To-night, at this hour, he should have been among all that was highest and gayest and fairest in Europe at the banquet of a Prince—and he went by his captor’s side, a convicted criminal.
Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. He started—it was the first sign that his liberty was gone! He restrained himself from all resistance still, and passed onward, down where Baroni motioned him out of the noise of the carriages, out of the glare of the light, into the narrow, darkened turning of a side street. He went passively; for this man trusted to his honor.
In the gloom stood three figures, looming indistinctly in the shadow of the houses. One was a Huissier of the Staats-Procurator, beside whom stood the Commissary of Police of the district; the third was an English detective. Ere he saw them their hands were on his shoulders, and the cold chill of steel touched his wrists. The Hebrew had betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street. In an instant, as the ring of the rifle rouses the slumbering tiger, all the life and the soul that were in him rose in revolt as the icy glide of the handcuffs sought their hold on his arms. In an instant, all the wild blood of his race, all the pride of his breeding, all the honor of his service, flashed into fire and leaped 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 a soldier and a gentleman. All he remembered was that he would fight to the death rather than be taken alive; that they should kill him where he stood, in the starlight, rather than lead him in the sight of men as a felon.
With the strength that lay beneath all the gentle languor of his habits and with the science of the Eton Playing Fields of his boyhood, he wrenched his wrists free ere the steel had closed, and with the single straightening of his left arm felled the detective to earth like a bullock, with a crashing blow that sounded through the stillness like some heavy timber stove in; flinging himself like lightning on the Huissier, he twisted out of his grasp the metal weight of the handcuffs, and wrestling with him was woven for a second in that close-knit struggle which is only seen when the wrestlers wrestle for life and death. The German was a powerful and firmly built man; but Cecil’s science was the finer and the most masterly. His long, slender delicate limbs seemed to twine and writhe around the massive form of his antagonist like the coils of a cobra; they rocked and swayed to and fro on the stones, while the shrill, shrieking voice of Baroni filled the night with its clamor. The viselike pressure of the stalwart arms of his opponent crushed him in till his ribs seemed to bend and break under the breathless oppression, the iron force; but desperation nerved him, the Royallieu blood, that never took defeat, was roused now, for the first time in his careless life; his skill and his nerve were unrivaled, and with a last effort he dashed the Huissier off him, and lifting him up—he never knew how—as he would have lifted a log of wood, hurled him down in the white streak of moonlight that alone slanted through the peaked roofs of the crooked by-street.
The cries of Baroni had already been heard; a crowd, drawn by their shrieking appeals, were bearing toward the place in tumult. The Jew had the quick wit to give them, as call-word, that it was a croupier who had been found cheating and fled; it sufficed to inflame the whole mob against the fugitive. Cecil looked round him once—such a glance as a Royal gives when the gaze-hounds are panting about him and the fangs are in his throat; then, with the swiftness of the deer itself, he dashed downward into the gloom of the winding passage at the speed which had carried 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 for lightness of limb, for power of endurance in every sport of field and fell, of the moor and the gymnasium; and the athletic pleasures of many a happy hour stood him in good stead now, in the emergence of his terrible extremity.
Flight!—for the instant the word thrilled through him with a loathing sense. Flight!—the craven’s refuge, the criminal’s resource. He wished in the moment’s agony that they would send a bullet through his brain as he ran, rather than drive him out to this. Flight!—he felt a coward and a felon as he fled; fled from every fairer thing, from every peaceful hour, from the friendship and good will of men, from the fame of his ancient race, from the smile of the women that loved him, from all that makes life rich and fair, from all that men call honor; fled, to leave his name disgraced in the service he adored; fled, to leave the world to think him a guilty dastard who dared not face his trial; fled, to bid his 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 own hand. Flight!—it has bitter pangs that make brave men feel cowards when they fly from tyranny and danger and death to a land of peace and promise; but in his flight he left behind him all that made life worth the 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 the pack 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 the steadier and keener pursuit of men organized for the hunter’s work, and trained to follow the faintest track, the slightest clew. The moon was out, and they saw him clearly, though the marvelous fleetness of his stride 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 of their running, the loud clamor of the mob, the shrill cries of the Hebrew offering gold with frantic lavishness to whoever should stop his prey. All the breathless excitation, all the keen and desperate straining, all the tension of the neck-and-neck struggle that he had known so often over the brown autumn country of the Shires at home, he knew now, intensified to horror, made deadly with despair, changed into a 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 languor heated his veins and spurred his strength; he was ready to die if they chose to slaughter him; but for his freedom he strove as men will strive for life; to distance them, to escape them, he would have breathed his last at the goal; they might fire him down, if they would, but he swore in his teeth to die free.
