The Secret Witness by George Gibbs (book recommendations txt) 📕

the causeway into the mountain road, visiting Szolnok farm and climbing the hills adjacent to the castle, but she saw no one except the German farmers, and it seemed indeed as though the gorge was taboo to all human beings. Goritz made love to her, of course, but she laughed him off, gaining a new confidence as the days of their companionship increased. Slowly, with infinite patience, with infinite self-control, she established a relationship which baffled him, a foil for each of his moods, a parry for each attack. With a smile on her lips which masked the lie, she told him that Hugh Renwick had been nothing to her.

And Goritz told her of the women he had met in the performance of his duty from London to Constantinople, women of the secret service of England, France, Russia, who had set their wits to match his. Some of them were ugly and clever, some were stupid and beautiful, but they had all been dangerous. He had passed them by. No woman in the world that he had ever known had had the nobility of spirit, the courage, the self-abnegation of the Countess Strahni.

It was in these moods of adulation and self-revelation that Marishka found him most difficult. But she managed to keep him at arm's length by the mere insistence of her spirituality which accepted his friendship upon its face value, telling him that she forgave the past, and vaguely suggesting hope for the future. With that he had to be content, though at times he was dangerously near rebellion. She promised him many things but denied him her lips, hoping day by day for the rescue which came not, and praying night after night that the God who watched over her would forgive her for her duplicity and for the hatred of him that was in her heart.

But there came a day when the walks beyond the causeway ceased, and from the window of her bedroom she learned the reason. Far, far below her in the valley along the road which wound through the Pass, she saw the figures of marching men. Austrian soldiers! What did their presence mean? They were going toward the other end of the pass—thousands of them. Had the Russians crossed Galicia? That night there were no lights in the side of the castle toward the gorge save the candle in her room, which was screened by heavy hangings. And when at dinner she questioned Goritz he gave her the briefest of replies. The Cossacks were coming? Perhaps, but they would not take Dukla Pass. He warned her not to show her figure at the castle windows or above the wall of the rampart, and she obeyed.

For several days Goritz disappeared, and she gained a breathing space to think over her position. She ventured out many times into the courtyard in the hope of finding an opportunity to elude her guard, but each time she approached the drawbridge she saw the chauffeur Karl seated in the shadow of the wall, smoking his pipe. And so she knew that any attempt to pass him would be impossible.

At the end of the fourth day, Captain Goritz joined her at the supper table. He had now discarded his Austrian uniform and wore a rough suit of working clothes, similar to the peasant costume which Ena's husband wore. He greeted her gladly, but she asked him no questions as to his absence, upon her guard as she always was against the unknown quality in the man, which held her in constant anxiety. But after he had eaten, the cloud which had hung over him seemed to pass, and he leaned forward, smiling at her across the table.

"You have been obedient?" he asked.

"What else is left for me?" she smiled. "I have wondered where you were."

"Ah," he laughed, "you missed me? That is good. You wondered what would happen to you if I did not come back." He laughed as he lighted his cigarette. "I am not so easily to be lost, I assure you. I have been through Dukla Pass."

"Many soldiers have gone through the pass today—many this morning—many more this afternoon."

"Yes, I saw them."

"And the Russians?"

He was silent for a while, and then spoke very quietly. "They are coming."

She made no sound and seemed to be frozen into immobility by the import of the information.

"The Austrians have fortified the other end of the Pass, but it is said that the Russians are in great numbers, sweeping everything before them——"

"Przemysl—! Lemberg—!"

"Lemberg has fallen. The fate of Przemysl hangs in the balance." He shrugged. "Tomorrow, perhaps, may see the Cossacks at Dukla Pass."

"And then——"

"I do not wish to alarm you," he said gently. "Six hundred years have passed over Schloss Szolnok, and it still stands. I am not going to run away."

"But you can do nothing—against so many."

"They will not bother us, I think. The Austrians, you see, have passed us by. They are taking all their artillery to Javorina and Jägerhorn and mounting them upon the old emplacements of the ruins. The defense will be made there where the gorge is narrower."

"But if they should come—here—the Cossacks—!" she whispered fearfully.

He laughed easily. "Ah, Countess, I am not a half-bad jailer, after all?"

"The Cossacks!" she repeated.

"They shall not come here."

"What can you do?"

"The place is impregnable—sheer cliffs upon all sides—the causeway two hundred meters long. I could pick them off one by one from the top of the keep. With the drawbridge up, we are as safe as though we were in Vienna."

"But their artillery?"

"They will not think us worth their while. In the armory there are six repeating hunting rifles and four shotguns, ammunition plentiful——" He broke off and, rising, came over and stood beside her. "But we will not think of unpleasant possibilities. It has been so long since I have seen you—too long."

She let him take her hand and press it to his lips, but tonight that condescension did not seem to be enough. He fell to one knee beside her and would have put his arm about her waist if she had not risen and struggled away from him.

