VII.—THE DEVIL'S COACH.
It seemed to Julie that Lucille was moody and abstracted next morning. Sometimes for a few moments she talked and smiled as before, but this was fitfully, and with an effort. She appeared like one brooding over some wrong that had taken possession of her thoughts, or some dark and angry scheme which engrossed her imagination. She soon left Julie and retired to her own apartments.
When Monsieur Le Prun returned, some time after noon, not finding his young wife in her usual chamber, he went up stairs to wish her good day in her own suite of rooms.
He was surprised at the sullen and stormy countenance with which she greeted him. She had not yet ventured to rebel against his authority, although she had frequently hinted her remonstrances and wrongs. But there was now a darkness charged with thunder on her brow, and the fermier-general began seriously (in nautical phrase) to look out for squalls.
"Good-day, my pretty wife."
"Good-day, sir."
"Are you well to-day?"
"No."
"Hey? that's a pity; what ails you, my charming little wife?"
"Solitude."
"Solitude! pooh, pooh! why, there is Julie."
"Julie has her young lover to think of."
"And when you weary of her," he continued, resolved not to perceive the slight but malicious emphasis, "you have got your own sweet thoughts to retire upon."
"My thoughts are ill company, sir."
"Well, as it seems to me, the pretty child is out of temper to-day," he said, with evident chagrin.
"Perhaps I am—it is natural—I should be a fool were I otherwise."
"Par bleu! what new calamity is this?" he asked, with a smile and a shrug.
"Nothing new, sir."
"Well, what old calamity?"
The past night had wrought a change in Lucille; and, little as she had ever liked M. Le Prun, she now felt a positive hatred of him, and she answered with a gloomy sort of recklessness—
"Sir, I am a prisoner."
"Tut, tut! pretty rogue."
"Yes, a prisoner; your prisoner."
"A prisoner on parole, perhaps; but provided, pretty captive, you don't desert me, you may wander where you will."
"Pshaw! that is nonsense," she said sharply.
"Nonsense!" he repeated, testily; "it is no such thing, madame; you have the handsomest equipages in France. Pray, when did I refuse you carriages, or horses, or free egress from this place? par bleu! or lock the gates, madame? Treated as you are, how can you call yourself a prisoner?"
"What advantage in carriages, and horses, and open gates, when we are surrounded by a desert?"
"A desert? what do you mean?"
"There is not a soul to speak to."
"Not a soul—why, you are jesting; pray, is the Marquise de Pompignaud nobody? is the Conte de la Perriere nobody?"
"Worse than nobody, monsieur: I should prefer a desert to a wilderness haunted by such creatures."
"Sacre! what does the child want?"
"What every wife in France commands—society, sir."
"Well, I say you have got it: independently of your immediate domestic circle, you have a neighborhood such as ought to satisfy any reasonable person. There are persons fully as well descended as yourself, and others nearly as rich as I am, all within easy visiting distance."
"The rich are all plebeians, and the nobles are all poor; there is and can be in a group so incongruous no cordiality, no gayety, no splendor; in a word, no such society as the last descendant of the Charrebourgs may reasonably aspire to."
"It is fully as numerous and respectable, notwithstanding, as the society which the last descendant of the Charrebourgs enjoyed in the ancestral park where first I had the honor of making her acquaintance."
"Yes; but not such as with my birth and beauty I might and must have commanded, sir."
"Well, what do you expect? These people won't give fêtes."
"Bring me to Paris, sir; I wish to take my place among the noble society, where I may meet my equals; and at court, where I may, like all my ancestry, see my sovereign. Here, sir, my days fly by in melancholy isolation; I am kept but to amuse your leisure; this, sir, is not indulgence—it is selfish and tyrannical."
Monsieur Le Prun looked angrier and uglier than ever she had seen him before. His eyes looked more black and prominent, and his face a great deal paler. But he did not trust himself with an immediate answer; and his features, as if in the effort to restrain the retort his anger prompted, underwent several grotesque and somewhat ghastly contortions.
His handsome wife, meanwhile, sat sullen and defiant, daring, rather than deprecating, the menaced explosion of his wrath.
Their matrimonial bickerings, however, were not so soon to reach their climax. Monsieur Le Prun contrived to maintain a silent self-command—thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window humming an air, and after a few moments' pause, turned abruptly and left the room.
