I was sure that the Waechters would not halt at Perleberg, but would press on through the night; and I foresaw that the moment was fast approaching when I must confront a new decision and make a new choice — the moment when, at Perleberg, I must finally decide between duty and sympathy, between pity and hard facts. For to follow the party beyond Perleberg would be to waste hours and days; hours and days which I could not spare and dared not waste, since they were already allotted to a task to which remorse and self-interest alike pledged me.
Sooner than I expected, and almost before I had foreseen the necessity, that choice — that very choice — was thrust upon me. As I stood impatient to be off and peevishly watching the buckling of the last strap, Grussbaum stepped up to me. “They have not gone this way, mein Herr,” he said.
“Not? They’ve not?” I exclaimed. “Impossible!”
“Still, honoured sir, they have not.”
“Nonsense! These people are lying to you!” And distrusting the man, I was instantly at a white heat. I turned about. There was a cobbler’s hutch on the farther side of the road, some twenty paces beyond the post-house. A man was working in it, seated cobbler-fashion under the tiny pent-house, a shoe between his knees. “Here, you!” I cried. “Here’s a quarter-thaler for you, if you can tell me what carriages have passed since noon — going for Perleberg.”
He reflected and slowly told them off. “ Two Eil-wagens and two post-carriages,” he said. “Four? No — no party of four.”
“Not two men and two women? Think, man! You must have seen them?”
“No. No party of four.”
“Will a whole thaler open your mouth?”
But the cobbler was more honest than I deserved to find him. He shook his head and unwillingly I had to believe him. I flung him the thaler and strode back to the carriage. Grussbaum met me. “There is a turning half a league back which leads into the Fehrbellin-Perleberg road,” he said. “They may have taken that way.”
“But why? Why, man?” I was in no mood to agree with any one. “ It must be longer and worse.” He shrugged his shoulders. “His Honour knows best,” he answered meekly. “But perhaps — to evade us.”
“D — n!” I said, and I took a turn down the road, and said “D — n” again. And no wonder. If we drove straight on I might indeed intercept the Waechters at Perleberg; but, on the other hand, they might leave the town on one side, and whether they did that or not, what might not happen in the meantime?
Yet to leave the main road and to follow them — to commit ourselves to the infamous tracks that lost themselves among the sands and pine-forests of this outlandish country — this was a dubious and a hateful prospect. If I kept on I should reach Perleberg by nightfall or thereabouts. But if I diverged, if I committed myself to the unknown, Heaven knew where night would find us, or whether even twenty-four hours would see us in Perleberg.
I thought of my duty and I thought of the girl. I pictured poor Perceval, his face livid and damp with the dews of death, and again I touched where it lay deep in my pocket the tiny scrap of linen that had borne to me the girl’s feeble cry for help. And I stood — tortured by doubt and indecision. I might lose forty-eight hours, and the loss might-baulk me in my main purpose On the other hand, I might be abandoning this child, helpless in brutal hands, to the most terrible of fates. What was I to do? How was I to decide? For even if I followed her, I had to remember that [the chances were against me; I might lose the track, or following it, I might never overtake the party. Their two hours’ start would by the time I reached the turning they had taken have become three, and more than three; and to come up with them by daylight might be impossible, to trace them in the dark equally impossible.
They had but to take no matter what turning; they had but to drive aside and let me go by, and I should be hopelessly astray. In a word, I saw that the odds were immense that if I left the road to pursue the party I should do no atom of good, and only waste time that was invaluable.
I decided. I turned back to the carriage. “Well jump in,” I said savagely. “Let them go to the devil!”
“His Honour goes on?”
“Where else? In! Get in, man! Let us lose no more time.”
He held the door, I sprang in. He closed it and bundled up in front. The postboys sounded their horns and cracked their whips, the ostlers stepped aside I flung out a douceur. We set out.
