T
There is nothing else for it!” I exclaimed, as I set out for the hotel. “I’ll go back to England.”
I could not resist the conclusion that my presence in Avranches was no longer demanded. The duchess had, on the one hand, arrived at a sort of understanding with her husband; while she had, on the other, contrived to create a very considerable misunderstanding with me. She had shown no gratitude for my efforts, and made no allowance for the mistakes which, possibly, I had committed. She had behaved so unreasonably as to release me from any obligation. As to Marie Delhasse, I had had enough (so I declared in the hasty disgust my temper engendered) of Quixotic endeavors to rescue people who, had they any moral resolution, could well rescue themselves. There was only one thing left which I might with dignity undertake—and that was to put as many miles as I could between the scene of my unappreciated labors and myself. This I determined to do the very next day, after handing back this abominable necklace with as little obvious appearance of absurdity as the action would permit.
It was six o’clock when I reached the hotel and walked straight up to my room in sulky isolation, looking neither to right nor left, and exchanging a word with nobody. I tossed the red box down on the table, and flung myself into an armchair. I had half a mind to send the box down to Marie Delhasse by the waiter—with my compliments; but my ill-humor did not carry me so far as thus to risk betraying her to her mother, and I perceived that I must have one more interview with her—and the sooner the better. I rang the bell, meaning to see if I could elicit from the waiter any information as to the state of affairs on the first floor and the prospect of finding Marie alone for ten minutes.
I rang once—twice—thrice; the third was a mighty pull, and had at last the effect of bringing up my friend the waiter, breathless, hot, and disheveled.
“Why do you keep me waiting like this?” I asked sternly.
His puffs and pants prevented him from answering for a full half-minute.
“I was busy on the first floor, sir,” he protested at last. “I came at the very earliest moment.”
“What’s going on on the first floor?”
“The lady is in a great hurry, sir. She is going away, sir. She has been taking a hasty meal, and her carriage is ordered to be round at the door this very minute. And all the luggage had to be carried down, and—”
I walked to the window, and, putting my head out, saw a closed carriage, with four trunks and some smaller packages on the roof, standing at the door.
“Where are they going?” I asked, turning round.
The waiter was gone! A bell ringing violently from below explained his disappearance, but did not soothe my annoyance. I rang my bell very forcibly again: the action was a welcome vent for my temper. Turning back to the window, I found the carriage still there. A second or two later, Mme. Delhasse, attended by the waiter who ought to have been looking after me, came out of the hotel and got into the carriage. She spoke to the waiter, and appeared to give him money. He bowed and closed the door. The driver started his horses and made off at a rapid pace toward the carriage-road down the hill. I watched till the vehicle was out of sight and then drew my head in, giving a low puzzled whistle and forgetting the better part of my irritation in the interest of this new development. Where was the old witch going—and why was she going alone?
Again I rang my bell; but the waiter was at the door before it ceased tinkling.
“Where’s she going to?” I asked.
“To the house of the Duke of Saint-Maclou, sir,” he answered, wiping his brow and sighing for relief that he had got rid of her.
“And the young lady—where is she?”
“She has already gone, sir.”
“Already gone!” I cried. “Gone where? Gone when?”
“About two hours ago, sir—very soon after I saw you go out, sir—a messenger brought a letter for the young lady. I took it upstairs; she was alone when I entered. When she looked at the address, sir, she made a little exclamation, and tore the note open in a manner that showed great agitation. She read it; and when she had read it stood still, holding it in her hand for a minute or two. She had turned pale and breathed quickly. Then she signed to me with her hand to go. But she stopped me with another gesture, and—and then, sir—”
“Well, well, get on!” I cried.
“Then, sir, she asked if you were in the hotel, and I said no—you had gone out, I did not know where. Upon that, she walked to the window, and stood looking out for a time. Then she turned round to me, and said: ‘My mother was fatigued by her walk, and is sleeping. I am going out, but I do not wish her disturbed. I will write a note of explanation. Be so good as to cause it to be given to her when she wakes.’ She was calm then, sir; she sat down and wrote, and sealed the note and gave it to me. Then she caught up her hat, which lay on the table, and her gloves; and then, sir, she walked out of the hotel.”
“Which way did she go?”
“She went, sir, as if she were making for the footpath down the hill. An hour or more passed, and then madame’s bell rang. I ran up and, finding her in the sitting room, I gave her the note.”
“And what did she say?”
“She read it, and cried ‘Ah!’ in great satisfaction, and immediately ordered a carriage and that the maid should pack all her luggage and the young lady’s. Oh! she was in a great hurry, and in the best of spirits; and she pressed us on so that I was not able to attend properly to you, sir. And finally, as you saw, she drove off to the house of the duke, still in high good humor.”
The waiter paused. I sat silent in thought.
“Is there anything else you wish to know, sir?” asked the waiter.
Then my much-tried temper gave way again.
“I want to know what the devil it all means!” I roared.
