David, bewildered with astonishment, continued to look around him.
At his right extended the fallow ground, across which meandered the road
which, with Frederick, he had just followed to arrive at the crest of
the hill, and he discovered then for the first time, as he took several
steps to the left, that on this side this bend of the ground was cut
almost perpendicular, in a length of three or four hundred feet, and
hung over a great wood, the highest summits of which reached only to a
third of the escarpment.
From the culminating point where he stood, David, commanding the plain a
long distance, satisfied himself that Frederick was neither before nor
behind him, nor was he on his right; he must then have disappeared
suddenly by the escarpment on the left.
David's anguish was insupportable when he thought of Madame Bastien's
despair if he should return to her alone. But this inactive terror did
not last long. A man of great coolness and of a determination often put
to the test in perilous journeys, he had acquired a rapidity of decision
which is the only hope of safety in extreme danger.
In a second he made the following argument, acting, so to speak, as he
thought:
"Frederick has escaped from me only on the side of the escarpment; he
has not thrown himself down this precipice, I would have heard the sound
of his falling body as it broke the branches of the great trees I see
there below me; he has then descended by some place known to himself;
the ground is muddy, I ought to discover his tracks; where he has passed
I will pass, he cannot be more than five minutes in advance of me."
David had travelled on foot with Indian tribes in North America, and,
more than once in the chase, separated from the main body of his
companions in the virgin forests of the New World, he had learned from
the Indians with whom he hunted how, by means of rare sagacity and
observation, to find those who had disappeared from his sight.
Returning then to the spot where he had first perceived that Frederick
had disappeared, David saw in the length of five or six metres, no other
than that made by his own steps; but suddenly he recognised Frederick's
tracks turning abruptly toward the edge of the escarpment, which they
coasted for a little, then disappeared.
David looked down below.
At a distance of about fifteen feet the top of an elm extended its
immense arms so far as to touch the steep declivity of the escarpment.
Between the thick foliage of this tree-top and the spot where he was
standing, David observed a large cluster of broom, which one could reach
by crawling along a wide gap in the clayey soil; there he discovered
fresh footprints.
"Frederick succeeded in reaching this tuft of brushwood," said David,
taking the same road with as much agility as daring, "and afterward,"
thought he, "suspending himself by the hands, he placed his foot on one
of the largest branches at the top of the elm, and from there descended
from branch to branch until he reached the foot of the tree."
In David the action accompanied the thought always. In a few minutes he
had glided to the top of the tree; a few little branches broken
recently, and the erosion of the bark in several spots where Frederick
had placed his feet, indicated his passage.
When David had slowly descended to the foot of the tree, the thick bed
of leaves, detached by the autumn and heaped upon the soil, rendered the
exploration of Frederick's path more difficult; but the slight
depression of this foliage where he had stepped, and the broken or
separated underbrush, very thick in spots he had just crossed, having
been carefully noted by David, served to guide him across a vast
circumference. When he came out of this ground he heard a hollow sound,
not far distant, but quite startling, which he had not noticed before in
the midst of the rustling of branches and dry leaves.
This startling noise was the sound of many waters.
The practised ear of David left him no doubt upon the subject. A
horrible idea entered his mind, but his activity and resolution,
suspended a moment by fright, received a new and vigorous impulse. The
enclosure from which he had just issued bordered on a winding walk where
the moist soil still showed the tracks of Frederick's feet. David
followed it in great haste, because he perceived by the intervals and
position of these tracks that in this spot the young man had been
running.
But soon a hard, dry soil, as it was sandy and more elevated, succeeded
the soft lowlands, and no more tracks could be seen.
David then found himself in a sort of cross-roads where he could hear
distinctly the sound of the Loire, whose waters, swollen to an unusual
degree in a few days, roared with fury.
David at once resolved to run straight to the river, guiding himself by
its sound, since it was impossible any longer to follow Frederick by his
tracks. Full of anguish and concern for the boy's mother,--an anguish
all the more intense from the recollection of the farewells addressed to
her by Frederick,--he darted across the wood in an easterly direction
according to the roar of the river.
At the end of ten minutes, leaving the undergrowth, David ran across a
prairie which ended with the bluff of the river. This bluff he cleared
in a few bounds.
