Long after, when Count Victor Jean de Montaiglon was come into great
good fortune, and sat snug by charcoal-fires in the chateau that bears
his name, and stands, an edifice even the Du Barry had the taste to
envy, upon the gusset of the roads which break apart a league to the
south of the forest of Saint Germain-en-Laye, he would recount, with
oddly inconsistent humours of mirth and tense dramatics, the manner of
his escape from the cell in the fosse of the great MacCailen. And always
his acutest memory was of the whipping rigour of the evening air, his
temporary sense of swooning helplessness upon the verge of the fantastic
wood. “Figure you! Charles,” would he say, “the thin-blooded wand of
forty years ago in a brocaded waistcoat and a pair of dancing-shoes
seeking his way through a labyrinth of demoniac trees, shivering half
with cold and half with terror like a _forcat_ from the _bagne_ of
Toulouse, only that he knew not particularly from what he fled nor
whereto his unlucky footsteps should be turned. I have seen it often
since--the same place--have we not, _mignonne?_--and I avow 'tis as
sweet and friendly a spot as any in our own neighbourhood; but then in
that pestilent night of black and grey I was like a child, tenanting
every tiny thicket with the were-wolf and the sheeted spectre. There is
a stupid feeling comes to people sometimes in the like circumstances,
that they are dead, that they have turned the key in the lock of life,
as we say, and gone in some abstraction into the territory of shades.
'Twas so I felt, messieurs, and if in truth the ultimate place of
spirits is so mortal chilly, I shall ask Père Antoine to let me have a
greatcoat as well as the viaticum ere setting out upon the journey.”
It had been an insufferably cruel day, indeed, for Count Victor in his
cell had he not one solace, so purely self-wrought, so utterly fanciful,
that it may seem laughable. It was that the face of Olivia came before
him at his most doleful moments--sometimes unsought by his imagination,
though always welcome; with its general aspect of vague sweet sadness
played upon by fleeting smiles, her lips desirable to that degree he
could die upon them in one wild ecstasy, her eyes for depth and purity
the very mountain wells. She lived, breathed, moved, smiled, sighed
in this same austere atmosphere under the same grey sky that hung low
outside his cell; the same snowfall that he could catch a glimpse of
through the tiny space above his door was seen by her that moment in
Doom; she must be taking the flavour of the sea as he could sometimes do
in blessed moments even in this musty _oubliette_.
The day passed, a short day with the dusk coming on as suddenly as if
some one had drawn a curtain hurriedly over the tiny aperture above the
door. And all the world outside seemed wrapped in silence. Twice again
his warder came dumbly serving a meal, otherwise the prisoner might have
been immeasurably remote from any life and wholly forgotten. There was,
besides his visions of Olivia, one other thing to comfort him; it was
when he heard briefly from some distant part of the castle the ululation
of a bagpipe playing an air so jocund that it assured him at all events
the Chamberlain was not dead, and was more probably out of danger. And
then the cold grew intense beyond his bearance, and he reflected upon
some method of escape if it were to secure him no more than exercise for
warmth.
The window was out of the question, for in all probability the watch was
still on the other side of the fosse--a tombstone for steadfastness and
constancy. Count Victor could not see him now even by standing on his
box and looking through the aperture, yet he gained something, he
gained all, indeed, so pregnant a thing is accident--even the cosy
charcoal-fires and the friends about him in the chateau near Saint
Germain-en-Laye--by his effort to pierce the dusk and see across the
ditch.
For as he was standing on the box, widening softly the aperture in the
drifted snow upon the little window-ledge, he became conscious of cold
air in a current beating upon the back of his head. The draught, that
should surely be entering, was blowing out!
At once he thought of a chimney, but there was no fireplace in his cell.
Yet the air must be finding entrance elsewhere more freely than from the
window. Perplexity mastered him for a little, and then he concluded
that the current could come from nowhere else than behind the array of
marshalled empty bottles.
“_Tonnerre!_” said he to himself, “I have begun my career as wine
merchant rather late in life or I had taken more interest in these dead
gentlemen. _Avancez, donc, mes princes!_ your ancient spirit once made
plain the vacancies in the heads of his Grace's guests; let us see
if now you do not conceal some holes that were for poor Montaiglon's
profit.”
One by one he pulled them out of their positions until he could intrude
a sensitive hand behind the shelves where they had been racked.
There was an airy space.
“_Très bon! merci, messieurs les cadavres_, perhaps I may forgive you
even yet for being empty.”
Hope surged, he wrought eagerly; before long he had cleared away a
passage--that ended in a dead wall!
It was perhaps the most poignant moment of his experience. He had, then,
been the fool of an illusion! Only a blank wall! His fingers searched
every inch of it within reach, but came upon nothing but masonry, cold,
clammy, substantial.
