Part 19

Marie-Anne alone suspected the truth. A secret presentiment told her that it was Martial de Sairmeuse who was working all these changes, by utilizing his ascendancy over his father’s mind. “And it is for your sake,” whispered an inward voice, “that Martial is working in this fashion. He cares nothing for the obscure peasant prisoners, whose names he does not even know! If he protects them, it is only that he may have a right to protect you, and those whom you love!” With these thoughts in her mind she could but feel her aversion for Martial diminish. Was not his conduct truly noble? She had to confess it was, and yet the thought of this ardent passion which she had inspired never once quickened the throbbing of Marie-Anne’s heart. Alas! it seemed as if nothing were capable of touching her heart now. She was but the ghost of her former self. She would sit for whole days motionless in her chair, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, her lips contracted as if by a spasm, while great tears rolled silently down her cheeks. The Abbe Midon, who was very anxious on her account, often tried to question her. “You are suffering my child,” he said kindly one afternoon. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing, Monsieur le Cure. I am not ill.”

“Won’t you confide in me? Am I not your friend? What do you fear?”

She shook her head sadly and replied: “I have nothing to confide.” She said this, and yet she was dying of sorrow and anguish. Faithful to the promise she had made to Maurice, she had never spoken of her condition, or of the marriage solemnized in the little church at Vigano. And she saw with inexpressible terror the moment, when she could no longer keep her secret, slowly approaching. Her agony was frightful; but what could she do! Fly! but where could she go? And by going, would she not lose all chance of hearing from Maurice, which was the only hope that sustained her in this trying hour? Still she had almost determined on flight when circumstances--providentially, it seemed to her--came to her aid.

Money was needed at the farm. The fugitives were unable to obtain any without betraying their whereabouts, and Father Poignot’s little store was almost exhausted. The Abbe Midon was wondering what they could do, when Marie-Anne told him of the will which Chanlouineau had made in her favour, and of the money concealed under the hearth-stone in the room on the first floor. “I might go to the Borderie one night,” she suggested, “enter the house, which is unoccupied, obtain the money and bring it here. I have a right to do so, haven’t I?”

“You might be seen,” replied the priest, “and who knows--perhaps arrested. If you were questioned, what plausible explanation could you give?”

“What shall I do, then?”

“Act openly; you yourself are not compromised. You must appear at Sairmeuse to-morrow as if you had just returned from Piedmont; go at once to the notary, take possession of your property, and install yourself at the Borderie.”

Marie-Anne shuddered. “What, live in Chanlouineau’s house,” she faltered. “Live there alone?”

“Heaven will protect you, my dear child. I can only see an advantage in your living at the Borderie. It will be easy to communicate with you; and with ordinary precautions there can be no danger. Before you start we will decide on a meeting place, and two or three times a week you can join Father Poignot there. And in the course of two or three months you can be still more useful to us. When people have grown accustomed to your living at the Borderie, we will take the baron there. Such an arrangement would hasten his convalescence; for in the narrow loft, where we are obliged to conceal him now, he is really suffering for want of light and air.”

Accordingly it was decided that Father Poignot should accompany Marie-Anne to the frontier that very night; and that she should take the diligence running between Piedmont and Montaignac, _via_ Sairmeuse. Before she started, the Abbe Midon gave her minute instructions as to the story she should tell of her sojourn in foreign lands. The peasantry, possibly even the authorities, would question her, and all her answers must tend to prove that the Baron d’Escorval was concealed near Turin.

