His eye had fallen upon a crack in the door that led to the kitchen, although he had no means of knowing that it was a kitchen. To his amazement, a gleaming eye was looking out upon the room from beyond this narrow crack. He looked long and found that he was not mistaken. There was an eye, glued close to the opposite side of the rickety door, and its gaze was directed to the Countess Marlanx.
The spirit of adventure, recklessness, bravado—whatever you may choose to call it—flared high in the soul of this self-despised outsider. He could feel a strange thrill of exaltation shooting through his veins; he knew as well as he knew anything that he was destined to create commotion in that stately crowd, even against his better judgment. The desire to spring forward and throw open the door, thus exposing a probable con-federate, was stronger than he had the power to resist. Even as he sought vainly to hold himself in check, he became conscious that the staring eye was meeting his own in a glare of realisation.
Without pausing to consider the result of his action, he sprang across the room, shouting as he did so that there was a man behind the door. Grasping the latch, he threw the door wide open, the others in the room looking at him as if he were suddenly crazed.
He had expected to confront the owner of that basilisk eye. There was not a sign of a human being in sight. Beyond was a black little room, at the back of which stood an old cooking stove with a fire going and a kettle singing. He leaped through, prepared to grasp the mysterious watcher, but, to his utter amazement, the kitchen was absolutely empty, save for inanimate things. His surprise was so genuine that it was not to be mistaken by the men who leaped to his side. He had time to note that two of them carried pistols in their hands, and that Tullis and Quinnox had placed themselves between the Prince and possible danger.
There was instant commotion, with cries and exclamations from all. Quick as the others were, the old woman was at his side before them, snarling with rage. Her talon-like fingers sunk into his arm, and her gaze went darting about the room in a most convincing way. Some minutes passed before the old woman could be quieted. Then King explained his action. He swore solemnly, if sheepishly, that he could not have been mistaken, and yet the owner of that eye had vanished as if swallowed up by the mountain.
Baron Dangloss was convinced that the young man had seen the eye. Without compunction he began a search of the room, the old woman looking on with a grin of glee.
“Search! Search!” she croaked. “It was the Spirit Eye! It is looking at you now, my fine baron! It finds you, yet cannot be found. No, no! Oh, you fools! Get out! Get out! All of you! Prince or no Prince, I fear you not, nor all your armies. This is my home! My castle! Go! Go!”
“There was a man here, old woman,” said the Baron coolly. “Where is he? What is your game? I am not to be fooled by these damnable tricks of yours. Where is the man?”
She laughed aloud, a horrid sound. The Prince clutched Tullis by the leg in terror.
“Brace up, Bobby,” whispered his big friend, leaning down to comfort him. “Be a man!”
“It—it’s mighty hard,” chattered Bobby, but he squared his little shoulders.
The ladies of the party had edged forward, peering into the kitchen, alarm having passed, although the exclamation “boo!” would have played havoc with their courage.
“I swear there was some one looking through that crack,” protested King, wiping his brow in confusion. “Miss—er—I should say—you could have seen it from where you stood,” he pleaded, turning to the lady in grey.
“Dear me, I wish I had,” she cried. “I’ve always wanted to see some one snooping.”
“There is no window, no trap door, no skylight,” remarked the Baron, puzzled. “Nothing but the stovepipe, six inches in diameter. A man couldn’t crawl out through that, I’m sure. Mr. King, we’ve come upon a real mystery. The eye without a visible body.”
“I’m sure I saw it,” reiterated Truxton. The Prince’s aunt was actually laughing at him. But so was the Witch, for that matter. He didn’t mind the Witch.
Suddenly the old woman stepped into the middle of the room and began to wave her hands in a mysterious manner over an empty pot that stood on the floor in front of the stove. The others drew back, watching her with the greatest curiosity.
A droning song oozed from the thin lips; the gesticulations grew in weirdness and fervor. Then, before their startled eyes, a thin film of smoke began to rise from the empty pot. It grew in volume until the room was quite dense with it. Even more quickly than it began, it disappeared, drawn apparently by some supernatural agency into the draft of the stove and out through the rickety chimney pipe. Even Dangloss blinked his eyes, and not because they were filled with smoke.
