CHAPTER XX.

ACROSS THE CHASM

"The moon," said Andrew, "is past her full, therefore she will not rise until close upon eleven. Now is the time."

He was seated in the general room, or parlour, of La Tête d'Or, and opposite to him was Laurent--it being the third day after his visit to Bois-le-Vaux.

He had the inn to himself now, as far as regarded visitors, since all of De Vaudemont's service, as well as several other Lorrainers who had returned with their masters from the campaign, had by this time gone to their respective homes. Yet, to some of them a hint had been given--a whisper sent round--that one of those who were most hated amongst the seigneurie might ere long be brought to his account, and that, if they desired to participate in the knowledge of what was happening, they should let Jean know their whereabouts.

"For," said he, over many an ale-house table in various villages around, "there may be some brave doings ere long--doings in which some of you may like to share. There are many of us who have had our noses to the grindstone a long while--many who have eaten hard bread so that those who have dominated us should feed well--some, too, whose hearths have been made desolate. Well! it may so happen now--God, He only knows!--that there will be one more hearth desolated soon. That--well!--that the oppressor shall have no hearth to warm himself at."

He had given many other hints, too--accompanied by divers winks and nods and shrugs, common to peasants of his class--hints that there might be a house to be burnt down and so forth; a fearful retaliation to be made on one whom they, in that part of Lorraine, had come to regard as a pest and curse; a man who was a traitor to all their traditions; one who--this being in the eyes of many the worst crime possible--had given in his allegiance to France.

And in the telling of all this he had so inflamed the imagination of his hearers--rude soldiers, mostly, who had been born and nurtured in the one idea that, above all other things, France was never to be permitted to enfold in her grasp their fair province of Lorraine--that, at any moment, they would be willing to rise and wreak their vengeance on the man at whom Jean hinted. And, their curiosity being also much aroused, as was natural enough, they tried hard to extract from him the name of the identical seigneur against whom such retaliation would probably be practised. This, however, he would not divulge--having been warned by Andrew and Laurent on no account to do so--and, thereby, inflamed their imagination the more! So that, when he left them, he did so knowing that they were fully primed to join at any moment in any attack to which they might be summoned, should the necessity arise; both he and Laurent believing in their own minds that that opportunity would not be long in coming.

For, though both these men considered that it was most probable Andrew would obtain the entrance to the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux which he desired, neither of them thought he would ever return or escape from that mansion alive. And, with him destroyed, there would be no further necessity for delaying the project on which they and others had long meditated--the project of destroying and razing to the ground the ancient home of the De Bois-Vallées. Therefore, the warning to those others had gone forth; they were bidden to be ready.

"So," said Laurent now, in answer to Andrew's remark, "it is to be to-night?"

"It is to-night. If all goes well I shall be in the house by ten o'clock, and out of it again an hour later with, I trust and pray, the lady safely rescued."

"I pray so," Laurent answered. But again he whispered to himself, as he had done before, that the English stranger would never return alive. He would be caught, discovered by some of the servitors--men thoroughly in their master's interests, since he at any moment could send them to the gallows-tree for past offences--and would be set upon and slain. Yet, when he told Andrew this, the other turned a deaf ear to him--refused to believe in such peril.

"There are five," he replied, "since their master is away--what devil's work is he on now, I wonder? What are five? How many times think you, my friend, have I been opposed to five men in the campaigns I have made? Why! 'twas but at Entzheim the other day that I was alone and unsupported amongst a dozen of the Duke of Holstein-Pleon's soldiers; yet, as you see, I am here, and without a scratch."

"Ay, I see," muttered Laurent, "but 'twas on an open field, your friends and comrades near you, ready at any moment to come to your assistance as, doubtless, they did. Oh! I know, I have been a soldier myself! But now, see, it is different. You will be alone in a strange house--in the dark--egress impossible during an attack on you. _Mon Dieu!_ you will be run through and through or shot ere you can get back to the slope--with no possibility of help from friends and comrades there. Heavens!" he concluded, "the risk is fearful."

"Bah!" answered Andrew, his nerves not touched one whit by Laurent's forebodings. "Bah! 'Twould want forty men to place me at such disadvantage as you speak of. For, observe! I shall be at the top of the house, since I enter that way, and she is also there--do not you--one who has been a soldier--see the advantage I have? Five cannot mount the stairs abreast, 'tis unlike they will be broad in that part of the house. As they come singly, or in twos, I shall have my chance."

"They will use firearms."

"And so shall I. Fear not, my friend, I shall return alive."