The plan was carried out as projected; and at eight o’clock on the following morning, the people of Sairmeuse were greatly astonished to see Marie-Anne alight from the passing diligence. “M. Lacheneur’s daughter has come back again!” they exclaimed. The words flew from lip to lip with marvellous rapidity, and soon all the villagers stood at their doors and windows watching the poor girl as she paid the driver, and entered the local hostelry, followed by a lad carrying a small trunk. Urban curiosity has some sense of shame, and seeks to hide itself when prying into other people’s affairs, but country folks are openly and outrageously inquisitive. Thus when Marie-Anne emerged from the inn, she found quite a crowd of sightseers awaiting her with gaping mouths and staring eyes. And fully a score of chattering gossips thought fit to escort her to the notary’s door. This notary was a man of importance, and he welcomed Marie-Anne with all the deference due to the heiress of a house and farm worth from forty to fifty thousand francs. However, being jealous of his renown for perspicuity, he gave her clearly to understand that, as a man of experience, he fully divined that love alone had influenced Chanlouineau in drawing up this last will and testament. He was no doubt anxious to obtain some information concerning the young farmer’s passion, and Marie-Anne’s composure and reticence disappointed him immensely.

“You forget what brings me here,” she said; “you don’t tell me what I have to do!”

The notary, thus interrupted, made no further attempts at divination. “Plague on it!” he thought, “she is in a hurry to get possession of her property--the avaricious creature!” Then he added aloud, “The business can be finished at once, for the magistrate is at liberty to-day, and can go with us to break the seals this afternoon.”

So, before evening, all the legal requirements complied with, and Marie-Anne was formally installed at the Borderie. She was alone in Chanlouineau’s house, and as the darkness gathered round her, a great terror seized hold of her heart. She fancied that the doors were about to open, that this man who had loved her so much would suddenly appear before her, and that she should hear his voice again as she heard it for the last time in his grim prison cell. She struggled hard against these foolish fears, and at last lighting a lamp she ventured to wander through this house--now her’s--but wherein everything spoke so forcibly of its former owner. She slowly examined the different rooms on the ground floor, noting the recent repairs and improvements, and at last climbed the stairs to the room above which Chanlouineau had designed to be the altar of his love. Strange as it may seem, it was really luxuriously upholstered--far more so than Chanlouineau’s letter had led her to suppose. The young farmer, who for years had breakfasted off a crust and an onion, had lavished a small fortune on this apartment, which he meant to be his idol’s sanctuary.

“How he loved me!” murmured Marie-Anne, moved by that emotion, the bare thought of which had awakened Maurice’s jealousy. But she had neither the time nor the right to yield to her feelings. At that very moment Father Poignot was no doubt waiting for her at the appointed meeting place. Accordingly, she swiftly raised the hearth-stone, and found the money which Chanlouineau had mentioned. She handed the larger part of it to Poignot, who in his turn gave it to the abbe on reaching home.

The days that followed were peaceful ones for Marie-Anne, and this tranquillity, after so many trials, seemed to her almost happiness. Faithful to the priest’s instructions, she lived alone; but, by frequent visits to Sairmeuse, she accustomed people to her presence. Yes, she would have been almost happy if she could only have had some news of Maurice. What had become of him! Why did he give no sign of life? She would have given anything in exchange for one word of love and counsel from him. Soon the time approached when she would require a confidant; and yet there was no one in whom she dared confide. In her dire need she at last remembered the old physician at Vigano, who had been one of the witnesses at her marriage. She had no time to reflect whether he would be willing or not; but wrote to him immediately, entrusting her letter to a youth in the neighbourhood. “The gentleman says you may rely upon him,” said the lad on his return. And that very evening Marie-Anne was roused by a rap at her door. It was the kind-hearted old man, who had hastened to her relief. He remained at the Borderie nearly a fortnight, and when he left one morning before daybreak, he took away with him under his cloak an infant--a little boy--whom he had sworn to cherish as his own child.

XXIX.

It had cost Blanche an almost superhuman effort to leave Sairmeuse without treating the duke to a display of violence, such as would have fairly astonished even that irascible nobleman. She was tortured with inward rage at the very moment, when, with an assumption of melancholy dignity, she murmured the words of forgiveness we have previously recorded. But vanity, after all, was more powerful than resentment. She thought of the gladiators who fall in the arena with a smile on their lips, and resolved that no one should see her weep, that no one should hear her threaten or complain. Indeed, on her return to the Chateau de Courtornieu her behaviour was truly worthy of a stoic philosopher. Her face was pale, but not a muscle of her features moved as the servants glanced at her inquisitively. “I am to be called mademoiselle as formerly,” she said imperiously. “Any of you forgetting this order will be at once dismissed.”

