Chapter 11

The main house stood close to the river, there being but a strip of lawn between the piazza and the top of the sea-wall. On the left, as Constans faced, an enclosed vestibule led to a secondary structure, which probably contained the domestic offices and servants' quarters. Still farther on, and under the same continuous albeit slightly lower roof-line, were the stables and cattle barns, the wood and other storehouses forming the extreme left wing. In its day, Arcadia House had been an eminently respectable and comfortable dwelling, and even now it presented a tolerably good appearance; certainly it might be called habitable. Constans, straining his eyes, for the afternoon was advancing, thought he saw smoke ascending from one of the chimneys, and this incited him to an actual invasion of the premises.

He chose the southwestern corner of the block as being farthest removed from the range of the house windows. A lucky throw made the grapples fast, and it took but an instant to run up the rungs. There was no one in sight, so Constans, shifting the ladder to the inner side, made the descent quite at his ease, and found himself in a little plantation of spruce-trees.

The evergreens grew so thickly together that he had some difficulty in forcing his way through them. Breaking free at last, he stepped out into the open, and stood vis-a-vis with a girl who had been advancing, as it were, to meet him. Constans knew instantly that this could be none other than Mad Scarlett's daughter, and there, indeed, were the proofs--the red-gold hair and the tawny eyes, just as Elena had described them in her message and Ulick in his endless lover's rhapsodies.

She stood mute and wide-eyed before him, the color in her cheeks coming and going like a flickering candle. Constans naturally concluded that his appearance had frightened her. He retreated a step or two; he tried to think of something to say that would reassure her. Perhaps he might use Ulick's name by way of introduction. He ended by blurting out:

"Don't be afraid; I will go whenever you say."

Her lips formed rather than uttered the warning, "Sh!" She listened intently for a moment or two, but there was only the distant dripping of water to be heard, the air being extraordinarily still and windless.

"Come!" she panted, and, clutching at her skirts, led the way to a thatched pavilion some eighty yards distant, a storehouse, perhaps, or a building once used as a farm office. Constans tried to question, to protest, but for the moment his will was as flax in the flame of her resolution; he yielded and ran obediently at her side.

Arrived at the little house, the girl pushed him bodily through the doorway and entered herself, turning quickly to slip into place the oaken bar that secured the door from the inside. Constans swelled with indignation at this singular treatment. He was a man grown, not a truant child to be led away by the ear for punishment. Yet she would not abate one jot of her first advantage, and his anger melted under the quiet serenity of her gaze; in spite of himself he let her have the first word.

"Did you think I was afraid for myself?" she asked, with a slow smile that made Constans's cheeks burn. "You see, I remembered that Fangs and Blazer are generally out by this time, a full hour before dark."

"Fangs and Blazer?"

"The dogs, I mean. They will track a man even over this half-melted snow, and old Kurt has trained them to short work with trespassers. You did not know that?"

"No," answered Constans, simply. "But then it would not have made any difference."

"You mean that you are not afraid?"

He had to be honest. "I'm not sure about that, but still I should have come."

The girl's eyes swept him approvingly.

"Of course," she said, well pleased, for a woman delights in placing her own valuation upon the courage of which a man speaks diffidently.

"I am Esmay," she announced, and paused a little doubtfully.

"I know," assented Constans.

"Then you do remember? Even the bracelet with the carbuncles, and how you would not make up because I was a girl and knew no better?"

"It was a very foolish affair from beginning to end," said Constans, loftily, intent upon disguising his embarrassment.

"Of course I knew you at once," she went on, meditatively. "You were so awkward in your ridiculous priest robes that morning in the temple of the Shining One. How Nanna and I did laugh!"

Constans winced a trifle at this, but he could not think of anything to say. She laughed again at the remembrance--provokingly. Then she turned on him suddenly. "Why have you come to Arcadia House?" she asked.

Constans hesitated, tried to avoid the real issue, and of course put himself in the wrong.

