CHAPTER XIII.

THE WHITE POWDER.

While these little matters were occurring at his Danish majesty's castle of Fredricksort, Ernestine was still at the sequestered cottage in the wood; the old hag was yet skinning her squirrels in a corner of the chimney; the oil lamp was yet shedding its sickly gleam to the pale face of Ernestine, on the coal black hair, the rattlesnake eyes, and ferocious mouth of Bandolo, who had imbibed many a draught of schnaps, slightly tinctured with water. He was still awed by the presence of her he had dared to decoy by an artful story; thus his love affair had not made much progress.

Had Gabrielle fallen into the hands of Bandolo, she had been inevitably lost; for the extreme buoyancy and girlishness of her nature would have been totally overcome by terror. But Ernestine, with all her sweetness, retained that majestic calmness and admirable self-possession which dazzled and confounded this man of a hundred crimes. She awed him by her placid dignity--even as still waters awe us by their depth, more than the turbulent and shallow. Yet in her inmost heart Ernestine deplored with voiceless bitterness her irreparable folly, in committing herself without my advice to the guidance of a perfect stranger; though that stranger had presented himself at Falster as the count's accredited messenger. But now the danger which she was certain must beset Gabrielle, gave her a desperate courage.

"Heaven--blessed heaven!" said she, clasping her hands and raising her fine eyes; "hast thou abandoned me!"

"Por el Santo nombre de Dios!" cried the Spaniard, with a hoarse laugh; "what the d--l! do you think that Heaven cares about all your little piques and perversities. Heaven would indeed have plenty to do if it attended to all the nonsense of women. Have done with ha's and oh's, and listen to me. I remember a time when I was ass enough to starve and scourge myself in the forty days of Lent, to make up for my enormities during the Neapolitan carnival--but, faith! I am wiser now, and St. Mary----"

"Wretch, name her not!"

"Well, if I am such a rascal that your precious saints will not interest themselves in my affairs, I must just have recourse to the schnaps in the first place, and the devil in the second--ha! ha! What a hen-hearted fellow I am to sit here all night without having one kiss from you! Trumpery! I am turning a cowardly blunderbuss, like Bernhard; and now, when I think of it, I wonder why that schwindler tarries with my thousand ducats. Lady," continued this ogre, with a ghastly leer; "I am rich. In this mail are bills on the Imperial treasury, and gold to the value of a hundred thousand dollars--the fruits of many years of valour and industry."

"Murder and espionage."

"Call it what you will--call it what you will! With that sum I can purchase a county, either in Germany or Naples, and thou shalt share that county with me."

Ernestine almost uttered a scornful laugh.

"'Twill be a glorious revenge upon that haughty noble, who, when caprioling through the streets of Vienna with all his waving feathers and plates of polished steel, rode over me near the palace gate, and passed on without pity, because I was Bandolo--'twill be a glorious vengeance, I say, when this man, Rupert Count of Carlstein, Lord of Giezar and Kœningratz, has to greet me as his son-in-law--ha! ha!" He attempted to take in his the hand of Ernestine.

"For the sake of Heaven, do not sully me by your touch!"

"Beware, lest by haughty words and scornful glances you turn my softness to anger; my love to hatred; my persuasions to that violence which I may put in force when I choose; and thus, in grim earnest, sully the illustrious blood of Carlstein--ha! ha! Sully, I think, was the term you used, lady--as if the blood in one body was better, or purer, or more divine, than the blood in another."

Full of scorn and fear, Ernestine gazed at him as she would have gazed at a serpent. Anger and horror alternately rendered her silent and motionless. At times she could scarcely believe that all she saw and heard was real--that she was so completely in the power of this man, the touch of whose hand--that hand so often dipped in human blood--struck a chill through her. Was she really awake? Was it not all a hideous dream, from which she would awake to find herself by her sister's side, in their little bed-chamber at Nyekiöbing?

"Mercy on me!" she thought wildly; "to what a fate am I exposed! Here, without a hope, without a chance of escape, but by death--and not even by that, for I am without a poniard. Oh, wretch! would that I could find one, either for myself or for thee!"

