steps. Hiding behind trees, the young lover would keep his eyes fixed
steadfastly on the maiden’s house. When she came out, Edouard would
follow her at a distance, and watch her for hours at a time. But he saw
that she was always alone, running along behind her flocks, or seated
quietly upon a mound, smiling artlessly at the gambols of her goats, and
glancing along the road by which her lover had gone away. If her eyes
turned toward the mysterious house, then an expression of melancholy, of
anxiety, would steal over her features; but she did not on that account
leave the place where she usually sat, and no one came out of the White
House to speak to her.
Ashamed of yielding to such jealous impulses, Edouard was always tempted
to throw himself at Isaure’s feet; but he restrained himself, watched
her return to her cottage, and then walked cautiously toward the White
House, and when he reached the door, listened attentively to see if he
could hear any sound inside.
Although thus far nothing had happened to justify his secret uneasiness,
Edouard was unable to overcome it; he felt that he should not be
tranquil in his mind until he knew what the obstacle was which prevented
him from being Isaure’s husband. Day after day he implored her to
confide to him what it was that detained her near the White House, that
prevented her from consenting to be his wife at once; but Isaure always
kept silent, or else said to her lover:
"Forgive me, but I cannot speak; the secret is not mine. Wait a little
longer. After all, are we not happy now, since we can tell each other
every day that we love each other?"
A girl may be content with such happiness; it satisfies her mind and it
satisfies her heart; she cannot desire any other; but it is not the same
with a young lover; the assurance that he is loved, the joy of pressing
his sweetheart in his arms is not enough for him; he is not content with
glances and oaths. Edouard realized that he could not long contain
himself; he realized the perils of their situation, and yet he did not
wish to sully that pure young blossom before it was lawful for him to
pluck it.
One morning, after urging the girl once more, to no purpose, to tell him
what it could be that prevented her from disposing of her hand, Edouard
had walked sadly away from the cottage, and his eyes had rested with
gloomy anxiety upon the White House. The weather was bad and the valley
was shrouded in a dense mist. Isaure was not likely to leave her
cottage. After pretending to take the road leading to the château,
Edouard retraced his steps, took a detour, and came back to the walls of
the deserted house.
Jealousy had crept into Edouard’s heart; he did not know what course to
pursue in order to discover if someone were secretly living in the White
House. He looked at the windows; those on the ground floor were provided
with wooden shutters, those on the first floor with persiennes. Edouard
made the circuit of the house and the garden walls. Suddenly it occurred
to him that if he entered the garden, he might perhaps solve the mystery
which was being hidden from him. At first he cast the idea aside as
unworthy of him. To force his way into a house by scaling the walls was
repugnant to his sense of delicacy. But the house was deserted, and no
one would know that he had given way to that impulse of curiosity. He
glanced involuntarily about; the dense mist made it impossible for him
to see Isaure’s cottage; consequently it was impossible that she could
see him from her windows. He walked close to the garden wall. It was
fully six feet high; but in several places it was broken; some stones
had become detached, and others protruding made it very easy to climb.
Edouard kept his eyes fixed upon the wall; the suspicions which he could
not banish, the secret which was being kept from him and which seemed to
be contained in that house, everything impelled him to attempt the
undertaking. Once more he looked about him; he was entirely alone, not a
sound could be heard. In a few seconds he had climbed the wall, leaped
down upon the other side, and stood in the garden of the house.
Edouard could not control his emotion; we are moved in spite of
ourselves when we feel that we are doing something wrong. He paused a
moment and looked about. The garden was large, but it was uncultivated;
nettles and weeds were growing in the paths, where evidently no foot had
trodden them for a long while. Trees, entirely neglected, had spread out
their new branches, untrimmed by the gardener’s pruning hook, over other
trees near them; the flowers had fallen at the foot of the shrubs that
bore them; and the fruit had in large part dried upon the branches.
Edouard walked forward cautiously along the first path that he came to.
At every step his feet became entangled in weeds and branches.