"It was on Ulick's account. I had promised him----"

"Oh!" The look was doubly eloquent of the disappointment inherent in the exclamation, and Constans thrilled under it. What delicious flattery in this unexpected frankness! He made a step forward, but Esmay in her turn drew back, her eyes hardened, and he stopped, abashed.

It had been a sudden remembrance of her childish threat--"a woman ... and some day you will know what that means"--that had tempted her to the rashness which she had so quickly regretted. For she had forgotten that a proposition is generally provided with a corollary. If she had become a woman he no less had grown to manhood, and that one forward step had forced her to recognize the fact. She was silent, feeling a little afraid and wondering at herself. Constans, in more evident discomfiture, blundered on, obsessed by a vague sense of loyalty to his friend.

"Ulick is away--on the expedition to the southland. He was anxious that you should be found, and I promised to do my best. He will be glad to know."

"When is he coming back?" demanded Esmay, with an entire absence of enthusiasm.

"This month, certainly; indeed, it may be any day now."

"You must promise me that you will not tell him where I am or even that you have seen me."

"But--but----"

"Remember now that you have promised."

Constans felt himself called upon to speak with some severity to this unreasonable young person.

"You are giving a great deal of trouble to your friends," he said, reprovingly.

"My friends!" she echoed, mockingly.

"There was your mother and her message to your uncle Hugolin in Croye."

"Yes, I know," she broke in. "Then it was received--the message----?" She stopped, unable to go on; an indefinable emotion possessed her.

"My uncle has sent you to fetch me," she whispered. "You are his messenger."

Constans had to answer her honestly, and was sorry.

"No," he said, bluntly. "Messer Hugolin could not see his way to anything."

Her pride came to her aid. "Oh, it does not matter," she said, and so indifferently that Constans was deceived.

"But you cannot stay here," he insisted--"here among the Doomsmen."

"They are my father's people, and you have just told me that my uncle Hugolin does not want me."

"And what does Quinton Edge desire of you?" he asked.

"I do not know," she answered, returning his gaze fearlessly, whereof Constans was glad, although he could not have told her why.

"Yet you are a prisoner?"

"It seems so, and my sister Nanna as well. But we have nothing of which to complain, and doubtless our master will acquaint us with his pleasure in good time."

"It is always that way," said Constans, bitterly. "His will against mine at every turn; a rock upon which I beat with naked hands."

"He is a strong man," answered Esmay, thoughtfully, "but I think I know where his power lies. It is simply that neither his friends nor his enemies are aware of how they stand with him."

But Constans did not even notice that she was speaking; the remembrance of his unfulfilled purpose seized and racked him. He had hated this man, Quinton Edge, from that first moment in which their eyes had clashed--ever and always. At first instinctively; then with reason enough and to spare; and yet this small world still held them both. How long were his hands to be tied? Once and again his enemy had stood before him and had gone his way insolently triumphant. He might be now in the house yonder, and Constans looked at it eagerly. A master passion, primitive and crude, possessed him.

The girl divined the hostile nature of the power which held him, and instinctively she put forth her own strength against it.

"Listen!" she said, and plucked him by the sleeve. Constans looked at her.

"I am going to trust you," she went on, quickly. "The time may come when I can no longer remain in safety at Arcadia House. When it does I will let you know by displaying a white signal in the western window of the cupola. Then you will come?"

"I will come," he answered, albeit a little slowly and heavily as one who seeks to find himself.

Esmay opened the door and looked out. It was almost dark, and after listening a moment she seemed satisfied.

"You have a ladder? Very well, you need not be afraid of the dogs, for when you see the signal I will arrange that they are kept in leash. And now you had better go; they are surely unchained by this time, and any moment may bring them ranging about. Good-bye, and remember your promise."

They walked along together until they came to the plantation of spruce-trees. Constans could see that his ladder was still in place on the wall; his path of retreat was open. He put out his hand, and her slim, cool palm rested for a moment in his. She nodded, smiled, and left him, going directly towards the house.

