On the fourth day, however, an incident occurred which made the next week fly like a single hour, and brought me to long most ardently, not merely that the Countess might lengthen her visit, but that she would depart from England without so much as passing through London on her way. For as I waked that morning at a somewhat late hour, I perceived Marston sitting patiently on the edge of my bed. He was in riding-dress, with his boots and breeches much stained with mud, and he carried a switch in his hand. For a while I lay staring at him in silent surprise. He did not notice that I was awake, and sat absorbed in a moody reverie. At last I stirred, and he turned towards me. I noticed that his face was dirty and leaden, his eyes heavy and tired.
“You sleep very well,” said he.
“Have you waited long?”
“An hour. I was anxious to speak to you, so I came up to your room.”
“We can talk the matter over at breakfast,” said I cheerfully, though, to tell the truth, I felt exceedingly uneasy at the strangeness of his manner. And I made a movement as though I would rise; but he budged not so much as an inch.
“I don’t fancy we shall breakfast together,” said he, with a slow smile, and after a pause: “you sleep very well,” he repeated, “considering that you have a crime upon your conscience.”
I started up in my bed.
“Lie down!” he snarled, with a sudden fierceness, and with a queer sense of helplessness I obeyed him.
“That’s right,” he continued, with a patronising smile. “Keep quiet and listen!”
For the moment, however, there was nothing for me to listen to, since Marston sat silent, watching with evident enjoyment the concern which I betrayed. He had chosen the easiest way with me. The least hint of condescension in another’s voice always made me conscious in the extreme of my own shortcomings, and I felt that I lay helpless in some new toils of his weaving.
At last he spoke.
“You killed Count Lukstein.”
I was prepared for the accusation by his previous words.
“Well?” I asked, in as natural a tone as I could command.
“Well,” he returned, “I would not be too hard with you. What if you returned to Cumberland to-day, and stayed there? Your estates, I am sure, will thrive all the better for their master’s supervision.”
“My estates,” I replied, “have a steward to supervise them. Their master will return to them at no man’s bidding.”
“It is a pity, a very great pity,” said he thoughtfully, flicking his switch in the air. “For not only are you unwise in your own interests, but you drive me to a proceeding which I assure you is very repugnant and distasteful to my nature. Really, Mr. Buckler, you should have more consideration for others.”
The smooth irony of his voice began to make my anger rise.
“And what is this proceeding?” I inquired.
“It would be my duty,” he began, and I interrupted him.
“I can quite understand, then, that it is repugnant to your nature.”
He smiled indulgently.
“It is a common fault of the very young to indulge in dialectics at inappropriate seasons. It would be my duty, unless you retired obediently to Cumberland, to share my knowledge with the lady you have widowed.”
“I shall save you that trouble,” said I, much relieved, “for I am in the mind to inform the Countess of the fact myself. Indeed, I called at her lodging the other day with that very object.”
“But the Countess had left, and you didn’t.” He turned on me sharply; the words were more a question than a statement. I remained silent, and he smiled again. “As it is, I shall inform her. That will make all the difference.”
I needed no arguments to convince me of the truth of what he said. The confession must come from me, else was I utterly undone. I sat up and looked at him defiantly.
“So be it, then! It is a race between us which shall reach her first.”
“Pardon me,” he explained, in the same unruffled, condescending tone; “there will be no race, for I happen to know where the Countess is a-visiting, and you, I fancy, do not. I have the advantage of you in that respect.”
I glanced at him doubtfully. Did he seek to bluff me into yielding, I wondered? But he sat on the bedside, carelessly swinging a leg, with so easy a composure that I could not hesitate to credit his words. However, I feigned not to believe him, and telling him as much, fell back upon my pillow with a show of indifference, and turned my face from him to the wall, as though I would go to sleep.
“You do believe me,” he insisted suavely. “You do indeed. Besides, I can give you proof of my knowledge. I am so certain that I know the lady’s whereabouts, and that you do not, that I will grant you four days’ grace to think the matter over. As I say, I have no desire to press you hard, and to be frank with you, I am not quite satisfied as to how my information would be received.” I turned back towards him, and noticing the movement, he continued: “Oh, make no mistake, Mr. Buckler! The disclosure will ruin your chance most surely. But will it benefit me? That is the point. However, I must take the risk, and will, if you persist in your unwisdom.”
I lay without answering him, turning over in my mind the only plan I could think of, which offered me a chance of outwitting him.
“You might send word to me, four days from now, which alternative you prefer. To-day is Monday. On Thursday I shall expect to hear from you.”
He uncrossed his legs as he spoke, and the scabbard of his sword rattled against the frame of the bed. The sound, chiming appositely to my thoughts, urged me to embrace my plan, and I did embrace it, though reluctantly. After all, I thought, ’twas a dishonourable wooing that Marston was about. So I said, with a sneer:
“Men have been called snivelling curs for better conduct than yours.”
“By pedantic schoolboys,” he replied calmly. “But then the schoolboys have been whipped for their impertinence.”