“A delusion after all!” he said, bitterly disappointed. “A delusion, and
not the first that has been at the bottom of a bottle of wine.” He
had almost resigned himself again to his imprisonment when the puffing
current of colder air than that stagnant within the cell struck him for
the second time, more keenly felt than before, because he was warm with
his exertions. This time he felt that it had come from somewhere over
the level of his head. Back he dragged his box and stood upon it behind
the bottle-bin, and felt higher upon the wall than he could do standing,
to discover that it stopped short about nine feet from the floor, and
was apparently an incompleted curtain partitioning his cell from some
space farther in.
Not with any vaulting hopes, for an egress from this inner space seemed
less unlikely than from the one he occupied, he pulled himself on the
top of the intervening wall and lowered himself over the other side. At
the full stretch of his arms he failed to touch anything with his feet;
an alarming thought came to him; he would have pulled himself back,
but the top of the wall was crumbling to his fingers, a mass of rotten
mortar threatening each moment to break below his grasp, and he realised
with a spasm of the diaphragm that now there was no retreat. What--this
was his thought--what if this was the mouth of a well? Or a mediaeval
trap for fools? He had seen such things in French castles. In the pitch
darkness he could not guess whether he hung above an abyss or had the
ground within an inch of his straining toes.
To die in a pit!
To die in a pit! good God!--was this the appropriate conclusion to a
life with so much of open-air adventure, sunshine, gaiety, and charm in
it? The sweat streamed upon his face as he strove vainly to hang by one
of his arms and search the cope of the crumbling wall for a surer hold
with the other; he stretched his toes till his muscles cramped, his eyes
in the darkness filled with a red cloud, his breath choked him, a vision
of his body thrashing through space overcame him, and his slipping
fingers would be loose from the mortar in another minute!
To one last struggle for a decent mastery his natural manhood rose, and
cleared his brain and made him loose his grip.
He fell less than a yard!
For a moment he stopped to laugh at his foolish terror, and then set
busily to explore this new place in which he found himself. The air was
fresher; the walls on either hand contracted into the space of a lobby;
he felt his way along for twenty paces before he could be convinced
that he was in a sort of tunnel. But figure a so-convenient tunnel in
connection with a prison cell! It was too good to be true.
With no great surrender to hope even yet, he boldly plunged into the
darkness, reason assuring him that the _cul-de-sac_ would come sooner
or later. But for once reason was wrong; the passage opened ever before
him, more airy than ever, always dank and odorous, but with never a
barrier--a passage the builders of the castle had executed for an age
of sudden sieges and alarms, but now archaic and useless, and finally
forgotten altogether.
He had walked, he knew not how long, when he was brought up by a curious
sound--a prolonged, continuous, hollow roar as of wind in a wood or a
sea that rolled on a distant beach. Vainly he sought to identify it, but
finally shook aside his wonder and pushed on again till he came to the
apparent end of the passage, where a wooden door barred his progress
farther. He stopped as much in amazement as in dubiety about the door,
for the noise that had baffled him farther back in the tunnel was now
close at hand, and he might have been in a ship's hold and the ship
all blown about by tempest, to judge from the inexplicable thunder
that shook the darkness. A score of surmises came quickly, only to be
dismissed as quickly as they came; that extraordinary tumult was beyond
his understanding, and so he applied himself to his release. Still his
lucky fortune remained with him; the door was merely on a latch. He
plucked it open eagerly, keen to solve the puzzle of the noise, emerging
on a night now glittering with stars, and clamant with the roar of
tumbling waters.
A simple explanation!--he had come out beside the river. The passage
came to its conclusion under the dumb arch of a bridge whose concaves
echoed back in infinite exaggeration every sound of the river as it
gulped in rocky pools below.
The landscape round about him in the starshine had a most bewitching
influence. Steep banks rose from the riverside and lost themselves in
a haze of frost, through which, more eminent, stood the boles and giant
members of vast gaunt trees, their upper branches fretting the starry
sky. No snow was on the spot where he emerged, for the wind, blowing
huge wreaths against the buttresses of the bridge a little higher on
the bank, had left some vacant spaces, but the rest of the world was
blanched well-nigh to the complexion of linen. Where he was to turn to
first puzzled Count Victor. He was free in a whimsical fashion,
indeed, for he was scarcely more than half-clad, and he wore a pair of
dancing-shoes, ludicrously inappropriate for walking in such weather
through the country. He was free, but he could not be very far yet from
his cell; the discovery of his escape might be made known at any moment;
and even now while he lingered here he might have followers in the
tunnel.
