"Oh, I don"t know. It doesn"t come without a reason. You"ve no superst.i.tions, I suppose? I have many; as a child I learned them all.
They"re never wrong. Yes, something is to happen."
I shrugged my shoulders and laughed.
"You"ll come to-morrow?" she asked, with increased and most unusual urgency.
"If possible," I answered again.
"But why won"t you promise? Why do you always say "if possible"? You"re tiresome with your "if possible."" She shrugged her shoulders petulantly.
"I might be ill."
"Yes, and you might be dead, but----" She had begun petulantly and impatiently, as though she were angry at my excuse and meant to exhibit its absurdity. But now she stopped suddenly. In the pause the wind moaned.
"I hate that sound," she cried resentfully. "It comes from the souls of the dead as they fly through the air. They fly round and round the houses, crying to those who must join them soon."
"Ah, well, these people were, doubtless, often wrong when they were alive. Why must they be always right when they"re dead?"
"No, death is near to-night. I wish you would stay with me--here, talking and forgetting it"s night. I would make you coffee and sing to you. We would shut the window and light all the lights, and pretend it was day."
"I can"t stay," I said. "I must get back. I have business early."
It is difficult to be in contact with such a mood as hers was that night and not catch something of its infection. Reason protests, but imagination falls a ready prey. I had no fear, but a sombre apprehension of evil settled on me. I seemed to know that our season of thoughtless, reckless merriment was done, and I mourned for it. There came over me a sorrow for her, but I made no attempt to express what she certainly would not have understood. To feel for others what they do not feel for themselves is a distortion of sympathy which often afflicts me. Her discomfort was purely childish, a sudden fear of the dark night, the dark world, the ways of fortune so dark and unknowable. No self-questioning and no sting of conscience had any part in it. She had been happy, and she wanted to go on being happy; but now she was afraid she was going to be unhappy, and she shrank from unhappiness as from a toothache. I took her hand and kissed and caressed it.
"Go to bed, my dear," said I. "You"ll be laughing at this in the morning. And poor Vohrenlorf is waiting all this while for me."
"Go, then. You may kiss me though."
I bent down and kissed her.
"Your lips are very hot," she said. "Yet you look cool enough."
"I am even rather cold. I must walk home briskly. Good-night."
"You"ll make it up with poor Wetter?"
"Indeed our difference is over, or all but over."
"Good. I hate my friends to quarrel seriously. As for a little, it"s amusing enough."
With that she let me go. The last I saw of her was as she ran hastily across the room, slammed down the window, and drew the curtain across it. She was afraid of hearing more of those voices of the night that frightened her. I thought with a smile that candles would burn about her bed till she woke to rejoice in the sun"s new birth. Ah, well, I myself do not love a blank darkness.
Vohrenlorf and I walked home together. We entered by the gardens, the sentry saluting us and opening the gate. There was the Pavilion rising behind my apartments, a long, high, gla.s.s-roofed building. The sight of it recalled my thought from Coralie to the work of the morning. I nodded my head toward the building and said to Vohrenlorf:
"There"s our rendezvous."
He did not answer, but turned to me with his lips quivering.
"What"s the matter, man?" I asked.
"For G.o.d"s sake, sire, don"t do it. Send him a message. You mustn"t do it."
"My good Vohrenlorf, you are mad," said I.
Yet not Vohrenlorf was mad, but I, mad with the vision of my two phantoms--freedom and pleasure.
CHAPTER XVII.
DECIDEDLY MEDIaeVAL.
I was in the Garden Pavilion only the other morning with one of my sons, teaching him how to use his weapons. Suddenly he pointed at a bullet-mark not in any of the targets, but in the wainscoting above and a little to the right of them.
"There"s a bad shot, father!" he cried.
"But you don"t know what he aimed at," I objected.
"At a target, of course!"
"But perhaps his target was differently placed. That shot is many years old."
"Anyhow he missed what he shot at, or he wouldn"t have struck the wainscoting," the boy persisted.
"Why, yes, he missed, but he may have missed only by a hair"s breadth."
