“To cheat me, me!” Crochard went on with extraordinary vehemence,—“to cheat a friend, an old comrade! Ah the rascal! But he sha’n’t go to paradise, if I can help it! Let them cut my throat, I don’t mind it; I shall be quite content even, provided I see his throat cut first.”
“He has not even been arrested yet.”
“But nothing is easier than to catch him, sir. He must be uneasy at not hearing from me; and I am sure he is going every day to the post-office to inquire if there are no letters yet for M. X. O. X. 88. I can write to him. Do you want me to write to him? I can tell him that I have once more missed it, and that I have been caught even, but that the police have found out nothing, and that they have set me free again. I am sure, after that, the scamp will keep quiet; and the police will have nothing to do but to take the omnibus, and arrest him at his lodgings.”
The magistrate had allowed the prisoner to give free vent to his fury, knowing full well by experience how intensely criminals hate those of their accomplices by whom they find themselves betrayed. And he was in hopes that the rage of this man might suggest a new idea, or furnish him with new facts. When he saw he was not likely to gain much, he said,—
“Justice cannot stoop to such expedients.” Then he added, seeing how disappointed Crochard looked,—
“You had better try and recollect all you can. Have you forgotten or concealed nothing that might assist us in carrying out this examination?”
“No; I think I have told you every thing.”
“You cannot furnish any additional evidence of the complicity of Justin Chevassat, of his efforts to tempt you to commit this crime, or of the forgery he committed in getting up a false set of papers for you?”
“No! Ah, he is a clever one, and leaves no trace behind him that could convict him. But, strong as he is, if we could be confronted in court, I’d undertake, just by looking at him, to get the truth out of him somehow.”
“You shall be confronted, I promise you.”
The prisoner seemed to be amazed.
“Are you going to send for Chevassat?” he asked.
“No. You will be sent home, to be tried there.”
A flash of joy shone in the eyes of the wretch. He knew the voyage would not be a pleasant one; but the prospect of being tried in France was as good as an escape from capital punishment to his mind. Besides, he delighted in advance in the idea of seeing Chevassat in court, seated by his side as a fellow-prisoner.
“Then,” he asked again, “they will send me home?”
“On the first national vessel that leaves Saigon.”
The magistrate went and sat down at the table where the clerk was writing, and rapidly ran his eye over the long examination, seeing if anything had been overlooked. When he had done, he said,—
“Now give me as accurate a description of Justin Chevassat as you can.”
Crochard passed his hand repeatedly over his forehead; and then, his eyes staring at empty space, and his neck stretched out, as if he saw a phantom which he had suddenly called up, he said,—
“Chevassat is a man of my age; but he does not look more than twenty seven or eight. That is what made me hesitate at first, when I met him on the boulevard. He is a handsome fellow, very well made, and wears all his beard. He looks clever, with soft eyes; and his face inspires confidence at once.”
“Ah! that is Maxime all over,” broke in Daniel.
And, suddenly remembering something, he called Lefloch. The sailor started, and almost mechanically assumed the respectful position of a sailor standing before his officer.
“Lieutenant?” he said.
“Since I have been sick, they have brought part of my baggage here; have they not?”
“Yes, lieutenant, all of it.”
“Well. Go and look for a big red book with silver clasps. You have no doubt seen me look at it often.”
“Yes, lieutenant; and I know where it is.”
And he immediately opened one of the trunks that were piled up in a corner of the room, and took from it a photograph album, which, upon a sign from Daniel, he handed to the lawyer.
“Will you please,” said Daniel at the same time, “ask the prisoner, if, among the sixty or seventy portraits in that book, he knows any one?”
The album was handed to Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, who turned over leaf after leaf, till all of a sudden, and almost beside himself, he cried out,—
“Here he is, Justin Chevassat! Oh! that’s he, no doubt about it.”
Daniel could, from his bed, see the photograph, and said,—
“That is Maxime’s portrait.”
After this decisive evidence, there could be no longer any doubt that Justin Chevassat and Maxime de Brevan were one and the same person. The investigation was complete, as far as it could be carried on in Saigon; the remaining evidence had to be collected in Paris. The magistrate directed, therefore, the clerk to read the deposition; and Crochard followed it without making a single objection. But when he had signed it, and the gendarmes were about to carry him off again, and to put on the handcuffs, he asked leave to make an addition. The magistrate assented; and Crochard said,—
“I do not want to excuse myself, nor to make myself out innocent; but I do not like, on the other hand, to seem worse than I am.”
He had assumed a very decided position, and evidently aimed at giving to his words an expression of coarse but perfect frankness.
“The thing which I had undertaken to do, it was not in my power to do. It has never entered my head to kill a man treacherously. If I had been a brute, such as these are, the lieutenant would not be there, wounded to be sure, but alive. Ten times I might have done his business most effectively; but I did not care. I tried in vain to think of Chevassat’s big promises; at the last moment, my heart always failed me. The thing was too much for me. And the proof of it is, that I missed him at ten yards’ distance. The only time when I tried it really in earnest was in the little boat, because there, I ran some risk; it was like a duel, since my life was as much at stake as the lieutenant’s. I can swim as well as anybody, to be sure; but in a river like the Dong-Nai, at night, and with a current like that, no swimmer can hold his own. The lieutenant got out of it; but I was very near being drowned. I could not get on land again until I had been carried down two miles or more; and, when I did get on shore, I sank in the mud up to my hips. Now, I humbly beg the lieutenant’s pardon; and you shall see if I am going to let Chevassat escape.”