But I suffered. God knows how I suffered and what piteous visions I had as I turned my back on the girl; what dumb appeals wrung my heart, what pangs of conscience tormented me! I suffered, and when we had travelled a mile I could bear it no longer. I put out my head, I ordered the horses’ heads to be turned, and even while, writhing on the horns of this cursed dilemma, I called myself every kind of fool for my softness, I drove back to the post-house. There, of course, I had to confront a wrangle.
The postmaster had no mind to let out his team for the by-roads — I must pay treble, I must pay double, I must take at least a cock-horse. But I was in no temper to be browbeaten, and in the end, now bribing and now bullying, I got my will, and we travelled back to the by-road of which Grussbaum had informed me. There we confirmed the fact that a calash had recently turned off, and we followed its traces at the best speed that we could compass.
An hour, two hours passed; we were still toiling on, and we had seen nothing and heard nothing of our quarry. Hours I knew must elapse before we could hope to see anything of it, and meantime night was beginning to close in — and on what a scene! The district which we were traversing, a part of that tongue of land which Brandenburg thrusts in between the jaws of the Danish and Mecklenburg marches, is one of the most desolate in Europe.
A barren waste, broken here and there by ragged thickets, with ever — at hand or on the horizon — a dark wall of forest, a man may traverse it for hours by day without seeing a human being, and from sunset to dawn without espying a lighted window. Such wretched hamlets and famine-stricken farms as there are lie hidden in hollows and parted by wide spaces. The inns, where there are inns, are cut-throat hovels; and here, as in all marchlands where jurisdictions meet, outlaws gather and prey, or would prey, were there anything to steal.
The sand clogs the toiling wheels, fallen trees cumber the forest road, the signposts are gibbets; and, as in the wilds of Livonia, men tremble as they pass, lest in the pinewoods beside them the wolves give tongue.
Something of a road we kept, and to this I had to trust. But as the twilight fell and veiled the melancholy landscape, while our progress grew ever more laboured, I had leisure, and, alas! only too much leisure, to reflect what a fool I had been, on what a goose-chase I had started, what a Jack-o’-lanthorn I was pursuing! Even the opinion of Grussbaum began to have its weight with me, and for the lads I had hardly the face, so foolish seemed my expedition, to ask them if they were still in the road.
In a word I found time to repent a dozen times. Que faisais-je dans cette galere, I asked myself — I, who had my task laid down and ordained for me, without one hour to spare if I would do my duty and let no chance slip? To search for Ellis, to search for the despatches, ten days had been little for this; the enterprise had been desperate, the odds against me had I spent every minute and every thought upon the search! And here was I wandering from the road and from my purpose — wandering benighted in the fog and mist of this barren Sahara! Had ever diplomatist, even the unlucky Drake, even poor Spencer Smith, played the fat so completely?
I have seldom lived through four hours of sorer vexation. We had gone too far to return, yet toiling forward saw with every mile less hope. Flakes of snow, too, were beginning to fall from a grey sky, not a landmark showed, and the horses tugging at the traces laboured on ever more slowly.
But all things come to an end at last, and we had left the open moor and were plodding along between black lines of pine-trees, when on a sudden I sat up. The postilion had sounded his horn! I thrust out my head, hope reviving. I tried to pierce the gloom with my eyes, but for the mome
nt I could see nothing except eddying flakes falling slowly and softly. Then, as the carriage swerved to one side, I perceived what had drawn the postboy’s greeting.
A single, steady, lonely light shone before us. Anon it vanished as we sank into a hollow; it appeared again, again I lost it. But when it peeped out for the third time we were close upon it, and a minute later we drew up before a dark mass of a house, set in an angle between two roads — two of four that met in a desolate clearing a little, but very little, lighter than the sombre woods that hemmed it in on every side.
Before Grussbaum could open the door, I was out of the carriage and in the road, savagely intent on getting forward. For so much at least we had done; and now to eat and to drive on, or to drive on without the loss of a minute — either would suit me. Meantime, as I stamped my chilled feet on the road I wondered that no one came out to receive us, and I looked at the house. It stood lonely and gloomy, with pine-woods all about it, but it bulked large.