Moved by an inexplicable impulse, Constans followed for a short distance, keeping under the shelter of the trees. Then suddenly to him, straining his eyes through the dusk, there appeared a second figure, that of a woman, clothed wholly in white, hovering close upon the retreating steps of the girl.

Constans felt his knees loosen under him, the ancient superstitions being still strong in his blood for all of his studies and new-found philosophy.

"It is her sister Nanna," he muttered to himself, and knew that he lied in saying it. The old wives' tales, at which he had shuddered in boyhood, came crowding back upon him--grisly legends of vampire shapes and of the phantoms, invariably feminine in form, who were said to inhabit ruined places. A panic terror seized him as he watched the apparition gliding so swiftly and noiselessly upon the unconscious girl. Yet he continued to run forward, stumbling and slipping on the treacherous foothold of melting snow.

Esmay had reached a side door of the main building; quite naturally she entered and closed the door behind her, while the white-robed figure, after hesitating a moment, walked to a far corner of the house and disappeared. Out of the indefinite distance came the deep-throated bay of a hound. Constans turned and fled for his life.

Safely astride the wall coping he looked back. All was quiet in the garden, and at that instant a light shone out at an upper window of the house.

"She is safe," he told himself, and that was enough to know.

As he walked slowly westward, the thought of Ulick came again to him. Had he really promised the girl that he would tell Ulick nothing? Ridiculous as it may appear, he could not remember.

XVI

AS IN A LOOKING-GLASS

Arcadia House, while it certainly stood in need of the repairer's hand, was by no means uninhabitable, a fact which spoke well for the honesty of its old-time builders. Its oak beams, fastened together with tree-nails instead of iron spikes, were still sound, and its brick walls, unusually massive in construction, were without a crack. Most important of all, the roof, shingled with the best cypress, remained water-tight, and so protected the interior from the ruinous effects of moisture. In outward appearance, however, Arcadia House had sadly degenerated. The stucco that originally covered the outer walls had fallen away here and there, leaving unsightly patches to vex the eye, and in many of the windows the glazing had been destroyed either wholly or in part.

Some years before Quinton Edge had taken possession of this abandoned Eden. The summers in the city were usually warm, and the Doomsmen were in the habit of seeking the upper stories of the tall buildings for relief, just as in the twentieth century people went to the mountains for the heated term. Quinton Edge, having accidentally discovered Arcadia House recognized its advantages as a summer residence, and he had his own reasons for desiring the privacy that its secluded situation afforded. He was satisfied with putting three or four of the rooms into livable condition, and as for the rest it was only necessary to repair the wall surrounding the grounds and stock the storehouses with fuel and provisions to make of Arcadia House the proverbial castle. That it _was_ his castle was his own affair, and he had taken care that only the fewest possible number should be in the secret. Old Kurt and a couple of negro slave women made up the ordinary domestic staff of the establishment, and until the advent of Esmay and Nanna, some three months before, Arcadia House had received no visitors. And he would be a foolish man who called upon Quinton Edge without an invitation.

Esmay, after parting from Constans, paused a moment at the side entrance of the house. She wanted to look back, but a stronger instinct forbade it; she opened the door and passed into the hall.

It was a broad, low-ceilinged apartment, and served as a common living-room to the master of Arcadia House and his guests. A few embers burned on the hearth, and a solitary candle set in a wall-sconce strove with its feeble glimmer against the full tide of silver moonshine that poured in through the uncurtained windows facing on the river. Quinton Edge himself was sitting at the corner of the fireplace smoking a red-clay pipe with a reed stem. He rose as Esmay entered, detaining her with a gesture as she would have passed him.

"One moment, if you will."

The girl stopped and waited for him to continue. He considered a moment, looking her over coolly. And indeed she made an attractive picture as she stood there, the firelight glinting redly in her tawny eyes and her cheeks incarnadined with excitement. Quinton Edge told himself that he had made no mistake. Then he spoke:

"You have waited most patiently for me to announce my intentions. Let me see; it is nearly three months since you came to Arcadia House?"

