"Send for a chair, Hugh!" she whispered, rising unsteadily to her feet.
""Twere wiser for you to rest a little before you leave," said the Countess, but there was no kindliness in her voice to second the invitation, and she did not move a step towards her.
"I would not appear discourteous, madame," faltered Lady Tracy, "but I shall recover best at home."
"I will fetch a chair, Betty," said Marston, and made as though to go; but with a terrified "No, no!" Lady Tracy caught him by the coat and drew his arm about her waist, clasping her hand upon it to keep it there. "Twas the frankest confession of fear that ever I chanced upon, and I marvelled not that Ilga smiled at it. However, she despatched Otto upon the errand, and presently Marston accompanied his sister to her home.
Ilga and myself were thus left standing in the hall, looking each at the other. I was determined not to speak, being greatly angered for that she had not believed me when I informed her Lady Tracy was Marston"s sister, and I took up my hat and cane and marched with my nose in the air to the door. But she came softly behind me, and said in the gentlest tone of contrition:
"I seem to spend half my life in giving you offence and the other half in begging your pardon."
And contrasting her sweet patience with me against the cold dislike which she had evinced to Lady Tracy, I, poor fool, carried home with me the fancy yet more firmly rooted than before, that her antagonism to the original of the miniature was no more than the outcome of a woman"s jealousy.
CHAPTER XIII.
COUNTESS LUKSTEIN IS CONVINCED.
One detail of this mischancy episode occasioned me considerable perplexity. Conjecture as I might, I could hit upon no cause or explanation of it that seemed in any degree feasible. The astonishment of Otto Krax I attributed, and as I afterwards discovered rightly attributed, to the appearance of Lady Tracy so pat upon the discussion of her picture, and to my expressed desire to present her to the Countess within a few minutes of strenuously denying her acquaintance; and I deemed it not extravagant. That he recognised her as the object of his master"s capricious fancy at Bristol, I considered most improbable. For I remembered how successfully the intrigue had been concealed; so that even Julian himself came over-late to the knowledge of it. His second exclamation on the stairs I set down to the probability that he had perceived Lady Tracy was on the point of swooning.
It was indeed the fact of the lady"s swoon which troubled me. Her natural repugnance to meeting the Countess was not motive enough. Nor did I believe her sufficiently sensible to shame for that feeling to work on her to such purpose. It seemed of a piece with the terror which she had subsequently shown on her recovery. The miniature, I conjectured, had something, if not everything to do with it. Resolving wisely that I had best ascertain the top and bottom of the matter, I called upon Marston at his house in Lincoln"s Inn Fields, close to the new college of Franciscans, and asked where his sister stayed, on the plea that I would fain pay my respects to her, and a.s.sure myself of her convalescence.
"I can satisfy you on the latter point," he returned cordially, "but at the cost of denying you the pleasure of a visit. For my sister left London on the next day, and has gone down into the country."
"So soon?" I asked in some surprise. For Lady Tracy hardly impressed me as likely to find much enjoyment in the felicities of a rural life.
"Her illness left her weak, and she thought the country air would give her health."
For a moment I was in two minds whether to inquire more precisely of her whereabouts and follow her; but I reflected that I might encounter some difficulty in compa.s.sing an interview, for it was evident that she had fled from London in order to avoid further trouble and concern in the matter. And even if I succeeded so far, I saw no means of eliciting the explanation I needed, without revealing to her the unscrupulous use which her brother had made of her miniature; and that I had not the heart to do. The business seemed of insufficient importance to warrant it. There was besides a final and convincing argument which decided me to remain in London. If I journeyed into the West, I should leave an open field for my rival, and no ally with the Countess to guard against his insinuations; and I reflected further that there were few possible insinuations from which he would refrain.
On this point of his conduct, however, I was minded to teach him a lesson, which would make him more discreet in the future, and at the same time effect the purpose I had in view when Lady Tracy inopportunely swooned. For when I came to think over the events of that morning, I recollected that after all Lady Tracy had not spoken as I asked her, and though the last words Ilga had said to me as I left the house seemed to show me that she no longer believed the calumny, I was none the less anxious to compel Marston to disavow it.
Now it was the fashion at the time of which I write for the fine ladies and gentlemen of the town to take the air of a morning in the Piazza, of Covent Garden; and choosing an occasion when Marston was lounging there in the company of the Countess and her attendant, Mdlle. Durette, I inquired of him pointedly concerning his sister"s health, meaning to lead him from that starting-point to an admission that Lady Tracy was until that chance meeting a complete stranger to me.
But or ever he could reply, Ilga broke in with an air of flurry, and calling to Lord Culverton, who was approaching, engaged him in a rapid conversation. She was afraid, I supposed, that I meant to break the promise which I had given her upon the stairs, and tax Marston with his treachery; and I was confirmed in the supposition when I repeated the question. For she shot at me a look of reproach, and said quickly:
"I was telling your friend when you joined us," she said, "of my home in the Tyrol." She laid some stress upon the word "friend." ""Twere hard, I think, at any season to find a spot more beautiful."
""Twere impossible," rejoined Culverton, with his most elegant bow.
