I TAKE A VOW.
FOR an instant I was so shaken by that dead weight on my arm, by that
white drawn face turned blindly up to mine, that my heart stopped in my
bosom; for I recalled that other white face and that other limp form I
had seen but a moment since. Then I shook the horror off.
“She has only fainted,” I told myself. “She is not dead; she cannot be
dead; it is nothing; it will pass in a moment;” and gripping my teeth
together in a very agony of effort I lifted her in my arms and set off
up the hillside toward the ledge which Pasdeloup had pointed out. How
I reached it I know not, for ere I covered half the distance the world
was reeling red before me and the blood pounding like a hammer in my
brain. But reach it I did, and pushing aside that curtain of vines,
I saw behind it the dark entrance to the cavern, framed by the solid
rock. I stooped and entered, then laid my burden gently on the hard,
dry floor, and flung myself well-nigh senseless beside her.
But a moment or two sufficed to give me back my breath, and struggling
to my feet I first assured myself that the leafy curtain had fallen
naturally into place. Then I made a quick circuit of the cavern. I
found it rudely circular, with a diameter of perhaps a rod and a
height of half as much. Pasdeloup had doubtless occupied it more than
once, for in one corner was a pile of dry moss, which had evidently
served for a bed. To this I bore that still, limp body and fell
to chafing wrist and temple, with a harrowing fear again gripping
my heart. She was so pale, so haggard, her hands were so cold and
nerveless, that I was almost ready to believe that the horrors
and hardships of the night had slain her. There was no pulse, no
respiration....
Despairingly I let the limp hand fall. My path lay clear before me--I
would share the fate of my companions--I would die beside them!
I bent and kissed her lips, softly, reverently. And in that instant a
gentle sigh came from them, her eyes opened and she lay looking up at
me.
“Then you are not dead!” I cried. “You are not dead!” And I caught up
her hands again and chafed them madly, feeling with joy indescribable
the warmth of life returning to them.
She lay still a moment longer, then gently drew her hands away and
raised herself to a sitting posture.
“Where are we?” she questioned, staring about her in the green
half-light which filtered through the leafy curtain.
“We are in a cavern which Pasdeloup knew of,” I explained. “We are
safe.”
“I thought we were under the ocean,” she said, still staring about her.
“Far down in the depths of the ocean--I have always fancied it must be
like this. But where are the others?” she demanded suddenly.
“That I do not know,” I answered as cheerfully as I could. “No doubt
they have escaped in another direction;” but in my heart I knew the
absurdity of such a hope.
“You left them, then?” she questioned, looking at me from under level
brows.
“M. le Comte commanded it,” I answered flushing. “Do you not remember?”
She pressed her hands to her temples.
“I remember nothing,” she said at last, “except that we climbed a great
mountain, and that your arm was about me, aiding me.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that her memory stopped there.
“Shall I go back and look for them?” I asked.
“No, no!” she protested, and caught my hand. “Do not leave me here--at
least not yet!”
“I shall have to go before long. We must have food.”
“I want no food--I feel as though I never shall.”
“Nevertheless you must eat. You must be strong and brave. We have a
long journey before us.”
“A long journey?”
“Yes; we shall not be really safe until we are among M. le Comte’s
friends in the Bocage.”
“Is that far?” she asked.
“Not so far but that we shall win through safely,” I assured her.
She lay back again upon the moss with a long sigh of utter weariness.
“You must sleep,” I added, gently. “Do not fight it off--yield to it.
You will need your strength--all of it--for to-night.”
“For to-night?”
“Yes; we dare not start until darkness comes, and we must get forward
as far as we can ere daybreak. You can sleep in perfect security. No
one suspects that we are hidden here.”
She did not answer, but turned on one side, laid her head upon her arm
and closed her eyes. Sleep, I knew, would claim her in a moment.
I crept forward to the mouth of the cavern and sitting down behind the
screen of vines pulled them aside a little and peered down the valley,
in the hope that I might see Pasdeloup and M. le Comte making their way
toward us. But there was no one in sight, nor could I hear any sound
of conflict in the direction whence we had come. It might be, I told
myself, that Pasdeloup by some miracle had again succeeded in saving
his master, and that they had fled together in some other direction;
but I felt there were limits to the power of even his supreme devotion.
Certainly no situation could have been more critical and hopeless than
that in which I had left my friend.
Whatever the result of that struggle, there was evidently nothing left
for me to do save to stand sentinel over my companion and see that no
harm came to her. I sat down with my back against the wall of stone
and composed myself as comfortably as I could to watch the valley.
Indeed my posture was too comfortable. The knowledge that we were safe,
the lifting of the cloud of horror, the slackening of the strain under
which I had labored, left me strangely weary. My eyelids drooped, and
before I realized the danger I was sound asleep.
I awoke with a guilty start, but a single glance down into the valley
reassured me--no danger threatened us from that direction. How long I
had slept I could not guess, but it must have been some hours, for I
felt refreshed, invigorated, ready for anything--ready especially to
undertake an energetic search for food to appease the gnawing in my
stomach.
But first I turned back into the cave and bent over my companion. She
was still sleeping peacefully. A ray of light which had fought its way
through the leafy curtain fell upon her face in benediction. I saw how
sleep had wiped away the lines of weariness and care, and I knew she
would be ready for the task which nightfall would bring with it.