A deafening crash, as of many guns, came to their ears from the outside. With one accord the entire party rushed to the outer door, a wild laugh from the hag pursuing them.
“There!” she screamed. “There goes all there was of him! And so shall we all go some day. Fire and smoke!”
Not one there but thought on the instant of the Arabian nights and the genii who went up in smoke—those never-to-be-forgotten tales of wonder.
Just outside the door stood Lieutenant Saffo of the guard, his hand to his cap. He was scarcely distinguishable, so dark had the day become.
“Good Lord!” shouted Tullis. “What’s the matter? What has happened?”
“The storm, sir,” said Saffo. “It is coming down the valley like the wind.” A great crash of thunder burst overhead and lightning darted through the black, swirling skies.
“Very sudden, sir,” added Mr. Hobbs from behind. “Like a puff of wind, sir.”
The Witch stood in the door behind them, smiling as amiably as it was possible for her to smile.
“Come in,” she said. “There’s room for all of you. The spirits have gone. Ha, ha! My merry man! Even the eye is gone. Come in, your Highness. Accept the best I can offer—shelter from the hurricane. I’ve seen many, but this looks to be the worst. So it came sudden, eh? Ha, ha!”
The roar of wind and rain in the trees above seemed like a howl of confirmation. Into the hovel crowded the dismayed pleasure-seekers, followed by the soldiers, who had made the horses fast at the first sign of the storm.
Down came the rain in torrents, whisked and driven, whirled and shot by the howling winds, split by the lightning and urged to greater glee by the deafening applause of the thunder. Apple carts in the skies!
Out in the dooryard the merry grandson of the Witch was dancing as if possessed by revelling devils.
CHAPTER VIII
LOOKING FOR AN EYE
“Washing the dead men’s bones,” was the remark King made a few minutes later. The storm was at its height; the sheets of rain that swept down the pebbly glen elicited the gruesome sentence. He stood directly behind the quaking Loraine, quite close to the open door; there is no doubt that the observation was intended for her ears, maliciously or otherwise.
She gave him an awed glance, but no verbal response. It was readily to be seen that she was terrified by the violence of the mountain tornado. As if to shame him for the frivolous remark, she suddenly changed her position, putting herself behind him.
“I like that,” he remonstrated, emboldened by the elements. “You leave me in front to be struck by the first bolt of lightning that comes along. And I a stranger, too.”
“Isn’t it awful?” she murmured, her fingers in her ears, her eyes tightly closed. “Do you think we’ll be struck?”
“Certainly not,” he assured her. “This is a charmed spot. It’s a frolic of her particular devils. She waves her hand: all the goblins and thunder-workers in this neck of the woods hustle up to see what’s the matter. Then there’s an awful rumpus. In a minute or two she’ll wave her hand and—presto! It will stop raining. But,” with a distressed look out into the thick of it, “it would be a beastly joke if lightning should happen to strike that nag of mine. I’d not only have to walk to town, but I’d have to pay three prices for the bru
te.”
“I think she’s perfectly—ooh!—perfectly wonderful. Goodness, that was a crash! Where do you think it struck?”
“If you’ll stand over here a little closer I’ll point out the tree. See? Right down the ravine there? See the big limb swaying? That’s the place. The old lady is carrying her joke too far. That’s pretty close home. Stand right there, please. I won’t let it rain in on you.”
“You are very good, Mr. King. I—I’ve always thought I loved a storm. Ooh! But this is too terrible! Aren’t you really afraid you’ll be struck? Thanks, ever so much.” He had squared himself between her and the door, turning his back upon the storm: but not through cowardice, as one might suppose.
“Don’t mention it. I won’t mind it so much, don’t you know, if I get struck in the back. How long ago did you say it was that you went to school with my sister?”
All this time the Witch was haranguing her huddled audience, cursing the soldiers, laughing gleefully in the faces of her stately, scornful guests, greatly to the irritation of Baron Dangloss, toward whom she showed an especial attention.