Bandolo, who sat on the top of his precious mail, which he had placed upon a stool, swung his legs to and fro, laughed boisterously as the schnaps mounted to his brain; for she had uttered the last wish aloud.

"Bandolo--man--monster! what wrong have I ever done you, that you should persecute me thus?"

"You have not done any thing, but your father has. He rode me down in the streets of Vienna; and the man you love has, for he defeated and disgraced me at Glückstadt. He has stabbed and discovered me in various disguises; and, by robbing him of you, I rob him of that which he prizes more than his miserable life, which I could have taken by a pistol-shot at any time--ha! ha! So do not talk in that way again, my bride, or, zounds! I will come and kiss you."

Terrified by this threat, Ernestine remained silent for a time.

He uttered a succession of savage chuckles; then whistled a bolero, and resumed his swinging to and fro on the stool and his beloved portmanteau, eyeing his prisoner all the time as a cat does a mouse.

"Bandolo--Herr or Señor--for I know not by which to address you," said Ernestine; "you are said to love gold as a fish loves water, or flowers the sun."

"As flowers love water, or a fish the sun--what a fine simile! ha! ha!" said Bandolo, who was rapidly becoming tipsy; "Well--what if I do?"

"Conduct me to the nearest Austrian garrison, and I will see that you are paid a thousand ducats in gold."

"Bah!" said he; "I have just sold your sister for that very sum."

"My sister--my sister!" reiterated Ernestine in a breathless voice--"to whom?"

"The virtuous and honourable Count of Merodé."

At this cruel reply, the heart of Ernestine ceased to beat, and a palsy seemed to shake her beautiful form. A glazed expression stole over the ferocious eyes of Bandolo; they seemed to roll on vacancy, and the terror of Ernestine was redoubled.

"Gold--yes, gold!" he muttered; "when gold is spread before me, when a poniard is in my hand, I am mad! I am no longer myself! Something like a red curtain descends between me and the sun, bathing in redness all before my eyes. A hand passes over my heart--there is a whisper in my ears; it is destroy--_destroy and be rich_! Then I can see nothing before me, above me, and below me, but blood--red blood in pouring torrents, but spotted with sparkling stars; these stars are coins--they are gold--yellow gold--they are the price of my soul! Every deed I have done--every deed I am yet to do--even the murder of thee, perhaps, all beautiful as thou art--was written down ages before I was born, and they were all foretold to me by an old gitana of Arragon. Oh, yes! I remember that night in the wood near Almudevar. The wind was still, and the red sheet lightning was reddening the midnight sky, behind Huesca and the spire of San Lorenzo. We sat near the margin of the Gallego, and a thousand cork-trees hung their branches over its stupendous torrent, the roar of which shook the earth beneath our feet, yet not even the smallest of their leaves was stirring. I remember yet the solemn stillness of the wood, and roaring fury of the torrent, but I heard only the voice of the old gitana; and she foretold how, wading through a sea of crime, I should wed the daughter of a valiant noble, and die rich, powerful, feared, and respected; and the hour is at hand for accomplishing the first part of my destiny--for turning the first leaf in the great book of my fate. I am not drunk--Maldicion de Dios--no!" he continued, rolling his head from side to side; "do I speak like a man who is so?"

Ernestine turned anxiously and hopelessly to the old woman; but Dame Krümpel had fallen asleep by the dying embers, and lay half reclined against the fireplace, with a knife in one hand, and a half-skinned squirrel in the other; and while Bandolo had run on thus concerning the gitana, her prophecy and his fate, a sickness, the very sickness of intense fear, came over Ernestine. She bent her head upon her hand, but still continued to watch him between her white fingers. Suddenly the wretched cottage seemed to swim around her; and she felt herself sinking.

"Blessed Heaven!" she prayed, "preserve me from the deadly faintness that is coming over me!"

"The bottle of kirschwasser is rather nearer you than heaven," said Bandolo, pouring some of the cherry-wine into the two tin cups which were on the table. Ernestine, who thought it might revive and strengthen her for what she might have yet to encounter, made no objection; but while watching Bandolo between the pretty fingers which shaded her eyes, she perceived him hastily shake a little _white powder_ into one of the cups! Instead of increasing her terror, this gave her a new and sudden courage, and she immediately conceived a bold and decisive project, for my brave Ernestine had a man's head with all her woman's heart.

