THE LAST MEETING
Marion Wyatt lay in her grave under the west wall of the burying
ground belonging to the Abbey of Remiremont--she was at rest for ever
now.
And, on the road to Bois-le-Vaux, to the house which had been her
prison for so long, Andrew Vause and the Marquis Debrasques rode
together, bent upon finding out, if possible, the manner in which De
Bois-Vallée had eluded the grasp of the former on that night of
horror.
Strapped to their saddles they carried with them some implements which
they thought might be of considerable assistance in enabling them--or
at least one of them--to descend into that yawning oubliette, since
down it Andrew Vause was determined to go, even though it sank into
the bowels of the earth. These implements consisted of, first, a solid
iron bar which would stretch easily across the diameter of the
oubliette's mouth, also a couple of lanterns, then some grappling
hooks which would be of use in catching hold of any projection, or
side of the shaft, in their descent, if necessary, and next, a coil of
rope strong as that which Andrew had previously used in his flight
across the chasm, and of the same length, namely, thirty metres.
"For," said he, when overnight they made these purchases in
Plombières, "the house is but half that height; therefore, by the time
I have descended some fifteen mètres I shall be on the level of the
earth. And, if the shaft goes below the earth as much again, and then
ceases not--which is scarce likely--why, the rope must be got down,
and I go on still."
"Yet, how for that?" asked Debrasques. "How to do it? I am resolved to
follow you, even though 'tis into the bowels of the earth--how shall
it be lowered, therefore, from above? We want a third, and one who is
trustworthy, in our company."
"Nay," replied Andrew, "we want no third, and we will have
none--trustworthy or not. Laurent was trustworthy, and he died in
keeping his pledge. Jean has disappeared, dispersed into air with all
the other besiegers of the ill-fated house. There is none other. Nor,
if there were, would we enlist him. The work shall be done alone by
us."
Marion had been laid to rest at daybreak of this wintry morning,
therefore it was still very early when they drew near the
half-demolished mansion, and, as they entered the estate, saw its
blackened walls in which yawned the great gaps where the wings had
partly fallen, and observed the still larger gap where the whole of
one side was gone. Also, they saw the gable chimneys still standing on
that portion of the roof to which Andrew and the women had escaped
from the garret--the stack of chimneys to which he had fastened that
first rope after he had taken his flight across.
The desolation was complete--was penetrating to the senses of those
who now regarded it--yet this very desolation seemed an appropriate
monument to the downfall of the race which had so long been known
and feared as "The Wolves of Lorraine." For the family was gone,
extinct now--the last member of it, Camille De Bois-Vallée, could
never build it up nor restore it again, any more than he could build
up and restore the house which had sheltered that family for
generations--'twas perhaps well, therefore, that it should go too. In
years to come, these now blackened walls would tell the tale of how
the vengeful Lorrainers had swept away at last those who had used
their power to trample on and ill-treat them.
Against the side of the building, under the shattered window from
which the three had eventually escaped, they found the logs and
billets of wood piled up precisely as they had been left--there were
none to disturb them now!--and, leaving their horses in the very
outhouse where the wood had been discovered, they entered at once the
ruined mansion.
"'Twill take but little time to reach the roof," Andrew said, "and as
little to see if by chance he found a passage that way. Come,
Valentin." Whereon, each carrying some of the necessaries they had
brought with them, they entered by the window.
To the younger man the scene of ruin and devastation on which he gazed
was appalling--also, it was saddening. For, as a child, and even later
in his still short existence, he had been here often--had run up and
down those huge staircases which were now torn from their settings and
lying in ruins below; in those rooms by which they passed swiftly--and
in one of which the dead body of Beaujos was stretched, as Andrew
knew--he had slept many a night; from that great yawning doorway, now
open to the cold wind that blew up from the west and whistled through
the empty vastness of the hall, he had issued forth often enough, bent
on a hawking or a hunting party.
And now--what a scene to gaze upon! What desolation and silence--what
an atmosphere of death and ruin, and the decay that time would bring,
prevailed over all!
They stood at last upon the roof of this remaining wing, arriving at
it by the way the others had left a few nights ago, their feet
embedded in the dank, decaying leaves blown on it by the autumn
winds--leaves now becoming skeletons under the winter rain and
frost--and made inspection of the whole to see what outlet there
might be for the fugitive. Yet there was none. Upon those leads there
was no opening beneath all that rotting mass--as they found quickly
enough--nothing except the trapdoor leading to the garret, to which
they now returned.
"As for the chimney stacks," said Andrew, "they are impossible.
