III
"Mr. De Jussac! do you hear me?"
"I am coming, my friend."
The light shining steadily through a front window of the cottage flickered and shifted. The young man in the rain and storm outside danced with impatience.
Suddenly the door opened, and Plancine's father stood there, candle in hand.
"What is it, my George?"
"The hill, sir—the hill! It's fallen! You were right. You must stand by your word. Black Venn has slipped his apron!"
"My God, no!"
There were despair and exultation in his voice.
"My God, no!" he whispered again, and dived into a cupboard under the stair.
Thence he reappeared with a horn lantern and his old blue cloak.
"Come, then!" he cried. "My hour is upon me!"
"Mr. De Jussac, it will wait till the morning."
"No, no, no! Do you trifle with your destiny? It has happened opportunely, while all are within doors and we have a clear field. How do you know? have you seen? Is it possible to descend to it from above?"
"I passed there less than an hour ago. It is possible, I am sure."
They set off hurriedly through the rain-beaten night. Not a word passed between them as they left the village and struck into the high-valley road that ran past, at a moderate distance, the head of the bay. De Jussac strode rapidly in advance of his companion. His long cloak whirled in the blast; it flogged his gaunt limbs all set to intense action. He seemed uplifted, translated—like one in whom the very article of a life-long faith, or monomania, is about to be justified.
Toiling onward, like driven cattle, they swerved from the road presently and breasted a sharp incline. Their boots squelched on the sodden turf; the wind bore on them heavily.
George saw the dancing lanthorn go up the slope in front of him like a will-o'-the-wisp—stop, and swing steady, heard the loud cry of jubilation that issued from the withered throat.
"It is true! The moment is realized!"
They stood together on the verge of the upper lip of the fissure. It was a cliff now, twenty, thirty feet to its base. The lower ground had fallen like a dead jaw; had slipped—none so great a distance—down the slope leading to the under-cliff, and lay a billowing mass subsided upon itself.
De Jussac would stand not an instant.
"We must climb down—somehow, anyhow!" he cried feverishly. "We must search all along what was once the bottom of the cleft."
"It is a risk, sir. Why not wait till the morning?"
"No, no! now! My God! I demand it. Others may forestall us if we delay. See, my friend, I wish but my own; and what proof of right have I if another should snatch the treasure?"
"The treasure?"
"It is our fortune that lies there—yours, and mine, and the little Plancine's. Do I know what I say? Hurry, hurry, hurry! while my heart does not burst."
He forced the lanthorn into the young man's hands. He was panting and sobbing like a child. Before the other realized his intention, he had flung himself upon his hands and knees, had slipped over the edge, and was scrambling down the broken wall of lias.
There was nothing for George but to take his own life in hand and humour his venerated elder. He followed with the lanthorn, thinking of Plancine a little, and hoping he should fall on a soft place.
But they got down in safety, breathing hard and extremely dirty. Caution, it is true, reacts very commonly upon itself.
The moment his companion's feet touched bottom, De Jussac snatched the light from his hand, roughly enough to send him off his balance, and went scurrying to and fro along the face of the cliff like a mad thing.
"I cannot find it!" he cried, rushing back after an interval—nervous, in an agony of restlessness—a very pitiable old man.
George spoke up from the ground.
"Find what?" said he, feeling all sopped and dazed.
"The box—the casket! It could never perish. It was of sheet-iron. Look, look, my friend! Your eyes are younger than mine—a box, a foot long, of hard iron!"
"I am sitting upon something hard," said George.
He sprang to his feet and took the lanthorn.
"Bones," said he, peering down. "Some old mastodon, I expect. Is this your treasure?"
De Jussac was glaring. His head drooped lower and lower. His lips were parted, and the line of strong white teeth showed between them. His voice, when he spoke, was quite fearful in its low intensity.
"Bones—yes, and human. Where they lie, the other must be near. Ah,
Lacombe, Lacombe; you will yield me my own at last!"
He was shaking a slow finger at the poor remnants—a rib or two, the half of a yellow skull.
Suddenly he was down on his knees, tearing at the black, thick soil, diving into it, tossing it hither and thither.
A pause, a rending exclamation, and he was on his feet again with a scream of ecstasy. An oblong casket, rusty, corroded, but unbroken, was in his hand.
"Now," he whispered, sibilant through the wind, controlling himself, though he was shaking from head to foot, "now to return as we have come. Not a word, not a word till we have this safe in the cottage!"
They found, after some search, a difficult way up. By-and-by they stood once more on the lip of the fall, and paused for breath.
It was at this very instant that De Jussac dropped the box beside him and threw up his hands.
"The guillotine!" he shrieked, and fell headlong into the pit he had just issued from.