One maid did forget the injunction that very day, addressing her young mistress as “madame,” and the poor girl was instantly dismissed, in spite of her tears and protestations. All the servants were indignant. “Does she hope to make us forget that she’s married, and that her husband has deserted her?” they queried.

Ah! that was what she wished to forget herself. She wished to annihilate all recollection of the day that had seen her successively maiden, wife, and widow. For was she not really a widow? A widow, not by her husband’s death, it is true; but, thanks to the machinations of an odious rival, an infamous, perfidious creature, lost to all sense of shame. And yet, though she had been disdained, abandoned, and repulsed, she was no longer free. She belonged to this man whose name she bore like a badge of servitude--to this man who hated her, who had fled from her. She was not yet twenty; still her youth, her hopes, her dreams were ended. Society condemned her to seclusion, while Martial was free to rove wheresoever he listed. It was now that she realised the disadvantages of isolation. She had not been without friends in her school-girl days; but after leaving the convent she had estranged them by her haughtiness, on finding them not as high in rank, or as wealthy as herself. So she was now reduced to the irritating consolations of Aunt Medea, a very worthy person, no doubt, but whose tears flowed as freely for the loss of a cat as for the death of a relative. However, Blanche firmly persevered in her determination to conceal her grief and despair in the deepest recesses of her heart. She drove about the country, wore her prettiest dresses, and forced herself to assume a gay and indifferent air. But on going to church at Sairmeuse on the following Sunday, she realised the futility of her efforts. Her fellow worshippers did not look at her haughtily, or even inquisitively, but they turned aside to smile, and she overheard remarks concerning “the maiden widow,” which pierced her very soul. So she was an object of mockery and ridicule. “Oh! I will have my revenge!” she muttered to herself.

She had indeed already thought of vengeance; and had found her father quite willing to assist her. For the first time the father and the daughter shared the same views. “The Duke de Sairmeuse shall learn what it costs to favour a prisoner’s escape, and to insult a man like me,” said the Marquis bitterly. “Fortune, favour, position--he shall lose everything, and I will not rest content till I see him ruined and dishonoured at my feet. And mind me, that day shall surely come!”

Unfortunately, however, for M. de Courtornieu’s projects, he was extremely ill for three days after the scene at Sairmeuse; and then he wasted three days more in composing a report, which was intended to crush his former ally. This delay ruined him, for it gave Martial time to perfect his plans, and to despatch the Duke de Sairmeuse to Paris with full instructions. And what did the duke say to the king, who gave him such a gracious reception? He undoubtedly pronounced the first reports to be false, reduced the rising at Montaignac to its proper proportions, represented Lacheneur as a fool, and his followers as inoffensive idiots. It was said, moreover, that he led his majesty to suppose that the Marquis de Courtornieu might have provoked the outbreak by undue severity. He had served under Napoleon, and had possibly thought it necessary to make a display of his zeal, so that his past apostacy might be forgotten. As far as the duke himself was concerned, he deeply deplored the mistakes into which he had been led by his ambitious colleague, on whom he cast most of the responsibility of so much bloodshed. To be brief, the result of the duke’s journey was, that when the Marquis de Courtornieu’s report reached Paris, it was answered by a decree depriving him of his office as provost-marshal of the province.

This unexpected blow quite crushed the old intriguer. What! he had been duped in this fashion, he so shrewd, so adroit, so subtle minded and quick witted; he who had successfully battled with so many storms; who, unlike most of his fellow patricians, had been enriched, not impoverished, by the Revolution, and who had served with the same obsequious countenance each master who was willing to accept his services. “It must be that old imbecile, the Duke de Sairmeuse, who has manœuvred so skilfully,” he groaned. “But who advised him? I can’t imagine who it could have been.”

