THE CHURCHYARD
Our dinner was really good, so were the wines; better, perhaps, at this
out-of-the-way inn, than at some of the more pretentious hotels in
Paris. The moral effect of a really good dinner is immense--we all felt
it. The serenity and good nature that follow are more solid and
comfortable than the tumultuous benevolences of Bacchus.
My friends were happy, therefore, and very chatty; which latter relieved
me of the trouble of talking, and prompted them to entertain me and one
another incessantly with agreeable stories and conversation, of which,
until suddenly a subject emerged which interested me powerfully, I
confess, so much were my thoughts engaged elsewhere, I heard next to
nothing.
"Yes," said Carmaignac, continuing a conversation which had escaped me,
"there was another case, beside that Russian nobleman, odder still. I
remembered it this morning, but cannot recall the name. He was a tenant
of the very same room. By-the-by, Monsieur, might it not be as well," he
added, turning to me with a laugh, half joke whole earnest, as they say,
"if you were to get into another apartment, now that the house is no
longer crowded? that is, if you mean to make any stay here."
"A thousand thanks! no. I'm thinking of changing my hotel; and I can run
into town so easily at night; and though I stay here for this night at
least, I don't expect to vanish like those others. But you say there is
another adventure, of the same kind, connected with the same room. Do
let us hear it. But take some wine first."
The story he told was curious.
"It happened," said Carmaignac, "as well as I recollect, before either
of the other cases. A French gentleman--I wish I could remember his
name--the son of a merchant, came to this inn (the Dragon Volant),
and was put by the landlord into the same room of which we have been
speaking. _Your_ apartment, Monsieur. He was by no means young--past
forty--and very far from good-looking. The people here said that he was
the ugliest man, and the most good-natured, that ever lived. He played
on the fiddle, sang, and wrote poetry. His habits were odd and desultory.
He would sometimes sit all day in his room writing, singing, and
fiddling, and go out at night for a walk. An eccentric man! He was
by no means a millionaire, but he had a _modicum bonum_, you
understand--a trifle more than half a million of francs. He consulted
his stockbroker about investing this money in foreign stocks, and drew
the entire sum from his banker. You now have the situation of affairs
when the catastrophe occurred."
"Pray fill your glass," I said.
"Dutch courage, Monsieur, to face the catastrophe!" said Whistlewick,
filling his own.
"Now, that was the last that ever was heard of his money," resumed
Carmaignac. "You shall hear about himself. The night after this
financial operation he was seized with a poetic frenzy: he sent for the
then landlord of this house, and told him that he long meditated an
epic, and meant to commence that night, and that he was on no account to
be disturbed until nine o'clock in the morning. He had two pairs of wax
candles, a little cold supper on a side-table, his desk open, paper
enough upon it to contain the entire Henriade, and a proportionate store
of pens and ink.
"Seated at this desk he was seen by the waiter who brought him a cup of
coffee at nine o'clock, at which time the intruder said he was writing
fast enough to set fire to the paper--that was his phrase; he did not
look up, he appeared too much engrossed. But when the waiter came back,
half an hour afterwards, the door was locked; and the poet, from within,
answered that he must not be disturbed.
"Away went the _garçon_, and next morning at nine o'clock knocked
at his door and, receiving no answer, looked through the key-hole; the
lights were still burning, the window-shutters were closed as he had
left them; he renewed his knocking, knocked louder, no answer came. He
reported this continued and alarming silence to the innkeeper, who,
finding that his guest had not left his key in the lock, succeeded in
finding another that opened it. The candles were just giving up the
ghost in their sockets, but there was light enough to ascertain that the
tenant of the room was gone! The bed had not been disturbed; the
window-shutter was barred. He must have let himself out, and, locking
the door on the outside, put the key in his pocket, and so made his way
out of the house. Here, however, was another difficulty: the Dragon
Volant shut its doors and made all fast at twelve o'clock; after that
hour no one could leave the house, except by obtaining the key and
letting himself out, and of necessity leaving the door unsecured, or
else by collusion and aid of some person in the house.
"Now it happened that, some time after the doors were secured, at
half-past twelve, a servant who had not been apprised of his order to be
left undisturbed, seeing a light shine through the key-hole, knocked at
the door to inquire whether the poet wanted anything. He was very little
obliged to his disturber, and dismissed him with a renewed charge that
he was not to be interrupted again during the night. This incident
established the fact that he was in the house after the doors had been
locked and barred. The inn-keeper himself kept the keys, and swore that
he found them hung on the wall above his head, in his bed, in their
usual place, in the morning; and that nobody could have taken them away
without awakening him. That was all we could discover. The Count de St.
Alyre, to whom this house belongs, was very active and very much
chagrined. But nothing was discovered."
"And nothing heard since of the epic poet?" I asked.
"Nothing--not the slightest clue--he never turned up again. I suppose he
is dead; if he is not, he must have got into some devilish bad scrape,
of which we have heard nothing, that compelled him to abscond with all
the secrecy and expedition in his power. All that we know for certain is
that, having occupied the room in which you sleep, he vanished, nobody
ever knew how, and never was heard of since."
"You have now mentioned three cases," I said, "and all from the same
room."
