CHAPTER XI.
FOR A WOMAN'S SAKE.
The door opened--Cecil entered.
The Seraph crossed the room, with his hand held out; not for his lifein that moment would he have omitted that gesture of friendship.Involuntarily he started and stood still one instant in amaze; the next,he flung thought away and dashed into swift, inconsequent words.
"Cecil, my dear fellow! I'm ashamed to send for you on such a blackguarderrand. Never heard of such a swindler's trick in all my life; couldn'tpitch the fellow into the street because of the look of the thing, andcan't take any other measure without you, you know. I only sent for youto expose the whole abominable business, never because I believe----Hangit! Beauty, I can't bring myself to say it even! If a sound thrashingwould have settled the matter, I wouldn't have bothered you about it,nor told you a syllable. Only you are sure, Bertie, aren't you, thatI never listened to this miserable outrage on us both with a second'sthought there could be truth in it? You know me? you trust me too wellnot to be certain of that?"
The incoherent address poured out from his lips in a breathless torrent;he had never been so excited in his life; and he pleaded with asimploring an earnestness as though he had been the suspected criminal,not to be accused with having one shadow of shameful doubt against hisfriend. His words would have told nothing except bewilderment to one whoshould have been a stranger to the subject on which he spoke; yet Cecilnever asked even what he meant. There was no surprise upon his face,no flush of anger, no expression of amaze or indignation; only the lookwhich had paralyzed Rock on his entrance; he stood still and mute.
The Seraph looked at him, a great dread seizing him lest he should haveseemed himself to cast this foul thing on his brother-in-arms; and inthat dread all the fierce fire of his freshly-loosened passion broke itsbounds.
"Damnation! Cecil, can't you hear me! A hound has brought against youthe vilest charge that ever swindlers framed: an infamy that he deservesto be shot for, as if he were a dog. He makes me stand before you as ifI were your accuser; as if I doubted you; as if I lent an ear one secondto this loathsome lie. I sent for you to confront him, and to give himup to the law. Stand out, you scoundrel, and let us see how you darelook at us now!"
He swung round at the last words, and signed to Baroni to rise from thecouch were he sat. The Jew advanced slowly, softly.
"If your lordship will pardon me, you have scarcely made it apparentwhat the matter is for which the gentleman is wanted. You have scarcelyexplained to him that it is on a charge of forgery."
The Seraph's eyes flashed on him with a light like a lion's, and hisright hand clinched hard.
"By my life! If you say that word again you shall be flung in the streetlike the cur you are, let me pay what I will for it! Cecil, why don'tyou speak?"
Bertie had not moved; not a breath escaped his lips. He stood like astatue, deadly pale in the gaslight; when the figure of Baroni roseup and came before him, a great darkness stole on his face--it was aterrible bitterness, a great horror, a loathing disgust; but it wasscarcely criminality, and it was not fear. Still he stood perfectlysilent--a guilty man, any other than his loyal friend would have said:guilty, and confronted with a just accuser. The Seraph saw that look,and a deadly chill passed over him, as it had done at the Jew's firstcharge--not doubt; such heresy to his creeds, such shame to hiscomrade and his corps could not be in him; but a vague dread hushed hisimpetuous vehemence. The dignity of the old Lyonnesse blood asserted itsascendency.
"M. Baroni, make your statement. Later on Mr. Cecil can avenge it."
Cecil never moved; once his eyes went to Rockingham with a look ofyearning, grateful, unendurable pain; but it was repressed instantly; aperfect passiveness was on him. The Jew smiled.
"My statement is easily made, and will not be so new to this gentlemanas it was to your lordship. I simply charge the Honorable Bertie Cecilwith having negotiated a bill with my firm for 750 pounds on the 15th oflast month, drawn in his own favor, and accepted at two months' dateby your lordship. Your signature you, my Lord Marquis, admit to be aforgery--with that forgery I charge your friend!"
"The 15th!"
The echo of those words alone escaped the dry, white lips of Cecil; heshowed no amaze, no indignation; once only, as the charge was made, hegave in sudden gesture, with a sudden gleam, so dark, so dangerous, inhis eyes, that his comrade thought and hoped that with one moment morethe Jew would be dashed down at his feet with the lie branded on hismouth by the fiery blow of a slandered and outraged honor. The actionwas repressed; the extraordinary quiescence, more hopeless because moreresigned than any sign of pain or of passion, returned either by forceof self-control or by the stupor of despair.
The Seraph gazed at him with a fixed, astounded horror; he could notbelieve his senses; he could not realize what he saw. His dearest friendstood mute beneath the charge of lowest villainy--stood powerless beforethe falsehoods of a Jew extortioner!