Who it was Blanche knew only too well. Like Marie-Anne, she recognized Martial’s hand in all this business. “Ah! I was not deceived in him,” she thought; “he is the great diplomatist I believed him to be. To think that at his age he has outwitted my father, an old politician of such experience and acknowledged skill! And he does all this to please Marie-Anne,” she continued, frantic with rage. “It is the first step towards obtaining pardon for that vile creature’s friends. She has unbounded influence over him, and so long as she lives there is no hope for me. But, patience, my time will come.”

She had not yet decided what form the revenge she contemplated should take; but she already had her eye on a man whom she believed would be willing to do anything for money. And, strange as it may seem, this man was none other than our old acquaintance, Father Chupin. Burdened with remorse, despised and jeered at; stoned whenever he ventured in the streets, and horror-stricken whenever he thought of Balstain’s vow, Chupin had left Montaignac, and sought an asylum at the Chateau de Sairmeuse. In his ignorance, he fancied that the great nobleman who had incited him to discover Lacheneur owed him, over and above the promised reward, all needful aid and protection. But the duke’s servants shunned the so-called traitor. He was not even allowed a seat at the kitchen table, nor a straw pallet in the stables. The cook threw him a bone, as he would have thrown it to a dog; and he slept just where he could. However, he bore all these hardships uncomplainingly, deeming himself fortunate in being able to purchase comparative safety, even at such a price. But when the duke returned from Paris with a policy of forgetfulness and conciliation in his pocket, his grace could no longer tolerate in his establishment the presence of a man who was the object of universal execration. He accordingly gave instructions for Chupin to be dismissed. The latter resisted, however, swearing that he would not leave Sairmeuse unless he were forcibly expelled, or unless he received the order from the lips of the duke himself. This obstinate resistance was reported to the duke, and made him hesitate; but a word from Martial concerning the necessities of the situation eventually decided him. He sent for Chupin and told him that he must not visit Sairmeuse again under any pretext whatever, softening the harshness of expulsion, however, by the offer of a small sum of money. But Chupin, sullenly refusing the proffered coins, gathered his belongings together, and departed, shaking his clenched fist at the chateau, and vowing vengeance on the Sairmeuse family. He then went to his old home, where his wife and his two boys still lived. He seldom left this filthy den, and then only to satisfy his poaching proclivities. On these occasions, instead of stealthily firing at a squirrel or a partridge from some safe post of concealment, as he had done in former times, he walked boldly into the Sairmeuse or the Courtornieu forests, shot his game, and brought it home openly, displaying it in an almost defiant manner. He spent the rest of his time in a state of semi-intoxication, for he drank constantly, and more and more immoderately. When he had taken more than usual, his wife and his sons usually attempted to obtain money from him, and if persuasion failed they often resorted to blows. For he had never so much as shown them the blood-money paid to him for betraying Lacheneur; and though he had squandered a small sum at Montaignac, no one knew what he had done with the great bulk of the 20,000 francs in gold paid to him by the Duke de Sairmeuse. His sons believed he had buried it somewhere; but they tried in vain to wrest his secret from him. All the people in the neighbourhood were aware of this state of affairs, and one day when the head gardener at Courtornieu was telling the story to two of his assistants, Blanche, seated on a bench near by, chanced to overhear him.

“Ah, he’s an old scoundrel!” said the gardener indignantly. “And he ought to be at the galleys, instead of at large among respectable people.”

At that same moment the voice of hatred was whispering to Blanche, “That’s the man to serve your purpose.” But how an opportunity was to be found to confer with him? she wondered, being too prudent to think of hazarding a visit to his house. However, she remembered that he occasionally went shooting in the Courtornieu woods, and that it might be possible for her to meet him there. “It will only require,” thought she, “a little perseverance and a few long walks.” But, in point of fact, it cost poor Aunt Medea, the inevitable chaperone, two long weeks of almost constant perambulation. “Another freak!” groaned the impoverished relative, overcome with fatigue; “my niece is certainly crazy!”