The waiter drew near, wearing a very sympathetic expression. I knew that he had always put me down as an admirer of Marie Delhasse. He saw in me now a beaten rival. Curiously I had something of the feeling myself.
“There is one thing, sir,” said he. “The stable-boy told me. The message for Mlle. Delhasse was brought from a carriage which waited at the bottom of the hill, out of sight of the town. And—well, sir, the servants wore no livery; but the boy declares that the horses were those of the Duke of Saint-Maclou.”
I muttered angrily to myself. The waiter, discreetly ignoring my words, continued:
“And, indeed, sir, madame expected to meet her daughter. For I chanced to ask her if she would take with her a bouquet of roses which she had purchased in the town, and she answered: ‘Give them to me. My daughter will like to have them.’”
The waiter’s conclusion was obvious. And yet I did not accept it. For why, if Marie were going to the duke’s, should she not have aroused her mother and gone with her? That the duke had sent his carriage for her was likely enough; that he would cause it to wait outside the town was not impossible; that Marie had told her mother that she had gone to the duke’s was also clear from that lady’s triumphant demeanor. But that she had in reality gone, I could not believe. A sudden thought struck me.
“Did Mlle. Delhasse,” I asked, “send any answer to the note that came from the carriage?”
“Ah, sir, I forgot. Certainly. She wrote an answer, and the messenger carried it away with him.”
“And did the boy you speak of see anything more of the carriage?”
“He did not pass that way again, sir.”
My mind was now on the track of Marie’s device. The duke had sent his carriage to fetch her. She, left alone, unable to turn to me for guidance, determined not to go; afraid to defy him—more afraid, no doubt, because she could no longer produce the necklace—had played a neat trick. She must have sent a message to the duke that she would come with her mother immediately that the necessary preparations could be made; she had then written a note to her mother to tell her that she had gone in the duke’s carriage and looked to her mother to follow her. And having thus thrown both parties on a false scent, she had put on her hat and walked quietly out of the hotel. But, then, where had she walked to? My chain of inference was broken by that missing link. I looked up at the waiter. And then I cursed my carelessness. For the waiter’s eyes were no longer fixed on my face, but were fastened in eloquent curiosity on the red box which lay on my table. To my apprehensive fancy the Cardinal’s Necklace seemed to glitter through the case. That did not of course happen; but a jewel case is easy to recognize, and I knew in a moment that the waiter discerned the presence of precious stones. Our eyes met. In my puzzle I could do nothing but smile feebly and apologetically. The waiter smiled also—but his was a smile of compassion and condolence. He took a step nearer to me, and with infinite sympathy in his tone observed:
“Ah, well, sir, do not despair! A gentleman like you will soon find another lady to value the present more.”
In spite of my vanity—and I was certainly not presenting myself in a very triumphant guise to the waiter’s imagination—I jumped at the mistake.
“They are capricious creatures!” said I with a shrug. “I’ll trouble myself no more about them.”
“You’re right, sir, you’re right. It’s one one day, and another another. It’s a pity, sir, to waste thought on them—much more, good money. You will dine to-night, sir?” and his tone took a consolatory inflection.
“Certainly I will dine,” said I; and with a last nod of intelligence and commiseration, he withdrew.
And then I leaped, like a wildcat, on the box that contained the Cardinal’s Necklace, intent on stowing it away again in the seclusion of my coat-pocket. But again I stood with it in my hand—struck still with the thought that I could not now return it to Marie Delhasse, that she had vanished leaving it on my hands, and that, in all likelihood, in three or four hours’ time the Duke of Saint-Maclou would be scouring the country and setting every spring in motion in the effort to find the truant lady, and—what I thought he would be at least anxious about—the truant necklace. For to give your family heirlooms away without recompense is a vexatious thing; and ladies who accept them and vanish with them into space can claim but small consideration. And, moreover, if the missing property chance to be found in the possession of a gentleman who is reluctant to explain his presence, who has masqueraded as a groom with intent to deceive the owner of the said property, and has no visible business to bring or keep him on the spot at all—when all this happens, it is apt to look very awkward for that gentleman.
“You will regret it if you don’t start with me;” so said Gustave de Berensac. The present was one of the moments in which I heartily agreed with his prescient prophecy. Human nature is a poor thing. To speak candidly, I cannot recollect that, amid my own selfish perplexities, I spared more than one brief moment to gladness that Marie Delhasse had eluded the pursuit of the Duke of Saint-Maclou. But I spared another to wishing that she had thought of telling me to what haven she was bound.
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I
Imust confess at once that I might easily have displayed more acumen, and that there would have been nothing wonderful in my discerning or guessing the truth about Marie Delhasse’s movements. Yet the truth never occurred to me, never so much as suggested itself in the shape of a possible explanation. I cannot quite tell why; perhaps it conflicted too strongly with the idea of her which possessed me; perhaps it was characteristic of a temperament so different from my own that I could not anticipate it. At any rate, be the reason what it may, I did not seriously doubt that Marie Delhasse had cut the cords which bound her by a hasty flight from Avranches; and my conviction was deepened by my knowledge that an evening train left for Paris just about half an hour after Marie, having played her trick on her mother and on the Duke of Saint-Maclou, had walked out of the hotel, no man and no woman hindering her.
