CHAPTER L.
In answer to his inquiries for Megret, Arwed learned that he had retired into the garden in company with a strange officer. He followed him there, and their voices guided him through the leafless and snow covered walks to a thick grove of yew-trees, in which Megret and the stranger were sitting. A glance through an opening in the branches of the trees discovered to him the face of Siquier, pale and wasted by disease and affliction; and the interest of a conversation which now commenced between them, chained him with irresistible power to the spot.
'What is it that you particularly want of me?' asked Megret, with mingled embarrassment and vexation. 'We have both of us so long and so carefully avoided each other, that this unexpected visit may well excite my wonder.'
'I am about to leave Sweden forever,' answered Siquier, in a desponding tone, 'and have come to take my leave of you, and to procure money for my traveling expenses.'
'Money for traveling?' murmured Megret. 'We settled with each other long since, and balanced our accounts. Above all, how came you to form the resolution of leaving Sweden?'
'You know,' answered Siquier, in a low voice and looking carefully about him, 'with what ignominy common report has branded my honor since the king's death. I still hoped that those suspicions would gradually die away, but they continued daily to strengthen and increase, and I learned that my enemies with witty insolence pronounced my once honorable name, Sicaire,[1] thus, by a slight change of sound expressing the accusation with that atrocious word. Two duels followed, and still the rumor continued to spread. Had I fought half the army, it would have been unavailing. Finally my mental sufferings overpowered my physical strength. A raging fever seized me, and...' He ceased.
'And then?' asked Megret, with painful anxiety.
'In the paroxysms,' stammered Siquier, almost inaudibly, 'I am said to have accused myself of Charles's murder, and to have thrown up my windows and begged Sweden's pardon for the crime.'
'What consequence could they attach to such silly phantasies?' asked Megret, turning deadly pale.
'The government,' continued Siquier, 'had me confined in a mad-house, and when I recovered I received my dismission, with an injunction to leave the kingdom.'
'Are you also, like myself, dismissed?' cried Megret, with a ferocious laugh. 'They are right! The lemons have been squeezed, why should they not sweep out the useless peels?'
'It is dreadful to have no means of escaping the gnawing worm in the heart,' said Siquier, 'but, between ourselves, Megret, have we deserved anything better?'
While saying this he seized Megret's hand and gave him a piercing glance. The latter angrily tore himself from his grasp.
'You know our former agreement,' said he moodily, 'never to allude to bye-gone occurrences, even in our most secret conversations.'
'You are right,' said Siquier, with a look and tone of horror. 'The past is, for us, a black night, full of blood and flames! Let us wait until it re-appear in eternal futurity!'
'Here is money,' said Megret, placing a heavy purse of gold in his hand. 'Go and prosper.'
'It contains more than thirty pieces of silver,' said Siquier, weighing the purse in a sort of mental abstraction. 'There is more than enough to purchase a potter's field for a wanderer's grave!'
'The fever has weakened you, poor Siquier!' exclaimed Megret, with forced laughter. 'You have grown learned in the scriptures, and will no doubt become one of the professing brothers of La Trappe, in your old age. Do hasten to get there.'
'Mock me not, seducer!' said Siquier, grating his teeth and grasping the hilt of his sword. After a few moments he observed, 'you are right! I believe in a hereafter,--I believe in future rewards and punishments, and may I therefore live to repent and reform. You entertain a different belief, and you have only to shoot yourself when your conscience awakens from its death-sleep!'
'That may become advisable!' said Megret, in a low tone, and both remained sitting near each other, their arms resting on their knees, and their faces buried in their hands. They remained silent, each absorbed in his own reflections, while the thickly falling flakes of snow gradually wrapped them in white mantles, without attracting notice.
At length a heavy sigh escaped from Siquier's laboring breast. He rose up, threw the purse of gold before Megret's feet, and suddenly left the garden, without bidding him farewell. Megret, uttering no word, remained sitting in the same posture, and Arwed was detained motionless for some time, by the feelings which this singular and dreadful disclosure awakened, and by a want of decision, which of the two first to call to account for their hidden deed of horror. He finally concluded: 'why should I contend with the miserable man, whom the judgment of God has already stricken, whose marrow has been already consumed by sickness and remorse, who has neither strength nor courage to oppose me, and who, perhaps, would welcome death from my hand? No, the insolent transgressor, in all the pride and bloom of life, shall be the object of my wrath--the seducer! as his accomplice called him. I will punish not the knife, but the hand!'--and he quickly approached the entrance to the grove, which Megret was that moment leaving.
The latter shrunk before the indignant glance of the youth. The flush of anger and the paleness of terror alternately played upon his countenance, and it was dreadful to see the two manly forms confronting each other with looks of enmity and defiance.
The fearful silence was interrupted by Arwed. 'I have overheard your conversation with Siquier, colonel,' said he, 'and, as you know how strong was the love I bore the king, you will not be surprised when I declare to you that we must fight!'
'You have an especial passion for pistol-shooting!' calmly and jestingly replied Megret. 'Probably you wish to revive the custom of the ancient pagans, with whom the companions in arms of a hero prince reciprocally slaughtered each other on his grave; as an evidence of their love and respect for him.'
'Name your time and place!' cried Arwed, whose anger was increased by his insolent witticisms.
'Eight days from this, about the same hour,' answered Megret, after some little reflection, 'in the first iron mine of Danemora.'
'That is a late and distant rendezvous,' said Arwed. 'You will not let me wait for you there in vain?'
The Frenchman's eyes flashed, and in his anger he resembled an evil spirit in the human form. 'Young man!' he cried, 'doubt every thing--doubt even of Megret's eternal salvation--but doubt not his word or his courage,--or you will compel him to annihilate you even against his will.' And with a proud step he left the garden.