"Bertie! Great Heaven!" he cried, well-nigh beside himself, "how canyou stand silent there? Do you hear--do you hear aright? Do you knowthe accursed thing this conspiracy has tried to charge you with? Saysomething, for the love of God! I will have vengeance on your slanderer,if you take none."
He had looked for the rise of the same passion that rang in his ownimperious words, for the fearless wrath of an insulted gentleman, theinstantaneous outburst of a contemptuous denial, the fire of scorn, thelightning flash of fury--all that he gave himself, all that must be sonaturally given by a slandered man under the libel that brands him withdisgrace. He had looked for these as surely as he looked for the settingof one sun and the rise of another; he would have staked his life on thecourse of his friend's conduct as he would upon his own, and a ghastlyterror sent a pang to his heart.
Still--Cecil stood silent; there was a strange, set, repressed anguishon his face that made it chill as stone; there was an unnatural calmupon him; yet he lifted his head with a gesture haughty for the momentas any action that his defender could have wished.
"I am not guilty," he said simply.
The Seraph's hands were on his own in a close, eager grasp almost erethe words were spoken.
"Beauty, Beauty! Never say that to me. Do you think I can ever doubtyou?"
For a moment Cecil's head sank; the dignity with which he had spokenremained on him, but the scorn of his defiance and his denial faded.
"No; you cannot; you never will."
The words were spoken almost mechanically, like a man in a dream. EzraBaroni, standing calmly there with the tranquility that an assured poweralone confers, smiled slightly once more.
"You are not guilty, Mr. Cecil? I shall be charmed if we can find it so.Your proofs?"
"Proof? I give you my word."
Baroni bowed, with a sneer at once insolent but subdued.
"We men of business, sir, are--perhaps inconveniently forgentlemen--given to a preference in favor of something more substantial.Your word, doubtless, is your bond among your acquaintance; it is a pityfor you that your friend's name should have been added to the bond youplaced with us. Business men's pertinacity is a little wearisome, nodoubt, to officers and members of the aristocracy like yourself; but allthe same I must persist--how can you disprove this charge?"
The Seraph turned on him with a fierceness of a bloodhound.
"You dog! If you use that tone again in my presence, I willdouble-throng you till you cannot breathe!"
Baroni laughed a little; he felt secure now, and could not resist thepleasure of braving and of torturing the "aristocrats."
"I don't doubt your will or your strength, my lord; but neither do Idoubt the force of the law to make you account for any brutality of theprize-ring your lordship may please to exert on me."
The Seraph ground his heel into the carpet.
"We waste words on that wretch," he said abruptly to Cecil. "Prove hisinsolence the lie it is, and we will deal with him later on."
"Precisely what I said, my lord," murmured Baroni. "Let Mr. Cecil p
rovehis innocence."
Into Bertie's eyes came a hunted, driven desperation. He turned themon Rockingham with a look that cut him to the heart; yet the abhorrentthought crossed him--was it thus that men guiltless looked?
"Mr. Cecil was with my partner at 7:50 on the evening of the 15th. Itwas long over business hours, but my partner to oblige him stretched apoint," pursued the soft, bland, malicious voice of the German Jew. "Ifhe was not at our office--where was he? That is simple enough."
"Answered in a moment!" said the Seraph, with impetuous certainty."Cecil!--to prove this man what he is, not for an instant to satisfyme--where were you at that time on the 15th?"
"The 15th!"
"Where were you?" pursued his friend. "Were you at mess? At the clubs?Dressing for dinner?--where--where? There must be thousands of ways ofremembering--thousands of people who'll prove it for you?"
Cecil stood mute still; his teeth clinched on his under lip. He couldnot speak--a woman's reputation lay in his silence.
"Can't you remember?" implored the Seraph. "You will think--you mustthink!"
There was a feverish entreaty in his voice. That hunted helplessnesswith which a question so slight yet so momentous was received, wasforcing in on him a thought that he flung away like an asp.
Cecil looked both of them full in the eyes--both his accuser and hisfriend. He was held as speechless as though his tongue were paralyzed;he was bound by his word of honor; he was weighted with a woman'ssecret.
"Don't look at me so, Bertie, for mercy's sake! Speak! Where were you?"
"I cannot tell you; but I was not there."
The words were calm; there was a great resolve in them, moreover; buthis voice was hoarse and his lips shook. He paid a bitter price for thebutterfly pleasure of a summer-day love.
"Cannot tell me!--cannot? You mean you have forgotten!"
"I cannot tell you; it is enough."
There was an almost fierce and sullen desperation in the answer;its firmness was not shaken, but the ordeal was terrible. A woman'sreputation--a thing so lightly thrown away with an idler's word, aLovelace's smile!--that was all he had to sacrifice to clear himselffrom the toils gathering around him. That was all! And his word ofhonor.
