On reaching Rozsnyo he went in by his private door, and for an hour was busy making secret preparations for his flight. Having put things in order and destroyed certain papers, he took a gun and went out. As he crossed the bridge he could see that he was being watched from a window; he waved his hand carelessly to Royda, cursing her in his heart all the while as the indirect cause of his discomfiture. The action, almost brutal in its perfunctoriness, nevertheless brought a flush to the pale face, which watched him till the wood hid him from sight. For she knew nothing of the last night’s fierce doings, and if she had known she might have welcomed the crisis as putting her rival out of reach.
Zarka’s way was one he had often traversed, that leading to the pass over the mountains. The afternoon was still brilliant as he reached the snow line, and turned to take breath after his rapid climb. For he had set forth in a state of vicious excitement for which action and waste of energy were the only safety-valves. Even when he had halted on the lower plateau he could not keep still, but restlessly paced to and fro in irregular strides, now stopping, now starting forward again as his thoughts seemed to whip him into action.
The disfigurement of his face showed plainer now; the swelling and discoloration adding ugliness of feature to that of temper which blazed malignantly from his eyes.
He lighted a cigar and walked on scowling; his progress was slower now, for the track was rough and tortuous.
Suddenly in his walk he stopped, and flung out his arms with a cry of “Hail!” The giant shadow of the mountain had appeared with startling abruptness, and now towered with weird vastness above him, seeming to rise from the chasm below. The suddenness of the apparition seemed for a moment to have shaken his nerves, but it was merely a flash of fear.
“An omen!” he cried. “Ah, my good genius, have you come again to give me courage? Zarka of the cloud and storm, help this fettered, passion-tossed Zarka of blood and clay. Give me my heart’s desire, or at least a sign that I shall gain it. God or demon, do with me what thou wilt so thou grant me this. Zarka of the mist and mountain, give me my prayer. I have never known defeat, my guardian genius, let me never know it!”
Up from the profundity of the yawning abyss before him came a great suppressed sighing as the wind swept through the fissured depths. A big bird of the vulture family flew suddenly down to the mouth of the chasm, circled about, and sighting the man there, wheeled off with a cry of angry surprise. The spectre of the mountain slowly faded as the sun dipped behind the topmost peak; the mist began to rise and roll, and the cloud to assert its sway.
Zarka, who had stood since his apostrophe in lowering meditation, started forward as though with a suddenly formed determination. His disfigured face lighted up with diabolical triumph, and he laughed aloud as he hastened back along the path. Such a laugh! The laugh of a gambler who throws his last coin on the green table, a laugh that flings defiance at God and man, and utters the old invocation, “Evil be thou my Good!” A laugh that was echoed back from across the abyss, and reverberated on and on through the rocky walls and chasms of the mountain, on and on, after the human voice that had uttered it was silent for ever. For the laugh had been crushed out of those lying lips into a scream by the rush of a sudden “lavine,” or avalanche, which swept with terrific swiftness down the sloping wall of rock, bounded on to the ledge which just perceptibly checked its sheer descent, then, crashing over the precipice, flung itself into the abyss with a thunder which the echoes prolonged and redoubled till it seemed as though the very mountain would be rent.
And the path was empty. Count Zarka was never more to know failure as he lay a thousand feet below, swept out of the world by a force that would have annihilated a regiment. And as the echoes of the fall died away they were followed by that of a scream, the cry of the vulture, swooping back and hovering in baffled voracity over the grave of his human brother.