At his feet he saw an immense sheet of water, yellow, rapid, and
foaming, the waves of which broke and died upon the sand.
As far as his view extended, David, panting from his precipitate run,
could discover nothing.
Nothing but the other shore of the river drowned in mist.
Nothing but a gray and sullen sky, from which a beating rain began to
fall.
Nothing but this muddy stream muttering like distant thunder, and
forming toward the west a great curve, above which rose the solid mass
of the forest of Pont Brillant dominated by its immense castle.
Suddenly reduced to enforced inaction, David felt his strong and valiant
soul bow beneath the weight of a great despair.
Against this despair he vainly struggled, hoping that perhaps Frederick
had not resolved upon this terrible step. He even went so far as to
attribute the disappearance of the young man to a schoolboy's trick.
Alas! David did not keep this illusion long; a sudden blast of wind
which blew violently along the current of the river brought almost to
David's feet, as it rolled and tossed it upon the sand, a cap of blue
cloth bound with a little Scotch border, which Frederick had worn that
morning.
"Unhappy child!" exclaimed David, his eyes full of tears, "and his
mother, his mother! oh, this is terrible!"
Suddenly he heard, above the roar of the waters, and brought by the
wind, a long cry of distress.
Remounting at once the bank opposite the wind which brought this cry to
his ears, David ran with all his might in the direction of the call.
Suddenly he stopped.
These words, uttered with a heartrending cry, reached his ear:
"My mother! oh, my mother!"
A hundred steps before him, David perceived, almost at the same time, in
the middle of the surging waters, the head of Frederick, livid!
frightful! his long hair matted on his temples, his eyes horribly
dilated, while his arms, in a last struggle, moved convulsively above
the abyss.
Then the preceptor saw no more, save a wider, deeper bubbling in the
spot where he had discovered the body.
A light of hope, nevertheless, illumined David's manly face, but feeling
the imminence of the peril and the danger of a blind precipitation,--for
he had need of all his skill and all his strength, and, too, of all
possible freedom from restraint,--he had the self-possession, after
having thrown off his coat and vest, to take off his cravat, his
stockings, and even his suspenders.
All this was executed with a sort of deliberate quickness which
permitted David, while he was removing his garments, to follow with an
attentive eye the current of the river, and coolly to calculate how far
Frederick would be carried by the current. He calculated correctly. He
saw soon, at a little distance, and toward the middle of the river,
Frederick's long hair lifted by the waves, and the skirt of his hunting
jacket floating on the water.
Then all disappeared again.
The moment had come.
Then David with a firm and sure gaze measured the distance, threw
himself in the stream, and began to swim straight to the opposite shore,
estimating, and with reason, that in cutting the breadth of the river,
keeping count of the drift, he ought to reach the middle of the Loire a
little before the current would carry Frederick's body there.
David's foresight made no mistake; he had already gained the middle of
the stream when he saw at his left, drifting between two waves, the
body of Madame Bastien's son, entirely unconscious.
Seizing Frederick's long hair with one hand, he began to swim with the
other hand, and reached the shore by means of the most heroic efforts,
tortured every moment with the thought that perhaps, after all, he had
rescued only a corpse.
At last he trod upon the shore. Robust and agile, he took the young man
in his arms and laid him on the turf, about a hundred steps from the
spot where he had left his garments.
Then, kneeling down by Frederick, he put his hand upon the poor boy's
heart. It was not beating, his extremities were stiff and cold, his lips
blue and convulsively closed, nor did one breath escape from them.
David, terrified, lifted the half-closed eyelid of the youth: his eye
was immovable, dull and glassy.
The rain continued to flow in torrents over this inanimate body. David
could no longer restrain his sobs. Alone, on this solitary shore, with
no help near, when help was so much needed,--powerful and immediate
help, even if one spark of life still remained in the body before him!
David was looking around him, in desperate need, when at a little
distance he saw a thick column of smoke rising from behind a projecting
angle of the embankment, which, no doubt, hid some inhabited house from
his sight.
To carry Frederick in his arms, and, in spite of his heavy burden, to
run to this hidden habitation, was David's spontaneous act. When he had
passed this angle, he perceived at a little distance one of the
brick-kilns so numerous on the borders of the Loire, as brickmakers find
in this latitude all the necessary materials of clay, sand, water, and
wood.