With that he drew the bed-clothes from my chest, and raised his whip in the air. I clenched my fists, and did not stir a muscle. I could have asked for nothing that was more like to serve me. I made a mistake, however, in not feigning some slight resistance, and he suddenly flung back the clothes upon me.
“The ruse was ingenious,” he said, with a smile, “but I cannot gratify you to the extent you wish. In a week’s time I shall have the greatest pleasure in crossing swords with you. But until then we must be patient.”
My patience was exhausted already, and raising myself upon my elbow, I loaded him with every vile epithet I could lay my tongue to. He listened with extraordinary composure and indifference, stripping off his gloves the while, until I stopped from sheer lack of breath.
“It’s all very true,” he remarked quietly. “I have nothing to urge against the matter of your speech. Your voice is, I think, unnecessarily loud, but that is a small defect, and easily reformed.”
The utter failure of my endeavour to provoke him to an encounter, combined with the contemptuous insolence of his manner, lifted me to the highest pitch of fury.
“You own your cowardice, then!” I cried, fairly beside myself with rage. “You have plotted against me from the outset like a common, rascally intriguer. No device was too mean for you to adopt. Why, the mere lie about the miniature — —”
I stopped abruptly, seeing that he turned on me a sudden questioning look.
“Miniature?” he exclaimed. “What miniature?”
I remembered the pledge which I had given to Ilga, and continued hurriedly, seeking to cover up my slip:
“I could not have believed there was such underhand treachery in the world.”
“Then now,” said he, “you are better informed,” and on the instant his composure gave way. It seemed as though he could no longer endure the strain which his repression threw on him. Passion leaped into his face, and burned there like a flame; his voice vibrated and broke with the extremity of feeling; his very limbs trembled.
“’Tis all old talk to me — ages old a
nd hackneyed. You are only repeating my thoughts, the thoughts I have lived with through this damned night. But I have killed them. Understand that!” His voice shrilled to a wild laugh. “I have killed them. Do you think I don’t know it’s cowardly? But there’s a prize to be won, and I tell you” — he raised his hands above his head, and spoke with a sort of devilish exaltation— “I tell you, were my mother alive, and did she stand between Ilga and me, I would trample her as surely as I mean to trample you.”
“Damn you!” I cried, wrought to a very hysteria by his manner. “Don’t call her by that name!”
“And you!” he said, and with an effort he recovered his self-control. “And you, are your hands quite clean, my little parson? You kill the husband secretly, and then woo the wife with all the innocence and timidity in the world. Is there no treachery in that?”
I was completely staggered by his words and the contempt with which they were spoken. That any one should conceive my lack of assurance in paying my addresses to be a deliberate piece of deceit, had never so much as entered my head. I had always been too busy upbraiding myself upon that very score. Yet I could not but realise now how plausible the notion appeared. ’Twas plain that Marston believed I had been carefully playing a part; and I wondered: Would Ilga imagine that, too, when I told her my story? Would she believe that my deference and hesitation had been assumed to beguile her? I gazed at Marston, horror-stricken by the conjecture.
“Ay!” said he, nodding an answer to my look, “we have found each other out. Come, let us be frank! We are just a couple of dishonest scoundrels, and preaching befits neither of us.”
He moved away from the bedside, and picked up his whip which he had dropped on to the floor. It lay close to the window, and as he raised himself again, he looked out across the garden.
“You overlook the Park,” he said in an altered tone. “It is very strange.”
At the time I was so overwhelmed by the construction which he had placed upon my behaviour, that I did not carefully consider what he meant. Thinking over the remark subsequently, however, I inferred from it, what indeed I had always suspected, that Marston had no knowledge his interviews and promenades with the Countess had taken place within sight of my windows.
He took up his hat, and opened the door.
“I told you fortune would give me my revenge,” he said.
“You are leaving your gloves,” said I, awakened to the necessity of action by his leave-taking.
The gloves were lying on the edge of the bed. Thanking me politely, he returned, and stooped forward to take them. I gathered them in my hand and tossed them into his face. His head went back as though I had struck him a blow; he flushed to a dark crimson, and I saw his fingers tighten about his whip. The next moment, however, he gave a little amused laugh.
“There is much of the child lingering in you, Mr. Buckler,” he said. “’Tis a very amiable quality, and I wonder not that it gets you friends. Indeed, I should have rejoiced to have been reckoned among them myself, had such a consummation been possible.”
He spoke the last sentence with something of sincerity; but it only served to increase my rage.
“You cannot disregard the insult,” I cried.
“Why not? There are no witnesses.”
“There shall be witnesses and to spare on the next occasion,” I replied, baffled by his coolness. He shrugged his shoulders.
“You have four days to bring about that occasion. Afterwards I shall seek it myself.”
I had four days wherein to discover the whereabouts of Countess Lukstein, or to compel Marston to an encounter. The one alternative seemed impossible; the other, as I had evidence enough, little short of impossible. Four days! The words beat into my brain like dull strokes of a hammer. I could not think for their pressing repetition. I was, moreover, bitterly sensible that I had myself placed the weapon for my destruction into Marston’s hand.