Everything indicated that for a long time no attention had been paid to
the garden. In a clump of trees which was a little less overgrown, he
spied a bench with a back; that bench was not covered with leaves and
dust, and the path leading to the clump seemed to have been used more
than the rest of the garden.
Edouard walked toward the house, and came to a small courtyard. The gate
in the fence separating the courtyard from the garden was not closed, so
he was soon in front of the house. On that side the windows were not
closed by shutters; the door leading from the ground floor into the
garden was of glass, and seemed to be secured inside by a latch only.
Edouard listened for some time, but not the slightest sound could be
heard in the house. In a corner of the courtyard was a small stable,
where there was some straw and grain; everything indicated that horses
had been kept there; but it was the interior of the house that the young
lover was especially eager to examine. One of the panes in a window on
the ground floor was broken, so that he could easily pass his hand
through, and in that way unlock the window and gain entrance to the
house. After some further hesitation, Edouard yielded to his longing to
discover what Isaure was concealing from him. The window was opened and
in a moment he was inside the house.
When he was inside, Edouard could hardly see anything, for it was a dark
day, the windows looking on the open country were tightly closed by
shutters, and very little light came in from the garden. But he
gradually became used to that half light and could examine everything
about him.
The furniture was old, but seemed to have been used very little; it was
covered with dust, but on the dining-table there still stood the remains
of a meal, plates, a glass, and a bottle, in which there was some wine.
"If this house is not always occupied," said Edouard to himself; "it is
certain at all events that people come here sometimes; but is it a man
or a woman who comes to this place in secret?"
He passed into a vestibule which separated the two rooms on the ground
floor. That vestibule had one door leading to the road and another to
the garden; he crossed it and found himself in the other room; it was
only partially furnished, but there was a small bookcase, the shelves of
which were filled with books. Edouard took one up at random; on
examining the binding, it seemed to him to be exactly like that of the
volumes which he had seen in Isaure’s hands.
"Yes, this is where the books come from that she has in her house!" he
said to himself, his curiosity becoming greater with every moment. "This
library is for her. Ah! here are grammars, abridgments of history,
geography, treatises upon botany and the cultivation of flowers;
certainly no one would have all these books in his library unless they
were used for someone’s instruction. Yes, it must be the person who
comes here who has educated Isaure; evidently she has learned here all
that she knows more than the other peasants!"
And the young lover heaved a sigh, for he feared that the woman he loved
had been taught too much.
He left this room and ascended a staircase leading from the vestibule to
the rooms on the first floor. The keys were in all the doors. He entered
a bedroom; the tumbled bed indicated that someone had passed the night
there. Edouard, more perturbed than ever, looked carefully about; the
desk was locked and so was the bureau; but he spied upon a table a pair
of small pocket pistols; on examining them he found that they were
loaded.
"Pistols!" exclaimed Edouard; "it can’t be a woman who carries such
weapons! and yet sometimes, on a journey--but, no! no! it is a man who
comes secretly to this house. A man! and Isaure refuses to go away from
here! She cannot give me her hand as yet, she says. Can this man be her
father? But she told me only this morning that she never knew her
parents. No, it is not her father! Who then can this mysterious being
be, who exercises such absolute control over her?"
Edouard threw himself upon a chair; his emotion was so intense, his
heart beat so violently, that he needed a moment to recover himself. He
glanced about the room and sighed as he said to himself:
"Ah! if only I could know all that has happened in this house!"
He replaced the pistols where they were, entered two other rooms, and
finding nothing to throw light upon his suspicions, concluded that it
was time to leave the deserted house. He closed the doors, descended the
stairs, went out through the window on the ground floor, and stood once
more in the courtyard adjoining the garden. After one last glance at the
house, Edouard returned to the garden and left it by the same method by
which he had entered. Looking about him once more, and convinced that no
one had seen him, he walked rapidly away from the White House, even more
anxious and tormented than he had been before visiting it.
XXIV
THE GHOST.--THE NORTH TOWER
Two days had passed since the visit Edouard had paid to the White House,
and despite the suspicions which had arisen in his mind, when he saw
Isaure his anxiety always vanished; she displayed so sincere an
attachment for him, told him so earnestly how pleased she was that she
had won his love, that he often blushed at the thought that he could
give way to any feeling of jealousy.