Under these circumstances, my work—imposed and voluntary alike—was done; and the cheering influence of the dinner to which I sat down so awoke my mind to fresh agility that I found the task of disembarrassing myself of that old man of the sea—the Cardinal’s Necklace—no longer so hopeless as it had appeared in the hungry disconsolate hour before my meal. Nay, I saw my way to performing, incidentally, a final service to Marie by creating in the mind of the duke such chagrin and anger as would, I hoped, disincline him from any pursuit of her. If I could, by one stroke, restore him his diamonds and convince him, not of Marie’s virtue, but of her faithlessness, I trusted to be humbly instrumental in freeing her from his importunity, and of restoring the jewels to the duchess—nay, of restoring to her also the undisturbed possession of her home and of the society of her husband. At this latter prospect I told myself that I ought to feel very satisfied, and rather to my surprise found myself feeling not very dissatisfied; for most unquestionably the duchess had treated me villainously and had entirely failed to appreciate me. My face still went hot to think of the glance she had given Marie Delhasse’s maladroit ambassador.
After these reflections and a bottle of Burgundy (I will not apportion the credit) I rose from the table humming a tune and started to go upstairs, conning my scheme in a contented mind. As I passed through the hall the porter handed me a note, saying that a boy had left it and that there was no answer. I opened and read it; it was very short and it ran thus:
I wish never to see you again. ELSA.
Now “Elsa” (and I believe that I have not mentioned the fact before—an evidence, if any were needed, of my discretion) was the Christian name of the Duchess of Saint-Maclou. Picking up her dropped handkerchief as we rambled through the woods, I had seen the word delicately embroidered thereon, and I had not forgotten this chance information. But why—let those learned in the ways of women answer if they can—why, first, did she write at all? Why, secondly, did she tell me what had been entirely obvious from her demeanor? Why, thirdly, did she choose to affix to the document which put an end to our friendship a name which that friendship had never progressed far enough to justify me in employing? To none of these pertinent queries could I give a satisfactory reply. Yet, somehow, that “Elsa” standing alone, shorn of all aristocratic trappings, had a strange attraction for me, and carried with it a pleasure that the uncomplimentary tenor of the rest of the document did not entirely obliterate. “Elsa” wished never to see me again: that was bad; but it was “Elsa” who was so wicked as to wish that: that was good. And by a curious freak of the mind it occurred to me as a hardship that I had not received so much as a note of one line from—“Marie.”
“Nonsense!” said I aloud and peevishly; and I thrust the letter into my pocket, cheek by jowl with the Cardinal’s Necklace. And being thus vividly reminded of the presence of that undesired treasure, I became clearly resolved that I must not be arrested for theft merely because the Duchess of Saint-Maclou chose (from hurry, or carelessness, or what motive you will) to sign a disagreeable and unnecessary communication with her Christian name and nothing more, nor because Mlle. Delhasse chose to vanish without a word of civil farewell. Let them go their ways—I did not know which of them annoyed me more. Notwithstanding the letter, notwithstanding the disappearance, my scheme must be carried out. And then—for home! But the conclusion came glum and displeasing.
The scheme was very simple. I intended to spend the hours of the night in an excursion to the duke’s house. I knew that old Jean slept in a detached cottage about half a mile from thechâteau. Here I should find the old man. I would hand to him the necklace in its box, without telling him what the contents of the box were. Jean would carry the parcel to his master, and deliver with it a message to the effect that a gentleman who had left Avranches that afternoon had sent the parcel by a messenger to the duke, inasmuch as he had reason to believe that the article contained therein was the property of the duke and that the duke would probably be glad to have it restored to him. The significant reticence of this message was meant to inform the duke that Marie Delhasse was not so solitary in her flight but that she could find a cavalier to do her errands for her, and one who would not acquiesce in the retention of the diamonds. I imagined, with a great deal of pleasure, what the duke’s feelings would be in face of the communication. Thus, then, the diamonds were to be restored, the duke disgusted, and I myself freed from all my troubles. I have often thought since that the scheme was really very ingenious, and showed a talent for intrigue which has been notably wanting in the rest of my humble career.
The scheme once prosperously carried through, I should, of course, take my departure at the earliest moment on the following day. I might, or I might not, write a line of dignified remonstrance to the duchess, but I should make no attempt to see her; and I should most certainly go. Moreover, it would be a long while before I accepted any of her harum-scarum invitations again.
“Elsa” indeed! Somehow I could not say it with quite the indignant scorn which I desired should be manifest in my tone. I have never been able to be indignant with the duchess; although I have laughed at her. Now I could be, and was, indignant with Marie Delhasse; though, in truth, her difficult position pleaded excuses for her treatment of me which the duchess could not advance.
