La Corriveau, eager to commence her work of wickedness, took up her
abode at the house of her ancient friend, Mère Malheur, whither she went
on the night of her first interview with Angélique.
It was a small house, built of uncut stones, with rough stone steps and
lintels, a peaked roof, and low overhanging eaves, hiding itself under
the shadow of the cliff, so closely that it seemed to form a part of the
rock itself.
Its sole inmate, an old crone who had reached the last degree of woman's
ugliness and woman's heartlessness,--Mère Malheur--sold fair winds to
superstitious sailors and good luck to hunters and voyageurs. She was
not a little suspected of dabbling in other forbidden things. Half
believing in her own impostures, she regarded La Corriveau with a
feeling akin to worship, who in return for this devotion imparted to her
a few secrets of minor importance in her diabolic arts.
La Corriveau was ever a welcome guest at the house of Mère Malheur, who
feasted her lavishly, and served her obsequiously, but did not press
with undue curiosity to learn her business in the city. The two women
understood one another well enough not to pry too closely into each
other's secrets.
On this occasion La Corriveau was more than usually reserved, and while
Mère Malheur eagerly detailed to her all the doings and undoings that
had happened in her circle of acquaintance, she got little information
in return. She shrewdly concluded that La Corriveau had business on hand
which would not bear to be spoken of.
“When you need my help, ask for it without scruple, Dame Dodier,” said
the old crone. “I see you have something on hand that may need my aid. I
would go into the fire to serve you, although I would not burn my finger
for any other woman in the world, and you know it.”
“Yes, I know it, Mère Malheur,” La Corriveau spoke with an air of
superiority, “and you say rightly: I have something on hand which I
cannot accomplish alone, and I need your help, although I cannot tell
you yet how or against whom.”
“Is it a woman or a man? I will only ask that question, Dame Dodier,”
said the crone, turning upon her a pair of green, inquisitive eyes.
“It is a woman, and so of course you will help me. Our sex for the
bottom of all mischief, Mère Malheur! I do not know what women are made
for except to plague one another for the sake of worthless men!”
The old crone laughed a hideous laugh, and playfully pushed her
long fingers into the ribs of La Corriveau. “Made for! quotha! men's
temptation, to be sure, and the beginning of all mischief!”
“Pretty temptations you and I are, Mère Malheur!” replied La Corriveau,
with a scornful laugh.
“Well, we were pretty temptations once! I will never give up that! You
must own, Dame Dodier, we were both pretty temptations once!”
“Pshaw! I wish I had been a man, for my part,” replied La Corriveau,
impetuously. “It was a spiteful cross of fate to make me a woman!”
“But, Dame Dodier, I like to be a woman, I do. A man cannot be half as
wicked as a woman, especially if she be young and pretty,” said the old
woman, laughing till the tears ran out of her bleared eyes.
“Nay, that is true, Mère Malheur; the fairest women in the world are
ever the worst! fair and false! fair and false! they are always so. Not
one better than another. Satan's mark is upon all of us!” La Corriveau
looked an incarnation of Hecate as she uttered this calumny upon her
sex.
“Ay, I have his mark on my knee, Dame Dodier,” replied the crone. “See
here! It was pricked once in the high court of Arras, but the fool judge
decided that it was a mole, and not a witch-mark! I escaped a red gown
that time, however. I laughed at his stupidity, and bewitched him for
it in earnest. I was young and pretty then! He died in a year, and Satan
sat on his grave in the shape of a black cat until his friends set a
cross over it. I like to be a woman, I do, it is so easy to be wicked,
and so nice! I always tell the girls that, and they give me twice as
much as if I had told them to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw!
Nice! If only men knew us as we really are!”
“Well, I do not like women, Mère Malheur,” replied La Corriveau; “they
sneer at you and me and call us witch and sorceress, and they will lie,
steal, kill, and do worse themselves for the sake of one man to-day, and
cast him off for sake of another to-morrow! Wise Solomon found only
one good woman in a thousand; the wisest man now finds not one in a
worldful! It were better all of us were dead, Mère Malheur; but pour me
out a glass of wine, for I am tired of tramping in the dark to the house
of that gay lady I told you of.”
Mère Malheur poured out a glass of choice Beaume from a dame-jeanne
which she had received from a roguish sailor, who had stolen it from his
ship.
“But you have not told me who she is, Dame Dodier,” replied Mère
Malheur, refilling the glass of La Corriveau.
“Nor will I yet. She is fit to be your mistress and mine, whoever she
is; but I shall not go again to see her.”
And La Corriveau did not again visit the house of Angélique. She had
received from her precise information respecting the movements of the
Intendant. He had gone to the Trois Rivières on urgent affairs, and
might be absent for a week.
