Part 19 (1/2)
The Countess Marlanx was trembling violently. Tullis, observing this, tried to laugh away her nervousness.
”Mere coincidence, that's all,” he said. ”Surely you are not superst.i.tious. You can't believe she brought about this storm?”
”It isn't that,” she said in a low voice. ”I feel as if a grave personal danger had just pa.s.sed me by. Not danger for the rest of you, but for me alone. That is the sensation I have: the feeling of one who has stepped back from the brink of an abyss just in time to avoid being pushed over.
I can't make you understand. See! I am trembling. I have seen no more than the rest of you, yet am more terrified, more upset than Robin, poor child. Perhaps I am foolish. I _know_ that something dreadful has--I might say, touched me. Something that no one else could have seen or felt.”
”Nerves, my dear Countess. Shadows! I used to see them and feel them when I was a lad no bigger than Bobby if left alone in the dark. It is a grown-up fear of goblins. You'll be over it as soon as we are outside.”
Ten minutes later the cavalcade started down the rain-swept road toward the city, dry blankets having been placed across the saddles occupied by the ladies and the Prince. The Witch stood in her doorway, laughing gleefully, inviting them to come often.
”Come again, your Highness,” she croaked sarcastically.
”The next time I come, it will be with a torch to burn you alive!”
shouted back Dangloss. To Tullis he added: ”'Gad, sir, they did well to burn witches in your town of Salem. You cleared the country of them, the pests.”
Darkness was approaching fast among the sombre hills; the great pa.s.s was enveloped in the mists and the gloaming of early night. In a compact body the guardsmen rode close about Prince Robin and his friend.
Ingomede had urged this upon Tullis, still oppressed by the feeling of disaster that had come over her in the hovel.
”It means something, my friend, it means something,” she insisted. ”I feel it--I am sure of it.” Riding quite close beside him, she added in lower tones: ”I was with my husband no longer ago than yesterday. Do you know that I believe it is Count Marlanx that I feel everywhere about me now? _He_--his presence--is in the air! Oh, I wish I could make you feel as I do.”
”You haven't told me why you ran away on Sunday,” he said, abruptly, dismissing her argument with small ceremony.
”He sent for me. I--I had to go.” There was a new, strange expression in her eyes that puzzled him for a long time. Suddenly the solution came: she was completely captive to the will of this hated husband. The realisation brought a distinct, sickening shock with it.
Down through the lowering shades rode the Prince's party, swiftly, even gaily by virtue of relaxation from the strain of a weird half hour. No one revealed the slightest sign of apprehension arising from the mysterious demonstration in which nature had taken a hand.
Truxton King was holding forth, with cynical good humour, for the benefit, if not the edification of Baron Dangloss, with whom he rode--Mr. Hobbs galloping behind not unlike the faithful Sancho of another Quixote's day.
”It's all tommy-rot, Baron,” said Truxton. ”We've got a dozen stage wizards in New York who can do all she did and then some. That smoke from the kettle is a corking good trick--but that's all it is, take my word for it. The storm? Why, you know as well as I do, Baron, that she can't bring rain like that. If she could, they'd have her over in the United States right now, saving the crops, with or without water. That was chance. Hobbs told me this morning it looked like rain. By the way, I must apologise to him. I said he was a crazy kill-joy. The thing that puzzles me is what became of the owner of that eye. I'll stake my life on it, I saw an eye. 'Gad, it looked right into mine. Queerest feeling it gave me.”
”Ah, that's it, my young friend. What became of the eye? Poof! And it is gone. We searched immediately. No sign. It is most extraordinary.”
”I'll admit it's rather gruesome, but--I say, do you know I've a mind to look into that matter if you don't object, Baron. It's a game of some sort. She's a wily old dame, but I think if we go about it right we can catch her napping and expose the whole game. I'm going back there in a day or two and try to get at the bottom of it. That confounded eye worries me. She's laughing up her sleeve at us, too, you know.”
”I should advise you to keep away from her, my friend. Granted she has tricked us: why not? It is her trade. She does no harm--except that she's most offensively impudent. And I rather imagine she'll resent your investigation, if you attempt it. I can't say that I'd blame her.” The Baron laughed.
”Baron, it struck me a bit s.h.i.+very at the time, but I want to say to you now that the eye that I saw at the crack was not that of an idle peeper, nor was it a mere fakir's subst.i.tute. It was as malevolent as the devil and it glared--do you understand? Glared! It didn't _peep!_”
Truxton King, for reasons best known to himself, soon relapsed into a thoughtful, contemplative silence. Between us, he was sorely vexed and disappointed. When the gallant start was made from the glen of ”dead men's bones,” he found that he was to be cast utterly aside, quite completely ignored by the fair Loraine. She rode off with young Count Vos Engo without so much as a friendly wave of the hand to him. He said it over to himself several times: ”not even a friendly wave of her hand.” It was as if she had forgotten his existence, or--merciful Powers! What was worse--as if she took this way of showing him his place. Of course, that being her att.i.tude, he glumly found his place--which turned out rather ironically to be under the eye of a police officer--and made up his mind that he would stay there.
Vos Engo, being an officer in the Royal Guard, rode ahead by order of Colonel Quinnox. Truxton, therefore, had her back in view--at rather a vexing distance, too--for mile after mile of the ride to the city. Not so far ahead, however, that he could not observe every movement of her light, graceful figure as she swept down the King's Highway. She was a perfect horsewoman, firm, jaunty, free. Somehow he knew, without seeing, that a stray brown wisp of hair caressed her face with insistent adoration: he could see her hand go up from time to time to brush it back--just as if it were not a happy place for a wisp of hair.
Perhaps--he s.h.i.+vered with the thought of it--perhaps it even caressed her lips. Ah, who would not be a wisp of brown hair!
He galloped along beside the Baron, a prey to gloomy considerations.
What was the use? He had no chance to win her. That was for story-books and plays. She belonged to another world--far above his. And even beyond that, she was not likely to be attracted by such a rude, ungainly, sunburned lout as he, with such chaps about as Vos Engo, or that what's-his-name fellow, or a dozen others whom he had seen. Confound it all, she was meant for a prince, or an archduke. What chance had he?
But she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen. Yes; she was the golden girl of his dreams. Within his grasp, so to speak, and yet he could not hope to seize her, after all. Was she meant for that popinjay youth with the petulant eye and the sullen jaw? Was he to be the lucky man, this Vos Engo?
The Baron's dry, insinuating voice broke in upon the young man's thoughts. ”I think it's pretty well understood that she's going to marry him.” The little old minister had been reading King's thoughts; he had the satisfaction of seeing his victim start guiltily. It was on the tip of Truxton's tongue to blurt out: ”How the devil did you know what I was thinking about?” But he managed to control himself, asking instead, with bland interest: