SALLE DU SABBAT.
How we all came to visit the _Grottes de S. Jean_ in one large party, I
never quite made out, but the fact remains that we went. Some one
proposed it, probably Miss Markham (for that gay young creature was
always on the alert to concoct a plan by which she should secure the
privilege of Mr. Charteris’s company), and some one agreed to it, but
neither of them was I.
I found myself one morning in the centre of a group consisting of Mr.
and Mrs. Carolus, Sophy Markham, Arthur Thrale and Charlie Sandilands,
Cave Charteris, and Ange and Tessie, all habited in walking costumes,
and armed with thick sticks, ready to start on an expedition to these
famous grottoes of stalactites, and I was told to put on my hat and
accompany them.
There was no particular interest to me in the expedition; indeed, had I
been given my choice, I would much rather have stayed at home on the
chance of getting a lesson in French from the Baron de Nesselrode—the
public will see that I am frank in these records, even to detailing my
errors of judgment—but consciousness that it was so, and that I showed
weakness in encouraging it, urged me to the opposite course, and I
agreed, with alacrity, to do all that they required of me. So in a few
minutes we had started on our way. Sophy Markham clinging close, of
course, to Charteris’s side, as Charlie Sandilands did to mine, and the
rest walking, as Ange expressed it, _heegledy-peegledy_. How well I
remember that morning: we were all so terribly young. Mrs. Carolus
skipped round and about her Willy, whom, more than once, she nearly
knocked over in her airy evolutions, as a bride of sixteen might have
done; whilst Miss Markham hung upon Charteris’s arm and gazed up into
his face with the rapture of a first attachment. The boys caught the
youthful infection, and raced Tessie and me down the green slopes we had
to traverse, until I told them they reminded me of Greenwich fair. Of
all the company only two seemed unequal to taking part in the general
hilarity. These two were Cave Charteris and _petite_ Ange.
He walked along with his head in the air, without appearing to take much
interest in the conversation of his self-elected companion. Did he or
did he not care for the attentions which this woman was always pressing
upon him? To love her I was quite sure would be impossible to him—the
great difference in their ages alone would render it most unlikely—but
he had certainly been more polite and amiable to her lately than he had
ever been before.
What motive could he have for it? for I was certain Cave Charter never
did anything without a motive. Did he entertain any thoughts of marrying
her? Miss Markham was reported at that time to have money, and Madame
Marmoret had more than once openly expressed her disgust to see the
lady’s favours transferred to the wrong quarter. But Mr. Charteris had
told me he was rich; he could never be so mean as to sell his liberty to
an old woman when he was not even in want of pecuniary assistance. Yet
on what other grounds, except the desire to ingratiate himself with her,
could one account for his former rudeness being changed to a curt
familiarity? The other dullard of our party, dear Ange, was not so
melancholy as she was silent. The burst of grief she had given way to,
now more than a week ago, had been succeeded by an unusually subdued
manner—an _older_ manner if I may express it so. It was as if the
discovery of that day had swept her youth away before it. So I believed,
at least, then—now I know that subtler influences were at work to
destroy her gaiety.
I tried on that morning, by every means in my power, to make Ange like
her former self, but it was in vain. She laughed, it is true, and when
we pulled her down the steep hills, the crimson blood mantled in her
peachy cheeks and made her beautiful, but there was a sense of care
underlying the laughter that spoilt the joyousness of its echo, and the
colour faded too fast after each exertion to have been called there by
healthy exercise.
The grottoes we were about to visit extended for a great distance under
the grounds of Monsieur de Condé, whose property they were, and who
charged a certain sum for admission to them. They had been discovered by
some workmen whilst excavating on his estate, and had been quite a
source of profit to their owner ever since. The visitors to St. Pucelle,
naturally, had already heard a great deal about these famous grottoes,
and Sophy Markham ‘gushed’ over them to her heart’s content.
‘Oh! I am so _anxious_ to see them! I am anticipating so much pleasure
from this little excursion!’ she exclaimed, with a violent and most
palpable squeeze of Mr. Charteris’s arm. ‘I have been looking over the
book in the hotel where visitors have written down their impressions of
them, and they are so terribly tantalising. A Persian describes himself
as having been suddenly transported into fairyland—didn’t he, Lizzie
dear?—positively into fairyland, and says he can compare the vast
caverns to nothing but the palace of his great master the sultan, and
the forms of the stalactites to lovely houris frozen around him. Isn’t
it poetical? _Frozen houris!_ Oh! I do love poetry so! It is the very
life of my soul.’
Tessie laughed quietly.
