"O pasitive, madam!"
"And prithee--what saw you?"
""Tis no matter----"
"What saw you, Pan--Tom?"
"I saw that Dalroyd fellow--brutalise your foot."
My lady"s cheek grew rosy and her delicate nostrils expanded suddenly, but her voice was smooth and soft as ever.
"Will you swear it, Pan?"
"On oath!" he answered.
"Alack!" she sighed. "On what slender threads doth woman"s reputation hang! And if I say I was not there?"
"Then, my lady, I am blind or, having eyes, see visions----"
"Was ever such a coil!" she sighed. "Dear Pan, hast ever been my second brother, so do I forgive thee and, thus forgiving, bid thee go, thinking on me as kindly as thou may"st and believing that thine eyes do verily see visions." So the Viscount bowed and went, somewhat stiff in the back and making great play with his snuff-box. "Dear Pan!" she murmured as she watched him go, "I might have loved him had I any love to spare. And now--you, John--will you rail at me, too?"
"No, my lady," he answered dully, "never again!"
"Yet your voice is cold and hard! Did you think to see me too?"
"Aye, I saw--I saw," he answered wearily.
"And if I say you saw me not?"
"Then, my lady, I will say I saw you not."
Now at this she came near, so near that he was conscious of all her warm and fragrant loveliness and thrilled to the contact of her hand upon the sleeve of the war-worn Ramillie coat.
"And--wilt believe, John?" she questioned softly. The Major stood silent and with head averted. "This dear old coat!" she murmured.
"Dost remember how I sewed these b.u.t.tons on?"
"Aye, I remember!" he groaned.
"And--wilt believe, my John?" she questioned, and drew nearer yet, until despite her soft and even tone, he could feel against him the swell and tumult of her bosom; yet he stood with head still averted and arms, that yearned to clasp her, rigid at his sides. "Wilt believe, John?"
"Betty," he answered, "ask me to believe the sun will rise no more and I"ll believe, but not--not this!"
"Yet, dost love me--still?" she whispered.
"Aye, my lady--through life to death and beyond. The love I bear you is a love stronger than death and the agony of heartbreak and dead hopes. Though you take my heart and trample it in the dust that heart shall love thee still--though you profane the worship that I bear you still shall that worship endure--though you strip me of fame and honour and rob me of my dearest ideals still, ah still shall I love you until--until----" His voice broke and he bowed his head. "O Betty!"
he cried. "In G.o.d"s name show me--a little mercy--let me go!"
And turning he limped away and left her standing alone.
IV
The Colonel"s fierce eyes were transfigured with a radiant tenderness, his gruff voice was grown strangely soft and tender, his sinewy hand had sought and found at last those white and trembling fingers, while two soft eyes were looking up into his, eyes made young with love, and bright with happy tears.
Seeing all of which from without the cas.e.m.e.nt, my lady Betty, choking back her own grief, smiled, sobbed and, stealing away, crept softly upstairs to her room, locked herself in and, lying face down upon her bed, wept tears more bitter than any she had ever known.
CHAPTER XL
OF THE ONSET AT THE HAUNTED MILL
A wild, black night full of wind and rain and mud--a raging, tearing wind with rain that hissed in every vicious gust--a wind that roared fiercely in swaying tree-tops and pa.s.sing, moaned dismally afar; a wind that flapped the sodden skirts of the Major"s heavy riding-coat, that whirled the Sergeant"s hat away into the blackness and set him cursing in French and Dutch and English.
"What is"t, Zeb?" enquired the Major during a momentary lull as they rode knee and knee in the gloom.
"My hat sir ... the wind with a cur----" The words were blown away and the Sergeant, swearing unheard, bent his head to the lashing rain.
"Are we ... right ... think you? ... long way ... very dark egad..."
"Dark sir, never knowed it darker and the rain--may the dev..."
"Are we nigh the place Zeb d"ye think, we should be ... by now----"
"Not so fur your hon ... a bye-road hereabouts if "twarn"t dark, with ten thousand..."
In a while as they splashed on through the gloom the Major felt a hand on his arm.
"By your left, sir ... bye-road ... can"t see on account o" dark, may the foul fiend ... by your left, so!" Thus through mud and rain and buffeting wind they rode until at word of the Sergeant they dismounted.
"Must hide the horses, sir," said he in the Major"s ear. "I know a snug place hard by, wait you here sir ... some shelter under the hedge ... never saw such a plaguy night, may all the foul----" And the Sergeant was gone, venting curses at every step. Very soon he was back again and the Major stumbled after him across an unseen, wind-swept expanse until looming blacker than the dark, they saw the ruin of the haunted mill. Inside, sheltered from rain and wind the Major unloosed his heavy coat and took from under his arm a certain k.n.o.bby bludgeon and twirled it in the dark while Sergeant Zebedee, hard by, struck flint and steel, but the tinder was damp and refused to burn.
"Is a light necessary Zeb--if any should observe----"
"Why sir, like as not they"d think "twas ghosts, d"ye see. And "tis as well to survey field of operations, wherefore I brought a lanthorn and----" The Major reached out and caught his arm.
"Hark!" said he.
Above and around them were shrieks and howlings, timbers creaked and groaned and the whole ruined fabric quivered, ever and anon, to the fierce buffets of the wind, while faint and far was an ever-recurrent roll and rumble of thunder.
"Storm"s a-waxing sir ... can"t last, I..." Borne on the wind above the tempest came a faint hail. "Zounds, they"re close on us!"
exclaimed the Sergeant. "This way, sir, keep close, catch the tail o"
my coat." Thus they stumbled on through the pitchy dark, found a wall, followed it, turned a corner, brought up against another wall and so stood waiting with ears on the stretch.
And soon amid this confusion of sounds was a stamping of horse, the tread of feet and presently voices within the mill itself; one in especial that poured out a flood of oaths and fierce invective upon rain and wind and all things in general.
"O burn me, and must we wait here, shivering in the darkness with a curse on"t and me wet to the bone----"