THE WEIRD WOMAN
Andrew Vause raised himself on his left elbow--though his right arm
and shoulder were so intolerably painful that it caused him agony to
do so--and endeavoured to peer into the darkness in which he was
enveloped. Endeavoured to discover, or imagine, where he was; also to
remember what had happened.
Yet he could recollect nothing, had no more conception where he was,
or why he was lying on his back suffering excruciating agony
accompanied by a burning thirst, than he would have possessed had he
been but that moment born.
All was chaos to him.
As, however, the lowest form of creature on which nature confers
existence, even though owning no power of reasoning or memory, or the
knowledge of why or how it so exists, yet seeks for the necessities
that existence requires and for the wherewithal to supply its wants,
so the man lying there sought for some assuagement of that intolerable
thirst. Sought for it by endeavouring unconsciously to moisten his
lips with his dry and parched tongue--then, failing in this attempt,
relapsed into the lethargy, followed by the oblivion, which had
previously been his.
Yet again, later on--though he knew it not himself, no more than
he knew that many more hours had passed since first his eyes had
opened--he awoke a second time, still dazed, still unconscious of
who, or what, or where he was; knowing only as the unreasoning
brute-beast knows that it is suffering, yet also knowing not why.
But now his agony was so intense--the agony of thirst! for the other
pain, that of his right side, might be borne--that, like some wounded
creature, he writhed and tossed about upon whatever object it might be
on which he lay, and in his writhings and the tossings of his long
arms his left hand struck something. Something that, even to his
bemused mind, seemed to give promise of containing the wherewithal to
quench his thirst. Whereon the long fingers twining round that object
found that it held water. Then, still with no knowledge of what he
did, with nothing beyond that instinct shared by the lowest of
creatures to tell him that what he was doing would bring him relief,
he drew the vessel nearer and drank. Drank and drank, long and
copiously, until at last there was no drop left, then sank back once
more, and once more lapsed into unconsciousness.
* * * * * *
Again he awoke, more hours afterwards, with still the impenetrable
darkness all around him, and with still the dazed blankness of memory
and the inability to recall who or what he was, yet with now through
all his density of mind some feeble glimmering of humanity working in
his brain. Some hazy idea coursing through that brain and suggesting
that he was a thing that had life in it, that he had not only just
begun to exist, but, instead, had been existing heretofore. That he
was a creature not used to lying paralyzed and helpless here, but, on
the contrary, one full of action.
Memory was beginning to assert itself! Though, even as it did so, he
slept again, went off once more into oblivion.
At last, awakening for the fourth time, with the terrible thirst gone,
he awoke also to life and reason. A little longer--after lying still
in the darkness--he recalled the fact that his name was Andrew Vause.
After that the rest was easy, indeed, too easy; for, with this clue to
aid him, the whole of the past surged up in such huge waves of
remembrance that they almost served to engulf memory altogether, That
past rushed in upon him, recollections crowded swift and fast upon his
mind and hurtled one another away; gradually he remembered all. All!
The passage from the mountain slope to the roof; the meeting with
Marion Wyatt; the still unexplained reasons why this English girl
should be a prisoner here in the Lorrainer's house; the attempted
escape; the fight and his defeat. But, beyond and after that, only the
blank occasioned by his insensibility--and now this black impenetrable
darkness!
Where was he? He must know that! Always a man of action, and with the
promptings to action still working in him, all wounded as he was, he
made, therefore, an attempt to rise, but found that attempt useless.
His leg was attached by a chain to something at the foot of where he
lay, a chain that, as he moved the leg, hung heavily upon it above the
ankle and clasped it tight. He was a prisoner. That much was certain
But what else?
His hands, which were free--though the right still caused him great
pain when he endeavoured to move it--told him he lay close above a
floor upon some stretched-out rug or skin; his other senses revealed
to him that he was in some large, vast place into which the air
entered freely; a damp, cold air, too, that blew upon his face, yet
was grateful since it cooled the fever that raged within him still.
But that was all; he could discover nothing further, could, from where
he was, touch nothing beyond the bare boards around him, excepting
only the vessel which he had some time previously--he could not
recollect whether it was an hour or a day ago!--drunk from. No more.
Yet now, lying there--half dozing sometimes; sometimes forgetful of
everything and recalling next each incident as it had happened and in
its proper sequence, as well as with strange clearness--it seemed that
a sound broke on his ears. A sound as of one who slowly mounted some
steps, or stairs. A footstep that came nearer each time it fell. And,
suddenly, as he lay listening, wondering if, with this approaching
footfall, his doom approached too, if he was now to pay with his life
for the entrance into his enemy's house, a light sparkled in his eyes
from a slight distance, then blazed full into them, and a woman
carrying a lanthorn in her hand stood before him. A woman who had
mounted some steps close by him, and thus entered the place in which
he lay. By the light of that lanthorn he recognized where he was
namely, the garret beneath the roof of the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux!
