MR. VINCOTT knocked at the great door within the arch, and we were presently admitted and handed over to the guidance of a jailer.
The fellow led us across a courtyard and into a long room clouded and heavy with the smoke of tobacco.
“Keep the hood close!” whispered my companion a second time.
I muffled my face and bent my head towards the ground. For a noisy clamour of drunken songs and coarse merriment and, mingled with that, a ceaseless rattle of drinking cans, rose about me on all sides. It seemed that the Bridewell kept open house that night. We traversed the room, picking out a path among the captives, for even the floor was littered with men in all imaginable attitudes—some playing cards, some asleep, and most of them drunk. My presence served to redouble the uproar, and each moment I feared that my disguise would be detected. I felt that every eye in the room was centred upon my hood. One fellow, indeed, that sat talking to himself upon a bench, got unsteadily to his feet and reeled towards us. But or ever he came near, the jailer cut him across the shoulders with his stick and sent him back howling and cursing.
“Back to your kennel!” he shouted. “’Tis an uncommon wench that would visit the lousy likes o’ you.” At the far end of the room he unlocked a door which opened on to a narrow flight of stairs. On the landing above he halted before a second door of a more solid make, the panels being strengthened by cross-beams, and secured with iron bars and a massive lock. The jailer unfastened it and threw it open.
“You have half an hour, mistress,” he said, civilly enough. A startled cry of pain broke from the inside, I heard a sharp clink of fetters, and Julian confronted me through the doorway, his eyes ablaze with passion, and every limb strained and quivering.
“What more? What more, madam?” he asked, in a hoarse, trembling voice. “Are you not satisfied?”
He stopped suddenly with a gasping intake of the breath, and let his head roll forward on his breast like a fainting man. Vincott pushed me gently within the room, and I heard the door clang behind me. For a moment I could not speak. The tears rose in my throat and drowned the words. Julian was the first to recover his composure.
“I crave your pardon,” he said, and his voice sounded in my ears with a sad familiarity like the echo of our boyhood. “I mistook you for another.” And he sat down on a bench and covered his face with his hands.
“Julian!” I said, finding at length my voice, and I held out my hands to him. He uncovered his face and stared at me in sheer incredulity. Then with a cry of joy he sprang forwards, stumbling pitifully from the hindrance of his fetters.
“Morrice at last!” He lifted his hands and clapped them down into mine, and the quick movement jerked the chain between his handlocks so that it fell cold across my wrists. So we stood silent, memory speeding to and fro between our eyes and telling the same wistful tale within the heart of each of us. But in that brumous cell, lit only by a smoky lamp which served rather to deepen the shadows of the space which it left obscure than to illumine the circle immediately about it, such thoughts could not beguile one long; and a strange, unaccountable fear began to creep up in my mind like a mist. It seemed to me that the chain pressed ever tighter and tighter about my wrists, and grew cold like a ring of ice. The chill of it slipped into the marrow of my bones. I came almost to believe that I myself was manacled, and with that I felt once again that premonition of evil drawing near, which had numbed my spirit in the gray dawn at London. Now, however, the warning came to me with a clearer and more particular message. I had a penetrating conviction that this cell prefigured some scene in the years to come wherein I should fill the place of Julian; and, seeing him, I saw a dim image of myself as when a man looks into a clouded mirror, So thoroughly, indeed, did the fancy master me that I too became, as it were, the shadow and reflex of another, a mere counter and symbol representing one as yet unknown to me.
“I thought you would never come,” said my friend, and I woke out of my trance.
“I started at once from Leyden,” I replied; but Julian cut short my explanation.
“I am sure of it. I never doubted you. We have but half an hour, and I have much to tell.”
He turned away and flung himself down on the bench, which was broad and had a rail at the back, such as you may see outside a village ale-house.
“Vincott has told you the history of my arrest?”