"Do you know who fired the shot?"
"Yes. It"s a strange story; perhaps you shall hear it some day."
This little scene recalled with vividness my memories of the morning when Wetter and I met in the Pavilion. I had hit on a good plan. I was known to practise often, and Wetter was given to the same pursuit.
Indeed we had shot against one another in club matches before now, and come off very equal. It was not likely that suspicion would be aroused; the very early hour was our vulnerable point, but this could not be helped. Had we come later, we should have been pestered by attendants and markers. In other respects the ordinary arrangements for matches suited our purpose well. There was a target at either end of the Pavilion; each man chose an end to fire from. When he had discharged his bullet he retreated to a little shelter, of which there were two at each end, one for the shooter, one for the marker. His opponent then did the like. To account for what was meant to occur this morning we had only to make it believed that one of us, Wetter or I, as chance willed, had incautiously stepped out of his shelter at the wrong time. To render this plausible we agreed to pretend a misunderstanding; the man hit was to have thought that his opponent would fire only one shot, the man who escaped would express deepest regret, but maintain that the arrangement had been for two successive shots. I had very little doubt that these arrangements for baffling inconvenient inquiry would prove thoroughly adequate. For the rest, I made up a packet for Varvilliers containing a present for Coralie. To make any other preparations would not have been fair to Wetter; for my death, if it happened, must seem absolutely accidental. After all I did not feel such confidence in my value to the country, or in my wisdom, as to desire to leave my last will and testament. Victoria would do very well, no doubt. It was odd to think of her sleeping peacefully in the opposite wing, without an idea that anything touching her fortunes was being done in the Garden Pavilion.
The external scene is clearer to me than the picture of my own mind; yet there also I can trace the main outlines. The heat of pa.s.sion was past; I was no longer in the stir of rivalry. I knew that it was through and because of Coralie that I had come into this position, and that Wetter had done what he had. But the thought of her, and the desire to conquer him in her favour or punish him for seeking it, were no more my foremost impulses. I can claim no feeling so natural, so instinctive, so pardonable because so natural. I was angry with him. I had waived my rank and set aside my state; that still I was eager and glad to do; but I waived them and forgot them, because only thus could I avenge them. By his challenge, his insult, his defiance, he had violated what I held sacred in me, and almost the only thing that I held sacred. I hear now the Englishman"s mocking epithet in my ears--"Mediaeval!" I did not hear it then. Wetter had insulted the King; the King would cease to be the King to punish him. I had this cool anger in my heart when I went with Vohrenlorf to the Pavilion at six in the morning. But half the bitterness of it was due to my own inmost knowledge that my acts had led him on; that, if he had committed the sacrilege, my hand had flung open the doors of the shrine. He had defaced the image; it was I who had taught him no more to reverence it. Because he reminded me of this, I thought that I hated him, as we took our way to the Pavilion.
Men who have been through many of these affairs have told me that on the first occasion they felt some fear, or, at least, an excitement so great as to seem like fear. I recollect no such feeling. This was not because I was especially courageous or more indifferent to death than other men; it did not occur to me that I should be killed or even hit. Coralie had a strong presentiment of evil for some one; I had none for myself. If she were right, it seemed to me that Wetter"s fate must prove her so.
The other pair came punctually. They had encountered some slight obstacle in entering. The sentry had been seized with scruples, and the officer of the guard had been summoned. Varvilliers pleaded an express appointment with me, and the officer, surprised but conquered, had let them pa.s.s. All this Varvilliers told us in his usual airy manner, Wetter sitting apart the while. The clock struck a quarter past six.
"We waste time, Vicomte," said I, and I sat down in a chair, leaving him to make the arrangements with Vohrenlorf, or, rather, to announce them to Vohrenlorf; for my second was unmanned by the business, and had quite lost his composure.
Varvilliers had just measured the distance and settled the places where we were to stand, when there was a step outside and a knock at the door.
The seconds looked round. Wetter sprang to his feet.
"Open it, Vohrenlorf. We"re doing nothing secret," I said, with a smile.