With Anne in his arms he made for the door by which he had entered, and Pendennis rushed after him. Anne’s arms were round his neck; she was clinging to him, and her head lay on his shoulder. I saw the gleam of her bright hair as they passed through the doorway,—the last I was to see of Anne Pendennis for many a long day.
I staggered forward, trying to beat back the horrible faintness that was overwhelming me, and to follow them, stumbled over a corpse, and fell headlong. An agonizing pain shot through me, beginning at my left arm, and I knew now that it was broken. The pain dispelled the faintness for the time being, but I made no attempt to rise. Impossible to follow them now, or even if not impossible, I could be of no service; I should only hamper their flight. Better stay here and die.
I think I prayed that I might die soon; I know I prayed that they might yet reach safety. Where had Anne’s father sprung from? How could he have known of her capture, of this meeting in the heart of the woods? How had he made his way here?
Why, he must himself belong to this infernal society, as she did; that was it, of course. What an abominable din this was in my head,—worse to bear than the pain of my wounds. In my head? No, the noise was outside—shrieks and shouts, and the crackle of rifles. I dragged myself to a sitting posture and listened. The Duke had said that his tale of the soldiers was a mere ruse, but certainly there was a fight going on outside. Were the soldiers there, and had Loris unwittingly spoken the truth,—or had he himself betrayed the revolutionists as a last resource? Unanswerable questions, all of them; so why worry about them? But they kept whirling round maddeningly in my half delirious brain, while the din still raged without, though it seemed to be abating.
The remaining lamp had flickered out, but sufficient light came now through the gaps in the broken roof to enable me to see about me. The place was like a shambles round the spot where we had taken our stand; there were five or six bodies, besides the president, whom I had shot at first. It was his corpse I had stumbled over, so he had his revenge in a way.
I found myself wondering idly how long it would be before they would search the chapel, and if it would be worth while to try and get out by the door through which Loris had come and gone; but, though I made a feeble effort to get on my feet, it was no good. I was as weak as an infant. I discovered then that I was soaked with blood from bullet wounds in my right arm and in my side, though I felt no pain from them at the time; all the pain was concentrated in my broken left arm.
There came a battering at the barred door, to which my back was turned, and a moment afterwards the other door swung open, and an officer sprang in, sword in hand, followed by a couple of soldiers with fixed bayonets.
He stopped short, with an exclamation of astonishment, at the sight of the dead man, and I laughed aloud, and called:
“Hello, Mirakoff!”
It was queer; I recognized him, I heard myself laugh and speak, in a strange detached fashion, as if I was some one else, having no connection with the battered individual half sitting, half lying on the blood-stained floor.