The Room in the Dragon Volant
J >>
J. Sheridan LeFanu >> The Room in the Dragon Volant
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10
Chapter XXII
RAPTURE
Down the screw-stair I went in utter darkness; and having reached the
stone floor I discerned the door and groped out the key-hole. With more
caution, and less noise than upon the night before, I opened the door
and stepped out into the thick brushwood. It was almost as dark in this
jungle.
Having secured the door I slowly pushed my way through the bushes, which
soon became less dense. Then, with more case, but still under thick
cover, I pursued in the track of the wood, keeping near its edge.
At length, in the darkened air, about fifty yards away, the shafts of
the marble temple rose like phantoms before me, seen through the trunks
of the old trees. Everything favored my enterprise. I had effectually
mystified my servant and the people of the Dragon Volant, and so dark
was the night, that even had I alarmed the suspicions of all the tenants
of the inn, I might safely defy their united curiosity, though posted at
every window of the house.
Through the trunks, over the roots of the old trees, I reached the
appointed place of observation. I laid my treasure in its leathern case
in the embrasure, and leaning my arms upon it, looked steadily in the
direction of the chateau. The outline of the building was scarcely
discernible, blending dimly, as it did, with the sky. No light in any
window was visible. I was plainly to wait; but for how long?
Leaning on my box of treasure, gazing toward the massive shadow that
represented the chateau, in the midst of my ardent and elated longings,
there came upon me an odd thought, which you will think might well have
struck me long before. It seemed on a sudden, as it came, that the
darkness deepened, and a chill stole into the air around me.
Suppose I were to disappear finally, like those other men whose stories
I had listened to! Had I not been at all the pains that mortal could to
obliterate every trace of my real proceedings, and to mislead everyone
to whom I spoke as to the direction in which I had gone?
This icy, snake-like thought stole through my mind, and was gone.
It was with me the full-blooded season of youth, conscious strength,
rashness, passion, pursuit, the adventure! Here were a pair of
double-barreled pistols, four lives in my hands? What could possibly
happen? The Count--except for the sake of my dulcinea, what was it to me
whether the old coward whom I had seen, in an ague of terror before the
brawling Colonel, interposed or not? I was assuming the worst that could
happen. But with an ally so clever and courageous as my beautiful
Countess, could any such misadventure befall? Bah! I laughed at all such
fancies.
As I thus communed with myself, the signal light sprang up. The
rose-colored light, _couleur de rose_, emblem of sanguine hope and
the dawn of a happy day.
Clear, soft, and steady, glowed the light from the window. The stone
shafts showed black against it. Murmuring words of passionate love as I
gazed upon the signal, I grasped my strong box under my arm, and with
rapid strides approached the Chateau de la Carque. No sign of light or
life, no human voice, no tread of foot, no bark of dog indicated a
chance of interruption. A blind was down; and as I came close to the
tall window, I found that half-a-dozen steps led up to it, and that a
large lattice, answering for a door, lay open.
A shadow from within fell upon the blind; it was drawn aside, and as I
ascended the steps, a soft voice murmured--"Richard, dearest Richard,
come, oh! come! how I have longed for this moment!"
Never did she look so beautiful. My love rose to passionate enthusiasm.
I only wished there were some real danger in the adventure worthy of
such a creature. When the first tumultuous greeting was over, she made
me sit beside her on a sofa. There we talked for a minute or two. She
told me that the Count had gone, and was by that time more than a mile
on his way, with the funeral, to Pere la Chaise. Here were her diamonds.
She exhibited, hastily, an open casket containing a profusion of the
largest brilliants.
"What is this?" she asked.
"A box containing money to the amount of thirty thousand pounds," I
answered.
"What! all that money?" she exclaimed.
"Every _sou_."
"Was it not unnecessary to bring so much, seeing all these?" she said,
touching her diamonds. "It would have been kind of you to allow me to
provide for both, for a time at least. It would have made me happier
even than I am."
"Dearest, generous angel!" Such was my extravagant declamation. "You
forget that it may be necessary, for a long time, to observe silence as
to where we are, and impossible to communicate safely with anyone."
"You have then here this great sum--are you certain; have you counted
it?"
"Yes, certainly; I received it today," I answered, perhaps showing a
little surprise in my face. "I counted it, of course, on drawing it from
my bankers."
"It makes me feel a little nervous, traveling with so much money; but
these jewels make as great a danger; that can add but little to it.