‘I’m afraid if you do not lessen your anticipations, Miss Markham, that
you will be disappointed. I went over the grotto years ago with some
friends, but I saw nothing at all like “frozen houris” there.’
‘Ah! but then, my dear Tessie, you are not imaginative. Now, I _am_. I
always have been, and it is my _métier_ to make the very best of
everything I see. You don’t blame me for it, or think me foolish, Mr.
Charteris, do you?’
Of course Mr. Charteris assured her that folly and herself were the two
things in his ideas farthest removed from one another, and just as he
had given vent to this opinion, we came in sight of the mouth of the
grotto, where two _guides_, each bearing a petroleum lamp, awaited our
arrival. They tendered us little hats made of grey linen, each trimmed
with a cockade and a bunch of red feathers in front, very much after the
pattern of those adopted by the monkeys on the organs, and for which we
were expected to exchange those we wore, which were liable to be damaged
by the drippings from the cave.
They were comical-looking head-dresses, and I hardly wondered at Mrs.
Carolus and the fair Sophia hesitating to surmount their hard-lined and
puckered faces by them, although Ange and Tessie looked all the prettier
from the contrast.
Miss Markham in particular, I could see, would rather have spoiled a
dozen hats than assumed the unbecoming linen one, had she not been
ridiculed into doing so.
‘Oh! Lizzie dear, we never _can_ wear such things—now can we?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, dear. I’d much rather keep on my bonnet, but
then it cost five guineas, and I shall be crazy if it gets hurt. I
really think I must venture to try one of the caps.’
‘Oh! my dear girl, you do look so comical! Excuse my laughing—but you’ve
no idea—and grey never did suit your complexion, you know.’
‘Well, I don’t think you need talk, Sophy. So plain a headdress is by no
means suited to your own style of features, I can tell you!’
‘Oh! the horrid thing—I will never, never wear it!’ cried the childish
Sophia, as she threw the offending cap upon the ground; and I believe,
if she had not overheard Mr. Charteris grumble at being kept waiting so
long, that she would have been as good as her word.
But, finding that we were all wearing them and she would be singular if
she did not do the same, she consented at last to crown her _chignon_
with it, and came simpering forth like a bashful girl that was afraid of
being looked at.
No one troubled her, however, and the whole party being ready, we began
to descend the first flight of wooden steps which were steep but easy,
and went down, down, down, until the ivy and fern covered entrance was
left far above us, and we had reached the very centre of the cave, which
was yet light enough to let us see that there were several more such
flights to be descended before we could touch level earth again.
This was a fine opportunity for Miss Markham and Mrs. Carolus to shriek
and laugh hysterically, and cling like grim death to whoever happened to
be nearest to them, and they made every use of it. But Mr. Charteris and
Mr. Carolus had been wise in their generation, and insisted upon going
down first, leaving their women-kind to struggle in the rear with any
one they could lay hold of. So poor Charlie and Arthur Thrale had them
all to themselves, whilst Tessie and I laughed wickedly in each others’
ears.
At last we stood on level ground, in a cavern as dark as Erebus; there
was no light anywhere, except from the lamps of the guides, who waved
them over their heads and introduced us to _la grande salle_. I looked
up and down and round about me; but all was black as pitch. I felt that
I was standing on broken flints and thick mud, and as the guides’ lamps
threw their faint gleam here and there, I perceived that the cave we
stood in was very vast and damp, and uncommonly like a huge cellar, but
I can’t say that I saw anything more.
‘Are these the “frozen houris?”’ asked Cave Charteris, sarcastically.
‘Oh no! I should hardly think so,’ replied Miss Markham, quickly;
‘and—where are you, Mr. Charteris? I feel so dreadfully timid, I can’t
tell you—and would give anything to have hold of the hand of some one
that I knew!’
‘Take mine!’ I said, with _malice prepense_; ‘it’s quite strong enough
to keep you from slipping.’
‘Oh no! I couldn’t think of it. I might fall and pull you down with me.
But if Mr. Charteris would help me——’
‘All right! You can take my arm if you wish it. But we can’t walk
abreast through the passages,’ he answered, with anything but lover-like
alacrity, and something made me turn to Ange and whisper:
‘Are you not frightened, dear, too? If so, I can hold you up.’
But she said calmly:
‘There is nothing to be frightened of, Hilda. We are on the solid ground
now, and can fall no lower.’