As the clock of the church struck ten I walked downstairs from my room, wearing a light short overcoat tightly buttoned up. I informed the waiter that I was likely to be late, secured the loan of a latchkey, and left my good friend under the evident impression that I was about to range the shores of the bay in love-lorn solitude. Then I took the footpath down the hill and, swinging along at a round pace, was fairly started on my journey. If the inference I drew from the next thing I saw were correct, it was just as well for me to be out of the way for a little while. For, when I was still about thirty yards from the main road, there dashed past the end of the lane leading up the hill a carriage and pair, traveling at full speed. I could not see who rode inside; but two men sat on the box, and there was luggage on the top. I could not be sure in the dim light, but I had a very strong impression that the carriage was the same as that which had conveyed Mme. Delhasse out of my sight earlier in the evening. If it were so, and if the presence of the luggage indicated that of its owner, the good lady, arriving alone, must have met with the scantest welcome from the duke. And she would return in a fury of anger and suspicion. I was glad not to meet her; for if she were searching for explanation, I fancied, from glances she had given me, that I was likely to come in for a share of her attention. In fact, she might reasonably have supposed that I was interested in her daughter; nor, indeed, would she have been wrong so far.
Briskly I pursued my way, and in something over an hour I reached the turn in the road and, setting my face inland, began to climb the hill. A mile further on I came on a bypath, and not doubting from my memory of the direction, that this must be a short cut to the house, I left the road and struck along the narrow wooded track. But, although shorter than the road, it was not very direct, and I found myself thinking it very creditable to the topographical instinct of my friend and successor, Pierre, that he should have discovered on a first visit, and without having been to the house, that this was the best route to follow. With the knowledge of where the house lay, however, it was not difficult to keep right, and another forty minutes brought me, now creeping along very cautiously, alertly, and with open ears, to the door of old Jean’s little cottage. No doubt he was fast asleep in his bed, and I feared the need of a good deal of noisy knocking before he could be awakened from a peasant’s heavy slumber.
My delight was therefore great when I discovered that—either because he trusted his fellow-men, or because he possessed nothing in the least worth stealing—he had left his door simply on the latch. I lifted the latch and walked in. A dim lantern burned on a little table near the smoldering log-fire. Yet the light was enough to tell me that my involuntary host was not in the room. I passed across its short breadth to a door in the opposite wall. The door yielded to a push; all was dark inside. I listened for a sleeper’s breathing, but heard nothing. I returned, took up the lantern, and carried it with me into the inner room. I held it above my head, and it enabled me to see the low pallet-bed in the corner. But Jean was not lying in the bed—nay, it was clear that he had not lain on the bed all that night. Yet his bedtime was half-past eight or nine, and it was now hard on one o’clock. Jean was “making a night of it,” that seemed very clear. But what was the business or pleasure that engaged him? I admit that I was extremely annoyed. My darling scheme, on which I had prided myself so much, was tripped up by the trifling accident of Jean’s absence.
What in the world, I asked again, kept the old man from his bed? It suddenly struck me that he might, by the duke’s orders, have accompanied Mme. Delhasse back to Avranches, in order to be able to report to his master any news that came to light there. He might well have been the second man on the box. This reflection removed my surprise at his absence, but not my vexation. I did not know what to do! Should I wait? But he might not be back till morning. Wearily, in high disgust, I recognized that the great scheme had, for tonight at least, gone awry, and that I must tramp back to Avranches, carrying my old man of the sea, the Cardinal’s Necklace. For Jean could not read, and it was useless to leave the parcel with written directions.
I went into the outer room, and set the lantern in its place; I took a pull at my flask, and smoked a pipe. Then, with a last sigh of vexation, I grasped my stick in my hand, rose to my feet, and moved toward the door.
Ah! Hark! There was a footstep outside.
“Thank Heaven, here comes the old fool!” I murmured.
The step came on, and, as it came, I listened to it; and as I listened to it, the sudden satisfaction that had filled me as suddenly died away; for, if that were the step of old Jean, may I see no difference between the footfalls of an elephant and of a ballet-dancer! And then, before I had time to form any plan, or to do anything save stand staring in the middle of the floor, the latch was lifted again, the door opened, and in walked—the Duke of Saint-Maclou!
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T
The dim light served no further than to show that a man was there.
“Well, Jean, what news?” asked the duke, drawing the door close behind him.
“I am not Jean,” said I.
“Then who the devil are you, and what are you doing here?” He advanced and held up the lantern. “Why, what are you hanging about for?” he exclaimed the next moment, with a start of surprise.
“And I am not George Sampson either,” said I composedly. I had no mind to play any more tricks. As I must meet him, it should be in my own character.
The duke studied me from top to toe. He twirled his mustache, and a slight smile appeared on his full lips.
“Yet I know you as George Sampson, I think, sir,” said he, but in an altered tone. He spoke now as though to an equal—to an enemy perhaps, but to an equal.
