The Room in the Dragon Volant

J >> J. Sheridan LeFanu >> The Room in the Dragon Volant

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I bore this serious privation as well as I could, and took a little
saunter through the town. I shan't bore you with moonlight effects, nor
with the maunderings of a man who has fallen in love at first sight with
a beautiful face. My ramble, it is enough to say, occupied about half an
hour, and, returning by a slight detour, I found myself in a little
square, with about two high gabled houses on each side, and a rude stone
statue, worn by centuries of rain, on a pedestal in the center of the
pavement. Looking at this statue was a slight and rather tall man, whom
I instantly recognized as the Marquis d'Harmonville: he knew me almost
as quickly. He walked a step towards me, shrugged and laughed:

"You are surprised to find Monsieur Droqville staring at that old stone
figure by moonlight. Anything to pass the time. You, I see, suffer from
_ennui_, as I do. These little provincial towns! Heavens! what an
effort it is to live in them! If I could regret having formed in early
life a friendship that does me honor, I think its condemning me to a
sojourn in such a place would make me do so. You go on towards Paris, I
suppose, in the morning?"

"I have ordered horses."

"As for me I await a letter, or an arrival, either would emancipate me;
but I can't say how soon either event will happen."

"Can I be of any use in this matter?" I began.

"None, Monsieur, I thank you a thousand times. No, this is a piece in
which every _role_ is already cast. I am but an amateur, and
induced solely by friendship, to take a part."

So he talked on, for a time, as we walked slowly toward the Belle
Etoile, and then came a silence, which I broke by asking him if he knew
anything of Colonel Gaillarde.

"Oh! yes, to be sure. He is a little mad; he has had some bad injuries
of the head. He used to plague the people in the War Office to death. He
has always some delusion. They contrived some employment for him--not
regimental, of course--but in this campaign Napoleon, who could spare
nobody, placed him in command of a regiment. He was always a desperate
fighter, and such men were more than ever needed."

There is, or was, a second inn in this town called l'Ecu de France. At
its door the Marquis stopped, bade me a mysterious good-night, and
disappeared.

As I walked slowly toward my inn, I met, in the shadow of a row of
poplars, the garcon who had brought me my Burgundy a little time ago. I
was thinking of Colonel Gaillarde, and I stopped the little waiter as he
passed me.

"You said, I think, that Colonel Gaillarde was at the Belle Etoile for a
week at one time."

"Yes, Monsieur."

"Is he perfectly in his right mind?"

The waiter stared. "Perfectly, Monsieur."

"Has he been suspected at any time of being out of his mind?"

"Never, Monsieur; he is a little noisy, but a very shrewd man."

"What is a fellow to think?" I muttered, as I walked on.

I was soon within sight of the lights of the Belle Etoile. A carriage,
with four horses, stood in the moonlight at the door, and a furious
altercation was going on in the hall, in which the yell of Colonel
Gaillarde out-topped all other sounds.

Most young men like, at least, to witness a row. But, intuitively, I
felt that this would interest me in a very special manner. I had only
fifty yards to run, when I found myself in the hall of the old inn. The
principal actor in this strange drama was, indeed, the Colonel, who
stood facing the old Count de St. Alyre, who, in his traveling costume,
with his black silk scarf covering the lower part of his face,
confronted him; he had evidently been intercepted in an endeavor to
reach his carriage. A little in the rear of the Count stood the
Countess, also in traveling costume, with her thick black veil down, and
holding in her delicate fingers a white rose. You can't conceive a more
diabolical effigy of hate and fury than the Colonel; the knotted veins
stood out on his forehead, his eyes were leaping from their sockets, he
was grinding his teeth, and froth was on his lips. His sword was drawn
in his hand, and he accompanied his yelling denunciations with stamps
upon the floor and flourishes of his weapon in the air.

The host of the Belle Etoile was talking to the Colonel in soothing
terms utterly thrown away. Two waiters, pale with fear, stared uselessly
from behind. The Colonel screamed and thundered, and whirled his sword.
"I was not sure of your red birds of prey; I could not believe you would
have the audacity to travel on high roads, and to stop at honest inns,
and lie under the same roof with honest men. You! _you! both_--vampires,
wolves, ghouls. Summon the _gendarmes_, I say. By St. Peter and all
the devils, if either of you try to get out of that door I'll take your
heads off."

