"No, Irma--no, Miss Irma!" I faltered.
"Well, I am," she whispered; "I was not before when the mob came, because I had to do everything. But now--I am glad that you are here"
(she paused the s.p.a.ce of a breath), "you and your sister."
I was glad, too, though not particularly about Agnes Anne.
"How old are you, Duncan?" she asked next.
I gave my age with the usual one year"s majoration. It was not a lie, for my birthday had been the day before. Still, it made Irma thoughtful.
"I did not think you were so much older than your sister," she said musingly; "why, you are older than I am!"
"Of course I am," I answered, gallantly facing the danger, and determined to brave it out.
On the spot I resolved to have a private interview with Agnes Anne as soon as might be, and, after reminding her of my birthday just past, tell her that in future I was to be referred to as "going on for twenty"--and that there was no real need to insert the words "going on for."
Irma Sobieski considered the subject a while longer, and I could see her eyes turned towards me as if studying me deeply. I wondered what she was thinking about with a brow so knotted, and I knew instinctively that it must be something of consequence, because it made her forget the letter nailed to the door, and the warning which might veil a threat. She fixed me so long that her eyes seemed to glow out of the pale face which made an oval patch against the darkness of the trees. Irma"s face was only starlit, but her eyes shone by their own light.
"Yes, I will trust you," she said at last. "I saw you the day when the mob came. You were ashamed, and would have helped me if you could. Even then I liked your face. I did not forget you, and when Agnes Anne spoke of her brother who was afraid of nothing, I was happy that you should come. I wanted you to come."
The words made my heart leap, but the next moment I knew that I was a fool, and might have known better. This was no Gerty Gower, to put her hand on your arm unasked, and let her face say what her lips had not the words to utter.
"I want a friend," she said; "I need a friend--a big brother--nothing else, remember. If you think I want to be made love to, you are mistaken. And, if you do, there will be an end. You cannot help me that way. I have no use for what people call love. But I have a mission, and that mission is my brother, Sir Louis. If you will consent to help me, I shall love you as I love him, and you--can care about me--as you care about Agnes Anne!"
Now I did not see what was the use of bringing Agnes Anne into the business. At home she and I were quarrelling about half our time. But since it was to be that or nothing, of course I was not such a fool as to choose the nothing.
All the same, after the promising beginning, I was enormously disappointed, and if only it had been lighter, doubtless my chagrin would have showed on my face. It seemed to me (not knowing) the death-blow to all my hopes. I did not then understand that in all the unending and necessarily eternal game of chess, which men and women play one against the other, there is no better opening than this.
But I was still cra.s.sly ignorant, intensely disappointed. I even swore that I would not have given a bra.s.s farthing to be "cared about" by Irma as I myself did about Agnes Anne.
Dimly, however, I did feel, even then, that there was a fallacy somewhere. And that, however much human beings with youthful hearts and answering eyes may pretend they are brother and sister, there is something deep within them that moves the Previous Question--as we are used to say in the Eden Valley Debating Parliament, which Mr. Oglethorpe and my father have organized on the model of that in the _Gentleman"s Magazine_.
But Irma, at least, had no such fear. She had, she believed, solved for ever a difficult and troublesome question, and, on easy terms, provided herself with a new relative, useful, safe and insured against danger by fire. Perhaps the underwriters of the city would not have taken the latter risk, but at that moment it seemed a slight one to Irma Sobieski.
At any rate, to seal the new alliance, in all sisterly freedom she gave me her hand, and did not appear to notice how long I kept it in the darkness. This was certainly a considerable set-off against the feeling of loneliness, and, if not quite content, I was at least more so. I wondered, among other things, if Irma"s heart kept knocking in a choking kind of way against the bottom of her throat.
At least mine did, and I had never, to my knowledge, felt just so about Agnes Anne. Indeed, I don"t think I had ever held Agnes Anne"s hand so long in my life, except to pick a thorn out of it with a needle, or to point out how disgracefully grubby it was.
CHAPTER X
THE CROWBAR IN THE WOOD
We sat so long that I grew hungry. And then forethought was rewarded.
For as I well knew, Agnes Anne had much ado to keep the house supplied (and the larder too often bare with all her trying!), I had done some trifle of providing on my own account. I had a flask of milk in my pouch--the big one in the skirt of the coat that I always wore when taking a walk in the General"s plantations. Cakes, too, and well-risen scones cut and with b.u.t.ter between them, most refreshing. I gave first of all to Irma, and at the sound of the eating and drinking Agnes Anne awakened and came forward. So I handed her some, but with my foot cautioned her not to take too much, because it was certain that she would by no means do her share of the fighting.
Both were my sisters. We had agreed upon that. But then some roses smell sweeter than others, though all are called by the same name.
We had just finished partaking of the food (and great good it did us) when Agnes Anne heard a sound that sent her suddenly back to her corner with a face as white as a linen clout. She was always quicker of hearing than I, but certain it is that after a while I did hear something like the trampling of horses, and especially, repeated more than once, the sharp jingle which the head of a caparisoned horse makes when, wearied of waiting, it casts it up suddenly.
_They were coming._
We said the words, looking at each other, and I suppose each one of us felt the same--that we were a lot of poor weak children, in our folly fighting against men. At least this is how I took it, and a sick disdain of self for being no stronger rose in my throat. A moment and it had pa.s.sed. For I took "King George" in hand, and bidding Irma see that little Louis was sleeping, I ran up the stairs to the open tower-top.