“Yes!” said I. The lamp stood upon a stool beside the bench, and I lifted it up and placed it on a rough bracket which was fixed to the wall above. The light fell full upon his face, which had grown extraordinary thin, with the skin very bloodless and tight about his jaws, so that the bones looked to have sharpened. Only around his eyes was there any colour, and that of a heavy purple. I sat down upon the stool, and Julian gave something like a sigh of content.
“I am glad you have come, Morrice,” he said “It has tired me so, waiting for you.”
He closed his eyes wearily, and appeared to be falling asleep. I touched him on the shoulder, and he sprang to his feet like one dazed, brushing against the bracket and making the flame of the lamp spirt up with a sudden flare. Once or twice he walked to and fro in the room, as though ordering his speech.
“Here is the kernel of the matter,” said he at last, coming back to the bench. “I was arrested to serve no ends of justice, but the vilest treachery and cowardice that man ever heard of. The tale, in truth, seems well nigh inconceivable. Even I, who have sounding evidence of its truth,” and he kicked one of his feet, so that the links of the fetters rattled on the floor, “even I find it hard to believe that ’tis more than a monstrous fable. The man called himself my friend.”
“It was Count Lukstein, then?”
“How did you find out that? Vincott could not have told you.”
“He did not tell me, but yet he gave me to know it.”
“Yes, it was Count Lukstein. He laid the information to spare himself a duel and to get rid of—well, of an obstacle. I meant to kill him. I should have killed him, and he knew it. The duel was arranged secretly on the afternoon of Saturday, the ninth; the spot chosen—a dip in the hill, solitary and unfrequented even at midday, for the descent is steep—and the time six o’clock on the Sunday morning. And yet there I was taken, on the very ground, at six o’clock on a Sunday morning—raining, too!”
“There seems little doubt.”
“There is no doubt. ’Twas his life or mine. The dispute was the mere pretext and occasion of the duel.”
“So I understood.”
I was beginning to understand, besides, that the facts which Mr Vincott had intended to impart to me were somewhat more numerous than he thought fit to admit.
“The cause—but I can’t speak of that. In any case, ’twas his life or mine, and he knew it, so deemed it prudent to take mine, since he had the power, without risking his own.”
“But,” I objected, “could you trust your seconds? They knew the time, the place—”
“But they did not know I was sheltering Monmouth’s fugitives. Lukstein knew it.”
“You told him?”
“No!”
He stopped abruptly, and his eyes foil from my face to the ground. And then he said, in a very sad and quiet voice,—“But I have none the less sure proof he knew.” He sat silent with bowed head, labouring his breath, and his hands lying clasped together upon his knees. I noticed that the tips of his fingers were pressed tight into the backs of his palms, so that the flesh about them looked dead.
I leaned forward and took him gently by the arm. “You must deliver me that proof, Julian,” said I. For I began to have a pretty sure inkling of the service he had it in his mind to require of me.
He shifted his eyes to my face and then back again to the floor.
“I know, I know,” he replied unsteadily, “I disclosed my secret to but one person in the world.” And as I held my peace wondering, he flashed on me a tortured face. “Don’t force me to give the name!” he cried. “Think! Think, Morrice! Who should I have told? Who should I have told?”
The words seemed wrung from his soul. I understood what that first outburst meant when the jailer had bidden me enter, and my gorge rose against this woman who could make such foul sport of her lover’s trust. He read my thought in my face, and though he might upbraid his mistress himself, he would not suffer me to do the same.
“You must not blame her,” he said earnestly, laying a hand upon my knee. “Blame me! Blame us who wantoned the days away at Whitehall, and cloyed the very air with our flatteries. You chose the right part, Morrice, a man’s part—work. As for us,” he resumed his restless walk about the chamber, beating one clenched fist into the palm of the other, “as for us, a new fashion, a new dance, were our studies, cajoling women our work. The divine laws were sneered at, trampled down. They were meet for the ragged who had naught but hope in the next world to comfort them for their humiliation in this. But we—we who had silk to wear and money to spend, we needed a different creed. Sin was our God, and we worshipped and honoured it openly. When I think of it, I, a Catholic, can find it in my heart to wish that Monmouth’s cause had won. No, Morrice, you must not blame her. The fault is ours, and I am rightly punished for my share in it. Constancy was a burgess virtue, fit for a tradesman. We despised it in ourselves; what right had we to expect it in the women we surrounded?”