I was in some perplexity; but a moment later he relieved me.
“You need trouble yourself with no denials,” he said. “Lafleur’s story of the gentleman at Avranches, with the description of him, struck me as strange; and for the rest—there were two things.”
He seated himself on a stool. I leaned against the wall.
“In the first place,” he continued, “I know my wife pretty well; in the second, a secret known to four maidservants— Really, sir, you were very confiding!”
“I was doing no wrong,” said I; though not, I confess, in a very convinced tone.
“Then why the masquerade?” he answered quickly, hitting my weak point.
“Because you were known to be unreasonable.”
His smile broadened a little.
“It’s the old crime of husbands, isn’t it?” he asked. “Well, sir, I’m no lawyer, and it’s not my purpose to question you on that matter. I will put you to no denials.”
I bowed. The civility of his demeanor was a surprise to me.
“If that were the only affair, I need not keep you ten minutes,” he went on. “At least, I presume that my friend would find you when he wanted to deliver a message from me?”
“Certainly. But may I ask why, if that is your intention, you have delayed so long? You guessed I was at Avranches. Why not have sent to me?”
The duke tugged his mustache.
“I do not know your name, sir,” he remarked.
“My name is Aycon.”
“I know the name,” and he bowed slightly. “Well, I didn’t send to you at Avranches because I was otherwise occupied.”
“I am glad, sir, that you take it so lightly,” said I.
“And by the way, Mr. Aycon, before you question me, isn’t there a question I might ask you? How came you here to-night?” And, as he spoke, his smile vanished.
“I have nothing to say, beyond that I hoped to see your servant Jean.”
“For what purpose? Come, sir, for what purpose? I have a right to ask for what purpose.” And his tone rose in anger.
I was going to give him a straightforward answer. My hand was actually on the way to the spot where I felt the red box pressing against my side, when he rose from his seat and strode toward me; and a sudden passion surged in his voice.
“Answer me! answer me!” he cried. “No, I’m not asking about my wife; I don’t care a farthing for that empty little parrot. Answer me, sir, as you value your life! What do you know of Marie Delhasse?”
And he stood before me with uplifted hand, as though he meant to strike me. I did not move, and we looked keenly into one another’s eyes. He controlled himself by a great effort, but his hands trembled, as he continued:
“That old hag who came to-night and dared to show her filthy face here without her daughter—she told me of your talks and walks. The girl was ready to come. Who stopped her? Who turned her mind? Who was there but you—you—you?”
And again his passion overcame him, and he was within an ace of dashing his fist in my face.
My hands hung at my side, and I leaned easily against the wall.
“Thank God,” said I, “I believe I stopped her! I believe I turned her mind. I did my best, and except me, nobody was there.”
“You admit it?”
“I admit the crime you charged me with. Nothing more.”
“What have you done with her? Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah!” he cried, in angry incredulity. “You don’t know, don’t you?”
“And if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“I’m sure of that,” he sneered. “It is knowledge a man keeps to himself, isn’t it? But, by Heaven, you shall tell me before you leave this place, or—”
“We have already one good ground of quarrel,” I interrupted. “What need is there of another?”
“A good ground of quarrel?” he repeated, in a questioning tone.
Honestly I believe that he had for the moment forgotten. His passion for Marie Delhasse and fury at the loss of her filled his whole mind.
“Oh, yes,” he went on. “About the duchess? True, Mr. Aycon. That will serve—as well as the truth.”
“If that is not a real ground, I know none,” said I.
“Haven’t you told me that you kept her from me?”
“For no purposes of my own.”
He drew back a step, smiling scornfully.
“A man is bound to protest that the lady is virtuous,” said he; “but need he insist so much on his own virtue?”
“As it so happens,” I observed, “it’s not a question of virtue.”
I suppose there was something in my tone that caught his attention, for his scornful air was superseded by an intent puzzled gaze, and his next question was put in lower tones:
“What did you stay in Avranches for?”
“Because your wife asked me,” said I. The answer was true enough, but, as I wished to deal candidly with him, I added: “And, later on, Mlle. Delhasse expressed a similar desire.”
“My wife and Mlle. Delhasse! Truly you are a favorite!”
“Honest men happen to be scarce in this neighborhood,” said I. I was becoming rather angry.
“If you are one, I hope to be able to make them scarcer by one more,” said the duke.
“Well, we needn’t wrangle over it any more,” said I; and I sat down on the lid of a chest that stood by the hearth. But the duke sprang forward and seized me by the arm, crying again in ungovernable rage:
“Where is she?”
“She is safe from you, I hope.”
“Aye—and you’ll keep her safe!”
“As I say, I know nothing about her, except that she’d be an honest girl if you’d let her alone.”
He was still holding my arm, and I let him hold it: the man was hardly himself under the slavery of his passion. But again, at my words, the wonder which I had seen before stole into his eyes.
