Clash of Arms: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

Again he awoke, more hours afterwards, with still the impenetrable darkness all around him, and with still the dazed blankness of memory and the inability to recall who or what he was, yet with now through all his density of mind some feeble glimmering of humanity working in his brain. Some hazy idea coursing through that brain and suggesting that he was a thing that had life in it, that he had not only just begun to exist, but, instead, had been existing heretofore. That he was a creature not used to lying paralyzed and helpless here, but, on the contrary, one full of action.

Memory was beginning to assert itself! Though, even as it did so, he slept again, went off once more into oblivion.

At last, awakening for the fourth time, with the terrible thirst gone, he awoke also to life and reason. A little longer--after lying still in the darkness--he recalled the fact that his name was Andrew Vause.

After that the rest was easy, indeed, too easy; for, with this clue to aid him, the whole of the past surged up in such huge waves of remembrance that they almost served to engulf memory altogether, That past rushed in upon him, recollections crowded swift and fast upon his mind and hurtled one another away; gradually he remembered all. All! The passage from the mountain slope to the roof; the meeting with Marion Wyatt; the still unexplained reasons why this English girl should be a prisoner here in the Lorrainer's house; the attempted escape; the fight and his defeat. But, beyond and after that, only the blank occasioned by his insensibility--and now this black impenetrable darkness!

Where was he? He must know that! Always a man of action, and with the promptings to action still working in him, all wounded as he was, he made, therefore, an attempt to rise, but found that attempt useless. His leg was attached by a chain to something at the foot of where he lay, a chain that, as he moved the leg, hung heavily upon it above the ankle and clasped it tight. He was a prisoner. That much was certain But what else?

His hands, which were free--though the right still caused him great pain when he endeavoured to move it--told him he lay close above a floor upon some stretched-out rug or skin; his other senses revealed to him that he was in some large, vast place into which the air entered freely; a damp, cold air, too, that blew upon his face, yet was grateful since it cooled the fever that raged within him still. But that was all; he could discover nothing further, could, from where he was, touch nothing beyond the bare boards around him, excepting only the vessel which he had some time previously--he could not recollect whether it was an hour or a day ago!--drunk from. No more.

Yet now, lying there--half dozing sometimes; sometimes forgetful of everything and recalling next each incident as it had happened and in its proper sequence, as well as with strange clearness--it seemed that a sound broke on his ears. A sound as of one who slowly mounted some steps, or stairs. A footstep that came nearer each time it fell. And, suddenly, as he lay listening, wondering if, with this approaching footfall, his doom approached too, if he was now to pay with his life for the entrance into his enemy's house, a light sparkled in his eyes from a slight distance, then blazed full into them, and a woman carrying a lanthorn in her hand stood before him. A woman who had mounted some steps close by him, and thus entered the place in which he lay. By the light of that lanthorn he recognized where he was namely, the garret beneath the roof of the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux!

She held the lanthorn high above her head, peering down at him under its rays for some time as though scrutinizing the great form stretched before her, and, perhaps, did not see that his eyes were open and looking at her from under his long and much dishevelled hair as curiously as she regarded him. Whereby he had time and opportunity for observing what manner of woman this was who stood there.

She was no longer young, that he saw from the great streaks of grey which mingled with her hair, that once must have been as raven black as his own was now; was, indeed, a woman of about fifty years of age. Yet no man could regard her and fail to observe that she must also once have been beautiful, though with a beauty spoilt and marred by the workings of strong passions within--sensual passions, as testified by the full thick lips and large gleaming eyes--which even now shone with a strange, fierce brightness!--cruel, vindictive passions, as shown by the manner in which those lips closed tightly together; by the broad jaw, and by the perpendicular line between the eyes, which caused a frown to be always upon her face.

Fixing her glance at last full on him she saw he was awake and conscious, and, so seeing, moved the lanthorn a little and peered under it into his eyes. Then she spoke, while as she did so her features either assumed a cynical smile or seemed, in the flickering light of the lamp, to assume it.