So beautiful she looked, standing there in her floating, snowy draperies, with her solemn, mysterious eyes fixed upon that sullen, lowering face. Beautiful and mysterious as some vestal priestess defending the secrets of her Order. But that beauty, for once, seemed less to subjugate than to inflame the evil desires of that lower nature to which it was bound.
"I will listen no more to vague threats," he said fiercely. "I have paid a heavy enough price for you. I mean to enjoy my purchase. See, here is the list--they are fairly trapped--a word from you and they are safe--these impatient fools. Keep silence--and the knout, the mines, the slow torturing death of Siberia, awaits them all. Now, once again-- your answer?"
He drew nearer--his eyes aflame--his arms outstretched.
Then a change, wild and fearful, as that of the tropical tornado to a southern landscape, swept over that lovely form.
Her eyes flashed, her figure seemed to dilate. Slowly she raised her arm and stretched it towards that brutal ravisher...
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Struggling, panting, tearing, as it were, against a power that bade him hearken to that terrible answer, Julian Estcourt cried or seemed to cry aloud in an agony of entreaty.
Then a rushing noise as of an unloosed torrent was in his ears; a dull, confused pain beat like clanging hammers in his brain.
His eyes opened and he found himself, bathed in the cold sweat of more than mortal terror, lying face downwards on the floor of his own bedroom.
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In a blind, dazed fashion he struggled to his feet and rushed to the window and let the cool night air blow over his face. Every limb was trembling; he could not think with any clearness.
In some dim, unconscious fashion he groped for his watch, found it, and looked at the time. A quarter-past one. Only an hour had passed--an hour--and he felt as if centuries had swept over his head in the vivid horrors of that awful dream.
"But it was only a dream," he cried aloud, drawing in deep panting breaths of the pine-scented air. "Oh! thank God. Thank God, it was only a dream!"
And he sank on his knees and sobbed like a child in the star-lit solitude of the night.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
EFFECTS.
The next day, when Colonel Estcourt sent to know if the Princess Zairoff would receive him, he was informed she was ill, and could see no one.
Feeling strangely disinclined for mere ordinary society, he ordered his horse to be brought round and spent the greater portion of the day in long, fierce gallops over the miles of stretching sand that framed in the bay.
The sky was chill and grey; a cold wind blew from the sea and dashed the salt foam in his face as the waves swept stormily in. But the dull sky and the stormy sea suited his mood, and seemed to string up the relaxed tension of his nerves.
"Nature is man's best physician after all," he said to himself, reining in his beautiful Arab at last, and baring his brow to the fresh breeze. "Even as she is his best friend. Only we don't believe it. We live in the world and follow the ways of the world, until our faculties are blunted, our natures demoralised, our tastes vitiated, our energies enfeebled. How many lands I have travelled over, how many cities I have seen, and yet I verily believe that the wild Sioux in his prairies, and the wandering Bedouin of the desert, have more of real manhood than we. Yes; and get more real enjoyment out of life."
It was quite dusk before he reached the hotel. The country was all new and strange to him, and he had missed his way more than once. But though he was tired, and stiff, and hungry, he felt that his mental energies were braced, his mind at ease, and the disturbing and torturing memories of the previous night no longer tormented him.
At dinner he sat next to Mrs Ray Jefferson, who was radiant and voluble as ever.
She had a great deal to say about the Princess, who, it appeared, had again spent the morning in the Baths.
"She looked ill," said the little American. "Awfully white and languid. I asked her if she had seen a ghost. There was something scared and strange about her. I surmise it's nerves. It was odd, too," and she lowered her voice as if taking the Colonel into a special confidence. "But she went off to sleep in the hot room. Nothing could waken her. I got rather frightened."
His face looked disturbed. "To sleep?" he said. "That is rather unusual, is it not?"
"Oh, plenty of us go to sleep in the cooling-room," said Mrs Jefferson, "but I never saw anyone do it in any of the others. She was talking to me, and then quite suddenly she said `I feel sleepy. Please do not speak. I shall wake in a quarter of an hour.' And so she did."
"You did not try to waken her, I suppose?" asked Colonel Estcourt anxiously.