Baroni bent his head with an ironic mockery of sympathy.
"I feared so, my lord. Mr. Cecil 'cannot tell.' As it happens, mypartner can tell. Mr. Cecil was with him at the hour and on the day Ispecify; and Mr. Cecil transacted with him the bill that I have had thehonor of showing you--"
"Let me see it."
The request was peremptory to imperiousness, yet Cecil would have facedhis death far sooner than he would have looked upon that piece of paper.
Baroni smiled.
"It is not often that we treat gentlemen under misfortune in the mannerwe treat you, sir; they are usually dealt with more summarily, lessmercifully. You must excuse altogether my showing you the document; bothyou and his lordship are officers skilled, I believe, in the patricianscience of fist-attack."
He could not deny himself the pleasure and the rarity of insolenceto the men before him, so far above him in social rank, yet at thatjuncture so utterly at his mercy.
"You mean that we should fall foul of you and seize it?" thunderedRockingham in the magnificence of his wrath. "Do you judge the world byyour own wretched villainies? Let him see the paper; lay it there, or,as there is truth on earth, I will kill you where you stand."
The Jew quailed under the fierce flashing of those leonine eyes. Hebowed with that tact which never forsook him.
"I confide it to your honor, my Lord Marquis," he said, as he spread outthe bill on the console. He was an able diplomatist.
Cecil leaned forward and looked at the signatures dashed across thepaper; both who saw him saw also the shiver, like a shiver of intensecold, that ran through him as he did so, and saw his teeth clinch tight,in the extremity of rage, in the excess of pain, or--to hold in allutterance that might be on his lips.
"Well?" asked the Seraph, in a breathless anxiety. He knew not what tobelieve, what to do, whom to accuse of, or how to unravel this mysteryof villainy and darkness; but he felt, with a sickening reluctance whichdrove him wild, that his friend did not act in this thing as he shouldhave acted; not as men of assured innocence and secure honor act beneathsuch a charge. Cecil was unlike himself, unlike every deed and word ofhis life, unlike every thought of the Seraph's fearless expectance, whenhe had looked for the coming of the accused as the signal for the sureand instant unmasking, condemnation, and chastisement of the falseaccuser.
"Do you still persist in denying your criminality in the face of thatbill, Mr. Cecil?" asked the bland, sneering, courteous voice of EzraBaroni.
"I do. I never wrote either of these signatures; I never saw thatdocument until to-night."
The answer was firmly given, the old blaze of scorn came again inhis weary eyes, and his regard met calmly and unflinchingly the looksfastened on him; but the nerves of his lips twitched, his face washaggard as by a night's deep gambling; there was a heavy dew on hisforehead--it was not the face of a wholly guiltless, of a whollyunconscious man; often even as innocence may be unwittingly betrayedinto what wears the semblance of self-condemnation.
"And yet you equally persist in refusing to account for your occupationof the early evening hours of the 15th? Unfortunate!"
"I do; but in your account of them you lie!"
There was a sternness inflexible as steel in the brief sentence. Underit for an instant, though not visibly, Baroni flinched; and a fear ofthe man he accused smote him, more deep, more keen than that with whichthe sweeping might of the Seraph's fury had moved him. He knew now whyBen Davis had hated with so deadly a hatred the latent strength thatslept under the Quietist languor and nonchalance of "the d----d Guards'swell."
What he felt, however, did not escape him by the slightest sign.
"As a matter of course you deny it!" he said, with a polite wave of hishand. "Quite right; you are not required to criminate yourself. I wishsincerely we were not compelled to criminate you."
The Seraph's grand, rolling voice broke in; he had stood chafing,chained, panting in agonies of passion and of misery.
"M. Baroni!" he said hotly, the furious vehemence of his anger and hisbewilderment obscuring in him all memory of either law or fact, "youhave heard his signature and your statements alike denied once forall by Mr. Cecil. Your document is a libel and a conspiracy, like yourcharge; it is false, and you are swindling; it is an outrage, and youare a scoundrel; you have schemed this infamy for the sake of extortion;not a sovereign will you obtain through it. Were the accusation you dareto make true, I am the only one whom it can concern, since it is my namewhich is involved. Were it true--could it possibly be true--I shouldforbid any steps to be taken in it; I should desire it ended once andforever. It shall be so now, by God!"
He scarcely knew what he was saying; yet what he did say, utterly as itdefied all checks of law or circumstance, had so gallant a ring, had sokingly a wrath, that it awed and impressed even Baroni in the instant ofits utterance.
"They say that those fine gentlemen fight like a thousand lions whenthey are once roused," he thought. "I can believe it."