Place them side by side; you shall take off your greatcoat when we are
ready to go, and with it manage to conceal these boxes. I should not
like the drivers to suspect that we were conveying such a treasure. I
must ask you now to close the curtains of that window, and bar the
shutters."
I had hardly done this when a knock was heard at the room door.
"I know who this is," she said, in a whisper to me.
I saw that she was not alarmed. She went softly to the door, and a
whispered conversation for a minute followed.
"My trusty maid, who is coming with us. She says we cannot safely go
sooner than ten minutes. She is bringing some coffee to the next room."
She opened the door and looked in.
"I must tell her not to take too much luggage. She is so odd! Don't
follow--stay where you are--it is better that she should not see you."
She left the room with a gesture of caution.
A change had come over the manner of this beautiful woman. For the last
few minutes a shadow had been stealing over her, an air of abstraction,
a look bordering on suspicion. Why was she pale? Why had there come that
dark look in her eyes? Why had her very voice become changed? Had
anything gone suddenly wrong? Did some danger threaten?
This doubt, however, speedily quieted itself. If there had been anything
of the kind, she would, of course, have told me. It was only natural
that, as the crisis approached, she should become more and more nervous.
She did not return quite so soon as I had expected. To a man in my
situation absolute quietude is next to impossible. I moved restlessly
about the room. It was a small one. There was a door at the other end. I
opened it, rashly enough. I listened, it was perfectly silent. I was in
an excited, eager state, and every faculty engrossed about what was
coming, and in so far detached from the immediate present. I can't
account, in any other way, for my having done so many foolish things
that night, for I was, naturally, by no means deficient in cunning.
About the most stupid of those was, that instead of immediately closing
that door, which I never ought to have opened, I actually took a candle
and walked into the room.
There I made, quite unexpectedly, a rather startling discovery.
Chapter XXIII
A CUP OF COFFEE
The room was carpetless. On the floor were a quantity of shavings, and
some score of bricks. Beyond these, on a narrow table, lay an object
which I could hardly believe I saw aright.
I approached and drew from it a sheet which had very slightly disguised
its shape. There was no mistake about it. It was a coffin; and on the
lid was a plate, with the inscription in French:
PIERRE DE LA ROCHE ST. AMAND.
AGE DE XXIII ANS.
I drew back with a double shock. So, then, the funeral after all had not
yet left! Here lay the body. I had been deceived. This, no doubt,
accounted for the embarrassment so manifest in the Countess's manner.
She would have done more wisely had she told me the true state of the
case.
I drew back from this melancholy room, and closed the door. Her distrust
of me was the worst rashness she could have committed. There is nothing
more dangerous than misapplied caution. In entire ignorance of the fact
I had entered the room, and there I might have lighted upon some of the
very persons it was our special anxiety that I should avoid.
These reflections were interrupted, almost as soon as began, by the
return of the Countess de St. Alyre. I saw at a glance that she detected
in my face some evidence of what had happened, for she threw a hasty
look towards the door.
"Have you seen anything--anything to disturb you, dear Richard? Have you
been out of this room?"
I answered promptly, "Yes," and told her frankly what had happened.
"Well, I did not like to make you more uneasy than necessary. Besides,
it is disgusting and horrible. The body is there; but the Count had
departed a quarter of an hour before I lighted the colored lamp, and
prepared to receive you. The body did not arrive till eight or ten
minutes after he had set out. He was afraid lest the people at Pere la
Chaise should suppose that the funeral was postponed. He knew that the
remains of poor Pierre would certainly reach this tonight, although an
unexpected delay has occurred; and there are reasons why he wishes the
funeral completed before tomorrow. The hearse with the body must leave
this in ten minutes. So soon as it is gone, we shall be free to set out
upon our wild and happy journey. The horses are to the carriage in the
_porte-cochere_. As for this _funeste_ horror" (she shuddered
very prettily), "let us think of it no more."
She bolted the door of communication, and when she turned it was with
such a pretty penitence in her face and attitude, that I was ready to
throw myself at her feet.
"It is the last time," she said, in a sweet sad little pleading, "I
shall ever practice a deception on my brave and beautiful Richard--my
hero! Am I forgiven?"
Here was another scene of passionate effusion, and lovers' raptures and
declamations, but only murmured lest the ears of listeners should be
busy.