He checked the vehement flow abruptly, and came and stood over me.
“And yet, Morrice,” he said, with a smile that was infinitely tender and sad, “and yet I loved her, with a sweet purity in the love, and a humble thankfulness for the knowledge of it, loved her as any country bumpkin might love the girl who rakes a furrow at his side.”
“And in return,” I said bitterly, “she betrayed you to Count Lukstein?”
He nodded “yes,” and sat down again on his bench.
“Why?”
“Long before the duel. She had no suspicion of the consequences of her words,” he said hastily. “She had no hand in this plot.”
“Why?” I repeated.
He looked at me, imploring mercy.
“I understand,” said I.
“Ah, no!” he said quickly; “your suspicions outstrip the truth. I think so,” and again with a curiously pleading voice, “I think so. The man purred more softly than the rest, and so she—”
He broke off in the middle of the sentence and began anew. “I must lay the whole truth bare, I see that. Only the shame of it cuts into me like a knife.”
He paused, and great beads of sweat broke out upon his forehead.
“I have told you that my dispute with Lukstein was no more than the pretext of our quarrel. She was the cause. How long their acquaintance had lasted I know not, or to what length of intimacy it had gone. Lukstein was as secret as a cat, and he taught her his duplicity. ’Twas I myself presented him to her formally when he came first to the Hotwell, but I think now the pair had met before in London. ’Twere too long to describe how my fears were aroused—an exchange of glances noted here, a letter in his hand dropped from a sachet there, a certain guarded hesitation she evinced when Lukstein and I were both with her, a word carelessly dropped showing knowledge of his movements; all trifles in themselves, but summed together a very weighty argument. So on the morning of the ninth, worn out with disquiet, I resolved to bring the matter to an issue, and I rode over to St Vincent’s rock. Lukstein was seated at an escritoire as I entered the room. I saw his face blanch and his hand fly to an open drawer, close, and lock it. He rose to greet me, and drew me to the window, which pleased me the more for that a bell stood upon the escritoire. I got between him and the bell and taxed him with his treachery. He denied it, larding me with friend protestations. I backed to the escritoire and repeated the charge. He laughed at me for my unmanly lack of faith. With a sudden wrench I tore open the locked drawer. He bounded towards the bell; my sword was at his breast, and we stood watching one another while I rummaged with my left hand in the drawer.
“‘You shall pay for this,’ says he, very softly.
“‘One of us will pay,’ says I.
“‘Yes, you! You!’ and he smiled, with his lips drawn back so that I saw the gums of his teeth on both jaws. If only I had known what he meant! I had him there at my sword’s point. I had but to lean forward on my arm!
“‘Get back to the window!” I ordered, and he obeyed me with an affected jauntiness. Out of the drawer I drew a small gold box of an oval shape. I had given it but a fortnight agone to—to—you will understand; and it contained my miniature. The box fastened with a lock, and I forgot to ask him for the key. He has it still. There were letters besides in the drawer, and I made him burn them before my eyes. Then I took my leave and sent my seconds.”
“Are you sure the box was the same?” I asked, when he had done. He slipped his hand into his pocket, and brought it out and placed it in my hand. His coat of arms was emblazoned on the cover.
“Keep it!” he said. I tried the lid, but the box was locked. “Until I recover the key,” I answered, and we clasped hands.
“Thank you!” he said simply. “Thank you!”
The smell of the Cumberland gorse was in my nostrils, my friend lay before me traitorously fettered, and this poor, belated adjustment of his wrong seemed the very right and fitting function of the love I bore for him. There was, however, still one point on which I still felt need to be assured. For I knew the timidity of my nature, and I was minded to leave no fissure in this wall of evidence through which after-doubts might leak to sap my resolution.
“And the proof?” I asked. “The proof that she informed Count Lukstein!”
