ONE evening the monotony of the Herriard’s delightful existence under the shadow of the grey old Schloss was broken by the appearance of a company of poor strolling players. They were, it appeared, a band of humble comedians and pantomimists who, in the more rural and remote districts, went from village to village, to gain a precarious livelihood by giving a crude medley of melodrama and farce, interspersed with singing and acrobatic feats. To gain permission for a short performance at a great house naturally was, when such an opportunity presented itself, much to be desired. It meant probably less work for a greater reward, compared with the two or three hours’ toil, required to conjure kreutzers from the thrifty peasants’ pockets. Alexia knew this, and persuaded her husband to join with her in sanctioning the humble show. Herriard had at first shown himself a little dubious as to the wisdom of inviting strangers within the precincts of the castle. But Alexia quickly laughed away his doubts; these strolling mummers were familiar visitors. They had made their appearance there at more or less regular intervals ever since she could remember; she would like to hear their bombastic nonsense and the old songs once again for the sake of old times, and she called Gollmar, the ancient steward, to bear witness that there was no harm in the poor fellows.
So it came that Herriard readily fell in with Alexia’s wish; he ordered the troupe to be admitted to the inner courtyard, and for an hour they laughed together at the strange, half-incomprehensible performance of the strollers.
Certainly they were, for the most part, a strange, weird, almost forbidding dozen of human beings; but then in stage-struck peasants from the wild regions of Austro-Hungary one would scarcely expect to find the graces of players drawn from more civilized surroundings. When the performance was over, Herriard sent them a liberal fee, and they were given a substantial meal under the superintendence of Gollmar, who was directed to keep his eye upon them until they were once more outside the gates.
“It was, perhaps, as well, gnädiger Herr,” the old man observed afterwards, “to keep the fellows under observation. Our countrymen have a saying, ‘One coat suffices to keep warm a player and a thief.’ Not but what these scoundrels are good honest mountebanks for their sort; still, there was no harm in keeping them from the temptation to pilfer. Old Karonsek, the leader, I have known for well-nigh forty years: he has, naturally, a reputation to preserve, since he boasts he has never seen the inside of a prison; but the younger men—” he gave a shrug, “what would you have? A man does not often turn player till every respectable calling is closed to him, and our proverb says a man who has no home has no neighbours to call him thief when he steals. But,” he added, by way of softening his strictures upon the average morality of theatrical strollers, “your honour’s kindness has given untold pleasure to the household. Few amusements come our way in this remote spot, and in the late Count’s time we always made the humblest strollers welcome.”
Two nights later Herriard was roused from his sleep by the furious barking of a dog, followed by a man’s angry cry. Snatching up his revolver, he ran downstairs, and, guided by the sounds, rushed into the library. The moonlight, streaming in through the half-open window, showed him one of the men servants, Jan Martin, leaning over a writing table, his hand held to his chest, while he was almost inarticulate with rage and fear. As Herriard’s approach he pointed excitedly to the window. “There! He has gone that way. A robber, Excellency: the wretch has stabbed me. Quick! he cannot be far away. Fritz has gone after him.”
With a word to the wounded man, Herriard passed out by the window. He could hear Fritz, the wolf-hound, still barking savagely, but now there came from him a howl of pain, and then all was silent. He hurried forward, and about a hundred yards away came upon the poor animal bleeding, and quite disabled. No sign of the midnight robber was to be seen, although Herriard ran in pursuit of him. But the plantation at which he had arrived was large, its paths devious; unless he came upon him by chance it was almost hopeless to expect to overtake the man. Herriard stopped and listened. Not a sound was to be heard except presently that of running footsteps of men from the castle who, headed by Gollmar, were coming in pursuit. But half-an-hour’s energetic search by the party brought no result; the miscreant, whoever he was, had made good his escape.
As Herriard took his way back to the castle his apprehensions, which had been lulled, returned in full strength. In the courtyard the poor dog, Fritz, lay moaning in pain. Herriard examined his hurt, which he found to be a punctured wound just below the throat. On the ground beside him lay an object which Herriard eagerly picked up and scrutinized. It was a small piece of coarse cloth, evidently torn by the dog from the intruder’s coat. He showed it to Gollmar.
“Ah,” said the old steward, looking critically at the fragment, “it is as I suspected. Certainly one of the play-actor fellows who were here on Tuesday. I noticed one or two knavish faces among the new members of the troupe. He has been tempted to earn a year’s pay in a single night. A daring, beggarly villain. His after-thought is likely to mean death to Jan Martin, if not to poor Fritz as well. Well, if Fritz dies there will be a reckoning to pay with the Count.”
“You think, then, it was one of those wretched fellows, the players?”