The girl made no reply. Alert and keeping herself well in hand, she would force him to the first move. And Quinton Edge realized that he would have to make it.

"It won't be any news to you that there are several people who would be glad to be informed of your whereabouts. There's Boris, for one, and young Ulick--we spoke of them some time ago."

"But to no purpose, sir; you remember that."

"Perfectly. Still, in three months a woman may change her mind many times."

"But only for her own satisfaction."

"Then it is hopeless to expect a decision from you?"

"Evidently."

"In that case it may become necessary for me to act for you."

"Oh!"

The exclamation told its own story, and the girl in her vexation bit the lip that had betrayed her. Quinton Edge smiled.

"Don't distress yourself," he said, smoothly. "I am only giving you the warning that courtesy entitles you to receive."

Esmay reflected. Whatever his intentions concerning her, she could not be the worse off for knowing them. So she went on, steadily:

"Since you have already decided upon my future, argument would be useless. But perhaps I may assume that you have acted with some small regard for my interests."

"Not the least in the world," returned Quinton Edge, and Esmay smiled involuntarily at frankness so unblushing. Whereupon and curiously enough, Quinton Edge became suddenly of a great gravity, the flippancy of his accustomed manner falling from him as a cloak drops unnoticed from a man's shoulders. He rose to his feet, strode to a window, and stood there for perhaps a minute looking out upon the moonlit waters of the Lesser river. When he turned again to the girl there were lines of hardness about his mouth that she had never noticed before. Yet, in speaking, his voice was soft, almost hesitating.

"Why should I tell you of these things, and then again why not? We are both children of the Doomsmen, and the matter concerns us nearly. Not equally, of course, but listen and draw your own conclusions."

"There are clouds in the political sky, and our little ship of state is in danger of going upon the rocks, coincident with the death of Dom Gillian, its old-time helmsman. And that contingency in the natural course of events cannot be long delayed.

"Now there are two nominal heirs--Boris and Ulick. Each deems himself the chosen successor to his great-grandfather, and each is incompetent to play the part. In the past the reins of power have been held by the man who stands between them. I am that third man."

"As everybody knows now."

"No; and for the simple reason that there are few to care who rules so long as the figure-head remains a presentable one. But let me continue.

"Dom Gillian will formally nominate one of his grandsons as his heir. It makes no difference whether Boris or Ulick succeeds--the outcome must be the same. Both have personal followings, and that of the disappointed one will form a minority insignificant in numerical strength, but capable of being kneaded by strong hands into a compact mass."

"A revolution, then?"

"By no means. I accept the situation as it is and simply turn it to my own advantage--as third man. This makes it necessary that the disappointed one should become my absolute property. Now I hold the price that he will demand for the surrender of his rights and freedom--nothing less than yourself."

"I shall not affect to be surprised," said the girl, coolly. "But are you quite sure that I am valued at so high a figure? It would be mortifying for you to go into the market and find that your currency had depreciated on your hands."

"I am not afraid," he answered. "The passion with Boris and Ulick alike is genuine enough, albeit of somewhat different sort. As you care for neither, it should be a matter of indifference whose property you become."

The blood burned redly under the girl's brown skin. "No one but a woman could know how unforgivable is that insult," she said. Then, with a suddenly conceived appeal to the man himself:

"But why a bargain at all? You have the strength, the courage, the brains--why chaffer when you have but to strike once to win all? You stand between Boris and Ulick; crush them both in a single embrace and take their birthright of power."

"Bah!" said the Doomsman, contemptuously. "Do you think that the mere possession of the wolf-skin is the object of the hunt? It is the game that amuses me and not the final distribution of the stakes. The game, I say, and it happens to suit my humor to play it in this particular way. You are simply a piece on the board, and I may win with you or lose with you, or conclude to throw you back in the box without playing you at all--just as it pleases me."