Tullis was holding the Prince in his arms. Colonel Quinnox stood before them, keeping the babbling, leering beldame from thrusting her face close to that of the terrified boy. Young Vos Engo glowered at Truxton King from the opposite side of the room. Mr. Hobbs had safely ensconced himself in the rear of the six guardsmen, who stood near the door, ready to dash forth if by any chance the terrified horses should succeed in breaking away.
The Countess Marlanx, pale and rigid, her wondrous eyes glowing with excitement, stood behind John Tullis, straight and strong, like a storm spirit glorying in the havoc that raged about her. Time and again she leaned forward to utter words of encouragement in the ear of the little Prince, never without receiving a look of gratitude and surprise from his tall protector.
And all this time the goose-herd grandson of the Witch was dancing his wild, uncanny solo in the thick of the brew, an exalted grin on his face, strange cries of delight breaking from his lips: a horrid spectacle that fascinated the observers.
With incredible swiftness the storm passed. Almost at its height, there came a cessation of the roaring tempest; the downpour was checked, the thunder died away and the lightning trickled off into faint flashes. The sky cleared as if by magic. The exhibition, if you please, was over!
Even the most stoical, unimpressionable men in the party looked at each other in bewilderment and—awe, there was no doubt of it. The glare that Dangloss bent upon the hag proved that he had been rudely shaken from his habitual complacency.
“It is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, over and over again.
The Countess Marlanx was trembling violently. Tullis, observing this, tried to laugh away her nervousness.
“Mere coincidence, that’s all,” he said. “Surely you are not superstitious. You can’t believe she brought about this storm?”
“It isn’t that,” she said in a low voice. “I feel as if a grave personal danger had just passed me by. Not danger for the rest of you, but for me alone. That is the sensation I have: the feeling of one who has stepped back from the brink of an abyss just in time to avoid being pushed over. I can’t make you understand. See! I am trembling. I have seen no more than the rest of you, yet am more terrified, more upset than Robin, poor child. Perhaps I am foolish. I know that something dreadful has—I might say, touched me. Something that no one else could have seen or felt.”
“Nerves, my dear Countess. Shadows! I used to see them and feel them when I was a lad no bigger than Bobby if left alone in the dark. It is a grown-up fear of goblins. You’ll be over it as soon as we are outside.”
Ten minutes later the cavalcade started down the rain-swept road toward the city, dry blankets having been placed across the saddles occupied by the ladies and the Prince. The Witch stood in her doorway, laughing gleefully, inviting them to come often.
“Come again, your Highness,” she croaked sarcastically.
“The next time I come, it will be with a torch to burn you alive!” shouted back Dangloss. To Tullis he added: “’Gad, sir, they did well to burn witches in your town of Salem. You cleared the country of them, the pests.”
Darkness was approaching fast among the sombre hills; the great pass was enveloped in the mists and the gloaming of early night. In a compact body the guardsmen rode close about Prince Robin and his friend. Ingomede had urged this upon Tullis, still oppressed by the feeling of disaster that had come over her in the hovel.
“It means something, my friend, it means something,” she insisted. “I feel it—I am sure of it.” Riding quite close beside him, she added in lower tones: “I was with my husband no longer ago than yesterday. Do you know that I believe it is Count Marlanx that I feel everywhere about me now? He—his presence—is in the air! Oh, I wish I could make you feel as I do.”
“You haven’t told me why you ran away on Sunday,” he said, abruptly, dismissing her argument with small ceremony.
“He sent for me. I—I had to go.” There was a new, strange expression in her eyes that puzzled him for a long time. Suddenly the solution came: she was completely captive to the will of this hated husband. The realisation brought a distinct, sickening shock with it.
Down through the lowering shades rode the Prince’s party, swiftly, even gaily by virtue of relaxation from the strain of a weird half hour. No one revealed the slightest sign of apprehension arising from the mysterious demonstration in which nature had taken a hand.
Truxton King was holding forth, with cynical good humour, for the benefit, if not the edification of Baron Dangloss, with whom he rode—Mr. Hobbs galloping behind not unlike the faithful Sancho of another Quixote’s day.