I drew her cloak more closely about her, then went out softly, leaving
her undisturbed. I glanced up and down the valley to assure myself that
I was unobserved, drew carefully together the veil of vines behind me,
then paused a moment to reflect. I had two things to do--I must secure
food, and I must discover if possible the fate of our companions. I
resolved to do the latter first, and so proceeded cautiously down the
valley, keeping a sharp lookout on every side. I thought for a time
that I had got my directions strangely reversed, for the sun appeared
to be rising in the west instead of in the east; but I soon perceived
that it was not rising at all, but setting, and that instead of being
mid-morning, it was mid-afternoon. I had slept not three or four hours,
as I had fancied, but eight or nine.
That discovery had the effect of hastening my steps and lessening my
caution. I had no time to lose, and whatever the result of the fight
at the cliff, it was improbable that any of the enemy had lingered so
long in the neighborhood. So I went forward boldly and as swiftly as
I could, down the hill, into the narrow bed of the torrent where now
murmured the clear waters of a little brook, over the rough stones,
around a jagged point of rock--and the scene of the fight lay before me.
For a moment I saw only the rocks, the red earth. Then my eye was
caught by a huddled mass so trampled into the mud as to be almost
indistinguishable from it, yet unmistakably a human body. I hastened
to it; I bent above it and stared down into the battered and blackened
face. Disfigured, repulsive as it was, I knew it instantly--it was
Pasdeloup.
With a sudden feeling of suffocation I stood erect and looked about
me, trembling at the thought of the dread objects my eyes sought and
yet shrank from. Then I drew a quick breath of relief, of joy, of
thankfulness. Pasdeloup had sacrificed his life, indeed, but not in
vain. His master had escaped--by some miracle he had escaped, bearing
his wife with him. But which way had he gone? Why had he not pressed
forward to the cave? Which way----
I stopped, shivering, my eyes burning into my brain; for there, in
cruel exposure half way down the slope, were two objects....
How I got down to them, shaken as I was by the agony of that discovery,
I know not. I remember only the tempest of wild rage which burst
within me as I looked down at those mutilated figures. And I held my
clenched hands above my head and swore, as there was a God in heaven,
that I would have vengeance on the devil who had done this thing. He
should pay for it--he should pay to the uttermost, drop by drop. I
vowed myself to the task. By my father’s memory, by my mother’s honor,
by my hope of heaven, I swore that for me there should be no rest, no
happiness, no contentment, until I had pulled this monster down and
sent his soul to the torture which awaited it.
For an instant the mad thought seized me to set off at once on the
trail of the murderers, to harry them, cleave them asunder, seize the
fiend who had set them on and wring his life out. A superhuman strength
possessed me, a divine ardor of vengeance; and not for an instant did I
doubt that God would nerve my arm to accomplish all this. But suddenly
I remembered that another duty had been laid upon me. I must discharge
that first; I must go on to the Bocage. Then I could turn back to Dange.
I grew calmer after a time; that divine rage passed and left me weak
and shaken. I sat limply down upon a nearby stone and gazed at those
desecrated bodies, with hot tears starting from my eyes at thought of
the gallant man and fair woman for whom this hideous fate had been
reserved. In that moment of anguish there was but one comforting
reflection--she had died with her husband’s arms about her, his voice
in her ears, his kisses on her lips.
Yet, deserted, insentient as they were, I could not leave these bodies
here to rot in the sun, food for carrion birds and unclean beasts
of the night. Nor could I spare the time to bury them, for the sun
was already sinking toward the horizon. I glanced despairingly about
me--then I saw the way.
Twenty feet above the bed of the stream some tremendous freshet had
eaten into the bank and so undermined it that it seemed to hang
tottering in the air. In a moment I had carried the bodies, one by one,
into the shadow of this bank and laid them tenderly side by side. Then
I hesitated--but only for an instant. I went straight to the spot where
Pasdeloup lay, and half dragging, half carrying, placed him at last
beside his master, where he surely had the right to lie--where I was
certain he would have wished to lie.
As I was about to turn away a sudden thought struck me. I had donned my
gayest suit the night before,--the suit indeed I had not thought to
wear until I approached the high altar at Poitiers,--and though it was
already sadly soiled and torn, it must still attract attention to a man
with no better means of conveyance than his legs. Here was a disguise
ready to my hand; for under the rude garments which Pasdeloup had
worn--stained as they were with blood and dirt--no one would suspect
the Royalist. In a moment I had stripped off his stockings, blouse
and breeches, cleaned the caked mud from them as well as I could, and
throwing my own garments over him, donned his,--not without a shiver
of repugnance,--taking care to transfer to my new attire my purse, my
ammunition, and the one pistol which remained to me, and to secure the
knife which had already done such execution, and which I found gripped
in his right hand. I tied his coarse handkerchief about my head, and
stopping only for a little prayer clambered to the top of the bank
and with my sword began to loosen the overhanging earth. Great cracks
showed here and there, and it must soon have fallen of its own weight.
So very little remained for me to do, and at the end of a moment’s work
I saw the cracks slowly widen.
Then, with a dull crash which echoed along the valley, the earth fell
upon the bodies, burying them to a depth of many feet, safe from
desecration by the fang of brute or the eye of man.
The tears were streaming down my face as I turned away; but I could
not linger, for darkness was at hand and I had already been too long
absent from my charge. I flung my sword far down the cliff, for I would
have no further need of it, then with all the speed at my command I
retraced my steps along the bed of the stream and upward toward the
ledge of rock. As I approached it I fancied I saw a figure slip quickly
out of sight behind the vines. Dreading I knew not what, I hastened my
steps, swept aside the curtain and stooped to enter.
But even as I did so there came a burst of flame almost in my face, and
I felt a sharp, vivid pain tear across my cheek.