Some Germans in his path, hearing the shouts that thundered after him in the night, drew their mule-cart across the pent-up passage-way down which he turned, and blocked the narrow road. He saw it in time; a second later, and it would have been instant death to him at the pace he went; he saw it, and gathered all the force and nervous impetus in his frame to the trial, as he came rushing downward along the slope of the lane, with his elbows back, and his body straight, as prize-runners run. The wagon, sideways, stretched across—a solid barrier, heaped up with fir boughs brought for firing from the forests; the mules stood abreast, yoked together. The mob following saw too, and gave a hoot and yell of brutal triumph; their prey was in their clutches; the cart barred his progress, 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—the daring and the coolness that the languid surface of indolent fashion had covered. Even in the imminence of supreme peril, of breathless jeopardy, he measured with unerring eye the distance and the need; rose as lightly in the air as Forest King had risen with him over fence and hedge; and with a single, running leap cleared the width of the mules’ backs, and landing safely on the farther side, dashed on; scarcely pausing for breath. 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, was on his ear like the bay of the slot-hounds to the deer. They might kill him, if they could; but they should never take him captive.
And the moon was so brightly, so pitilessly clear; shining down in the summer light, as though in love with the beauty of earth! He looked up once; the stars seemed reeling round him in disordered riot; the chill face of the moon looked unpitying as death. All this loveliness was round him; this glory of sailing cloud and shadowy forest and tranquil planet, and there was no help for him.
A gay burst of music broke on the stillness from the distance; he had left the brilliance of the town behind him, and was now in its by-streets and outskirts. The sound seemed to thrill him to the bone; it was like the echo of the lost life he was leaving forever.
He saw, he felt, he heard, he thought; feeling and sense were quickened in him as they had never been before, yet he never slackened his pace save once or twice, when he paused for breath; he ran as swiftly, he ran as keenly, as ever stag or fox had run before him; doubling with their skill, taking the shadow as they took the covert; noting with their rapid eye the safest track; outracing with their rapid speed the pursuit that thundered in his wake.
The by-lanes he took were deserted, and he was now well-nigh out of the town, with the open country and forest lying before him. The people whom he met rushed out of his path; happily for him they were few, and were terrified, because they thought him a madman broken loose from his keepers. He never looked back; but he could tell that the pursuit was falling farther and farther behind him, that the speed at which he went was breaking the powers of his hunters; fresh throngs added indeed to the first pursuers as they tore down through the starlight night, but none had the science with which he went, the trained, matchless skill of the university foot-race. He left them more and more behind him each second of the breathless chase, that, endless as it seemed, had lasted bare three minutes. If the night were but dark! He felt that pitiless luminance glistening bright about him everywhere; shining over all the summer world, and leaving scarce a shadow to fall athwart his way. The silver glory of the radiance was shed on every rood of ground; one hour of a winter night, one hour of the sweeping ink-black rain of an autumn storm, and he could have made for shelter as the stag makes for it across the broad, brown Highland water.
Before him stretched indeed the gloom of the masses of pine, the upward slopes of tree-stocked hills, the vastness of the Black Forest; but they were like the mirage to a man who dies in a desert; he knew, at the pace he went, he could not live to reach them. The blood was beating in his brain and pumping from his heart; a tightness like an iron band seemed girt about his loins, his lips began to draw his breath in with loud gasping spasms; he knew that in a little space his speed must slacken—he knew it by the roar, like the noise of water, that was rushing on his ear, and the oppression, like a hand’s hard grip, that seemed above his heart.
