“Confess the truth.”
Measure for Measure.
“You would pluck out the heart of my mystery.”
Hamlet.
Claude Montigny rode to Stillyside and back, and was again with the advocate within the hour. To conceive the terror and outcry in that quiet dwelling, when its inmates ascertained that Amanda was missing, let the reader recall the commotion in the castle of Macbeth, when on the morning following his fatal entrance beneath its battlements, it is discovered that the royal Duncan has been murdered. As vehement and as wild as when the distracted Macduff, in frantic tones and with wringing hands, declares to the assembling sons and thanes of the ill-starred monarch, that, “confusion now has made its masterpiece, most sacrilegeous murder has broken open the Lord's anointed temple, and stolen hence the life o' the building,” was the outcry and disorder on the discovery of Amanda's absence; and the wail and lamentation rung in Claude's ear as he rode away from the gate to return to Montreal, where, still pacing the library, the advocate anxiously awaited him. By the ratiocination, as well as by the intuition, of the old man, the seigneur of Mainville was reasonably to be suspected of being at least an accessory to the stealing of Amanda. Claude, too, was not unvisited by suspicions of his father's complicity; but thrust the dishonoring doubts from him, as might a suffering saint dismiss hard thoughts of the dealings of Providence towards himself. Each thought more than he expressed to the other, but at length the advocate communicated to Claude his injurious suspicions, acquainting him with the fact and nature of his father's visits to his office; when Claude, in turn, informed the advocate of the long cherished project of an alliance between the houses of Duchatel and Montigny. This information not only confirmed, but widened the field of the advocate's fears. He was aware also of the lawless character of Duchatel's sons; and recollected to have heard that the youngest was a comrade of Narcisse, who, he likewise knew, entertained a covert spite against Amanda, and, for his mother's sake, a rankling dislike of Mona Macdonald. Against both of these his umbrage might be supposed to have been heated by his recent ignominious expulsion from Stillyside; and to gratify this resentment he might now be executing some scheme of revenge, wherein, from his intimacy with the young Duchatel, he could know that that family had cause to be ready to assist him. Here was a clue to the recovery of his ward:—in legal parlance, here was a prima facie case; and it but remained to find and prosecute the criminals. To seize his son, and, by threats or promises, extract a confession from him was the first idea. But where was the errant and suspected Narcisse to be found? His father knew he was absent, so the mother was summoned. She came, but advanced no further than the threshold of the room, and fell a trembling with fear, behaviour that she would fain have dissembled to be from cold, for, with the divination with which guilt endows its subject, she at once knew that the stranger was the young Montigny, and herself had been cited in order to suffer a searching cross-examination.
“Woman,” said the advocate sternly, and wheeling his arm-chair round so as to face her, “Woman, where is your son?”
“Helas!” she exclaimed, and shrugged her shoulders, as much as to say, “I don't know where he is;” and smiled a rueful smile.
“No grinning now,” cried the lawyer, raising his finger and shaking it at her, and frowning as he was wont to do when he wished to intimidate a witness, “no grinning now, madam. Will you pretend to say you know nothing of where he was last night, where he is at present?”
“Helas!” again exclaimed the affrighted Babet: “sir you forget yourself. Last night? Why it is yet night. Open the shutters and put out the lamp, and you will still be in darkness. Let me return to bed.”
“Babet Blais, many a better woman than you have I wished bedridden,” the advocate cried with bitterness. “Beshrew me, but your answer. Remember I am flint if you are steel, hence the less often we are smitten together in this enquiry, the fewer may be the revealing sparks. Babet Blais, here is an affair of blackest tinder, whereon your bated breath has blown already, until it glows upon your guilty face, as grimly as the lurid East that brews a rainy day, to you the type of tears.”