Thereupon he held out his hands for the handcuffs, with a theatrical gesture, and left the room.
In the meantime, the long, trying scene had exhausted Daniel; and he lay there, panting, on his bed. The surgeon and the lawyer withdrew, to let him have some rest.
He certainly needed it; but how could he sleep with the fearful idea of his Henrietta—she whom he loved with his whole heart—being in the hands of this Justin Chevassat, a forger, a former galley-slave, the accomplice and friend of Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet?
“And I myself handed her over to him!” he repeated for the thousandth time,—“I, her only friend upon earth! And her confidence in me was so great, that, if she had any presentiment, she suppressed it for my sake.”
Daniel had, to be sure, a certain assurance now, that Maxime de Brevan would not be able to escape from justice. But what did it profit him to be avenged, when it was too late, long after Henrietta should have been forced to seek in suicide the only refuge from Brevan’s persecution? Now it seemed to him as if the magistrate was far more anxiously concerned for the punishment of the guilty than for the safety of the victims. Blinded by passion, so as to ask for impossibilities, Daniel would have had this lawyer, who was so clever in unearthing crimes committed in Saigon, find means rather to prevent the atrocious crime which was now going on in France. On his part, he had done the only thing that could be done.
At the first glimpse of reason that had appeared after his terrible sufferings, he had hastened to write to Henrietta, begging her to take courage, and promising her that he would soon be near her. In this letter he had enclosed the sum of four thousand francs.
This letter was gone. But how long would it take before it could reach her? Three or four months, perhaps even more.
Would it reach her in time? Might it not be intercepted, like the others? All these anxieties made a bed of burning coals of the couch of the poor wounded man. He twisted and turned restlessly from side to side, and felt as if he were once more going to lose his senses. And still, by a prodigious effort of his will, his convalescence pursued its normal, steady way in spite of so many contrary influences.
A fortnight after Crochard’s confession, Daniel could get up; he spent the afternoon in an arm-chair, and was even able to take a few steps in his chamber. The next week he was able to get down into the garden of the hospital, and to walk about there, leaning on the arm of his faithful Lefloch. And with his strength and his health, hope, also, began to come back; when, all of a sudden, two letters from Henrietta rekindled the fever.
In one the poorgirltold him how she had lived so far on the money obtained from the sale of the little jewelry she had taken with her, but added that she was shamefully cheated, and would soon be compelled to seek employment of some sort in order to support herself.
“I am quite sure,” she said, with a kind of heartrending cheerfulness, “that I can earn my forty cents a day; and with that, my friend, I shall be as happy as a queen, and wait for your return, free from want.”
In the other she wrote,—
“None of my efforts to procure work has so far succeeded. The future is getting darker and darker. Soon I shall be without bread. I shall struggle on to the last extremity, were it only not to give my enemies the joy of seeing me dead. But, Daniel, if you wish to see your Henrietta again, come back; oh, come back!”
Daniel had not suffered half as much the day when the assassin’s ball ploughed through his chest. He was evidently reading one of those last cries which precede agony. After these two fearful letters, he could only expect a last one from Henrietta,—a letter in which she would tell him, “All is over. I am dying. Farewell!”
He sent for the chief surgeon, and said, as soon as he entered,—
“I must go!”
The good doctor frowned, and replied rudely,—
“Are you mad? Do you know that you cannot stand up fifteen minutes?”
“I can lie down in my berth.”
“You would kill yourself.”
“What of that? I would rather suffer death than what I now endure. Besides, I have made up my mind irrevocably! Read this, and you will see yourself that I cannot do otherwise.”
The chief surgeon took in Henrietta’s last letter almost at a single glance; but he held it in his hand for some time, pretending to read it, but in reality meditating.
“I am sure,” the excellent man thought in his heart, “I am sure, in this man’s place, I should do the same. But would this imprudence be of any use to him? No; for he could not reach the mouth of the Dong-Nai alive. Therefore it is my duty to keep him here: and that can be done, since he is as yet unable to go out alone; and Lefloch will obey me, I am sure, when I tell him that his master’s life depends upon his obedience.”
Too wise to meet so decided a determination as Daniel’s was by a flat refusal, he said,—
“Very well, then; be it as you choose!”
Only he came in again the same evening, and, with an air of disappointment, said to Daniel,—
“To go is all very well; but there is one difficulty in the way, of which neither you nor I have thought.”
“And what is that?”
“There is no vessel going home.”
“Really, doctor?”
“Ah! my dear friend,” replied the excellent man boldly, “do you think I could deceive you?”
Evidently Daniel thought him quite capable of doing so; but he took good care not to show his suspicions, reserving to himself the right of making direct inquiries as soon as the opportunity should offer. It came the very next morning. Two friends of his called to see him. He sent Lefloch out of the room on some pretext, and then begged them to go down to the port, and to engage a passage for him,—no, not for him, but for his man, whom urgent business recalled to France.
In the most eager manner the two gentlemen disappeared. They stayed away three hours; and, when they came back, their answer was the same as the doctor’s. They declared they had made inquiries on all sides; but they were quite sure that there was not a single vessel in Saigon ready to sail for home. Ten other persons whom Daniel asked to do the same thing brought him the same answer. And yet, that very week, two ships sailed,—one for Havre, the other for Bordeaux. But the concierge of the hospital, and Lefloch, were so well drilled, that no visitor reached Daniel before having learned his lesson thoroughly.
