The Tangled Skein Part 37

She could not see into the corners of the great hall, but straight in front of her was another ma.s.sive door, exactly similar to the one in which she stood.

The room itself seemed empty. Wess.e.x had gone, and she had not spoken to him. That was the one great thought which detached itself from the turmoil which was going on in her brain. The door opposite fascinated her. Perhaps he had gone through there. Nay! surely so, for it almost seemed to her as if she could hear that strange, bitter laugh of his still echoing in the distance.

She ran across the room, fearful lest he should disappear altogether ere she could get to him. But even before she reached the door she felt her arm seized, her body dragged violently back. By the light of the moon, which fell full on him, she recognized the young foreign lord.

He had summarily placed himself before her, and he held her wrist in a tight grip.

"Let me go!" she murmured hoa.r.s.ely.

"No!"

"I _will_ go to him!"

"You cannot!"

He spoke from between his teeth, as if in a fury of rage or fear, she could not tell which, but as she, poor soul, had never inspired terror in any one she quaked before his rage.

Just then she heard, as if in the room beyond, a few footsteps, then a call: "Come, Harry!" and after that the opening and shutting of a distant door. It was the Duke of Wess.e.x going again, somewhere where perhaps she could not find him again, and here was this man standing between her and the object of her adoration.

With a vigorous jerk she freed herself from Don Miguel's grasp.

"Have a care, man, have a care," she said in a low, trembling voice, in which a suppressed pa.s.sion seemed suddenly to vibrate. "Let me pa.s.s, or . . ."

"Silence, wench!" commanded Don Miguel. "Another word and I call the guard and have thee whipped as a disturber of the peace."

She started as if stung with the very lash with which he so callously threatened her. The fumes of wine and of excitement were being slowly expelled from her dull brain. A vague sense of bitter wrong crept into her heart; her own native shrewdness--the shrewdness of the country wench--made her dimly realize that she had been fooled: how and for what purpose she could not yet comprehend.

She pushed the tangled hair from her forehead, mechanically readjusting her c.u.mbersome garments, then she stepped close up to the young Spaniard; she crossed her arms over her breast and looked him boldly in the eyes.

"Soho! my fine lord!" she said, speaking with a strange and pathetic effort at calmness, "that's it, is it? . . . and do ye take me for a fool, that I do not see through your tricks? . . . You and that purple-robed hypocrite there wanted to make use of me . . . you cajoled me with soft words . . . promises . . . what? . . . Bah! you tricked me, I say, do you hear?" she added with ever-increasing vehemence, "tricked me that you might trick him. . . . With all your talks of Ursula and Lady . . . the devil alone knows what ye wanted. . . . Well! you've had your way . . . he looked on me as he would on a plague-stricken cur . . . mangy and dirty. . . . Was that what ye wanted? . . . You've had your will . . . are ye satisfied . . . what more do ye want of me?"

Don Miguel, much astonished at this unexpected outburst of pa.s.sion, gazed at her with a sneer, then he shrugged his shoulders and said coldly--

"Nothing, wench! His Grace of Wess.e.x does not desire thy company, and I cannot allow thee to molest him. If thou'lt depart in peace, there'll be a well-filled purse for thee . . . if not . . . the whip, my girl . . .

the whip . . . understand!"

"I will not go!" she repeated with dogged obstinacy. "I'll not . . .

I'll not . . . I'll see him just once . . . he was good to me. . . . I love his beautiful face and his kind, white hands; I want to kiss them.

. . . I'll not go . . . I'll not . . . till I've kissed them. . . . So do not stand in my way, fine sir . . . but let me get to him. . . ."

The obstinate desire, half a mania now, had grown upon her with this wanton thwarting of her wishes. A wholly unfettered pa.s.sion seethed in her, half made up of hatred against this man who had fooled her and caused her to be spurned with unutterable contempt by Wess.e.x.

"I'll give thee three minutes in which to get sober, my wench!" remarked Don Miguel placidly. "After that, take heed. . . ."