Taking advantage of the uncovered grass he climbed the bank and sought
the shelter of a thicket where the young trees grew too dense to permit
the snow to enter. From here another hazard of flight was manifest, for
he could see now that the face of the country outside on the level was
spread as with a tablecloth, its white surface undisturbed, ready for
the impress of so light an object as a hopping wren. To make his way
across it would be to drag his bonds behind him, plainly asking the
world to pull him back. Obviously there must be a more tactical retreat,
and without more ado he followed the river's course, keeping ever, as he
could, in the shelter of the younger woods, where the snow did not lie
or was gathered by the wind in alleys and walls. Forgotten was the cold
in his hurried flight through the trees; but by-and-by it compelled
his attention, and he fell to beating his arms in the shelter of a
plantation of yews.
“_Mort de ma vie!_” he thought while in this occupation, “why should I
not have a roquelaire? If his very ungracious Grace refuses to see
when a man is dying of cold for want of a coat, shall the man not help
himself to a loan? M. le Duc owes Cammercy something for that ride in
a glass coach, and for a night of a greatcoat I shall be pleased to
discharge the family obligation.”
Count Victor there and then came to a bold decision. He would, perhaps,
not only borrow a coat and cover his nakedness, but furthermore cover
his flight by the same strategy. The only place in the neighbourhood
where he could obscure his footsteps in that white night of stars was
in the castle itself--perhaps in the very fosse whence he had made his
escape. There the traffic of the day was bound to have left a myriad
tracks, amongst which the imprint of a red-heeled Rouen shoe would never
advertise itself. But it was too soon yet to risk so bold a venture, for
his absence might be at this moment the cause of search round all the
castle, and ordinary prudence suggested that he should permit some time
to pass before venturing near the dwelling that now was in his view, its
lights blurred by haze, no sign apparent that they missed or searched
for him.
For an hour or more, therefore, he kept his blood from congelation by
walking back and forward in the thicket into which the softly breathing
but shrewish night wind penetrated less cruelly than elsewhere, and
at last judged the interval enough to warrant his advance upon the
enterprise.
Behold then Count Victor running hard across the white level waste of
the park into the very boar's den--a comic spectacle, had there been any
one to see it, in a dancer's shoes and hose, coatless and excited.
He looked over the railing of the fosse to find the old silence
undisturbed.
Was his flight discovered yet? If not it was something of a madness,
after all, to come back to the jaws of the trap.
“Here's a pretty problem!” he told himself, hesitating upon the brink of
the ditch into which dipped a massive stair--“Here's a pretty problem!
to have the roquelaire or to fly without it and perish of cold, because
there is one chance in twenty that monsieur the warder opposite my
chamber may not be wholly a fool and may have looked into his mousetrap.
I do not think he has; at all events here are the alternatives, and the
wiser is invariably the more unpleasant. _Allons!_ Victor, _advienne que
pourra_, and Heaven help us!”
He ran quickly down the stair into the fosse, crept along in the shelter
of the ivy for a little, saw that no one was visible, and darted across
and up to a postern in the eastern turret. The door creaked noisily
as he entered, and a flight of stairs, dimly lit by candles, presented
itself, up which he ventured with his heart in his mouth. On the
first landing were two doors, one of them ajar; for a second or two
he hesitated with every nerve in his flesh pulsating and his heart
tumultuous in his breast; then hearing nothing, took his courage in his
hands and blandly entered, with his feet at a fencer's balance for the
security of his retreat if that were necessary. There was a fire glowing
in the apartment--a tempting spectacle for the shivering refugee, a dim
light burned within a glass shade upon the mantel, and a table laden
with drug-vials was drawn up to the side of a heavily-curtained bed.
Count Victor compassed the whole at a glance, and not the least pleasant
part of the spectacle was the sight of a coat--not a greatcoat, but
still a coat--upon the back of a chair that stood between the bed and
the fire.
“With a thousand apologies to his Grace,” he whispered to himself, and
tiptoed in his soaking shoes across the floor without reflecting for a
second that the bed might have an occupant. He examined the coat; it had
a familiar look that might have indicated its owner even if there had
not been the flageolet lying beside it. Instinctively Count Victor
turned about and went up to the bed, where, silently peeping between the
curtains, he saw his enemy of the morning so much in a natural slumber
as it seemed that he was heartened exceedingly. Only for a moment he
looked; there was the certainty of some one returning soon to the room,
and accordingly he rapidly thrust himself into the coat and stepped back
upon the stair.
There was but one thing wanting--a sword! Why should he not have his own
back again? As he remembered the interview of the morning, the chamber
in which he had left his weapon at the bidding of the Duke was close
at hand, and probably it was still there. Each successive hazard
audaciously faced emboldened him the more; and so he ventured along,
searching amid a multitude of doors in dim rushlight till he came upon
one that was different from its neighbours only inasmuch as it had
a French motto painted across the panels. The motto read “_Revenez
bientôt_,” and smiling at the omen, Count Victor once more took his
valour in his fingers and turned the handle. “_Revenez bientôt_” he was
whispering softly to himself as he noiselessly pushed in the door. The
sentence froze on his lips when he saw the Duchess seated in a chair,
and turned half round to look at him.