XIII.—THE ROSE-TREE.
One day Lucille was walking in the little court we have described, when the door of the park, which we have had occasion to signalize, opened, and Blassemare stood within a yard or two of her.
"Good-day, madame."
"Good-day, sir."
A glance at the attendant, who seemed to regard Blassemare as Le Prun's vicegerent, was sufficient to cause her to withdraw to some distance, and affecting a light and easy air, which might well mislead the more distant observers as to the serious purport of his discourse, he continued—
"I am afraid madame is very unhappy."
"Truly, I am so."
"I fear she is also in danger."
She started as if a bolt of ice had pierced her heart. He had spoken in that word the secret fears of many a long night. How inexpressibly more terrible do our untold terrors become, when they are spoken in our ears by the lips of strangers!
"Yes, madame, I say in danger. There are odd stories afloat about Monsieur Le Prun—they may be all lies, I don't pretend to say; for in truth I don't very well comprehend my friend Le Prun. But it cannot be hidden from madame, that when one wants to make away with an individual, the first step is to conceal them—to cut them off from all intercourse with the world, and cause them to be forgotten. Madame understands me?"
"Yes, yes—oh, my God!"
"Madame must learn to command herself, if she wishes to prolong our conversation. We must appear, at least, indifferent. There are spies watching our gestures and countenances, though they can't hear our words."
"I will—thank you, thank you: but for the mercy of God, monsieur, will you suffer me to perish?"
"No, madame, if you will aid in your own deliverance. Will you fly with me to-morrow night?"
"If monsieur, for the charity of heaven, will undertake to act only as my brother and protector."
"By my faith, madame, I'll put myself under no conditions."
"Monsieur de Blassemare, have you no honor, no pity, no manhood? Will you be accessory to a murder? I will go with you on no other terms."
"I accept none, madame."
"You are a coward, sir, and a criminal."
"Madame might command, at least, her countenance and her gestures; imitate me. You call me hard names; I'm prepared for them. Now listen: I won't accept your condition, because, if I did, I should keep my word; and, I tell you frankly, I won't despair, and I don't despair. But, madame, you shan't perish. What do you say to leaving the chateau with De Secqville?"
"Yes, he will agree to whatever I propose."
"I dare say."
"But when—how?"
"To-morrow night, at ten o'clock, through that door; a coach shall wait in the park. You know the well under the two chestnut-trees; there he will await you; don't fail—a moment late, and all may be lost."
"But—but how to evade the woman who watches me?"
"She shall be perfectly drunk."
"And the man?"
"Drunker still. Leave all details to me. There are more than one Argus besides these; but a man of resource is at home among difficulties. Watch at ten o'clock. When you see a light in the window of the small pavilion, all is prepared: you will find the door open."
Blassemare signed to the woman to approach, and said, as he bowed his adieu, in a louder key—
"I shall not fail, madame, to report to Monsieur Le Prun the unfortunate temper in which I have the honor to find you."
"And have the goodness to add, that I only regret my inability to repeat the same sentiments in his presence."
"Madame shall be obeyed."
So, with an air of affected defiance on the one side, and of sarcastic levity on the other, the two conspirators parted. Her protracted residence in the Chateau des Anges, gloomy and anxious before, had become absolutely terrifying since she had heard the dark and menacing insinuations used by Blassemare. The evening that followed that scene, the night, and the ensuing morning, seemed endless, filled with horrid images, and haunted by the hideous thought that the catastrophe might possibly anticipate the hour of escape, or that some one untoward chance might defeat the entire scheme, and leave her at the mercy of a more than ever exasperated tyrant.
As the day wore on, every incident appeared to her overstrained mind an omen of good or ill-success. Towards evening the sky became overcast, and finally an awful thunder-storm swept over the Chateau des Anges. Her heart sank within her at the inauspicious augury; but as the same tempest, an hour later, rolled over other regions, it left one trifling token of its passage, which, by a mysterious stroke of fate, was nearly connected with her destiny.