But he would go till he died; go till they fired on him; go, though the skies felt swirling round like a sea of fire, and the hard, hot earth beneath his feet jarred his whole frame as his feet struck it flying.
The angle of an old wood house, with towering roof and high-peaked gables, threw a depth of shadow at last across his road; a shadow black and rayless, darker for the white glisten of the moon around. Built more in the Swiss than the German style, a massive balcony of wood ran round it, 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 these things, and, swinging himself up with noiseless lightness, he threw himself full-length down on the rough flooring of the balcony. If they passed he was safe, for a brief time more at least; if they found him—his teeth clinched like a mastiff’s where he lay—he had the strength in him still to sell his life dearly.
The pursuers came closer and closer, and by the clamors that floated up in indistinct and broken fragments, he knew that they had tracked him. He heard the tramp of their feet as they came under the loggia; he heard the click of the pistols—they were close upon him at last in the blackness of night.
CHAPTER XII
THE KING’S LAST SERVICE
“Is he up there?” asked a voice in the darkness.
“Not likely. A cat couldn’t scramble up that woodwork,” answered a second.
“Send a shot, and try,” suggested a third.
There he lay, stretched motionless on the flat roof of the veranda. He heard the words as the thronging mob surged, and trampled, and swore, and quarreled, beneath him, in the blackness of the gloom; balked of their prey, and savage for some amends. There was a moment’s pause—a hurried, eager consultation; then he heard the well-known sound of a charge being rammed down, and the sharp drawing out of a ramrod; there was a flash, a report, a line of light flamed a second in his sight; a ball hissed past him with a loud, singing rush, and bedded itself in the timber, a few inches above his uncovered hair. A dead silence followed; then the muttering of many voices broke out afresh.
“He’s not there, at any rate,” said one, who seemed the chief; “he couldn’t have kept as still as that with a shot so near him. He’s made for the open country and the forest, I’ll take my oath.”
Then the trending of many feet trampled their way out from beneath the loggia; their voices and their rapid steps grew fainter and fainter as they hurried away through the night. For a while, at least, he was safe.
For some moments he lay prostrated there; the rushing of the blood on his brain, the beating of his heart, the panting of his breath, the quivering of his limbs after the intense muscular effort he had gone through, mastered him and flung him down there, beaten and powerless. He felt the foam on his lips and he thought with every instant that the surcharged veins would burst; hands of steel seemed to crush in upon his chest, knotted cords to tighten in excruciating pain about his loins; he breathed in short, convulsive gasps; his eyes were blind, and his head swam. A dreaming fancy that this was death vaguely came on him, and he was glad it should be so.
His eyelids closed unconsciously, weighed down as by the weight of lead; he saw the starry skies above him no more, and the distant noise of the pursuit waxed duller and duller on his ear; then he lost all sense and memory—he ceased even to feel the night air on his face. How long he lay there he never knew; when consciousness returned to him all was still; the moon was shining down clear as the day, the west wind was blowing softly among his hair. He staggered to his feet and leaned against the timber of the upper wall; the shelving, impenetrable darkness sloped below; above were the glories of a summer sky at midnight, around him the hills and woods were bathed in the silver light; he looked, and he remembered all.
He had escaped his captors; but for how long? While yet there were some hours of the night left, he must find some surer refuge, or fall into their hands again. Yet it was strange that in this moment his own misery and his own peril were less upon him than a longing to see once more—and for the last time—the woman for whose sake he suffered this. Their love had had the lightness and the languor of their world, and had had but little depth in it; yet, in that hour of his supreme sacrifice to her, he loved her as he had not loved in his life.
