Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Even now, though the boys were hired at the courier rate, we were scarcely doing one German mile an hour, and in the wet bottoms about Spandau we crawled. It was half-past nine when we reached the fortress town, and ten before, after changing horses, we had left it behind us.

  Thenceforth we struggled forward, under a steady downpour, now through mud into which we sank almost to the hubs of the wheels, now under gloomy pines where again and again in their efforts to avoid the rutted ground the drivers bumped us — at the risk of breaking everything — against the stumps. I fumed, I fretted, I resigned myself; and about noon, reaching a village the very name of which I have now forgotten, but which seemed to boast a decent inn, I sprang out, announced that I should dine there, and thankfully sought a glowing stove.

  It had not yet occurred to me that we might not reach Kyritz that night, and I made the mistake of resting for an hour after I had dined. It was two o’clock when we took the road again, and now, a little more resigned to the position, I had leisure to take in the aspect of the road and those who travelled it, and to note that here, too, the Baron’s warning had been to the point.

  Disbanded soldiers, begging their way home, sutlers’ carts with sturdy rogues trudging behind them, skulking figures that peered at us from the undergrowth and were gone as soon as seen — these, and once a squad of horse-police armed to the teeth, bore abundant witness to the disordered state of the country and to the wrack which the ebb of war had left.

  The waters, too, were rising. Towards four we came to a place where a swollen stream crossed the road, and much time was lost in persuading the postboys to attempt the crossing. I don’t know that I should have persuaded them if one of the troops of vagabonds I have mentioned had not come up and offered their aid.

  They sounded before us, led the frightened horses through the ford, propped up the carriage — in all I must allow, ably directed by my chance companion, at whose continued presence in the carriage — as he did not trouble me — I had silently winked. Indeed, I was glad to have him with us at this juncture, for our helpers were an ugly crew, and if appearances went for anything would have as soon robbed us as aided us.

  As the afternoon wore on I felt my spirits sink. I experienced in lieu of the briskness of the start a growing depression, as if some part of me, more sensitive than the mind, recognized that which was indeed the case — that I was about to lose touch with the life I knew, the life that had hitherto encircled me; and to come face to face with dark and grim things.

  At the time I set down the change to the weather, to the gloomy prospect of the road before me, to depression on Ellis’s account; but I believe now that some shadow cast by the future fell on me on that afternoon and silently warned me that I was about to descend to a lower plane and to come in contact for a span with that underworld which seethes beneath our civilization.

  We were still over two German miles from Kyritz when the November day began to close in. The horses were jaded, the postboys out of temper, and we were plodding along at little more than a walk when we heard the horn of an approaching mail. The man who was riding shouted something to my fellows, and a moment later they pulled up, and the lad on the wheeler turned in his saddle.

  “He says, mein Herr, that we cannot go beyond—” some half-heard name. “The water is out.”

  “Nonsense!” I answered peevishly. “Get on!”

  The lad shrugged his shoulders and obeyed. But ten minutes later we met an empty caleche. I stopped it and got the same news from it. “And you’d best push on,” the driver added, “for there’s but one inn at Pessin, and it is like a fair already. There’ll be no crossing before daylight.”

  “D — n!” I said, forced to believe the story, and a good deal out of humour. “Go on!” I cried. “We shall see when we get there.”

  But five minutes later we stopped again. The postilions — confound them! — would not go farther without lights. Then on again, with flagging horses, until suddenly we pulled up with a jerk that flung me against the front of the carriage. I thrust my head out of the window to learn what was wrong, and made out a dark mass lying across the track, beyond the reach of our lights.

  Between us and it three or four figures gesticulated, and these as they came forward I saw to be those of two men and two women. The taller of the men came up to the carriage door. “We’ve had an upset and lost a wheel,” he said. “We shall be greatly obliged, mein Hen, if you will take two of us on to Pessin. It is only half a league and—” he broke off abruptly as our eyes met.