Its size promised well, and impatiently I strode to the door and tried it, and shook it. It proved to be unfastened, and throwing it back I entered. “House! House!” I cried — damn the folks, what were they about? Were they all asleep? What was the use of a horn if no attention was paid to it?— “House, within!” again. “ Do you hear?”
But I had hardly crossed the threshold before my hopes sank, and I guessed that the single light that we had espied measured the position more correctly than my expectations. My call, echoing through empty rooms, awoke only echoes. The air of the house smelled musty and damp, the cold took me by the throat, the stone-floored passage rang hollow.
And when I shouted again and a man at length appeared from some hidden recess, and came, bearing a light, down the long tunnel-like passage towards us, I saw before me, no hearty civil Boniface, but a dirty unshaven lump of a clown whose sodden visage matched his frowsy blouse.
A relay? In half an hour? The man laughed sourly, eyeing us, for Grussbaum had joined me, with covert insolence. He had but one nag in the stable. The gentleman should have given notice if he wanted a relay. Since the war there were no travellers on the road, and such as there were passed him by.
“But you are the postmaster!” I stormed. “You are the postmaster!”
“I’m all the postmaster there is,” he answered sulkily “ I’ve a team, and that’s a team too many. But it went out four hours agone.”
Were there no horses to be hired in the neighbourhood? No, there was no neighbourhood, he answered, and no horses. And no traffic either, not so much as a louse could live by. The war had killed it — and the taxes. It was no use for the gentleman to be angry — he could not make horses, no more than another. Of course, the gentleman could stay if he pleased, but it was a poor place nowadays.
Supper? Well, he had nothing that was ready — the house was empty. The next posthouse? Towards-Perleberg? A German mile and perhaps a bit, and a good road; a much better road, the Fehrbellin-Perleberg road, if the gentry preferred to go on.
“It’s two German miles — and a long bit,” Grussbaum muttered in my ear. “Ten English miles.”
I did not at once see the bearing of this — of an understatement so unlike an innkeeper — but I put the same question that I should have put if I had seen it: “You had a party came in this afternoon, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, mein Hen — for a wonder,” with a grimace. “ Four persons. They took my team and went on.”
“For Perleberg?”
“That way. Four hours ago.” He cast the light of the candle he was carrying on the face of a clock fixed to the wall beside him, for all this time we were standing in the chill discomfort of the bare, stone-floored passage. “They should be there by now.”
It seemed to be a full stop. I felt myself beaten, and I dare say that my face showed it. But as the man had said, he could not make horses, and ours were worn out. To proceed with them was impossible, and with a silent curse at my folly I gave up the struggle. “ Well,” I said peevishly, “get fire and lights. And be stirring, man! Move yourself. Can’t you see that we are half-frozen? And supper! Something, anything, as soon as you can!”
“You stop then, mein Herr?”
“Of course we stop,” I cried irascibly. “What else can we do if you have no horses? And be moving, man. A fire first — is this the room?” I pushed open a door. “ Gott im Himmel, what a vault! And then, supper — do you hear? And be airing beds for us. No wonder you’ve little custom if you have no better welcome for travellers than this!”
He grumbled something that I did not catch, and looked at me by no means pleasantly, but in the end he obeyed, snuffed his light and set it down on the table, and went sluggishly away. Grussbaum had gone out before him to hasten matters, and there was nothing for me to do but to pace up and down the bare, melancholy room.
The walls, coloured a dismal blue, and damp-stained in places, gave out the chill of the grave, and I shivered as I walked, even in my fur cloak. By and by, but it might well have been sooner, a squalid old woman brought in a tray of embers and started the fire in the stove, and with vengeful extravagance I piled on wood from a heap in a comer.
