Chapter XX
FOR ETERNITY it seemed he stood there staring down at her, and then slowly he descended, never taking his eyes from her face, and she backed away from him, feeling for the tabie, and sat down in her chair, and watched him. He was clad only in his shirt and breeches, and she saw now that there was blood upon his shirt, and on the knife that he held in his hand. She knew then what had happened. Somewhere, in one of the dark passages above, a man lay mortally wounded, or even dead, and it might be one of the crew from La Mouette, or it might be William. This struggle had taken place in silence and in darkness, while she had sat in the salon alone and dreaming, her rubies in her hands. Now he stood at the bottom of the stairs, and still he said nothing, but he went on watching her with his narrow cat-like eyes, and then he sat himself in Harry's chair at the far end of the table, and put the knife down on the plate before him.
When at last he spoke the familiarity of his voice sounded odd in contrast to his altered looks, for the man who faced her was not the Rockingham she had jested with in London, ridden beside at Hampton Court, and despised as a degenerate and a rake. This man had something cold about him, something evil, and from henceforward he was her enemy, wishing her suffering and pain.
"I see," he said, "that your jewels have been returned to you."
She shrugged her shoulders without answer, for how much he had guessed was of little consequence. The only thing that mattered was to know the plan in his head, and what movement he would make.
"And what," he said, "did you give in place of your jewels?"
She began to replace the rubies in her ears, watching him over her arm as she did so. And then, because his gaze was something that she hated now, and could even grow to fear, she said to him, "We have become very serious, Rockingham, all of a sudden. I should have thought this evening's jest would have amused you well."
"You are right," he answered, "it has amused me much. That twelve men could be disarmed and unbreeched in so short a time by so few jesters bears a curious likeness to the pranks we used to play at Hampton Court. But that Dona St. Columb should look upon the leader of the jesters in the way she did-in a way that could mean one thing only no, that I did not find amusing."
She leant her elbows on the table, and cupped her chin in her hands.
"And so?" she asked.
"And so in a flash I understood much that had puzzled me since my arrival here last night. That servant of yours, a spy of course of the Frenchman's. The friendliness between you, that you knew he was a spy. And those walks of yours, those wanderings in the woods, that elusive look in your eye that I had never seen before, yes, indeed, elusive to me, to Harry, to all men but one man, and I have seen that man to-night." His voice was low now, scarcely above a whisper, and all the time he looked at her with hatred.
"Well," he said, "do you deny it?"
"I deny nothing," she answered.
He picked up the knife from his plate, and began tracing lines with it upon the table, as though abstracted.
"You know," he said, "that you could be imprisoned for this, and possibly hanged, should the truth come out?"
Once again she shrugged her shoulders, and did not answer.
"Not a very pleasant ending, for Dona St. Columb," he said. "You have never been inside a jail, have you? You have never smelt the heat and the filth, you have never tasted the black broken bread, or drunk the water, thick with scum. And the feeling of a rope about your neck, as it tightens, and chokes you. How would you like that, Dona?"
"My poor Rockingham," she said slowly, "I can imagine all these things far better than you can describe them. What is your object? Do you wish to frighten me? Because you are not succeeding."
"I thought it only wise," he said, "to remind you of what may happen."
"And all this," she said, "because my lord Rockingham fancies I smiled upon a pirate when he asked me for my jewels. Tell your story to Godolphin, to Rashleigh and to Eustick, to Harry even-they will say that you are mad."
"Possibly," he said, "with your Frenchman on the high seas, and yourself sitting at your ease in Navron House. But supposing your Frenchman was not on the high seas, supposing he was caught, and bound and brought before you, and we played with him a little, as they played with prisoners some hundred years ago, Dona, with you for audience. I rather believe you would give yourself away."
Once again she saw him as she had seen him earlier in the day, a sleek cat crouching in the long grass, a bird between his claws, so padded, so soft, and she realised, her memory streaking back to the past, how she had always suspected in him some quality of deliberate and cruel depravity which, because of the foolhardy lightness of the age in which they lived, was well concealed.
"It pleases you to be dramatic," she said, "but the days of the thumb-screw and the rack are over. We no longer burn our heretics at the stake."
"Not our heretics perhaps," he said, "but our pirates are hanged, and drawn, and quartered, and their accomplices suffer the same fate."
"Very well," she said, "since you believe me an accomplice, do what you wish. Go upstairs, and unbind the guests who supped here to-night. Wake Harry from his drunken slumbers. Call the servants. Fetch horses, fetch soldiers and weapons. And then when you have caught your pirate, you may hang us both side by side from the same tree."
He did not answer. He stared at her across the table, balancing the knife in his hand.
"Yes," he said, "you would suffer that, would you not, and be proud and glad. You would not mind dying now, because you have had, at last, the thing you wanted all your life. Is not that true?"
She looked back at him, and then she laughed.
"Yes," she said, "it is true."
He turned very white, and the gash on his face showed vivid red in contrast, altering the shape of his mouth, like a strange grimace.
"And it might have been me," he said, "it might have been me."
"Never," she said, "that I swear. Never in this world."
"If you had not left London, if you had not come down here to Navron, it would have been me. Yes, though it were from boredom, from idleness, from indifference, even from disgust, it would have been me."
"No, Rockingham… never…"
He got up slowly from his chair, still balancing the knife in his hands, and he kicked the spaniel away from under his feet, and he rolled his sleeves above his elbow.
She rose too, gripping the sides of her chair, and the murky light from the two candles on the wall flickered down upon his face.
"What is it, Rockingham?" she asked.
Then for the first time he smiled, and he pushed back his chair, and laid one hand on the corner of the table.
"I believe," he whispered, "that I am going to kill you."
In a moment she had flung a glass of wine, close to her hand, straight in his face, and for half a second it blinded him, while the glass shivered to fragments on the floor. Then he made a lunge towards her across the table, but she eluded him, reaching for one of the heavy chairs beside her, and she lifted it, and sent it crashing amongst the silver and the fruit on the table, the leg of it striking his shoulder. He breathed quickly, with the pain of it, and hurling the chair from the table to the ground, he held his knife poised an instant, high above his shoulder, and threw it from him, straight at her throat. It struck the ruby pendant around her neck, cracking it in two, and she felt the cold steel slip away from her, pricking her skin, catching itself in the folds of her gown. She fumbled for it, sick with horror and with pain, but before she could seize it he was upon her, one hand doubling her wrist behind her back, and the other pressing her mouth in suffocation. She felt herself falling back against the table, the glasses and the plates crashing to the ground, and somewhere beneath her was the knife which he wished to find. The dogs were barking now, furiously excited, imagining this was some new sport designed for their amusement, and they leapt up at him, scratching with their paws, so that he was forced to turn a moment, and kick them from under him, releasing the pressure of his hand upon her mouth.