  “Of course I will,” I answered. “I will take on the two ladies with pleasure. I’m sorry I can’t take all.”

  He was still staring at me. “If you’ll take me and my wife then,” he returned, “that will do. The girl and the lad can ride in on the two horses.”

  I was surprised. “But it’s raining,” I objected — indeed it was raining very heavily. “Surely the two ladies had better come on?”

  He did not reply at once, but fell back, and for a moment conferred with his companions. The light shone on them — they had come within its compass — and I had now a good view of them; and I was very much mistaken if they were not the people who had left the “Russie” in front of me that morning — the same four, therefore, whom I had seen in the Thiergarten the day before.

  But if this were so, and I was pretty sure of it, it did not explain the man’s odd selection. And I was further surprised and not at all pleased when, breaking off the discussion, he returned to the window and persisted in his plan.

  “It will be the same to you, mein Hen,” he said, “whom you take. And we’ll do, if you please, as I proposed. My daughter will be safe with her cousin. She is used to riding.”

  The woman advanced to support him. “If the gentleman cannot take us all in?” she said smoothly.

  It was plain that the gentleman could not, and the suggestion was otiose. But the woman’s movement afforded me a good view of her face, and I was convinced that she was not only the lady of the Thiergarten but the same woman whom I had seen leaving Wittenberg with the girl whom I now knew to be Norma Mackay.

  Whether the girl who was with her now was the same, I could not say, as she kept out of the light.

  However, I put that thought away for future digestion and in the meantime I had to deal with the man’s request. It was his business, after all, who rode dry and who faced the weather; yet for an instant I hesitated, while in the half light behind the lamp the two and I gazed frowning at one another, like fencers feeling their antagonists’ blades. And I confess I liked very little what I saw.

  I did not like the woman — my mind was made up as to that. And I did not like the man; he was tall, he looked taller in his long, straight coat and beaver hat, and he was pale and lanthorn-jawed, with sinister sneering eyes and something odd and unusual about his face — at the moment I could not say what. But least of all did I like the coincidence which had brought us together again. It seemed as if I was never to be quit of these people — of them and of the ambiguous atmosphere which they carried about with them and which I felt and resented at that moment.

  However, I could not refuse to take them up, and “No, I am not able to take you all in,” I said. “I have room for no more than two, as you see. But I fear—” with a glance at the two who stood forlornly waiting half a dozen paces away, the rain soaking their shoulders—” I fear that the young lady will be very wet.”

  “Alas, we are all pretty wet for that,” the woman said lightly, and laid her hand on the door. On which I opened it, and she stepped in, a tiny dog in her arms. The bells on its collar tinkled as she sat back beside me, and her companion closing the door, went to get up in front. As he did so, I heard him utter an exclamation.

  “Oh, you!” I heard him say. “If I had known that. So you got your lift, eh? How often does your wife die, my joker?”

  The man made some humble response, which was lost in the rumble of the wheels. As we skirted the foundered carriage whi
ch had been drawn partly out of the way, our lights travelled across the faces of the two whom we were leaving, and was it my fancy, or some odd effect of light and shade, or did I read in the girl’s white face and strained eyes a silent appeal?

  CHAPTER XV

  “OH, I AM FRIGHTENED!”

  MY fancy, or some trick “of the light? Though vague suspicions moved in my mind I might have set the thing down to one or the other, if the woman beside me had kept her mouth shut. But she made the mistake of offering to explain. “Silly girl!” she said in a tone of affection, that seemed to me to ring false. “She was always afraid of the dark from a child.”

  “Then,” I said, “I am surprised, gnadige Frau, that you left her behind.”

  “So! But I had to think first of my husband, mein Herr. He has a chest complaint, and with that in mind we had no choice but to avail ourselves of your kindness — as we have.”

