Chapter 11

THE CHÂTEAU

I had an indistinct impression of being carried for what seemed an eternity upon the shoulders of my rescuer, and of clinging there through the delirium that supervened.

Sometimes I thought I was on a camel's back, pursuing Jacqueline's abductors through the hot sands of an Egyptian desert; sometimes I was on shipboard, sinking in a tropical sea, beneath which amid the marl and ooze of delta depositions, hideous, antediluvian creatures, with faces like that of Leroux, writhed and stretched up their tentacles to drag me down.

Then I would be conscious of the cold and bitter wind again. But at last there came a grateful sense of warmth and ease, followed by a period of blank unconsciousness.

When at last I opened my eyes it was late afternoon. Though they pained me, I could now see with tolerable distinctness.

I was lying upon a bed of dried balsam-leaves inside a little hut, and through the half-open door I could see the sun just dipping behind the mountains. Besides the bed the hut contained a roughly hewn table and chair and a bookcase with a few books in it. Upon a wall hung a big crucifix of wood, and under it an old man was standing.

He heard me stir and came toward me. I recognized the massive shoulders and commanding countenance of Père Antoine, and remembrance came back to me.

"Where am I?" I asked.

"In my cabin, _monsieur_," answered the priest, standing at my side, an inscrutable calm upon his face.

"You saved me?"

"Three days ago. You were dying in the snow. You had fired off your pistols and had thrown your coat away. I had to carry you back and find it. It is lucky that I found you, _monsieur_, or assuredly you would soon have been dead. But for your dog----"

"_My_ dog!" I exclaimed.

"Certainly, a dog came to me and brought me a mile out of my route to where you were lying. But, now, come to think of it, it disappeared and has not returned. Perhaps it was sent to me by _le bon Dieu_."

"Where is Mlle. Duchaine?" I burst out.

"Ah, M. Hewlett," said the priest, looking at me severely, "that was a wild undertaking of yours, and God does not prosper such schemes, though I confess I do not understand why you were taking her to her home. Rest assured she is in good hands. I met the sleigh containing her, and M. Leroux informed me that all would be well. It is strange that he did not speak of you, though, and I do not understand how----"

"He stole her from me when I was snow-blind, and left me to die!" I exclaimed. "I must rescue her----"

Father Antoine laid a heavy hand upon my shoulder.

"Be assured, _monsieur_, that _madame_ is perfectly happy and contented with her friends," he said. "And no doubt she has already regretted her escapade. Did I not warn you in Quebec, _monsieur_, that your enterprise would be brought to naught? And now you will doubtless be glad of your lesson, and will abandon it willingly and return homeward. I have to depart at daybreak upon an urgent mission a hundred miles away, which was interrupted by your rescue; but I shall be back within a week, by which time you will doubtless be able to accompany me to the coast. Meanwhile, you will rest here, and my provisions and a few books are at your disposal."

"I shall not!" I cried weakly. "I am going on to the _château_!"

He looked at me steadily.

"You cannot," he said. "If you attempt it you will perish by the way."

"You cannot stop me!" I cried desperately.

"Perhaps not, _monsieur_; nevertheless, you will not be able to reach the _château_."

"Who are you that you should stop me?" I exclaimed angrily. "You are a priest, and your duty is with souls."

"That is why," answered Père Antoine. "You are in pursuit of a married woman."

"I do not know anything about that, but I am the protector of a defenceless one," I answered, "and I shall seek her until she sends me away. Do you know where her husband is?"

"No, _monsieur_," answered the old man. "And you?"

I burst into an impassioned appeal to him. I told him of Leroux and his conspiracy to obtain possession of the property, of my encounter with Jacqueline, and how I had rescued her, omitting mention of course of the murder.

As I went on I could see the look of surprise upon his face gradually change into belief.

I told him of our journey across the snow and begged him to help me to rescue Jacqueline, or at least to find her. I added that the trouble had partially destroyed her memory, so that she was not competent to decide who her protectors were.

When I had ended he was looking at me with a benignancy that I had never seen before upon his face.

"M. Hewlett," he answered, "I have long suspected a part of what you have told me, and therefore I readily accept your statements. I believe now that _madame_ has suffered no wrong from you. But I am a priest, and, as you say, my care is only that of souls. _Madame_ is married. I married her----"

"To whom?" I cried.

"To M. Louis d'Epernay, nephew of M. Charles Duchaine by marriage, less than two weeks ago in the _château_ here."

The addition of the last word singularly revived my hopes. It had slipped from his lips unconsciously, but it gave me reason to believe that the château was near by.

Father Antoine sat down upon the chair beside me.

"M. Duchaine has been a recluse for many years," he said, "and of late his mind has become affected. It is said that he was implicated in the troubles of 1867, and that, fearing arrest, he fled here and built this château, in this desolate region, where he would be safe from pursuit. If anyone ever contemplated denouncing him, at any rate those events have long ago been forgotten. But solitude has made a hermit of him and taken him out of touch with the world of to-day.