Angélique had received from Varin, in reply to her eager question for
news, a short, falsified account of the proceedings in the Council
relative to Caroline and of Bigot's indignant denial of all knowledge of
her.
Varin, as a member of the Council, dared not reveal the truth, but would
give his familiars half-hints, or tell to others elaborate lies, when
pressed for information. He did not, in this case, even hint at the fact
that a search was to be made for Caroline. Had he done so, Angélique
would herself have given secret information to the Governor to order
the search of Beaumanoir, and thus got her rival out of the way without
trouble, risk, or crime.
But it was not to be. The little word that would have set her active
spirit on fire to aid in the search for Caroline was not spoken, and her
thoughts remained immovably fixed upon her death.
But if Angélique had been misled by Varin as to what had passed at the
Council, Mère Malheur, through her intercourse with a servant of Varin,
had learned the truth. An eavesdropping groom had overheard his
master and the Intendant conversing on the letters of the Baron and La
Pompadour. The man told his sweetheart, who, coming with some stolen
sweetmeats to Mère Malheur, told her, who in turn was not long in
imparting what she had heard to La Corriveau.
La Corriveau did not fail to see that, should Angélique discover that
her rival was to be searched for, and taken to France if found, she
would at once change her mind, and Caroline would be got rid of without
need of her interference. But La Corriveau had got her hand in the dish.
She was not one to lose her promised reward or miss the chance of so
cursed a deed by any untimely avowal of what she knew.
So Angélique was doomed to remain in ignorance until too late. She
became the dupe of her own passions and the dupe of La Corriveau, who
carefully concealed from her a secret so important.
Bigot's denial in the Council weighed nothing with her. She felt certain
that the lady was no other than Caroline de St. Castin. Angélique
was acute enough to perceive that Bigot's bold assertion that he knew
nothing of her bound him in a chain of obligation never to confess
afterwards aught to the contrary. She eagerly persuaded herself that he
would not regret to hear that Caroline had died by some sudden and, to
appearance, natural death, and thus relieved him of a danger, and her of
an obstacle to her marriage.
Without making a full confidant of Mère Malheur, La Corriveau resolved
to make use of her in carrying out her diabolical scheme. Mère Malheur
had once been a servant at Beaumanoir. She knew the house, and in her
heyday of youth and levity had often smuggled herself in and out by the
subterranean passage which connected the solitary watchtower with the
vaults of the Château. Mère Malheur knew Dame Tremblay, who, as the
Charming Josephine, had often consulted her upon the perplexities of a
heart divided among too many lovers.
The memory of that fragrant period of her life was the freshest and
pleasantest of all Dame Tremblay's experience. It was like the odor of
new-mown hay, telling of early summer and frolics in the green fields.
She liked nothing better than to talk it all over in her snug room with
Mère Malheur, as they sat opposite one another at her little table,
each with a cup of tea in her hand, well laced with brandy, which was a
favorite weakness of them both.
Dame Tremblay was, in private, neither nice nor squeamish as to the
nature of her gossip. She and the old fortune-teller, when out of sight
of the rest of the servants, had always a dish of the choicest scandal
fresh from the city.
La Corriveau resolved to send Mère Malheur to Beaumanoir, under the
pretence of paying a visit to Dame Tremblay, in order to open a way
of communication between herself and Caroline. She had learned enough
during her brief interview with Caroline in the forest of St. Valier,
and from what she now heard respecting the Baron de St. Castin, to
convince her that this was no other than his missing daughter.
“If Caroline could only be induced to admit La Corriveau into her secret
chamber and take her into her confidence, the rest--all the rest,”
muttered the hag to herself, with terrible emphasis, “would be easy, and
my reward sure. But that reward shall be measured in my own bushel, not
in yours, Mademoiselle des Meloises, when the deed is done!”
La Corriveau knew the power such a secret would enable her to exercise
over Angélique. She already regarded the half of her reputed riches as
her own. “Neither she nor the Intendant will ever dare neglect me after
that!” said she. “When once Angélique shall be linked in with me by a
secret compact of blood, the fortune of La Corriveau is made. If
the death of this girl be the elixir of life to you, it shall be the
touchstone of fortune forever to La Corriveau!”
Mère Malheur was next day despatched on a visit to her old gossip, Dame
Tremblay. She had been well tutored on every point, what to say and how
to demean herself. She bore a letter to Caroline, written in the Italian
hand of La Corriveau, who had learned to write well from her mother,
Marie Exili.
The mere possession of the art of writing was a rarity in those days in
the class among whom she lived. La Corriveau's ability to write at all
was a circumstance as remarkable to her illiterate neighbors as the
possession of the black art which they ascribed to her, and not without
a strong suspicion that it had the same origin.