“It’s all tommy-rot, Baron,” said Truxton. “We’ve got a dozen stage wizards in New York who can do all she did and then some. That smoke from the kettle is a corking good trick—but that’s all it is, take my word for it. The storm? Why, you know as well as I do, Baron, that she can’t bring rain like that. If she could, they’d have her over in the United States right now, saving the crops, with or without water. That was chance. Hobbs told me this morning it looked like rain. By the way, I must apologise to him. I said he was a crazy kill-joy. The thing that puzzles me is what became of the owner of that eye. I’ll stake my life on it, I saw an eye. ’Gad, it looked right into mine. Queerest feeling it gave me.”
“Ah, that’s it, my young friend. What became of the eye? Poof! And it is gone. We searched immediately. No sign. It is most extraordinary.”
“I’ll admit it’s rather gruesome, but—I say, do you know I’ve a mind to look into that matter if you don’t object, Baron. It’s a game of some sort. She’s a wily old dame, but I think if we go about it right we can catch her napping and expose the whole game. I’m going back there in a day or two and try to get at the bottom of it. That confounded eye worries me. She’s laughing up her sleeve at us, too, you know.”
“I should advise you to keep away from her, my friend. Granted she has tricked us: why not? It is her trade. She does no harm—except that she’s most offensively impudent. And I rather imagine she’ll resent your investigation, if you attempt it. I can’t say that I’d blame her.” The Baron laughed.
“Baron, it struck me a bit shivery at the time, but I want to say to you now that the eye that I saw at the crack was not that of an idle peeper, nor was it a mere fakir’s substitute. It was as malevolent as the devil and it glared—do you understand? Glared! It didn’t peep!”
Truxton King, for reasons best known to himself, soon relapsed into a thoughtful, contemplative silence. Between us, he was sorely vexed and disappointed. When the gallant start was made from the glen of “dead men’s bones,” he found that he was to be cast utterly aside, quite completely ignored by the fair Loraine. She rode off with young Count Vos Engo without so much as a friendly wave of the hand to him. He said it over to himself several times: “not even a friendly wave of her hand.” It was as if s
he had forgotten his existence, or—merciful Powers! What was worse—as if she took this way of showing him his place. Of course, that being her attitude, he glumly found his place—which turned out rather ironically to be under the eye of a police officer—and made up his mind that he would stay there.
Vos Engo, being an officer in the Royal Guard, rode ahead by order of Colonel Quinnox. Truxton, therefore, had her back in view—at rather a vexing distance, too—for mile after mile of the ride to the city. Not so far ahead, however, that he could not observe every movement of her light, graceful figure as she swept down the King’s Highway. She was a perfect horsewoman, firm, jaunty, free. Somehow he knew, without seeing, that a stray brown wisp of hair caressed her face with insistent adoration: he could see her hand go up from time to time to brush it back—just as if it were not a happy place for a wisp of hair. Perhaps—he shivered with the thought of it—perhaps it even caressed her lips. Ah, who would not be a wisp of brown hair!
He galloped along beside the Baron, a prey to gloomy considerations. What was the use? He had no chance to win her. That was for story-books and plays. She belonged to another world—far above his. And even beyond that, she was not likely to be attracted by such a rude, ungainly, sunburned lout as he, with such chaps about as Vos Engo, or that what’s-his-name fellow, or a dozen others whom he had seen. Confound it all, she was meant for a prince, or an archduke. What chance had he?
But she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen. Yes; she was the golden girl of his dreams. Within his grasp, so to speak, and yet he could not hope to seize her, after all. Was she meant for that popinjay youth with the petulant eye and the sullen jaw? Was he to be the lucky man, this Vos Engo?
The Baron’s dry, insinuating voice broke in upon the young man’s thoughts. “I think it’s pretty well understood that she’s going to marry him.” The little old minister had been reading King’s thoughts; he had the satisfaction of seeing his victim start guiltily. It was on the tip of Truxton’s tongue to blurt out: “How the devil did you know what I was thinking about?” But he managed to control himself, asking instead, with bland interest:
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 85