"It is magnificent!" I exclaimed, as a collar of diamonds twinkled and flashed in the moonlight, suspended from her pretty fingers. I thought, even at that tragic moment, that she prolonged the show, with a feminine delight in these brilliant toys.
"Yes," she said, "I shall part with them all. I will turn them into money and break, forever, the unnatural and wicked bonds that tied me, in the name of a sacrament, to a tyrant. A man young, handsome, generous, brave, as you, can hardly be rich. Richard, you say you love me; you shall share all this with me. We will fly together to Switzerland; we will evade pursuit; in powerful friends will intervene and arrange a separation, and shall, at length, be happy and reward my hero."
You may suppose the style, florid and vehement, in which poured forth my grat.i.tude, vowed the devotion of my life, and placed myself absolutely at her disposal.
"Tomorrow night," she said, "my husband will attend the remains of his cousin, Monsieur de St. Amand, to Pere la Chaise. The hea.r.s.e, he says, will leave this at half-past nine. You must be here, where we stand, at nine o"clock."
I promised punctual obedience.
"I will not meet you here; but you see a red light in the window of the tower at that angle of the chateau?"
I a.s.sented.
"I placed it there, that, tomorrow night, when it comes, you may recognize it. So soon as that rose-colored light appears at that window, it will be a signal to you that the funeral has left the chateau, and that you may approach safely. Come, then, to that window; I will open it and admit you. Five minutes after a carriage-carriage, with four horses, shall stand ready in the _porte-cochere_. I will place my diamonds in your hands; and so soon as we enter the carriage our flight commences. We shall have at least five hours" start; and with energy, stratagem, and resource, I fear nothing. Are you ready to undertake all this for my sake?"
Again I vowed myself her slave.
"My only difficulty," she said, "is how we shall quickly enough convert my diamonds into money; I dare not remove them while my husband is in the house."
Here was the opportunity I wished for. I now told her that I had in my banker"s hands no less a sum than thirty thousand pounds, with which, in the shape of gold and notes, I should come furnished, and thus the risk and loss of disposing of her diamonds in too much haste would be avoided.
"Good Heaven!" she exclaimed, with a kind of disappointment. "You are rich, then? and I have lost the felicity of making my generous friend more happy. Be it so! since so it must be. Let us contribute, each, in equal shares, to our common fund. Bring you, your money; I, my jewels.
There is a happiness to me even in mingling my resources with yours."
On this there followed a romantic colloquy, all poetry and pa.s.sion, such as I should in vain endeavor to reproduce. Then came a very special instruction.
"I have come provided, too, with a key, the use of which I must explain."
It was a double key--a long, slender stem, with a key at each end--one about the size which opens an ordinary room door; the other as small, almost, as the key of a dressing-case.
"You cannot employ too much caution tomorrow night. An interruption would murder all my hopes. I have learned that you occupy the haunted room in the Dragon Volant. It is the very room I would have wished you in. I will tell you why--there is a story of a man who, having shut himself up in that room one night, disappeared before morning. The truth is, he wanted, I believe, to escape from creditors; and the host of the Dragon Volant at that time, being a rogue, aided him in absconding. My husband investigated the matter, and discovered how his escape was made.
It was by means of this key. Here is a memorandum and a plan describing how they are to be applied. I have taken them from the Count"s escritoire. And now, once more I must leave to your ingenuity how to mystify the people at the Dragon Volant. Be sure you try the keys first, to see that the locks turn freely. I will have my jewels ready. You, whatever we divide, had better bring your money, because it may be many months before you can revisit Paris, or disclose our place of residence to anyone: and our pa.s.sports--arrange all that; in what names, and whither, you please. And now, dear Richard" (she leaned her arm fondly on my shoulder, and looked with ineffable pa.s.sion in my eyes, with her other hand clasped in mine), "my very life is in your hands; I have staked all on your fidelity."
As she spoke the last word, she, on a sudden, grew deadly pale, and gasped, "Good G.o.d! who is here?"
At the same moment she receded through the door in the marble screen, close to which she stood, and behind which was a small roofless chamber, as small as the shrine, the window of which was darkened by a cl.u.s.tering ma.s.s of ivy so dense that hardly a gleam of light came through the leaves.
I stood upon the threshold which she had just crossed, looking in the direction in which she had thrown that one terrified glance. No wonder she was frightened. Quite close upon us, not twenty yards away, and approaching at a quick step, very distinctly lighted by the moon, Colonel Gaillarde and his companion were coming. The shadow of the cornice and a piece of wall were upon me. Unconscious of this, I was expecting the moment when, with one of his frantic yells, he should spring forward to a.s.sail me.
I made a step backward, drew one of my pistols from my pocket, and c.o.c.ked it. It was obvious he had not seen me.
I stood, with my finger on the trigger, determined to shoot him dead if he should attempt to enter the place where the Countess was. It would, no doubt, have been a murder; but, in my mind, I had no question or qualm about it. When once we engage in secret and guilty practices we are nearer other and greater crimes than we at all suspect.