She held the lanthorn high above her head, peering down at him under
its rays for some time as though scrutinizing the great form stretched
before her, and, perhaps, did not see that his eyes were open and
looking at her from under his long and much dishevelled hair as
curiously as she regarded him. Whereby he had time and opportunity for
observing what manner of woman this was who stood there.
She was no longer young, that he saw from the great streaks of grey
which mingled with her hair, that once must have been as raven black
as his own was now; was, indeed, a woman of about fifty years of age.
Yet no man could regard her and fail to observe that she must also
once have been beautiful, though with a beauty spoilt and marred by
the workings of strong passions within--sensual passions, as testified
by the full thick lips and large gleaming eyes--which even now shone
with a strange, fierce brightness!--cruel, vindictive passions, as
shown by the manner in which those lips closed tightly together; by
the broad jaw, and by the perpendicular line between the eyes, which
caused a frown to be always upon her face.
Fixing her glance at last full on him she saw he was awake and
conscious, and, so seeing, moved the lanthorn a little and peered
under it into his eyes. Then she spoke, while as she did so her
features either assumed a cynical smile or seemed, in the flickering
light of the lamp, to assume it.
"So," she said, "you are the man who found his way into this house by
a road none have ever been known to travel before in our day. The man
who thought to carry off your countrywoman--almost succeeded in doing
so! _Ciel!_ at least you are a brave one."
"I am the man," Andrew assented calmly; "who are you?"
It seemed, however, to be no part of her intention to tell him this,
since, after casting another glance at his stretched-out form, she
strode off to that part of the garret where the ladder, or steps, from
below entered it, and, stooping down to the floor, picked up a jar of
water and a platter of bread which she had placed there ere she
advanced towards him. Then she returned to where he lay, put them by
his side, and, taking up the other water-pitcher which he had drained
when alone in the darkness, prepared to retire. But Andrew--who hoped
that, even from this stern-looking woman (who was, he did not doubt,
that custodian of Marion Wyatt of whom the peasant had spoken--the
woman who had loved De Bois-Vallée's father and hated, in consequence,
his mother) he might obtain some information as to what had been the
conclusion of the events which had occurred in the hall--put out his
hand as though to stop her going, and exclaimed:
"Tell me, I beseech you--as a woman yourself--what has befallen that
countrywoman of mine. Is all well with her?"
Pausing in her withdrawal to gaze down at him, while the dark,
piercing eyes looked into his, she made the enigmatic answer:
"As well as before. As well as it is ever like to be," then again
directed her steps towards where the ladder descended from the room.
"And I----" he cried, endeavouring thereby to arrest her steps,
"I--what is to be done to me--what attempted? Tell me that."
But she answered no more, continuing still upon her way to the steps.
Yet, had Andrew been a timorous man who feared for whatever was about
to befall him, he might have shuddered even as much as though she had
told him he was to be done to death that very hour. For she turned
her dark, grey-flecked head over her shoulder and looked at him with
those piercing eyes--pausing in her progress as she did so--and in the
eyes, nay! in the whole face, there was so mocking, devilish an
expression--in the flickering rays of the lanthorn it seemed to be a
grin!--that he divined there was no hope for him. That look told as
plainly as a hundred words that he was doomed! Was in the hands of one
who would forego nothing of the opportunity that had fallen in his
way--and this woman knew it, gloated over it!
Yet, with what he felt to be his fate foretold by that baleful glance,
this creature with her air of weird sardonic _espièglerie_ fascinated
him, even as the snake fascinates those who cannot fly from it, and,
as she strode slowly towards the other end of the vast garret, he
followed her with his eyes, unable to withdraw them. For it seemed to
him that in her he saw a living semblance of those women, those Fates
or Furies, of whom his mother and gentle, scholarly Philip had read to
him in his wild boyish days; the dark and terrible women who held the
web of men's lives in their hands and tore it as they listed. And he
wondered if she, this woman, whose worn face told of fierce and stormy
passions not yet spent--perhaps only subdued and half burnt out--might
hold his fate. Was she to be the administrator of some terrible death
marked out for him by the man in whose power he now was--did that
hideous glance she had given him over her shoulder mean this, or mean,
instead, that though death might not come to him at her hands she knew
well how it must and would come?
Watching her still, half awed, half bewitched by her weirdness, he saw
her suddenly stop ere she approached close to the ladder-head, gaze on
the ground, then flash the lanthorn's miserable light on the spot at
which she stared; next, stoop swiftly to the floor--supple now as a
girl of twenty!--pick something up from the floor and, holding it in
the palm of her disengaged hand, regard it by the lamp's gleam. And,
if her face had stirred him with an undefined feeling of repulsion as
she cast that leering, evil look over her shoulder, it horrified him
now by the glance of hate it bore as she inspected the object in her
hand.
For it was the face of a devil glaring on an enemy, and that a
well-hated one; the face of a fiend regarding that which it would
blast to all eternity if possessing the power to do so. The mouth
twitching--the full lips livid now, and with the teeth clenched over
the lower one so that they seemed dug into it, until Andrew wondered
no blood spurted forth--the eyes staring, the last remaining colour
gone from the already dead-ivory of the cheeks--the woman gazed
Medusa-like at what she held in her hand.