Thus they succeeded in keeping Daniel quiet for a fortnight; but, at the end of that time, he declared that he felt quite well enough to look out for a ship himself; and that, if he could do no better, he meant to sail for Singapore, where he would be sure to procure a passage home. It would, of course, have been simple folly to try and keep a man back who was so much bent upon his purpose; and, as his first visit to the port would have revealed to him the true state of things, the old surgeon preferred to make a clean breast of it. When he learned that he had missed two ships, Daniel was at first naturally very much incensed.
“That was not right, doctor, to treat me thus,” he exclaimed. “It was wrong; for you know what sacred duties call me home.”
But the surgeon was prepared for his justification. He replied with a certain solemnity which he rarely assumed,—
“I have only obeyed my conscience. If I had let you set sail in the condition in which you were, I should have virtually sent you to your grave, and thus have deprived your betrothed, Miss Ville-Handry, of her last and only chance of salvation.”
Daniel shook his head sadly, and said,—
“But if I get there too late, too late; by a week, a day, do you think, doctor, I shall not curse your prudence? And who knows, now, when a ship will leave?”
“When? On Sunday, in five days; and that ship is ‘The Saint Louis’ a famous clipper, and so good a sailor, that you will easily overtake the two big three-masters that have sailed before you.”
Offering his hand to Daniel, he added,—
“Come, my dear Champcey; don’t blame an old friend who has done what he thought was his duty to do.”
Daniel was too painfully affected to pay much attention to the conclusive and sensible reasons alleged by the chief surgeon; he saw nothing but that his friends had taken advantage of his condition to keep him in the dark. Still he also felt that it would have been black ingratitude and stupid obstinacy to preserve in his heart a shadow of resentment. He therefore, took the hand that was offered him, and, pressing it warmly, replied in a tone of deep emotion,—
“Whatever the future may have in store for me, doctor, I shall never forget that I owe my life to your devotion.”
As usually, when he felt that excitement was overcoming him,—a very rare event, to tell the truth,—the old surgeon fell back into his rough and abrupt manner.
“I have attended you as I would have attended any one: that is my duty, and you need not trouble yourself about your gratitude. If any one owes me thanks, it is Miss Ville-Handry; and I beg you will remind her of it when she is your wife. And now you will be good enough to dismiss all those dismal ideas, and remember that you have only five days longer to tremble with impatience in this abominable country.”
He spoke easily enough of it,—five days! It was an eternity for a man in Daniel’s state of mind. In three hours he had made all his preparations for his departure, arranged his business matters, and obtained a furlough for Lefloch, who was to go with him. At noon, therefore, he asked himself with terror, how he was to employ his time till night, when they came, and asked if he would please come over to the courthouse, to see the magistrate.
He went at once, and found the lawyer, but so changed, that he hardly recognized him at first. The last mail had brought him the news of his appointment to a judgeship, which he had long anxiously desired, and which would enable him to return, not only to France, but to his native province. He meant to sail in a frigate which was to leave towards the end of the month, and in which Crochard, also, was to be sent home.
“In this way,” he said, “I shall arrive at the same time as the accused, and very soon after the papers, which were sent home last week; and I trust and hope I shall be allowed to conduct the trial of an affair, which, so far, has gone smoothly enough in my hands.”
His impassive air was gone; and that official mask was laid aside, which might have been looked upon as much a part of his official costume as the black gown which was lying upon one of his trunks. He laughed, he rubbed his hands, and said,—
“I should take pleasure in having him in my court, this Justin Chevassat, alias Maxime de Brevan. He must be a cool swindler, brimful of cunning and astuteness, familiar with all the tricks of criminal courts, and not so easily overcome. It will be no child’s play, I am sure, to prove that he was the instigator of Crochard’s crimes, and that he has hired him with his own money. Ah! There will be lively discussions and curious incidents.”
Daniel listened, quite bewildered.
“He, too,” he thought. “Professional enthusiasm carries him away; and here he is, troubling himself about the discussions in court, neither less nor more than Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet. He thinks only of the honor he will reap for having handed over to the jury such a formidable rascal as”—
But the lawyer had not sent for Daniel to speak to him of his plans and his hopes. Having learned from the chief surgeon that Lieut. Champcey was on the point of sailing, he wished to tell him that he would receive a very important packet, which he was desired to hand to the court as soon as he reached Paris.
“This is, you understand,” he concluded, “an additional precaution which we take to prevent Maxime de Brevan from escaping us.”
It was five o’clock when Daniel left the court-house; and on the little square before it he found the old surgeon, waiting to carry him off to dinner, and a game of whist in the evening. So, when he undressed at night, he said to himself,—
“After all, the day has not been so very long!”
But to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and the next days!
He tried in vain to get rid of the fixed idea which filled his mind,—a mechanical instinct, so to say, which was stronger than his will, and drove him incessantly to the wharf where “The Saint Louis” was lying. Sitting on some bags of rice, he spent hour after hour in watching the cargo as it was put on board. Never had the Annamites and the Chinamen, who in Saigon act as stevedores, appeared to him so lazy, so intolerable. Sometimes he felt as if, seeing or guessing his impatience, they were trying to irritate him by moving the bales with the utmost slowness, and walking with unbearable laziness around with the windlass.
Then, when he could no longer bear the sight, he went to the cafe on the wharf, where the captain of “The Saint Louis” was generally to be found.