Recklessness had always been latent in him, with all his serenity and impassiveness; a reckless resolve entered him now—reckless to madness. Lightly and cautiously, though his sinews still ached, and his nerves still throbbed with the past strain, he let himself fall, hand over hand, as men go down a rope, along the woodwork to the ground. Once touching earth, off he glided, swiftly and noiselessly, keeping in the shadow of the walls all the length of the streets he took, and shunning every place where any sort of tumult could suggest the neighborhood of those who were out and hunting him down. As it chanced, they had taken to the open country; he passed on unquestioned, and wound his way to the Kursaal. He remembered that to-night there was a masked ball, at which all the princely and titled world of Baden were present; to which he would himself have gone after the Russian dinner; by the look of the stars he saw that it must be midnight or past; the ball would be now at its height.
The dare-devil wildness and the cool quietude that were so intimately and intricately mingled in his nature could alone have prompted and projected such a thought and such an action as suggested themselves to him now; in the moment of his direst extremity, of his utter hopelessness, of his most imminent peril, he went—to take a last look at his mistress! Baden, for aught he knew, might be but one vast network to mesh in and to capture him; yet he ran the risk with the dauntless temerity that had ever lain underneath the indifferentism and the indolence of his habits.
Keeping always in the shadow, and moving slowly, so as to attract no notice from those he passed, he made his way deliberately, straight toward the blaze of light where all the gayety of the town was centered; he reckoned, and rightly, as it proved, that the rumor of his story, the noise of his pursuit, would not have penetrated here as yet; his own world would be still in ignorance. A moment, that was all he wanted, just to look upon a woman’s beauty; he went forward daringly and tranquilly to the venture. If any had told him that a vein of romance was in him, he would have stared and thought them madmen; yet something almost as wild was in his instinct now. He had lost so much to keep her honor from attainder; he wished to meet the gaze of her fair eyes once more before he went out to exile.
In one of the string of waiting carriages he saw a loose domino lying on the seat; he knew the liveries and the footmen, and he signed them to open the door. “Tell Count Carl I have borrowed these,” he said to the servant, as he sprang into the vehicle, slipped the scarlet-and-black domino on, took the mask, and left the carriage. The man touched his hat and said nothing; he knew Cecil well, as an intimate friend of his young Austrian master. In that masquerade guise he was safe; for the few minutes, at least, which were all he dared take.
He went on, mingled among the glittering throng, and pierced his way to the ballroom, the Venetian mask covering his features; many spoke to him, by the scarlet-and-black colors they took him for the Austrian; he answered none, and treaded his way among the blaze of hues, the joyous echoes of the music, the flutter of the silk and satin dominoes, the mischievous challenge of whispers. His eyes sought only one; he soon saw her, in the white and silver mask-dress, with the spray of carmine-hued eastern flowers, by which he had been told, days ago, to recognize her. A crowd of dominoes were about her, some masked, some not. Her eyes glanced through the envious disguise, and her lips were laughing. He approached her with all his old tact in the art d’arborer le cotillon; not hurriedly, so as to attract notice, but carefully, so as to glide into a place near her.
“You promised me this waltz,” he said very gently in her ear. “I have come in time for it.”
She recognized him by his voice, and turned from a French prince to rebuke him for his truancy, with gay raillery and much anger.
“Forgive me, and let me have this one waltz—please do!” She glanced at him a moment, and let him lead her out.
“No one has my step as you have it, Bertie,” she murmured, as they glided into the measure of the dance.
She thought his glance fell sadly on her as he smiled.
“No?—but others will soon learn it.”
Yet he had never treaded more deftly the maze of the waltzers, never trodden more softly, more swiftly, or with more science, the polished floor. The waltz was perfect; she did not know it was also a farewell. The delicate perfume of her floating dress, the gleam of the scarlet flower-spray, the flash of the diamonds studding her domino, the fragrance of her lips as they breathed so near his own; they haunted him many a long year afterward.