"My lord," he said softly, "you have called me by many epithets, andmenaced me with many threats since I have entered this chamber; it isnot a wise thing to do with a man who knows the law. However, I canallow for the heat of your excitement. As regards the rest of yourspeech, you will permit me to say that its wildness of language is onlyequaled by the utter irrationality of your deductions and your absoluteignorance of all legalities. Were you alone concerned and alone thediscoverer of this fraud, you could prosecute or not as you please;but we are subjects of its imposition, ours is the money that hehas obtained by that forgery, and we shall in consequence open theprosecution."
"Prosecution?" The echo rang in an absolute agony from his hearer; hehad thought of it as, at its worst, only a question between himself andCecil.
The accused gave
no sigh, the rigidity and composure he had sustainedthroughout did not change; but at the Seraph's accent the hunted andpathetic misery which had once before gleamed in his eyes came thereagain; he held his comrade in a loyal and exceeding love. He would havelet all the world stone him, but he could not have borne that his friendshould cast even a look of contempt.
"Prosecution!" replied Baroni. "It is a matter of course, my lord, thatMr. Cecil denies the accusation; it is very wise; the law speciallycautions the accused to say nothing to criminate themselves. But wewaste time in words; and, pardon me, if you have your friend's interestat heart, you will withdraw this very stormy championship; this utterlyuseless opposition to an inevitable line of action. I must attest Mr.Cecil; but I am willing--for I know to high families these misfortunesare terribly distressing--to conduct everything with the strictestprivacy and delicacy. In a word, if you and he consult his interests,he will accompany me unresistingly; otherwise I must summon legal force.Any opposition will only compel a very unseemly encounter of physicalforce, and with it the publicity I am desirous, for the sake of hisrelatives and position, to spare him."
A dead silence followed his words, the silence that follows on an insultthat cannot be averted or avenged; on a thing too hideously shameful forthe thoughts to grasp it as reality.
In the first moment of Baroni's words Cecil's eyes had gleamed againwith that dark and desperate flash of a passion that would have beenworse to face even than his comrade's wrath; it died, however, well-nighinstantly, repressed by a marvelous strength of control, whatever itsmotive. He was simply, as he had been throughout, passive--so passivethat even Ezra Baroni, who knew what the Seraph never dreamed, looked athim in wonder, and felt a faint, sickly fear of that singular, unbrokencalm. It perplexed him--the first thing which had ever done so in hisown peculiar paths of finesse and of intrigue.
The one placed in ignorance between them, at once as it were the judgeand champion of his brother-at-arms, felt wild and blind under thisunutterable shame, which seemed to net them both in such close andhopeless meshes. He, heir to one of the greatest coronets in the world,must see his friend branded as a common felon, and could do no more toaid or to avenge him than if he were a charcoal-burner toiling yonder inthe pine woods! His words were hoarse and broken as he spoke:
"Cecil, tell me--what is to be done? This infamous outrage cannot pass!cannot go on! I will send for the Duke, for--"
"Send for no one."
Bertie's voice was slightly weaker, like that of a man exhausted by along struggle, but it was firm and very quiet. Its composure fell onRockingham's tempestuous grief and rage with a sickly, silencingawe, with a terrible sense of some evil here beyond his knowledge andministering, and of an impotence alike to act and to serve, to defendand to avenge--the deadliest thing his fearless life had ever known.
"Pardon me, my lord," interposed Baroni, "I can waste time no more. Youmust be now convinced yourself of your friend's implication in this verydistressing affair."
"I!" The Seraph's majesty of haughtiest amaze and scorn blazed from hisazure eyes on the man who dared say this thing to him. "I! If you darehint such a damnable shame to my face again, I will wring your neck withas little remorse as I would a kite's. I believe in his guilt? Forgiveme, Cecil, that I can even repeat the word! I believe in it? I would assoon believe in my own disgrace--in my father's dishonor!"
"How will your lordship account, then, for Mr. Cecil's total inabilityto tell us know he spent the hours between six and nine on the 15th?"
"Unable? He is not unable; he declines! Bertie, tell me what you didthat one cursed evening. Whatever it was, wherever it was, say it for mysake, and shame this devil."
Cecil would more willingly have stood a line of leveled rifle-tubesaimed at his heart than that passionate entreaty from the man he lovedbest on earth. He staggered slightly, as if he were about to fall, anda faint white foam came on his lips; but he recovered himself almostinstantly. It was so natural to him to repress every emotion that it wassimply old habit to do so now.
"I have answered," he said very low, each word a pang--"I cannot."
Baroni waved his hand again with the same polite, significant gesture.
"In that case, then, there is but one alternative. Will you follow mequietly, sir, or must force be employed?"