Alfred, however, noticed that Edouard did not seem to be so happy as he
should have been; more than once he had asked of his friend the reason
of the melancholy and anxiety which he read in his eyes; and he always
replied:
"Nothing is the matter, my dear Alfred; but you know very well that
lovers are never entirely satisfied. If I had any real cause for
unhappiness, to whom could I more fittingly confide it than to him who
sacrificed his love to mine?"
But one day more, and Mademoiselle de la Pincerie would become
Robineau’s wife. All the documents were ready, the gifts were
purchased, the dresses prepared. The wedding was to take place at the
town; and the husband and wife were to return thence to the château,
where the wedding feast would be spread. It would have been more in
accordance with custom that the bride’s family should return to their
own house in the town, and that the groom should go thither to fetch his
wife. But among his economical plans, the marquis numbered a
determination never to keep house again, but to live always at his
son-in-law’s château. That is why all the family had remained there. As
the marquis declared that only the lower orders danced on their
wedding-day, it was agreed that there should be no ball, and no dancing
at the château; but Robineau had obtained from his future father-in-law
a promise not to play whist that evening.
Nearly an hour had elapsed since all the guests in the château had
separated in search of repose. Robineau, who had persuaded himself that
he was very much in love, and who deemed himself highly honored to enter
the family of a marquis, reflected that on the following day he was to
lead the superb Cornélie to the altar, that the whole town would
probably go to church to witness the ceremony, and that the wedding
would be talked about for a long time. Cornélie thought of nothing but
the two dresses that she was to wear that day, and the anger which all
the young ladies would feel who had flattered themselves that they would
be Robineau’s choice.
She remembered too that she was about to be the lady and mistress at the
château, and she proposed to make the most of the privileges which those
titles conferred upon her.
Edouard gave but little thought to the marriage which was in
preparation. All his ideas, all his affections were centered in the
little valley which contained Isaure and the White House, and he had too
much to think about to make sleep easy for him. The marquis and his
brother Mignon were already sound asleep; the former dreaming that he
had invented a way of bringing up children on vapor; the other that he
was looking for pins in a haystack. As for Alfred and Eudoxie, I cannot
tell you positively what they were doing.
But suddenly shrieks were heard in the part of the building occupied by
the servants. It was Benoît’s voice, waking the scullions, the cook and
the concierge. He called them in great haste, shouting as loud as his
fright allowed him to do:
"Get up! Look at the tower! Look over there! It’s the ghost! This time
they’re not likely to say that I see double!"
Mademoiselle Cheval had gone to her window; she saw a light in one of
the windows of the abandoned tower, whereupon she added her shrieks to
Benoît’s.
"It is true!" she cried; "there is something there; perhaps it’s a
thief; that light ought to be arrested!"
All the servants were soon on their feet; and as Monsieur de la
Roche-Noire had told them that he would discharge them all if they did
not discover what it was that had frightened them, they thought that
they had better wake their master and let him see what was taking place.
So they ran to the large gallery on the first floor, on which the chief
apartments opened. The shouts of the servants woke Robineau with a
start. He thought that the château was on fire; so he rang for François,
and his first words when he appeared were:
"Firemen! firemen!"
"Firemen for the ghost, monsieur?" asked François in surprise.
"The ghost!" cried Robineau, putting his legs back into bed. "What! has
anyone seen anything horrible?"
"We’ve seen a light in the North Tower, monsieur!"
"A light! the deuce! Go at once, François, and wake the gentlemen. Wake
everybody! I will get up at once."
François went to Alfred’s door and knocked, but no one answered. Soon,
however, all the other doors opened except Eudoxie’s. Edouard had drawn
on his trousers, and came out to inquire the cause of the uproar.
Cornélie, in a dressing jacket, over which she had hastily thrown a
large silk shawl, appeared, with a candle in her hand. Monsieur Férulus
also arrived, followed by Jeannette, whom no one had seen heretofore,
and who had put on over her night-dress an old black waistcoat, which in
no wise resembled a dressing jacket; while Monsieur Férulus, in his
haste, had put on a housemaid’s cap; but everybody was too much
engrossed to notice that. Everybody questioned everybody else.
