CHAPTER XIV
THE COUNT AND HIS SHADOW
ON leaving the farm Count Zarka rode straight to Rozsnyo. In the hall he encountered Royda d’Ivady, and they went into the library together.
“I, too, have been riding in the forest,” the girl said, “and met your friend, Lieutenant Von Tressen.”
Zarka looked at her sharply. “Ah? Where?”
“He was coming from the direction of the farm, where your friends the Harlbergs are staying.”
Watching him expectantly, she saw his face grow dark. “He had not been to the farm,” he said, for once off his guard.
“Ah, then you have been there, Aubray?” she returned, forcing a laugh.
“I had good reason to go there,” he replied. “A serious thing has happened to Fräulein Harlberg. She was attacked by a wild boar in the forest.”
“So! Then that is what the Lieutenant meant.”
“The Lieutenant?” Zarka exclaimed sharply. “What did he know? What did he say?”
Jealous herself, Royda divined the same feeling in him, and, though it stung her, she rejoiced at it.
“Only that I was wise to ride rather than walk, since there was danger from wild boars.”
“You think he knew that the Fräulein had been attacked?”
She delighted in feeding his jealousy since it soothed her own and seemed, vaguely, to work towards the end she desired.
“I did not understand then,” she answered, “but now have no doubt the Lieutenant knew all about it. Who was privileged to rescue the poor Fräulein?” she went on, with a touch of banter. “You or he?”
“Neither,” he returned curtly.
“She vanquished the animal herself, unaided?”
“What nonsense, Royda!” he exclaimed impatiently. “A stranger shot the brute.”
“A stranger!” she echoed incredulously. “A providential stranger. Did the Fräulein tell you so?”
“Certainly,” he snapped. Then suspiciously: “Did the Lieutenant say he shot it?”
“Oh, no. He said nothing about the affair, except to warn me.”
“But you think he knew of it?”
“I am sure of that,” she answered. All the same she was not quite so sure as her tone implied.
Zarka walked to the window and stood looking out. For a while there was silence, then Royda said, half timidly—
“Aubray, what is this mystery about the Harlbergs?”
He looked round sharply, then turned his head away again. “Mystery? There is no mystery. What makes you think so?”
“It is odd for them to live at that half-ruined farmhouse.”
“They are poor.”
“But none the less attractive.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are there every day, Aubray.”
“I have business with Herr Harlberg.”
She gave a sigh. “It is a strange business——”
“How?” he interrupted sharply.
“That can change you and make you so unkind to me.” A tear glistened in her eye; her pride made her dash it away swiftly ere he turned. He came towards her, the deceitful face smoothed into tenderness, although the irritation was not quite successfully obliterated.
“Unkind, little one?” he protested caressingly. “You are mistaken. I could not be that. Only I have been worried lately by political matters. A man who plays for a great stake must not expect to have command either of his time or his moods. You must forgive me, Royda.”
He spoke in a tone of easy confidence, very different to his strenuous pleading with Philippa Harlberg. He put his arm round his cousin’s shoulders, drew her to him and kissed her. “Am I forgiven, little one?” To a third person the tone of the question would have sounded indifferent as to its answer.
“Aubray, I feared she was trying to take you from me.”
“No; you are utterly wrong,” he assured her quite truthfully. “That is the last thing she would try to do! I swear it, Royda. There is no love between us.”
She gave a sigh of relief.
“Now I must be off again,” he said, releasing her. “You need not be afraid,” he added with a smile. “I am going in the opposite direction to the farm.”
Royda would have liked him to stay, but she knew by experience that he was not to be turned from his intentions, and so forbore to try and keep him. When the door had closed behind him she walked to the window, intent on watching his departure. On a table lay his riding whip. Impulsively she caught it up and kissed it, pressing to her lips that part where his hand must have held it. Then from the window she waved her hand to him, and stood watching till the wood hid him from sight.
“Aubray, Aubray, my darling!” she cried, as she turned away; “you shall be mine. If this woman had come between us and taken your love I would have killed her.”
