A CUP OF COFFEE
The room was carpetless. On the floor were a quantity of shavings, and
some score of bricks. Beyond these, on a narrow table, lay an object
which I could hardly believe I saw aright.
I approached and drew from it a sheet which had very slightly disguised
its shape. There was no mistake about it. It was a coffin; and on the
lid was a plate, with the inscription in French:
PIERRE DE LA ROCHE ST. AMAND.
ÂGÉ DE XXIII ANS.
I drew back with a double shock. So, then, the funeral after all had not
yet left! Here lay the body. I had been deceived. This, no doubt,
accounted for the embarrassment so manifest in the Countess's manner.
She would have done more wisely had she told me the true state of the
case.
I drew back from this melancholy room, and closed the door. Her distrust
of me was the worst rashness she could have committed. There is nothing
more dangerous than misapplied caution. In entire ignorance of the fact
I had entered the room, and there I might have lighted upon some of the
very persons it was our special anxiety that I should avoid.
These reflections were interrupted, almost as soon as began, by the
return of the Countess de St. Alyre. I saw at a glance that she detected
in my face some evidence of what had happened, for she threw a hasty
look towards the door.
"Have you seen anything--anything to disturb you, dear Richard? Have you
been out of this room?"
I answered promptly, "Yes," and told her frankly what had happened.
"Well, I did not like to make you more uneasy than necessary. Besides,
it is disgusting and horrible. The body is there; but the Count had
departed a quarter of an hour before I lighted the colored lamp, and
prepared to receive you. The body did not arrive till eight or ten
minutes after he had set out. He was afraid lest the people at Père la
Chaise should suppose that the funeral was postponed. He knew that the
remains of poor Pierre would certainly reach this tonight, although an
unexpected delay has occurred; and there are reasons why he wishes the
funeral completed before tomorrow. The hearse with the body must leave
this in ten minutes. So soon as it is gone, we shall be free to set out
upon our wild and happy journey. The horses are to the carriage in the
_porte-cochère_. As for this _funeste_ horror" (she shuddered
very prettily), "let us think of it no more."
She bolted the door of communication, and when she turned it was with
such a pretty penitence in her face and attitude, that I was ready to
throw myself at her feet.
"It is the last time," she said, in a sweet sad little pleading, "I
shall ever practice a deception on my brave and beautiful Richard--my
hero! Am I forgiven?"
Here was another scene of passionate effusion, and lovers' raptures and
declamations, but only murmured lest the ears of listeners should be
busy.
At length, on a sudden, she raised her hand, as if to prevent my
stirring, her eyes fixed on me and her ear toward the door of the room
in which the coffin was placed, and remained breathless in that attitude
for a few moments. Then, with a little nod towards me, she moved on
tip-toe to the door, and listened, extending her hand backward as if to
warn me against advancing; and, after a little time, she returned, still
on tip-toe, and whispered to me, "They are removing the coffin--come
with me."
I accompanied her into the room from which her maid, as she told me, had
spoken to her. Coffee and some old china cups, which appeared to me
quite beautiful, stood on a silver tray; and some liqueur glasses, with
a flask, which turned out to be noyau, on a salver beside it.
"I shall attend you. I'm to be your servant here; I am to have my own
way; I shall not think myself forgiven by my darling if he refuses to
indulge me in anything."
She filled a cup with coffee and handed it to me with her left hand; her
right arm she fondly passed over my shoulder, and with her fingers
through my curls, caressingly, she whispered, "Take this, I shall take
some just now."
It was excellent; and when I had done she handed me the liqueur, which I
also drank.
"Come back, dearest, to the next room," she said. "By this time those
terrible people must have gone away, and we shall be safer there, for
the present, than here."
"You shall direct, and I obey; you shall command me, not only now, but
always, and in all things, my beautiful queen!" I murmured.
My heroics were unconsciously, I daresay, founded upon my ideal of the
French school of lovemaking. I am, even now, ashamed as I recall the
bombast to which I treated the Countess de St. Alyre.
"There, you shall have another miniature glass--a fairy glass--of
noyau," she said gaily. In this volatile creature, the funereal gloom of
the moment before, and the suspense of an adventure on which all her
future was staked, disappeared in a moment. She ran and returned with
another tiny glass, which, with an eloquent or tender little speech, I
placed to my lips and sipped.
I kissed her hand, I kissed her lips, I gazed in her beautiful eyes, and
kissed her again unresisting.
"You call me Richard, by what name am I to call my beautiful divinity?"
I asked.
"You call me Eugenie, it is my name. Let us be quite real; that is, if
you love as entirely as I do."
"Eugenie!" I exclaimed, and broke into a new rapture upon the name.
It ended by my telling her how impatient I was to set out upon our
journey; and, as I spoke, suddenly an odd sensation overcame me. It was
not in the slightest degree like faintness. I can find no phrase to
describe it, but a sudden constraint of the brain; it was as if the
membrane in which it lies, if there be such a thing, contracted, and
became inflexible.
"Dear Richard! what is the matter?" she exclaimed, with terror in her
looks. "Good Heavens! are you ill? I conjure you, sit down; sit in this
chair." She almost forced me into one; I was in no condition to offer
the least resistance. I recognized but too truly the sensations that
supervened. I was lying back in the chair in which I sat, without the
power, by this time, of uttering a syllable, of closing my eyelids, of
moving my eyes, of stirring a muscle. I had in a few seconds glided into
precisely the state in which I had passed so many appalling hours when
approaching Paris, in my night-drive with the Marquis d'Harmonville.
Great and loud was the lady's agony. She seemed to have lost all sense
of fear. She called me by my name, shook me by the shoulder, raised my
arm and let it fall, all the time imploring of me, in distracting
sentences, to make the slightest sign of life, and vowing that if I did
not, she would make away with herself.
These ejaculations, after a minute or two, suddenly subsided. The lady
was perfectly silent and cool. In a very business-like way she took a
candle and stood before me, pale indeed, very pale, but with an
expression only of intense scrutiny with a dash of horror in it. She
moved the candle before my eyes slowly, evidently watching the effect.
She then set it down, and rang a handball two or three times sharply.
She placed the two cases (I mean hers containing the jewels and my
strong box) side by side on the table; and I saw her carefully lock the
door that gave access to the room in which I had just now sipped my
coffee.