His voice was very calm, his smile was very gentle, his step, as he swung easily through the intricacies of the circle, was none the less smooth and sure for the race that had so late strained his sinews to bursting; the woman he loved saw no change in him; but as the waltz drew to its end, she felt his heart beat louder and quicker on her own; she felt his hand hold her own more closely, she felt his head drooped over her till his lips almost touched her brow;—it was his last embrace; no other could be given here, in the multitude of these courtly crowds. Then, with a few low-murmured words that thrilled her in their utterance, and echoed in her memory for years to come, he resigned her to the Austrian Grand Duke who was her next claimant, and left her silently—forever.
Less heroism has often proclaimed itself, with blatant trumpet to the world—a martyrdom.
He looked back once as he passed from the ballroom—back to the sea of colors, to the glitter of light, to the moving hues, amid which the sound of the laughing, intoxicating music seemed to float; to the glisten of the jewels and the gold and the silver—to the scene, in a word, of the life that would be his no more. He looked back in a long, lingering look, such as a man may give the gladness of the earth before the gates of a prison close on him; then he went out once more into the night, threw the domino and the mask back again into the carriage, and took his way, alone.
He passed along till he had gained the shadow of a by-street, by a sheer unconscious instinct; then he paused, and looked round him—what could he do? He wondered vaguely if he were not dreaming; the air seemed to reel about him, and the earth to rock; the very force of control he had sustained made the reaction stronger; he began to feel blind and stupefied. How could he escape? The railway station would be guarded by those on the watch for him; he had but a few pounds in his pocket, hastily slipped in as he had won them, “money-down,” at ecarte that day; all avenues of escape were closed to him, and he knew that his limbs would refuse to carry him with any kind of speed farther. He had only the short, precious hours remaining of the night in which to make good his flight—and flight he must take to save those for whom he had elected to sacrifice his life. Yet how? and where?
A hurried, noiseless footfall came after him; Rake’s voice came breathless on his ear, while the man’s hand went up in the unforgotten soldier’s salute—
“Sir! no words. Follow me, and I’ll save you.”
The one well-known voice was to him like water in a desert land; he would have trusted the speaker’s fidelity with his life. He asked nothing, said nothing, but followed rapidly and in silence; turning and doubling down a score of crooked passages, and burrowing at the last like a mole in a still, deserted place on the outskirts of the town, where some close-set trees grew at the back of stables and out-buildings.
In a streak of the white moonlight stood two hunters, saddled; one was Forest King. With a cry, Cecil threw his arms round the animal’s neck; he had no thought then except that he and the horse must part.
“Into saddle, sir! quick as your life!” whispered Rake. “We’ll be far away from this d–d den by morning.”
Cecil looked at him like a man in stupor—his arm still over the gray’s neck.
“He can have no stay in him! He was dead-beat on the course.”
“I know he was, sir; but he ain’t now; he was pisined; but I’ve a trick with a ‘oss that’ll set that sort o’ thing—if it ain’t gone too far, that is to say—right in a brace of shakes. I doctored him; he’s hisself agen; he’ll take you till he drops.”
The King thrust his noble head closer in his master’s bosom, and made a little murmuring noise, as though he said, “Try me!”
“God bless you, Rake!” Cecil said huskily. “But I cannot take him, he will starve with me. And—how did you know of this?”
“Begging your pardon, your honor, he’ll eat chopped furze with you better than he’ll eat oats and hay along of a new master,” retorted Rake rapidly, tightening the girths. “I don’t know nothing, sir, save that I heard you was in a strait; I don’t want to know nothing; but I sees them cursed cads a-runnin’ of you to earth, and thinks I to myself, ‘Come what will, the King will be the ticket for him.’ So I ran to your room unbeknown, packed a little valise, and got out the passports; then back again to the stables, and saddled him like lightning, and got ‘em off—nobody knowing but Bill there. I seed you go by into the Kursaal, and laid in wait for you, sir. I made bold to bring Mother o’ Pearl for myself.”
And Rake stopped, breathless and hoarse with passion and grief that he would not utter. He had heard more than he said.
“For yourself?” echoed Cecil. “What do you mean? My good fellow, I am ruined. I shall be beggared from to-night—utterly. I cannot even help you or keep you; but Lord Rockingham will do both for my sake.”