"You forget, Herr Hauptmann, the dependence of my position here—alone with you. Whatever our personal relations, a delicacy for my feelings must warn you——"

"Marishka!" he broke in. "What does a man who loves as I do, care for the conventions of the sham world you and I have left so far behind. I adore you. And you flout me."

"For shame! Would you care for me if I were a woman without delicacy or dignity? I beg of you——"

But he had held her by the hand and would not release her.

"I adore you—and you flout me—that is all that I know. Your indifference maddens me. Perhaps I am not as other men, and must not be judged by other standards than my own which are sufficient for myself as they should be sufficient for you. You know that I—I worship you—that by staying here I have forgotten my duty to my country at a time when I am most needed. Does that mean nothing to you? Can you be callous to a love like mine which lives only in your happiness and hangs upon your pleasure? I worship you, Marishka. Just one kiss, to tell me that you care for me a little. I will be content——"

She struggled in his grasp, her fear of him lending her more strength. Her lips—? Hugh's! Never—never—as God witnessed.

"One kiss, Marishka——"

She struggled free and struck him with her clenched fist furiously, full in the face, and then ran to the window, as he released her, breathing hard, trembling, but full of defiance. The suddenness of the affair and its culmination had driven them both dumb, Marishka with terror, Goritz with chagrin at his mistake and anger at her temerity. He touched his face with the fingers of one hand and stared at her with eyes that burned with black fire in the pallor of his face.

"You have struck me," he muttered. And then, with a shrug, "That was not a love tap, Countess Strahni."

She could not speak for very terror of the consequences of the encounter, but stood watching him narrowly, one hand upon the window-ledge beside her.

"Well," he asked presently, "are you dumb?"

"You—you insulted me," she gasped.

"Whatever I have done, you have repaid me," he muttered.

She glanced out of the window into the black void beneath.

"I—I am not afraid to die, Herr Goritz," she said.

He caught the meaning of her glance and her poise by the window-ledge, and their significance sobered him instantly. He drew back from her two or three paces and leaned heavily against an oaken chair.

"Am I so repellent to you as that?" he whispered.

"My lips—are mine," she said proudly. "I give them willingly or not at all."

His gaze flickered and fell before the high resolve that he read in her face. And her courage enthralled him.

"Herr Gott!" he muttered, "you have never been so beautiful as now, Marishka!"

She did not reply or move, but only watched him steadily.

He paced the floor stiffly, his hands behind him, struggling for his self-control. And the better instinct in him, the part of him that had made life possible for Marishka at Schloss Szolnok, was slowly triumphant.

"A kiss means much or little," he said quietly at last. "To me, the consecration of a love which has leaped the bounds of mere platitude. A woman of your training perhaps cannot grasp the honesty of my unconvention. I have meant you no harm. But that you should have misunderstood—!"

"One thing only I understand—that you have violated the hospitality of Schloss Szolnok."

"I beg of you——"

"It is true. Was your kindness, your courtesy, your consideration, but the means to this end? I can never believe in you again."

"Do you mean that?"

"I do——"

"It is a pity."

"It is the truth. Fear and affection cannot survive together."

"Fear?"

"I can never trust you again. Let me go—I beg that you will excuse me."

He bowed. "If that is your wish——" and turned and walked to the window opposite, while Marishka found her way up the stairs and so to her room where she lay upon her bed fully dressed, in a high state of nervous excitement.

CHAPTER XXV THE RIFT IN THE ROCK

Hugh Renwick in his borrowed plumage, strode forth before dawn, and reaching a spot where the valley narrowed into the gorge and marked the grim outline of Schloss Szolnok against the lightening East, slowly climbed the rugged slope of the mountain on his left which faced it. He meant to spend the morning in a study of the approaches to the castle, and if possible devise some means by which he could inspect it unobserved at closer range. Daylight found him perched in a crevice of rock among some trees, through the leaves of which he could clearly see the distant mass of stone which rose in solitary dignity, an island above the mists of the valley, a grim relic of an age when such a situation meant isolation and impregnability.

Indeed, it scarcely seemed less impregnable now, for upon two sides at least, the cliffs rose sheer from the gorge until they were joined by the heavy buttresses which tapered gracefully until they joined the walls of the crenelated towers and bastions. In the center of the mass of buildings rose the square solid mass of the keep, with its crenelated roof and small windows commanding every portion of the space enclosed within the gray walls. He marked the dim lines of a road which ascended from the valley upon the further mountain, now scarcely visible because of the vegetation which grew luxuriantly on the hillsides, and he studied this approach to the castle most attentively—the straight reach of wall, built to span a branch of the gorge beyond, perhaps two hundred feet deep and six hundred wide. This was the main entrance to the castle, a narrow causeway, that terminated at the gate where he marked a