Mère Malheur, in anticipation of a cup of tea and brandy with Dame
Tremblay, had dressed herself with some appearance of smartness in
a clean striped gown of linsey. A peaked Artois hat surmounted a
broad-frilled cap, which left visible some tresses of coarse gray hair
and a pair of silver ear-rings, which dangled with every motion of
her head. Her shoes displayed broad buckles of brass, and her short
petticoat showed a pair of stout ankles enclosed in red clocked
stockings. She carried a crutched stick in her hand, by help of which
she proceeded vigorously on her journey.
Starting in the morning, she trudged out of the city towards the ferry
of Jean Le Nocher, who carefully crossed himself and his boat too as he
took Mère Malheur on board. He wafted her over in a hurry, as something
to be got rid of as quickly as possible.
Mère Malheur tramped on, like a heavy gnome, through the fallen and
flying leaves of the woods of Beaumanoir, caring nothing for the golden,
hazy sky, the soft, balmy air, or the varicolored leaves--scarlet,
yellow, and brown, of every shade and tinge--that hung upon the autumnal
trees.
A frosty night or two had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was
called by the habitans,--the Indian summer,--that brief time of glory
and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the
approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the
sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden
devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks is allowed to flutter like
a bird of paradise amid the pleasures and gaieties of the world, and
then comes the end. Her locks of pride are shorn off; she veils her
beauty, and kneels a nun on the cold stones of her passionless cell, out
of which, even with repentance, there comes no deliverance.
Mère Malheur's arrival at Beaumanoir was speedily known to all the
servants of the Château. She did not often visit them, but when she did
there was a hurried recital of an Ave or two to avert any harm, followed
by a patronizing welcome and a rummage for small coins to cross her
hand withal in return for her solutions of the grave questions of love,
jealousy, money, and marriage, which fermented secretly or openly in the
bosoms of all of them. They were but human beings, food for imposture,
and preyed on by deceivers. The visit of Mère Malheur was an event of
interest in both kitchen and laundry of the Château.
Dame Tremblay had the first claim, however, upon this singular visitor.
She met her at the back door of the Château, and with a face beaming
with smiles, and dropping all dignity, exclaimed,--
“Mère Malheur, upon my life! Welcome, you wicked old soul! you surely
knew I wanted to see you! come in and rest! you must be tired, unless
you came on a broom! ha! ha! come to my room and never mind anybody!”
This last remark was made for the benefit of the servants who stood
peeping at every door and corner, not daring to speak to the old woman
in the presence of the housekeeper, but knowing that their time would
come, they had patience.
The housekeeper, giving them a severe look, proceeded to her own snug
apartment, followed by the crone, whom she seated in her easiest chair
and proceeded to refresh with a glass of cognac, which was swallowed
with much relish and wiping of lips, accompanied by a little artificial
cough. Dame Tremblay kept a carafe of it in her room to raise the
temperature of her low spirits and vapors to summer heat, not that she
drank, far from it, but she liked to sip a little for her stomach's
sake.
“It is only a thimbleful I take now and then,” she said. “When I was
the Charming Josephine I used to kiss the cups I presented to the young
gallants, and I took no more than a fly! but they always drank bumpers
from the cup I kissed!” The old dame looked grave as she shook her head
and remarked, “But we cannot be always young and handsome, can we, Mère
Malheur?”
“No, dame, but we can be jolly and fat, and that is what we are! You
don't quaff life by thimblefuls, and you only want a stout offer to show
the world that you can trip as briskly to church yet as any girl in New
France!”
The humor of the old crone convulsed Dame Tremblay with laughter, as if
some invisible fingers were tickling her wildly under the armpits.
She composed herself at last, and drawing her chair close to that of
Mère Malheur, looked her inquiringly in the face and asked, “What is the
news?”
Dame Tremblay was endowed with more than the ordinary curiosity of her
sex. She knew more news of city and country than any one else, and
she dispensed it as freely as she gathered. She never let her stock of
gossip run low, and never allowed man or woman to come to speak with
her without pumping them dry of all they knew. A secret in anybody's
possession set her wild to possess it, and she gave no rest to her
inordinate curiosity until she had fished it out of even the muddiest
waters.
The mystery that hung around Caroline was a source of perpetual
irritation to the nerves of Dame Tremblay. She had tried as far as she
dared by hint and suggestion to draw from the lady some reference to
her name and family, but in vain. Caroline would avow nothing, and Dame
Tremblay, completely baffled by a failure of ordinary means to find out
the secret, bethought herself of her old resource in case of perplexity,
Mère Malheur.