  She spoke with a silkiness meant to propitiate. But of all makeshifts for refinement affectation is the poorest, and her voice failed to persuade, and her excuse also; for if the latter were true, why had she suffered the man to take the outside seat which was exposed to the weather? However, it was no business of mine to put my finger on the blot, and “Still it was a pity to leave her behind,” I said. “If I had known I might have—”

  “Oh, no, indeed,” politely, “we could not have trespassed on you farther.”

  “I might have set down my friend in front,” I concluded dryly. “He might have walked.”

  She did not understand me, for I think that she had not caught the drift of her husband’s words as he stepped in, nor recognized the importunate of the barrier. So, “ Oh, we could not have suffered that,” she replied. “Azor!” to the dog, which was sniffing at me, “Be quiet! And behave, will you?” And then for a time we were both silent, though I have no doubt that our thoughts were busy with each other.

  I have said that I did not like her. I liked nothing in her. A bad kind of woman, I thought, ill-bred and affected. What she thought of me is another matter, though I know now that she had already identified me with the person who had inquired for the Mackay girl the previous day; which accounted, if the girl were really Norma Mackay, for the reluctance of the party to let the girl travel in my company.

  I am not so sure that she had carried her identification farther back — to Grossenhayn and Wittenberg, for the carriage was dark, and she had had as yet but an imperfect view of me. And I was now differently dressed.

  Besides, when she had seen me at those places I had not been alone; I had been in company with Ellis. As I thought of this it was strange how vividly and how powerfully Perceval’s pale face and grave eyes rose before me in the darkness of the carriage! How strong was the feeling of his presence, how poignant the sense of his personality that suddenly and in a moment oppressed me. It was an extraordinary and an uncomfortable sensation; and it gave rise to a thought as extraordinary.

  He had travelled this way, on this very road. He had halted, it might be, at this very place to which we were bound. And he had travelled, he had halted in uneasiness of mind, already under the shadow of the tragic and mysterious fate which awaited him a few stages onward. Could it be that he had travelled in this very carriage, suffered in it, reproached me in it? Could it be that he — that he haunted it now?

  It was a wild, it was the wildest idea, and one which in my sober senses I should have been the first to ridicule. But for the moment it possessed me to such a degree that I caught myself now glancing over my shoulder, and now peering fearfully at my companion. She had brought into the carriage a heavy overpowering scent — the Germans know no mean in such things. Could it be that? But no, Perceval had used no scent; I could not associate any scent with him. It could not be that which brought his personality, his reproachful eyes and pale face so vividly, so uncomfortably, so hauntingly before me.

  The feeling was akin to the gloomy sensation which I had experienced when walking the streets of Berlin the night before, and it was a relief to me when my neighbour spoke and broke both the spell and the silence.

  “Do you think that we are nearly there?” she asked. She was leaning forward, peering into the darkness.

  “I think we must be,” I replied, breathing more freely. “You know the road perhaps?”

  “I have travelled it. And you, too, Madam?”

  “Yes — once.” Was it fancy, or did she shiver as she spoke? Then, “You, too, mein Herr, are for Hamburg?”

  “As good,” I said. “ For Altona.”

  I was aware of her only as a dark shape seated beside me, but it seemed to me that at that she turned her face to me. But she only answered, “ Ah, Altona.” And then, “ From South Germany perhaps?”

  I suspected that she was uneasy about me and would learn what she could, and I assented. Doubtless my accent had to that extent betrayed me. A moment later, as lights gleamed on the road before us, “I think we are there,” I said, and I was thankful for it. For I wanted above all things to be rid of the woman. She weighed on me and made me uncomfortable. Even her kindness to the dog — and she petted it and fondled it with affectation, calling it her Liebling, her Azor, and the like — did not conciliate me.

  We stopped, amid much confusion, in front of a building which I was thankful to see promised better than I had expected. A stream of light and noise poured from a large double doorway, which suggested to me that the house had once been a farmstead; and whether it was the invitation that this held out that moved us, or a natural impulse to seek shelter, or a common desire to part company, we all melted inwards with speed and a blind eye to one another.