The ci-devant soldier struck his heel into the earth with a fiery oath.
“Sir, there ain’t time for no words. Where you goes I go. I’ll follow you while there’s a drop o’ blood in me. You was good to me when I was a poor devil that everyone scouted; you shall have me with you to the last, if I die for it. There!”
Cecil’s voice shook as he answered. The fidelity touched him as adversity could not do.
“Rake, you are a noble fellow. I would take you, were it possible; but—in an hour I may be in a felon’s prison. If I escape that, I shall lead a life of such wretchedness as—”
“That’s not nothing to me, sir.”
“But it is much to me,” answered Cecil. “As things have turned—life is over with me, Rake. What my own fate may be I have not the faintest notion—but let it be what it will, it must be a bitter one. I will not drag another into it.”
“If you send me away, I’ll shoot myself through the head, sir; that’s all.”
“You will do nothing of the kind. Go to Lord Rockingham, and ask him from me to take you into his service. You cannot have a kinder master.”
“I don’t say nothing agen the Marquis, sir,” said Rake doggedly; “he’s a right-on generous gentleman, but he aren’t you. Let me go with you, if it’s just to rub the King down. Lord, sir! you don’t know what straits I’ve lived in—what a lot of things I can turn my hand to—what a one I am to fit myself into any rat-hole, and make it spicy. Why, sir, I’m that born scamp, I am—I’m a deal happier on the cross and getting my bread just anyhow, than I am when I’m in clover like you’ve kept me.”
Rake’s eyes looked up wistfully and eager as a dog’s when he prays to be let out of kennel to follow the gun; his voice was husky and agitated with a strong excitement. Cecil stood a moment, irresolute, touched and pained at the man’s spaniel-like affection—yet not yielding to it.
“I thank you from my heart, Rake,” he said at length, “but it must not be. I tell you my future life will be beggary—”
“You’ll want me anyways, sir,” retorted Rake, ashamed of the choking in his throat. “I ask your pardon for interrupting, but every second’s that precious like. Besides, sir, I’ve got to cut and run for my own sake. I’ve laid Willon’s head open, down there in the loose box; and when he’s come to himself a pretty hue and cry he’ll raise after me. He painted the King, that’s what he did; and I told him so, and I give it to him—one—two—amazing! Get into saddle, sir, for the Lord’s sake! And here, Bill—you run back, shut the door, and don’t let nobody know the ‘osses are out till the morning. Then look like a muff as you are, and say nothing!”
The stable-boy stared, nodded assent, and sloped off. Rake threw himself across the brown mare.
“Now, sir! a steeple-chase for our lives! We’ll be leagues away by the day-dawn, and I’ve got their feed in the saddle-bags, so that they’ll bait in the forests. Off, sir, for God’s sake, or the blackguards will be down on you again!”
As he spoke the clamor and tread of men of the town racing to the chase were wafted to them on the night wind, drawing nearer and nearer; Rake drew the reins tight in his hand in fury.
“There they come—the d–d beaks! For the love of mercy, sir, don’t check now. Ten seconds more and they’ll be on you; off, off!—or by the Lord Harry, sir, you’ll make a murderer of me, and I’ll kill the first man that lays his hand on you!”
The blaze of bitter blood was in the ex-Dragoon’s fiery face as the moon shone on it, and he drew out one of his holster pistols, and swung round in his saddle, facing the narrow entrance of the lane; ready to shoot down the first of the pursuit whose shadow should darken the broad stream of white light that fell through the archway.
Cecil looked at him, and paused no more; but vaulted into the old familiar seat, and Forest King bore him away through the starry night, with the brown mare racing her best by his side. Away—through the sleeping shadows, through the broad beams of the moon, through the odorous scent of the crowded pines, through the soft breaking gray of the dawn; away—to mountain solitudes and forest silence, and the shelter of lonely untracked ravines, and the woodland lairs they must share with wolf and boar; away—to flee with the flight of the hunted fox, to race with the wakeful dread of the deer; away—to what fate, who could tell?