“Your men will never finish, captain,” he said. “You will never be ready by Sunday.”
To which the captain invariably replied in his fierce Marseilles accent,—
“Don’t be afraid, lieutenant. ‘The Saint Louis,’ I tell you, beats the Indian mail in punctuality.”
And really, on Saturday, when he saw his passenger come as usual to the cafe, the captain exclaimed,—
“Well, what did I tell you? We are all ready. At five o’clock I get my mail at the post-office; and to-morrow morning we are off. I was just going to send you word that you had better sleep on board.”
That evening the officers of “The Conquest,” gave Daniel a farewell dinner; and it was nearly midnight, when, after having once more shaken hands most cordially with the old chief surgeon, he took possession of his state-room, one of the largest on board ship, in which they had put up two berths, so that, in case of need, Lefloch might be at hand to attend his master.
Then at last, towards four o’clock in the morning, Daniel was aroused by the clanking of chains, accompanied by the singing of the sailors. He hastened on deck. They were getting up anchors; and, an hour after that, “The Saint Louis” went down the Dong-Nai, aided by a current, rushing along “like lightning.”
“And now,” said Daniel to Lefloch, “I shall judge, by the time it will take us to get home, if fortune is on my side.”
Yes, fate, at last, declared for him. Never had the most extraordinarily favorable winds hastened a ship home as in this case. “The Saint Louis” was a first-class sailer; and the captain, stimulated by the presence of a navy lieutenant, always exacted the utmost from his ship; so that on the seventeenth day after they had left Saigon, on a fine winter afternoon, Daniel could see the hills above Marseilles rise from the blue waters of the Mediterranean. He was drawing near the end of the voyage and of his renewed anxieties. Two days more, and he would be in Paris, and his fate would be irrevocably fixed.
But would they let him go on shore that evening? He trembled as he thought of all the formalities which have to be observed when a ship arrives. The quarantine authorities might raise difficulties, and cause a delay.
Standing by the side of the captain, he was watching the masts, which looked as if they were loaded down with all the sails they could carry, when a cry from the lookout in the bow of the vessel attracted his attention. That man reported, at two ship’s lengths on starboard, a small boat, like a pilot-boat, making signs of distress. The captain and Daniel exchanged looks of disappointment. The slightest delay in the position in which they were, and at a season when night falls so suddenly, deprived them of all hope of going on shore that night. And who could tell how long it would take them to go to the rescue of that boat?
“Well, never mind!” said Daniel. “We have to do it.”
“I wish they were in paradise!” swore the captain.
Nevertheless, he ordered all that was necessary to slacken speed, and then to tack so as to come close upon the little boat.
It was a difficult and tedious manoeuvre; but at last, after half an hour’s work, they could throw a rope into the boat.
There were two men in it, who hastened to come on the deck of the clipper. One was a sailor of about twenty, the other a man of perhaps fifty, who looked like a country gentleman, appeared ill at ease, and cast about him restless glances in all directions. But, whilst they were hoisting themselves up by the man-rope; the captain of “The Saint Louis” had had time to examine their boat, and to ascertain that it was in good condition, and every thing in it in perfect order.
Crimson with wrath, he now seized the young sailor by his collar; and, shaking him so roughly as nearly to disjoint his neck, he said with a formidable oath,—
“Are you making fun of me? What wretched joke have you been playing?”
Like their captain, the men on board, also, had discovered the perfect uselessness of the signals of distress which had excited their sympathy; and their indignation was great at what they considered a stupid mystification. They surrounded the sailor with a threatening air, while he struggled in the captain’s hand, and cried in his Marseilles jargon,—
“Let go! You are smothering me! It is not my fault. It was the gentleman there, who hired my boat for a sail. I, I would not make the signal; but”—
Nevertheless, the poor fellow would probably have experienced some very rough treatment, if the “gentleman” had not come running up, and covered him with his own body, exclaiming,—
“Let that poor boy go! I am the only one to blame!”
The captain, in a great rage, pushed him back, and, looking at him savagely, said,—
“Ah! so it is you who have dared”—
“Yes, I did it. But I had my reasons. This is surely ‘The Saint Louis,’ eh, coming from Saigon?”
“Yes. What next?”
“You have on board Lieut. Champcey of the navy?”
Daniel, who had been a silent witness of the scene, now stepped forward, very much puzzled.
“I am Lieut. Champcey, sir,” he said. “What do you desire?”
But, instead of replying, the “gentleman” raised his hands to heaven in a perfect ecstasy of joy, and said in an undertone,—
“We triumph at last!”
Then, turning to Daniel and the captain, he said,—
“But come, gentlemen, come! I must explain my conduct; and we must be alone for what I have to tell you.”
Pale, and with every sign of seasickness in his face, when he had first appeared on deck, the man now seemed to have recovered, and, in spite of the rolling of the vessel, followed the captain and Daniel with a firm step to the quarter-deck. As soon as they were alone, he said,—
“Could I be here, if I had not used a stratagem? Evidently not. And yet I had the most powerful interest in boarding ‘The Saint Louis’ before she should enter port; therefore I did not hesitate.”
He drew from his pocket a sheet of paper, simply folded twice, and said,—
“Here is my apology, Lieut. Champcey; see if it is sufficient.”
Utterly amazed, the young officer read,—
“I am saved, Daniel; and I owe my life to the man who will hand you this. I shall owe to him the pleasure of seeing you again. Confide in him as you would in your best and most devoted friend; and, I beseech you, do not hesitate to follow his advice literally.