  No host presented himself to receive us, and the threshold crossed, I found myself standing, valise in hand, in a wide, draughty earthen-floored passage, once I fancied a cartway, but now cumbered with tables and benches and crowded with brawling pushing guests. From a large room on the left came the strains of a fiddle and the rumble and clatter of men dancing in heavy boots, and I had a vision, glancing that way, of roughly-clad peasants whirling heavily and clumsily round in a cloud of tobacco smoke — for every other dancer had a long pipe in his mouth.

  I cursed my luck as I saw that to an unusual influx of guests was added the pandemonium of a rustic dance, and shrugging my shoulders I turned to the room on my right, where I found things scarcely better. The room was crowded in every part with impatient, bawling, supping guests, among whom distracted serving-wenches, here summoned by raucous voices, there snatched at by clutching hands, staggered to and fro, unequal to a tithe of the calls made upon them.

  At one end, at a great open fire-place — a rare sight in Germany and found only in the rural districts — cooking was going on, and the steam and odour filled the room and hung like a canopy over the company. Everywhere were noise, disorder, the reek of victuals and damp clothes.

  I paused dismayed by the prospect. The man and woman had entered before me, and were standing at a little distance away, equally at a loss. For a separate room or tolerable attention — these things I saw were out of the question; and I was looking uncertainly about for someone, the host or another, to whom I might apply, when I caught the eye of my friend of the barrier — the man to whom I had given the lift.

  He was the last person to whom I should have looked for aid in such a quandary, but he not only met my eye, he unmistakably, though humbly, beckoned to me. I pushed my way through the press, and I found that somehow, I am sure I don’t know how, he had got hold of the crimson-faced, perspiring host; and not only that, but he had secured his ear also, as the next step proved.

  On either side of the fire stood a couple of small tables, hauled in to supplement the long tables that filled the room. At one of these the red-faced man, still with my chance-met friend at his elbow, made room for me by unceremoniously sweeping away a guest who might or might not have finished.

  At any rate, and however it was effected, here in a trice and to my surprise I found myself seated; and seated in the bes
t position in the room, within the cheering influence of the fire, and where I could by turning a little to the side, warm my chilled feet among the pots that simmered and bubbled at my feet.

  It was such a piece of luck as I could not have expected, for in the confusion all distinctions of class were lost; and I appreciated it the more when I saw that my late companions were still at a loss and seeking seats in a very ill humour. I had done already as much for them as could be expected, and I had no mind to resign my luck even in the lady’s favour; so I hung my cloak on the back of my bench and placed my valise under it. Then I looked round, prepared to enter upon the noisy contest for food which raged about me.

  But I had no call to do so. By what magic he obtained it where so many were waiting, I cannot say, but in a twinkling the man of the barrier leaned over my shoulders — but still with a meek and deprecatory air — and plumped down before me a plate of bacon salad, a huge flagon of Cotbus beer, and a pancake. He muttered humbly, “Zu Tischebitte, Hofedelgeborer,” and vanished like the good fairy of the legends.

  Never indeed was a lift more speedily or more handsomely rewarded, and I did not appreciate his aid the less as I saw that the Waechter couple were still in debate with some persons whose places they were striving to take. A few minutes later I perceived that they had succeeded; and then, as they sat down, I lost sight of them. But when I again looked that way I met their eyes, and quickly as they averted them I saw enough to be sure that the feeling of dislike which I felt for them was shared on their side.

  The cause was to seek, but most certainly if I had ever read suspicion and something like fear in any eyes, I read it in theirs — and something more, a venom that set me thinking. Where had I seen the man before? Where had I encountered a face that reminded me of his — yet vaguely and doubtfully? I could not remember, I could not fix the occasion or the man. But somewhere, somehow, at some time, I was sure that we had met.