Rupert of Hentzau [86]
The old woman was across his path in a moment, all defiant, arms akimbo.
"Nobody can see the count. He's not here," she blurted out.
"What, can't the king see him? Not even the king?"
"King!" she cried, peering at him. "Are you the king?"
Rosa burst out laughing.
"Mother, you must have seen the king a hundred times," she laughed.
"The king, or his ghost--what does it matter?" said Rudolf lightly.
The old woman drew back with an appearance of sudden alarm.
"His ghost? Is he?"
"His ghost!" rang out in the girl's merry laugh. "Why, here's the king himself, mother. You don't look much like a ghost, sir."
Mother Holf's face was livid now, and her eyes staring fixedly. Perhaps it shot into her brain that something had happened to the king, and that this man had come because of it--this man who was indeed the image, and might have been the spirit, of the king. She leant against the door post, her broad bosom heaving under her scanty stuff gown. Yet still--was it not the king?
"God help us!" she muttered in fear and bewilderment.
"He helps us, never fear," said Rudolf Rassendyll. "Where is Count Rupert?"
The girl had caught alarm from her mother's agitation. "He's upstairs in the attic at the top of the house, sir," she whispered in frightened tones, with a glance that fled from her mother's terrified face to Rudolf's set eyes and steady smile.
What she said was enough for him. He slipped by the old woman and began to mount the stairs.
The two watched him, Mother Holf as though fascinated, the girl alarmed but still triumphant: she had done what the king bade her. Rudolf turned the corner of the first landing and disappeared from their sight. The old woman, swearing and muttering, stumbled back into her kitchen, set her stew on the fire, and began to stir it, her eyes set on the flames and careless of the pot. The girl watched her mother for a moment, wondering how she could think of the stew, not guessing that she turned the spoon without a thought of what she did; then she began to crawl, quickly but noiselessly, up the staircase in the track of Rudolf Rassendyll. She looked back once: the old woman stirred with a monotonous circular movement of her fat arm. Rosa, bent half-double, skimmed upstairs, till she came in sight of the king whom she was so proud to serve. He was on the top landing now, outside the door of a large attic where Rupert of Hentzau was lodged. She saw him lay his hand on the latch of the door; his other hand rested in the pocket of his coat. From the room no sound came; Rupert may have heard the step outside and stood motionless to listen. Rudolf opened the door and walked in. The girl darted breathlessly up the remaining steps, and, coming to the door, just as it swung back on the latch, crouched down by it, listening to what passed within, catching glimpses of forms and movements through the chinks of the crazy hinge and the crevices where the wood of the panel sprung and left a narrow eye hole for her absorbed gazing.
Rupert of Hentzau had no thought of ghosts; the men he killed lay still where they fell, and slept where they were buried. And he had no wonder at the sight of Rudolf Rassendyll. It told him no more than that Rischenheim's errand had fallen out ill, at which he was not surprised, and that his old enemy was again in his path, at which (as I verily believe) he was more glad than sorry. As Rudolf entered, he had been half-way between window and table; he came forward to the table now, and stood leaning the points of two fingers on the unpolished dirty-white deal.
"Ah, the play-actor!" said he, with a gleam of his teeth and a toss of his curls, while his second hand, like Mr. Rassendyll's, rested in the pocket of his coat.
Mr. Rassendyll himself has confessed that in old days it went against the grain with him when Rupert called him a play-actor. He was a little older now, and his temper more difficult to stir.
"Yes, the play-actor," he answered, smiling. "With a shorter part this time, though."
"What part to-day? Isn't it the old