ACROSS THE CHASM
"The moon," said Andrew, "is past her full, therefore she will not
rise until close upon eleven. Now is the time."
He was seated in the general room, or parlour, of La Tête d'Or, and
opposite to him was Laurent--it being the third day after his visit to
Bois-le-Vaux.
He had the inn to himself now, as far as regarded visitors, since all
of De Vaudemont's service, as well as several other Lorrainers who had
returned with their masters from the campaign, had by this time gone
to their respective homes. Yet, to some of them a hint had been
given--a whisper sent round--that one of those who were most hated
amongst the seigneurie might ere long be brought to his account, and
that, if they desired to participate in the knowledge of what was
happening, they should let Jean know their whereabouts.
"For," said he, over many an ale-house table in various villages
around, "there may be some brave doings ere long--doings in which some
of you may like to share. There are many of us who have had our noses
to the grindstone a long while--many who have eaten hard bread so that
those who have dominated us should feed well--some, too, whose
hearths have been made desolate. Well! it may so happen now--God,
He only knows!--that there will be one more hearth desolated soon.
That--well!--that the oppressor shall have no hearth to warm himself
at."
He had given many other hints, too--accompanied by divers winks and
nods and shrugs, common to peasants of his class--hints that there
might be a house to be burnt down and so forth; a fearful retaliation
to be made on one whom they, in that part of Lorraine, had come to
regard as a pest and curse; a man who was a traitor to all their
traditions; one who--this being in the eyes of many the worst crime
possible--had given in his allegiance to France.
And in the telling of all this he had so inflamed the imagination of
his hearers--rude soldiers, mostly, who had been born and nurtured
in the one idea that, above all other things, France was never to
be permitted to enfold in her grasp their fair province of
Lorraine--that, at any moment, they would be willing to rise and wreak
their vengeance on the man at whom Jean hinted. And, their curiosity
being also much aroused, as was natural enough, they tried hard to
extract from him the name of the identical seigneur against whom such
retaliation would probably be practised. This, however, he would not
divulge--having been warned by Andrew and Laurent on no account to do
so--and, thereby, inflamed their imagination the more! So that, when
he left them, he did so knowing that they were fully primed to join at
any moment in any attack to which they might be summoned, should the
necessity arise; both he and Laurent believing in their own minds that
that opportunity would not be long in coming.
For, though both these men considered that it was most probable Andrew
would obtain the entrance to the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux which he
desired, neither of them thought he would ever return or escape from
that mansion alive. And, with him destroyed, there would be no further
necessity for delaying the project on which they and others had long
meditated--the project of destroying and razing to the ground the
ancient home of the De Bois-Vallées. Therefore, the warning to those
others had gone forth; they were bidden to be ready.
"So," said Laurent now, in answer to Andrew's remark, "it is to be
to-night?"
"It is to-night. If all goes well I shall be in the house by ten
o'clock, and out of it again an hour later with, I trust and pray, the
lady safely rescued."
"I pray so," Laurent answered. But again he whispered to himself, as
he had done before, that the English stranger would never return
alive. He would be caught, discovered by some of the servitors--men
thoroughly in their master's interests, since he at any moment could
send them to the gallows-tree for past offences--and would be set upon
and slain. Yet, when he told Andrew this, the other turned a deaf ear
to him--refused to believe in such peril.
"There are five," he replied, "since their master is away--what
devil's work is he on now, I wonder? What are five? How many times
think you, my friend, have I been opposed to five men in the campaigns
I have made? Why! 'twas but at Entzheim the other day that I was alone
and unsupported amongst a dozen of the Duke of Holstein-Pleon's
soldiers; yet, as you see, I am here, and without a scratch."
"Ay, I see," muttered Laurent, "but 'twas on an open field, your
friends and comrades near you, ready at any moment to come to your
assistance as, doubtless, they did. Oh! I know, I have been a soldier
myself! But now, see, it is different. You will be alone in a strange
house--in the dark--egress impossible during an attack on you. _Mon
Dieu!_ you will be run through and through or shot ere you can get
back to the slope--with no possibility of help from friends and
comrades there. Heavens!" he concluded, "the risk is fearful."
"Bah!" answered Andrew, his nerves not touched one whit by Laurent's
forebodings. "Bah! 'Twould want forty men to place me at such
disadvantage as you speak of. For, observe! I shall be at the top of
the house, since I enter that way, and she is also there--do not
you--one who has been a soldier--see the advantage I have? Five cannot
mount the stairs abreast, 'tis unlike they will be broad in that part
of the house. As they come singly, or in twos, I shall have my
chance."
"They will use firearms."
"And so shall I. Fear not, my friend, I shall return alive."