“I am sure of it, gnädiger Herr. Look at this scrap of cloth. It is of the coarsest description. Such as would be worn only by a peasant or a strolling mountebank. And no peasant, in his mind or out of it, would dare to plan a midnight robbery, with murder if need be, at the Schloss Rohnburg. It is out of the question. No; this evidence points to one of those ranting tatterdemalions, who have the wits of a drunkard and the reverence of a pig.”
Gollmar’s manifest conviction of the man’s identity somewhat reassured Herriard, and he was able to relate the affair to Alexia without communicating to her the fears he had at first entertained. The doctor who had been sent for reported Jan Martin’s wound as not dangerous; with a week’s quiet he would recover from its effects. Fritz, too, had had a wonderful escape; the evidently hasty stab he had received having just missed being mortal.
Still, although, providentially, not much harm had been done, the affair gave Herriard considerable uneasiness. He made light of it, since there seemed no object to be gained by taking it, outwardly at least, more seriously. Yet, somehow, it contrived to give him an ever-present conviction of impending danger. When he reasoned the matter out with himself he was bound to admit that the common-sense arguments pointed to the confirmation of Gollmar’s simple theory. What more likely, he asked himself, than that a member of a lawless, homeless, strolling party of mountebanks, recruited probably from the dregs of society, if not, indeed, from the jails, should use the opportunity of admittance to a house of wealth to plan an attempt which promised a tempting haul? Had Herriard’s mind, as he admitted, not been full of Gastineau and his methods, he would not have thought to question the obvious explanation. As it was, the affair, unpleasant enough in itself, gave a disagreeable shock, the effects of which did not leave him when he found that the harm done by the midnight marauder was far less than it might have been.
But the days went by, resuming their uneventful course. A week passed, and at its end both man and dog had quite recovered from their wounds. Herriard began to think that it had, after all, been a case of attempted robbery by one of the strolling prayers. Enquiries in the district had quite failed to identify the scrap of cloth, and the idea that the culprit belonged to the neighbourhood was scouted by every one in the place. A watch was now kept every night in the castle, but no sign was detected of a renewal of the attempt. Naturally, they said, the players were now far away. On the night in question they had been performing at a village but a few miles from Rohnburg.
So Herriard’s uneasiness, having nothing new to feed upon, gradually subsided, and he gave himself up once more to all the charm of existence which that romantic domain afforded him.
One day it was announced to him that Fritz, the wolf-hound, had mysteriously disappeared. He had been always a domesticated animal, content for the most part to lie basking in the sun on the terrace or in the courtyard, and had never been known to stray far from the castle. But now he had not been seen for twenty-four hours, and every one was at a loss to account for his absence. His wound was quite healed, and he had seemed in perfect health, although one of the men had noticed that he was unusually restless. Herriard was at first inclined to be somewhat perturbed by the occurrence, till one of the foresters, having a peculiar knowledge of animals, adduced a theory which tended to set his mind at rest. The dog’s behaviour, he declared, was perfectly explicable. In his natural state he would be a fierce, marauding, dangerous animal. His real character had been tamed and held in suspension by the luxury and kindness of a domestic life. Now the hurt he had received had roused the animal’s fiercer nature which had but slumbered. That this was the case had been indicated by the dog’s noticeable restlessness; he had now assuredly gone off on a wild hunting prowl; the taste of live blood (he had doubtless bitten the robber) had quickened his instinct, and induced a craving for living prey.
With this explanation Herriard had to be satisfied. He ordered, however, a thorough search to be made for the dog, and it was with a certain sense of relief that he heard this was unsuccessful; he had feared the finding of the animal dead by that mysterious hand which his fancy would picture as stretched forth against him and his.
But Alexia laughed him out of his fear of the unknown. Was not the world smiling on them with all the delights of an ideal existence? What sign was there, save in imagination, of the danger they had dreaded? It was a sin to let the memory of a trouble, now past and gone, destroy the delight of the present hour. Paul Gastineau was not a fool to waste, in pursuing them with his hatred, time which might be spent to more advantage in opening out his new career. Probably he had for once spoken the frank truth, and was by that time across the ocean, eager to put into practice the fresh schemes and projects of his busy, ambitious brain. In the weeks they had spent at the Schloss Rohnburg what tangible sign had there been of the presence or machinations of their arch enemy? None. If he had meant to strike, why this delay? He was, above all things, a man of swift action. No. Geoffrey should not worry himself any more with those fancies. The danger was now a myth, opposed by common sense; if it were real, the worry would not keep it away. So Herriard resolved to be guided by Alexia’s counsel, and to give himself up thenceforward to the full enjoyment of the new life he had entered upon. After the stuffy turmoil of the Courts it was indeed a change full of delight, a life never even dreamt of a month before.