Gun on shoulder, Zarka had set off on foot towards the higher mountain range which backed with abrupt and majestic elevation the dark forest uplands as they rose towards it. He strode resolutely on, soon leaving the warmer and more smiling valley behind him, following a scarcely perceptible path through the superb terraces of woods, making his way through dense thickets, and taking all the while little heed of the furred and feathered inhabitants of those regions as they scampered or whirred away on his approach. His course was continually on an ascending gradient, and after a good half-hour’s walking it became quite steep. Presently the woods grew thinner and lighter, the air cooler. A quarter of an hour more brought the Count to the verge of the forest on the greatest height at which it grew, and he emerged into the blood-red sunshine and keen, cold air above the summit of the great timber-line. Beneath him, as he stood for a few moments to gain breath, stretched away downwards the vast pine forests, like a green velvet robe reaching to the bosom of the mountain; above him majestically towered the bust and head in the dazzling complexion of their eternal snows, and just then brilliantly decked with prismatic gems under the glittering sunlight.
But Zarka seemed in no mood that day for sight-seeing. After his impatient halt he went on, no longer straight upwards, but by a jagged path formed by a ledge on the side of the mountain. There was no fear about the man; his nerves were as strong as the rock he was climbing. Taking his way up the slippery and uneven mountain track, having on one hand a wall of rock and on the other space with a sheer precipice below him, he never seemed in any danger even when most surrounded by it: his character manifestly dominated the inert threatenings of Nature around him. He was master of his fate and, humanly speaking, could defy it to run counter to his will.
Presently his path broadened, descended abruptly, and finally led on to a mountain road evidently the approach to a pass, one of the few points of communication from one side of the great range to the other. Here were, at least, some signs of life and occasional traffic, although dreary and primitive enough. A walk of a few hundred yards towards the pass brought Zarka to a wretched building which served in that desolate region for an inn. He walked into its one public room, called for a glass of brandy, and threw himself on a bench. A bearded man in a rough country dress, sitting with his head resting on his arm, seemingly half asleep over his glass, was the only other occupant of the room.
“A fine autumn day, friend, but cold,” Zarka observed to him carelessly.
Scarcely troubling to change his attitude, the man replied: “On the mountains, where ’tis never hot, we know not cold.”
When he had spoken he raised his head, and the two men glanced keenly at one another. Then they nodded significantly, resuming their indifferent attitude as the innkeeper came in with the Count’s refreshment. When they were alone again the man rose, crossed the floor with heavy step, and flung himself down on the other end of the bench on which Zarka was sitting. He slid his hand stealthily along the space between them; the Count’s came out furtively to meet it, both men the while looking in front of them across the room. When the hands were raised a little two small envelopes lay on the bench. Talking the casual gossip of an inn, each man moved his hand to the paper which the other’s had held, and so drew it back and slipped it into his pocket. The Count sipped his brandy, or at least made a pretence of doing so, for the rough spirit was not likely to be to his taste.
“We live in dangerous times,” observed the man in a casual tone, which, however, was contradicted by the intense meaning in the look he gave his companion; “dangerous times, and there are many events happening and going to happen which may not be written.”
“That is true enough,” Zarka assented, responding to the look, but speaking in the same phlegmatic tone. “When once it is certain that it is nobody’s business to inquire into matters, why, anything, be it ever so desperate, may be done with impunity.”
“You are right, friend,” the man replied. “But not till then. They who take forbidden paths must walk warily. They know better than to hurry. To rush forward is to court discovery and its consequences.”
Looking straight in front of him Zarka nodded twice, and the action was calculated to leave no doubt in his companion’s mind that he comprehended the drift of his somewhat general remarks, and was fully able to apply them to a particular case. “Whereas,” he said with a half-yawn, “by taking his time a man may tire out the vigilance of his watchers and get through unseen. Yes, my friend, that is very true, and is, no doubt, perfectly understood by those whose secret actions make our history.”
The man, affecting to change his position, touched him sharply. Zarka glanced at him, and then at the door. Probably none but an eye sharpened by suspicion would have detected a form behind it as it stood slightly open. With an alert movement of the arm Zarka knocked over his glass.
“Landlord!” he called, watching the door.
It was pushed open and the man who had stood behind it came in, followed by the innkeeper. Zarka ordered his glass to be refilled, then carelessly turned his attention to the newcomer, and conceived a shrewd idea as to his identity. The astute Count was right in his surmise. It was the man who had shot the boar, he who called himself Abele d’Alquen.
“I always maintain,” Zarka observed, as though resuming a subject interrupted by the accident with the glass, “that the less a man speaks the safer he is. It is best to know nothing; it is next best to keep others ignorant of what we know.”
“A wise saying, friend,” his companion responded. “Since we never know who are our friends and who are our enemies.”
Zarka turned quickly to him, his mouth drawn back in a sinister smile. “Sometimes we do,” he remarked, and the other understood him.