For several days she had been brooding over this mode of satisfying
her curiosity, when the unexpected visit of Mère Malheur set aside
all further hesitation about disobeying the Intendant's orders not
to inquire or allow any other person to make inquisition respecting
Caroline.
“Mère Malheur, you feel comfortable now!” said she. “That glass of
cognac has given you a color like a peony!”
“Yes, I am very comfortable now, dame! your cognac is heavenly: it warms
without burning. That glass is the best news I have to tell of to-day!”
“Nay, but there is always something stirring in the city; somebody born,
married, or dead; somebody courted, won, lost, or undone; somebody's
name up, somebody's reputation down! Tell me all you know, Mère Malheur!
and then I will tell you something that will make you glad you came to
Beaumanoir to-day. Take another sip of cognac and begin!”
“Ay, dame, that is indeed a temptation!” She took two deep sips, and
holding her glass in her hand, began with loose tongue to relate the
current gossip of the city, which was already known to Dame Tremblay;
but an ill-natured version of it from the lips of her visitor seemed
to give it a fresh seasoning and a relish which it had not previously
possessed.
“Now, Mère Malheur! I have a secret to tell you,” said Dame Tremblay, in
a low, confidential tone, “a dead secret, mind you, which you had better
be burnt than reveal. There is a lady, a real lady if I ever saw one,
living in the Château here in the greatest privacy. I and the Intendant
only see her. She is beautiful and full of sorrow as the picture of
the blessed Madonna. What she is, I may guess; but who she is, I cannot
conjecture, and would give my little finger to know!”
“Tut, dame!” replied Mère Malheur, with a touch of confidence, “I will
not believe any woman could keep a secret from you! But this is news,
indeed, you tell me! A lady in concealment here, and you say you cannot
find her out, Dame Tremblay!”
“In truth, I cannot; I have tried every artifice, but she passes all my
wit and skill. If she were a man, I would have drawn her very teeth out
with less difficulty than I have tried to extract the name of this lady.
When I was the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport, I could wind men
like a thread around which finger I liked; but this is a tangled knot
which drives me to despair to unravel it.”
“What do you know about her, dame? Tell me all you suspect!” said Mère
Malheur.
“Truly,” replied the dame, without the least asperity, “I suspect the
poor thing, like the rest of us, is no better than she should be; and
the Intendant knows it, and Mademoiselle des Meloises knows it too; and,
to judge by her constant prayers and penitence, she knows it herself but
too well, and will not say it to me!”
“Ay, dame! but this is great news you tell me!” replied Mère Malheur,
eagerly clutching at the opportunity thus offered for the desired
interview. “But what help do you expect from me in the matter?”
Mère Malheur looked very expectant at her friend, who continued, “I want
you to see that lady under promise of secrecy, mark you!--and look at
her hands, and tell me who and what she is.”
Dame Tremblay had an unlimited faith in the superstitions of her age.
“I will do all you wish, dame, but you must allow me to see her
alone,” replied the crone, who felt she was thus opening the door to La
Corriveau.
“To be sure I will,--that is, if she will consent to be seen, for she
has in some things a spirit of her own! I am afraid to push her too
closely! The mystery of her is taking the flesh off my bones, and I can
only get sleep by taking strong possets, Mère Malheur! Feel my elbow!
Feel my knee! I have not had so sharp an elbow or knee since Goodman
Tremblay died! And he said I had the sharpest elbow and knee in the
city! But I had to punch him sometimes to keep him in order! But set
that horrid cap straight, Mère Malheur, while I go ask her if she would
like to have her fortune told. She is not a woman if she would not like
to know her fortune, for she is in despair, I think, with all the world;
and when a woman is in despair, as I know by my own experience, she will
jump at any chance for spite, if not for love, as I did when I took the
Sieur Tremblay by your advice, Mère Malheur!”
Dame Tremblay left the old crone making hideous faces in a mirror.
She rubbed her cheeks and mouth with the corner of her apron as she
proceeded to the door of Caroline's apartment. She knocked gently, and a
low, soft voice bade her enter.
Caroline was seated on a chair by the window, knitting her sad thoughts
into a piece of work which she occasionally lifted from her lap with a
sudden start, as something broke the train of her reflections.
She was weighing over and over in her thoughts, like gold in a scale, by
grains and pennyweights, a few kind words lately spoken to her by Bigot
when he ran in to bid her adieu before departing on his journey to Trois
Rivières. They seemed a treasure inexhaustible as she kept on repeating
them to herself. The pressure of his hand had been warmer, the tone
of his voice softer, the glance of his eye more kind, and he looked
pityingly, she thought, upon her wan face when he left her in the
gallery, and with a cheery voice and a kiss bade her take care of her
health and win back the lost roses of Acadia.