“Henrietta.”
Daniel turned deadly pale, and tottered. This unexpected, intense happiness overcame him.
“Then—it is true—she is alive?” he stammered.
“She is at my sister’s house, safe from all danger.”
“And you, sir, you have rescued her?”
“I did!”
Prompt like thought, Daniel seized the man’s hands, and, pressing them vehemently, exclaimed with a penetrating voice,—
“Never, sir, never, whatever may happen, can I thank you enough. But remember, I pray you, under all circumstances, and for all times, you can count upon Lieut. Champcey.”
A strange smile played on the man’s lips; and, shaking his head, he said, “I shall before long remind you of your promise, lieutenant.”
Standing between the two men, the captain of “The Saint Louis” was looking alternately at the one and the other with an astonished air, listening without comprehending, and imagining marvellous things. The only point he understood was this, that his presence was, to say the least, not useful.
“If that is so,” he said to Daniel, “we cannot blame this gentleman for the ugly trick he has played us.”
“Blame him? Oh, certainly not!”
“Then I’ll leave you. I believe I have treated the sailor who brought him on board a little roughly; but I am going to order him a glass of brandy, which will set him right again.”
Thereupon the captain discreetly withdrew; while Papa Ravinet continued,—
“You will tell me, M. Champcey, that it would have been simpler to wait for you in port, and hand you my letter of introduction there. That would have been grievous imprudence. If I heard at the navy department of your arrival, others may have learned it as well. As soon, therefore, as ‘The Saint Louis’ was telegraphed in town, you may be sure a spy was sent to the wharf, who is going to follow you, never losing sight of you, and who will report all your goings and your doings.”
“What does it matter?”
“Ah! do not say so, sir! If our enemies hear of our meeting, you see, if they only find out that we have conversed together, all is lost. They would see the danger that threatens them, and they would escape.”
Daniel could hardly trust his ears.
“Our enemies?” he asked, emphasizing the word “our.”
“Yes: I meanourenemies,—Sarah Brandon, Countess Ville-Handry, Maxime de Brevan, Thomas Elgin, and Mrs. Brian.”
“You hate them?”
“If I hate them! I tell you for five years I have lived only on the hope of being able to avenge myself on them. Yes, it is five years now, that, lost in the crowd, I have followed them with the perseverance of an Indian,—five years that I have patiently, incessantly, inch by inch, undermined the ground beneath their steps. And they suspect nothing. I doubt whether they are aware of my existence. No, not even—What would it be to them, besides? They have pushed me so far down into the mud, that they cannot imagine my ever rising again up to their level. They triumph with impunity; they boast of their unpunished wickedness, and think they are strong, and safe from all attacks, because they have the prestige and the power of gold. And yet their hour is coming. I, the wretched man, who have been compelled to hide, and to live on my daily labor,—I have attained my end. Every thing is ready; and I have only to touch the proud fabric of their crimes to make it come down upon them, and crush them all under the ruins. Ah! if I could see them only suffer one-fourth of what they have made me suffer, I should die content.”
Papa Ravinet seemed to have grown a foot; his hatred convulsed his placid face; his voice trembled with rage; and his yellow eyes shone with ill-subdued passion.
Daniel wondered, and asked himself what the people who had sworn to ruin him and Henrietta could have done to this man, who looked so inoffensive with his bright-flowered waistcoat and his coat with the high collar.
“But who are you, sir?” he asked.
“Who am I?” exclaimed the man,—“who am I?”
But he paused; and, after waiting a little while, he sunk his head, and said,—
“I am Anthony Ravinet, dealer in curiosities.”
The clipper was in the meantime making way rapidly. Already the white country houses appeared on the high bluffs amid the pine-groves; and the outlines of the Castle of If were clearly penned on the deep blue of the sky.
“But we are getting near,” exclaimed Papa Ravinet; “and I must get back into my boat. I did not come out so far, that they might see me enter on board ‘The Saint Louis.’”
And when Daniel offered him his state-room, where he might remain in concealment, he replied,—
“No, no! We shall have time enough to come to an understanding about what is to be done in Paris; and I must go back by rail to-night; I came down for the sole purpose of telling you this. Miss Henrietta is at my sister’s house; but you must take care not to come there. Neither Sarah nor Brevan know what has become of her; they think she has thrown herself into the river; and this conviction is our safety and our strength. As they will most assuredly have you watched, the slightest imprudence might betray us.”
“But I must see Henrietta, sir.”
“Certainly; and I have found the means for it. Instead of going to your former lodgings, go to the Hotel du Louvre. I will see to it that my sister and Miss Ville-Handry shall have taken rooms there before you reach Paris; and you may be sure, that, in less than a quarter of an hour after your arrival, you will hear news. But, heavens, how near we are! I must make haste.”
Upon Daniel’s request, the ship lay by long enough to allow Papa Ravinet and his sailor to get back again into their boat without danger. When they were safely stowed away in it, and at the moment when they cast off the man-rope, Papa Ravinet called to Daniel,—
“We shall soon see you! Rely upon me! Tonight Miss Henrietta shall have a telegram from us.”