Then, suddenly, her long, loose gown swishing the floor as she moved,
she strode back to him, her movements resembling a tigress's now; and,
standing quivering before him, she said--while her voice sounded
hoarse from out her throat--
"This! This! This! This cursed thing! It has fallen from your
body--must have done so when you were brought here. How came it yours?
Answer!"
"If," replied Andrew calmly, yet marvelling now at what the "cursed
thing" could be, the finding of which had stirred her so--observing,
too, the shaking of her limbs and the wild tempestuous fury that held
her in its grasp, "If madame would deign to say what it is that she
has found which moves her so----"
"What it is! What!" she repeated. Then exclaimed, "Man, trifle not
with me, or I shall anticipate your death by some few hours. God! why
bring this before my eyes? This! This picture of Fleurange Debrasques!
His mother! And in your possession. In yours! It is some trick 'twixt
you and him! Are you in truth his enemy?" and she bent her livid face
down and peered into his face. "Or is this a scheme to torture me even
in my swift-coming age, as, oh my God," and she wailed out these last
words, "I have been tortured all my life by her. By her and by her
memory," and, while she spoke, she struck the miniature against the
side of the lanthorn as though demented.
In a moment it seemed to Andrew's now cleared brain that here was an
accident, a chance, that might go far to help him to win, perhaps,
this wild cat, this creature of mad passions, to his side. To win
her--to!--to!--ah! it seemed more than one might hope for! Yet he
would make the attempt. His life--Marion's life--might hang on what he
could do with this woman.
"That," he said quietly, "Oh! that. The miniature. Why, 'tis nothing.
Only his mother's portraiture. True, I have heard she was a
Debrasques. And beautiful as the morning. Is it not so?"
Yet he had to pause as he looked now at the fury above him. For, by
his remarks on the beauty of the woman whose likeness she held in her
hand, he saw that he had goaded her almost too far. That she was
trembling from head to foot, that a little more and he would spoil his
chance. He must goad her further--but by degrees.
As he so paused she controlled herself. Calmed herself enough to say,
"how came it in your possession? Answer that."
"'Tis simple. He dropped it fleeing from Turenne's army--fleeing, as I
do pride myself, from me. For in solemn truth I am his enemy. Yet, I
pray, an honest one. And, therefore, because I know he loved that
lady, his mother, dearly, because also I knew his father worshipped
her from the moment he set eyes on her first, it was my intention to
have returned the jewel to him."
Andrew never moved his eye from off her as he spoke; he knew it might
have been death to do so. If she had a weapon about her, his words
were as like as not to cause her to use it on him. He was driving her
to desperation; only--he did not want that desperation vented on him.
And, watching the woman thus, he knew that it must find its vent
somehow. Those livid lips--dashed now with flecks of foam--those
glaring eyes, told clearly of the fire burning within.
"His father worshipped her! His father worshipped her!" she repeated,
bringing out the words, as it seemed to him lying there before her,
with an agonizing effort. "His father worshipped her. From the moment
he set eyes on her first. My God! that they had been blinded first!
That she had never come across my-- Yet," calming herself with another
strong effort, while she took a step nearer, so that now she stood
rigid before him--"how know you that? How? How? You never knew nor saw
his father--nor," and she seemed to force her glance to rest upon the
medallion--"this woman, Fleurange Debrasques--his wife."
In Andrew's mind there rang the Lorrainer's words, "She loved his
father and, they say, hated his mother _par consequent_"--he knew that
his cue was here. Also he knew he must be careful. Must be ready to
ward off any blow from hidden knife or dagger that might come; be
prepared to feel himself struck to the heart with some bullet from
concealed pistol when next he spoke. Yet the train was laid. The time
had come to say his last words.
And he said them.
"Know it? How know it? Is not the tale oft told hereabouts? Even I, a
stranger, have heard it! Sometimes with laughter--sometimes with pity
for another--sometimes----"
"With pity for another! What other?"
As she spoke no statue of marble, no corpse, was ever more rigid than
this woman standing there before him. Nor more white!
"What other?"
"One whom he thought he loved at first," the words coming clear and
distinct from Andrew's lips, "yet found he cared nothing for when
Fleurange Debrasques--ay! that was her name--met his view. One whom
they say he even then meant to discard, having grown weary of her; one
whom he did discard when Mdlle. Debrasques made him love her. Have you
never heard this?"
* * * * * *
The woman spoke no more, nor, as Andrew had thought would happen, did
she spring at him. Instead, without one word, she turned on her heel
and slowly made her way to the ladder, where, grasping the side-rail,
she descended it. Yet, ere she did so, she turned her face once and
glanced at him, the look she gave him piercing to his heart.
And, as he flung himself back on his rug, he muttered in the darkness
by which he was once more surrounded:
"Heaven forgive me! Heaven forgive me! I had to do it--it may win her
to our side; help Marion Wyatt and myself to our freedom. It had to be
done. Yet, it has driven her mad--if she was not already so. Heaven
forgive me!"