Here I had thought to be alone, but there before me, crouched behind the ramparts and looking out upon a dim glade which led down towards the landing-place at Killantringan, was Agnes Anne. In answer to my question as to what she was doing there, she answered at first that she could see in the dark better than I, and when I denied this she said that surely I did not think she was going to be left down there alone, nearest to the a.s.sailants if they should force a pa.s.sage!
One should never encourage one"s real sister in the belief that she can ever by any chance do right. So I said at once that whether she was behind the door or sitting on the weatherc.o.c.k at Marnhoul Tower would make no difference if the people were enemies and once got in.
"Hush!" she said. "What is that I hear now?"
And from away down the glade came slow and steady blows like those which a man might make as he lifts his axe and smites into the b.u.t.t. There was a sort of reverberation, too, as if the tree were hollow. But that might only be the effect of the night, the stillness, and the heavy covert of great woods which lay like a big green blanket all about us, and tossed every sound back to us like a wall at ball-play.
"Oh, if we could only see what they were doing--who they are?" I groaned. "I could go out quite safely by the door in the tower, but then who would fire off "King George"?"
"Toc! Toc!" came the sounds. And then a pause as if the woodsman had straightened himself up and was wiping his brow. The timing of the strokes was very slow. Probably, therefore, the labour itself was fatiguing. Sometimes, too, the axe fell with a different swing, as if other hands grasped it, but always with the same dull thudding and irritating slowness.
Then Agnes Anne made an astonishing proposition.
"See here, Duncan," she whispered, "let _me_ out by the little postern door at the foot of the tower. Miss Irma can watch behind it to let me in if I come running back, and you stay on the top ready with "King George." I will find out for you everything you want to know." And I got ready to say, brother-like, "Agnes Anne, you are a fool--your legs would give way under you in the first hundred yards."
But somehow she saw (or felt) the speech that was coming, and cut me short.
"No, I wouldn"t either," she said hurriedly and quite boldly. "You think that because I hate that great thing there filled with powder and slugs (which even you can"t tell when it will go off, or what harm it will do when it does) that I am a coward. I am no more frightened than you are yourself--perhaps less. Who was the best tracker when we played at Indians and colonists, I should like to know? Who could go most quietly through the wood? Or run the quickest? Just me, Agnes Anne MacAlpine!"
Well, I had to admit it. These things were true. But then they had little to do with courage. This was serious. It was taking one"s life in one"s hand.
"And pray what are we doing here and now?" snapped Agnes Anne. "If they are strong enough to break in one of the doors, or get through one of the windows, what can we do? Till we know what is coming against us, we are only going from one blunder to another!"
Now this was most astonishing of our Agnes Anne. So I told her that I had known that Irma was plucky, but not her. And she only said, very shortly, "Better come and see!"
So we went down and told Irma. At first she was all against opening any door, even for a moment, on any account. The strength of these defences was our only protection. She would rather do anything than endanger that. But we made her listen to the slow thud of the axe out in the wood, and even as we looked the figure of a man pa.s.sed across the glade, black against the greyish-green of the gra.s.s, on which a thick rise of dew was catching the starlight.
This figure wrapped in a sea-cloak, with head bent forward, pa.s.sing across the pale glimmer of the glade, sufficed to alter the mind of Irma. She agreed in a moment, and locking the door of little Louis"s room, she declared herself willing to keep watch behind the little postern door of the tower, ready to let Agnes Anne in again, on the understanding that I should be prepared from the open window above to deal with any pursuer.
I admit that in this I was persuaded against my judgment. For I felt certain that though Agnes Anne could move with perfect stillness through woods, and was a fleet runner, her nerve would certainly fail her when it came to a real danger. And so great was the sympathy of my imagination that I seemed already to feel the pursuer gaining at every stride, the muscles of my limbs failing beneath me and refusing to carry me farther, just as they do in a dream.
But Agnes Anne was serious and determined, and in the end had to have her way. I can see the reason now. She knew exactly what she meant to do, which neither Irma nor I did--though of course both of us far braver.
We got the door open quite silently--for it was the one Irma had used in her few and brief outgates. Then, shrouded in her school cloak of grey, and clad, I mean, in but little else, Agnes flitted out as silent as a shadow along a wall.
But oh, the agony I suffered to think what my father, and still more my grandmother, would say to me because I had let my sister expose herself on such an errand. Twenty times I was on the point of sallying forth after her. Twenty times the sight of the pale face of Irma waiting there stopped me, and the thought that I was the only protector of the two poor things in that great house. Also after all Agnes Anne had gone of her own accord.
All the same I shivered as I kneeled by the window above with the wide muzzle of "King George" pointing down the path which led from the glade.
Every moment I expected to hear the air rent with a hideous scream, and "King George" wobbled in my hands as I thought of Agnes Anne lying slain in the glow-worm shining of that abominable glade, with that across her white neck for which my conscience and my grandmother would reproach me as long as I (and she) lived. One thing comforted me during that weary waiting. The hollow thudding as of axe on wood never ceased for a moment. So from that I gathered (and was blithe to believe) that the alarm had not been given, and that wherever Agnes Anne was, she herself was still undiscovered.
My eyes were so glued to that misty glade that presently I got a great surprise. "There she is!" cried Irma, looking round the door, and I saw a figure flit out of the dusk of the copse-covert within two yards of the postern door. The next moment, without advertis.e.m.e.nt or the least fuss, Agnes Anne was within. I heard the sliding of bolts, the hum of talk, and then the patter of returning feet on the stair.