Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  We looked to the priming of our pistols, buckled our swords tighter about the waist, shook the snow from our cloaks, and cautiously stepped out on to the path. At the edge of the village we stopped. ’Twas but one street; but that very narrow and busy. Not a moment passed but a door opened, and a panel of orange light was thrown across the gloom, and the figures of men and women were seen passing and repassing. The village was astir and humming like a hive. But there was no other way. For on our right rose the tooth of rock in a sheer scarp; on our left the ground broke steeply away at the backs of the houses.

  “We must make a dash for it,” said Larke. We waited until the street cleared for a moment, and then ran between the houses as fast as our legs would carry us. The snow deadened the sound of our feet, and we were well-nigh through the village when Larke tripped over a hillock and stumbled forward on his face with a curse. The next instant I dropped down beside him, and covering his mouth with my hand, forced him prone to the ground. For barely twenty feet ahead a door had suddenly opened, and a man dressed in the jacket and short breeches of the Tyroler came out on to the path. He stood with his back towards us and exchanged some jest with the inmates of the house, and I recognised his voice. I had heard it no more than once, it is true, but the occasion had fixed the sound of it for ever in my memories. It was the voice of the spy who had tracked us in the streets of Bristol. He turned towards the door, so that the light streamed full upon his face, shouted a “God be with you,” and strode off in the direction of the Castle. The sight of him left me no room for doubt. That he had outstripped us caused me, indeed, little surprise, for we had travelled by a devious way, and had, moreover, delayed here and there upon the road.

  Larke commenced to sputter and cough.

  “Quiet!” I whispered, for the man was yet within hearing.

  “Loose your hand, then!” he returned. “Tis easy enough to say quiet, but ’tis not so easy to choke quietly.”

  In my fluster I was holding his head tightly pressed into the snow, so that he could only have caught the barest glimpse of the man.

  “Who was it?” he asked.

  “One of Lukstein’s servants.”

  “You know him?”

  “I have seen him, and he has seen me. Maybe he would know me again.”

  We got safely quit of the houses and turned into the upward stretch of road, towards the buttress of rock. It jutted out across our path, and was plainly distinguishable, for the night was pure and clean, and appeared to be tinctured with a vague light from the snow-fields. I noticed, too, that on the far side of the valley a pale radiance was welling over the brim of the hills with promise of the moon. ’Twas a very sweet sight to me, since climbing an unknown rock-ridge in the dark hath little to commend it, unless it be necessity.

  At the foot of the rib we halted and prepared to ascend. But nowhere could I find a cranny for my fingers or a knob for my boot. The surface was indeed, as Jack had said, as smooth as an egg-shell. I stepped back to the outer edge of the road and examined it as thoroughly as was possible.

  For the first twelve feet it was absolutely perpendicular; above that point it began to slope. It was as though the lowest portion of the rib had been cut purposely away.

  And then I remembered! Julian had spoken only of a descent. Now a man may drop twelve feet and come to no harm, but once at the bottom he must bide there. There was but one way out of the difficulty, and luckily Larke’s shoulders were broad.

  “You must lend me your back,” I said. “I will haul you up after me.”

  He planted himself firmly against the rock, with his legs apart, and I climbed up his back on to his shoulders.

  “You teach me mercy to my horse,” he said quietly.

  “Why? What have I done?” I asked. “Jabbed your spurs into my thighs and stood on them,” he replied in a matter-of-fact voice. “But ’tis all one. Blood was meant to be spilled.”

  Being now more than five feet from the ground, I was able to worm my fingers into a crack at the point where the ridge began to incline, and so hoist myself on to an insecure footing. But it was utterly beyond my power to drag Larke after me, for the snow was thin and shallow, and underneath it the rock loose and shattered. I should most surely have been pulled over had I made the attempt. I ascended the ridge in the hope of discovering a more stable position, whence I could lower my cloak to my companion. But ’twas all slabs at a pretty steep slope, with here and there little breaks and ledges. I could just crawl up on my belly, but I could do no more. There was never a yard of level where you could secure a solid grip of the feet. So I climbed back again and leaned over the edge.