"Well, I did, but it was no use, so I let her be. I saw she was all right, because she breathed naturally, and her heart beat quite regularly. Still, it seemed odd. I asked her maid afterwards about it. She's a pretty little Frenchwoman, and always waits in the cooling-room for her mistress. But she didn't seem to think anything of it. She said she very often does that, and it is best not to try and waken her. I must say she seemed much better afterwards. Brighter and more alert. What a lovely creature she is!" she added enthusiastically. "I suppose you know you're the most envied person in the hotel at this present moment?"
He smiled, but his face still looked anxious and disturbed.
"Because I have the privilege of being her friend?" he said. "Well, I am not going to deny that it _is_ a privilege--a most enviable one."
"I should think," said Mrs Jefferson meaningly, "it is also one that has its dangers."
The calm grey eyes met her sharp inquisitive glance, but were utterly unrevealing.
"I will not affect to misunderstand you," he said, "but there are men who covet danger for its own sake. They may seem foolhardy, but they are only accountable to themselves for the risks they run."
"Well," said Mrs Jefferson warmly, "I'm only a woman, and yet if it's possible to fall in love with one of my own sex, I've done it. She's perfectly charmed me. I can't get her out of my head for a single moment. It's not only her wonderful beauty, but her mind. As for our poet," she added, laughing, "he's quite gone. He's done nothing all day but moon about under the pine trees. Writing sonnets, I guess, and hoping to catch a glimpse of her. All useless--she's not left the hotel to-day, and I suppose she'll not favour us to night."
Colonel Estcourt was silent. Conversation was more or less general, but it sounded vague and unmeaning to him. He heard a voice on his left holding forth with energy, but he did not heed it until Mrs Jefferson touched his arm and whispered an entreaty.
"Do listen," she said, "it's Diogenes. Isn't he coming out? I surmise it's _her_ influence. You remember last night?"
"An atheist," said the dogmatic voice of the individual who had given that common-sense view of spiritualism the previous evening, "must be a fool of the most complete type. Because he doubts what _men_ teach of God, is no reason for doubting the existence of God. I grant that the Reverend John Smith, with his high-falutin' trappings of Ritualism on one side, and the Reverend Josiah Stiggins, with his coarse and commonplace familiarity with the Almighty (whose personality he has the effrontery to expound as if he were discussing the characteristics of an ordinary mortal), on the other, are enough to drive hundreds of people out of the pale of Christianity, and force them to take refuge in defiance and opposition. But, all the same, the expectation of another life is a rooted belief in the minds of all men, quite apart from religion. Even the savage has it. If we call it human nature to eat, drink, fight, love, or desire, it must also be human nature that gives universal assent to this idea of an after existence. The fact of finding it in all races is but a proof that Man is the creation of a Power that intends him for a far wider range of existence than he sees before him. There are many things affirmed by man's consciousness that he cannot really or logically explain. Yet it is a narrow reasoning that bids us reject the inexplicable."
"Yet you reject spiritualism," said Mrs Jefferson quickly.
"Not at all, my dear madam. I only reject the humiliating and degrading trickery that is its sensational form. I only repeat what I said yesterday, that no lofty or educated mind could do anything but resent the idea of being subjugated to a mere material will, and being forced by that will to perform conjuring tricks in order that a small portion of the civilised world should gape, and gaze, and cry out `How wonderful!' To deny that spirits exist, aye and work, would be to deny the very crudest faith in Christianity."
"There is no doubt," said Colonel Estcourt, "that everything _is_ explicable, but we must wait for the growth and development of our higher natures before we can comprehend half the mysteries of the higher life. The great fault of the materialist and the scientist is, that they would fain bring everything down to the level of their _present_ comprehension, instead of patiently waiting the completion of their future spiritual forces. It is quite evident that we are not meant to attain our full mental stature on the earth-plane, or what would be left to achieve in the countless ages of immortality? Man believes in immortality and yet seems to contemplate it as a state of stagnation and quiescence. Why he believes in it he cannot fully explain. It is, as you said before, a consciousness given to the races of humanity, but no more capable of commonplace analysis than time, or space, or thought."