D’Alquen had taken his seat at the long narrow table opposite. He was clearly watching them with hardly a pretence of doing otherwise; there was nothing furtive about those fierce, eager, reckless eyes. Zarka took out a cigar and lighted it.
“How long,” he asked his companion, as he lay back lazily puffing the smoke to the low ceiling, “may we expect the present unsettled weather to last?”
“Who knows?” the other answered. “Come back here this day week, then ask me again,”—he laughed—“and I may tell you for certain.”
After a few casual remarks Zarka rose. “I must be going,” he observed, “if I would be home by nightfall. Luckily my way is downhill. Good-day to you, friend.”
As the Count took up his gun, D’Alquen spoke for the first time. “Have you had sport, sir?”
“Very fair,” Zarka answered, with a particularly courteous bow. “In the forest.”
“You have not brought your bag with you!” D’Alquen remarked, and Zarka thought he understood the half sneer on his face.
“I shoot for sport, not for food,” he retorted. “Good-day.”
As he came out upon the wild road the autumn sun was already well on its downward course, and the mountain peaks had begun to grow indistinct in the gathering mist. Walking at a brisk pace, he soon reached the rocky spur which interposed between him and the great forest. Gaining the precipitous path that led round the chasm he followed it as familiar ground in its windings, its sudden falls and rises. At one point it ran for a few dozen paces across an open plateau where for a short space the wall of rocks was broken. As Zarka advanced across this, suddenly there rose from the great abyss a gigantic figure terrible in its size, awful in its weirdness, a very horror in its human image yet ghostly form, more terrible still in its spectral likeness to the man whom it confronted.
Zarka, startled by the suddenness of the apparition, stopped dead with an involuntary gesture, then laughed aloud, and his laugh was half that of self-derision, half of greeting; a laugh in crescendo, and it seemed as though the spectre joined in and flung back its loud ending.
“An omen!” Zarka cried, and his voice was carried and re-echoed far away, in and out of the rocks and chasms. “My alter ego! Have you come to bid me take courage in answer to my prayer? Have you known my thoughts, and risen to the bidding that was in my heart? Then you are more than mere shadow of mortal man, bugbear of timid ignorance; you are more than this, you must be. You are he that serves us when we have the courage to call you; you are myself! Zarka—Aubray Zarka in the forces of Nature, outside this puny flesh; you are my ministering familiar to give me my heart’s desire. Now you will grant it! Give this girl to me in the teeth of my rival, in spite of herself. Turn her heart to me, and let her will be as nothing matched with mine!”
The wild reckless spirit of the superstitious gambler was on him. The habit of speculation, added to the fire in the blood, had changed the sane shrewd schemer to an almost childish omen-seeker.
He stretched out his hands passionately towards the spectre. “Am I not your child—your very self on earth? Shall I not be merged in you, and be as you are when this clay lies cold in the ground? I have power; power of will, power of gold! And my power shall not be mocked. In me the heart to desire is one with the power to have. So, my genius—angel—devil, whate’er you be, in these desperate passes, give me my desire; the brain, the will, the courage—for fair or foul, harden my heart, strengthen my hand. Be with me now, as I shall be with you hereafter. Zarka!”
He shouted the last word in half mocking exaltation, and as he ended the apostrophe the spectral form seemed to bend over him and the cloudy presence to surround and envelop him. It was but the vapour descending as the sun gradually lost its power, just as the apparition had been but the familiar spectre of the mountains.
Nevertheless Zarka seemed, with a gambler’s superstition, to regard it as an omen and an answer to his profane prayer. He threw back his head and stretched his arms as though he would embrace what was but his own shadow. Then, with a more practical impulse, he snatched up his gun, and ran quickly on along the path, racing the great cumuli which were rolling down from the mountain tops. He had started only just in time, and, familiar with the way, was able to keep in front of the pursuing obscurity. Soon he reached in safety the dividing ground between the snow and the commencing line of vegetation. Here all was bright and warm once more. Zarka, pausing with the air of a man who has won his race, looked backwards up towards the rolling mists and laughed.
“Just in time! A few seconds more of apostrophizing, and not even my tutelar deity or demon could have saved me from an uncomfortable night. Well, I shall enjoy my dinner all the more from the knowledge that I very nearly missed it. May I be as lucky elsewhere!”
He went on, soon plunging down into the sloping forest, and leisurely making his way homewards.