"I believe that Leroux has discovered coal on his property, and by threatening him with arrest has gained a complete ascendency over the weak-minded old man. However, the fact remains that his daughter was married by me to M. d'Epernay some ten or twelve days ago at the _château_.

"I was uneasy, for it did not look to be like a love-match, and I knew that M. d'Epernay had the reputation of a profligate in Quebec, where he was hand in glove with Philippe Lacroix, one of M. Leroux's aids. But a priest has no option when an expression of matrimonial consent is made to him in the presence of two witnesses. So I married them.

"My duties took me to Quebec. There I learned that Mme. d'Epernay had fled on the night of her marriage, and that her husband was in pursuit of her. Again it was told me that she was living at the Château Frontenac with another man. It was not for me to question whether she loved her husband, but to do my duty.

"I appealed to you. You refused to listen to my appeal. You threatened me, _monsieur_. And you denied my priesthood. However, I do not speak of that, for she is undoubtedly safe with her father now, awaiting her husband's return. And I shall not help you in your pursuit of her, M. Hewlett, for you are actuated solely by love for the wife of another man. Is that not so?" he ended, bending over me with a penetrating look in his blue eyes.

"Yes, it is so. But I shall go to the château," I answered.

Père Antoine rose up.

"You will find food here," he said, "and if you wish to take exercise there are snow-shoes. Try to find the _château_--do what you please; but remember that if you lose your way I shall not be here to save you. I shall return from my mission in a week and be ready to conduct you to St. Boniface. And now, _monsieur_, since we understand each other, I shall prepare the supper."

I swallowed a few mouthfuls of food and fell asleep soon afterward. In the morning when I awoke the cabin was empty.

My eyes were almost well, but my hands had been badly frozen and were extremely painful, while I was so weak that I could hardly walk. I spent the next two days recovering my strength, and on the third I found myself able to leave the hut for a short tramp.

I found snow-shoes and coloured glasses in the cabin; my overcoat was there, and I did not feel troubled in conscience when I appropriated a pair of warm fur mittens which the good priest had made from mink skins. They had no fingers, and were admirably adapted to the weather.

I found one of the pistols in the hut, and in the pocket of my fur coat were a couple of cartridges which I had overlooked. The rest I had fired away in my delirium.

The cabin, was situated in a valley, around which high hills clustered. Strapping on the snow-shoes, I set to work to climb a lofty peak which stood at no great distance.

It took me a couple of hours to make the ascent, and when at last I sank down exhausted on the summit there was nothing in sight but a succession of new hills in every direction. I seemed to be on the summit of the ridge which sloped away to east and west of me. Hidden among the hills were little lakes.

There was no sign of life in all that desolate country.

My disappointment was overwhelming. Surely the _château_ was near. I strode up and down upon the mountain-top, clenching my hands with rage. It was four days since I had lost Jacqueline, and Leroux had contemptously left me to die in the snow. He was so sure I could not follow and find him.

I began the descent again. But it is easy to lose one's way upon a mountain-peak, and the hills presented no clear definition to me. Once in the valley I could locate the cabin again, but the sun had travelled far toward the west and no longer guided me accurately.

I must have turned off at a slight angle which took me some distance out of my course, for my progress was suddenly arrested by a mighty wall of rock, a sheer precipice that seemed to descend perpendicularly into the valley underneath. Somewhere a torrent was roaring like a miniature Niagara.

I discovered my error and bent my footsteps along the summit of the precipice, and as I proceeded the noise of the torrent grew louder until the din was deafening. I was treading now upon a smooth slope, like the glacis of a fortress. I continued the descent, and all at once, at no great distance from me, I saw a tremendous waterfall, ice-sheeted, that tumbled down the face of the declivity and sent up a cloud of misty spray.

I stopped to stare in admiration. Far below me the narrow valley had widened into the smooth, snow-coated surface of a lake.

And on a point of land projecting from the bottom of that mighty wall I saw the _château_!

It could have been nothing else. It was a splendid building--not larger than the house of a country gentleman, perhaps, and made of hewn logs; but the rude splendour of it against that icy, rocky background transfixed me with wonder.

It was a rambling, straggling building, apparently constructed at different times; having two wings and a wide central hall, with odd projecting chambers, and it was hidden so cunningly away that it was visible from this side of the lake only from the point of the rocky precipice above on which I stood.

The _château_ stood under the overhanging precipice in such a way that half the building was invisible even from here. It seemed to be set back into a hollow of the mountainside, which appeared every moment about to overwhelm it.

And now I perceived that the smooth slope on which I stood was a snow-covered glacier, a million tons of ice, pressing ever by its own weight toward the precipice, and carrying its débris of rocks and stones toward the waterfall that issued from it and poured in deafening clamour into the lake below.

Where the precipice projected the waterfall was split in two, and rushed down in twin streams, bubbling, tumbling, hissing, plunging into the lake, which whirled furiously around the spit of land on which the castle stood, clear of ice for a distance of a hundred feet from the shore, a foaming maelstrom in which no boat that was ever built could have endured an instant, but must have been twisted and flung back like the fantastically shaped ice pinnacles along the marge.