At the same hour when Papa Ravinet, on the deck of “The Saint Louis,” was pressing Daniel’s hand, and bidding him farewell, there were in Paris two poor women, who prayed and watched with breathless anxiety,—the sister of the old dealer, Mrs. Bertolle, the widow; and Henrietta, the daughter of Count Ville-Handry. When Papa Ravinet had appeared the evening before, with his carpet-bag in his hand, his hurry had been so extraordinary, and his excitement so great, that one might have doubted his sanity. He had peremptorily asked his sister for two thousand francs; had made Henrietta write in all haste a letter of introduction to Daniel; and had rushed out again like a tempest, as he had come in, without saying more than this,—
“M. Champcey will arrive, or perhaps has already arrived, in Marseilles, on board a merchant vessel, ‘The Saint Louis.’ I have been told so at the navy department. It is all important that I should see him before anybody else. I take the express train of quarter past seven. To-morrow, I’ll send you a telegram.”
The two ladies asked for something more, a hope, a word; but no, nothing more! The old dealer had jumped into the carriage that had brought him, before they had recovered from their surprise; and they remained there, sitting before the fire, silent, their heads in their hands, each lost in conjectures. When the clock struck seven, the good widow was aroused from her grave thoughts, which seemed so different from her usual cheerful temper.
“Come, come, Miss Henrietta,” she said with somewhat forced gayety, “my brother’s departure does not condemn us, as far as I know, to starve ourselves to death.”
She had gotten up as she said this. She set the table, and then sat down opposite to Henrietta, to their modest dinner. Modest it was, indeed, and still too abundant. They were both too much overcome to be able to eat; and yet both handled knife and fork, trying to deceive one another. Their thoughts were far away, in spite of all their efforts to keep them at home, and followed the traveller.
“Now he has left,” whispered Henrietta as it struck eight.
“He is on his way already,” replied the old lady.
But neither of them knew anything of the journey from Paris to Marseilles. They were ignorant of the distances, the names of the stations, and even of the large cities through which the railroad passes.
“We must try and get a railway guide,” said the good widow. And, quite proud of her happy thought, she went out instantly, hurried to the nearest bookstore, and soon reappeared, flourishing triumphantly a yellow pamphlet, and saying,—
“Now we shall see it all, my dear child.”
Then, placing the guide on the tablecloth between them, they looked for the page containing the railway from Paris to Lyons and Marseilles, then the train which Papa Ravinet was to have taken; and they delighted in counting up how swiftly the “express” went, and all the stations where it stopped.
Then, when the table was cleared, instead of going industriously to work, as usually, they kept constantly looking at the clock, and, after consulting the book, said to each other,—
“He is at Montereau now; he must be beyond Sens; he will soon be at Tonnerre.”
A childish satisfaction, no doubt, and very idle. But who of us has not, at least once in his life, derived a wonderful pleasure, or perhaps unspeakable relief from impatience, or even grief, from following thus across space a beloved one who was going away, or coming home? Towards midnight, however, the old lady remarked that it was getting late, and that it would be wise to go to bed.
“You think you will sleep, madam?” asked Henrietta, surprised.
“No, my child; but”—
“Oh! I, for my part,—Icould not sleep. This work on which we are busy is very pressing, you say; why could we not finish it?”
“Well, let us sit up then,” said the good widow.
The poor women, reduced as they were to conjectures by Papa Ravinet’s laconic answers, nevertheless knew full well that some great event was in preparation, something unexpected, and yet decisive. What it was, they did not know; but they understood, or rather felt, that Daniel’s return would and must totally change the aspect of affairs. But would Daniel really come?
“If he does come,” said Henrietta, “why did they only the other day tell me, at the navy department, that he was not coming? Then, again, why should he come home in a merchant vessel, and not on board his frigate?”
“Your letters have probably reached him at last,” explained the old lady; “and, as soon as he received them, he came home.”
Gradually, however, after having exhausted all conjectures, and after having discussed all contingencies, Henrietta became silent. When it struck half-past three, she said once more,—
“Ah! M. Ravinet is at the Lyons station now.”
Then her hand became less and less active in drawing the worsted, her head oscillated from side to side, and her eyelids closed unconsciously. Her old friend advised her to retire; and this time she did not refuse.
It was past ten o’clock when she awoke; and upon entering, fully dressed, into the sitting-room, Mrs. Bertolle greeted her with the exclamation:—
“At this moment my brother reaches Marseilles!”
“Ah! then it will not be long before we shall have news,” replied Henrietta.
But there are moments in which we think electricity the slowest of messengers. At two o’clock nothing had come; and the poor women began to accuse the old dealer of having forgotten them, when, at last, the bell was rung.
It was really the telegraph messenger, with his black leather pouch. The old lady signed her receipt with marvellous promptness; and, tearing the envelope hastily open, she read,—
Marseilles, 12.40 a.m.
“Saint Louis” signalled by telegraph this morning. Will be in to-night. I hire boat to go and meet her, provided Champcey is on board. This evening telegram.
Ravinet.
“But this does not tell us any thing,” said Henrietta, terribly disappointed. “Just see, madam,yourbrother is not even sure whether M. Champcey is on board ‘The Saint Louis.’”
Perhaps Mrs. Bertolle, also, was a little disappointed; but she was not the person to let it be seen.
“But what did you expect, dear child? Anthony has not been an hour in Marseilles; how do you think he can know? We must wait till the evening. It is only a matter of a few hours.”
She said this very quietly; but all who have ever undergone the anguish of expectation will know how it becomes more and more intolerable as the moment approaches that is to bring the decision. However the old lady endeavored to control her excitement, the calm and dignified woman could not long conceal the nervous fever that was raging within her. Ten times during the afternoon she opened the window, to look for—what? She could not have told it herself, as she well knew nothing could come as yet. At night she could not stay in any one place. She tried in vain to work on her embroidery; her fingers refused their service.
