear to think of any calamity befalling her. He hated her for tricking him; feared for her, for the pa.s.s to which he had brought her; cared for her beyond the point his liking had reached for any other woman. A mirthless laugh escaped him as he stood at the stairway looking down the empty hall.

"Surely I've gone daft over the stroller!" he thought, as his own position recurred to him in all its seriousness. "Well, what's done is done! Let them come!" His eyes gleamed.

With no definite purpose of searching further, he nevertheless walked mechanically down the corridor toward the other side of the manor and suddenly, to his surprise and satisfaction, discerned Constance in a blind pa.s.sage, where she had inadvertently fled.