At length, on a sudden, she raised her hand, as if to prevent my
stirring, her eyes fixed on me and her ear toward the door of the room
in which the coffin was placed, and remained breathless in that attitude
for a few moments. Then, with a little nod towards me, she moved on
tip-toe to the door, and listened, extending her hand backward as if to
warn me against advancing; and, after a little time, she returned, still
on tip-toe, and whispered to me, "They are removing the coffin--come
with me."
I accompanied her into the room from which her maid, as she told me, had
spoken to her. Coffee and some old china cups, which appeared to me
quite beautiful, stood on a silver tray; and some liqueur glasses, with
a flask, which turned out to be noyau, on a salver beside it.
"I shall attend you. I'm to be your servant here; I am to have my own
way; I shall not think myself forgiven by my darling if he refuses to
indulge me in anything."
She filled a cup with coffee and handed it to me with her left hand; her
right arm she fondly passed over my shoulder, and with her fingers
through my curls, caressingly, she whispered, "Take this, I shall take
some just now."
It was excellent; and when I had done she handed me the liqueur, which I
also drank.
"Come back, dearest, to the next room," she said. "By this time those
terrible people must have gone away, and we shall be safer there, for
the present, than here."
"You shall direct, and I obey; you shall command me, not only now, but
always, and in all things, my beautiful queen!" I murmured.
My heroics were unconsciously, I daresay, founded upon my ideal of the
French school of lovemaking. I am, even now, ashamed as I recall the
bombast to which I treated the Countess de St. Alyre.
"There, you shall have another miniature glass--a fairy glass--of
noyau," she said gaily. In this volatile creature, the funereal gloom of
the moment before, and the suspense of an adventure on which all her
future was staked, disappeared in a moment. She ran and returned with
another tiny glass, which, with an eloquent or tender little speech, I
placed to my lips and sipped.
I kissed her hand, I kissed her lips, I gazed in her beautiful eyes, and
kissed her again unresisting.
"You call me Richard, by what name am I to call my beautiful divinity?"
I asked.
"You call me Eugenie, it is my name. Let us be quite real; that is, if
you love as entirely as I do."
"Eugenie!" I exclaimed, and broke into a new rapture upon the name.
It ended by my telling her how impatient I was to set out upon our
journey; and, as I spoke, suddenly an odd sensation overcame me. It was
not in the slightest degree like faintness. I can find no phrase to
describe it, but a sudden constraint of the brain; it was as if the
membrane in which it lies, if there be such a thing, contracted, and
became inflexible.
"Dear Richard! what is the matter?" she exclaimed, with terror in her
looks. "Good Heavens! are you ill? I conjure you, sit down; sit in this
chair." She almost forced me into one; I was in no condition to offer
the least resistance. I recognized but too truly the sensations that
supervened. I was lying back in the chair in which I sat, without the
power, by this time, of uttering a syllable, of closing my eyelids, of
moving my eyes, of stirring a muscle. I had in a few seconds glided into
precisely the state in which I had passed so many appalling hours when
approaching Paris, in my night-drive with the Marquis d'Harmonville.
Great and loud was the lady's agony. She seemed to have lost all sense
of fear. She called me by my name, shook me by the shoulder, raised my
arm and let it fall, all the time imploring of me, in distracting
sentences, to make the slightest sign of life, and vowing that if I did
not, she would make away with herself.
These ejaculations, after a minute or two, suddenly subsided. The lady
was perfectly silent and cool. In a very business-like way she took a
candle and stood before me, pale indeed, very pale, but with an
expression only of intense scrutiny with a dash of horror in it. She
moved the candle before my eyes slowly, evidently watching the effect.
She then set it down, and rang a handball two or three times sharply.
She placed the two cases (I mean hers containing the jewels and my
strong box) side by side on the table; and I saw her carefully lock the
door that gave access to the room in which I had just now sipped my
coffee.
Chapter XXIV
HOPE
She had scarcely set down my heavy box, which she seemed to have
considerable difficulty in raising on the table, when the door of the
room in which I had seen the coffin, opened, and a sinister and
unexpected apparition entered.
It was the Count de St. Alyre, who had been, as I have told you,
reported to me to be, for some considerable time, on his way to Pee la
Chaise. He stood before me for a moment, with the frame of the doorway
and a background of darkness enclosing him like a portrait. His slight,
mean figure was draped in the deepest mourning. He had a pair of black
gloves in his hand, and his hat with crape round it.