  “Jack,” I said, “I can’t give you a helping hand. It would mean a certain fall.”

  “I shall need little help, Morrice — very little,” he answered, in a tone of entreaty.

  “I can’t even give you that. The ridge is too insecure.”

  “Ah! Don’t say that!” he burst out “You have not come all these miles to be turned back by a foot or two of rock. It is absurd! It is worse than absurd. It is cowardly.”

  “Hush!” I whispered gently. For I could gauge his disappointment, and gauging it, could pardon his railing, “I have no thought of turning back.”

  “Then what will you do? Morrice, this is no time for dreaming! What will you do?”

  “Jack,” I said, “you and I must part company. I must win through this trouble by myself.”

  I heard something like a sob; it was the only answer he made.

  “Wait for me by the horses in the wood! Give me till dawn, but not a moment longer! If I am not with you then — well, ’tis the long good-bye betwixt you and me, Jack, and you had best ride for your life.”

  Again he made no answer. For a moment I fancied that he had stolen away in a fury, and I craned my head over the rock, so that I could look down into the road. He was standing motionless with bent shoulders just beneath me.

  “Jack!” I called. For it might well be the last time I should speak to him. We had been good friends, and I would not have him part from me in anger. “There is no other way. It can’t be helped.”

  He turned up his face towards me, but it was too dark for me to read its expression.

  “Very well, Morrice,” he said, and there was no resentment in his tone. “I will wait for your coming, and God send you come!”

  And with a dull, heavy step he walked back along the path.

  I turned and set my face to the cliff. After a while the ridge widened out, and the snow overlaid it more firmly, insomuch that a surefoot might have walked along by day. In the uncertain light, however — for the moon as yet hung low in a gap of the hills — I dared not venture it, and crept up on my hands and knees, testing carefully each tooth of rock or ever I trusted my weight to its stability. Towards the summit the rib thinned again to a sharp edge, and I was forced to straddle up it as best I could, with a leg dangling on either side. Altogether, what with the obstacles which the climb presented, and the numbing of my fingers, since the snow quickly soaked through my gloves, I made my way but slowly.

  At the top I found myself face to face with the Castle wall, which was some ten feet in height, and quite solid and uncrumbled. Between it and the rim of the crag, however, was a strip of level ground about half a yard broad, and I determined to follow it round until I should reach some angle at which it would be possible to climb the wall. On this strip the snow was heavily piled, and for security’s sake I got me again to my hands and knees, flogging a path before me with the scabbard of my sword. I began to fear that I might be foiled in my endeavour for want of a companion; for again I bethought me, Julian only descended, and a man might drop from any portion of the wall, whereas the scaling of it was a different matter. I proceeded in the opposite direction to the Castle gates, and so came out above the south face of the precipice. Below me the houses of Lukstein village glimmered like a cluster of glow-worms; I had merely to roll over to fall dump among the roof-tops. I could even hear a fai
nt murmur of brawling voices, and once I caught a plaintive snatch of song. For in that still, windless air sounds rose like bubbles in a clear pool of water.

  The wall on my left curved and twisted with the indents of the cliff, and a little more than halfway across the face I came to a spot where it ran in and out at a sharp angle. Moreover, one of the turrets which I had remarked from the wood bulged out from the line, and made of this angle a sort of crevice. Into the corner I thrust my back, and working my elbows and knees, with some help from the roughness of the stones, I managed to mount on to the parapet. The Castle lay stretched before me. In front stood the main body of the building; to my right a shorter wing, ending in a tower, jutted off towards the wall on which I lay. A broad terrace, enclosing in the centre a patch of lawn, separated me from the building.