He laughed a long, cruel laugh, and looked at her with an evil leer, up and down.

"After that thou'lt go," he said slowly and significantly, "but not in peace. The Palace watch have a heavy hand . . . three men to give thee ten lashes each . . . till thy shoulders bleed, wench . . . aye! I'll have thee whipped till thou die under it . . . so go now or . . ."

He looked so evil, so threatening, so full of baffled rage, that instinctively she drew back a few steps away from him, into the gloom.

. . . As she did so her foot knocked against something on the floor, whilst the sharp point of some instrument of steel penetrated through the thin soles of her shoes.

She had enough presence of mind, enough determination, enough deadly hatred of him, not to give forth one sound; but when he, almost overcome with his own furious pa.s.sion, had paused awhile and turned from her, she stooped very quickly and picked up that thing which had struck her foot.

It was an unsheathed dagger.

Silently, surrept.i.tiously, she hid it within the folds of her gown, whilst keeping a tight grip on its handle with her clenched right hand.

Now she felt safe, and sure of herself and of ultimate success.

Don Miguel, seeing how quiet she had become, heaved a sigh of relief.

For one moment he had had the fear that she meant to create a scandal, attract the guard with her screams, bring spectators upon the scene, and thus expose the whole despicable intrigue which had just been so successfully carried through.

But now she was standing quite rigid and mute, half hidden by the gloom, evidently terrorized by the cruel threats hurled against her.

"Well, which is it to be, wench," said the young man more calmly, "the purse of gold or the whipping-post?"

She did not reply at once, and a strange, almost awesome silence fell upon the scene. Not a sound from any portion of the Palace, even from the gardens and terraces, beyond the night watchman's call had ceased to echo, only from far, very far away beyond the river and the distant meadows the melancholy hooting of an owl broke the intense stillness of the place.

Then the woman began to speak, slowly at first, very calmly, and in a voice deep and low, like the sound of m.u.f.fled thunder, growing louder and louder, more violent, more pa.s.sionate as she worked herself up into a very whirlwind of fury.

"Powers of h.e.l.l!" she said, "grant me patience! Man, listen. Ye don't understand me. . . . I am not one of your fine Court ladies, who simpers and trips along arrayed in silken kirtle. . . . I am called Mirrab, a witch, d'ye hear? . . . a witch who knows naught about the law, and the guard, nor about queens and richly dressed lords. The Duke of Wess.e.x saved my life . . . and I want to go to him. . . . Do ye let me go.

. . . What is it to ye if I see him? . . . Do ye let me go. . . ."

Her voice broke into a sob of agonized entreaty and baffled desire.

"Shall I call the guard?" rejoined Don Miguel coldly.

She was now quite close to him, he, still between her and the door which she wished to reach, was half turned away from her, in obvious impatience, and looking at her over his shoulder with a sneer and a cruel frown.

"Do ye let me go!" she entreated once more.

For sole answer he made pretence at calling the guard.

"What ho there! the guard! What ho!"

But the last sound broke in a death rattle. Even as he spoke Mirrab had thrust the dagger with all her might between his shoulders. He fell forward on the floor, whilst with one last gasp of agony he called upon the man whom he had so deeply wronged.

"A moi! . . . Wess.e.x! . . . I die! . . . A moi! . . ."

And the silvery moon, who had just gazed on so placidly whilst human pa.s.sions ran riot in this vast audience chamber, who had shed her poetic light on hatred, revenge, and l.u.s.t, suddenly veiled her brilliant face: the room was plunged in total darkness as the Marquis de Suarez breathed his last.

CHAPTER XXIX

CHECK-MATE

For some time already there had been a certain amount of commotion in the Palace. Mirrab's shouts when first she saw the combat, then her high-voiced altercation with Don Miguel, had roused the attention of some of the guard who were stationed in the cloister green court close by. Some of the gentlemen too were astir.