CHAPTER V.
Thistime it is not a false alarm; this time it really has gone to his stomach, and, declining to be dislodged thence, kills him. My return is therefore retarded until after the funeral and the reading of the will. The latter is so satisfactory, and my time is so fully occupied with a multiplicity of attendant business, that I have no leisure to regret the delay. I write to Elizabeth, but receive no letters from her. This surprises and makes me rather angry, but does not alarm me. “If she had been ill, if anything had happened, Morris would have written. She never was great at writing, poor littlesoul. What dear little babyish notes she used to send me during our engagement; perhaps she wishes to punish me for my disobedience to her wishes. Well,nowshe will see who was in the right.” I am drawing near her now; I am walking up from the railway station at Lucerne. I am very joyful as I march along under an umbrella, in the grand broad shining of the summer afternoon. I think with pensive passion of the last glimpse I had of my beloved—her small and wistful face looking out from among the thick fair fleece of her long hair—winking away her tears and blowing kisses to me. It is a new sensation to me to have any one looking tearfully wistful over my departure. I draw near the great glaring Schweizerhof, with its colonnaded, tourist-crowded porch; here are all the pomegranates as I left them, in their green tubs, with their scarlet blossoms, and the dusty oleanders in a row. I look up at our windows;nobody is looking out from them; they are open, and the curtains are alternately swelled out and drawn in by the softly-playful wind. I run quickly upstairs and burst noisily into the sitting-room. Empty, perfectly empty! I open the adjoining door into the bedroom, crying “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” but I receive no answer. Empty too. A feeling of indignation creeps over me as I think, “Knowing the time of my return, she might have managed to be indoors.” I have returned to the silent sitting-room, where the only noise is the wind still playing hide-and-seek with the curtains. As I look vacantly round my eye catches sight of a letter lying on the table. I pick it up mechanically and look at the address. Good heavens! what can this mean? It is my own, that I sent her two days ago, unopened, with the seal unbroken. Does she carry her resentment so far as not even to open my letters? I spring at the bell and violently ring it. It isanswered by the waiter who has always specially attended us.
“Is madame gone out?”
The man opens his mouth and stares at me.
“Madame! Is monsieur then not aware that madame is no longer at the hotel?”
“What?”
“On the same day as monsieur, madame departed.”
“Departed!Good God! what are you talking about?”
“A few hours after monsieur’s departure—I will not be positive as to the exact time, but it must have been between one and two o’clock as the middaytable d’hôtewas in progress—a gentleman came and asked for madame——”
“Yes—be quick.”
“I demanded whether I should take up his card, but he said ‘No,’ that was unnecessary,as he was perfectly well known to madame; and, in fact, a short time afterwards, without saying anything to any one, she departed with him.”
“And did not return in the evening?”
“No, monsieur; madame has not returned since that day.”
I clench my hands in an agony of rage and grief. “So this is it! With that pure child-face, with that divine ignorance—only three weeks married—this is the trick she has played me!” I am recalled to myself by a compassionate suggestion from the garçon.
“Perhaps it was the brother of madame.”
Elizabeth has no brother, but the remark brings back to me the necessity of self-command. “Very probably,” I answer, speaking with infinite difficulty. “What sort of looking gentleman was he?”
“He was a very tall and dark gentleman with a most peculiar nose—not quite like anynose that I ever saw before—and most singular eyes. Never have I seen a gentleman who at all resembled him.”
I sink into a chair, while a cold shudder creeps over me as I think of my poor child’s dream—of her fainting fit at Wiesbaden—of her unconquerable dread of and aversion from my departure. And this happened twelve days ago! I catch up my hat, and prepare to rush like a madman in pursuit.
“How did they go?” I ask incoherently; “by train?—driving?—walking?”
“They went in a carriage.”
“What direction did they take? Whither did they go?”
He shakes his head. “It is not known.”
“Itmustbe known,” I cry, driven to frenzy by every second’s delay. “Of course the driver could tell; where is he?—where can I find him?”
“He did not belong to Lucerne, neither didthe carriage; the gentleman brought them with him.”
“But madame’s maid,” say I, a gleam of hope flashing across my mind; “did she go with her?”
“No, monsieur, she is still here; she was as much surprised as monsieur at madame’s departure.”
“Send her at once,” I cry eagerly; but when she comes I find that she can throw no light on the matter. She weeps noisily and says many irrelevant things, but I can obtain no information from her beyond the fact that she was unaware of her mistress’s departure until long after it had taken place, when, surprised at not being rung for at the usual time, she had gone to her room and found it empty, and on inquiring in the hotel, had heard of her sudden departure; that, expecting her to return at night, she had sat up waiting for her till two o’clock in the morning, but that, as Iknew, she had not returned, neither had anything since been heard of her.
Not all my inquiries, not all my cross-questionings of the whole staff of the hotel, of the visitors, of the railway officials, of nearly all the inhabitants of Lucerne and its environs, procure me a jot more knowledge. On the next few weeks I look back as on a hellish and insane dream. I can neither eat nor sleep; I am unable to remain one moment quiet; my whole existence, my nights and my days, are spent in seeking, seeking. Everything that human despair and frenzied love can do is done by me. I advertise, I communicate with the police, I employ detectives; but that fatal twelve days’ start for ever baffles me. Only on one occasion do I obtain one tittle of information. In a village a few miles from Lucerne the peasants, on the day in question, saw a carriage driving rapidly through their little street. It was closed, butthrough the windows they could see the occupants—a dark gentleman, with the peculiar physiognomy which has been so often described, and on the opposite seat a lady lying apparently in a state of utter insensibility. But even this leads to nothing.
Oh, reader, these things happened twenty years ago; since then I have searched sea and land, but never have I seen my little Elizabeth again.