THAT afternoon, as arranged, Von Tressen and Galabin paid a visit to Rozsnyo. Count Zarka received them with every sign of hospitality, and led them through a wide corridor lined with statues and bronzes, to an octagonal belvidere room where, somewhat to the visitors’ surprise, they found two ladies. The Count presented them to his cousin, Madame d’Ivady, a stately, picturesque woman, and her daughter, Fräulein Royda, a dark, rather handsome girl.
“My cousins,” Zarka said, with his easy, tactful, man-of-the-world air, “are kind enough to take compassion on my loneliness in this rocky stronghold, and give me as much of their company here as my conscience will allow me to take, knowing as I do that I am thereby depriving them of the joys of the outer world of gaiety and fashion, and that world of their presence.”
The elder lady swept her hand towards the windows which filled nearly three-quarters of the side of the room.
“We have at least nothing like this in Paris or Vienna,” she said with a sort of stately patronage, which made the two visitors struggle with a smile.
Perhaps the girl noticed their repressed amusement, for she moved to the window, saying—
“I don’t know where in the whole of Europe another view like this is to be found. Is it not magnificent?”
She turned her head in invitation to the young men to join her, and they moved to her side. There was no gainsaying the paramount loveliness of the panorama beneath and around them; the multitudinous shades of colour, ranging from the purple black of the pine woods to the red gold of the mountain tops; the spray of the torrent catching the sunlight, the deep glassy mirror of the lake, the luscious, restful green of the valley, and the brilliant flower-clad bank from which the castle rose—all made it indeed a position of surpassing beauty.
“Before we go over the place,” Zarka said, “you must have some refreshment. Walking in the forest is so fascinating that one is apt to forget how exhausting it may be. Now you shall try some Imperial Tokay.”
A large salver with cakes and flasks of wine had been brought in, and Zarka did the honours with a flourish and excess of politeness which hardly left room for the suspicion of a grim nature beneath.
“I tried to persuade our friends to take up their abode here for a while,” he observed to the ladies. “But they preferred the simplicity of a tent in the forest.”
“More natural than gallant,” Madame d’Ivady commented, in her grand manner.
“Hardly ungallant,” Galabin objected laughingly, “since we did not know of the presence of ladies at Rozsnyo.”
“And now you are aware of it,” the old lady said with the same pompous rigidity, “will you not change your mind?”
Zarka interposed.
“We must not worry our young friends, Cousin Gertrud. It is only natural that they should like the free life of the forest, and it would be unfair to make them lead, even here, the very existence from which they have for the time emancipated themselves.”
The girl laughed.
“Mother can hardly understand any one preferring life in a tent to being snug in a house.”
Certainly the imagination would fail to picture the majestic, formal Madame d’Ivady roughing it under canvas, and they smiled at the idea.
“Now,” exclaimed Zarka, as having finally disposed of the subject, “shall we stroll round and see the few curiosities my poor house has to show? Come, Royda. I suppose we cannot tempt you, Cousin Gertrud?”
The old lady excused herself with a dignity out of all proportion to the matter, and they went off on a tour of inspection, the host leading the way, and keeping up a running description of the place as they proceeded, explaining how he had, so to speak, grafted a new house on the remains of the mediæval castle. All the rooms through which they passed were decorated and furnished in a manner suggestive of considerable wealth.
Presently they crossed a small inner courtyard, and Zarka paused before a door of ecclesiastical design.
“This,” he said, “is a necessary adjunct to a house so isolated as mine.” He threw open the door, and they found themselves to their surprise in an elaborately fitted private chapel. It was perhaps as well that their voluble host did not catch the glances exchanged between his two visitors; he might not have felt flattered by the implied sarcasm on his religious arrangements. Perhaps their silence was significant; anyhow the Count did not detain them in the chapel longer than was needed to glance round it.
“Now,” he said, as they turned from the door, “one more room, and I will not bore you by playing the showman any longer, at least indoors. I must take you down into the rock and show you my armoury. I think you will admit it is worth seeing.”
Indeed it was. The Count led the way down a broad winding staircase cut between walls of solid rock. Deep loopholes, lined with reflectors, gave light at intervals, and the roughness of the steps, evidently hewn in the rock-bed, was covered with thick carpets of Oriental design. Arrived at the bottom the Count pressed a knob, and the great barred doors in front of them opened, disclosing an unexpected sight.
It was a great room, constructed deep in the rock; its stone walls, hewn smooth and polished, were hung with arms and trophies of the chase. Suits of armour of various descriptions and ages were arranged on stands round the room, from regal suits of mail to the habergeons of humble pikemen and arquebusiers. Above were suspended helmets, the crested, gold-inlaid casques of warrior kings and knights, as well as the sallet of the free-lance and the plain skull pieces and morions of foot-soldiers. Shields of various shapes and emblazonry formed a frieze round the upper part of the walls; below were swords, rapiers and daggers, lances gay with pennons, murderous pikes, daggers, gauntlets, all in artistic array. The great room, hewn out almost to the face of the rock, sloping almost sheer down from beneath the castle, was lighted by deep windows opening on to the side of the precipice, and commanding the sunlit valley which stretched away below.
Zarka watched his visitors’ surprise with his habitual smile, a smile which seemed to serve as a mask for possibly darker thoughts behind.
“This room,” he observed, “is my favourite toy, and it has afforded me more amusement than most toys.”
“An innocent amusement,” Galabin thought; “yet, truly with a grim significance behind it.”