"I will go with you."
The reply was very tranquil, but in the look that met his own as it wasgiven, Baroni saw that some other motive than that of any fear was itsspring; that some cause beyond the mere abhorrence of "a scene" was atthe root of the quiescence.
"It must be so," said Cecil huskily to his friend. "This man is right,so far as he knows. He is only acting on his own convictions. We cannotblame him. The whole is--a mystery, an error. But, as it stands, thereis no resistance."
"Resistance! By God! I would resist if I shot him dead, or shot myself.Stay--wait--one moment! If it be an error in the sense you mean, it mustbe a forgery of your name as of mine. You think that?"
"I did not say so."
The Seraph gave him a rapid, shuddering glance; for once the suspicioncrept in on him--was this guilt? Yet even now the doubt would not beharbored by him.
"Say so--you must mean so! You deny them as yours; what can they be butforgeries? There is no other explanation. I think the whole matter aconspiracy to extort money; but I may be wrong--let that pass. If itbe, on the contrary, an imitation of both our signatures that hasbeen palmed off upon these usurers, it is open to other treatment.Compensated for their pecuniary loss, they can have no need to press thematter further, unless they find out the delinquent. See here"--he wentto a writing-cabinet at the end of the room, flung the lid back, sweptout a heap of papers, and wrenching a blank check from the book, threwit down before Baroni--"here! fill it up as you like, and I will sign itin exchange for the forged sheet."
Baroni paused a moment. Money he loved with an adoration that excludedevery other passion; that blank check, that limitless carte blanche,that vast exchequer from which to draw!--it was a sore temptation.He thought wistfully of the welsher's peremptory forbiddance ofall compromise--of the welsher's inexorable command to "wring thefine-feathered bird," lose whatever might be lost by it.
Cecil, ere the Hebrew could speak, leaned forward, took the check andtore it in two.
"God bless you, Rock," he said, so low that it only reached the Seraph'sear, "but you must not do that."
"Beauty, you are mad!" cried the Marquis passionately. "If thisvillainous thing be a forgery, you are its victim as much as I--tenfoldmore than I. If this Jew chooses to sell the paper to me, naming hisown compensation, whose affair is it except his and mine? They have beenlosers, we indemnify them. It rests with us to find out the criminal. M.Baroni, there are a hundred more checks in that book; name your price,and you shall have it; or, if you prefer my father's, I will send to himfor it. His Grace will sign one without a question of its errand, if Iask him. Come! your price?"
Baroni had recovered the momentary temptation, and was strong in theausterity of virtue, in the unassailability of social duty.
"You behave most nobly, most generously by your friend, my lord," hesaid politely. "I am glad such friendship exists on earth. But youreally ask me what is not in my power. In the first place, I am but oneof the firm, and have no authority to act alone; in the second, Imost certainly, were I alone, should decline totally any pecuniarycompromise. A great criminal action is not to be hushed up by anymonetary arrangement. You, my Lord Marquis, may be ignorant in theGuards of a very coarse term used in law, called 'compounding a felony.'That is what you tempt me to now."
The Seraph, with one of those oaths that made the Hebrew's blood runcold, though he was no coward, opened his lips to speak; Cecil arrestedhim with that singular impassiveness, that apathy of resignation whichhad characterized his whole conduct throughout, save at a few briefmoments.
"Make no opposition. The man is acting but in his own justification.I will wait for mine. To resist would be to degrade us with
a bully'sbrawl; they have the law with them. Let it take its course."
The Seraph dashed his hand across his eyes; he felt blind--the roomseemed to reel with him.
"Oh, God! that you----"
He could not finish the words. That his comrade, his friend, one of hisown corps, of his own world, should be arrested like the blackest thiefin Whitechapel or in the Rue du Temple!
Cecil glanced at him, and his eyes grew infinitely yearning--infinitelygentle; a shudder shook him all through his limbs. He hesitated amoment, then he stretched out his hand.
"Will you take it--still?"
Almost before the words were spoken, his hand was held in both of theSeraph's.
"Take it? Before all the world--always, come what will."
His eyes were dim as he spoke, and his rich voice rang clear as thering of silver, though there was the tremor of emotion in it. He hadforgotten the Hebrew's presence; he had forgotten all save his friendand his friend's extremity. Cecil did not answer; if he had done so, allthe courage, all the calm, all the control that pride and breeding alikesustained in him, would have been shattered down to weakness; his handclosed fast in his companion's, his eyes met his once in a look ofgratitude that pierced the heart of the other like a knife; then heturned to the Jew with a haughty serenity.
"M. Baroni, I am ready."
"Wait!" cried Rockingham. "Where you go I come."
The Hebrew interposed demurely.