“You must know where she is,” he said, with a straining look at my face, “but—but—”
He broke off, leaving his sentence unfinished. Then he broke out again:
“Safe from me? I would make life a heaven for her!”
“That’s the old plea,” said I.
“Is a thing a lie because it’s old? There’s nothing in the world I would not give her—nothing I have not offered her.” Then he looked at me, repeating again: “You must know where she is.” And then he whispered: “Why aren’t you with her?”
“I have no wish to be with her,” said I. Any other reason would not have appealed to him.
He sank down on the stool again and sat in a heap, breathing heavily and quickly. He was wonderfully transfigured, and I hardly knew in him the cold harsh man who had been my temporary master and was the mocking husband of the duchess. Say all that may be said about his passion, I could not doubt that it was life and death to him. Justification he had none; excuse I found in my heart for him, for it struck me—coming over me in a strange sudden revelation as I sat and looked at him—that he had given such love to the duchess, the gay little lady would have been marvelously embarrassed. It was hers to dwell in a radiant mid-ether, neither to mount to heaver nor descend to hell. And in one of theses two must dwell such feelings as the dukes’s.
He roused himself, and leaning forward spoke to me again:
“You’ve lived in the same house with her and talked to her. You swear you don’t love her? What? Has Elsa’s little figure come between?”
His tone was full of scorn. He seemed angry with me, not for presuming to love his wife (nay, he would not believe that), but for being so blind as not to love Marie.
“I didn’t love her!” I answered, with a frown on my face and slow words.
“You have never felt attracted to her?”
I did not answer that question. I sat frowning in silence till the duke spoke again, in a low hoarse whisper:
“And she? What says she to you?”
I looked up with a start, and met his searching wrathful gaze. I shook my head; his question was new to me—new and disturbing.
“I don’t know,” said I; and on that we sat in silence for many moments.
Then he rose abruptly and stood beside me.
“Mr. Aycon,” he said, in the smoother tones in which he had begun our curious interview, “I came near a little while ago to doing a ruffianly thing, of a sort I am not wont to do. We must fight out our quarrel in the proper way. Have you any friends in the neighborhood?”
“I am quite unknown,” I answered.
He thought for an instant, and then continued:
“There is a regiment quartered at Pontorson, and I have acquaintances among the officers. If agreeable to you, we will drive over there; we shall find gentlemen ready to assist us.”
“You are determined to fight?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, with a snap of his lips. “Have we not matters enough and to spare to fight about?”
“I can’t of course deny that you have a pretext.”
“And I, Mr. Aycon, know that I have also a cause. Will this morning suit you?”
“It is hard on two now.”
“Precisely. We have time for a little rest; then I will order the carriage and we will drive together to Pontorson.”
“You mean that I should stay in your house?”
“If you will so far honor me. I wish to settle this affair at once, so as to be moving.”
“I can but accept.”
“Indeed you could hardly get back to Avranches, if, as I presume, you came on foot. Ah! you’ve never told me why you wished to see Jean;” and he turned a questioning look on me again, as he walked toward the door of the cottage.
“It was—” I began.
“Stay; you shall tell me in the house. Shall I lead the way? Ah, but you know it!” and he smiled grimly.
With a bow, I preceded him along the little path where I had once waited for the duchess, and where Pierre, the new servant, had found me. No words passed between us as we went. The duke advanced to the door and unlocked it. We went in, nobody was about, and we crossed the dimly lighted hall into the small room where supper had been laid for three (three who should have been four) on the night of my arrival. Meat, bread, and wine stood on the table now, and with a polite gesture the duke invited me to a repast. I was tired and hungry, and I took a hunch of bread and poured out some wine.
“What keeps Jean, I wonder?” mused the duke, as he sat down. “Perhaps he has found her!” and a gleam of eager hope flashed from his eyes.
I made no comment—where was the profit in more sparring of words? I munched my bread and drank my wine, thinking, by a whimsical turn of thought, of Gustave de Berensac and his horror at the table laid for three. Soon I laid down my napkin, and the duke held out his cigarette case toward me:
“And now, Mr. Aycon, if I’m not keeping you up—”
“I do not feel sleepy,” said I.
“It is the same for both of us,” he reminded me, shrugging his shoulders. “Well, then, if you are willing—of course you can refuse if you choose—I should like to hear what brought you to Jean’s quarters on foot from Avranches in the middle of the night.”
“You shall hear. I did not desire to meet you, if I could avoid it, and therefore I sought old Jean, with the intention of making him a messenger to you.”
“For what purpose?”
“To restore to you something which has been left on my hands and to which you have a better right than I.”
“Pray, what is that?” he asked, evidently puzzled. The truth never crossed his mind.
“This,” said I; and I took the red leathern box out of my pocket, and set it down on the table in front of the duke. And I put my cigarette between my lips and leaned back in my chair.