Near the stair-head he met old Marguerite on her way to Lucille's apartments. He signed to her to follow him, and entered a chamber there. She perceived the unmistakable traces of angry excitement in his face—always sinister in an old man, but in one so powerful, and about whom she had heard so many dark rumors, full of vague terrors. As soon as he had closed the door, he said to her—
"I hope they make you comfortable here, Marguerite?"
"Yes, sir, very comfortable," she replied, with a low courtesy, and trembling a good deal.
"Well, Marguerite, I suppose you would wish to make a suitable return. Now, some vile miscreant meddler, who has got the ear of your young mistress, has been endeavoring to make her unhappy in her present secluded situation—I think I could place my hand upon the culprit; but at all events, do you lose no opportunity henceforward of cheering her, and reconciling your young mistress, to this most suitable residence."
It was perfectly plain from his looks, that Monsieur Le Prun suspected her of being the "meddler" in question; but before she could muster presence of mind to attempt her exculpation, he was gone. The interview was like an ugly, flitting dream. His angry face and menacing croak had scared her senses but for a moment; the apparition had vanished, and, with a heart still beating fast, she went stealthily on her way.
Now Julie perceived that a change had taken place in Lucille—she was anxious and excited, and appeared morbidly and passionately eager to share in those amusements which before she had desired with comparative moderation.
"Julie, I will mix in the world; I will meet people and associate with my equals—I am resolved upon it. If Monsieur Le Prun persists in refusing my reasonable wishes, it will perchance be the worse for himself."
Such sentences she used to utter amidst blushes and pallor, and with a fire and agitation that painfully perplexed her gentle, but now somewhat estranged, little companion.
Her conduct, too, became eccentric and capricious; sometimes she appeared sullen and reserved—sometimes, at moments, as if animated with a positive hatred of her unoffending companion. Then, again, she would relent, and, in an agony of compunction, entreat her to be reconciled.
It happened, not unfrequently, that business compelled Monsieur Le Prun to pass the night from home. Upon one of these occasions Lucille had gone early to her bed, and old Marguerite, at her special desire, sat beside her.
"Well, Marguerite," said her young mistress, "I am going to exact the fulfilment of a promise you made me long ago, when first you came home, and before you became afraid of Monsieur Le Prun. You told me, then, that you knew some stories of him—come, what are they?"
"Hey dear, bless the pretty child!—did I though?"
"Yes, yes, Marguerite; and you must tell them now—I say you must—I will have them. Nay, don't be afraid; I'll not tell them again, and nobody can overhear us here."
"But, my pretty pet, these stories——"
"Then there are stories—see, you can't deny it any longer; tell them, tell them to me all."
"Why, they are nothing but a pack of nonsense. You would laugh at me. It is only about monsieur's father, and the wonderful coach they say he left to his son."
"Well, be it what it may, let me have it."
"Well, then, my pretty bird, you shall have it as they told it to myself."
She looked into the next apartment, and having satisfied herself that it was vacant, and shut the door of communication, she prepared for her narrative.
We have clipped the redundancies and mended the inaccuracies of honest Marguerite's phraseology; but the substance and arrangement of the story is recorded precisely as she gave it herself.
"Monsieur's father, they say, began with a very little money, madame, and he made it more by—by—in short, by usury; I beg pardon, but they say so, madame; and so finding as he grew old that he had a great deal of gold, and wishing to have some one of his own flesh and blood to leave it to, when he should be dead and buried, he bethought him of getting a wife. He must have been a shrewd man, I need not tell you, to have made so much money, so he was determined not to make his choice without due consideration. Now there was a farmer near them, who had a pretty and innocent daughter, and after much cautious inquiry and patient study of her character, old money-bags resolved that she was excellently suited for his purpose."
"She was young and pretty, and he old and ugly, but rich; well, what followed?"
"Why, she, poor thing, did not want to marry him at all; for though he was rich, he had a very ill name in the country, and she was afraid of him; but her father urged her, and the old man himself spoke her fair, and between them they overpowered her fears and scruples, and so she was married."
"Poor thing!" said Lucille, unconsciously.
"Well, madame, he married, and brought her home to his desolate old house, and there, they say, he treated her harshly; and, indeed he might there safely use her as he pleased, for there was not another house for a great way round to be seen: and nobody but his own creatures and dependents, who, they said, were just as bad as himself, could hear her cries, or witness his barbarities."
Lucille sat up in the bed, and listened with increased interest.