In another minute the guides had turned and led us through a passage cut
in the rock. We were not going up nor down stairs now, but picking our
way over slippery stones, and between places sometimes so narrow and so
low, that gaunt Mr. Carolus knocked his head more than once, as he
disregarded the guides’ warning cry of ‘_Tête!_’ and the majority of us
got bruised arms and shoulders. Every now and then we came upon a larger
excavation which was called a _salle_, and bore some name consequent on
the likeness assumed by the stalactites it contained. One was termed
_Salle de Brahma_, because it held a lump of crystal somewhat resembling
the idol of that name. Another _Salle du Sacrifice_, its principal
attraction being a large flat stone, at the foot of which was another,
shaped like a sausage and entitled _tombeau de la victime_.
We paced after the guides through these cavernous passages for what
appeared to me to be miles, my mind, meanwhile, being divided between
fear that I should leave my best pair of boots behind me in the slushy
clay, and apprehension as to the appearance my crape would present when
I reached home again. I heard Mrs. Carolus, every now and then,
querulously complaining to ‘Willy’ of the pains she was acquiring in her
back from the constant stooping, and I knew that Sophy Markham was
dogging Mr. Charteris’s steps as closely as the circumstances would
admit of, and that Tessie and Ange plodded behind me silent and
uncomplaining.
I was beginning to think that we had come on a very foolish expedition
and were likely to have more pain than pleasure for our trouble, when I
found we were ploughing our way up again, on fungus-covered ladders and
wet slippery stairs upon which it was most difficult to keep a footing,
until we arrived at what was decidedly the finest sight there, the
_Salle du Sabbat_. Here the guides proposed to send up a spirit balloon,
in order to show us the height and extent of the vast cavern, and went
away, taking the lamps with them, having first planted us in a row on
the edge of a precipice, and conjured us not to stir until their return.
I think we felt little inclination to do so. The blackness about us was
so thick that we could almost _feel_ it, and the silence was that of
death. Ange slipped her little hand in mine, and whispered:
‘Hilda, suppose they should never come back!’ and I could not say the
supposition was a pleasant one. She had been standing between Sophy
Markham and myself, but as she said the words, she slipped round my back
and linked her arm in mine on the other side.
Miss Markham, for a wonder, was silent, but Mrs. Carolus was plaintively
trying to make her spouse partake her girlish fears, and he was
ridiculing them with a kind of rough good sense that made me laugh.
Under cover of their expostulations with one another, a mouth approached
my ear on the side left vacant by Ange, and I heard a voice say gently:
‘My own darling! How much I love you!’
The announcement took me so completely by surprise, that, for the
moment, I imagined it had proceeded from Charlie Sandilands, and it was
quite a mercy that, under cover of the darkness, I did not turn round
and smartly box his ears in return for his impudence. But before I had
had time to prepare the weapon of chastisement, the speaker continued,
still in the same soft tones:
‘What a nuisance it is having to play propriety before all these bores!
How I long to be alone with you again, and able to tell you what I
feel!’
Before this sentence was concluded, I had recognised the voice as that
of Cave Charteris, and was bristling with indignation.
‘What do you mean by speaking to me like that?’ I said angrily.
‘Good God, Hilda!’ he rejoined, ‘is it you?’
‘Yes, it is I! Who did you take me for?’
‘Then—where—where—’ he stammered, in order to give himself time to think
of what to say, ‘where is Miss Markham?’
We had both raised our voices in our mutual surprise, and his last
question was overheard.
‘Here I am, Mr. Charteris!’ ejaculated the fair Sophy, from his other
side—I know she had shifted her quarters in hopes of extracting some
familiarity from him before the lights came back. ‘Close to you—see!’
The order to ‘see’ was apparently accompanied by a playful pinch, for
Charteris gave a sudden yell, and a step forward that might have sent
him over the precipice.
‘Do be careful, Miss Markham,’ I exclaimed, with an expression of
annoyance, ‘and keep your facetiæ until we stand on safer ground. You
might have caused Mr. Charteris to make a false step.’
‘Oh, you needn’t be so alarmed, Miss Marsh,’ she answered meaningly; ‘I
assure you I am quite as anxious for Mr. Charteris’s safety as you can
be, and I should think you had quite enough to do to look after Mr.
Sandilands without troubling yourself about other people!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I retorted; but at that moment the spirit
balloon rose in the air, and half a dozen voices joined in a chorus of
admiration at the height and depth and length and breadth of the cavern
we stood in, and the glittering clusters of stalactites which the light
momentarily revealed as it majestically sailed past them. I looked with
the rest, but my thoughts were far away from the scene around me. A
question was puzzling my brain which I felt I could not give up until I
had unravelled. _For whom_ had Cave Charteris intended the whisper which
by mistake he addressed to me?