Observe their height; he could never have reached their summit alone
and unaided--and--even though he had--what then? Come--'tis time to
inspect the oubliette."
In the dull, dim light that penetrated to the garret from the open
trapdoor above, they made their preparations swiftly--indeed, there
were but few to make. A turn or two of the rope (already previously
knotted at intervals of four feet to aid in the descent) around the
iron bar was made by Andrew, he fastening it by what is known to
sailors as a bowline knot, and he was ready to descend.
Then he sat down upon the edge of the oubliette, grasped the bar, and,
with his two hands, worked himself immediately over the middle of it,
the rope being between his legs.
"Now, Valentin," he said, "the search begins. What shall I find
below?" and as he spoke he ignited his tinder, communicated the flame
to the lamp attached to his belt, and peered down into the depths
beneath him.
But the rays of the lamp showed nothing--nothing beyond the bare walls
of the shaft, built, as was the lower part of the house itself, of
stone. And from up that shaft there came a cool, damp air, that made
itself perceptible even as he sat dangling over it.
"For Heaven's sake, be careful," Valentin whispered. Then--in even a
lower tone, added: "If he is there below--if he should be still
there--he may spring out at you."
But Andrew, glancing at him from his perch on the bar, pointed over
his shoulder to where his sword was braced on to his back
perpendicularly, since, had it been by his side, it might have impeded
his descent. Also he showed a pistol ready to his grasp.
"Have no fear," he said.
A moment later he was going down the rope hand over hand, the knots in
it assisting his feet. And Valentin Debrasques, lying on the floor of
the garret, face downwards, with his head over the edge of the
oubliette, saw beneath him the flame of the lamp descending further
and further. Andrew was now, he calculated, twenty feet below the
opening where he himself was.
Then, suddenly, he heard him call up.
"He passed this way."
"You know that?"
"Ay. I know it now."
"How?"
"He has left his traces. Also--now--I know how he descended."
"I must follow," Valentin called back. "'Tis nothing. And the rope
will surely bear both."
"It needs but to bear one," Andrew replied. "I have reached a
platform, a half platform--crescent-moon shaped--leaving still,
however, room for the passage of a man below, to further depths. He
has gone that way."
"I come," Debrasques called once more--and, heedless of Andrew's
warning him to remember that he was still weak from his wounds, he
seized the rope and slung his slight young form down it--the other
holding up the lantern so that he might better see as he descended.
A moment later and the two men were standing side by side upon the
platform mentioned by Andrew, a slab of flat stone, jutting out from
one side of the oubliette's now slimy walls--for the damp was very
perceptible here; the sides reeked with it, and drops of water oozed
from out of them and ran down to the stone slab itself. And, at their
feet, was the opening to the further depths.
But, also at their feet, was something else, something beside the coil
of the lower part of the rope by which they had come.
A chain, itself lying in a coil upon the platform--with a foot or so
of it hanging over into the abyss below. With, upon the ledge of the
platform, an inch of brown-coloured velvet--a strip torn doubtless
from a man's sleeve as he let himself down from the ledge and laid one
arm along the stone, while groping with the other for the means to
descend.
"His coat," said Debrasques, turning the strip over in his hand
beneath the light of the lantern. "He was wearing such a one when last
I saw him out of his trappings."
"And, as I think, on the night when he returned to this house; loomed
up before my eyes as they struck me down. Come, Valentin, let us go
on. To the end now."
"But how get there?" asked the Marquis, "how arrive? How use that
chain?"
"Easy enough. A foot below the mouth of the oubliette above, there is
a broken hook--I saw it as I descended. On that hook hung this chain,
and he knew it--it not being broken then. He descended part way by.
that--as I think--then the hook broke and he fell the rest, on to this
platform--the chain coming with him, grasped in his hand. No great
harm that--if he missed this smaller opening, as without doubt he did.
Had he not so missed it--poof! he would be lying somewhere below a
mangled corpse."
"Suppose--suppose," said Debrasques, "that, nevertheless, he did not
miss it--fell through, the chain remaining behind."
"Then, 'tis as I have said. We shall find him there--dead. Yet, what
use surmise? Let us on; I will go first."
As he spoke, he lifted up the coils of their own rope and let them
fall down through the opening, observing that the cord did not tighten
nor spin round a moment later. By that he judged that it had struck
some bottom, since, otherwise, it would doubtless have done both,
instead of, as now, lying against the side as though not extended its
full length.