"There"s the statue," said the Colonel, in his brief discordant tones.
"That"s the figure."
"Alluded to in the stanzas?" inquired his companion.
"The very thing. We shall see more next time. Forward, Monsieur; let us march." And, much to my relief, the gallant Colonel turned on his heel and marched through the trees, with his back toward the chateau, striding over the gra.s.s, as I quickly saw, to the park wall, which they crossed not far from the gables of the Dragon Volant.
I found the Countess trembling in no affected, but a very real terror.
She would not hear of my accompanying her toward the chateau. But I told her that I would prevent the return of the mad Colonel; and upon that point, at least, that she need fear nothing. She quickly recovered, again bade me a fond and lingering good-night, and left me, gazing after her, with the key in my hand, and such a phantasmagoria floating in my brain as amounted very nearly to madness.
There was I, ready to brave all dangers, all right and reason, plunge into murder itself, on the first summons, and entangle myself in consequences inextricable and horrible (what cared I?) for a woman of whom I knew nothing, but that she was beautiful and reckless!
I have often thanked heaven for its mercy in conducting me through the labyrinths in which I had all but lost myself.
Chapter XX
A HIGH-CAULD-CAP
I was now upon the road, within two or three hundred yards of the Dragon Volant. I had undertaken an adventure with a vengeance! And by way of prelude, there not improbably awaited me, at my inn, another encounter, perhaps, this time, not so lucky, with the grotesque sabreur.
I was glad I had my pistols. I certainly was bound by no law to allow a ruffian to cut me down, unresisting.
Stooping boughs from the old park, gigantic poplars on the other side, and the moonlight over all, made the narrow road to the inn-door picturesque.
I could not think very clearly just now; events were succeeding one another so rapidly, and I, involved in the action of a drama so extravagant and guilty, hardly knew myself or believed my own story, as I slowly paced towards the still open door of the Flying Dragon. No sign of the Colonel, visible or audible, was there. In the hall I inquired.
No gentleman had arrived at the inn for the last half hour. I looked into the public room. It was deserted. The clock struck twelve, and I heard the servant barring the great door. I took my candle. The lights in this rural hostelry were by this time out, and the house had the air of one that had settled to slumber for many hours. The cold moonlight streamed in at the window on the landing as I ascended the broad staircase; and I paused for a moment to look over the wooded grounds to the turreted chateau, to me, so full of interest. I bethought me, however, that prying eyes might read a meaning in this midnight gazing, and possibly the Count himself might, in his jealous mood, surmise a signal in this unwonted light in the stair-window of the Dragon Volant.
On opening my room door, with a little start, I met an extremely old woman with the longest face I ever saw; she had what used to be termed a high-cauld-cap on, the white border of which contrasted with her brown and yellow skin, and made her wrinkled face more ugly. She raised her curved shoulders, and looked up in my face, with eyes unnaturally black and bright.
"I have lighted a little wood, Monsieur, because the night is chill."
I thanked her, but she did not go. She stood with her candle in her tremulous fingers.
"Excuse an old woman, Monsieur," she said; "but what on earth can a young English _milord_, with all Paris at his feet, find to amuse him in the Dragon Volant?"
Had I been at the age of fairy tales, and in daily intercourse with the delightful Countess d"Aulnois, I should have seen in this withered apparition, the _genius loci_, the malignant fairy, at the stamp of whose foot the ill-fated tenants of this very room had, from time to time, vanished. I was past that, however; but the old woman"s dark eyes were fixed on mine with a steady meaning that plainly told me that my secret was known. I was embarra.s.sed and alarmed; I never thought of asking her what business that was of hers.
"These old eyes saw you in the park of the chateau tonight."
"_I_!" I began, with all the scornful surprise I could affect.
"It avails nothing, Monsieur; I know why you stay here; and I tell you to begone. Leave this house tomorrow morning, and never come again."
She lifted her disengaged hand, as she looked at me with intense horror in her eyes.
"There is nothing on earth--I don"t know what you mean," I answered, "and why should you care about me?"
"I don"t care about you, Monsieur--I care about the honor of an ancient family, whom I served in their happier days, when to be n.o.ble was to be honored. But my words are thrown away, Monsieur; you are insolent. I will keep my secret, and you, yours; that is all. You will soon find it hard enough to divulge it."
The old woman went slowly from the room and shut the door, before I had made up my mind to say anything. I was standing where she had left me, nearly five minutes later. The jealousy of Monsieur the Count, I a.s.sumed, appears to this old creature about the most terrible thing in creation. Whatever contempt I might entertain for the dangers which this old lady so darkly intimated, it was by no means pleasant, you may suppose, that a secret so dangerous should be so much as suspected by a stranger, and that stranger a partisan of the Count de St. Alyre.
Ought I not, at all risks, to apprise the Countess, who had trusted me so generously, or, as she said herself, so madly, of the fact that our secret was, at least, suspected by another? But was there not greater danger in attempting to communicate? What did the beldame mean by saying, "Keep your secret, and I"ll keep mine?"