"It’s the ghost in the tower!" said all the servants, while Mademoiselle
Cornélie did not cease to call her sister, saying:
"And Monsieur Alfred, too--why doesn’t he get up?"
Robineau appeared in a pair of drawers in the waistband of which he had
thrust a pair of pistols, while he had his gun under his left arm and a
razor in his right hand.
At last Eudoxie partly opened her door, saying in a low voice:
"Why do you knock so at my door? It is a shame to wake me so suddenly!
This will make me ill for a fortnight! I certainly shan’t go roaming
about after the ghost! Let me sleep, I beg you; I have a sick headache."
"You shall have your sick headache some other night, sister," said
Cornélie; "but as everybody else is up, you might as well do like the
rest."
Eudoxie showed much temper, but finally came out of her room, half
covered by a pelisse which she had thrown over her shoulders, and taking
pains to stand in front of her door.
At that moment all the servants began to shriek at the top of their
voices:
"There it is! It’s coming here!" they cried. And they ran to the other
end of the gallery, pushing and jostling one another, while from the
opposite direction advanced majestically a tall white figure, which was
no other than Monsieur le Marquis de la Pincerie, who, with his tall,
thin form, his fluttering night-shirt and his nightcap, might very well
pass for a spectre.
Robineau had already taken aim at his future father-in-law, when he was
recognized by his familiar cough.
"It is monsieur le marquis!" cried Robineau; "I believe that these
fellows have become idiots."
"Certainly, it is I," said Monsieur de la Pincerie, stalking as proudly
in his night-shirt as if he were in full uniform. "What has happened, in
heaven’s name? Has anybody made an attack on the château?"
"Yes, what is it all about?" asked Alfred, who, in the midst of the
uproar caused by the arrival of the marquis, had suddenly appeared among
the company, no one knew whence.
"Ah, there you are, monsieur!" said Cornélie, with a sarcastic air. "For
a gallant man, you are very slow in coming to the assistance of ladies."
"Because, mademoiselle, I thought that before all else, I ought at least
to put on the necessary clothing."
"Yes," said Monsieur Férulus, stepping forward, "decency and good morals
before everything,----"
Férulus did not finish his sentence, for he suddenly noticed that
Jeannette was wearing an easily recognizable waistcoat. He led her into
a dark corner of the gallery, and there while Jeannette removed his cap,
he hastily took off the waistcoat, saying:
"_Errare humanum est_, Jeannette."
"But after all, what is the cause of all this shouting and uproar?" said
Edouard.
"It’s the ghost, the spirit, walking in the tower at this time of
night!" said Benoît.
"We all of us saw a light," said the servants.
"Well," said Alfred, "we must go and examine the tower, that’s all."
"That is so," said Robineau, "we must send all these cowards to examine
the tower."
"Where is my Uncle Mignon?" asked Cornélie; "he is the only one who
isn’t up."
"He absolutely refused to get out from under his bedclothes," said the
marquis; "I told him to get up, but it was in vain. He never showed so
much resolution before."
"Let us leave Monsieur Mignon under his bedclothes," said Edouard, "and
let us go to the tower. Come, concierge, you know the way,--guide us."
Monsieur Cunette was no longer so incredulous since he had seen the
light; he displayed much disinclination to guide the young men; and the
other servants were no more anxious than he to accompany them to the
tower.
"But, messieurs, who is going to take care of us?" said Eudoxie; "for we
certainly are not going to examine that horrible tower with you."
"For my part, I am going back to bed," said the marquis; "for I feel a
cold wind which makes me shiver, and if I had known that all this fuss
was about a ghost, I would have done just as Mignon has--I would have
remained in my bed."
"Mesdames, I will stay and take care of you," said Robineau; "I will not
stir from your side; I refuse to leave you for an instant."