Poor Gabriel, his head full of chimeras, his heart of true love, was slowly walking through the woodlands of the Parcq de Charrebourg, towards that haunted spot, the cottage in which the beautiful demoiselle had passed her happiest days, when the storm began to mutter over the rising grounds, and before he had made much way, the thunder burst above his head with fury, and in a little time the rain descended with such tropical violence as to arrest his further progress, under the dense canopy of a chestnut-tree.
Here he waited until the thunder-clouds had quite passed away; and then, amid red glances of western sunshine, he resumed that pilgrimage, to him so full of melancholy, of ambition, and of tenderness.
"And now, dear, dear Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, I come into your presence, to learn how it fares with you."
He took off his hat, as if expecting to see her looking, as of old, from the window of her little room. From the plants that hung from the walls, and from the struggling bushes, the big rain-drops were trickling, in the merry sunlight, like tears of joy. His heart was full as he turned the corner of the cottage, and entered the little bowling-green. But, alas! what a sight awaited him! The rose-tree, the emblem of his adored mistress, was shivered: the casement, and the wall, and roof, were shattered, and reduced to a mass of rubbish, by a stroke of lightning.
Gabriel had never felt real desolation before. He rushed to the wide chasm which now admitted the winds and rains of heaven to the shrine which his adoration and reverence had consecrated with a tenderness so absorbing. Oh! what ruin—what profanation—what an irreparable havoc of all his treasure! And the tree, too—gone, blasted. Tears of passionate despair rained from his eyes: he wrung his hands, he stamped, raved, and "cursed his day."
In a little while, however, his thoughts took a different turn. From the material wreck they passed on to the dire significance which such portent might indicate.
"Yes, I came to see how she fares, and behold what I find—torn by storms—ruined—dead." He stooped, and took up a fragment of the rose-tree and kissed it.
"But the Chateau des Anges is not five leagues away. I will go there. I will go now. I will learn what all this means."
With this resolution he ran fleetly down the slopes of the park, now wreathed in the rising mists of night, towards the feudal village of Charrebourg, through which his path lay.
Breathless and eager, as if heaven were before him and all the fiends of hell at his heels, he sped through the darkening town, and did not slacken his speed until he was a full mile beyond it.
He had been so absorbed with the single idea that had seized upon his mind, that he was scarcely conscious of the objects he had passed or the speed at which he ran.
As he looked round upon the moonlit scenery among which he found himself, he felt for a moment stunned and perplexed; he slackened his pace and thought over his expedition. It lost none of its romantic fascination; he only wondered that he had not made a journey to the Chateau des Anges at least once in every week.
How beautiful the moonlight was! how soft the air! how enchanting the scenery! and oh, what vague possibilities of glory and rapture might not be unfolded in the undeveloped future of this wild excursion!
It was fully a quarter past twelve when Gabriel reached the point, at which the road directly leading to the Chateau des Anges diverged from that which he had been hitherto travelling. Just as he did so, a carriage and four, with two postillions and two mounted servants beside, came to a sudden stop within a few score paces of the pedestrian, and one of the men dismounting secured some part of the harness which had given way, and was getting into the saddle again when Gabriel arrived at the side of the carriage. He then made a momentary pause. In the brilliant moonlight every detail of the equipage was visible; the coach was dingy and battered, its principal color blue, and covered, according to the fashion, with gilded arabesques in cumbrous relief, in which a curious dragon, with a barbed tongue and tail, was contending in a hundred repetitions with as many little cupids. Just as these details seized upon his imagination, the window was suddenly opened, and a lady put out her head and in thrilling tones cried—
"Gabriel, Gabriel—save me, save me."
He saw Lucille's face; it was her voice that rang in his ears. He felt his strength multiplied a hundred fold. He would have, single-handed, fought an army in such a quarrel. With a cry of delight, that burst from his very soul, he sprang to the side of the carriage and grasped the door. Before he reached it, however, some one from within had drawn her away and shut the window close, and the horses being again in motion, and rapidly quickening their pace to a gallop, Gabriel ran by the side, tugging vainly at the door, until one of the mounted attendants, spurring beside, seized him by the collar, and flung him headlong upon the road.