"Forgive me, my lord--not now. You can take what steps you will asregards your friend later on; and you may rest assured he will betreated with all delicacy compatible with the case, but you cannotaccompany him now. I rely on his word to go with me quietly; but Inow regard him, and you must remember this, as not the son of ViscountRoyallieu--not the Honorable Bertie Cecil, of the Life Guards--not thefriend of one so distinguished as yourself--but as simply an arrestedforger."
Baroni could not deny himself that last sting of his vengeance; yet, ashe saw the faces of the men on whom he flung the insult, he felt for themoment that he might pay for his temerity with his life. He put his handabove his eyes with a quick, involuntary movement, like a man who wardsoff a blow.
"Gentlemen," and his teeth chattered as he spoke, "one sign of violence,and I shall summon legal force."
Cecil caught the Seraph's lifted arm, and stayed it in its vengeance.His own teeth were clinched tight as a vise, and over the haggardwhiteness of his face a deep red blush had come.
"We degrade ourselves by resistance. Let me go--they must do what theywill. My reckoning must wait, and my justification. One word only. Takethe King and keep him for my sake."
Another moment, and the door had closed; he was gone out to his fate,and the Seraph, with no eyes on him, bowed down his head upon his armswhere he leaned against the marble table, and, for the first time inall his life, felt the hot tears roll down his face like rain, as thepassion of a woman mastered and unmanned him--he would sooner a thousandtimes have laid his friend down in his grave than have seen him live forthis.
Cecil went slowly out beside his accuser. The keen, bright eyes of theJew kept vigilant watch and ward on him; a single sign of any effortto evade him would have been arrested by him in an instant withpreconcerted skill. He looked, and saw that no thought of escape was inhis prisoner's mind. Cecil had surrendered himself, and he went to hisdoom; he laid no blame on Baroni, and he scarce gave him a remembrance.The Hebrew did not stand to him in the colors he wore to Rockingham, whobeheld this thing but on its surface. Baroni was to him only the agentof an inevitable shame, of a hapless fate that closed him in, nettinghim tight with the web of his own past actions; no more than theirresponsible executioner of what was in the Jew's sight and knowledgea just sentence. He condemned his accuser in nothing; no more thanthe conscience of a guilty man can condemn the discoverers and theinstruments of his chastisement.
Was he guilty?
Any judge might have said that he knew himself to be so as hepassed down the staircase and outward to the entrance with that deadresignation on his face, that brooding, rigid look set on his features,and gazing almost in stupefaction out from the dark hazel depths of eyesthat women had loved for their luster, their languor, and the softnessof their smile.
They walked out into the evening air unnoticed; he had given his consentto follow the bill-discounter without resistance, and he had no thoughtto break his word; he had submitted himself to the inevitable course ofthis fate that had fallen on him, and the whole tone of his temper andhis breeding lent him the quiescence, though he had none of the doctrineof a supreme fatalist. There were carriages standing before the hotel,waiting for those who were going to the ballroom, to the theater, to anarchduke's dinner, to a princess' entertainment; he looked at them witha vague, strange sense of unreality--these things of the life from whichhe was now barred forever. The sparkling tide of existence in Badenwas flowing on its way, and he went out an accused felon, branded, andoutlawed, and dishonored from all place in the world that he had led,and been caressed by and beguiled with for so long.
To-night, at this hour, he should have been among all that was highestand gayest and fairest in Europe at the banquet of a Prince--and he wentby his captor's side, a convicted criminal.
Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. He started--itwas the first sign that his liberty was gone! He restrained himself fromall resistance still, and passed onward, down where Baroni motioned himout of the noise of the carriages, out of the glare of the light, intothe narrow, darkened turning of a side street. He went passively; forthis man trusted to his honor.
In the gloom stood three figures, looming indistinctly in the shadowof the houses. One was a Huissier of the Staats-Procurator, beside whomstood the Commissary of Police of the district; the third was an Englishdetective. Ere he saw them their hands were on his shoulders, and thecold chill of steel touched his wrists. The Hebrew had betrayed him, andarrested him in the open street. In an instant, as the ring of the riflerouses the slumbering tiger, all the life and the soul that were in himrose in revolt as the icy glide of the handcuffs sought their hold onhis arms. In an instant, all the wild blood of his race, all the prideof his breeding, all the honor of his service, flashed into fire andleaped into action. Trusted, he would have been true to his accuser;deceived, the chains of his promise were loosened, and all he thought,all he felt, all he knew were the lion impulses, the knightly instincts,the resolute choice to lose life rather than to lose freedom, of asoldier and a gentleman. All he remembered was that he would fight tothe death rather than be taken alive; that they should kill him where hestood, in the starlight, rather than lead him in the sight of men as afelon.