When he was not speaking his face showed signs of agitation; his mouth
was puckering and working. He looked damnably wicked and frightened.
"Well, my dear Eugenie? Well, child--eh? Well, it all goes admirably?"
"Yes," she answered, in a low, hard tone. "But you and Planard should
not have left that door open."
This she said sternly. "He went in there and looked about wherever he
liked; it was fortunate he did not move aside the lid of the coffin."
"Planard should have seen to that," said the Count, sharply. "_Ma
foi!_ I can't be everywhere!" He advanced half-a-dozen short quick
steps into the room toward me, and placed his glasses to his eyes.
"Monsieur Beckett," he cried sharply, two or three times, "Hi! don't you
know me?"
He approached and peered more closely in my face; raised my hand and
shook it, calling me again, then let it drop, and said: "It has set in
admirably, my pretty _mignonne_. When did it commence?"
The Countess came and stood beside him, and looked at me steadily for
some seconds. You can't conceive the effect of the silent gaze of those
two pairs of evil eyes.
The lady glanced to where, I recollected, the mantel piece stood, and
upon it a clock, the regular click of which I sharply heard.
"Four--five--six minutes and a half," she said slowly, in a cold hard
way.
"Brava! Bravissima! my beautiful queen! my little Venus! my Joan of Arc!
my heroine! my paragon of women!"
He was gloating on me with an odious curiosity, smiling, as he groped
backward with his thin brown fingers to find the lady's hand; but she,
not (I dare say) caring for his caresses, drew back a little.
"Come, _ma chere,_ let us count these things. What is it?
Pocket-book? Or--or--_what?_"
"It is _that_!" said the lady, pointing with a look of disgust to
the box, which lay in its leather case on the table.
"Oh! Let us see--let us count--let us see," he said, as he was
unbuckling the straps with his tremulous fingers. "We must count
them--we must see to it. I have pencil and pocket-book--but--where's the
key? See this cursed lock! My--! What is it? Where's the key?"
He was standing before the Countess, shuffling his feet, with his hands
extended and all his fingers quivering.
"I have not got it; how could I? It is in his pocket, of course," said
the lady.
In another instant the fingers of the old miscreant were in my pockets;
he plucked out everything they contained, and some keys among the rest.
I lay in precisely the state in which I had been during my drive with
the Marquis to Paris. This wretch, I knew, was about to rob me. The
whole drama, and the Countess's _role_ in it, I could not yet
comprehend. I could not be sure--so much more presence of mind and
histrionic resource have women than fall to the lot of our clumsy
sex--whether the return of the Count was not, in truth, a surprise to
her; and this scrutiny of the contents of my strong box, an extempore
undertaking of the Count's. But it was clearing more and more every
moment: and I was destined, very soon, to comprehend minutely my
appalling situation.
I had not the power of turning my eyes this way or that, the smallest
fraction of a hair's breadth. But let anyone, placed as I was at the end
of a room, ascertain for himself by experiment how wide is the field of
sight, without the slightest alteration in the line of vision, he will
find that it takes in the entire breadth of a large room, and that up to
a very short distance before him; and imperfectly, by a refraction, I
believe, in the eye itself, to a point very near indeed. Next to nothing
that passed in the room, therefore, was hidden from me.
The old man had, by this time, found the key. The leather case was open.
The box cramped round with iron was next unlocked. He turned out its
contents upon the table.
"Rouleaux of a hundred Napoleons each. One, two, three. Yes, quick.
Write down a thousand Napoleons. One, two; yes, right. Another thousand,
_write_!" And so on and on till the gold was rapidly counted. Then
came the notes.
"Ten thousand francs. _Write_. Then thousand francs again. Is it
written? Another ten thousand francs: is it down? Smaller notes would
have been better. They should have been smaller. These are horribly
embarrassing. Bolt that door again; Planard would become unreasonable if
he knew the amount. Why did you not tell him to get it in smaller notes?
No matter now--go on--it can't be helped--_write_--another ten
thousand francs--another--another." And so on, till my treasure was
counted out before my face, while I saw and heard all that passed with
the sharpest distinctness, and my mental perceptions were horribly
vivid. But in all other respects I was dead.
He had replaced in the box every note and rouleau as he counted it, and
now, having ascertained the sum total, he locked it, replaced it very
methodically in its cover, opened a buffet in the wainscoting, and,
having placed the Countess' jewel-case and my strong box in it, he
locked it; and immediately on completing these arrangements he began to
complain, with fresh acrimony and maledictions of Planard's delay.