However, at last, one lovely afternoon in May, Blanche came across the object of her quest. She chanced to be standing in a sequestered nook nigh the mere, situated in the depths of the forest of Courtornieu, when she perceived Chupin, tramping sullenly along with his gun in his hand, and glancing suspiciously on either side. Not that he feared either game-keeper or judicial proceedings, but go wherever he would, still and ever he fancied he could see Balstain the Piedmontese innkeeper, walking in his shadow and brandishing the terrible knife, which, by St. Jean-de-Coche, he had consecrated to his vengeance. Seeing Blanche in turn, the old rascal would have fled into the cover, but before he could do so she had called to him: “Eh, Father Chupin!”

He hesitated for a moment, then paused, dropped his gun, and waited.

Aunt Medea was pale with fright. “Blessed Jesus!” she murmured, pressing her niece’s arm; “what are you calling that terrible man for?”

“I want to speak to him.”

“What Blanche, do you dare----”

“I must!”

“No, I can’t allow it. I must not----”

“There, that’s enough!” said Blanche, with one of those imperious glances that deprive a dependent of all strength and courage; “quite enough.” Then, in gentler tones: “I _must_ talk with this man,” she added. “And you, Aunt Medea, must remain some little distance off. Keep a close watch on every side, and if you see any one approaching, call me at once.”

Aunt Medea, submissive as was her wont, immediately obeyed; and Blanche walked straight towards the old poacher. “Well, my good Father Chupin, and what sort of sport have you had to-day?” she began, directly she was a few steps from him.

“What do you want with me?” growled Chupin; “for you do want something, or you wouldn’t trouble yourself about a man like me.”

The old ruffian’s manner was so surly and aggressive that Blanche needed all her strength of mind to carry out her purpose. “Yes, it is true that I have a favour to ask you,” she replied, in a resolute tone.

“Ah, ha! I supposed so.”

“A mere trifle which will cost you no trouble, and for which you shall be well paid.” She said this so carelessly that an ordinary person would have supposed she was really asking for some unimportant service; but cleverly as she played her part, Chupin was not deceived.

“No one asks trifling services of a man like me,” he said coarsely. “Since I served the good cause, at the peril of my life, people seem to suppose they’ve a right to come to me with money in their hands whenever they want any dirty work done. It’s true that I was well paid for that other job; but I would like to melt all the gold and pour it down the throats of those who gave it to me. Ah! I know now what it costs the poor to listen to the words of the great! Go your way; and if you have any wickedness in your head, do it yourself!”

He shouldered his gun and was moving off, when Blanche coldly observed: “It was because I knew of your wrongs that I stopped you; I thought you would be glad to serve me, because I hate the Sairmeuses like you do.”

These words excited the old poacher’s interest, and he paused. “I know very well that you hate the Sairmeuses now--but--”

“But what?”

“Why, in less than a month you will be reconciled. And then that old wretch, Chupin--”

“We shall never be reconciled.”

“Hum!” growled the wily rascal, after deliberating awhile. “And if I did assist you, what compensation will you give me?”

“I will give you whatever you wish for--money, land, a house--”

“Many thanks. I want something quite different.”

“What do you want then? Tell me.”

Chupin reflected for a moment, and then replied: “This is what I want. I have a good many enemies, and I don’t even feel safe in my own house. My sons abuse me when I’ve been drinking, and my wife is quite capable of poisoning my wine. I tremble for my life and for my money. I can’t endure such an existence much longer. Promise me an asylum at the Chateau de Courtornieu and I’m yours. I shall be safe in your house. But let it be understood I won’t be ill-treated by the servants like I was at Sairmeuse.”

“Oh, I can promise you all that.”

“Swear it then by your hope of heaven.”

“I swear it.”

There was such evident sincerity in her accent that Chupin felt re-assured. He leant towards her, and in a low voice, remarked: “Now tell me your business.” His small grey eyes glittered in a threatening fashion; his thin lips were drawn tightly over his sharp teeth; he evidently expected some proposition of murder, and was ready to accomplish it.

His attitude evinced his feelings so plainly that Blanche shuddered. “Really, what I want of you is almost nothing,” she replied. “I only want you to watch the Marquis de Sairmeuse.”

“Your husband?”