CHAPTER XX
THE END OF THE QUEST
He came to his wits, strangling, his throat burned by a stinging dose of brandy, and sat up, coughing, conscious that the pain in his shoulder and his side was growing yet more agonizing with each passing instant.
Blinded with it, he was yet aware that he was not alone. Realizing this he strove to force himself into clear sentience.
As though from a distance of many leagues a voice thrilled in his ears—a voice to whose sweet accents he had not listened for long years.
"… Terence! …" it whispered, "… Terence, beloved! …"
"'Tis not so," he muttered thickly. "'Tis … not so! …"
A hand, soft, cool, light as the leaf of a rose, was upon his forehead; there was a shiver of breath upon his cheek; and the whispered appeal: "Terence, Terence, my beloved!"
Through all the pain and nausea, through the deadening lethargy that seemed to be numbing him thoroughly, penetrated the knowledge that he had won—somehow—to the presence of his heart's mistress. With a magnificent effort, drunkenly, he straightened up in his chair, erected his head, opened his eyes, even found strength to bring himself abruptly, with a mechanical movement, to his feet.
"Princesse!" he said clearly. "I am come … to die for ye … as I promised …"
The filmy mists of weakness that had lain, tremulously, before his eyes, seemed to tremble and fall apart—as the mists of morning before the rays of the sun. He saw, and saw, it seemed, more distinctly than ever he had been able to observe, his princess, and the beauty that was hers,—her face close to his, her eyes upon his own, glorious with the light of the love that she bore him.
"Terence!" she whispered again; and he felt her arms close about him, lending him strength to support himself. "Terence, sweetheart! Ah, but you are—"
"Dying, madame," he breathed hoarsely. "'Tis me fate … and me desire … to die for ye …"
He heard her sob softly. "But you will not—must not die, sweetheart. You—ah, but I thought you had come back to claim me—at last, Terence, at last! … And I had waited so long, so long, my beloved!"
He passed a hand across his eyes, with the other gripped the back of a chair.
"D'ye mean it?" he cried. "That ye want me, after all, my princess? …"
"Want you, dearest? Ah, but that I might die in your place."
He seemed to concentrate himself as by a powerful putting forth of his will. The veins upon his forehead stood out darkly; the muscles of his jaw were like huge knots beneath his skin. He forced speech between his clenched teeth.
"Is there … chance of escape? …"
"I have locked the doors," she told him. "None can enter. We are alone, and there is a secret way out of the castle."
"Then," he interrupted tensely, "give me brandy … Twas that ye gave me the minute gone? …"
She pressed the edge of a goblet against his lips. He gripped its stem, threw back his head and swallowed, gulp after gulp. Sound and in his right mind, the quantity would have well-nigh killed him. At the moment it lent him, temporarily, fictive but necessary strength. He showed it at once in his manner.
"Time?" he demanded.
"They are battering upon the doors; they may break in."
"I can't go this way."
It was true that the people of the castle were assaulting the doors of the great hall; the thundering blows upon the stout oaken panels were rapid and constantly increasing in force. Yet the doors were strong, and would hold yet a little while.
"The way out?" he asked.
She seemed to glide across the floor, swiftly, to one wall, where, beneath a hanging tapestry, she discovered to him a sliding panel. "Here?" she announced, waiting expectantly, quivering with anxiety and pity.
"Turn your back," he commanded roughly, "and stay so for—till I speak."
She obeyed. Despite the exquisite pain he endured, the man nerved himself to manage to remove his coat. With his knife he slit away one sleeve and the side of his shirt—grinding his teeth with mortal anguish. Then, swiftly tearing the linen into strips, he moistened them with water from a silver pitcher on the table and plastered them upon his wounds. "They be not wide, nor deep," he said to himself. "'Tis not worthy the name of O'Rourke I am if I cannot overcome them—win out of here—mend. …"
Somehow—it seemed by hours of painful struggling, he got the coat on again and buttoned it tight about him. Then, with his one sound arm pressing the other against his side, tightly, to hold the bandages—such as they were—in place, he turned, gathered himself together for a supreme effort, and with a tolerably firm step moved across the floor and joined the woman.
