The German stared again, open-mouthed, and clinched the bargain eagerly. He did not know anything about gems, but the splendor of this dazzled his eye, while he had guns more than enough, and could get many others at his lord's cost. Cecil fastened a shot-belt round him, took a powder-flask and cartridge-case, and with a few words of thanks, went on his way.
Now that he held the rifle in his hand, he felt ready for the work that was before him; if hunted to bay, at any rate he could now have a struggle for his liberty. The keeper stood bewildered, gazing blankly after him down the vista of pines.
“Hein! Hein!” he growled, as he looked at the sapphire sparkling in his broad, brown palm; “I never saw such a with-lavishness-wasteful-and-with-courteous-speech-laconic gentleman! I wish I had not let him have the gun; he will take his own life, belikes; ach, Gott! He will take his own life!”
But Cecil had not bought it for that end—though he had called himself a fool for not sending a bullet through his brain, to quench in eternal darkness this ruined and wretched life that alone remained to him. He walked on through the still summer dawn, with the width of the country stretching sun-steeped around him. The sleeplessness, the excitement, the misery, the wild running of the past night had left him strengthless and racked with pain, but he knew that he must press onward or be caught, sooner or later, like netted game in the poacher's silken mesh. Where to go, what to do, he knew no more than if he were a child; everything had always been ready to his hand; the only thought required of him had been how to amuse himself and avoid being bored; now thrown alone on a mighty calamity, and brought face to face with the severity and emergency of exertion, he was like a pleasure-boat beaten under high billows, and driven far out to sea by the madness of a raging nor'wester. He had no conception what to do; he had but one resolve—to keep his secret; if, to do it, he killed himself with the rifle his sapphire ring had bought.
Carelessly daring always, he sauntered now into the station for which he had made, without a sign on him that could attract observation; he wore still the violet velvet Spanish-like dress, the hessians, and the broad-leafed felt hat with an eagle's feather fastened in it, that he had worn at the races; and with the gun in his hand there was nothing to distinguish him from any tourist “milor,” except that in one hand he carried his own valise. He cast a rapid glance around; no warrant for his apprehension, no announcement of his personal appearance had preceded him here; he was safe—safe in that; safer still in the fact that the train rushed in so immediately on his arrival there, that the few people about had no time to notice or speculate upon him. The coupe was empty, by a happy chance; he took it, throwing his money down with no heed that when the little he had left was once expended he would be penniless, and the train whirled on with him, plunging into the heart of forest and mountain, and the black gloom of tunnels, and the golden seas of corn-harvest. He was alone; and he leaned his head on his hands, and thought, and thought, and thought, till the rocking, and the rushing, and the whirl, and the noise of the steam on his ear and the giddy gyrations of his brain in the exhaustion of overstrung exertion, conquered thought. With the beating of the engine seeming to throb like the great swinging of a pendulum through his mind, and the whirling of the country passing by him like a confused phantasmagoria, his eyes closed, his aching limbs stretched themselves out to rest, a heavy dreamless sleep fell on him, the sleep of intense bodily fatigue, and he knew no more.
Gendarmes awoke him to see his visa. He showed it them by sheer mechanical instinct, and slept again in that dead weight of slumber the moment he was alone. When he had taken his ticket, and they had asked him to where it should be, he had answered to their amaze, “to the farthest place it goes,” and he was borne on now unwitting where it went; through the rich champaign and the barren plains; through the reddening vintage and over the dreary plateaux; through antique cities, and across broad, flowing rivers; through the cave of riven rocks, and above nestling, leafy valleys; on and on, on and on, while he knew nothing, as the opium-like sleep of intense weariness held him in it stupor.
He awoke at last with a start; it was evening; the stilly twilight was settling over all the land, and the train was still rushing onward, fleet as the wind. His eyes, as they opened dreamily, fell on a face half obscured in the gleaming; he leaned forward, bewildered and doubting his senses.
“Rake!”
Rake gave the salute hurriedly and in embarrassment.
“It's I, sir!—yes, sir.”