"For no spot can be more beautiful than that which owns Beauty for its queen."
"The compliment," replied Ilga, with a bow, "is worthy of the playhouse."
"Nay, nay," smirked my lord, mightily gratified; "the truth, madame, the truth extorted from me, let me die! And yet it hath some wit. I cannot help it, wit will out, the more certainly when it is truth as well."
"Lady Tracy, then----" I began to Marston.
"But at this time of the year," interrupted the Countess immediately, "Lukstein has no rival. Cornfields redden below it, beeches are marshalled green up the hillside behind it, gentian picks out a mosaic on the gra.s.s, and night and day waterfalls tumble their music through the air. Yet even in winter, when the ice binds it and gags its voices, it has a quiet charm of silence whereof the memory makes one homesick."
As she proceeded the anxiety died out of her face, and she grew absorbed in the picture which her memories painted.
"Madame," said Marston, "I should appreciate the description better if it spoke less of a longing to return."
"It is my kingdom, you see," she replied. "Barbarous no doubt, with a turbulent populace, but still it is my kingdom, and very loyal to me."
Culverton paid her the obvious flattery, but she took no heed of it.
"The tiniest, compactest kingdom," she went on in a musing tone, "sequestered in a nook of the world." She seated herself on a chair which stood at the edge of the Piazza. "Indeed, I shall return there, and that, I fancy, soon."
"Countess!" replied Culverton. "That were too heartless. "Twould decimate London, let me perish! For never a gallant but would drink himself to death. Oh, fie!"
Marston joined eagerly in the other"s protestations. For my part, however, I remained silent, well content with what she had said. For I recollected the evening when I first had talk with her, and the construction which I had placed upon her words; how she would never return to Lukstein until she was eased of the pain which her husband"s disaster had caused her. The notion that her memories had lost their sting thrilled me to the heart, and woke my vanity to conjecture of a cause.
"Then," said the Countess, "would my friends be proved heartless. For it is their turn to visit me, and I would not be baulked of requiting them for their kindness to me here. "Tis not so tedious a journey after all."
"I can warrant the truth of that," said Culverton. "For I have been as far as Innspruck myself."
"Indeed?" said the Countess. She looked hard at him for a second, and then laughed to herself. "When was that?" she asked.
"Some six years ago. I was on the grand tour with a tutor--a most obnoxious person, who was ever poring over statues and cold marble figures, but as for a fine woman, rabbit me if he ever knew one when he saw her. He dragged me with him from Italy to Innspruck to view some figures in the Cathedral."
"Then you must needs have pa.s.sed beneath Lukstein," said the Countess, "for it hangs just above the high-road from Italy."
Culverton would not admit the statement. Some instinct, some angelic warning, he declared, would surely have bidden him stop and climb to the Castle as to a holy shrine. The Countess laughingly a.s.sured him that nevertheless he had pa.s.sed her home, and with a fond minuteness she described to him its aspect and position.
Then the strangest thing occurred. She leaned forward in her chair, and with the tip of the stick she carried, drew a line on the gravel at the edge of the pavement.
"That represents the road from Meran," she explained. "The stone yonder is the Lukstein rock, on which the Castle stands." She briefly described the character of the village, and marked out the windings of the road from the gates at the back of the Castle down the hillside, until she had well-nigh completed a diagram in all essentials similar to that which Julian had sketched for me in my Horace.
"From the village," she said, "the road runs in a zigzag to join the highway."
She traced two long, distinct lines, but stopped of a sudden at the apex of the second angle, where the coppice runs to a point, with her face puckered up in a great perplexity. Culverton asked her what troubled her.
"I was forgetting," she said. "I was forgetting how often the road twisted," and very slowly she drew the final line to join with that which she had marked to represent the highway in the bed of the valley.
It struck me as peculiar for the moment, that with her great affection for Lukstein, she should forget so simple and prominent a detail as the number of angles which the road made in its descent. But I gave little thought to the matter, being rather engrossed in the strange coincidence of the diagram. It brought home to me with greater poignancy than ever before the deceit which I was practising upon my mistress. For I compared the use to which I had put my plan of the Castle with the motive which had led her unconsciously to reproduce it, I mean her desire that her friends should appreciate the home in which she took such manifest delight.
But while I was thus uneasily reproaching myself I perceived Marston separate from the group, and being obstinately determined that he should admit before Ilga the tenuity of my acquaintance with his sister, I called him back and asked him at what period Lady Tracy might be expected again in town.
This time the Countess made no effort to divert me. Indeed, she seemed barely to notice that I had put the question, but sat with her chin propped on the palms of her hands gazing with a thoughtful frown at the outline which she had drawn; and I believed her to be engrossed in the picture which it evoked in her imagination.
"It appears that you feel great interest in my sister, Mr. Buckler,"
said Marston curiously. Doubtless my question was a clumsy one, for I was never an adept at finesse; but this was the last answer which I desired to hear. "Nay, nay," I said hurriedly, and stopped at a loss, idly adding with my cane a line here and there to Countess Lukstein"s diagram.
To my surprise, however, Ilga herself came to my rescue, and in a careless tone brought the matter to an issue.