Part 40 (1/2)

A wooden settle stood against the wall just beneath the window, and I knelt on it and drove at the shutters with my shoulder. They gave a little at first, and I heard a whispered call for help. The pressure from without was redoubled; I was forced back; a bar fell across them outside and was fitted into a socket. Thrust as I might I could not break it; the window was securely barricadoed.

Meanwhile Ilga had not spoken. ”Ilga!” I called.

She did not answer me, nor in the blackness of the pavilion could I discover where she stood.

”Ilga!”

The same empty silence. I could not even hear her breathing, and yet she was in the pavilion, within a few feet of me. There was something horrible in her quietude, and a great fear of I knew not what caught at my heart and turned my blood cold.

”This is the priest's doing,” I cried, and I drew my sword and made towards the door.

A startled cry burst from the gloom behind me.

”Stop! If you open it, you will be killed.”

I stopped as she bade me, body and brain numbed in a common inaction.

I could hear her breathing now plainly enough.

”This is not the priest's doing,” she said, at length. ”It is the wife's.” Her voice steadied and became even as she spoke. ”From the hour I found Count Lukstein dead I have lived only for this night.”

I let my sword slip from my grasp, and it clattered and rang on the floor.

'Twas not surprise that I felt; ever since the shutters had been slammed I seemed to have known that she would speak those words. And 'twas no longer fear. Nor did I as yet wonder how she came by her knowledge. Indeed, I had but one thought, one thought of overwhelming sadness, and I voiced it in utter despondency.

”So all this time--in London, here, a minute ago, you were tricking me! Tricking me into loving you; then tricking my love for you!”

”A minute ago!” she caught me up, and there was a quiver in her voice of some deep feeling. Then she broke off, and said, in a hard, clear tone: ”I was a woman, and alone. I used a woman's weapons.”

Again she paused, but I made no answer. I had none to make. She resumed, with a flash of anger, as though my silence accused her:

”And was there no trickery on your side, too?”

They were almost the same words as those which Marston had levelled at me, and I imagined that they conveyed the same charge. However, it seemed of little use or profit to defend myself at length, and I answered:

”I have played no part. It might have fared better with me if I had.

What deceit I have practised may be set down to love's account. 'Twas my fear of losing you that locked my lips. Had I not loved you, what need to tell you my secret? 'Twas no crime that I committed. But since I loved you, I was bound in very truth to speak. I have known that from the first, and I pledged myself to speak at the moment that I told you of my love. I dared not disclose the matter before. There was so little chance that I should win your favour, even had every circ.u.mstance seconded my suit. But this very night I should have told you the truth.”

”No doubt! no doubt!” she answered, with the bitterest irony, and I understood what a fatal mistake I had made in pleading my pa.s.sion before disclosing the story of the duel. I should have begun from the other end. ”And no doubt you meant also to tell me, with the same open frankness, of the woman for whose sake you killed my--my husband?”

”I fought for no woman, but for my friend.”

She laughed; surely the hardest, most biting laugh that ever man heard.

”Tell me your fine story now.”

I sank down on the settle, feeling strangely helpless in the face of her contempt.

”This is the priest's doing,” I repeated, more to myself than to her.

”It is my doing,” she said again; ”my doing from first to last”