Part 20 (2/2)

”Oh, you would rather see me hanged, like Captain Hale?”

She whitened where she stood, tugging at her gloves, teeth set in her lower lip.

”You shall neither fight nor hang,” she said, her blue eyes fixed on s.p.a.ce, busy with her gloves the while--so busy that her whip dropped, and I picked it up.

There was a black loup-mask hanging from her girdle. When her gloves were fitted to suit her she jerked the mask from the string and set it over her eyes.

”My whip?” she asked curtly.

I gave it.

”Now,” she said, ”your pistol-case lies hid beneath my bed-covers. Take it, Mr. Renault, but it shall serve a purpose that neither you nor Walter Butler dream of!”

I stared at her without a word. She opened the beaded purse at her girdle, took from it a heaping handful of golden guineas, and dropped them on her dresser, where they fell with a pleasant sound, rolling together in a s.h.i.+ning heap. Then, looking through her mask at me, she fumbled at her throat, caught a thin golden chain, snapped it in two, and drew a tiny ivory miniature from her breast; and still looking straight into my eyes she dropped it face upward on the polished floor.

It bore the likeness of Walter Butler. She set her spurred heel upon it and crushed it, grinding the fragments into splinters. Then she walked by me, slowly, her eyes still on mine, the hem of her foot-mantle slightly lifted; and so, turning her head to watch me, she pa.s.sed the door, closed it behind her, and was gone.

What the strange maid meant to do I did not know, but I knew what lay before me now. First I flung aside the curtains of her bed, tore the fine linen from it, burrowing in downy depths, under pillow, quilt, and valance, until my hands encountered something hard; and I dragged out the pistol-case and snapped it open. The silver-chased weapons lay there in perfect order; under the drawer that held them was another drawer containing finest priming-powder, shaped wads, ball, and a case of flints.

So all was ready and in order. I closed the case and hurried up the stairway to my room, candle in hand. Ha! The wainscot cupboard I had so cunningly devised was swinging wide. In it had been concealed that blotted sheet rejected from the copy of my letter to his Excellency--nothing more; yet that alone was quite enough to hang me, and I knew it as I stood there, my candle lighting an empty cupboard.

Suddenly terror laid an icy hand upon me. I shook to my knees, listening. Why had he not denounced me, then? And in the same instant the answer came: _He_ was to profit by my disgrace; _he_ was to be aggrandized by my downfall. The drama he had prepared was to be set in scenery of his own choosing. His savant fingers grasped the tiller, steering me inexorably to my destruction.

Yet, as I stood there, teeth set, tearing my finery from me, flinging coat one way, waistcoat another, and dressing me with blind haste in riding-clothes and boots, I felt that just a single chance was left to me with honor; and I seized the pa.s.ses that Sir Henry had handed me for Sir Peter and his lady, and stuffed them into my breast-pocket.

Gloved, booted, spurred, I caught up the case of pistols, ran down the stairs, flung open the door, and slammed it behind me.

Sir Peter stood waiting by the coach; and when he saw me with his pistol-case he said: ”Well done, Carus! I had no mind to go hammering at a friend's door to beg a brace of pistols at such an hour.”

I placed the case after he had entered the coach. Dr. Carmody made room for me, but I shook my head.

”I ride,” I said. ”Wait but an instant more.”

”Why do you ride?” asked Sir Peter, surprised.

”You will understand later,” I said gaily. ”Be patient, gentlemen;” and I ran for the stables. Sleepy hostlers in smalls and bare feet tumbled out in the glare of the coach-house lanthorn at my shout.

”The roan,” I said briefly. ”Saddle for your lives!”

The stars were no paler in the heavens as I stood there on the gra.s.s, waiting, yet dawn must be very near now; and, indeed, the birds' chorus broke out as I set foot to stirrup, though still all was dark around me.

”Now, gentlemen,” I said, spurring up to the carriage-door. I nodded to the coachman, and we were off at last, I composed and keenly alert, cantering at Sir Peter's coach-wheels, perfectly aware that I was riding for my liberty at last, or for a fall that meant the end of all for me.

There was a chaise standing full in the light of the tavern windows when we clattered up--a horse at the horse-block, too, and more horses tied to the hitching-ring at the side-door.

At the sound of our wheels Mr. Jessop appeared, hastening from the cherry grove, and we exchanged salutes very gravely, I asking pardon for the delay, he protesting at apology; saying that an encounter by starlight was, after all, irregular, and that his princ.i.p.al desired to wait for dawn if it did not inconvenience us too much.

Then, hat in hand, he asked Sir Peter's indulgence for a private conference with me, and led me away by the arm into a sweet-smelling lane, all thick with honeysuckle and candleberry shrub.

”Carus,” he said, ”this is painfully irregular. We are proceeding as pa.s.sion dictates, not according to code. Mr. Butler has no choice but to accept, yet he is innocent of wrong intent, and has so informed me.”

<script>