And how my spirits sank as I fed the blaze and owned myself defeated! I had led into the enemy’s hand, and he had tramped me; he had drawn me off the road and left me planted here, while he pursued his way unmolested and triumphant. Nor could any reflection be more mortifying, any thought more poignant than the certainty I now felt that if I had clung to the main road I should have been in Perleberg before him and might have intercepted him and his prey at my leisure.
By and by the old hag came in again, and removing the dip, set a pair of guttering candles in its place, while I, drawing up a stool, crouched before the open door of the stove, and now cursed my folly and now tried to beat the logs into a fiercer blaze. A silence as of death held the house — anything less like a house of entertainment, anything more funereal I had never in all my journeyings happened upon; and the thought of the desolate forest without, stretching for miles on every side, did but darken the picture. It was a relief when at last I heard a step coming down the passage, and looked behind me. Here was at last some sign of life, and, I hoped, of supper.
But it was only Grussbaum, and disappointed I moved to give the man a share of the heat.
“Pull up a chair,” I said ungraciously. “ A more God-forsaken place than this I never saw!”
He did not comply, but instead, and after a moment’s pause, “I’ve been down the road,” he said.
I was in no mood to do anything but snub him, but something in his tone led me to look at him, and I perceived a change in the man; such a change as I had noticed once before. He had shed his meekness, his voice had gathered force, and either there was a gleam of excitement in his eyes or the leaping blaze, that issued from the open stove, deceived me. At any rate, “Down the road?” I queried, in place of what I had meant to say. “Why? Why, man?”
“I took a lanthorn — from the carriage.”
I stared at him. “Well?”
“There’s no trace of wheels along the Perleberg road. Nor along either of the other roads.”
“So! And you fancy—”
“I fancy,” with a glance at the door, “that your friends are here, mein Herr.”
“Here?” I stood up, in my surprise.
“Here, or hereabouts,” he rejoined. “And if that be so, I would advise his Honour to say nothing, but to keep his eyes open.”
But I was in too low a mood to preserve any hope, and I laughed. “Why there’s not a sound in the house!” I said. “Rubbish! Rubbish, man!”
“Still, they’ve not gone on, I am sure,” he persisted. “And there’s a hamlet five furlongs away on the Fehrbellin road. They may have walked to it.”
“Much more likely that the snow has effaced their wheel-marks!” I retorted. “No, man, I don’t believe a word of it. Depend upon it they are half-way to Perleberg by now, and if I had not been all sorts of a fool I sh
ould have been there before them. Instead of spinning these fine yams, my friend, suppose you go and urge on the supper. I am more interested in that than in your theories.”
For really this was too much! To be advised by this man whom I had taken up out of charity! It was a reversal of our positions a little too sudden. And I suppose Grussbaum saw that he had presumed, for he became again the suppliant of the barrier, meek, subdued, and uncertain of himself. “Of course,” he stammered “if the gnadiger Herr thinks that there is nothing in what I say—”
“I do,” I answered sharply. “ I am sure that there is nothing. Do you see about the supper, man. That’s your work.”
But he had sown the seeds of suspicion in my mind, and no sooner was he gone than I began to turn over what he had said, and very uncomfortable it made me. I was sure that there was nothing in it, and yet I could not rest. I caught myself listening, suspecting, glancing over my shoulder. The gloom of the room, with its bare table and its mouldering walls, took on a lowering aspect. The long echoing passages throbbed with unseen possibilities.
The stillness, the chill, the unreadiness veiled a mystery, demanded explanation. I fancied strange things passing in the depths of this dark silent house, and when the landlord at last appeared and sluggishly proceeded to lay a coarse cloth on the end of the table, I watched him covertly. But his glum face told nothing; it was a stolid mask, and I still swung between uncertainties. He went and came, and it was not until he brought in a covered dish, and the smell of roast meat restored the commonplace, that I shook off the obsession.
As I rose to go to the table, and Grussbaum sneaked in, “What time did you say that that party left?” I asked, fixing my eyes on the landlord’s face.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 698