Making use of his reminiscences of travel, David recalled the fact that
the Indians inhabiting the borders of the great lakes, often restore
their half-drowned companions to life, and awaken heat and circulation
of the blood, by means of large stones which are made hot,--a sort of
drying-place, upon which they place the body while they rub the limbs
with spirits.
The brickmakers came eagerly to David's assistance. Frederick, enveloped
in a thick covering, was extended on a bed of warm bricks, and exposed
to the penetrating heat which issued from the mouth of the oven. A
bottle of brandy, offered by the head workman, was used in rubbing. For
some time David doubted the success of his efforts. Nevertheless some
little symptoms of sensibility made his heart bound with hope and joy.
* * * * *
An hour after having been carried to the brick-kiln, Frederick,
completely restored, was still so feeble, notwithstanding his
consciousness, that he was not able to utter a word, although many times
he looked at David with an expression of tenderness and unspeakable
gratitude.
The preceptor and his pupil were in the modest chamber of the master
workman, who had returned to his work near the embankment, and with his
labourers was observing the level of the stream, which had not reached
such a height in many years, for the inhabitants of these shores were
always filled with fear at the thought of an overflow of the Loire.
David had just administered a warm and invigorating drink to Frederick,
when the youth said, in a feeble voice:
"M. David, it is to you that I shall owe the happiness of seeing my
mother again!"
"Yes, you will see her again, my child," replied the preceptor, pressing
the son's hands in his own, "but why did you not think that to kill
yourself was to kill your mother?"
"I thought of that too late. Then I felt myself lost, and I cried, 'My
mother!' when I should have cried, 'Help!'"
"Fortunately, that supreme cry I heard, my poor child. But now that you
are calm, I implore you, tell me--"
Then, interrupting himself, David added:
"No, after what has passed, I have no right to question you. I shall
wait for a confession which I wish to owe only to your confidence."
Frederick felt David's delicacy, for it was evident that his preceptor
did not desire to abuse the influence given by a service rendered, by
forcing a confidence from him.
Then he said, with tears in his eyes:
"M. David, life was a burden to me. I judged of the future by the past,
and I wished to end it. Yet, that night, when during my mother's sleep I
bade her farewell, my heart was broken. I thought of the sorrow that I
would cause her in killing myself, and for a moment I hesitated, but I
said to myself, 'My life will cost her more tears perhaps than my
death,' and so I decided to put an end to it. This morning I asked her
to forgive all the grief I had caused her, I also asked you to forgive
me for the wrongs I had done to you, M. David. I did not wish to carry
with me the animadversion of anybody. To remove all suspicion I affected
calmness, certain of finding during the day some means of escaping your
watchfulness and that of my mother. Your invitation to go out this
morning served my plans. I was acquainted with the country. I directed
our walk toward a spot where I felt sure I could escape from you and
from your assistance, and I do not know how it was possible for you to
find a trace of me, M. David."
"I will tell you that, my child, but continue."
"The hurry, the eagerness of my flight, the noise of the wind and the
waters, seemed to intoxicate me, and then, on the horizon, I saw rise up
before me, like an apparition, the--" Here a light flush coloured
Frederick's cheeks, and he did not finish his sentence.
David mentally supplied it, and said to himself:
"This unhappy child, in his moment of desperation, saw, as it commanded
the shore of the river from afar, the castle of Pont Brillant."
After a short silence, Frederick continued:
"As I told you, M. David, I seemed intoxicated, almost mad, for I do not
recollect at what spot on the river I threw myself in. The cold in the
water seized me, I thought I was going to die, and then I was afraid.
Then the thought of my mother came back to me. I seemed to see her, as
in a dream, throw herself upon my cold, dead body. I did not want to
die, and I cried, 'My mother! my mother!' as I tried to save myself, for
I know very well how to swim; but the cold made me numb, and I felt
myself sinking to the bottom. As I heard the river roar above my head I
made a desperate effort, and came to the surface of the water, and then
I lost consciousness until I found myself here, M. David,--here where
you have brought me,--saved me as if I were your child,--here, where my
first thought has been of my mother."
And Frederick, fatigued by the emotion of this recital, leaned his elbow
on the bed where they had carried him, and remained silent, his head
resting on his hand.