"The means are at least nobler than the end," retorted the girl. "A lofty ambition, truly, to stand behind a screen and pull the strings of a puppet, who in turn lords it over a handful of rick burners and cattle reivers. Even my uncle Hugolin, Councillor Primus of Croye, cuts a better figure when, clad in his state robe of silver-fox fur, he presides over his parliament of shopkeepers."

"Granted," returned Quinton Edge, "but one and all dance together when I choose to pipe. Is it such a contemptible thing to rule a small world, if, indeed, it be the world? I take all that there is to be taken. Could Alexander or Caesar do more?"

"I am beginning to comprehend," she said, slowly. "An ambition that confessedly overleaps all bounds is at least not an ignoble one."

He turned and searched her eyes.

"You will play the game with me?"

"No."

"Yet a moment ago you were considering it--the possibility, I mean."

"For the moment--yes. After three months of Arcadia House dulness almost any amusement would seem worth while. But, frankly speaking, it is the nature of the risk that appalls me. I cannot afford to lose my stake nor even to adventure it."

"To speak plainly?"

"Well, then, you contribute to the common capital but one thing--your brains. Later on, if the play goes against us, you may have to throw on the table your liberty, and, in the last extremity, your life. But that is the utmost limit of your losses. I, on the contrary, must contribute myself to the hazard, and no man understands what that means to a woman."

"How long is it since the woman has understood?" he asked, mockingly, but Esmay was silent.

"Well, then, if I cannot have you with me I want you actively against me--the more balls in the air, the better sport for the juggler. And at least we understand each other."

"There is just the one question--perhaps an obvious one."

"Yes."

"Boris or Ulick? For of course you know which of them is to be the old Dom's heir."

"I do."

"I am to be informed of my purchaser's name--after the bargaining is over? And only then?"

"Since you choose to put it in that way--yes."

Neither chose to break the silence that fell between them, and Esmay, catching up her skirt, turned to go.

"Good-night," she said, but Quinton Edge did not answer. Apparently he had forgotten her very existence; he sat with feet out-stretched to the fire, his eyes fixed upon the curl of blue smoke that hung above his pipe bowl.

Esmay went up to the room on the second floor which she shared with her sister. Nanna was already in bed and asleep, but she started up as Esmay entered, like a dog that has been listening in its dreams for its master's footsteps. "Are you coming to bed?" she asked, drowsily, and fell back among the pillows without even waiting for the answer.

Esmay, unconscious of the cold, remained seated at the window looking out upon the river, her mind busy with the ultimatum which had just been presented to it. That it was an ultimatum, she could not doubt; Quinton Edge had been in deadly earnest in confronting her with her fate--a double-faced one, as she thought, with a little shiver. She could not avoid seeing it, no matter which way she turned.

A waning moon in a clouding sky. Even as she looked the two faces seemed to start out from the uncertain shadows--Boris, the Butcher--involuntarily, she shrank back from the window--never that!

Ulick? Yes, she had been fond of Ulick; they had been comrades and friends for so long as she could remember. But Ulick in this new light--ah, that was different again. Strangely enough she found herself contemplating this last possibility even more fearfully than she had the first. If the "Butcher" but laid a finger upon her, surely her arm was strong enough to drive the dagger home. But if it were Ulick, what could she do but turn the weapon against her own breast.

Plan and counterplan, and the argument invariably came back to where it began--she must call upon Constans for the aid which he had promised to place at her disposal. Hardly two hours had passed since they had made the compact, and now she was come to ask for its fulfilment. What would he think of her? How interpret a precipitancy so foreign to the cool assurance of her bearing in the garden? She frowned; the instinct that urges a woman to any folly short of the supreme blunder of unveiling herself to masculine eyes took possession of her. But only for a moment, for again the imminence of the peril in which she stood broke over her like a wave. There was but one thing to do; the signal must be set this very night. The returning expedition from the south might even now be encamped at the High Bridge, and if Constans could help her at all it must be at once.