“She confessed that to me herself. She came to me here on the evening of the day that I was taken.”
I placed the gold box in the fob of my waistcoat, and as I did so I felt a book. I drew it out wondering what it might be. ’Twas the small copy of Horace which I had thrust there unwittingly when I waited for the doctor’s report at Leyden. I held it in my hands and turned over the pages idly.
“Count Lukstein has left Bristol,” I said.
“Ay; he got little good out of his treachery beyond the saving of his carcass. But he left his servant here—Otto Krax. That is why I bade you come disguised. He knew I could not make the matter public for—for her sake. But I suppose that he feared I might reveal it to some friend if the trial went against me, entrust to him the just work I am forced to leave undone. Perchance he had some hint of Swasfield’s departure; I know not. This only I know: Krax has been at Vincott’s heels, keeping close watch on all who passed in with him to me; and should he find out that you had come from Holland in this great haste, it might prove an ill day’s work for you, and, in any case, Lukstein would be forewarned.”
“He lives in the Tyrol?”
“At Schloss Lukstein, six miles to the east of Glurns, in the valley of the Adige. But, Morrice, he is master there. The spot is remote, there’s no one to gainsay him. You must needs be careful. He hath no love for honest dealing, and you had best take him privately.”
He spoke with so sombre a, warning in his tone that the shadows appeared to darken about the room.
“He is cunning,” Julian went on; “you must match him in cunning. Nay, over-match him, for he has power as well.”
“You have visited this castle?”
“Yes. ’Tis built in two wings which run from east to west, and north to south, and form a right angle at the north-east corner. At the extreme end of the latter wing there is a tower; a window opens on to the terrace from a small room in this tower. There are but two doors in the room; that on the left gives on to a passage which leads to the main hall. The servants sleep on the far side of the hall. The other door opens on to a narrow stairway which mounts to the Count’s bedroom. ’Tis his habit of a night to sit in this small room.”
“I understand. And the entrance to this terrace?”
“That is the danger, for the place is built upon a rock sheer and precipitous. However, there is one spot where the ascent may be contrived. I discovered the way by chance. The climb is hazardous, yet not more so than some that we attacked out of mere sport on Scafell crags. Ah, me! Morrice, those were the best days of my life. I wonder whether ’twill be the same with you!”
Something like a shiver ran through me, but before I could answer him the key grated in the lock and the door was flung open. I turned, and saw in the shadow of the entrance the sombre figure of a priest. He was tall, and the cassock which robed him in black from head to foot made him show yet taller. In his hand he held a gleaming crucifix. He raised it above his head as he crossed the threshold, and in the twilight of the room it shone like a silver flame.
Julian sprang from his bench; his shoulder caught the bracket, the lamp rocked once or twice, and then crashed to the ground. In the darkness no one spoke; the rustle of our breathing was marked like the ticking of a clock.
Alter a while the jailer fetched in a taper. Julian looked at me in some embarrassment. The priest waited patiently by the door, and it was impossible for us to renew our discourse. In rising, however, I had let fall the Horace on to the floor, and the book lay open at my feet. Julian caught sight of it, and a plan occurred to him. He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil, picked the volume up, and drew a rapid sketch upon the open page.
“That will make all clear,” he remarked.
I took the book from him, and we clasped hands for the last time.
“At this hour to-morrow?” he said, with a little catch in his voice. I was still holding his hand. I could feel the blood beating in his fingers. At this hour to-morrow! It seemed incredible. “Morrice!” he cried, clinging to me, and his voice was the voice of a child crying out in the black of the night. In a moment he recovered his calm, and dropped my hand. I made my reverence to the priest, and the door clanged between us.
Vincott was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, and we hurried silently to the gates. The porter came forward to let us out, but I noticed that he fumbled with his keys which he carried upon an iron ring. He tried first one and then another in the lock, as though he knew not which fitted it. His ignorance struck me as strange until Vincott pulled me by the sleeve.