And again Laurent said, "I pray so," while, again, he thought to himself, "It is impossible."

Then Andrew asked him if it was certain, as Jean had reported, that the dog was dead?

"He says," replied the other, "that almost for sure it must be. He and his cousin have laid the poison carefully; the cousin, indeed, getting at the meat with which it is fed. It cannot be still alive."

"Therefore," said Andrew, "I am safe from its discovery. Yet, poor beast, I would it had not been necessary."

"Pray God it is dead," replied Laurent. "Pray God it is. For if it still lives when you are in that house, nothing can save your presence from being known."

"Bah! croaker! Even if it still lives it must have a strong scent to discover me in the topmost part of the building when they are all below. I will not believe it."

After which he set about making all necessary arrangements for reaching the mansion into which he had resolved to penetrate that night.

They were soon concluded, as he himself had pondered much over them during the time that had elapsed since his escape from the jaws of the hounds on that, his first and only, visit--it but remained for him to go over them carefully with Laurent. Therefore, he asked now, "Is the coil of rope safely bestowed?"

"Ay, it is," Laurent replied. "Thirty good metres of the newest and best. Placed in our hut far down the slope, where the wood is kept after the felled trees are cut into billets. It is there. To-night we shall find it."

"'Tis very well. Now listen. To-night I set forth from this inn and shall reach Gaspard's cabin about the hour of nine. You will be there. Then we shall descend without loss of time and, ere ten minutes have elapsed, I shall be across. It will not take long, once the rope is fixed to that chestnut which grows close down to the summit of the wall."

"It will not take long, in truth," Laurent replied. "That will not, Monsieur," and the man's face testified true anxiety. "It is the returning I fear."

"Dispel your fear--I shall return."

"And with the lady?"

"And with the lady!"

"Suppose," said Laurent, "you find her guarded by the woman. It may be she sleeps with her, or close by her side. What then?"

"I must find means to silence without hurting her." While, impetuously, he said, "My friend, all is thought of--as far as may be, all foreseen. I know well the risks and dangers I have to encounter. See. Let me tell them over to you," and swiftly he proceeded to do so.

"First--there is the risk that the rope may break--then----"

"For that never fear! I guarantee that!"

"So be it. Then, first--since that counts not--I may be seen ere I reach the roof by someone on the look out--'tis not very like, yet it may be so. Whereon I shall be shot like a sparrow, and die hanging 'twixt earth and heaven. Or, let me reach the roof, and be hacked to death, or hurled to the paved court below. Is not all possible?"

For answer Laurent shuddered. "_Mon Dieu!_" he muttered, "your nerve is iron."

"On the other hand, allow I gain the roof and find all barred--trapdoor or ladder--or discover no entrance that way I must then come back and try elsewhere, another time. But, presuming I can gain the entrance--what then? I have to reach the lady, silence her fear at sight of me--poor soul! doubtless she will think at first I am her doomsman--persuade her to come away with me, force her to pass across the chasm. 'Twill terrify her, yet--it is the only way. We can never escape below--specially if the hound happens by any chance to be still alive!--I must fasten her to the rope, let her swing across, while you from the other side will draw her up. Then the rope can be thrown back to me; why should we fail? Fail, bah we will, we must succeed. Say, have I not thought of all?"

"In truth you have," Laurent exclaimed, and, catching some of Andrew's spirit, he answered, "We will succeed."

* * * * * *

The night came--dark as pitch, with, above, dense clouds rolling so low that they swept the tops of the fir trees on the summit; covered, indeed, that summit so that Gaspard's cabin was enveloped in the dank, reeking mist. And, through that mist, Andrew and Laurent were descending to where was the ledge of the stone-facing to the slope that backed up the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux.

As far as was possible, every arrangement had been made for removing the woman, known to Andrew as Marion Wyatt, to a place of safety directly she was out of the house, it being deemed by him not necessary that, at first, she should be taken farther than Remiremont itself, or, at most, Plombières. For, once beyond Bois-le-Vaux and with him to protect her, Andrew shrewdly suspected that the Vicomte would make no further attempt upon her liberty, since to do so he would once more find himself opposed to his sword, of which--_maître d'escrime_ as he almost was--De Bois-Vallée must now have learnt to have a wholesome respect. And, as for summoning any authority there might be in the neighbourhood to his assistance--that was not to be imagined. Even though he should be able to show some kind of right to retain the lady, none in that place would be likely to lend assistance to one so cordially detested as he was, both because of his family and of the manner in which he had broken with all the traditions of the province in espousing the cause of France instead of--as most others had done--contenting himself with remaining lukewarm, if not inclined to join the Duke.