With the strength that lay beneath all the gentle languor of his habitsand with the science of the Eton Playing Fields of his boyhood, hewrenched his wrists free ere the steel had closed, and with the singlestraightening of his left arm felled the detective to earth like abullock, with a crashing blow that sounded through the stillness likesome heavy timber stove in; flinging himself like lightning on theHuissier, he twisted out of his grasp the metal weight of the handcuffs,and wrestling with him was woven for a second in that close-knitstruggle which is only seen when the wrestlers wrestle for life anddeath. The German was a powerful and firmly built man; but Cecil'sscience was the finer and the most masterly. His long, slender delicatelimbs seemed to twine and writhe around the massive form of hisantagonist like the coils of a cobra; they rocked and swayed to and froon the stones, while the shrill, shrieking voice of Baroni filled thenight with its clamor. The viselike pressure of the stalwart arms of hisopponent crushed him in till his ribs seemed to bend and break under thebreathless oppression, the iron force; but desperation nerved him, theRoyallieu blood, that never took defeat, was roused now, for the firsttime in his careless life; his skill and his nerve were unrivaled,and with a last effort he dashed the Huissier off him, and lifting himup--he never knew how--as he would have lifted a log of wood, hurledhim down in the white streak of moonlight that
alone slanted through thepeaked roofs of the crooked by-street.
The cries of Baroni had already been heard; a crowd, drawn by theirshrieking appeals, were bearing toward the place in tumult. The Jew hadthe quick wit to give them, as call-word, that it was a croupier whohad been found cheating and fled; it sufficed to inflame the whole mobagainst the fugitive. Cecil looked round him once--such a glance as aRoyal gives when the gaze-hounds are panting about him and the fangs arein his throat; then, with the swiftness of the deer itself, he dasheddownward into the gloom of the winding passage at the speed which hadcarried him, in many a foot-race, victor in the old green Eton meadows.There was scarce a man in the Queen's Service who could rival him forlightness of limb, for power of endurance in every sport of field andfell, of the moor and the gymnasium; and the athletic pleasures ofmany a happy hour stood him in good stead now, in the emergence of histerrible extremity.
Flight!--for the instant the word thrilled through him with a loathingsense. Flight!--the craven's refuge, the criminal's resource. He wishedin the moment's agony that they would send a bullet through his brain ashe ran, rather than drive him out to this. Flight!--he felt a coward anda felon as he fled; fled from every fairer thing, from every peacefulhour, from the friendship and good will of men, from the fame of hisancient race, from the smile of the women that loved him, from all thatmakes life rich and fair, from all that men call honor; fled, to leavehis name disgraced in the service he adored; fled, to leave the worldto think him a guilty dastard who dared not face his trial; fled, to bidhis closest friend believe him low sunk in the depths of foulest felony,branded forever with a criminal's shame--by his own act, by his ownhand. Flight!--it has bitter pangs that make brave men feel cowardswhen they fly from tyranny and danger and death to a land of peace andpromise; but in his flight he left behind him all that made life worththe living, and went out to meet eternal misery; renouncing every hope,yielding up all his future.
"It is for her sake--and his," he thought; and without a moment's pause,without a backward look he ran, as the stag runs with the bay of thepack behind it, down into the shadows of the night.
The hue and cry was after him; the tumult of a crowd's excitement,raised it knows not why or wherefore, was on his steps, joined with thesteadier and keener pursuit of men organized for the hunter's work, andtrained to follow the faintest track, the slightest clew. The moon wasout, and they saw him clearly, though the marvelous fleetness of hisstride had borne him far ahead in the few moments' start he had gained.He heard the beat of their many feet on the stones, the dull thud oftheir running, the loud clamor of the mob, the shrill cries of theHebrew offering gold with frantic lavishness to whoever should stophis prey. All the breathless excitation, all the keen and desperatestraining, all the tension of the neck-and-neck struggle that he hadknown so often over the brown autumn country of the Shires at home, heknew now, intensified to horror, made deadly with despair, changed intoa race for life and death.
Yet, with it the wild blood in him woke; the recklessness of peril,the daring and defiant courage that lay beneath his levity and languorheated his veins and spurred his strength; he was ready to die if theychose to slaughter him; but for his freedom he strove as men will strivefor life; to distance them, to escape them, he would have breathed hislast at the goal; they might fire him down, if they would, but he sworein his teeth to die free.