It worried me all the way home, and long after I had reached it. His
subsequent query seemed to imply that he had believed Sophy Markham
stood next him, but I could not credit that he had said those words
except with the intent to mislead me. Was it possible that he could have
seriously called Miss Markham by such a term of endearment, or addressed
her with so much earnestness in his voice? And if it were not possible,
then—did he intend that speech for Ange, who would have been standing
between us had she not slipped round to my other side at the very moment
we were left in darkness?
_Cave Charteris and Ange!_ The very combination of names seemed like
sacrilege in my ears. The man who had made love to me, and left me in
years gone by—who had tried to make love to me only a few weeks back—to
have the happiness of that innocent trusting child in his hands! It was
too horrible to think of. Whatever his protestations or passions for the
moment might be, he was cold and cruel by nature. I could read it in his
eyes and the sentiments in which he expressed his opinions, and I
trembled to think what Ange’s fate might prove, if he aroused all her
deepest feelings, and then basely deserted her as he had deserted me.
What was I to do? What was it my duty to do—both towards her and him! If
the sentences I heard were meant for Ange, it was not the first time Mr.
Charteris had addressed her as a lover. That was evident.
‘My own darling!’ he had said, ‘how much I love you!’
Men don’t call women their ‘own’ until they have proved they are willing
to be so. I knew enough of human nature to know that. And then he had
added, ‘How I long to be alone with you _again_,’ which showed that
whoever he spoke to had already kept appointments with him.
Oh! could it—could it be our little Ange? All my knowledge of her
childish manner, her shyness and her modesty, seemed to refute the
suspicion as an impossibility; but it was still more impossible to
believe that Mr. Charteris had seriously addressed those lover-like
speeches to old Sophy Markham. My mind became distracted in its
ignorance what to think, and how to act. If he were making love to Ange,
I felt as if, at all risk, I ought to fly to her rescue; but if he were
only making fun of Miss Markham’s undisguised _penchant_ for himself,
why my interference would appear very ridiculous, and bring not only
discredit on me as a busybody and meddler, but perhaps lay me open to a
false inference of jealousy.
It was evening—nine or ten o’clock—and I was sitting in my own room,
leaning my elbows on the open window-sill, and gazing up into the
starless sky. The night was very dark—I remember thinking _how_ dark, as
I sat and mused there, sadly. I had seen Madame Marmoret, arrayed in her
best gown, with her scarlet shawl across her shoulders, her gold
earrings dangling from her ears, and the broad strings of her snow-white
cap pinned carefully together at the back of her neck, leave the
courtyard some time ago, on a visit of ceremony, I presumed, to some of
her friends. I knew that Mr. Lovett was busily engaged in the _salle_
playing _écarté_ with Monsieur Condé, who had looked in to hear if we
had enjoyed our visit to his immortal grotto: and I had left Tessie and
Ange ironing their father’s shirts in the kitchen. Mr. Charteris I was
unable to account for, as he had left the house immediately after
dinner, and was probably smoking the calumet of peace with his friend
Monsieur de Nesselrode, or perhaps repeating the words which so much
troubled me for the benefit of Miss Sophy Markham.
Whose then was the figure, decidedly a man’s, which had just entered the
courtyard by way of the stables and cow-house, and leant up against the
wall outside the kitchen-door? He was smoking a cigar, for I could
distinguish the red light as he blew the thin wreaths of smoke into the
air; but that was no guide to his personality, since every man in St.
Pucelle enjoyed the same privilege. The kitchen window was full in view
from where I sat, but the shutters were closed, so I could not see if
the girls were still at work within or no. But why did not the stranger,
whoever he might be, knock for admittance? Could he have entered the
yard with any nefarious intentions? In another moment I am sure I should
have spoken to him, had not the kitchen-door opened suddenly, and a
second figure stepped out into the darkness.
‘Don’t stay here!’ said a tender voice, which I recognised at once; ‘I
cannot come to you. Tessie wants me in the little _salle_!’
‘Cannot my angel spare me _one_ minute?’ asked Cave Charteris.
‘No! not one, until to-morrow! You will not try to keep me now, will
you?’—imploringly, as if to say that if he _did_ try, he would certainly
succeed—‘because they might hear of it and be angry.’
‘You shall do just as you think best, my darling, on one condition.’
‘What is that?’
‘That you tell me you love me before you go—I cannot sleep without it.’
I could not see, but I fancied, from her stifled tones, that he had
clasped his arms about her.
‘Oh! my love! my love!’ she repeated fervently; ‘_I do love you!_’
And then she slipped away and closed the kitchen-door softly, and after
an interval of half a minute I heard the other figure step carefully
across the paved court and pass into the open street again.
And I turned from the window and sank down on my knees beside my bed,
and prayed for a long, long time, for _petite_ Ange and for myself, and
judgment to know what best to do.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]