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I
Ithink that at first the Duke of Saint-Maclou could not, as the old saying goes, believe his eyes. He sat looking from me to the red box, and from the red box back to my face. Then he stretched out a slow, wavering hand and drew the box nearer to him till it rested in the circle of his spread-out arm and directly under his poring gaze. He seemed to shrink from opening it; but at last he pressed the spring with a covert timid movement of his finger, and the lid, springing open, revealed the Cardinal’s Necklace.
It seemed to be more brilliant than I had ever seen it, in the light of the lamp that stood on the table by us; and the duke looked at it as a magician might at the amulet which had failed him, or a warrior at the talisman that had proved impotent. And I, moved to a sudden anger with him for tempting the girl with such a bribe, said bitterly and scornfully, with fresh indignation rising in me:
“It was a high bid! Strange that you could not buy her with it!”
He paid no visible heed to my taunt; and his tone was dull, bewildered, and heavy as, holding the box still in his curved arm, he asked slowly:
“Did she give it to you to give to me?”
“She gave it to me to give to your wife.” He looked up with a start. “But your wife would not take it of her. And when I returned from my errand she was gone—where I know not. So I decided to send it back to you.”
He did not follow, or took very little interest in my brief history. He did not even reiterate his belief that I knew Marie’s whereabouts. His mind was fixed on another point.
“How did you know she had it?” he asked.
“I found her with it on the table before her—”
“You found her?”
“Yes; I went into her sitting room and found her as I say; and she was sobbing; and I got from her the story of it.”
“She told you that?”
“Yes; and she feared to send it back, lest you should come and overbear her resistance. I supposed you had frightened her. But neither would she keep it—”
“You bade her not,” he put in, in a quick low tone.
“If you like, I prayed her not. Did it need much cleverness to see what was meant by keeping it?”
His mouth twitched. I saw the tempest rising again in him. But for a little longer he held it down.
“Do you take me for a fool?” he asked.
“Am I a boy—do I know nothing of women? And do I know nothing of men?”
And he ended in a miserable laugh, and then fell again to tugging his mustache with his shaking hand.
“You know,” said I, “what’s bad in both; and no doubt that’s a good deal.”
In that very room the duchess had called Gustave de Berensac a preacher. Her husband had much the same reproach for me.
“Sermons are fine from your mouth,” he muttered.
And then his self-control gave way. With a sweep of his arm he drove the necklace from him, so that the box whizzed across the table, balanced a moment on the edge, and fell crashing on the ground, while the duke cried:
“God’s curse on it and you! You’ve taken her from me!”
There was danger—there was something like madness—in his aspect as he rose, and, facing me where I sat, went on in tones still low, but charged with a rage that twisted his features and lined his white cheeks:
“Are you a liar or a fool? Have you taken the game for yourself, or are you fool enough not to see that she has despised me—and that miserable necklace—for you—because you’ve caught her fancy? My God! and I’ve given my life to it for two years past! And you step in. Why didn’t you keep to my wife? You were welcome to her—though I’d have shot you all the same for my name’s sake. You must have Marie too, must you?”
He was mad, if ever man was mad, at that moment. But his words were strong with the force and clear with the insight of his passion; and the rush of them carried my mind along, and swept it with them to their own conclusion. Nay, I will not say that—for I doubted still; but I doubted as a man who would deny, not as one who laughs away, a thought. I sat silent, looking, not at him, but at the Cardinal’s Necklace on the floor.
Then, suddenly, while I was still busy with the thought and dazzled at the revelation, while I sat bemused, before I could move, his fingers were on my throat, and his face within a foot of mine, glaring and working as he sent his strength into his arms to throttle me. For his wife—and his name—he would fight a duel: for the sake of Marie Delhasse he would do murder on an invited stranger in his house. I struggled to my feet, his grip on my throat; and I stretched out my hands and caught him under the shoulders in the armpits, and flung him back against the table, and thence he reeled on to a large cabinet that was by the wall, and Stood leaning against it.
“I knew you were a villain,” I said, “but I thought you were a gentleman.” (I did not stop to consider the theory implied in that.)
He leaned against the cabinet, red with his exertion and panting; but he did not come at me again. He dashed his hand across his forehead and then he said in hoarse breathless tones:
“You shan’t leave here alive!”
Then, with a start of recollection, he thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a key. He put it in the lock of a drawer of the cabinet, fumbling after the aperture and missing it more than once. Then he opened the drawer, took out a pair of dueling pistols, and laid them on the table.
“They’re loaded,” he said. “Examine them for yourself.”
I did not move; but I took my little friend out of my pocket.
“If I’m attacked,” said I, “I shall defend myself; but I’m not going to fight a duel here, without witnesses, at the dead of night, in your house.”
“Call it what you like then,” said he; and he snatched up a pistol from the table.
He was beyond remonstrance, influence, or control. I believe that in a moment he would have fired; and I must have fired also, or gone to my death as a sheep to the slaughter. But as he spoke there came a sound, just audible, which made him pause, with his right hand that held the pistol raised halfway to the level of his shoulder.