And again Laurent said, "I pray so," while, again, he thought to
himself, "It is impossible."
Then Andrew asked him if it was certain, as Jean had reported, that
the dog was dead?
"He says," replied the other, "that almost for sure it must be. He and
his cousin have laid the poison carefully; the cousin, indeed, getting
at the meat with which it is fed. It cannot be still alive."
"Therefore," said Andrew, "I am safe from its discovery. Yet, poor
beast, I would it had not been necessary."
"Pray God it is dead," replied Laurent. "Pray God it is. For if it
still lives when you are in that house, nothing can save your presence
from being known."
"Bah! croaker! Even if it still lives it must have a strong scent to
discover me in the topmost part of the building when they are all
below. I will not believe it."
After which he set about making all necessary arrangements for
reaching the mansion into which he had resolved to penetrate that
night.
They were soon concluded, as he himself had pondered much over them
during the time that had elapsed since his escape from the jaws of the
hounds on that, his first and only, visit--it but remained for him to
go over them carefully with Laurent. Therefore, he asked now, "Is the
coil of rope safely bestowed?"
"Ay, it is," Laurent replied. "Thirty good metres of the newest and
best. Placed in our hut far down the slope, where the wood is kept
after the felled trees are cut into billets. It is there. To-night we
shall find it."
"'Tis very well. Now listen. To-night I set forth from this inn and
shall reach Gaspard's cabin about the hour of nine. You will be there.
Then we shall descend without loss of time and, ere ten minutes have
elapsed, I shall be across. It will not take long, once the rope is
fixed to that chestnut which grows close down to the summit of the
wall."
"It will not take long, in truth," Laurent replied. "That will not,
Monsieur," and the man's face testified true anxiety. "It is the
returning I fear."
"Dispel your fear--I shall return."
"And with the lady?"
"And with the lady!"
"Suppose," said Laurent, "you find her guarded by the woman. It may be
she sleeps with her, or close by her side. What then?"
"I must find means to silence without hurting her." While,
impetuously, he said, "My friend, all is thought of--as far as may be,
all foreseen. I know well the risks and dangers I have to encounter.
See. Let me tell them over to you," and swiftly he proceeded to do so.
"First--there is the risk that the rope may break--then----"
"For that never fear! I guarantee that!"
"So be it. Then, first--since that counts not--I may be seen ere I
reach the roof by someone on the look out--'tis not very like, yet it
may be so. Whereon I shall be shot like a sparrow, and die hanging
'twixt earth and heaven. Or, let me reach the roof, and be hacked to
death, or hurled to the paved court below. Is not all possible?"
For answer Laurent shuddered. "_Mon Dieu!_" he muttered, "your nerve
is iron."
"On the other hand, allow I gain the roof and find all
barred--trapdoor or ladder--or discover no entrance that way I must
then come back and try elsewhere, another time. But, presuming I can
gain the entrance--what then? I have to reach the lady, silence her
fear at sight of me--poor soul! doubtless she will think at first I am
her doomsman--persuade her to come away with me, force her to pass
across the chasm. 'Twill terrify her, yet--it is the only way. We can
never escape below--specially if the hound happens by any chance to be
still alive!--I must fasten her to the rope, let her swing across,
while you from the other side will draw her up. Then the rope can be
thrown back to me; why should we fail? Fail, bah we will, we must
succeed. Say, have I not thought of all?"
"In truth you have," Laurent exclaimed, and, catching some of Andrew's
spirit, he answered, "We will succeed."
* * * * * *
The night came--dark as pitch, with, above, dense clouds rolling so
low that they swept the tops of the fir trees on the summit; covered,
indeed, that summit so that Gaspard's cabin was enveloped in the dank,
reeking mist. And, through that mist, Andrew and Laurent were
descending to where was the ledge of the stone-facing to the slope
that backed up the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux.
As far as was possible, every arrangement had been made for removing
the woman, known to Andrew as Marion Wyatt, to a place of safety
directly she was out of the house, it being deemed by him not
necessary that, at first, she should be taken farther than Remiremont
itself, or, at most, Plombières. For, once beyond Bois-le-Vaux and
with him to protect her, Andrew shrewdly suspected that the Vicomte
would make no further attempt upon her liberty, since to do so he
would once more find himself opposed to his sword, of which--_maître
d'escrime_ as he almost was--De Bois-Vallée must now have learnt to
have a wholesome respect. And, as for summoning any authority there
might be in the neighbourhood to his assistance--that was not to be
imagined. Even though he should be able to show some kind of right to
retain the lady, none in that place would be likely to lend assistance
to one so cordially detested as he was, both because of his family and
of the manner in which he had broken with all the traditions of the
province in espousing the cause of France instead of--as most others
had done--contenting himself with remaining lukewarm, if not inclined
to join the Duke.