These words passed through her mind with unceasing repetition, and a
white border of light was visible on the edge of the dark cloud which
hung over her. “The roses of Acadia will never bloom again,” thought she
sadly. “I have watered them with salt tears too long, and all in vain.
O Bigot, I fear it is too late, too late!” Still, his last look and last
words reflected a faint ray of hope and joy upon her pallid countenance.
Dame Tremblay entered the apartment, and while busying herself on
pretence of setting it in order, talked in her garrulous way of the
little incidents of daily life in the Château, and finished by a
mention, as if it were casual, of the arrival of the wise woman of the
city, who knew everything, who could interpret dreams, and tell, by
looking in a glass or in your hand, things past, present, and to come.
“A wonderful woman,” Dame Tremblay said, “a perilous woman too, not safe
to deal with; but for all that, every one runs after her, and she has
a good or bad word for every person who consults her. For my part,”
continued the dame, “she foretold my marriage with the Goodman Tremblay
long before it happened, and she also foretold his death to the very
month it happened. So I have reason to believe in her as well as to be
thankful!”
Caroline listened attentively to the dame's remarks. She was not
superstitious, but yet not above the beliefs of her age, while the
Indian strain in her lineage and her familiarity with the traditions
of the Abenaquis inclined her to yield more than ordinary respect to
dreams.
Caroline had dreamed of riding on a coal-black horse, seated behind the
veiled figure of a man whose face she could not see, who carried her
like the wind away to the ends of the earth, and there shut her up in
a mountain for ages and ages, until a bright angel cleft the rock,
and, clasping her in his arms, bore her up to light and liberty in the
presence of the Redeemer and of all the host of heaven.
This dream lay heavy on her mind. For the veiled figure she knew was
one she loved, but who had no honest love for her. Her mind had been
brooding over the dream all day, and the announcement by Dame Tremblay
of the presence in the Château of one who was able to interpret dreams
seemed a stroke of fortune, if not an act of Providence.
She roused herself up, and with more animation than Dame Tremblay had
yet seen in her countenance, requested her to send up the visitor, that
she might ask her a question.
Mère Malheur was quickly summoned to the apartment of Caroline, where
Dame Tremblay left them alone.
The repulsive look of the old crone sent a shock through the fine,
nervous organization of the young girl. She requested Mère Malheur to
be seated, however, and in her gentle manner questioned her about the
dream.
Mère Malheur was an adept in such things, and knew well how to humor
human nature, and lead it to put its own interpretations upon its own
visions and desires while giving all the credit of it to herself.
Mère Malheur therefore interpreted the dream according to Caroline's
secret wishes. This inspired a sort of confidence, and Mère Malheur
seized the opportunity to deliver the letter from La Corriveau.
“My Lady,” said she, looking carefully round the room to note if the
door was shut and no one was present, “I can tell you more than the
interpretation of your dream. I can tell who you are and why you are
here!”
Caroline started with a frightened look, and stared in the face of Mère
Malheur. She faltered out at length,--“You know who I am and why I am
here? Impossible! I never saw you before.”
“No, my Lady, you never saw me before, but I will convince you that I
know you. You are the daughter of the Baron de St. Castin! Is it not
so?” The old crone looked frightfully knowing as she uttered these
words.
“Mother of mercies! what shall I do?” ejaculated the alarmed girl. “Who
are you to say that?”
“I am but a messenger, my Lady. Listen! I am sent here to give you
secretly this letter from a friend who knows you better than I, and who
above all things desires an interview with you, as she has things of the
deepest import to communicate.”
“A letter! Oh, what mystery is all this? A letter for me! Is it from the
Intendant?”
“No, my Lady, it is from a woman.” Caroline blushed and trembled as she
took it from the old crone.
A woman! It flashed upon the mind of Caroline that the letter was
important. She opened it with trembling fingers, anticipating she knew
not what direful tidings when her eyes ran over the clear handwriting.
La Corriveau had written to the effect that she was an unknown friend,
desirous of serving her in a moment of peril. The Baron de St.
Castin had traced her to New France, and had procured from the King
instructions to the Governor to search for her everywhere and to send
her to France. Other things of great import, the writer said, she had
also to communicate, if Caroline would grant her a private interview in
the Château.
There was a passage leading from the old deserted watch-tower to the
vaulted chamber, continued the letter, and the writer would without
further notice come on the following night to Beaumanoir, and knock
at the arched door of her chamber about the hour of midnight, when,
if Caroline pleased to admit her, she would gladly inform her of very
important matters relating to herself, to the Intendant, and to the
Baron de St. Castin, who was on his way out to the Colony to conduct in
person the search after his lost daughter.