There was plenty of sport to be had in the forest which stretched away from the Schloss, and Herriard, with the enjoyment of one for whom struggle and danger had suddenly ceased, threw himself with zest into the novel, emancipated life, and wandered every day farther in pursuit of game. In the still depths of the forest, in a fairy-land which seemed far from the ken of worldly strife and schemes, Herriard felt he had left the events of a few weeks back years behind him; he could laugh at his fears. Paul Gastineau was no longer a haunting terror, but merely a strange episode.
What creatures of our impressions, our surroundings we are. How one mind, determined, inscrutable, can dominate a weaker: how long the paralyzing effect of a stronger will lingers, to be weakened and at last banished not by a human effort but by the external agency of a changed environment.
Reflections such as these were passing through Herriard’s mind as, after a full day’s sport, he sat, tranquilly smoking a cigar, on the platform of an ancient hunting-tower which stood in the forest depths some two or three miles from the castle. The two foresters who had accompanied him he had sent home with the heavy bag of game; being himself somewhat tired with his long tramp, he had thought to rest awhile before resuming his homeward walk.
The tower was situated in an open clearing where three glades met. To Herriard, as he stretched himself comfortably on the old weather-beaten benches, it seemed the most tranquilly romantic spot in the world. All round him from the sunlit dell rose majestically the dark violet masses of the vast forest; its density pierced by the three moss-carpeted roads which the tower commanded. The day had been hot; a hazy film seemed to hang over the dark, illimitable battalions of pines, standing motionless in the windless atmosphere. On either side of the long vista which lay before Herriard’s idle observation, the haze seemed to line the dark walls, fringing the avenue beyond the line of trees, and leaving a narrow road still bright and clear.
Presently Herriard became conscious that far down this glade, perhaps half an English mile away, a figure had appeared. For a while he watched it lazily, as a break in that magnificent monotony it had become the most interesting object in sight, and it amused the watcher to observe whether the figure was moving towards the tower or away from it. Nearer, surely; but with a progress so slow as to be scarcely perceptible. Herriard took out his stalking glasses and brought them to bear on the object of his curiosity. A man, a bent old man, he seemed, carrying a load, probably a faggot-gatherer crawling on his daily round. Herriard put back the glasses—he was never quite free now from suspicion—and contentedly resumed his cigar. Then he fell to moralizing, as an idle man will, over the lot of such an one as the solitary peasant who was creeping slowly towards him. Presently as he looked, the figure bore to one side of the track, and next moment vanished in the curtain of mist that hung before the line of trees. He had crept off by some forest path, Herriard conjectured, with a slight feeling of an ended companionship. For in that place, surrounded by the almost oppressive loneliness compelled by nature in all her unchallenged predominance and autocracy, even the distant presence of an obscure peasant creeping laboriously through the forest ways to his primitive hovel, gave a welcome touch of company. But he was gone now, passed out of his observer’s life, in all probability never to cross his way again.
With that thought in his mind Herriard gave an exclamation of surprise. There again was the man he had seen and who was still furnishing a text for his moralizing; he had reappeared as abruptly as he had vanished. He was close at hand now, almost under the tower; the same bent figure, bowed beneath a bundle of faggots, and using one as a staff to aid his steps.
The old man seemed to have come quickly from the point where he had disappeared not many minutes before; if, perhaps, more time had not passed in the interval than Herriard was conscious of. The man came on until he was under the tower, and so out of sight from the platform. Herriard was debating with himself whether he should accost the solitary creature and brighten the day for him with a present of a few florins, when, somewhat to his surprise, he heard the slow footsteps ascending the winding stairs of the tower. Perhaps, he thought, the old fellow is accustomed to billet himself here; the half-ruinous building is useless enough; one could scarcely complain.
At the floor below the footsteps stopped for a while: if the poor man was resting there comfortably Herriard would not disturb him unnecessarily. No; he was moving about softly; now, surely he was on the stairs again, coming up to the roof platform. It seemed a strange thing to do; the reason was not quite obvious, unless the man had noticed a stranger there, and was coming up to beg. Herriard watched for his appearance with some curiosity. The ascent sounded hard and laboured, and when at length the expected figure emerged from the trap-door the man’s back was, by the trend of the steps, turned towards the place where Herriard sat. For a few moments he seemed to fumble with his neck-cloth, apparently unaware that he was not alone, since he took no notice of him.
“What in the world is he doing?” As the remark was uttered half aloud, the man turned quickly. The unkempt beard was gone; and, with a great leap of the heart, Herriard found himself staring at the face of Paul Gastineau.