“Turn your back to the hutch,” he whispered suddenly. Instinct made me face it instead, and I perceived, gazing curiously into my face, the very man who had tracked Vincott in the afternoon: Otto Krax, as I now knew him to be, Count Lukstein’s servant. So startled was I by the unexpected sight of him, that I let the volume of Horace fall from my fingers to the ground. On the instant he ran forward and picked it up. I snatched it from his hand before he could do more than glance at its cover, where upon he made me a polite bow and returned to the embrasure. At last the porter succeeded in opening the door, and we got us into the street. Vincott was for upbraiding me at first in that I followed not his directions, but I cut him short roughly, and bade him hold his peace. For the world seemed very strange and empty, and I had no heart for talking. So we walked in silence back towards the inn.
Of a sudden, however, Vincott stopped.
“Listen!” he whispered.
I strained my ears until they ached. Behind us, in the quiet of the night, I could hear footsteps creeping and stealthy, not very far away. Vincott drew me into an angle of the wall, and we waited there holding our breaths. The footsteps slid nearer and nearer. Never since have I heard a sound which so filled me with terror. The haunting secrecy of their approach had something in it which chilled the blood—the sound of a man on the trail. He passed no more than six feet from where we stood. It was Otto Krax; and we remained until we could hear him no more. Vincott wiped his forehead.
“If he had stopped in front of us,” I said, “I should have cried out.”
“And by the Lord,” said he, “I should have done no less.”
A hundred yards farther on, Vincott stopped again.
“He has found out his mistake,” he exclaimed in a low, quavering voice.
We listened again; the footsteps were returning swiftly, but with the same quiet stealth.
“Quick!” said Vincott, “against the wall!”
“No,” said I, “he is tracking along the side of it. Let us face and pass him.”
We walked on at a good pace, and made no e at concealment. The man stopped as soon as we had gone by, turned, and came after us. My heart raced in my breast. He quickened his pace and drew level. “’Tis a strange time for women to run these streets?”
He spoke with a guttural accent, and his face leered over my shoulder. In a passion of fear I swung my arm free from the cloak, and hit at the face with all my strength. The dress I was wearing ripped at the shoulder as though you had torn a sheet of brown paper. My blow by good fortune caught him in the neck at the point where the jaw curves up into the cheek, and he fell heavily to the ground, his head striking full upon a rounded cobble. I waited to see no more, but tucked up my skirts and ran as though the fiend were at my heels, with Vincott panting behind me. We never halted until we had reached the alley which led to the back-door of the inn.
I invited Vincott to come in with me and recruit his energies with a second dose of Bristol milk.
“No! no!” he returned. “’Tis late already, and you have to start betimes in the morning.”
“There is the ceiling,” I suggested.
He laughed softly.
“Mr Buckler, I exaggerated its beauties,” he said, “and I fear me if I went in with you I should be forced to repeat my error. It is just that which I wish to avoid.”
“There are other and indifferent topics,” I replied, “on which we might speak frankly.” For a change had come over my spirit, and I dreaded to be left alone. Vincott shook his head.
“We should not find our tongues would talk of them.” However, he made no motion of departure, but stood scraping a toe between the stones. Then I heard him chuckle to himself.
“That was a good blow, my friend,” he said; “a good, clean blow, pat on the angle of the jaw. I would never have credited you with the strength for it. The man has been a plaguy nuisance to me, and the blow was a very soothing compensation. Only conduct your undertaking with the like energy throughout, and I do believe—” He pulled himself up suddenly.
“What do you believe?” I asked.
“I believe,” he replied sententiously, “that Lucy will need a new Sunday gown;” and he turned on his heel and marched out of the alley.
The next morning came a foreigner to the inn, and made inquiry concerning a woman who had stayed there over-night. Lucy, faithful to her promise, stoutly declared that no woman had rested in the house for so little as an hour, and, not content with that asseveration, she must needs go on to enforce her point by assuring him that the inn had given shelter to but one traveller, and that traveller a man. But the traveller by this time was well upon his way to London, and so learnt nothing of the inquiry until long afterwards.