No! there was no danger once outside the house. It all lay inside!

They reached the hut where the wood was stored by the peasants when cut into billets, ere being sent down to the mansions and towns that lay around the western side of the Vosges, and, furnishing themselves with the thirty metres of good new rope which Laurent had purchased by Andrew's orders--rope two inches in circumference and strong enough to bear the strain of four men of even his bulk--they set forth again on the descent. Also, Andrew took with him a small lantern and a tinder-box, since he knew not what impenetrable darkness might bar his way towards the room of the woman he sought, when inside the house.

But this was not all. He recognized that, once he quitted the comparative safety of the walled slope, his life would not be worth a moment's purchase if he were observed; he was resolved to part with that life as dearly as possible. To his sword, therefore, were now added the pistols in his belt, well charged and primed; likewise he had in his breast a dagger-knife, good either for stabbing or cutting.

"For all," he said to Laurent, "may be needed. The sword in close encounter with a number--they will be clever if they get beyond its point!--the pistols for use at a distance. To wit, when I am swinging over the chasm! For, there, a bullet would reach a man ere, perhaps, one from him can reach me. And for the knife--well, 'twill cut a lock away from an old door, or hack a rope in half with one lusty cut. Is't not so, my friend?"

"It is so," Laurent assented. Then he muttered, "You appal me! I never thought the man lived who knew not fear. Yet now I have found him."

But Andrew only laughed and bade him push on his way by the path that, even in the sodden, rimy darkness, the Lorrainer was well able to find.

At last they were on the brink of the chasm; they stood upon the coping of the wall of rock erected, doubtless, centuries ago by some De Bois-Vallée to prevent the flattened face of the slope from falling away and filling up the gap left between it and the house itself. The gap of twenty feet across which Andrew was now to pass.

Below, in front, nothing was visible; the mist rolling up from the plains obscured all. It was so profound that none who had not been there before could have imagined that, some yards away, though lower down, there stood the roof of a vast mansion; that, between the roof and their feet there was a gulf--a space--through which a step more, if taken by one who did not know every inch of the mountains, would hurl him to annihilation below.

"It is the safest moat--the most devilish!" Andrew whispered, "ever devised or thought of. How many have stumbled over this to death and destruction, I wonder, in the years that are gone and on such a night as this?"

"They are devils all, these De Bois-Vallées; devils all! Perhaps the _Loup de Lorraine_, the first of their race, foresaw the many stumbles that would happen here in the days that were to come."

"Maybe," said Andrew. "Well! by God's blessing I will not stumble nor fail in my passage. Now for the rope."

They wound it round the chestnut tree half a dozen times, knotting and making it fast at this end, so that by no chance could it slip and become uncoiled; they tugged singly and together at it until they were assured that it was as secure and fast as human hand could make it. Then they measured the length of what remained and judged that it was as nearly as possible what was desired.

"I shall be," said Andrew, "a little lower than the roof when I am at its full length below, therefore 'tis very well. For, when I am about to plunge across, it will require more length to gain that roof. Now, I will make a trial. And, one last word. Remember, I shall come back ere long. I feel it--know it. As man to man, I charge you not to desert me; not to quit this spot until all human hope of my return has vanished from your mind. On you my life, and the life of her I go to rescue, depends."

"There is my hand," Laurent said, finding that of the other in the darkness. "Alive I will not quit the place. Even though you come not back for forty-eight hours I shall be here."

"Enough! If I come not back in that time I shall be dead. Then--do as you will."

He looped the end of the coil about his body under his armpits, and, taking as well one turn of the rope beneath his shoulder, so that it should by no possibility be able to slip up over his head, he also wound it round his left arm. That done, he knew that nothing but the fraying of the strands upon the coping of the wall, or a sudden hack at it from a knife, could plunge him on to the stones below. It would never leave his body now until he removed it, or until, if dead, some other performed that office.

"Let it slip gradually round the trunk of the tree," he said, "till it is all payed out. About a foot from the ground; thereby it will escape the rough stones of the edge. Farewell! Remember!"

And now he knelt down upon the extreme lip of the coping-stone, found that one place in particular was very smooth, and decided that it was over this that the rope must run. Thereby, the friction would be scarcely anything.

"Lower me down," he whispered, as his legs hung dangling in the unfathomable space, and the toes of his boots scraped against the surface of the wall. "Lower me now."

And as he spoke he perceived himself slowly gliding down the face of the dank, wet wall, and felt the ferns and mosses that grew upon it brushing against his jacket.