For a moment I had stood aghast. Here was a situation! I walked up to
the lady; she laid her hand wildly upon my arm. "Oh! Monsieur," she
whispered, in great agitation, "that dreadful madman! What are we to do?
He won't let us pass; he will kill my husband."

"Fear nothing, Madame," I answered, with romantic devotion, and stepping
between the Count and Gaillarde, as he shrieked his invective, "Hold
your tongue, and clear the way, you ruffian, you bully, you coward!" I
roared.

A faint cry escaped the lady, which more than repaid the risk I ran, as
the sword of the frantic soldier, after a moment's astonished pause,
flashed in the air to cut me down.

Chapter VII

THE WHITE ROSE

I was too quick for Colonel Gaillarde. As he raised his sword, reckless
of all consequences but my condign punishment and quite resolved to
cleave me to the teeth, I struck him across the side of his head with my
heavy stick, and while he staggered back I struck him another blow,
nearly in the same place, that felled him to the floor, where he lay as
if dead.

I did not care one of his own regimental buttons, whether he was dead or
not; I was, at that moment, carried away by such a tumult of delightful
and diabolical emotions!

I broke his sword under my foot, and flung the pieces across the street.
The old Count de St. Alyre skipped nimbly without looking to the right
or left, or thanking anybody, over the floor, out of the door, down the
steps, and into his carriage. Instantly I was at the side of the
beautiful Countess, thus left to shift for herself; I offered her my
arm, which she took, and I led her to the carriage. She entered, and I
shut the door. All this without a word.

I was about to ask if there were any commands with which she would honor
me--my hand was laid upon the lower edge of the window, which was open.

The lady's hand was laid upon mine timidly and excitedly. Her lips
almost touched my cheek as she whispered hurriedly:

"I may never see you more, and, oh! that I could forget you.
Go--farewell--for God's sake, go!"

I pressed her hand for a moment. She withdrew it, but tremblingly
pressed into mine the rose which she had held in her fingers during the
agitating scene she had just passed through.

All this took place while the Count was commanding, entreating, cursing
his servants, tipsy, and out of the way during the crisis, my conscience
afterwards insinuated, by my clever contrivance. They now mounted to
their places with the agility of alarm. The postilions' whips cracked,
the horses scrambled into a trot, and away rolled the carriage, with its
precious freightage, along the quaint main street, in the moonlight,
toward Paris.

I stood on the pavement till it was quite lost to eye and ear in the
distance.

With a deep sigh, I then turned, my white rose folded in my
handkerchief--the little parting _gage_--the

Favor secret, sweet, and precious,

which no mortal eye but hers and mine had seen conveyed to me.

The care of the host of the Belle Etoile, and his assistants, had raised
the wounded hero of a hundred fights partly against the wall, and
propped him at each side with portmanteaus and pillows, and poured a
glass of brandy, which was duly placed to his account, into his big
mouth, where, for the first time, such a godsend remained unswallowed.

A bald-headed little military surgeon of sixty, with spectacles, who had
cut off eighty-seven legs and arms to his own share, after the battle of
Eylau, having retired with his sword and his saw, his laurels and his
sticking-plaster to this, his native town, was called in, and rather
thought the gallant Colonel's skull was fractured; at all events, there
was concussion of the seat of thought, and quite enough work for his
remarkable self-healing powers to occupy him for a fortnight.

I began to grow a little uneasy. A disagreeable surprise, if my
excursion, in which I was to break banks and hearts, and, as you see,
heads, should end upon the gallows or the guillotine. I was not clear,
in those times of political oscillation, which was the established
apparatus.

The Colonel was conveyed, snorting apoplectically, to his room.

I saw my host in the apartment in which we had supped. Wherever you
employ a force of any sort, to carry a point of real importance, reject
all nice calculations of economy. Better to be a thousand per cent, over
the mark, than the smallest fraction of a unit under it. I instinctively
felt this.

I ordered a bottle of my landlord's very best wine; made him partake
with me, in the proportion of two glasses to one; and then told him that
he must not decline a trifling _souvenir_ from a guest who had been
so charmed with all he had seen of the renowned Belle Etoile. Thus
saying, I placed five-and-thirty Napoleons in his hand: at touch of
which his countenance, by no means encouraging before, grew sunny, his
manners thawed, and it was plain, as he dropped the coins hastily into
his pocket, that benevolent relations had been established between us.

