Happy, indeed, they were—almost too happy—though as pure and guiltless as if they had been hours spent within a nunnery of the strictest rule, and in the presence of a sainted abbess.
Happy, indeed, they were; and, although brief, oft repeated. For, henceforth, not a night passed but Raoul visited his Melanie, and tarried there enjoying her sweet converse, and bearing to her every day glad tidings of the process of his schemes, and the certainty of their escape, until the approach of morning warned him to make good his retreat ere envious eyes should be abroad to make espials.
And ever the page, Jules, kept watch at the ladder-foot in the garden: and the true maiden, Rose, who ever sate within the chamber with the lovers during their stolen interviews, guarded the door, with ears as keen as those of Cerberus.
A month had passed, and the last night had come, and all was successful—all was ready. The brigantine lay manned and armed, and at all points prepared for her brief voyage at an instant’s notice at Calais. Relays of horses were at each post on the road. Raoul had taken formal leave of the delighted monarch. His passport was signed—his treasures were on board his good ship—his pistols were loaded—his horses were harnessed for the journey.
For the last time he scaled the ladder—for the last time he stood within the chamber.
Too happy! ay, they were too happy on that night, for all was done, all was won; and nothing but the last step remained, and that step so easy. The next morning Melanie was to go forth, as if to early mass, with Rose and a single valet. The valet was to be mastered and overthrown as if in a street broil, the lady, with her damsel, was to step into a light caleche, which should await her, with her lover mounted at its side,and hie! for Calais—England—without the risk—the possibility of failure.
That night he would not tarry. He told his happy tidings, clasped her to his heart, bid her farewell till to-morrow, and in another moment would have been safe—a step sounded close to the door. Rose sprang to her feet, with her finger to her lip, pointing with her left hand to the deep cupboard-door.
She was right—there was not time to reach the window—at the same instant, as Melanie relighted the lamp, not to be taken in mysterious and suspicious darkness, the one door closed upon the lover just as the other opened to the husband.
But rapid and light as were the motions of Raoul, the treacherous door by which he had passed into his concealment, trembled still as Ploermel entered. And Rose’s quick eye saw that he marked it.
But if he saw it, he gave no token, made no allusion to the least doubt or suspicion; on the contrary, he spoke more gayly and kindly than his wont. He apologized for his untimely intrusion, saying that her father had come suddenly to speak with them, concerning her presentation at court, which the king had appointed for the next day, and wished, late as it was, to see her in the saloon below.
Nothing doubting the truth of his statement, which Raoul’s intended departure rendered probable, Melanie started from her chair, and telling Rose to wait, for she would be back in an instant, hurried out of the room, and took her way toward the great staircase.
The marquis ordered Rose to light her mistress, for the corridor was dark; and as the girl went out to do so, a suppressed shriek, and the faint sounds of a momentary scuffle followed, and then all was still.
A hideous smile flitted across the face of De Ploermel, as he cast himself heavily into an arm-chair, opposite the door ofthe cupboard in which St. Renan was concealed, and taking up a silver bell which stood on the table, rung it repeatedly and loudly for a servant.
“Bring wine,” he said, as the man entered. “And, hark you, the masons are at work in the great hall, and have left their tools and materials for building. Let half a dozen of the grooms come up hither, and bring with them brick and mortar. I hate the sight of that cupboard, and before I sleep this night, it shall be built up solid with a good wall of mason-work; and so here’s a health to the rats within it, and a long life to them!” and he quaffed off the wine in fiendish triumph.
He spoke so loud, and that intentionally that Raoul heard every word that he uttered.
But if he hoped thereby to terrify the lover into discovering himself, and so convicting his fair and innocent wife, the villain was deceived. Raoul heard every word—knew his fate—knew that one word, one motion would have saved him; but that one word, one motion would have destroyed the fair fame of his Melanie.
The memory of the death of that unhappy Lord of Kerguelen came palpably upon his mind in that dread moment, and the comments of his dead father.
“I, at least,” he muttered between his hard set teeth, “I at least will not be evidence against her. I will die silent—fiel hasta, la muerte!”