The letter concluded with the information that the Intendant had gone to
Trois Rivières, whence he might not return for a week, and that during
his absence the Governor would probably order a search for her to be
made at Beaumanoir.
Caroline held the letter convulsively in her hand as she gathered its
purport rather than read it. Her face changed color, from a deep flush
of shame to the palest hue of fear, when she comprehended its meaning
and understood that her father was on his way to New France to find out
her hiding-place.
“What shall I do! Oh, what shall I do!” exclaimed she, wringing her
hands for very anguish, regardless of the presence of Mère Malheur, who
stood observing her with eyes glittering with curiosity, but void of
every mark of womanly sympathy or feeling.
“My father, my loving father!” continued Caroline, “my deeply-injured
father coming here with anger in his face to drag me from my
concealment! I shall drop dead at his feet for very shame. Oh, that
I were buried alive with mountains piled over me to hide me from my
father! What shall I do? Whither shall I go? Bigot, Bigot, why have you
forsaken me?”
Mère Malheur continued eyeing her with cold curiosity, but was ready at
the first moment to second the promptings of the evil spirit contained
in the letter.
“Mademoiselle,” said she, “there is but one way to escape from the
search to be made by your father and the Governor,--take counsel of
her who sends you that friendly letter. She can offer you a safe
hiding-place until the storm blows over. Will you see her, my Lady?”
“See her! I, who dare see no one! Who is she that sends me such strange
news? Is it truth? Do you know her?” continued she, looking fixedly
at Mère Malheur, as if in hope of reading on her countenance some
contradiction of the matter contained in the letter.
“I think it is all true, my Lady,” replied she, with mock humility; “I
am but a poor messenger, however, and speak not myself of things I do
not know, but she who sends me will tell you all.”
“Does the Intendant know her?”
“I think he told her to watch over your safety during his absence. She
is old and your friend; will you see her?” replied Mère Malheur, who saw
the point was gained.
“Oh, yes, yes! tell her to come. Beseech her not to fail to come, or
I shall go mad. O woman, you too are old and experienced and ought to
know,--can she help me in this strait, think you?” exclaimed Caroline,
clasping her hands in a gesture of entreaty.
“No one is more able to help you,” said the crone; “she can counsel you
what to do, and if need be find means to conceal you from the search
that will be made for you.”
“Haste, then, and bid her come to-morrow night! Why not tonight?”
Caroline was all nervous impatience. “I will wait her coming in the
vaulted chamber; I will watch for her as one in the valley of death
watches for the angel of deliverance. Bid her come, and at midnight
to-morrow she shall find the door of the secret chamber open to admit
her.”
The eagerness of the ill-fated girl to see La Corriveau outran every
calculation of Mère Malheur. It was in vain and useless for her to speak
further on the subject; Caroline would say no more. Her thoughts ran
violently in the direction suggested by the artful letter. She would
see La Corriveau to-morrow night, and would make no more avowals to Mère
Malheur, she said to herself.
Seeing no more was to be got out of her, the crone bade her a formal
farewell, looking at her curiously as she did so, and wondering in her
mind if she should ever see her again. For the old creature had a shrewd
suspicion that La Corriveau had not told her all her intentions with
respect to this singular girl.
Caroline returned her salute, still holding the letter in her hand. She
sat down to peruse it again, and observed not Mère Malheur's equivocal
glance as she turned her eyes for the last time upon the innocent girl,
doomed to receive the midnight visit from La Corriveau.
“There is death in the pot!” the crone muttered as she went out,--“La
Corriveau comes not here on her own errand either! That girl is too
beautiful to live, and to some one her death is worth gold! It will go
hard, but La Corriveau shall share with me the reward of the work of
tomorrow night!”
In the long gallery she encountered Dame Tremblay “ready to eat her up,”
as she told La Corriveau afterwards, in the eagerness of her curiosity
to learn the result of her interview with Caroline.
Mère Malheur was wary, and accustomed to fence with words. It was
necessary to tell a long tale of circumstances to Dame Tremblay, but not
necessary nor desirable to tell the truth. The old crone therefore, as
soon as she had seated herself in the easy chair of the housekeeper and
refreshed herself by twice accepting the dame's pressing invitation to
tea and cognac, related with uplifted hands and shaking head a narrative
of bold lies regarding what had really passed during her interview with
Caroline.
“But who is she, Mère Malheur? Did she tell you her name? Did she show
you her palm?”
“Both, dame, both! She is a girl of Ville Marie who has run away from
her parents for love of the gallant Intendant, and is in hiding from
them. They wanted to put her into the Convent to cure her of love. The
Convent always cures love, dame, beyond the power of philtres to revive
it!” and the old crone laughed inwardly to herself, as if she doubted
her own saying.