"The end of the journey is near," he muttered again, "near now," and,
so speaking, he grasped the rope as it hung down through the orifice
from the iron beam above, and began to descend once more. Yet, in an
instant, he stopped and put out his hand in front of him, clutching
the rope now with the other alone, yet still seeming as though easily
supported and without effort.
"There are," he said to Debrasques, glancing up at him as though able
to see his face as plainly as the Marquis could himself see his by the
light of the lamp at his waist, "long staples let into the wall at
short intervals. They serve the use of a ladder, being bent at the
sides, thereby to enter the wall. Come, the rope is unnecessary. Let
yourself down the hole, feel with your feet until they touch the
staples, use the platform as a hold till your hands grasp the
uppermost bar; the rest is easy. Come."
And he went lower down himself, discarding the use of the rope
entirely now.
Behind, from above, followed Debrasques. Hand under hand, foot
succeeding foot, they went down those staples, the air growing more
chilly and damp and penetrating as still they descended, and giving
sure proof that they were now below the level of the earth; were among
the foundations of the great old house. Also, the feeble lamp-flicker
showed this, too--showed that they had reached the vaults and actual
basement on which the whole building had been placed--vaults, or
dungeons, separated from each other by short, round shafts of rough,
untrimmed stone, and with the earth into which they were set
unlevelled. And now there was no damp; instead, only the dull mildewed
smell that such places have, places to which no air has penetrated for
centuries.
"He is not here," Andrew said, as they stood upon this earthen floor,
the crown of his hat touching almost the roof of the vault above him.
"Not here. He has gone on. Knew a way out. We must find it." While, as
he spoke, he flashed the lantern, which he had now taken in his hand,
around the dark and gloomy place, it casting fantastic shadows behind
the pillars and shafts as he did so.
"Come," he said once more.
So they went on--though not without obstruction either. Once his foot
caught in a mass of tangled chain lying at the base of a shaft to
which one end of it was attached, and, stooping to look at it, Andrew
saw amidst the coils of that chain some bones, and, a little farther
off, more bones--of a hand! Yet, when he put his own hand out to touch
them, they lost their shape, the fingers were gone at that touch;
there lay but a feathery mass of white dust upon the earth a moment
later.
"That tells its own tale," he whispered to the other. "Have centuries
rolled away since that poor thing gasped its last within the chain's
embrace?"
"God knows!" His companion whispered back. "They never forgave! Once
in their power and all hope was gone."
"It appears," said Andrew briefly.
The vault, the foundations, were as square as the house above; ere
long they had gone round them--finding more proof of how the De
Bois-Vallées had used it as a final prison. A knife, rusty now, yet
once a long, keen blade, was sticking point downward in the earth;
they asked themselves if, ages ago, it had struck, pierced something
between its hilt and point that was not earth then?--something that
had long since vanished away to dust. They found, also, a woman's
necklace set with quaint cut stones lying near a heap of rags, black
with time and perishable to the touch, and asked again what story of
horror was buried and forgotten here?
At last they found the outlet from that gloomy vault--a long dark
passage that led away to blackness impenetrable. A passage that,
in the past, had had a thick sturdy door to bar all entrance to,
and way through it, but which door now lay flat upon the earthen
floor--mouldered and decayed from off its hinges.
"Come," again said Andrew, wasting no words now, "Come, Debrasques."
And on down that passage they moved, side by side, the light
flickering on earthen walls shored up with old beams and rotting
staves, and with the bottoms of roots of trees showing through the
uppermost parts.
Also--though they scarce knew why, nor could they have told what they
expected--each had in his hand his drawn sword now.
Afar off, adown that ghastly passage, they saw a gleam of light that
each knew to be the light of the winter day--a gleam that was no
bigger, as it seemed, than a star, yet that still told the end was
there. Was the end of the outlet.
Onward they went, faster now, their footfalls sounding dull and
leaden on the earthy floor, their breath coming--again they knew not
why!--faster and faster.
Then--the passage traversed--the daylight now illuminating faintly a
space some dozen feet square, Debrasques clutched Andrew's arm and
pointed to a dark blur upon the ground before them--a heap of
blackness that bore some resemblance to a crouching human form--it
lying a little space outside the circle of dim light.
"Look! look!" He said, "it is a human figure. _Ciel!_ is it he? Is he
dead? See--the eyes glare at us!"
"Ay," replied Andrew, advancing to that blurred mass, "it is he."
While, stooping over the body of De Bois-Vallée, he added, "And he is
dead."
Then he lifted his _porte épée_, and thrust back his sword into the
scabbard gently, saying, "No more need for you now. Your work here is
done."