And when the brick and mortar were piled by the hands of the unconscious grooms, and when the fatal trowels clanged and jarred around him, he spake not—stirred not—gave no sign.
Even the savage wretch, De Ploermel, unable to believe in the existence of such chivalry, such honor, half doubted if he were not deceived, and the cupboard were not untenanted bythe true victim.
Higher and higher rose the wall before the oaken door; and by the exclusion of the light of the many torches by which the men were working, the victim must have marked, inch by inch, the progress of his living immurement. The page, Jules, had climbed in silence to the window’s ledge, and was looking in, an unseen spectator, for he had heard all that passed from without, and suspected his lord’s presence within the fatal precinct.
But as he saw the wall rise higher—higher—as he saw the last brick fastened in its place solid, immovable from within, and that without strife or opposition, he doubted not but that there was some concealed exit by which St. Renan had escaped, and he descended hastily and hurried homeward.
Now came the lady’s trial—the trial that shall prove to De Ploermel whether his vengeance was complete. She was led in with Rose, a prisoner.Lettres de cachethad been obtained, when the treason of some wretched subordinate had revealed the secret of her intended flight with Raoul; and the officers had seized the wife by the connivance of the shameless husband.
“See!” he said, as she entered, “see, the fool suffered himself to be walled up there in silence. There let him die in agony. You, madam, may live as long as you please in the Bastile,au secret.”
She saw that all was lost—her lover’s sacrifice was made—she could not save him! Should she, by a weak divulging of the truth, render his grand devotion fruitless? Never!
Her pale cheek did not turn one shade the paler, but her keen eye flashed living fire, and her beautiful lip writhed with loathing and scorn irrepressible.
“It is thou who art the fool!” she said, “who hast made all this coil, to wall up a poor cat in a cupboard, as it is thou whoart the base knave and shameless pandar, who has attempted to do murther, and all to sell thine own wife to a corrupt and loathsome tyrant!”
All stood aghast at her fierce words, uttered with all the eloquence and vehemence of real passion, but none so much as Rose, who had never beheld her other than the gentlest of the gentle. Now she wore the expression, and spoke with the tone of a young Pythoness, full of the fury of the god.
She sprang forward as she uttered the last words, extricating herself from the slight hold of the astonished officers, and rushed toward her cowed and craven husband.
“But in all things, mean wretch,” she continued, in tones of fiery scorn, “in all things thou art frustrate—thy vengeance is naught, thy vile ambition naught, thyself and thy king, fools, knaves, and frustrate equally, and now,” she added snatching the dagger which Raoul had given her from the scabbard, “now die, infamous, accursed pandar!” and with the word she buried the keen weapon at one quick and steady stroke to the very hilt in his base and brutal heart.
Then, ere the corpse had fallen to the earth, or one hand of all those that were stretched out to seize her had touched her person, she smote herself mortally with the same reeking weapon, and only crying out in a dear, high voice, “Bear witness, Rose, bear witness to my honor! Bear witness all that I die spotless!” fell down beside the body of her husband, and expired without a struggle or a groan.
Awfully was she tried, and awfully she died. Rest to her soul, if it be possible.
The caitiff marquis de Ploermel perished, as she had said in all things frustrated; for though his vengeance was in very deed complete, he believed that it had failed, and in his very agony that failure was his latest and his worst regret.
On the morrow, when St. Renan returned not to his home, the page gave the alarm, and the fatal wall was torn down, but too late.
The gallant victim of love’s honor was no more. Doomed to a lingering death he had died speedily, though by no act of his own. A blood vessel had burst within, through the violence of his own emotions. Ignorant of the fate of his sweet Melanie, he had died as he had lived, the very soul of honor; and when they buried him, in the old chapel of his Breton castle, beside his famous ancestors, none nobler lay around him; and the brief epitaph they carved upon his stone was true, at least, if it were short and simple, for it ran onlythus—
Raoul de St. Renan.Fiel hasta la Muerte.
Raoul de St. Renan.Fiel hasta la Muerte.
Raoul de St. Renan.Fiel hasta la Muerte.