  I fixed my eyes upon the tower. The window of the lower room was dark, and, strangely enough, ’twas the only window dark in the house. From the upper room there shone a faint gleam as of a lamp ill-trimmed. But all the other windows in the chief façade and the more distant part of this wing blazed out into the night. I could see passing figures shadowed upon the curtains, and music floated forth on a ripple of laughter, gavotte being linked to minuet and pavane in an endless melody.

  Every now and then some couple dainty with ribbons and jewels would step out from the porch, and with low voices and pensive steps pace the terrace until the cold froze the sweetness from their talk. They were plain to me, for the moon was riding high, and revealed even the nooks of the garden. Indeed, the only obscure corner was that in which I lay concealed. For a little pavilion leaned against the wall hard by me, and cast a deep shadow over the coping.

  But I hardly needed even that protection to screen me from these truants. I might have stood visible in the lawn’s centre, and yet been asked no question. For such as braved the frost came not out to spy for strangers; their eyes sought each other with too intimate an insistance.

  I had indeed timed my visit ill. The revels of the village were being repeated in the Castle.

  The sharp contrast of my particular purpose forced its reality grimly upon me, and made this vigil one long agony. I had planned to tell Larke the true object of my coming during the hour or so we should have to wait, and to draw some solace from his companionship. Now, however, I was planted there alone with a message of death for my foe or for myself, and the glamour of life in my eyes, and it seemed to me that all the tedium of my journey had been held over for these hours of waiting.

  To cap my discomfort I found occasion to prove to myself that I was a most indisputable prig. I had often discoursed to Larke concerning the consolations to be drawn from the classics in moments of distress. Now I sought to practise the precept, and to that end lowered a bucket into the well of my memories. But alas! I hauled up naught but tags about Cerberus and Charon, and passages from the sixth book of Vergil.

  To tell the honest truth, I was dismally afraid. The very stars in the sky flashed sword-points at my breast, and the ice upon the hills glittered like breastplates of steel. Moreover, my hands were swollen and clumsy with the cold, and I dreaded lest I might lose the nervous flexibility of their muscles, and so the nice command of my sword. I stripped off my gloves which were freezing on my fingers, and thrust my hands inside my shirt to keep them warm against my skin.

  Somehow or another, however, the night wore through. The stars and the moon shifted across the mountains, the music began to falter into breaks, and the murmurs grew louder from the village. I heard sledges descend the road with a jingle of bells, first one, then another, then several in quick succession. Iron gates clanked on the far side of the Castle, the windows darkened, and finally a light sprang up in the lower of the chambers which I watched.

  I turned over on my face and dropped on to the snow. But my spurs rattled and clinked as I touched the ground, and I stooped down and loosed them from my feet. I cast a hurried glance around me. Not a shadow moved; the world seemed frozen to an eternal immobility. I crept across the lawn, up the terrace steps to the sill of the window, and peered into the room. It was small and luxuriously furnished, the roof, panels, and floor, being all of a polished and mellow pine-wood. Warm-coloured rugs and the skins of chamois were scattered on the floor, and four candles in heavy sconces blazed on the mantel. Sunning himself before the log-fire sat Count Lukstein. I knew him at once from Julian’s account: a big, heavy-featured man with a loose dropping mouth. He was elaborately dressed in a suit of grey satin richly laced with silver, which seemed somewhat too airy and fanciful to befit the massive girth of his limbs. These he displayed to their full proportions, and the sight did little to enhearten me. For he sat with his legs stretched out and his arms clasped behind his head, the firelight playing gaily upon a sparkle of diamonds in his cravat.

  I noted the two doors of which Julian had spoken — that on my right leading to the bedroom, that on my left to the hall — and in particular a small writing-table which stood against the wall facing me. For a silver bell upon it caught the light of the candles and reflected it into my eyes. And I remembered Julian’s story of his visit to the Hotwell.

