The Shadow of the Czar Part 7

"It is six weeks since our meeting in the woods," he observed, for want of a better remark.

"And you were going to Sebenico, then. Have you remained at Castel Nuovo all this time on my account?"

"I desire to keep my promise of seeing you safely to Zara."

Barbara murmured her grat.i.tude, adding,--

"But am I not putting you to great inconvenience?"

"No, signorina, no. These are my holidays. I am on a long furlough. My time is my own, or rather it is at your disposal."

Barbara's eyes drooped beneath Paul's gaze. Why should this handsome young captain interest himself so on her behalf?

"Jacintha tells me that you have never quitted the vicinity of the castle."

"True. It has been my desire to guard against a surprise on the part of your pursuers."

Barbara's face lost its bright expression for a moment.

"My pursuers!" she murmured. "My pursuers! The thought of them haunted me while I lay ill. I dreaded lest I should be carried off in my helpless state. But as six weeks have elapsed I think I may regard the pursuit--if pursuit there were--as over. But tell me, Captain Cressingham,"--how prettily the name fell from her lips!--"what would you have done if my pursuers had appeared?"

"Fought," replied Paul laconically.

"But supposing they had been a dozen in number?"

"No matter. Lambro loves a fight, so do I. Castel Nuovo was built to stand a siege. The door is of ma.s.sive oak; the lower windows are barred; there are abundant loopholes convenient for taking shots at the enemy. And besides there are the twelve mastiffs, each of which is capable of tackling a man. Trust us, signorina, we should have made a good defence."

It was pleasant to be near such towers of strength as Paul and Lambro, who appeared to regard Austrian gendarmerie with contempt. Then her pleasure became lost in surprise. Was this Englishman really willing to undergo such perils on her behalf? Ay, those, and much more, Barbara, to gain your smiles.

"I am fortunate in my friends," she said, "but rather than expose them to such hazard I think I should prefer to give myself up."

She was a sweet and interesting patient, and the charm of her face and figure was enhanced by the toilette in which Jacintha had arrayed her,--a dress all soft and white and foamy with silk muslin. A silver rope girdle was tied at one side and fell in two long, graceful ta.s.sels. Delicate antique lace fringed the slender wrists. Paul's quick eye observed that a small portion of the lace was torn off from the right sleeve. He wondered why the defect had not been repaired. A trifling circ.u.mstance, but one destined to recur with peculiar force at a later date.

This was not the costume she had worn on the night of her first meeting with him. Whence, then, did it come? Barbara seemed to divine his thoughts.

"I see you are observing my dress," she remarked. "It is a gift from Jacintha, drawn from an old chest in her wardrobe. It might have been expressly made for me, for it fits to a nicety without requiring the least alteration. Made for another, and yet suiting me to perfection.

Is not that a singular coincidence?"

The fit of the dress did not strike Paul so much as the costliness of the material. He could not account for Jacintha's possession of such attire except on the supposition that it formed part of the flotsam and jetsam which supplied Lambro with his finery.

Again Barbara seemed to read his thoughts.

"No, it is not a gift of the sea; Jacintha a.s.sured me of that; otherwise I would not wear it. I have no liking for the clothing of the drowned." And then displaying a pair of pretty satin shoes, she added: "And these, too, are Jacintha's gift, and they fit as if my feet had been measured for them."

She turned to the open cas.e.m.e.nt and surveyed the scene without.

"Ah! if I could but get into the air outside I should recover the sooner."

"Then come down to-morrow, and sit outside on the terrace."

"I am too weak to walk."

"No matter. I will carry you," replied Paul, boldly.

"I shall have to get Jacintha's leave first," said Barbara, half-pleased, half-reluctant. "Jacintha is an ideal nurse. She will have her commands obeyed, and will not yield to the whims of her patient."

When Jacintha appeared, her consent was readily obtained, and as she averred that Barbara had talked enough for one day, Paul was compelled to take his leave.

He spent the rest of the day in recalling Barbara's words. The interview, though delightful, contained one element of disappointment: Barbara had said nothing as to her previous history. Paul had hesitated to question her on the matter, leaving her to take the initiative. Time would doubtless bring increasing confidence on her part.

On the following day he redeemed his promise of carrying her into the open air. An exquisite sense of pleasure filled him as he felt the clasp of Barbara's arm around his neck and noted the sweet color that mantled her cheek. From her chamber he bore her down the staircase and out to a dismantled marble terrace, where he seated her in a lounge, which had been placed there by Jacintha. Above her rose a stately terebinth, whose light-green foliage, crimsoned with cl.u.s.ters of delicate flowers, cast a circle of shade around.