"Three. Yes, all equally unintelligible. When men are murdered, the
great and immediate difficulty the assassins encounter is how to conceal
the body. It is very hard to believe that three persons should have been
consecutively murdered in the same room, and their bodies so effectually
disposed of that no trace of them was ever discovered."
From this we passed to other topics, and the grave Monsieur Carmaignac
amused us with a perfectly prodigious collection of scandalous anecdote,
which his opportunities in the police department had enabled him to
accumulate.
My guests happily had engagements in Paris, and left me about ten.
I went up to my room, and looked out upon the grounds of the Château de
la Carque. The moonlight was broken by clouds, and the view of the park
in this desultory light acquired a melancholy and fantastic character.
The strange anecdotes recounted of the room in which I stood by Monsieur
Carmaignac returned vaguely upon my mind, drowning in sudden shadows the
gaiety of the more frivolous stories with which he had followed them. I
looked round me on the room that lay in ominous gloom, with an almost
disagreeable sensation. I took my pistols now with an undefined
apprehension that they might be really needed before my return tonight.
This feeling, be it understood, in no wise chilled my ardor. Never had
my enthusiasm mounted higher. My adventure absorbed and carried me away;
but it added a strange and stern excitement to the expedition.
I loitered for a time in my room. I had ascertained the exact point at
which the little churchyard lay. It was about a mile away. I did not
wish to reach it earlier than necessary.
I stole quietly out and sauntered along the road to my left, and thence
entered a narrower track, still to my left, which, skirting the park
wall and describing a circuitous route all the way, under grand old
trees, passes the ancient cemetery. That cemetery is embowered in trees
and occupies little more than half an acre of ground to the left of the
road, interposing between it and the park of the Château de la Carque.
Here, at this haunted spot, I paused and listened. The place was utterly
silent. A thick cloud had darkened the moon, so that I could distinguish
little more than the outlines of near objects, and that vaguely enough;
and sometimes, as it were, floating in black fog, the white surface of a
tombstone emerged.
Among the forms that met my eye against the iron-grey of the horizon,
were some of those shrubs or trees that grow like our junipers, some six
feet high, in form like a miniature poplar, with the darker foliage of
the yew. I do not know the name of the plant, but I have often seen it
in such funereal places.
Knowing that I was a little too early, I sat down upon the edge of a
tombstone to wait, as, for aught I knew, the beautiful Countess might
have wise reasons for not caring that I should enter the grounds of the
château earlier than she had appointed. In the listless state induced by
waiting, I sat there, with my eyes on the object straight before me,
which chanced to be that faint black outline I have described. It was
right before me, about half-a-dozen steps away.
The moon now began to escape from under the skirt of the cloud that had
hid her face for so long; and, as the light gradually improved, the tree
on which I had been lazily staring began to take a new shape. It was no
longer a tree, but a man standing motionless. Brighter and brighter grew
the moonlight, clearer and clearer the image became, and at last stood
out perfectly distinctly. It was Colonel Gaillarde. Luckily, he was not
looking toward me. I could only see him in profile; but there was no
mistaking the white moustache, the _farouche_ visage, and the gaunt
six-foot stature. There he was, his shoulder toward me, listening and
watching, plainly, for some signal or person expected, straight in front
of him.
If he were, by chance, to turn his eyes in my direction, I knew that I
must reckon upon an instantaneous renewal of the combat only commenced
in the hall of Belle Étoile. In any case, could malignant fortune have
posted, at this place and hour, a more dangerous watcher? What ecstasy
to him, by a single discovery, to hit me so hard, and blast the Countess
de St. Alyre, whom he seemed to hate.
He raised his arm; he whistled softly; I heard an answering whistle as
low; and, to my relief, the Colonel advanced in the direction of this
sound, widening the distance between us at every step; and immediately I
heard talking, but in a low and cautious key. I recognized, I thought,
even so, the peculiar voice of Gaillarde. I stole softly forward in the
direction in which those sounds were audible. In doing so, I had, of
course, to use the extremest caution.
I thought I saw a hat above a jagged piece of ruined wall, and then a
second--yes, I saw two hats conversing; the voices came from under them.
They moved off, not in the direction of the park, but of the road, and I
lay along the grass, peeping over a grave, as a skirmisher might
observing the enemy. One after the other, the figures emerged full into
view as they mounted the stile at the roadside. The Colonel, who was
last, stood on the wall for awhile, looking about him, and then jumped
down on the road. I heard their steps and talk as they moved away
together, with their backs toward me, in the direction which led them
farther and farther from the Dragon Volant.
I waited until these sounds were quite lost in distance before I entered
the park. I followed the instructions I had received from the Countess
de St. Alyre, and made my way among brushwood and thickets to the point
nearest the ruinous temple, and crossed the short intervening space of
open ground rapidly.
I was now once more under the gigantic boughs of the old lime and
chestnut trees; softly, and with a heart throbbing fast, I approached
the little structure.
The moon was now shining steadily, pouring down its radiance on the soft
foliage, and here and there mottling the verdure under my feet.
I reached the steps; I was among its worn marble shafts. She was not
there, nor in the inner sanctuary, the arched windows of which were
screened almost entirely by masses of ivy. The lady had not yet arrived.