"Poor thing! it was there, in the midst of sufferings and cruelties, that she gave birth to a child, who is now Monsieur Le Prun, the great fermier-general; but her health, and indeed her heart, was broken; and, some rumor having reached her relations, that she was sick and unhappy, a cousin of hers, who, they said, was in love with her in their early days, brought the village physician with him to see her, though it was full three leagues and a half away."
"The cousin loved her; poor fellow, he was true," said Lucille, with a blush of interest.
"Ay, so they say; but Monsieur Le Prun, who was a jealous curmudgeon, would not admit him; but he did allow the physician to see her (himself standing by), because he was always glad to have the use of any body's skill for nothing—which, more than any love he bore his poor wife, was the reason of his letting him prescribe for her. Well, of course, she could not send any message to her friends, nor tell how she was treated, for old Le Prun was at her bedside; but the physician saw that she was ill, and he said to the old miser—'Your wife can't walk, and she must have air; let her drive every day in your coach.' 'I have no such thing,' said old Le Prun. 'But you are rich,' said the physician, 'you can afford to buy one; and it is your duty to do so for your wife, who will die else.' 'Let her die, then, for me—the devil may send her a coach to ride in, as they say he sent me my money; but I'll not waste my gold on any such follies.' So the physician went away, disappointed and disgusted, and her poor cousin was not able to effect any good on her behalf; but it seems the words of Monsieur Le Prun did not fall quite to the ground—they were heard in the quarter to where they were directed. That evening closed in clouds, and before twelve o'clock at night, they say, there came on such another thunder-storm as never was heard in the neighborhood, before or since. Nothing but thunder, roaring and crashing, peal upon peal, till the old house shook and trembled to its very base; and the blue lightning glared at every window, and split along the pavement in streams of livid fire; and all this time the rain was beating straight down in an incessant and furious deluge."
"And so, I suppose, the devil came in the midst of the tempest, and took him away bodily in a flash of lightning?"
"No, no, my pretty bird, not so fast. There was an old negro servant of his, a fellow just as wicked as himself, who was sitting in the kitchen, cursing the rain that was battering in huge drops down the chimney, and putting out the wood at which he was warming his shins, when, in the midst of the dreadful hubbub of the tempest, what should he hear but the rush of a great equipage, and wheels and horses clattering over the pavement, amidst the shouts of men and the sound of horns. Up jumped the black, and, listening, he heard a loud voice shouting through the storm, as if to summon some one to the door. Though they say he was a courageous old sinner, his heart failed him, for such sounds had not visited the old house within the memory of man in the day time, much less in the dead of night; and, instead of going to the door, he hurried away to the chamber where old Le Prun was cowering, screwed up in the middle of a great old fauteuil, and more frightened at the tempest than he would have cared to confess. So he told him of the sounds he had just heard, and he and his master mounted together to a small room in a gable over the hall-door, and from the casement of this they commanded a view of the paved court in front. It was so dark, however, that they could see nothing; and the thunder still echoing in loud explosions, and the rain battering at the windows, prevented their distinctly hearing the words which the voice was shouting outside. 'Shall we open the casement and ask him what they want?' said the old negro. 'Let it alone,' said his old master, shoving his arm back again, with a curse. At the same moment a vivid flash of lightning, or rather several in almost continuous succession, shed for some seconds a blue, pulsating illumination over the scene, and then they saw before their eyes a coach, with a team of horses and outriders, in the style of a royal equipage, drawn up before the hall door; and all the postillions and outriders were sitting motionless, with their whips pointing to the house, as if they were signing to the inhabitants to come out: and some one was looking from the window, and cried, in a tone like the shriek of the wind—'The coach that Monsieur Le Prun ordered this morning.' In the quivering blue light the whole thing looked like a smoky shadow, and was swallowed in darkness in a moment. Then came the bellowing thunder-burst, and a wild scream of winds rushed whooping, and sighing, and hissing through the tree-tops, and died away in the unknown distance. The two old sinners, master and man, crept away from the window, and stumbled their way back again to the chamber which Monsieur Le Prun had occupied before, and which, being in the rear of the house, and most remote from the sight that had scared them, was preferred by them to any other. In the morning a coach, of first-rate workmanship in all respects, was standing in front of the hall door, just where they had seen it on the night before, but no sign of horse, rider, or owner. For several days it remained in the same position, no one caring to touch it; but at the end of that time, having grown accustomed to its presence, and gradually less and less in awe of it, they lodged it in the coach-house; and so, after a considerable time, the old usurer's instincts prevailed, and he resolved to make trial of the vehicle, with a view to sell it in Paris. At first the horses snorted, and reared, and shyed, when they were attempted to be harnessed to it, but in a little while they too became reconciled to it, and Monsieur Le Prun made an experimental trip in it himself. Whatever passed upon that occasion, it certainly determined him against parting with it. And, it was said, whenever he was thenceforward in doubt about any purchase, or meditating any important financial coup, he invariably took a solitary drive in this preternaturally-acquired vehicle; and, in the course of that drive, his doubts, whatever they may have been, were invariably resolved, and some lucky purchase or successful operation upon 'Change was sure to follow. It was said that upon these occasions Monsieur Le Prun was always heard to converse with some companion in the coach; and the driver once avowed that, having been delayed by an accident on the road, as the darkness came on, he distinctly saw two shadowy outriders spurring duly in their van, and never lost sight of them until, with hair standing on end, and bathed in a cold sweat, he drew up in the court before his master's house."