The ladies did not seem very much reassured by Robineau’s presence, and
they absolutely insisted that Alfred or Edouard should remain with them
also. But the former had already started, compelling the concierge to
walk in front of him; so that Edouard was obliged to remain with the
ladies, while Robineau said to the other servants:
"Follow Alfred, and at the slightest danger call me. It is very
disagreeable not to be able to sleep in peace on the eve of one’s
wedding!"
The servants bowed obediently, but when they reached the end of the
gallery, they turned toward the kitchen instead of toward the tower.
Meanwhile, Alfred, carrying a torch in one hand and in the other a
pistol which he had taken from Robineau, went with Cunette down the
stairs which led to the door of the tower.
"Come, open this door," he said to the concierge.
"Open this door? Does monsieur really mean to go in there?"
"To be sure I do."
"You see there’s only two of us, monsieur; those other cowards didn’t
come with us."
"We two are enough to arrest a thief, if there really is one in this
building."
"But suppose there’s more than one, monsieur?"
"Then we could call for help."
"Yes, but before anyone could come to our help----"
"Open the door, Monsieur Cunette, I say!"
"I can’t find the key, monsieur; I must have left it in my room."
Alfred, losing his patience, dealt the old door a violent kick; it gave
way and flew open, to the great surprise of the concierge. While the
latter made his reflections thereupon, Alfred ascended the winding
staircase; and when Cunette saw that the young man had gone up without
him, he, instead of following him, went back to his comrades.
Alfred entered the old apartments on the first floor; he found no one
there, and everything was in the same order as when he had visited the
tower with Robineau. On leaving the first floor, he found that the
concierge had left him; he pursued his investigations none the less, and
went up to the floor above; finding no one there either, he went still
higher up, and was about to enter the room called the arsenal, when he
distinctly heard someone therein. He stopped, cocked his pistol, and
listened; the noise had ceased. He abruptly opened the door of that
room, which was as dark as night; but he fancied that he could see some
one, absolutely still, in one corner. He walked toward that object,
holding his light before him, and soon recognized the vagabond, seated
tranquilly in an old armchair.
Alfred started back in surprise, and the stranger smiled, saying:
"You hardly expected to find me here, did you?"
"That is true," said Alfred, setting his candle down near him. "But what
are you doing in this tower? How did you get into this château at night?
Why have you come here? Answer me, and do not try to deceive me."
"What am I doing in this tower? Why, you see: I am resting. How did I
get in? Oh! quite simply, through the door; for I have not the faculty
of passing through keyholes, as the imbeciles in this château think.
What I have come here for to-day is to see you, to whom I wished to
speak secretly; and as I never meet you now in the mountains, because
you never leave the château, I had no choice but to come here to see
you; and it was my intention to tap lightly at the door of your room
to-night."
The placidity, the perfect coolness with which the stranger answered
Alfred, added to the latter’s surprise; he could not imagine that a
malefactor, a man who had come there with the purpose of committing
theft, would speak to him so calmly; moreover, there was nothing in the
tower to tempt the cupidity of a thief; and he remembered that the man
before him had not long before refused a purse which he had offered him.
The stranger, apparently divining the young man’s thoughts, said:
"You cannot imagine that I have come into this château for the purpose
of committing theft. Since you have been living here with the new owner
there have been very few nights that I have not come into this tower to
rest; but I have never wished or attempted to go into any other part of
the château, which, however, it would have been very easy for me to do.
No, this place alone attracts me; it recalls memories of my childhood. I
used to live in this château, in the time of the old dowager of whom you
have heard. I noticed that no one lived in this tower, that it was
altogether deserted, and I saw no great harm in coming sometimes at
night to seek shelter within these walls, where I used to sleep so
soundly long ago."
The stranger’s speech had become slow and melancholy as he said these
last words; and, apparently engrossed by the memories which that old
room in which he sat aroused in his mind, he glanced about at the walls,
blackened by time, at the armor eaten by rust, which could still be
seen in some of the corners. A sigh escaped from his breast, his eyes
were moist; all his features expressed misery in the present and regret
for the past.
Alfred could not avoid a secret thrill of emotion at the demeanor of
that strange man.
"But," he said after a moment, "how do you get into the château?"