He unbolted the door, looked in the dark room beyond, and listened. He
closed the door again and returned. The old man was in a fever of
suspense.
"I have kept ten thousand francs for Planard," said the Count, touching
his waistcoat pocket.
"Will that satisfy him?" asked the lady.
"Why--curse him!" screamed the Count. "Has he no conscience? I'll swear
to him it's half the entire thing."
He and the lady again came and looked at me anxiously for a while, in
silence; and then the old Count began to grumble again about Planard,
and to compare his watch with the clock. The lady seemed less impatient;
she sat no longer looking at me, but across the room, so that her
profile was toward me--and strangely changed, dark and witch-like it
looked. My last hope died as I beheld that jaded face from which the
mask had dropped. I was certain that they intended to crown their
robbery by murder. Why did they not dispatch me at once? What object
could there be in postponing the catastrophe which would expedite their
own safety. I cannot recall, even to myself, adequately the horrors
unutterable that I underwent. You must suppose a real night-mare--I mean
a night-mare in which the objects and the danger are real, and the spell
of corporal death appears to be protractible at the pleasure of the
persons who preside at your unearthly torments. I could have no doubt as
to the cause of the state in which I was.
In this agony, to which I could not give the slightest expression, I saw
the door of the room where the coffin had been, open slowly, and the
Marquis d'Harmonville entered the room.
Chapter XXV
DESPAIR
A moment's hope, hope violent and fluctuating, hope that was nearly
torture, and then came a dialogue, and with it the terrors of despair.
"Thank Heaven, Planard, you have come at last," said the Count, taking
him with both hands by the arm, and clinging to it and drawing him
toward me. "See, look at him. It has all gone sweetly, sweetly, sweetly
up to this. Shall I hold the candle for you?"
My friend d'Harmonville, Planard, whatever he was, came to me, pulling
off his gloves, which he popped into his pocket.
"The candle, a little this way," he said, and stooping over me he looked
earnestly in my face. He touched my forehead, drew his hand across it,
and then looked in my eyes for a time.
"Well, doctor, what do you think?" whispered the Count.
"How much did you give him?" said the Marquis, thus suddenly stunted
down to a doctor.
"Seventy drops," said the lady.
"In the hot coffee?"
"Yes; sixty in a hot cup of coffee and ten in the liqueur."
Her voice, low and hard, seemed to me to tremble a little. It takes a
long course of guilt to subjugate nature completely, and prevent those
exterior signs of agitation that outlive all good.
The doctor, however, was treating me as coolly as he might a subject
which he was about to place on the dissecting-table for a lecture.
He looked into my eyes again for awhile, took my wrist, and applied his
fingers to the pulse.
"That action suspended," he said to himself.
Then again he placed something, that for the moment I saw it looked like
a piece of gold-beater's leaf, to my lips, holding his head so far that
his own breathing could not affect it.
"Yes," he said in soliloquy, very low.
Then he plucked my shirt-breast open and applied the stethoscope,
shifted it from point to point, listened with his ear to its end, as if
for a very far-off sound, raised his head, and said, in like manner,
softly to himself, "All appreciable action of the lungs has subsided."
Then turning from the sound, as I conjectured, he said:
"Seventy drops, allowing ten for waste, ought to hold him fast for six
hours and a half-that is ample. The experiment I tried in the carriage
was only thirty drops, and showed a highly sensitive brain. It would not
do to kill him, you know. You are certain you did not exceed
_seventy_?"
"Perfectly," said the lady.
"If he were to die the evaporation would be arrested, and foreign
matter, some of it poisonous, would be found in the stomach, don't you
see? If you are doubtful, it would be well to use the stomach-pump."
"Dearest Eugenie, be frank, be frank, do be frank," urged the Count.
"I am _not_ doubtful, I am _certain_," she answered.
"How long ago, exactly? I told you to observe the time."
"I did; the minute-hand was exactly there, under the point of that
Cupid's foot."
"It will last, then, probably for seven hours. He will recover then; the
evaporation will be complete, and not one particle of the fluid will
remain in the stomach."
It was reassuring, at all events, to hear that there was no intention to
murder me. No one who has not tried it knows the terror of the approach
of death, when the mind is clear, the instincts of life unimpaired, and
no excitement to disturb the appreciation of that entirely new horror.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10