Lawrence Clavering Part 33

He laid the cord upon the table, advanced to the door and opened it wide. I saw him slide his hand across the lock.

"The key is in my pocket," I said.

He looked at me with a sorrowful shake of the head.

"Your suspicions discompose me very much," and he came back for a candle. I noticed too that he carelessly picked up the cord again.

"I think," said I, "that I will help you to fetch that bottle;" and I went with him into the hall.

There was something new in the man's bearing which began to alarm me.

He still used the same tone of aggrieved affection, but with an indefinable difference which was none the less very apparent to me.

His effort seemed no longer to aim at misleading me, but rather to sustain the pretence that he was aiming to mislead me. It seemed to me that since he had become aware of what I knew concerning his treachery he had devised some new plan, and kept his old tone to hinder me from suspecting it. I noticed, too, a certain deliberateness in the indifference of his walk, a certain intention in the discomposure.

In the hall he stopped, and setting down the candle upon a cabinet, turned to face me.

"Why did you come with me?" he asked gently.

"I did not know but what you might call your servants, and, as you put it, I am delicately circ.u.mstanced."

He raised his hands in a gesture of pity.

"See what suspicion leads a man to! My servants hold you in so much respect that if I harboured designs against your safety, to call my servants would be to ruin me."

I was inclined to believe that what he said was in a measure true, for I remembered the interview which I had had with Ashlock in the steward's office, and the subsequent consideration which had been shown me.

Then, "Look!" I cried of a sudden, pointing my arm. Right in front of me on that vacant s.p.a.ce of the wall amongst the pictures hung the portrait of Jervas Rookley.

Rookley started ever so little and then stood eyeing me keenly, the while he swung round and round in a little circle the ta.s.sel of the curtain cord.

"You prate to me of suspicions," I cried, "there's the proof of their justice. This estate of Blackladies I held on one condition--that you should receive no benefit from it. We jogged side by side, you and I, cousins with hearts cousinly mated in the same endeavour! You still profess it! Then explain to me: how comes it the Whigs leave you alone, you stripped of your inheritance because of the very principles which outlawed me? Explain that, and I'll still believe you. Prove that you live here without the Government's connivance, I'll forget the rest of my suspicions. I'll count you my loyal friend. Only show me this: how comes it that I make my bed upon the bracken, and you lord it at Blackladies? Your presence the common talk, your picture staring from the walls?" and in my rage I plucked my sword from the sheath, and slashed his portrait across the face, lengthwise and breadthwise, in a cross.

The ta.s.sel stopped swinging. His shoulders hunched ever so little, his head came forward, the eyes shone out bright like beads, and his face tightened to that expression of foxy cunning I had noted before in mid Channel between Dover and Dunkirk.

"It is a gallant swordsman," he said, with a sneer, "and a prudent too."

"He looks to the original," I cried, "to give him the occasion of imprudence;" and I faced him.

"There is a better way," said he, with the quietest laugh, and he sprang back suddenly to the cabinet on which the candle stood. "We will make a present of a Michaelmas goose to King George."

I saw his hand for an instant poised above the flame, red with the light of it; I saw his figure black from head to foot, and at his elbow another figure white from head to foot, the reflection of myself in the mirror by his side; and then his palm squashed down upon the wick.

The hall fell to darkness just as I made the first step towards him. I halted on the instant. He could see me, I could not see him! He had thrown off the mask; he had proclaimed himself my enemy, and he knew where I had been sheltered. It was that thought which slipped into my mind as the darkness cloaked about me, and made me curse the folly of my intrusion here. I had hazarded not merely myself, but Dorothy and her father. He could see me, I could not see him, and the outcome of this adventure struck at Dorothy.

I stepped backwards as lightly as I could, until the edge of a picture-frame rubbed against my shoulder-blades, and so stood gripping my sword-hilt, straining my ears. Across the hall I seemed to hear Rookley breathing, but it was the only sound I heard. There was no shuffle of a foot; he had not moved.

Above me the twilight glimmered beneath the roof; about me the chamber was black as the inside of a nailed coffin. If I could only reach the windows and tear the curtains back! But half the length of the hall intercepted me, and to reach them I must needs take my back from the wall. That I dared not do, and I stood listening helplessly to the sound of Rookley's breathing. In that pitch-dark hall it seemed to s.h.i.+ft from quarter to quarter. At one moment I could have sworn I heard his breath, soft as a sigh, a foot's length from me; I could almost have sworn I felt it on my neck; and in a panic I whirled my sword from side to side, but it touched nothing within the half circle of its reach. My fears indeed so grew upon me, that I was in two minds whether or no to shout and bring the servants about me. It would at all events end the suspense. But I dared not do it. Tervas Rookley distrusted them. But how much more cause had I! I could not risk the safety of Applegarth upon their doubtful loyalty. And then a sharp sound broke in upon the silence. It set my heart fluttering and fainting within me by reason of its abruptness, so that for a moment I was dazed and could not come at the reason of it. It was a clattering sound, and, so far as I could gather, it came from the spot where I had last seen Jervas Rookley standing. It was like--nay, it was the sound of a shoe dropped upon the boards. I know not why, but the sound steadied, though it appalled me. It spoke of a doubled danger and cried for a doubled vigilance. Rookley could not only see my white figure; he could move to it noiselessly, for he was slipping off his shoes.

I listened for the creak of a board, for the light padding sound of stockinged feet, for the rustle of his coat; and while I listened, I moved my sword gently in front of me, but my sword touched nothing and my ears heard nothing. Yet he must be coming--stealthily stepping across the hall---I felt him coming. But from what quarter would he come? During those seconds of waiting the question became a torture.