Stunned and giddy, he got upon his feet again, and staggered blindly after the whirling carriage, uttering threats and defiances as huge as ever were thundered from the lips of the renowned knight of La Mancha. All would not do, however; the cortège held on its way with whirlwind speed. Vainly Gabriel strained every sinew to overtake the coach. The fell enchanters rapt his peerless mistress from his eyes, and every moment the distance between him and them became wider and more hopeless. At last, breathless, exhausted, enraged, he was forced to give over the pursuit, after having maintained it for nearly three miles over the pavements of the long straight road.
It was on the highway to Paris; thither he assumed they were bound, and there he resolved that night should behold him also. Sometimes running, sometimes walking with hurried strides, he steadily and rapidly pursued his way; his imagination every moment filled with images of the strange golden dragons and cupids, and the pale, beautiful face of Lucille shrieking from among them for help.
"What then had befallen Lucille?" The reader shall hear.
The first symptom which assured her that Blassemare was at work in the realization of this plot, was that her Norman woman, having stayed away longer than usual at her suppertime, returned with a very flushed face and dancing eyes, and altogether in a very hilarious and impertinent mood. For a long time, however, it appeared that the woman was only "pleasantly intoxicated," a state in which she would probably prove a more effectual check upon her plans of escape than in her ordinary condition. Spite of the seriousness of the issue, there was something inconceivably absurd in this distress. The woman was noisy, familiar, and sometimes indulged in a vein of menacing jocularity, the principal material of which was supplied from scraps of old Norman ditties. There was one in particular which had a specially grisly sound in the ears of the friendless and frightened young wife. It was about a belle demoiselle—
"Who lived all alone in a castle of brick,
And all in the night-time this lady fell sick;
She had eat of a berry that grew by the well,
And black grow her features—her members they swell;
This lady is poisoned and so she must lie,
All stark in her bower with nobody nigh."
In the midst of this sinister merriment the woman suddenly became drowsy, and after a few ineffectual efforts to shake off the torpor that was overpowering her, sank into a profound sleep. This occurred in the anteroom, and, leaving the snoring amazon to the sole occupation of the apartment, Lucille hastened to the bedchamber, from which she commanded a view of the little pavilion, in the window of which she was to expect the signal of escape.
It was quite dark; and with a heart palpitating so violently that she felt at times almost suffocating, she watched the hardly discernible outline of the building from which the signal was to be displayed.
The wicked Norman was snoring under the influence of her narcotics; but to the accompaniment of her abominable drone what a hell of suspense did poor Lucille endure! At length, and not until considerably past ten o'clock, a light gleamed faintly and for an instant in the appointed spot, and then disappeared. It returned, however, and now shone steadily. The decisive moment which was to commence the adventure had arrived. She murmured an imploring prayer, and turned the bolt of the window which opened on the balcony. Horror of horrors! it was fast locked; a strong wire grating covered the outside, so that even had she ventured upon so much noise as would have been necessary in order to break the glass, she would in that have encountered a further obstacle, to her strength absolutely insurmountable.
She made up her mind to escape by the outer door of her suite of rooms, and to risk all on being able undetected to make her exit in that way from the house. But that door was also locked. She wrung her hands in an agony of distraction; but she did not abandon the enterprise. Encouraged by the lusty snoring of the woman, she approached the fauteuil, where she lay rather than sat. She slid her hand into the sleeper's pocket, scarcely daring to breathe while she did so. The keys were not in it; and the woman turned with something like a start in the chair. Lucille recoiled on tiptoe, holding her breath, until she seemed again soundly asleep. She might have concealed them in her bosom; and with an effort of resolution Madame Le Prun stepped noiselessly beside her and tried there. She was successful, but in drawing out the key her hand brushed slightly on the slumbering woman's face, and to her unutterable terror she started bolt upright in the chair, and stared with a wild and glassy gaze in her face. Lucille's heart died within her; she froze with terror; but the action was purely physical, the woman's senses were still slumbering; there was no trace of meaning in her face; and in a few moments she fell back again in the same profound sleep.