On each side of the _château_ a cataract plunged, veiling itself in an opacity of mist, tinted with all the spectral hues by the rays of the westering sun. I could have flung a stone down, not on the _château_, but over it, into the boiling lake.

Why, that position was impregnable! Behind it the sheer precipice, up which not even a bird could walk; the impassable lake before it, and the torrent on either side!

But--how had M. Charles Duchaine gained entrance there?

There seemed to be no entrance. And yet the _château_ stood before my eyes, no dream, but very real indeed. There was a small piece of enclosed land between its front and the lake, and within this I thought I could see dogs lying.

That might have been my fancy, for the mountain was too high for me to be able to distinguish anything readily, and the sublime grandeur of the scene and the roar of the water made me incapable of clear discernment.

Before I reached the hut again I had formulated my plan. I would start at dawn, or earlier, and work around these mountains, a circuit of perhaps twenty miles, approaching the _château_ by the edge of the lake. I concluded that there must exist a ridge of narrow beach between the whirlpool and the castle, though it was invisible from above, and that the entrance would disclose itself to me in the course of my journey.

The hope of finding Jacqueline again banished the last vestiges of my weakness. I felt like one inspired. And my spirit was exalted, too. For she so completely filled my heart that she left no place for doubts and fears.

That night I paced the little cabin in an ecstasy of joy. And, as I paced it, suddenly I perceived a strange flicker of light in the north sky, and went to the door to see the most beautiful phenomenon that I had ever witnessed.

There came first a flash, and swiftly long streamers of flame shot up and spread fanwise over the heavens. They quivered and sank, and flared again, and broke into innumerable rippling waves; they hung, broad banners of light, athwart the skies, then slowly faded, to give place to a wavering interplay of ghostly beams that sought the darkest places beyond the moon: celestial fingers whiter than the white glow of a myriad of arc-lamps.

And somehow the wonder of it filled me with the conviction that all would be well for those heavenly lights bridged the loneliness of my soul even as they bridged the sky, from Jupiter, who blazed brilliant in the east to great Arcturus.

And, so I felt that, though I crossed a void as wide and fathomless in search of her, some time she should be mine and that our hearts would beat together so long as our lives should endure.

Although the sun was well above the horizon when I awoke, I started out on the fourth morning eager to achieve the entrance to the _château_.

First I plodded back to the two mountains which guarded the approach to the valley, then worked round along the flank of the ridge of peaks, searching for an entrance. The further I went, however, the higher and more precipitous became the mountains.

I realized that there was little chance of finding any access along this side, so after my noon meal I ascended one of the lower elevations in order to obtain my bearings. But I could discern neither _château_ nor lake nor waterfall, and the sound of the torrent, far away to the left, came to my ears only as a faint distant murmur.

I was far out of the way.

The snow, which had been falling at intervals during each day since Jacqueline's abduction, had long ago covered up the tracks of the sleigh. I had to trust to my own wit to solve my problem, and there did not seem to be any solution.

There was no visible entrance to that mountain lake on any side, and to descend that sheer, ice-coated precipice was an impossibility.

It was long after nightfall when I reached the cabin again, exhausted and dispirited.

I awoke too late on the fifth morning, and I was too stiff to make much of a journey. I climbed to the edge of the glacier once again in the hope of discovering an approach. I examined every foot of the ground with meticulous care.

But whenever I approached the edge the same wall of rock ran down vertically for some three hundred feet, veneered with ice and wrapped in a perpetual blinding spray.

And yet sleighs could enter that valley below. For at the extreme edge of the lake, outside the enclosed piece of land, I perceived one, a tiny thing, far under me, and yet unmistakably a sleigh.

I was within three hundred feet of Jacqueline's home and yet as far away as though leagues divided us. I looked down at the _château_ and ground my teeth and swore that I would win her. But all the rest of that day went in fruitless searching.

I must succeed in finding the entrance on the following day, for now Père Antoine might return at any time, and I knew that he would prove far less tractable here in his own bailiwick than he had been when I defied him at the Frontenac. By hook or by crook I must gain entrance to the valley.

This was to be my last night in the cabin. I could not return, not though I were perishing in the snows.

Happily my eyes were now entirely well, and my hands, though chapped and roughened from the frost-bites, had suffered no permanent injury. So I started out with grim resolution on the sixth morning, when the dawn was only a red streak on the horizon and the stars still lit my way. Before the sun rose I was standing once more outside those two sentinel peaks.

To this point I knew the sleigh had come. But whether it had continued straight down the valley or turned to the right along that same ridge which I had fruitlessly explored before, it was impossible to determine.

I tried to put myself in the position of a man travelling toward the _château_. Which road would I take? How and where would it occur to me to seek an entrance into the heart of those formidable hills?

The more I puzzled and pondered over the difficulty the harder it was to solve.

As I stood, rather weary, balancing myself upon my snow-shoes, I heard a wolf's howl quite near to me. Raising my head, I saw no wolf, but an Eskimo dog--the very dog I had encountered in New York, Jacqueline's dog!