Faint as the sound was, slight as the interruption it would seem to offer to the full career of a madman’s fury, it was yet enough to check him, to call him back to consciousness of something else in the world than his balked passion and the man whom he deemed to have thwarted it.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
It was the lowest, softest knock at the door—a knock that even in asking attention almost shrank from being heard. It was repeated, louder, yet hardly audibly. The duke, striding on the tip of his toes, transferred the pistols from the table back to the drawer, and stood with his hand inside the open drawer: I slid my weapon into my pocket; and then he trod softly across the floor to the door.
“One moment!” I whispered.
And I stooped and picked up the Cardinal’s Necklace and put it back where it had lain before, pushing its box under the table by a hasty movement of my foot—for the duke, after a nod of intelligence, was already opening the door. I drew back in the shadow behind it and waited.
“What do you want?” asked the duke.
And then a girl stepped hastily into the room and closed the door quickly and noiselessly behind her. I saw her face: she was my old friend Suzanne. When her eyes fell on me, she started in surprise, as well she might; but the caution and fear, which had made her knock almost noiseless, her tread silent, and her face all astrain with alert alarm, held her back from any cry.
“Never mind him,” said the duke. “That’s nothing to do with you. What do you want?”
“Hush! Speak low. I thought you would still be up, as you told me to refill the lamp and have it burning. There’s—there’s something going on.”
She spoke in a quick, urgent whisper, and in her agitation remembered no deference in her words of address. “Going on? Where? Do you mean here?”
“No, no! I heard nothing here. In the duchess’s dressing-room: it is just under the room where I sleep. I awoke about half an hour ago, and I heard sounds from there. There was a sound as of muffled hammering, and then a noise, like the rasping of a file; and I thought I heard people moving about, but very cautiously.”
The duke and I were both listening attentively.
“I was frightened, and lay still a little; but then I got up—for the sounds went on—and put on some clothes, and came down—”
“Why didn’t you rouse the men? It must be thieves.”
“I did go to the men’s room; but their door was locked, and I could not make them hear. I did not dare to knock loud; but I saw a light in the room, under the door; and if they’d been awake they would have heard.”
“Perhaps they weren’t there,” I suggested.
Suzanne turned a sudden look on me. Then she said:
“The safe holding the jewels is fixed in the wall of the duchess’ dressing room. And—and Lafleur knows it.”
The duke had heard the story with a frowning face; but now a smile appeared on his lips, and he said:
“Ah, yes! The jewels are there!”
“The—the Cardinal’s Necklace,” whispered Suzanne.
“True,” said the duke; and his eyes met mine, and we both smiled. A few minutes ago it had not seemed likely that I should share a joke—even a rather grim joke—with him.
“Mr. Aycon,” said he, “are you inclined to help me to look into this matter? It may be only the girl’s fancy—”
“No, no; I heard plainly,” Suzanne protested eagerly.
“But one can never trust these rascally men-servants.”
“I am quite ready,” said I.
“Our business,” said he, “will wait.”
“It will be the better for waiting.”
He hesitated a moment; then he assented gravely:
“You’re right—much better.”
He took a pistol out of the drawer, and shut and locked the drawer. Then he turned to Suzanne and said:
“You had better go back to bed.”
“I daren’t, I daren’t!”
“Then stay here and keep quiet. Mind, not a sound!”
“Give me a pistol.”
He unlocked the drawer again, and gave her what she asked. Then signing to me to follow him, he opened the door, and we stepped together into the dark hall, the duke laying his hand on my arm and whispering:
“They’re after the necklace.”
We groped slowly, with careful noiselessness, across the hall to the foot of the great staircase. There we paused and listened. There was nothing to be heard. We climbed the first flight of stairs, and the duke turned sharp to the right. We were now in a short corridor which ran north and south; three yards ahead of us was another turn, leading to the west wing of the house. There was a window by us; the duke gently opened it; and over against us, across the base of the triangle formed by the building, was another window, four or five yards away. The window was heavily curtained; no light could be seen through it. But as we stood listening, the sounds began—first the gentle muffled hammering, then the sound of the file. The duke still held my arm, and we stood motionless. The sounds went on for a while. Then they ceased. There was a pause of complete stillness. Then a sharp, though not loud, click! And, upon this, the duke whispered to me:
“They’ve got the safe open. Now they’ll find the small portable safe which holds the necklace.”
And I could make out an amused smile on his pale face. Before I could speak, he turned and began to crawl away. I followed. We descended the stairs again to the hall. At the foot he turned sharply to the left, and came to a standstill in a recess under the staircase.
“We’ll wait here. Is your pistol all right?”
“Yes, all right,” said I.
And, as I spoke, the faintest sound spread from the top of the stairs, and a board creaked under the steps of a man. I was close against the duke, and I felt him quiver with a stifled laugh. Meanwhile the Cardinal’s Necklace pressed hard against my ribs under my tightly buttoned coat.
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