  Whether it was that I rattled the frame of the window, or that chance turned the Count’s looks my way, I know not; but he suddenly turned full towards me, My face was pressed flat to the glass. I drew back hastily into the shadow of the wall. One minute passed, two, three; the window darkened, and the Count, lifting his hands to his temples to shut out the light at his back, laid his forehead to the pane. Instinctively I clapped my hand to the pistol in my pocket and cocked it. The click of the hammer sounded loud in my ears as though I had exploded the charge. Count Lukstein flung open the window and set one foot outside.

  “Who is it?” he cried; and yet again, “who is it?”

  I drew a deep breath, stepped quickly past him into the room, and turned about. The two doors and the writing-table were now behind me.

  He staggered back from the window, and his hand dived at the hilt of his sword. But before he could draw it he raised his eyes to my face; he let go of his sword and stared in sheer bewilderment.

  “And in the devil’s name,” he asked, “who are you?”

  ’Twas a humiliating moment for me. He spoke as a master might to an impudent schoolboy, and it was with a quavering schoolboy’s treble that I answered him.

  “I am Morrice Buckler.”

  “An Englishman?” he questioned, bending his brows suddenly; for we were speaking in German.

  “Of the county of Cumberland,” I replied meekly. I felt as if I was repeating my catechism.

  “Then, Mr. Morrice Buckler, of the county of Cumberland,” he began, with an exaggerated politeness. But I broke in upon him.

  “I have some knowledge of the county of Bristol, too,” I said, with as much bravado as I could muster. But ’twas no great matter. The display would have disgraced a tavern bully.

  The words, however, served their turn. Just for a second, just long enough for me to perceive it, a startled look of fear flashed into his eyes, and his body seemed to shrink in bulk. Then he asked suddenly:

  “How came you here?”

  “By a path Sir Julian Harnwood told me of,” says I.

  He stretched a finger towards the window.

  “Go!” he cried in a low voice. “Go!”

  I stood my ground, for I noted with a lively satisfaction that the quaver had passed from my voice into his.

  “Have a care, Master Buckler!” he continued. “You are no longer in England. You would do well to remember that. There are reasons why I would have no disturbance here to-night. There are reasons. But on my life, if you refuse to obey me, I will have you whipped from here by my servants.”

  “Ah!” says I, “this is not the first time, Count Lukstein, that some one has stood between you and the bell.”

  He cast a glance over my shoulder. I saw that he was going to shout, and I whipped out the pistol from my pocket.

  “If you shout,” I said
, “the crack of this will add little to the noise.”

  “It would go ill with you if you fired it,” he blustered.

  “It would go yet worse with you,” I answered.

  And there we stood over against one another, the finest brace of cowards in Christendom, each seeking to overcome the other by a wordy braggadocio. Indeed, my forefinger so trembled on the trigger that I wonder the pistol did not go off and settle our quarrel out of hand.

  “What does it mean?” he burst out, screwing himself to a note of passion. “What does it mean? You skulk into my house like a thief.”

  “The manner of my visit does in truth leave much to be desired,” I conceded. “But for that you must thank your reputation.”

  “It does, in truth,” he returned, ignoring my last words. “It leaves much — very much. You see that yourself, Mr. Buckler. So, to-morrow! Return by the way you came, and come to me again tomorrow. We can talk at leisure. It is over-late to-night.”

  “Nay, my lord,” said I, drawing some solid comfort from the wheedling tone in which he spake. “Your servants will be abroad in the house tomorrow, and, as you were careful to remind me, I am not in England. I have waited for some six hours upon the parapet of your terrace, and I have no mind to let the matter drag to another day.”

  His eyes shifted uneasily about the room; but ever they returned to the shining barrel of my pistol.

  “Well, well,” said he at length, with a shrug of the shoulders, and a laugh that rang flat as a cracked guinea, “one must needs listen when the speaker holds a pistol at your head. Say your say and get it done.”

  He flung himself into a chair which stood in the corner by the window. I sat me in the one from which he had risen, drawing it closer to the fire. A little table stood within arm’s reach, and I pulled it up between us and laid my pistol on the edge.