Some Germans in his path, hearing the shouts that thundered after himin the night, drew their mule-cart across the pent-up passage-way downwhich he turned, and blocked the narrow road. He saw it in time; asecond later, and it would have been instant death to him at the pace hewent; he saw it, and gathered all the force and nervous impetus in hisframe to the trial, as he came rushing downward along the slope of thelane, with his elbows back, and his body straight, as prize-runners run.The wagon, sideways, stretched across--a solid barrier, heaped up withfir boughs brought for firing from the forests; the mules stood abreast,yoked together. The mob following saw too, and gave a hoot and yell ofbrutal triumph; their prey was in their clutches; the cart barred hisprogress, and he must double like a fox faced with a stone wall.
Scarcely!--they did not know the man with whom they had to deal--thedaring and the coolness that the languid surface of indolent fashion hadcovered. Even in the imminence of supreme peril, of breathless jeopardy,he measured with unerring eye the distance and the need; rose as lightlyin the air as Forest King had risen with him over fence and hedge; andwith a single, running leap cleared the width of the mules' backs, andlanding safely on the farther side, dashed on; scarcely pausing forbreath. The yell that hissed in his wake, as the throng saw him escape,by what to their slow Teutonic instincts seemed a devil's miracle, wason his ear like the bay of the slot-hounds to the deer. They might killhim, if they could; but they should never take him captive.
And the moon was so brightly, so pitilessly clear; shining down in thesummer light, as though in love with the beauty of earth! He looked uponce; the stars seemed reeling round him in disordered riot; the chillface of the moon looked unpitying as death. All this loveliness wasround him; this glory of sailing cloud and shadowy forest and tranquilplanet, and there was no help for him.
A gay burst of music broke on the stillness from the distance; hehad left the brilliance of the town behind him, and was now in itsby-streets and outskirts. The sound seemed to thrill him to the bone; itwas like the echo of the lost life he was leaving forever.
He saw, he felt, he heard, he thought; feeling and sense were quickenedin him as they had never been before, yet he never slackened his pacesave once or twice, when he paused for breath; he ran as swiftly, he ranas keenly, as ever stag or fox had run before him; doubling with theirskill, taking the shadow as they took the covert; noting with theirrapid eye the safest track; outracing with their rapid speed the pursuitthat thundered in his wake.
The by-lanes he took were deserted, and he was now well-nigh out of thetown, with the open country and forest lying before him. The people whomhe met rushed out of his path; happily for him they were few, and wereterrified, because they thought him a madman broken loose from hiskeepers. He never looked back; but he could tell that the pursuit wasfalling farther and farther behind him, that the speed at which he wentwas breaking the powers of his hunters; fresh throngs added indeed tothe first pursuers as they tore down through the starlight night, butnone had the science with which he went, the trained, matchless skillof the university foot-race. He left them more and more behind him eachsecond of the breathless chase, that, endless as it seemed, had lastedbare three minutes. If the night were but dark! He felt that pitilessluminance glistening bright about him everywhere; shining over all thesummer world, and leaving scarce a shadow to fall athwart his way. Thesilver glory of the radiance was shed on every rood of ground; one hourof a winter night, one hour of the sweeping ink-black rain of an autumnstorm, and he could have made for shelter as the stag makes for itacross the broad, brown Highland water.
Before him stretched indeed the gloom of the masses of pine, the upwardslopes of tree-stocked hills, the vastness of the Black Forest; but theywere like the mirage to a man who dies in a desert; he knew, at the pacehe went, he could not live to reach them. The blood was beating in hisbrain and pumping from his heart; a tightness like an iron band seemedgirt about his loins, his lips began to draw his breath in withloud gasping spasms; he knew that in a little space his speed mustslacken--he knew it by the roar, like the noise of water, that wasrushing on his ear, and the oppression, like a hand's hard grip, thatseemed above his heart.
But he would go till he died; go till they fired on him; go, though theskies felt swirling round like a sea of fire, and the hard, hot earthbeneath his feet jarred his whole frame as his feet struck it flying.
The angle of an old wood house, with towering roof and high-peakedgables, threw a depth of shadow at last across his road; a shadow blackand rayless, darker for the white glisten of the moon around. Built morein the Swiss than the German style, a massive balcony of wood
ran roundit, upon and beneath which in its heavy shade was an impenetrable gloom,while the twisted wooden pillars ran upward to the gallery, loggia-like.With rapid perception and intuition he divined rather than saw thesethings, and, swinging himself up with noiseless lightness, he threwhimself full-length down on the rough flooring of the balcony. Ifthey passed he was safe, for a brief time more at least; if they foundhim--his teeth clinched like a mastiff's where he lay--he had thestrength in him still to sell his life dearly.
The pursuers came closer and closer, and by the clamors that floated upin indistinct and broken fragments, he knew that they had tracked him.He heard the tramp of their feet as they came under the loggia; heheard the click of the pistols--they were close upon him at last in theblackness of night.