Eager to return to La Corriveau with the account of her successful
interview with Caroline, she bade Dame Tremblay a hasty but formal
farewell, and with her crutched stick in her hand trudged stoutly back
to the city.
Mère Malheur, while the sun was yet high, reached her cottage under the
rock, where La Corriveau was eagerly expecting her at the window. The
moment she entered, the masculine voice of La Corriveau was heard asking
loudly,--
“Have you seen her, Mère Malheur? Did you give her the letter? Never
mind your hat! tell me before you take it off!” The old crone was
tugging at the strings, and La Corriveau came to help her.
“Yes! she took your letter,” replied she, impatiently. “She took my
story like spring water. Go at the stroke of twelve to-morrow night and
she will let you in, Dame Dodier; but will she let you out again, eh?”
The crone stood with her hat in her hand, and looked with a wicked
glance at La Corriveau.
“If she will let me in, I shall let myself out, Mère Malheur,” replied
Corriveau in a low tone. “But why do you ask that?”
“Because I read mischief in your eye and see it twitching in your thumb,
and you do not ask me to share your secret! Is it so bad as that, Dame
Dodier?”
“Pshaw! you are sharing it! wait and you will see your share of it! But
tell me, Mère Malheur, how does she look, this mysterious lady of the
Château?” La Corriveau sat down, and placed her long, thin hand on the
arm of the old crone.
“Like one doomed to die, because she is too good to live. Sorrow is a
bad pasture for a young creature like her to feed on, Dame Dodier!” was
the answer, but it did not change a muscle on the face of La Corriveau.
“Ay! but there are worse pastures than sorrow for young creatures like
her, and she has found one of them,” she replied, coldly.
“Well! as we make our bed so must we lie on it, Dame Dodier,--that is
what I always tell the silly young things who come to me asking their
fortunes; and the proverb pleases them. They always think the bridal bed
must be soft and well made, at any rate.”
“They are fools! better make their death-bed than their bridal bed! But
I must see this piece of perfection of yours to-morrow night, dame! The
Intendant returns in two days, and he might remove her. Did she tell you
about him?”
“No! Bigot is a devil more powerful than the one we serve, dame. I fear
him!”
“Tut! I fear neither devil nor man. It was to be at the hour of twelve!
Did you not say at the hour of twelve, Mère Malheur?”
“Yes! go in by the vaulted passage and knock at the secret door. She
will admit you. But what will you do with her, Dame Dodier? Is she
doomed? Could you not be gentle with her, dame?”
There was a fall in the voice of Mère Malheur,--an intonation partly
due to fear of consequences, partly to a fibre of pity which--dry and
disused--something in the look of Caroline had stirred like a dead leaf
quivering in the wind.
“Tut! has she melted your old dry heart to pity, Mère Malheur! Ha, ha!
who would have thought that! and yet I remember she made a soft fool of
me for a minute in the wood of St. Valier!” La Corriveau spoke in a hard
tone, as if in reproving Mère Malheur she was also reproving herself.
“She is unlike any other woman I ever saw,” replied the crone, ashamed
of her unwonted sympathy. “The devil is clean out of her as he is out of
a church.”
“You are a fool, Mère Malheur! Out of a church, quotha!” and La
Corriveau laughed a loud laugh; “why I go to church myself, and whisper
my prayers backwards to keep on terms with the devil, who stands nodding
behind the altar to every one of my petitions,--that is more than some
people get in return for their prayers,” added she.
“I pray backwards in church too, dame, but I could never get sight
of him there, as you do: something always blinds me!” and the two old
sinners laughed together at the thought of the devil's litanies they
recited in the church.
“But how to get to Beaumanoir? I shall have to walk, as you did, Mère
Malheur. It is a vile road, and I must take the byway through the
forest. It were worth my life to be seen on this visit,” said La
Corriveau, conning on her fingers the difficulties of the by-path, which
she was well acquainted with, however.
“There is a moon after nine, by which hour you can reach the wood of
Beaumanoir,” observed the crone. “Are you sure you know the way, Dame
Dodier?”
“As well as the way into my gown! I know an Indian canotier who will
ferry me across to Beauport, and say nothing. I dare not allow that
prying knave, Jean Le Nocher, or his sharp wife, to mark my movements.”
“Well thought of, Dame Dodier; you are of a craft and subtlety to cheat
Satan himself at a game of hide and seek!” The crone looked with genuine
admiration, almost worship, at La Corriveau as she said this; “but I
doubt he will find both of us at last, dame, when we have got into our
last corner.”