I immediately placed the Colonel's broken head upon the _tapis_. We
both agreed that if I had not given him that rather smart tap of my
walking-cane, he would have beheaded half the inmates of the Belle
Etoile. There was not a waiter in the house who would not verify that
statement on oath.

The reader may suppose that I had other motives, beside the desire to
escape the tedious inquisition of the law, for desiring to recommence my
journey to Paris with the least possible delay. Judge what was my horror
then to learn that, for love or money, horses were nowhere to be had
that night. The last pair in the town had been obtained from the Ecu de
France by a gentleman who dined and supped at the Belle Etoile, and was
obliged to proceed to Paris that night.

Who was the gentleman? Had he actually gone? Could he possibly be
induced to wait till morning?

The gentleman was now upstairs getting his things together, and his name
was Monsieur Droqville.

I ran upstairs. I found my servant St. Clair in my room. At sight of
him, for a moment, my thoughts were turned into a different channel.

"Well, St. Clair, tell me this moment who the lady is?" I demanded.

"The lady is the daughter or wife, it matters not which, of the Count
de St. Alyre--the old gentleman who was so near being sliced like a
cucumber tonight, I am informed, by the sword of the general whom
Monsieur, by a turn of fortune, has put to bed of an apoplexy."

"Hold your tongue, fool! The man's beastly drunk--he's sulking--he
could talk if he liked--who cares? Pack up my things. Which are Monsieur
Droqville's apartments?"

He knew, of course; he always knew everything.

Half an hour later Monsieur Droqville and I were traveling towards Paris
in my carriage and with his horses. I ventured to ask the Marquis
d'Harmonville, in a little while, whether the lady, who accompanied the
Count, was certainly the Countess. "Has he not a daughter?"

"Yes; I believe a very beautiful and charming young lady--I cannot
say--it may have been she, his daughter by an earlier marriage. I saw
only the Count himself today."

The Marquis was growing a little sleepy, and, in a little while, he
actually fell asleep in his corner. I dozed and nodded; but the Marquis
slept like a top. He awoke only for a minute or two at the next
posting-house where he had fortunately secured horses by sending on his
man, he told me. "You will excuse my being so dull a companion," he
said, "but till tonight I have had but two hours' sleep, for more than
sixty hours. I shall have a cup of coffee here; I have had my nap.
Permit me to recommend you to do likewise. Their coffee is really
excellent." He ordered two cups of _cafe noir_, and waited, with
his head from the window. "We will keep the cups," he said, as he
received them from the waiter, "and the tray. Thank you."

There was a little delay as he paid for these things; and then he took
in the little tray, and handed me a cup of coffee.

I declined the tray; so he placed it on his own knees, to act as a
miniature table.

"I can't endure being waited for and hurried," he said, "I like to sip
my coffee at leisure."

I agreed. It really _was_ the very perfection of coffee.

"I, like Monsieur le Marquis, have slept very little for the last two or
three nights; and find it difficult to keep awake. This coffee will do
wonders for me; it refreshes one so."

Before we had half done, the carriage was again in motion.

For a time our coffee made us chatty, and our conversation was animated.

The Marquis was extremely good-natured, as well as clever, and gave me a
brilliant and amusing account of Parisian life, schemes, and dangers,
all put so as to furnish me with practical warnings of the most valuable
kind.

In spite of the amusing and curious stories which the Marquis related
with so much point and color, I felt myself again becoming gradually
drowsy and dreamy.

Perceiving this, no doubt, the Marquis good-naturedly suffered our
conversation to subside into silence. The window next him was open. He
threw his cup out of it; and did the same kind office for mine, and
finally the little tray flew after, and I heard it clank on the road; a
valuable waif, no doubt, for some early wayfarer in wooden shoes.

I leaned back in my corner; I had my beloved souvenir--my white
rose--close to my heart, folded, now, in white paper. It inspired all
manner of romantic dreams. I began to grow more and more sleepy. But
actual slumber did not come. I was still viewing, with my half-closed
eyes, from my corner, diagonally, the interior of the carriage.

I wished for sleep; but the barrier between waking and sleeping seemed
absolutely insurmountable; and, instead, I entered into a state of novel
and indescribable indolence.

The Marquis lifted his dispatch-box from the floor, placed it on his
knees, unlocked it, and took out what proved to be a lamp, which he hung
with two hooks, attached to it, to the window opposite to him. He
lighted it with a match, put on his spectacles, and taking out a bundle
of letters began to read them carefully.

