The Vengeance of Passion.
Alison had met Atkins at the foot of the stairs leading to their
apartments, but he had not mounted them. He directed his steps to the
room of the French steward of the castle, which had been pointed out to
him by one of the soldiers.
The steward, an old man, with sharp, intelligent face, and dark,
flashing eyes, sat at a table on which a lamp was burning, and examined
his books. He looked up morosely as the door opened, but the embittered
resentment which his features wore and with which he met everyone
belonging to the hated soldiers quartered in the house, softened
somewhat as he recognized the visitor. He knew that the travellers were
Americans, forced to seek a night's rest in the castle from the
impossibility of finding entertainment in the village. Although guests
of the enemy, they did not belong to the hated nation, and the grim
reserve which Alison had this afternoon shown in the circle of the
officers, and which the Frenchman had found opportunity to observe,
gave him a decided advantage. The steward rose, and approached his
visitor politely, but still with a sort of chilling reserve.
"In what way can I serve you, Monsieur?"
Henry circumspectly closed the door, and hastily scanned the apartment.
"I wish to speak with you on a matter of importance," he said. "Are we
safe from intrusion?"
"Perfectly so!" returned the Frenchman. "The room, as you see, has only
this one door."
Alison drew near the table, and his voice sank to a whisper. "You know,
I suppose, that we are forbidden to pursue our journey. My companions
have consented to remain here for the night, but I must in any event go
on to the mountains."
"That is impossible, Monsieur," said the Frenchman politely but coldly.
"The Prussians hold guard over every avenue; no person can reach the
mountain-road without their permission."
Alison gazed at the Frenchman sharply and searchingly. "And would you
not know how to get there in spite of the guards, if you wished to send
tidings to the French sharpshooters in the mountains!"
"I tell you, Monsieur, that all the avenues are guarded."
"There are always lurking-places in the mountains not known to the
enemy, and which the inhabitants can use all the more safely," said
Alison with great positiveness. "This very afternoon I heard the
officers express their opinion, that in spite of the sharpest watch, a
secret understandings till existed between the village and the
mountains, and in this case there must be such a path."
"Possibly. But I know of none."
Instead of answering, Alison drew forth his letter-case, took from it a
bank-note and silently held it towards the old man. He must have known
the value of this piece of paper, and it must have been very great, for
he gazed in terror at the American.
"The price of the path," said he curtly.
"I do not allow myself to be bribed, Monsieur," said the Frenchman
decidedly.
Alison quietly laid the banknote on the table. "Not by the Germans, I
understand that in advance! They might offer you tenfold this sum, and
it would be in vain. But I do not belong to them,--I am not their
friend. Did my business concern their interests, I should be allowed to
pass their line. The fact that I am compelled to seek your aid, may
prove to you that as a Frenchman you can assume the responsibility of
this treachery. You _must_ tell me the way!"
The argument was just, and the lordly confidence of the American did
not fail of its effect upon the old steward; still he did not yield.
"Would you go alone, Monsieur?"
"Certainly."
"And this very night? You perhaps know what you will meet there."
"I do!" declared Alison, who thought it best to conceal his entire
ignorance of affairs, and pretend to have been initiated. He reached
his goal. He succeeded in goading on the Frenchman in the old steward's
nature; in making serviceable his hatred to the enemy. The steward well
knew what threatened in the mountains to-night, and the circumstance
that the stranger, without the knowledge of the Germans, wished to go
there alone, convinced him that here he had to deal with an ally. And
so his resistance gave way.
"There is such a path," he said, lowering his voice. "It leads over the
mountains to L. The Germans do not know it; even if they have chanced
to discover it, it ends for them in the first defile on the right. They
cannot possibly know that it continues on the other side, and extending
through the forest, connects with our park. The beginning and end are
too much hidden by rifts in the rock and by shrubbery; it is a secret
of ours."
Alison's eyes gleamed with a savage joy. "Very well; and how am I to
find the path?" he asked.
"You go into the park, and pass up the principal avenue, which is
unguarded; to the left you will see a statue of Flora. Go past this
into the grotto close by. It is not so closely shut in by the rocky
walls, as it appears to be; there is a way of egress from it to the
forest. Follow the narrow path through the bushes; there is but one,
you cannot err, and in ten minutes you will have reached the defile; it
leads to the left up the mountain road to the rocky plateau where
stands a solitary fir. There you are already beyond the lines, and far
enough from them not to be remarked."
Alison had listened in breathless attention, as if he would hold fast
every word in his remembrance; now with an expression of sullen triumph
in his eyes, he took the bank-note from the table and handed it to the
Frenchman.
"I thank you!" he said. "Here, take this!"
The old man hesitated. "I did not do this for money, Monsieur," he
said.
"I know it. It was from hatred to the enemy. Give yourself no
uneasiness. I do not need the money, at least not for to-night," he
added, while his lips curled with a cold, bitter irony. "But the
information is worth more to me than this paper; take it; it will not
lay heavy on your conscience!"
The steward threw one more glance at the money. One would hardly
venture such a sum merely to compromise him, and the path certainly was
not of so high value to the Prussians as to this morose stranger. He
took the reward and muttered some words of thanks.
When about to go, Alison turned and gazed steadily and threateningly at
the old man.
"Your complicity ensures your silence. I need not enjoin silence upon
you. The Germans would shoot you if they knew you had helped me through
their lines."
"I know it, Monsieur."
"If I return towards morning, I shall have found entrance to the
mountains impossible, and shall be supposed to have passed the night in
the castle. You are not to know otherwise.--Adieu!"