At last, at ten minutes past nine, the telegraph man appeared, as impassive as ever.
This time it was Henrietta who had taken the despatch; and, before opening it, she had half a minute’s fearful suspense, as if the paper had contained the secret of her fate. Then, by a sudden impulse, tearing the envelope, she read, almost at a glance,—
Marseilles, 6.45 p.m.
I have seen Champcey. All well; devoted to Henrietta. Return this evening. Will be in Paris tomorrow evening at seven o’clock. Prepare your trunks as if you were to start on a month’s journey immediately after my return. All is going well.
Pale as death, and trembling like a leaf, but with open lips and bright eyes, Henrietta had sunk into a chair. Up to this moment she had doubted every thing. Up to this hour, until she held the proof in her hand, she had not allowed herself to hope. Such great happiness does not seem to the unhappy to be intended for them. But now she stammered out,—
“Daniel is in France! Daniel! Nothing more to fear; the future is ours. I am safe now.”
But people do not die of joy; and, when she had recovered her equanimity, Henrietta understood how cruel she had been in the incoherent phrases that had escaped her in her excitement. She rose with a start, and, seizing Mrs. Bertolle’s hands, said to her,—
“Great God! what am I saying! Ah, you will pardon me, madam, I am sure; but I feel as if I did not know what I am doing. Safe! I owe it to you and your brother, if I am safe. Without you Daniel would find nothing of me but a cross at the cemetery, and a name stained and destroyed by infamous calumnies.”
The old lady did not hear a word. She had picked up the despatch, had read it; and, overcome by its contents, had sat down near the fireplace, utterly insensible to the outside world. The most fearful hatred convulsed her ordinarily calm and gentle features; and pale, with closed teeth, and in a hoarse voice, she said over and over again,—
“We shall be avenged.”
Most assuredly Henrietta did not find out only now that the old dealer and his sister hated her enemies, Sarah Brandon and Maxime de Brevan, mortally; but she had never seen that hatred break out so terribly as to-night. What had brought it about? This she could not fathom. Papa Ravinet, it was evident, was not a nobody. Ill-bred and coarse in Water Street, amid the thousand articles of his trade, he became a very different man as soon as he reached his sister’s house. As to the Widow Bertolle, she was evidently a woman of superior intellect and education.
How had they both been reduced to this more than modest condition? By reverses of fortune. That accounts for everything, but explains nothing.
Such were Henrietta’s thoughts, when the old lady roused her from her meditations.
“You saw, my dear child,” she began saying, “that my brother desires us to be ready to set out on a long journey as soon as he comes home.”
“Yes, madam; and I am quite astonished.”
“I understand; but, although I know no more than you do of my brother’s intentions, I know that he does nothing without a purpose. We ought, therefore, in prudence, comply with his wishes.”
They agreed, therefore, at once on their arrangements; and the next day Mrs. Bertolle went out to purchase whatever might be necessary,—ready-made dresses for Henrietta, shoes, and linen. Towards five o’clock in the afternoon, all the preparations of the old lady and the young girl had been made; and all their things were carefully stowed away in three large trunks. According to Papa Ravinet’s despatch, they had only about two hours more to wait, three hours at the worst. Still they were out of their reckoning. It was half-past eight before the good man arrived, evidently broken down by the long and rapid journey which he had just made.
“At last!” exclaimed Mrs. Bertolle. “We hardly expected you any longer to-night.”
But he interrupted her, saying,—
“Oh, my dear sister! don’t you think I suffered when I thought of your impatience? But it was absolutely necessary I should show myself in Water Street.”
“You have seen Mrs. Chevassat?”
“I come from her just now. She is quite at her ease. I am sure she has not the slightest doubt that Miss Ville-Handry has killed herself; and she goes religiously every morning to the Morgue.”
Henrietta shuddered.
“And M. de Brevan?” she asked.
Papa Ravinet looked troubled.
“Ah, I don’t feel so safe there,” he replied. “The man I had left in charge of him has foolishly lost sight of him.”
Then noticing the trunks, he said,—
“But I am talking, and time flies. You are ready, I see. Let us go. I have a carriage at the door. We can talk on the way.”
When he noticed some reluctance in Henrietta’s face, he added with a kindly smile,—
“You need not fear anything, Miss Henrietta; we are not going away from M. Champcey, very far from it. Here, you see, he could not have come twice without betraying the secret of your existence.”
“But where are we going?” asked Mrs. Bertolle.
“To the Hotel du Louvre, dear sister, where you will take rooms for Mrs. and Miss Bertolle. Be calm; my plans are laid.”
Thereupon, he ran out on the staircase to call the concierge to help him in taking down the trunks.
Although the manoeuvres required by Papa Ravinet’s appearance on board “The Saint Louis” had taken but little time, the delay had been long enough to prevent the ship from going through all the formalities that same evening. She had, therefore, to drop anchor at some distance from the harbor, to the great disgust of the crew, who saw Marseilles all ablaze before them, and who could count the wineshops, and hear the songs of the half-drunken people as they walked down the wharves in merry bands.
The least unhappy of them all was, for once, Daniel. The terrible excitement he had undergone had given way to utter prostration. His nerves, strained to the utmost, relaxed; and he felt the delight of a man who can at last throw down a heavy burden which he has long borne on his shoulders. Papa Ravinet had given him no details; but he did not regret it, he hardly noticed it. He knew positively that his Henrietta was alive; that she was in safety; and that she still loved him. That was enough.