“Well, vogue la galère!” exclaimed La Corriveau, starting up. “Let it go
as it will! I shall walk to Beaumanoir, and I shall fancy I wear golden
garters and silver slippers to make the way easy and pleasant. But you
must be hungry, Mère, with your long tramp. I have a supper prepared for
you, so come and eat in the devil's name, or I shall be tempted to say
grace in nomine Domini, and choke you.”
The two women went to a small table and sat down to a plentiful meal
of such things as formed the dainties of persons of their rank of
life. Upon the table stood the dish of sweetmeats which the thievish
maidservant had brought to Mère Malheur with the groom's story of the
conversation between Bigot and Varin, a story which, could Angélique
have got hold of it, would have stopped at once her frightful plot to
kill the unhappy Caroline.
“I were a fool to tell her that story of the groom's,” muttered La
Corriveau to herself, “and spoil the fairest experiment of the aqua
tofana ever made, and ruin my own fortune too! I know a trick worth two
of that,” and she laughed inwardly to herself a laugh which was repeated
in hell and made merry the ghosts of Beatrice Spara, Exili, and La
Voisin.
All next day La Corriveau kept closely to the house, but she found
means to communicate to Angélique her intention to visit Beaumanoir that
night.
The news was grateful, yet strangely moving to Angélique; she trembled
and turned pale, not for truth, but for doubt and dread of possible
failure or discovery.
She sent by an unknown hand to the house of Mère Malheur a little basket
containing a bouquet of roses so beautiful and fragrant that they might
have been plucked in the garden of Eden.
La Corriveau carried the basket into an inner chamber, a small room,
the window of which never saw the sun, but opened against the close,
overhanging rock, which was so near that it might be touched by the
hand. The dark, damp wall of the cliff shed a gloomy obscurity in the
room even at midday.
The small black eyes of La Corriveau glittered like poniards as she
opened the basket, and taking out the bouquet, found attached to it by a
ribbon a silken purse containing a number of glittering pieces of gold.
She pressed the coins to her cheek, and even put them between her lips
to taste their sweetness, for money she loved beyond all things. The
passion of her soul was avarice; her wickedness took its direction from
the love of money, and scrupled at no iniquity for the sake of it.
She placed the purse carefully in her bosom, and took up the roses,
regarding them with a strange look of admiration as she muttered, “They
are beautiful and they are sweet! men would call them innocent! they are
like her who sent them, fair without as yet; like her who is to
receive them, fair within.” She stood reflecting for a few moments, and
exclaimed as she laid the bouquet upon the table,--
“Angélique des Meloises, you send your gold and your roses to me because
you believe me to be a worse demon than yourself, but you are worthy to
be crowned tonight with these roses as queen of hell and mistress of
all the witches that ever met in Grand Sabbat at the palace of Galienne,
where Satan sits on a throne of gold!”
La Corriveau looked out of the window and saw a corner of the rock lit
up with the last ray of the setting sun. She knew it was time to prepare
for her journey. She loosened her long black and gray elfin locks, and
let them fall dishevelled over her shoulders. Her thin, cruel lips were
drawn to a rigid line, and her eyes were filled with red fire as
she drew the casket of ebony out of her bosom and opened it with a
reverential touch, as a devotee would touch a shrine of relics. She took
out a small, gilded vial of antique shape, containing a clear, bright
liquid, which, as she shook it up, seemed filled with a million sparks
of fire.
Before drawing the glass stopper of the vial, La Corriveau folded a
handkerchief carefully over her mouth and nostrils, to avoid inhaling
the volatile essence of its poisonous contents. Then, holding the
bouquet with one hand at arm's length, she sprinkled the glowing roses
with the transparent liquid from the vial which she held in the other
hand, repeating, in a low, harsh tone, the formula of an ancient
incantation, which was one of the secrets imparted to Antonio Exili by
the terrible Beatrice Spara.
La Corriveau repeated by rote, as she had learned from her mother, the
ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were
something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down
through generations of poisoners and witches from the times of heathen
Rome:
“'Hecaten voco!
Voco Tisiphonem!
Spargens avernales aquas,
Te morti devoveo, te diris ago!”'
The terrible drops of the aqua tofana glittered like dew on the glowing
flowers, taking away in a moment all their fragrance, while leaving all
their beauty unimpaired. The poison sank into the very hearts of the
roses, whence it breathed death from every petal and every leaf, leaving
them fair as she who had sent them, but fatal to the approach of lip or
nostril, fit emblems of her unpitying hate and remorseless jealousy.
La Corriveau wrapped the bouquet in a medicated paper of silver tissue,
which prevented the escape of the volatile death, and replacing the
roses carefully in the basket, prepared for her departure to Beaumanoir.