And then a momentary hope shot through me. When he put the candle out his sword was in the scabbard. He had not drawn it, since I had listened so strenuously that I must have heard. However carefully he drew it, a chain would clink; or if not that, the scabbard might knock against his leg; or if not that, there would be a little whirr, a sort of whisper as the blade slid upwards out of the sheath.

There was still a chance, then. At that point of the darkness from which the sound should come I would strike--strike the moment I heard it, with all my strength, down towards the floor. I tightened my fingers about my sword-hilt and waited. But it was a very different noise which struck upon my hearing, a noise that a man may make in the dragging of a heavy sack. I drew myself up close to the wall, setting my feet together, pressing my heels against the panels. The sound filled me with such terror as I think never before or since I have known the like of. For I could not explain it to myself. I only knew that it was dangerous. It seemed to me to come from somewhere about midway of the room, and I held my breath that I might judge the better on its repet.i.tion. After a moment it was repeated, but nearer, and by its proximity it sounded so much the more dangerous. I sprang towards it. A sobbing cry leapt from my lips, and I lunged at a venture into the darkness. But again my sword touched nothing, and with the force of that unresisted thrust I stumbled forward for a step or two. My cry changed into a veritable scream. I felt the fingers of a hand gently steal about each of my ankles and then tighten on them like iron fetters. I understood; halfway across the room Rookley had lowered himself full-length upon the floor and was crawling towards me. I raised my sword to strike, but even as I raised it he jerked my feet from beneath me, and I fell face forwards with a crash right across his body. My sword flew out of my hand and went rolling and clattering into the darkness. My forehead struck against the boards, and for a moment I lay half stunned. It was only for a moment, but when that moment had pa.s.sed, Jervas Rookley was upon me, above me, his arms twined about mine and drawing them behind me, his knees pressed with all his might into the small of my back.

"We will truss the goose before we send it to King George," said he.

CHAPTER XVI.

ASHLOCK GIVES THE NEWS.

Then I remembered the curtain cord. I felt that Rookley was trying to pa.s.s it from one hand to the other beneath my arms; I could hear the ta.s.sel bobbing and jerking on the floor, and I summoned all my strength to draw my arms apart For if he prevailed, here was the end of all my fine resolve to secure Mr. Herbert's enlargement!

I had flattered myself with that prospective atonement, as though it was a worthy action already counted to my credit. I saw this in a flash now, now that I was failing again, and the perception was like an agony in my bones. It seemed to me that a woman's face rose out of the darkness before me, mournful with reproach, and the face was not the wife's who waited in Keswick, but Dorothy's. She looked at me from beneath a hood half thrown back from the head and across her shoulder, as though she had pa.s.sed me, even as I had seen in my fancies a woman's face look at me, when I had watched the procession of my hours to come in the Rector's Library at the Jesuit College.

Meanwhile Rookley's knee so closely pressed me to the floor that my struggles did but exhaust myself, and delay the event. I was no match for him in bodily strength, and he held me, moreover, at that disadvantage wherein a weak man might well have triumphed over a strong.

I could get no purchase either with hand or foot, and lay like a fish flapping helplessly on the deck of a boat, the while he pressed my arms closer and closer together.

It is not to be imagined that this unequal contest lasted any great while. The thoughts which I have described raced through my mind while my cry seemed still to be echoing about the walls, and as though in answer to that cry, a latch clicked as I felt the cord tighten about my elbows.

The sound came from somewhere on the opposite side of the hall, and I do not think that Rookley heard it, for now and again he laughed in a low, satisfied fas.h.i.+on as though engrossed in the pleasure of his task. I heard a shuffling of feet, and a light brightened in the pa.s.sage which led to the steward's office. A great hope sprang up within me. There was one servant in the house whom I could trust.

"Ashlock!" I shouted at the top of my voice.

The footsteps quickened to a run.

"d.a.m.n you!" muttered Rookley, and he let go the cord. He had raised his hand to strike, but I did not give him time for the blow. With a final effort I gathered up my knees beneath me and raised myself on my fore-arms. Rookley's balance was disturbed already. He put out a hand to the floor. I got the sole of my foot upon the boards, jerked him off my back, and rolled over upon him with my fingers at his throat.

Ashlock ran towards us with a lighted lamp in his hand. I let go my hold and got to my feet. Rookley did the same.

"You came in the nick of time," said Rookley, "My good cousin would have murdered me;" and he arranged his cravat.

"That's a lie," said I, with a breath between each word.

"It was Mr. Clavering's cry I heard," said Ashlock.

And while he spoke a commotion arose in the upper part of the house.

Doors opened and shut, there was a hurry of footsteps along the pa.s.sages, and voice called to voice in alarm. My cry had roused the household, and I saw Jervas Rookley smile. I crossed the hall and picked up my sword. As I returned with it, I saw here and there a white face popped over the bal.u.s.ters of the staircase.

"I have fought with you in your way," said I. "It is your turn to fight with me in mine."

Rookley crossed his arms.

"To fight with a hunted traitor!" said he. "Indeed, my cousin, you ask too much of me; I would not rob the gallows of so choice a morsel.

Burtham, Wilson, Blacket!" and he lazily called up the stairs to the servants cl.u.s.tered there. "This is your work. Ashlock, do you carry the news to the sheriff."

I glanced at Ashlock; he did not stir. On the staircase I heard a conflict of muttering voices, but as yet no one had descended. So a full minute pa.s.sed, while my life and more than my life hung in the balance.