For there was no doubting that he had obtained his knowledge from his sister. I had plumed myself somewhat upon my diplomacy in revealing my secret to her, and in using it as a means to force her to deny my acquaintance. Now, when it was all too late, I saw what a mistake my cleverness had been. For not only through Lady Tracy’s swoon had I missed my particular aim, but I had presented to my antagonist a veritable Excalibur, and kept not so much as a poniard for my own defence. Even then, however, I did not realise the entirety of the mistake, and had no inkling of the price I was to pay for it.
The first step which I took that morning was to make inquiries at the lodging of Countess Lukstein. The servants, however, whom she had left behind, knew — or rather pretended to know — nothing of their mistress’ journey, beyond what they had previously told me.
Since, then, it was impossible to search the length and breadth of England within four days, I was thrown back upon my last resource. It was discreditable enough even to my fevered mind; but I could see no other way out of the difficulty, and at all costs I was resolved that Marston should not relate his story to the Countess until I had related mine. For even if he was minded to speak the truth, it would make all the difference, as he justly said, which of us twain spoke the first. I felt certain, moreover, that he would not speak the truth. For, to begin with, he would ascribe my timidity to a carefully-laid plan, since that was his genuine conviction; and again, remembering the story which I believed him to have invented concerning the miniature, I had no doubt that he would so embroider his actual knowledge that I should figure on the pattern as a common assassin. How much of the real history of Count Lukstein’s death he knew, of course I was not aware, nor did I trouble myself to consider.
My conclusion, accordingly, was to fix upon him within the next four days an affront so public and precise that he must needs put the business without delay to the arbitrament of swords; in which case, I was determined, one or the other of us should find his account.
To this end I spent the day amidst the favourite resorts of the town, passing from the Piazza to the Exchange in search of him; thence back to St. Paul’s Church, thence to Hyde Park, from the Park across the water to the Spring Garden at Lambeth, and thence again to Barn Elms. By this time the afternoon was far advanced, and bethinking me that he might by chance be dining abroad, I sought out the taverns which he most frequented: Pontac’s in Abchurch Lane, Locket’s, and the “Rummer.” But this pursuit was as fruitless as the former, and without waiting to bite a morsel myself, I hurried to make the round of the chocolate-houses. Marston, however, was not to be discovered in any of them, nor had word been heard of him that day. At the “Spread Eagle,” in Covent Garden, however, I fell across Lord Culverton, and framing an excuse persuaded him to bear me company; which he did with great good-nature, for he was engaged at ombre, a game to which he was much addicted. At the “Cocoa Tree” in Pall Mall, I secured Elmscott by a like pretext, and asked him if he knew of another who was minded for a frolic, and would make the fourth. He presented me immediately to a Mr. Aglionby, a country gentleman of the neighbouring county to my own, but newly come to town, and very boisterous and talkative. I thought him the very man for my purpose, since he would be like to spread the report of the quarrel, and joining him to my company I summoned a hackney coach, and we drove to the Lincoln’s Inn Fields. A hundred yards from Marston’s house I dismissed the coach and sent Elmscott and the rest of the party forward, myself following a little way behind. I had previously instructed Elmscott in the part which I desired him to play. Briefly, he was to inquire whether Marston was within; and if, as I suspected, that was the case, to seek admittance on the plea that he wished to introduce a friend from the country, in the person of Mr. Aglionby. Whereupon I was to join myself quietly to the party, and so secure an entrance into the house in company with sufficient witnesses to render a duel inevitable upon any insult.
Marston, however, was prepared against all contingencies, for four servants appeared in answer to my cousin’s knocking; and as they opened the door no further than would allow one pers
on to enter at a time, it was impossible even to carry the entrance by a rush. My friends, however, had no thought of doing that, since one of the servants came forward into the street and gravely informed them that his master had fallen suddenly sick of an infectious fever, and lay abed in a frenzy of delirium. Even as the fellow spoke, a noise of shouts and wild laughter came through the open door. My companions shuddered at the sounds, and with a few hasty expressions of regret, hurried away from the neighbourhood. I ran after them, shouting out that it was all a lie; that Marston had not one-tenth of the fever which possessed me, and that his illness was a coward’s dissimulation to avoid a just chastisement. However, I had better have spared my breath; for my words had no effect but to alienate their good-will, and they presently parted from me with every appearance of relief.
I walked home falling from depth to depth of despondency. The summer evening, pleasant with delicate colours, came down upon the town; the air was charged and lucent with a cool dew; the sweet odours of the country — nowhere, I think, so haunting, so bewitching to the senses as when one catches them astray in the heart of a city — were fragrant in the nostrils, so that the passers-by walked with a new alertness in their limbs, and a renewed youth in their faces; and as I stood at the door of my lodging, a great home-sickness swept in upon my soul, a longing for the dark fields in the starshine and the silent hills about them. I was seized with a masterful impulse to saddle my horse and ride out northwards through the night, while the lights grew blurred and misty behind me, and the fresh wind blew out of the heavens on my face. I doubt not, however, that the desire would have passed ere I had got far, and that I should have felt much the same desolate home-sickness for the cobbles and dust of London as I felt now for Cumberland.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 204