"And what happened to old Le Prun?"
"When they returned from one of their drives, taken, Heaven bless us! for the purpose of consulting the Evil One, so to speak, face to face, they found old Le Prun quite dead, sitting back in his wonted attitude, and with his arm slung in the embroidered strap."
"And what has become of the wonderful coach?"
"That I have never heard; but they say that Monsieur Le Prun, the fermier-general, has it in one of his houses, either in the country or in Paris, and that, whenever he wants to consult the familiar demon of the family, he takes a drive in it alone; and this, they say, has been the cause of his great successes and his enormous fortune."
"I should like to ride in that coach myself," said Lucille.
"Heaven and all the saints forbid!"
"I want to know my destiny, Marguerite. Were I sure that all my days were to pass as at present, I would rather die than live."
"Oh, but sure my pretty bird would not ask her fortune of—of—"
"Yes, of any one—of any spirit, good or evil, that could tell it. I am weary of my life, Marguerite. I would rather beg or work with my liberty, and the friends I like, than see my days glide by in this dull, wealthy house, without interest, or hope, or—or love."
"But never desire, while you live, my child, the visits of the Evil One. Once asked for, it is said he never refuses them."
"Say you so? then I invite him with all my heart," she said, with a bitter pleasantry; "he can't be a great deal worse than the society I have sometimes had to share; and, if he discloses the futurity that awaits me, he will have been the most instructive companion that fortune ever lent me."
"Chut! madame, listen."
"What is the matter, Marguerite?"
"Did not you hear?"
"What?—whom?"
"There—there again; blessed Virgin shield us!"
"Psha! Marguerite; it is nothing but the moths flying against the window-panes; I have heard that little tapping a hundred times."
"Well, well, maybe so; but say your prayers, my dear, and ask forgiveness for your foolish words."
"No, Marguerite; for in truth I do wish my fortune were read to me, and care not by whom."
"Hey, what's that? Chut! in Heaven's name hold thy mad tongue," she cried, in the irritation of panic; "surely that is no moth. May the saints guard your bed, my child. You heard it, did you not?"
"I should think so, par bleu! something a size or two larger than a moth, too."
"It was a spray of one of the plants swung by the breeze against the window."
"Ma foi! it was no such thing, my sweet pet; no, no, something with a pair of wings fluttered up against it."
Had the old woman, in her trepidation, had leisure to study the countenance of her young mistress, she would have perceived that her cheeks were flushed with crimson. But she was too busy with her medley of prayers and protestations, and too fully preoccupied with the idea of an unearthly visitation.
"Well, well, Marguerite, be it as you say; I'll not dispute the point; but leave me now; I'm tired, and would sleep. Good night."
After the old woman had withdrawn some minutes, Lucille rose from her bed. She had only been partially undressed; and throwing on her dressing-gown, and putting her little ivory feet into her slippers, she glided to her chamber-door, which she secured, and then cautiously, and almost fearfully, stepped to the window, which she pushed open, and stood upon the balcony.
With a beating heart, and a cheek that momentarily changed color, she looked all along the edges of the court, and over the tall plants, and under the shadow of the lofty jessamine-covered wall. She listened with breathless and excited suspense—she waited for some minutes; but, having watched and listened in vain, she pressed her hand on her heart, and, with a deep and trembling sigh, turned back again. It was at this moment she saw something white, no bigger than a playing-card, lie at her feet. She picked it up, entered her room, and trembling violently, closed the window again, and was alone.