“Well, lieutenant,” said Lefloch, delighted at his master’s joy, “did I not tell you? Good wind during the passage always brings good news upon landing.”
That night, while “The Saint Louis” was rocking lazily over her anchors, was the first night, since Daniel had heard of Count Ville-Handry’s marriage, that he slept with that sweet sleep given by hope. He was only aroused by the noise of the people who came in the quarantine boat; and, when he came on deck, he found that there was nothing any longer to prevent his going on shore. The men had been actively engaged ever since early in the morning, to set things right aloft and below, so as to “dress” “The Saint Louis;” for every ship, when it enters port, is decked out gayly, and carefully conceals all traces of injuries she has suffered, like the carrier-pigeon, which, upon returning to his nest after a storm, dries and smooths his feathers in the sun.
Soon the anchors were got up again; and the great clock on the wharf struck twelve, when Daniel jumped on the wharf at Marseilles, followed by his faithful man, and dazzled by the most brilliant sunlight. Ah! when he felt his foot once more standing on the soil of France, whence a vile plot had driven him long ago, his eyes flashed, and a threatening gesture boded ill to his enemies. It looked as if he were saying to them,—
“Here I am, and my vengeance will be terrible!”
Neither his joy nor his excitement, however, could make him forget the apprehensions of Papa Ravinet, although he thought they were eccentric, and very much exaggerated. That a spy should be waiting for him in the harbor, concealed in this busy, noisy crowd, to follow his track, and report his minutest actions,—this seemed to him, if not impossible, at least very improbable.
Nevertheless, he determined to ascertain the fact. Instead, therefore, of simply following the wharf, of going up Canebiere Street, and turning to the right on his way to the Hotel du Luxembourg, he went through several narrow streets, turning purposely every now and then. When he reached the hotel, he was compelled to acknowledge that the old dealer had acted wisely.
A big fellow, dark complexioned, and wicked looking, had followed the same route as he, always keeping some thirty yards behind him. The man who thus watched him, with his nose in the air and his hands in his pockets, hardly suspected the danger which he ran by practising his profession within reach of Lefloch. The idea of being tracked put the worthy sailor into a red-hot fury; and he proposed nothing less than to “run foul” of the spy, and make an end of him for good.
“I can do it in a second,” he assured his master. “I just go up to him, without making him aware of my presence.Iseize him by his cravat; I give him two turns, like that—and good-night. He won’t track anybody again.”
Daniel had to use all his authority to keep him back, and found it still harder to convince him of the necessity to let the scamp not know that he had been discovered.
“Besides,” he added, “it is not proved yet that we are really watched; it may be merely a curious coincidence.”
“That may be so,” growled Lefloch.
But they could no longer doubt, when, just before dinner, as they looked out of the window, they saw the same man pass the hotel. At night they saw him again at the depot; and he took the same express train of 9.45 for Paris, in which they went. They recognized him in the refreshment-room at Lyons. And the first person they saw as they got out at Paris was the same man.
But Daniel did not mind the spy. He had long since forgotten him. He thought of nothing but the one fact that he was in the same town now with Henrietta. Too impatient to wait for his trunks, he left Lefloch in charge, and jumped into a cab, promising the driver two dollars if he would go as fast as he could to the Hotel du Louvre. For such pay, the lean horses of any cab become equal to English thoroughbreds; and in three-quarters of an hour Daniel was installed in his room at the hotel, and waited with anxiety the return of the waiter. Now that he was really here, a thousand doubts assailed him: “Had he understood Papa Ravinet correctly? Had the good old man given him the right directions? Might they not, excited as they both were, have easily made a mistake?”
“In less than a quarter of an hour after your arrival,” Papa Ravinet had said to Daniel, “you shall have news.”
Less than a quarter of an hour! It seemed to Daniel as if he had been an eternity in this room. Thinking that Henrietta might possibly occupy a room on the same floor with him, on the same side of the house, that he might even be separated from her only by a partition-wall, he felt like cursing Papa Ravinet, when there came a knock at the door.
“Come in!” he cried.
A waiter appeared, and handed him a visiting-card, on which was written, “Mrs. Bertolle, third story. No. 5.”
As the waiter did not instantly disappear, Daniel said almost furiously,—
“Did I not tell you it was all right?”
He did not want the man to see his excitement, the most intense excitement he had ever experienced in all his life. His hands shook; he felt a burning sensation in his throat; his knees gave way under him. He looked at himself in the glass, and was startled; he looked deadly pale.
“Am I going to be ill?” he thought.
On the table stood a carafe with water. He filled a large glass, and drank it at one draught; this made him feel better, and he went out. But, once outside, he was so overcome, that he lost his way in the long passages and interminable staircases, in spite of the directions hung up at every turn, and had finally to ask a waiter, who pointed out a door which he had passed half a dozen times, and said,—
“That is No. 5.”
He knocked gently, and the door opened instantly, as if somebody had been standing behind it, ready to open it promptly. As he entered, he tottered, and, almost in a mist, saw on his right side Papa Ravinet and an old lady, then, farther back, near the window, Henrietta.
He uttered a cry, and went forward. But as quickly she bounded to meet him, casting both arms around his neck, and leaning upon his bosom, sobbing and stammering,—
“Daniel, Daniel! At last!”