We were making way very slowly. My impatience had hitherto employed four
horses from stage to stage. We were in this emergency, only too happy to
have secured two. But the difference in pace was depressing.

I grew tired of the monotony of seeing the spectacled Marquis reading,
folding, and docketing, letter after letter. I wished to shut out the
image which wearied me, but something prevented my being able to shut my
eyes. I tried again and again; but, positively, I had lost the power of
closing them.

I would have rubbed my eyes, but I could not stir my hand, my will no
longer acted on my body--I found that I could not move one joint, or
muscle, no more than I could, by an effort of my will, have turned the
carriage about.

Up to this I had experienced no sense of horror. Whatever it was, simple
night-mare was not the cause. I was awfully frightened! Was I in a fit?

It was horrible to see my good-natured companion pursue his occupation
so serenely, when he might have dissipated my horrors by a single shake.

I made a stupendous exertion to call out, but in vain; I repeated the
effort again and again, with no result.

My companion now tied up his letters, and looked out of the window,
humming an air from an opera. He drew back his head, and said, turning
to me:

"Yes, I see the lights; we shall be there in two or three minutes."

He looked more closely at me, and with a kind smile, and a little shrug,
he said, "Poor child! how fatigued he must have been--how profoundly he
sleeps! when the carriage stops he will waken."

He then replaced his letters in the box-box, locked it, put his
spectacles in his pocket, and again looked out of the window.

We had entered a little town. I suppose it was past two o'clock by this
time. The carriage drew up, I saw an inn-door open, and a light issuing
from it.

"Here we are!" said my companion, turning gaily to me. But I did not
awake.

"Yes, how tired he must have been!" he exclaimed, after he had waited
for an answer. My servant was at the carriage door, and opened it.

"Your master sleeps soundly, he is so fatigued! It would be cruel to
disturb him. You and I will go in, while they change the horses, and
take some refreshment, and choose something that Monsieur Beckett will
like to take in the carriage, for when he awakes by-and-by, he will, I
am sure, be hungry."

He trimmed his lamp, poured in some oil; and taking care not to disturb
me, with another kind smile and another word of caution to my servant he
got out, and I heard him talking to St. Clair, as they entered the
inn-door, and I was left in my corner, in the carriage, in the same
state.

Chapter VIII

A THREE MINUTES' VISIT

I have suffered extreme and protracted bodily pain, at different periods
of my life, but anything like that misery, thank God, I never endured
before or since. I earnestly hope it may not resemble any type of death
to which we are liable. I was, indeed, a spirit in prison; and
unspeakable was my dumb and unmoving agony.

The power of thought remained clear and active. Dull terror filled my
mind. How would this end? Was it actual death?

You will understand that my faculty of observing was unimpaired. I could
hear and see anything as distinctly as ever I did in my life. It was
simply that my will had, as it were, lost its hold of my body.

I told you that the Marquis d'Harmonville had not extinguished his
carriage lamp on going into this village inn. I was listening intently,
longing for his return, which might result, by some lucky accident, in
awaking me from my catalepsy.

Without any sound of steps approaching, to announce an arrival, the
carriage-door suddenly opened, and a total stranger got in silently and
shut the door.

The lamp gave about as strong a light as a wax-candle, so I could see
the intruder perfectly. He was a young man, with a dark grey loose
surtout, made with a sort of hood, which was pulled over his head. I
thought, as he moved, that I saw the gold band of a military undress cap
under it; and I certainly saw the lace and buttons of a uniform, on the
cuffs of the coat that were visible under the wide sleeves of his
outside wrapper.

This young man had thick moustaches and an imperial, and I observed that
he had a red scar running upward from his lip across his cheek.

He entered, shut the door softly, and sat down beside me. It was all
done in a moment; leaning toward me, and shading his eyes with his
gloved hand, he examined my face closely for a few seconds.

This man had come as noiselessly as a ghost; and everything he did was
accomplished with the rapidity and decision that indicated a
well-defined and pre-arranged plan. His designs were evidently sinister.
I thought he was going to rob and, perhaps, murder me. I lay,
nevertheless, like a corpse under his hands. He inserted his hand in my
breast pocket, from which he took my precious white rose and all the
letters it contained, among which was a paper of some consequence to me.

My letters he glanced at. They were plainly not what he wanted. My
precious rose, too, he laid aside with them. It was evidently about the
paper I have mentioned that he was concerned; for the moment he opened
it he began with a pencil, in a small pocket-book, to make rapid notes
of its contents.

