A HIGH-CAULD CAP.
I was now upon the road, within two or three hundred yards of the
Dragon Volant. I had undertaken an adventure with a vengeance!
And by way of prelude, there not improbably awaited me, at my
inn, another encounter, perhaps, this time, not so lucky, with
the grotesque sabreur.
I was glad I had my pistols. I certainly was bound by no law to
allow a ruffian to cut me down, unresisting.
Stooping boughs from the old park, gigantic poplars on the other
side, and the moonlight over all, made the narrow road to the
inn-door picturesque.
I could not think very clearly just now; events were succeeding
one another so rapidly, and I, involved in the action of a drama
so extravagant and guilty, hardly knew myself or believed my own
story, as I slowly paced towards the still open door of the
Flying Dragon.
No sign of the Colonel, visible or audible, was there. In the
hall I inquired. No gentleman had arrived at the inn for the last
half hour. I looked into the public room. It was deserted. The
clock struck twelve, and I heard the servant barring the great
door. I took my candle. The lights in this rural hostelry were by
this time out, and the house had the air of one that had settled
to slumber for many hours. The cold moonlight streamed in at the
window on the landing, as I ascended the broad staircase; and I
paused for a moment to look over the wooded grounds to the
turreted château, to me, so full of interest. I bethought me,
however, that prying eyes might read a meaning in this midnight
gazing, and possibly the Count himself might, in his jealous
mood, surmise a signal in this unwonted light in the stair-window
of the Dragon Volant.
On opening my room door, with a little start, I met an extremely
old woman with the longest face I ever saw; she had what used to
be termed, a high-cauld-cap, on, the white border of which
contrasted with her brown and yellow skin, and made her wrinkled
face more ugly. She raised her curved shoulders, and looked up in
my face, with eyes unnaturally black and bright.
"I have lighted a little wood, Monsieur, because the night is
chill."
I thanked her, but she did not go. She stood with her candle in
her tremulous fingers.
"Excuse an old woman. Monsieur," she said; "but what on earth can
a young English _milord_, with all Paris at his feet, find to
amuse him in the Dragon Volant?"
Had I been at the age of fairy tales, and in daily intercourse
with the delightful Countess d'Aulnois, I should have seen in
this withered apparition, the _genius loci_, the malignant fairy,
at the stamp of whose foot, the ill-fated tenants of this very
room had, from time to time, vanished. I was past that, however;
but the old woman's dark eyes were fixed on mine, with a steady
meaning that plainly told me that my secret was known. I was
embarrassed and alarmed; I never thought of asking her what
business that was of hers.
"These old eyes saw you in the park of the château to-night."
"_I!_" I began, with all the scornful surprise I could affect.
"It avails nothing, Monsieur; I know why you stay here; and I
tell you to begone. Leave this house to-morrow morning, and never
come again."
She lifted her disengaged hand, as she looked at me with intense
horror in her eyes.
"There is nothing on earth--I don't know what you mean," I
answered; "and why should you care about me?"
"I don't care about you, Monsieur--I care about the honour of an
ancient family, whom I served in their happier days, when to be
noble, was to be honoured. But my words are thrown away,
Monsieur; you are insolent. I will keep my secret, and you,
yours; that is all. You will soon find it hard enough to divulge
it."
The old woman went slowly from the room and shut the door, before
I had made up my mind to say anything. I was standing where she
had left me, nearly five minutes later. The jealousy of Monsieur
the Count, I assumed, appears to this old creature about the most
terrible thing in creation. Whatever contempt I might entertain
for the dangers which this old lady so darkly intimated, it was
by no means pleasant, you may suppose, that a secret so dangerous
should be so much as suspected by a stranger, and that stranger a
partisan of the Count de St. Alyre.
Ought I not, at all risks, to apprize the Countess, who had
trusted me so generously, or, as she said herself, so madly, of
the fact that our secret was, at least, suspected by another? But
was there not greater danger in attempting to communicate? What
did the beldame mean by saying, "Keep your secret, and I'll keep
mine?"
I had a thousand distracting questions before me. My progress
seemed like a journey through the Spessart, where at every step
some new goblin or monster starts from the ground or steps from
behind a tree.
Peremptorily I dismissed these harassing and frightful doubts. I
secured my door, sat myself down at my table, and with a candle
at each side, placed before me the piece of vellum which
contained the drawings and notes on which I was to rely for full
instructions as to how to use the key.
When I had studied this for awhile, I made my investigation. The
angle of the room at the right side of the window was cut off by
an oblique turn in the wainscot. I examined this carefully, and,
on pressure, a small bit of the frame of the woodwork slid aside,
and disclosed a keyhole. On removing my finger, it shot back to
its place again, with a spring. So far I had interpreted my
instructions successfully. A similar search, next the door, and
directly under this, was rewarded by a like discovery. The small
end of the key fitted this, as it had the upper keyhole; and now,
with two or three hard jerks at the key, a door in the panel
opened, showing a strip of the bare wall, and a narrow, arched
doorway, piercing the thickness of the wall; and within which I
saw a screw-staircase of stone.
Candle in hand I stepped in. I do not know whether the quality of air,
long undisturbed, is peculiar; to me it has always seemed so, and the
damp smell of the old masonry hung in this atmosphere. My candle faintly
lighted the bare stone wall that enclosed the stair, the foot of which I
could not see. Down I went, and a few turns brought me to the stone
floor. Here was another door, of the simple, old, oak kind, deep sunk in
the thickness of the wall. The large end of the key fitted this. The
lock was stiff; I set the candle down upon the stair, and applied both
hands; it turned with difficulty, and as it revolved, uttered a shriek
that alarmed me for my secret.
For some minutes I did not move. In a little time, however, I
took courage, and opened the door. The night-air floating in,
puffed out the candle. There was a thicket of holly and
underwood, as dense as a jungle, close about the door. I should
have been in pitch-darkness, were it not that through the topmost
leaves, there twinkled, here and there, a glimmer of moonshine.
Softly, lest any one should have opened his window, at the sound
of the rusty bolt, I struggled through this, till I gained a view
of the open grounds. Here I found that the brushwood spread a
good way up the park, uniting with the wood that approached the
little temple I have described.
A general could not have chosen a more effectually-covered
approach from the Dragon Volant to the trysting-place where
hitherto I had conferred with the idol of my lawless adoration.
Looking back upon the old inn, I discovered that the stair I
descended, was enclosed in one of those slender turrets that
decorate such buildings. It was placed at that angle which
corresponded with the part of the paneling of my room indicated
in the plan I had been studying.
Thoroughly satisfied with my experiment, I made my way back to
the door, with some little difficulty, re-mounted to my room,
locked my secret door again; kissed the mysterious key that her
hand had pressed that night, and placed it under my pillow, upon
which, very soon after, my giddy head was laid, not, for some
time, to sleep soundly.