It was the height of summer, and the day, though hot, was not oppressive; the atmosphere being tempered by the air flowing from the Dalmatian highlands that rose behind them, peak above peak, in dark wooded glory.

Facing them was the smooth Adriatic almost as blue as the heaven it reflected. Far off in the summer haze picturesque feluccas, with their white lateen sails, glided to and fro with slow dream-like motion.

Sea, sky, and mountains combined to form a scene of enchanting beauty, rendered still more enchanting to Paul by the presence of Barbara, to whom Jacintha had imparted an additional charm by adorning her with the graceful _pezzotto_, or muslin scarf, which, pinned on the head and falling over the arms and shoulders, permitted the beautiful face and hair of the wearer to be seen through it.

"Have you ever noticed, Captain Cressingham, how trifles annoy when one is in a state of illness? And I am annoyed by a trifle, one so absurd that I feel ashamed to mention it."

Paul urged her, nevertheless, to describe the annoyance.

"What torments me is a piece of sealing-wax on a panel in my bedroom.

Reposing the other night, with my eyes turned towards it, I was seized by a singular fancy. The wax seemed to be receding through the wall, drawing me after it. Reason told me that this could not be so, that the wax was immovably fixed to the panel, and that I was in bed; yet all the same, there was the circle of wax gliding onward with never-ending motion through the realm of air, and myself floating along in its wake like a disembodied spirit. This sensation occurs every night. My mind is kept perpetually on the rack following that piece of wax through the infinity of s.p.a.ce, ever lured onward by the hope of arriving at some goal. But that goal perpetually evades me, and therein is the torment."

"Having had the malaria myself," observed Paul, "I can testify that such queer notions do occur. What is the color of this wax?" he added, having little doubt as to what the answer would be.

"It is of a violet hue, and bears the impress of a lamb carrying a banner. I cannot go back to that chamber again," continued Barbara, "or I shall be driven mad, for the annoyance is depriving me of all sleep. I must change my room, even though my good nurse is opposed to it."

But Jacintha did not offer any opposition when Paul made known her patient's desire for a different sleeping-room; without any demur she immediately set about preparing another chamber.

That same night, when all was still in the castle, Paul, taking a revolver and a lamp, sought the room vacated by Barbara. He quickly discovered the piece of stamped wax, and saw that it corresponded precisely with the seal upon the door of the mysterious study.

Extinguis.h.i.+ng his lamp, he sat down on a chair beside the panel, determined to watch there during the night to ascertain, if possible, whether there was any ground for Barbara's strange fancy.

It was a long and dreary vigil, and when the gray light of dawn stole in through the cas.e.m.e.nt, and nothing had occurred to excite suspicion, he was fain to question the wisdom of his action.

That day Paul again carried Barbara downstairs to breathe the pure air of the sunlit terrace.

"My sleep last night was sweet and sound," she remarked. "With my new bedroom, and with this glorious air, I shall soon be well again."

She looked so radiant that Paul refrained from mentioning his nocturnal vigil. Though full of indefinable suspicion himself, he had no wish to alarm her mind; and he had laid both on Lambro and Jacintha an injunction to maintain silence respecting the locked room.

Barbara's strength gradually returned. In a day or two she was able to stand, and, leaning upon Paul's arm, she walked to and fro in the immediate vicinity of the castle. These promenades were soon lengthened into rambles along the seash.o.r.e or through the fragrant pine woods, Paul being her constant companion. She had taken his arm at first from weakness; she now continued to do so from habit.

As his knowledge of Barbara increased Paul discovered that she had received an extraordinary education, her course of study having been as remarkable for what it omitted as for what it contained. While knowing very little of poetry, painting, music, needle-work, and other accomplishments usually included in the feminine curriculum, she was nevertheless well versed in mathematics, logic, and "the dismal science," to wit, political economy. Cla.s.sic antiquity was almost a sealed book to her, but modern history and current continental politics she had at her finger-tips, and her knowledge of royal and n.o.ble genealogies with all their ramifications might have put a herald to the blush. She could give the biographies, and the characteristic foibles, of all the leading statesmen of Europe; was mistress of several modern languages, notably Polish or Russian, and--most puzzling circ.u.mstance of all--she was quite _au fait_ with the mysteries and subtleties of Catholic theology.

As she could scarcely have pa.s.sed her twentieth year, it seemed to Paul that Barbara, in view of her extensive acquirements, must have commenced her studies so soon as she had quitted her cradle.