“The room was made before my time,” Zarka continued, in answer to a question of Von Tressen’s. “It was excavated by my great-grandfather and used as a sort of strong room; perhaps”—he gave a shrug—“who knows? a hiding place in those troublous times. All I have done is to have it enlarged and fitted up as you see. Yes; it is my hobby. I have fallen a prey to the collector’s mania, and I fear have wasted much time and good money over it.”
Presently, when they had gone round the room, and cursorily inspected its contents, their host proposed, what his visitors were really eager for, a stroll round the outside of the castle.
“You have a most interesting abode,” Galabin remarked, as they found themselves in the hall again. “I suppose there are further curiosities to be seen above stairs?”
The Count’s urbane smile widened into a half comic grin of apology.
“All modern! Alas! all modern,” he exclaimed. “The lower part of the castle alone is old. I will not destroy the effect of the few quaint things you have seen by contrasting them with the bedroom appointments from the Königstrasse. Unless, that is, you shall change your mind and care to spend a few nights here. Perhaps if the weather breaks I may have the pleasure of being your host.”
They strolled out and made the circuit of the castle. It was with no small curiosity that the two visitors sought the window where they had seen the light, and which had seemed to disappear so mysteriously. It had vanished indeed. A blank wall ran from tower to tower without an opening or break of any kind. Unseen by Zarka the two men exchanged glances of wonder. Surely, they thought, the window itself with the light streaming from it across to the very spot where they were standing had not been a delusion of their brain. At any rate, now in the broad sunlight, there was no sign of it to be detected. The wall, massive and thick, seemed to put out of the question the idea of an opening into it. No particular examination could, of course, be hazarded, but a glance was enough to show how unaccountable was what they had seen the night before.
As they strolled on, Fräulein d’Ivady lingered behind to point out to Von Tressen a rare species of flowering plant which was growing in the old moat. This manœuvre, for it seemed designed, threw them a little way behind the other pair.
“You have been long encamped here in the forest?” the girl asked as they turned to follow.
“Hardly a week.”
“I heard,” she seemed to lower her voice guardedly, “I heard of your adventure the other day.”
“My adventure?”
“Surely!” she laughed, “The rare game you flushed and hit. The mysterious lady who has taken up her abode at the old farmhouse.”
“Ah, yes. That was an unfortunate mistake of mine.”
“Tell me of this Fräulein Harlberg,” she said quickly. “I have never seen her.”
“I have only seen her twice,” he replied, “and know nothing about her except that she is staying there with her father.”
“For what reason?”
“For sport, I understood. But I am sure the Count could tell you far more about them than I.”
“Aubray?” She nodded at Zarka. “He is there often? He knows them very well?”
“I think so,” Von Tressen answered. “He seemed the other day on quite familiar terms with them. I imagined they were old friends.”
He was a simple, straight-forward fellow, Von Tressen, and innocently saw nothing beyond curiosity in his companion’s questions. Perhaps, though, had he looked in her face during his last words he might have realized that there was something more serious in those almost breathless inquiries.
“This Fräulein Harlberg,” she went on; “is she very handsome?”
“Yes; very good-looking, I think.”
He hesitated a little awkwardly over his answer, and, woman-like, she instantly divined the reason.
“Ah,” she returned, with an affectation of banter in her tone, “I understand, do I? The romance is not to end with the healing of the lady’s wounded hand?”
He laughed.
“You go too fast for me, Fräulein.”
“At least you are interested in—your victim?”
“Could I be otherwise? Still I regret that my knowledge is not equal to my interest, or I could better gratify your curiosity.”
“Curiosity about what?”
The Count had turned suddenly—he evidently vibrated with alertness and had quick ears. The restless, glittering eyes and wolfish teeth faced them.
“Curiosity about what?” he repeated, as each hesitated for the other to reply.
“Nothing, Aubray,” the girl answered quickly, as though to anticipate Von Tressen. “I was asking the Lieutenant about his adventures in the forest.”
The eyes fixed on them seemed to grow stern, although the smile did not relax.
“Has the Lieutenant had any adventures, then?”
“Nothing worth relating,” Von Tressen answered. Somehow he felt he did not care to allude to the one episode the girl and he had been speaking of.
Zarka’s grin widened as his eyes looked more insistent. “What is the mystery?” he demanded, addressing his cousin rather than Von Tressen.
“No mystery, Aubray,” she replied, with a little show of impatience, “but what you already know. Lieutenant Von Tressen’s unlucky shot.”
“Ah? You do not deserve to hear tales if you allude to them so indiscreetly, my good cousin.”
He spoke playfully, but there was an evil gleam in his eyes. The girl bit her lip in self-annoyance, and said nothing. Von Tressen interposed.
“I can assure you, Count, that so far as I am concerned, there was no reason why Fräulein d’Ivady should not allude to that unlucky episode. At least I deserve to be for ever reminded of my carelessness.”
Zarka made a gesture of protest. “You are my guest, Herr Lieutenant, and I do not wish you, here, at any rate, to be twitted with a mistake which might have had very serious consequences.”
It seemed to Von Tressen that his host was making much more of the business than had the girl. There was a scarcely veiled sharpness in Zarka’s tone which seemed meant to sting his cousin.
“But I assure you, Count——” Von Tressen began, when Zarka interrupted him.
“Let us dismiss the subject, please,” he said almost peremptorily. “It is happily at an end.”