HOPE
She had scarcely set down my heavy box, which she seemed to have
considerable difficulty in raising on the table, when the door of the
room in which I had seen the coffin, opened, and a sinister and
unexpected apparition entered.
It was the Count de St. Alyre, who had been, as I have told you,
reported to me to be, for some considerable time, on his way to Pèe la
Chaise. He stood before me for a moment, with the frame of the doorway
and a background of darkness enclosing him like a portrait. His slight,
mean figure was draped in the deepest mourning. He had a pair of black
gloves in his hand, and his hat with crape round it.
When he was not speaking his face showed signs of agitation; his mouth
was puckering and working. He looked damnably wicked and frightened.
"Well, my dear Eugenie? Well, child--eh? Well, it all goes admirably?"
"Yes," she answered, in a low, hard tone. "But you and Planard should
not have left that door open."
This she said sternly. "He went in there and looked about wherever he
liked; it was fortunate he did not move aside the lid of the coffin."
"Planard should have seen to that," said the Count, sharply. "_Ma
foi!_ I can't be everywhere!" He advanced half-a-dozen short quick
steps into the room toward me, and placed his glasses to his eyes.
"Monsieur Beckett," he cried sharply, two or three times, "Hi! don't you
know me?"
He approached and peered more closely in my face; raised my hand and
shook it, calling me again, then let it drop, and said: "It has set in
admirably, my pretty _mignonne_. When did it commence?"
The Countess came and stood beside him, and looked at me steadily for
some seconds. You can't conceive the effect of the silent gaze of those
two pairs of evil eyes.
The lady glanced to where, I recollected, the mantel piece stood, and
upon it a clock, the regular click of which I sharply heard.
"Four--five--six minutes and a half," she said slowly, in a cold hard
way.
"Brava! Bravissima! my beautiful queen! my little Venus! my Joan of Arc!
my heroine! my paragon of women!"
He was gloating on me with an odious curiosity, smiling, as he groped
backward with his thin brown fingers to find the lady's hand; but she,
not (I dare say) caring for his caresses, drew back a little.
"Come, _ma chère,_ let us count these things. What is it?
Pocket-book? Or--or--_what?_"
"It is _that_!" said the lady, pointing with a look of disgust to
the box, which lay in its leather case on the table.
"Oh! Let us see--let us count--let us see," he said, as he was
unbuckling the straps with his tremulous fingers. "We must count
them--we must see to it. I have pencil and pocket-book--but--where's the
key? See this cursed lock! My--! What is it? Where's the key?"
He was standing before the Countess, shuffling his feet, with his hands
extended and all his fingers quivering.
"I have not got it; how could I? It is in his pocket, of course," said
the lady.
In another instant the fingers of the old miscreant were in my pockets;
he plucked out everything they contained, and some keys among the rest.
I lay in precisely the state in which I had been during my drive with
the Marquis to Paris. This wretch, I knew, was about to rob me. The
whole drama, and the Countess's _rôle_ in it, I could not yet
comprehend. I could not be sure--so much more presence of mind and
histrionic resource have women than fall to the lot of our clumsy
sex--whether the return of the Count was not, in truth, a surprise to
her; and this scrutiny of the contents of my strong box, an extempore
undertaking of the Count's. But it was clearing more and more every
moment: and I was destined, very soon, to comprehend minutely my
appalling situation.
I had not the power of turning my eyes this way or that, the smallest
fraction of a hair's breadth. But let anyone, placed as I was at the end
of a room, ascertain for himself by experiment how wide is the field of
sight, without the slightest alteration in the line of vision, he will
find that it takes in the entire breadth of a large room, and that up to
a very short distance before him; and imperfectly, by a refraction, I
believe, in the eye itself, to a point very near indeed. Next to nothing
that passed in the room, therefore, was hidden from me.
The old man had, by this time, found the key. The leather case was open.
The box cramped round with iron was next unlocked. He turned out its
contents upon the table.
"Rouleaux of a hundred Napoleons each. One, two, three. Yes, quick.
Write down a thousand Napoleons. One, two; yes, right. Another thousand,
_write_!" And so on and on till the gold was rapidly counted. Then
came the notes.
"Ten thousand francs. _Write_. Then thousand francs again. Is it
written? Another ten thousand francs: is it down? Smaller notes would
have been better. They should have been smaller. These are horribly
embarrassing. Bolt that door again; Planard would become unreasonable if
he knew the amount. Why did you not tell him to get it in smaller notes?
No matter now--go on--it can't be helped--_write_--another ten
thousand francs--another--another." And so on, till my treasure was
counted out before my face, while I saw and heard all that passed with
the sharpest distinctness, and my mental perceptions were horribly
vivid. But in all other respects I was dead.
He had replaced in the box every note and rouleau as he counted it, and
now, having ascertained the sum total, he locked it, replaced it very
methodically in its cover, opened a buffet in the wainscoting, and,
having placed the Countess' jewel-case and my strong box in it, he
locked it; and immediately on completing these arrangements he began to
complain, with fresh acrimony and maledictions of Planard's delay.
He unbolted the door, looked in the dark room beyond, and listened. He
closed the door again and returned. The old man was in a fever of
suspense.
"I have kept ten thousand francs for Planard," said the Count, touching
his waistcoat pocket.
"Will that satisfy him?" asked the lady.
"Why--curse him!" screamed the Count. "Has he no conscience? I'll swear
to him it's half the entire thing."
He and the lady again came and looked at me anxiously for a while, in
silence; and then the old Count began to grumble again about Planard,
and to compare his watch with the clock. The lady seemed less impatient;
she sat no longer looking at me, but across the room, so that her
profile was toward me--and strangely changed, dark and witch-like it
looked. My last hope died as I beheld that jaded face from which the
mask had dropped. I was certain that they intended to crown their
robbery by murder. Why did they not dispatch me at once? What object
could there be in postponing the catastrophe which would expedite their
own safety. I cannot recall, even to myself, adequately the horrors
unutterable that I underwent. You must suppose a real night-mare--I mean
a night-mare in which the objects and the danger are real, and the spell
of corporal death appears to be protractible at the pleasure of the
persons who preside at your unearthly torments. I could have no doubt as
to the cause of the state in which I was.
In this agony, to which I could not give the slightest expression, I saw
the door of the room where the coffin had been, open slowly, and the
Marquis d'Harmonville entered the room.