This man seemed to glide through his work with a noiseless and cool
celerity which argued, I thought, the training of the police department.

He re-arranged the papers, possibly in the very order in which he had
found them, replaced them in my breast-pocket, and was gone. His visit,
I think, did not quite last three minutes. Very soon after his
disappearance I heard the voice of the Marquis once more. He got in, and
I saw him look at me and smile, half-envying me, I fancied, my sound
repose. If he had but known all!

He resumed his reading and docketing by the light of the little lamp
which had just subserved the purposes of a spy.

We were now out of the town, pursuing our journey at the same moderate
pace. We had left the scene of my police visit, as I should have termed
it, now two leagues behind us, when I suddenly felt a strange throbbing
in one ear, and a sensation as if air passed through it into my throat.
It seemed as if a bubble of air, formed deep in my ear, swelled, and
burst there. The indescribable tension of my brain seemed all at once to
give way; there was an odd humming in my head, and a sort of vibration
through every nerve of my body, such as I have experienced in a limb
that has been, in popular phraseology, asleep. I uttered a cry and half
rose from my seat, and then fell back trembling, and with a sense of
mortal faintness.

The Marquis stared at me, took my hand, and earnestly asked if I was
ill. I could answer only with a deep groan.

Gradually the process of restoration was completed; and I was able,
though very faintly, to tell him how very ill I had been; and then to
describe the violation of my letters, during the time of his absence
from the carriage.

"Good heaven!" he exclaimed, "the miscreant did not get at my box-box?"

I satisfied him, so far as I had observed, on that point. He placed the
box on the seat beside him, and opened and examined its contents very
minutely.

"Yes, undisturbed; all safe, thank heaven!" he murmured. "There are
half-a-dozen letters here that I would not have some people read for a
great deal."

He now asked with a very kind anxiety all about the illness I complained
of. When he had heard me, he said:

"A friend of mine once had an attack as like yours as possible. It was
on board ship, and followed a state of high excitement. He was a brave
man like you; and was called on to exert both his strength and his
courage suddenly. An hour or two after, fatigue overpowered him, and he
appeared to fall into a sound sleep. He really sank into a state which
he afterwards described so that I think it must have been precisely the
same affection as yours."

"I am happy to think that my attack was not unique. Did he ever
experience a return of it?"

"I knew him for years after, and never heard of any such thing. What
strikes me is a parallel in the predisposing causes of each attack. Your
unexpected and gallant hand-to-hand encounter, at such desperate odds,
with an experienced swordsman, like that insane colonel of dragoons,
your fatigue, and, finally, your composing yourself, as my other friend
did, to sleep."

"I wish," he resumed, "one could make out who the _coquin_ was who
examined your letters. It is not worth turning back, however, because we
should learn nothing. Those people always manage so adroitly. I am
satisfied, however, that he must have been an agent of the police. A
rogue of any other kind would have robbed you."

I talked very little, being ill and exhausted, but the Marquis talked on
agreeably.

"We grow so intimate," said he, at last, "that I must remind you that I
am not, for the present, the Marquis d'Harmonville, but only Monsieur
Droqville; nevertheless, when we get to Paris, although I cannot see you
often I may be of use. I shall ask you to name to me the hotel at which
you mean to put up; because the Marquis being, as you are aware, on his
travels, the Hotel d'Harmonville is, for the present, tenanted only by
two or three old servants, who must not even see Monsieur Droqville.
That gentleman will, nevertheless, contrive to get you access to the box
of Monsieur le Marquis, at the Opera, as well, possibly, as to other
places more difficult; and so soon as the diplomatic office of the
Marquis d'Harmonville is ended, and he at liberty to declare himself, he
will not excuse his friend, Monsieur Beckett, from fulfilling his
promise to visit him this autumn at the Chateau d'Harmonville."

You may be sure I thanked the Marquis.

The nearer we got to Paris, the more I valued his protection. The
countenance of a great man on the spot, just then, taking so kind an
interest in the stranger whom he had, as it were, blundered upon, might
make my visit ever so many degrees more delightful than I had
anticipated.

Nothing could be more gracious than the manner and looks of the Marquis;
and, as I still thanked him, the carriage suddenly stopped in front of
the place where a relay of horses awaited us, and where, as it turned
out, we were to part.

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