He noted that she was attired as though for traveling. The circumstance puzzled him, yet at the moment he could spare no strength for words.
"Ready, madame," he announced with difficulty.
The woman stepped through the opened panel into stark blackness, which lay beyond. He followed; and she turned and slid the panel back into position. A furious crash told him that the doors to the hall—one or both of them—had given away.
Summoning the utmost of his iron resolution, the Irishman permitted the woman to take the lead, stumbling after her, guiding himself through the impenetrable darkness by the sounds of her passage—the rustle of her skirts and the light, almost inaudible tap of her footsteps.
"Faith, 'tis a woman after me own heart, she is!" he, thought. "To lead on so, without weakness or faltering, in a time like this—without stopping to comfort me, or to mourn!"
He felt himself stronger with each instant. The liquor was acting upon him oddly, seeming to flood his being with great, recurring waves of power. This effect, he knew, was but transient; yet it would serve.
It seemed that they trod miles of dense darkness; they descended steps, climbed again, felt their way down narrow and tortuous passages, cold as the heart of death itself. It was a progress interminable to the wounded man: hours seemed to elapse.
"Surely," he thought, "'tis morning; be now."
Yet when they unexpectedly emerged, it was into the open air of the mountainside, and the winter's night still held over the land. Above hung sable and opaque skies, cloud cloaked; below the mountainside sloped to the clustered, twinkling lights of Montbar, the city, to which the road wound down the mountain, a serpentine course outlined by threads of electric light.
Behind him—apparently the eighth of a mile distant—the stark and ugly battlements of the Castle of Grandlieu reared their blunt heads to Heaven. Before them, immediately at hand, lay the road, and upon it squatted, huge and monstrous, an automobile, purring huskily, diffusing a taint of petrol upon the cold night air, illuminating the highway with huge, glaring head lamps.
The woman paused and caught O'Rourke in her arms again. "My beloved!" she said. And then, turning, called aloud: "Monsieur Chambret!"
A man clambered hastily out of the tonneau of the car and came running towards them. With a few brief words the woman explained the situation. O'Rourke said nothing. He could not. It was all he could encompass to keep his feet. Chambret sprang to his side, silently, and gave him aid to the automobile. Somehow the Irishman was got in upon the rear seat. The princesse entered with him. Chambret buried them both under a mountain of fur robes.
O'Rourke closed his eyes, his head resting upon the woman's shoulder, her lips—he never forgot the cool, firm touch of them—upon his forehead. He heard the motor cough raucously and was conscious of a thunderous vibration, together with a sweep of nipping air against his face.
The freshness of it and the crashing of the car through the night kept him conscious for a space. He whispered now and again with the woman of his heart—little, intimate phrases that epitomized the undying passion that was theirs.
Once she told him: "The frontier is not far, sweetheart. Once over that, beyond immediate pursuit, we will stop at an inn and summon a surgeon. Can you bear, O my dearest, to wait so long?"
"I—Ah, faith! I could endure a thousand deaths—and yet live on—in your arms …"
And again he asked: '"Tis miraculous—this escape! Tell me how it was contrived."
"Through Monsieur Chambret," she replied: "Monsieur Chambret, to whom we owe all. He communicated with me through my maid, by means of that secret passage, of which you know. And, not knowing when you would arrive, dear heart—Ah, but you were long!—we laid om plans for an escape whether or not you came … I had sworn that I would marry no man but you! … It was schemed for this very morning; the automobile was to be in waiting on that by-path. I was in the act of leaving the castle when I heard the shots … I ran, was the first to enter the hall."
"And so … Ah, sweetheart, sweetheart! If the O'Rourke dies, 'twill be of sheer happiness!"
She caught him more closely to her. The pain in his wounds seemed to be lessening; a delicious and dreamy languor crept over him, and he lay very still, content in her arms, feeling himself slip gradually into slumber from which he could not be sure that he should ever waken: while the motor car crashed and roared on through the dawn—the bright dawn of many confident to-morrows.