THE TWO PRISONERS (_continued_)
The next day passed without a visit from the governor, and the next.
Rochefort ceased to ask about him; he resented this neglect, now, as a
personal insult. He forgot that he was incarcerated under the name of
La Porte, and that any neglect of M. La Porte, though unpleasant to M.
de Rochefort, need not be taken as a personal affront.
He would have resented the thing more had it not been that he was very
busy.
On the afternoon of the fourth day his work was complete. The bar was
not quite divided, but sufficiently so to yield to a strong wrench.
With his table-knife, which he had been allowed to keep, he had scraped
away the rust where the upper part of the bar was mortised into the
stone and had verified the weakness of this part of the attachment.
He had fixed upon midnight as the hour for his evasion, and nothing
remained now but to obtain the rope from the unsuspecting Ferminard.
The latter had also not been idle during the last four days. Happy as
a child with a toy, the ingenious Ferminard had not noticed the faint
sound of the saw in the next cell. If it reached him at all at times,
he no doubt put it down to the noise of a rat.
Never before in his life had he possessed so much paper, ink, and
time to write in. Up to this his leisure had been mostly consumed by
taverns, good companions, women, and the necessity of getting drunk
which his unfortunate temperament imposed on him. Also, in hunting for
loans. Now he found himself housed, fed, and cared for, protected from
drink and supplied with all the materials his imagination required
for the moment. So, for the moment, he was happy and busy, and his
happiness would have been more complete had Rochefort been a better
listener.
Towards dusk, Rochefort considered that the time had come to negotiate
the business of the rope with M. Ferminard. Accordingly, he drew the
bed away from the wall, and, kneeling down, approached his head to the
opening.
“Monsieur Ferminard.”
“Ho! M. de Rochefort, is that you?”
“Yes, it is I—let us talk for awhile.”
“With pleasure, monsieur.”
He heard Ferminard’s bed being moved away from the wall. Then came the
dramatist’s voice.
“I am here, monsieur. I was asleep when you called me and I was
dreaming that I was at the Maison Gambrinus drinking some Flemish beer
that Turgis had just imported, and that there was a hole in the bottom
of my mug, so that as fast as I drank so fast did the beer run out. I
got nothing but froth, and even that froth had a taste of soap-suds.
Now tell me one thing, M. de Rochefort.”
“Yes?”
“Why is it that when one dreams, one’s dreams are always so
unsatisfactory? Whenever I meet a pretty girl in dreamland, she always
turns into an old woman when I kiss her, and whenever I find myself
in good company, I am either dressed in rags, or, what is worse, not
dressed at all. If I go to collect money I always enter by mistake
the house of some man to whom I owe a debt, and if I find myself on
the stage I am always acting some part, the lines of which I have
forgotten.”
“The whole world is unsatisfactory, M. Ferminard, and as dreamland is
part of the world, why, I suppose it is unsatisfactory too. Now as to
that play of yours whose ending you insisted on describing to me this
morning, that is like dreamland and the world—unsatisfactory. The
ending does not satisfy me in the least.”
“In what way?”
“I have thought of a better.”
“Oh, you have. Well, please explain to me what you mean.”
“I will, certainly. But first let me see that rope which you told me
you had discovered, and the discovery of which gave you the idea for
this play of yours.”
“The rope, but what can you want with the rope?”
“I will show you when it is in my hands, or at least I will explain my
meaning; come, M. Ferminard, the rope, for without it I cannot show you
what I want.”
“Wait, monsieur, and I will get it.”
In a moment one end of the precious rope was in Rochefort’s hands. He
pulled it through into his cell, noted the length, the thickness and
the knots upon it, and was satisfied.
“Well, monsieur?” said the impatient Ferminard.
“Well, M. Ferminard, now I have the rope in my hands I will tell you
exactly how your play is going to end, in reality. The count—that
is myself, for since you have put me into your play I feel myself
justified in acting in it—the count is going to pull his bed to
the window of his cell, tie this precious rope to the bedpost, and,
crawling out of the window and dangling like a spider, he is going to
descend to the ground. He will not remain stuck on a ledge, as in your
version of the play, he will reach the ground—then he will pick up
his heels and run to Paris, and there he will pull M. de Choiseul’s
nose—or make friends with him.”
“But you cannot,” replied Ferminard, not knowing exactly how to take
the other.
“And why cannot I?”
“Because, monsieur, the bar of your window would permit you, perhaps,
to lower your rope, but it would prevent you from following it.”
“No, M. Ferminard, it would not.”
“Ah, well, then, it must be a most accommodating bar and have altered
considerably in strength since you spoke to me of it first.”
“It has.”
“In what way?”
“Why, it has been filed almost in two.”
“Ah,” cried Ferminard, “what is that you say? Filed in two—and since
when?”
“Since we had our first talk together.”
“You have cut it then—with what?”
“Heavens! can’t you guess?”
“Your table-knife.”
“Oaf!”
“You had, then, a knife, or file, or saw or something with you.”
“M. Ferminard, prison does not seem to improve your intelligence. I
cut it with the little saw contained in the big sou.”
“But that is impossible, for you had not the sou two minutes in your
possession.”
Rochefort laughed. “Open your sou, then, and see what is in it.”
Leaning on his elbow, he laughed to himself as he heard Ferminard
moving so as to get the sou from his pocket to open it.
Then he heard the voice of Ferminard who was speaking to himself. “It
is gone—he must have taken it—never!—yet it is gone.”
The astonishment evident in Ferminard’s voice at the trick that had
been played on him acted upon Rochefort just as the sudden stripping of
the bedclothes from a person asleep acts on the sleeper.
It was not stupidity on the part of Ferminard that had prevented him
from guessing with what instrument the bar had been cut, it was his
complete belief in Rochefort’s honour. His mind, of its own accord,
could not imagine the Comte de Rochefort playing him a trick like that,
and his voice now betrayed what was passing in his mind.
Had Ferminard been a suspicious man, and had he discovered the
abstraction of the saw on his own account, anything he might have said
would not have shown Rochefort what he saw now.
He felt as though, by some horrible accident, he had shot and injured
his own good faith, fair name and honour.
“_Mon Dieu_!” said he. “What have I done!”