No! there was no danger once outside the house. It all lay inside!
They reached the hut where the wood was stored by the peasants when
cut into billets, ere being sent down to the mansions and towns that
lay around the western side of the Vosges, and, furnishing themselves
with the thirty metres of good new rope which Laurent had purchased by
Andrew's orders--rope two inches in circumference and strong enough to
bear the strain of four men of even his bulk--they set forth again
on the descent. Also, Andrew took with him a small lantern and a
tinder-box, since he knew not what impenetrable darkness might bar his
way towards the room of the woman he sought, when inside the house.
But this was not all. He recognized that, once he quitted the
comparative safety of the walled slope, his life would not be worth a
moment's purchase if he were observed; he was resolved to part with
that life as dearly as possible. To his sword, therefore, were now
added the pistols in his belt, well charged and primed; likewise he
had in his breast a dagger-knife, good either for stabbing or cutting.
"For all," he said to Laurent, "may be needed. The sword in close
encounter with a number--they will be clever if they get beyond its
point!--the pistols for use at a distance. To wit, when I am swinging
over the chasm! For, there, a bullet would reach a man ere, perhaps,
one from him can reach me. And for the knife--well, 'twill cut a lock
away from an old door, or hack a rope in half with one lusty cut. Is't
not so, my friend?"
"It is so," Laurent assented. Then he muttered, "You appal me! I never
thought the man lived who knew not fear. Yet now I have found him."
But Andrew only laughed and bade him push on his way by the path that,
even in the sodden, rimy darkness, the Lorrainer was well able to
find.
At last they were on the brink of the chasm; they stood upon the
coping of the wall of rock erected, doubtless, centuries ago by some
De Bois-Vallée to prevent the flattened face of the slope from falling
away and filling up the gap left between it and the house itself. The
gap of twenty feet across which Andrew was now to pass.
Below, in front, nothing was visible; the mist rolling up from the
plains obscured all. It was so profound that none who had not been
there before could have imagined that, some yards away, though lower
down, there stood the roof of a vast mansion; that, between the roof
and their feet there was a gulf--a space--through which a step more,
if taken by one who did not know every inch of the mountains, would
hurl him to annihilation below.
"It is the safest moat--the most devilish!" Andrew whispered, "ever
devised or thought of. How many have stumbled over this to death and
destruction, I wonder, in the years that are gone and on such a night
as this?"
"They are devils all, these De Bois-Vallées; devils all! Perhaps the
_Loup de Lorraine_, the first of their race, foresaw the many stumbles
that would happen here in the days that were to come."
"Maybe," said Andrew. "Well! by God's blessing I will not stumble nor
fail in my passage. Now for the rope."
They wound it round the chestnut tree half a dozen times, knotting and
making it fast at this end, so that by no chance could it slip and
become uncoiled; they tugged singly and together at it until they were
assured that it was as secure and fast as human hand could make it.
Then they measured the length of what remained and judged that it was
as nearly as possible what was desired.
"I shall be," said Andrew, "a little lower than the roof when I am at
its full length below, therefore 'tis very well. For, when I am about
to plunge across, it will require more length to gain that roof. Now,
I will make a trial. And, one last word. Remember, I shall come back
ere long. I feel it--know it. As man to man, I charge you not to
desert me; not to quit this spot until all human hope of my return has
vanished from your mind. On you my life, and the life of her I go to
rescue, depends."
"There is my hand," Laurent said, finding that of the other in the
darkness. "Alive I will not quit the place. Even though you come not
back for forty-eight hours I shall be here."
"Enough! If I come not back in that time I shall be dead. Then--do as
you will."
He looped the end of the coil about his body under his armpits, and,
taking as well one turn of the rope beneath his shoulder, so that it
should by no possibility be able to slip up over his head, he also
wound it round his left arm. That done, he knew that nothing but the
fraying of the strands upon the coping of the wall, or a sudden hack
at it from a knife, could plunge him on to the stones below. It would
never leave his body now until he removed it, or until, if dead, some
other performed that office.
"Let it slip gradually round the trunk of the tree," he said, "till it
is all payed out. About a foot from the ground; thereby it will escape
the rough stones of the edge. Farewell! Remember!"
And now he knelt down upon the extreme lip of the coping-stone, found
that one place in particular was very smooth, and decided that it was
over this that the rope must run. Thereby, the friction would be
scarcely anything.
"Lower me down," he whispered, as his legs hung dangling in the
unfathomable space, and the toes of his boots scraped against the
surface of the wall. "Lower me now."
And as he spoke he perceived himself slowly gliding down the face of
the dank, wet wall, and felt the ferns and mosses that grew upon it
brushing against his jacket.