She cared not whether the drugged cup contained merely a narcotic or a deadlier draught. In either case she knew that it was meant for her, with some terrible ulterior object--and that the cup was full of peril; hence she resolved that it should be drunk by Bandolo himself.

"Drink with me," said he; "you cannot refuse me that. To our better acquaintance, lady sweetheart--and to your better humour--ha! ha!"

Gathering all her energies, she uttered a shrill cry of alarm, and exclaimed--

"See--see--what is that at the window?"

Dame Krümpel sprang to her slipshod feet. Bandolo grasped a pistol, rushed to the lattice, and, pressing his nose against it, peered out into the darkness of the forest, and at that instant Ernestine set down her drugged cup of the kirschwasser, and took up _his_.

"No one is there--por el nombre de Dios, _if there was_!" growled Bandolo grinding his teeth as he uncocked his pistol, and for a moment became almost sobered; while the beldam in the corner snorted herself asleep again. "Hoity, toity, my poor little Tit--'tis only your perverse fancy! Come, drink with me; this cup of cherry-water will brace your nerves, and set all right in heart and head--it will, by the henckers! (I am half German, you see--even as you are half Spaniard;) ha! ha! Come, my bride--let us clink our cans and be merry."

With a pale and trembling hand Ernestine raised the cup in the old German fashion, clinked it side by side, above and below, with the drugged cup of the subtle but unconscious bravo, and then drained its contents. He gave her a long stare of triumph and derision; then burst into a loud laugh, and drank off his wine at one gulp.

He then set down the cup, and while continuing to look at Ernestine with a leering expression, broke into a German drinking song which he had heard among Tilly's Reitres, and, mingling with it scraps of a Spanish gipsy ballad, rolled his head from side to side with a wild expression of face, that increased every moment.

The song died away in quavering murmurs on his lips; once or twice he raised his hands, but they fell heavily by his side.

Then it seemed suddenly to flash upon his mind, the faculties of which were fast obscuring, that he had drunk of the wrong cup; and the smile of bitter triumph that curled the beautiful lip of Ernestine, and the wonder that sparkled in her haughty eyes, convinced him that it was so!

"Ah, traitress--that cry--you have outwitted me! I thought you had swallowed this drag--it now spreads a drowsy numbness over every limb. Traitress--ass that I am--I have fallen into my own trap--I have drugged myself--she will escape! Maldicion--de--de--Maldetto! By the henckers; I will put a ball through you--I will--I will!----"

Erecting himself on his feet, where he swayed to and fro like a figure on a pivot, he endeavoured to grasp Ernestine; but she started back.

At that moment his aspect was frightful.

Inflamed by passion and desire, ferocity and revenge, his features were alternately brightened by a wild leer, or contracted and savage. His eyes were glittering with that white ghastly glare which some Spanish eyes can alone assume; and, balancing himself on each leg alternately, he approached the bold but startled girl, while his hands wandered nervously among the weapons in his belt. Suddenly he fell prostrate, speechless, and almost unable to move; but his glaring eyes--still fixed on Ernestine--shewed that, though the drugged kirschwasser had fettered every limb, his senses had not yet left him.

"And this would have been my situation!" thought Ernestine, with a heart full of horror.

Stooping down, she deliberately, but not without a shudder, drew from his belt four pistols and threw away the priming, and took possession of his poniard, which she placed in her girdle--uttering a joyful laugh, for she knew that _her_ moment for triumph had come. If Bandolo's eyes could have slain, at that crisis their glare would have immolated her. She was about to rush from the cottage when another thought occurred to her; and grasping the heavy portmanteau, which contained all Bandolo's vast amount of treasury bills and gold--that gold which the perpetration of a hundred complicated crimes had amassed and enabled him to hoard up, like the very blood of his heart--she shook it tauntingly before his fixed and frenzied eyes, and, rejoicing that she could thus rob the robber, issued from the cottage with the intention of throwing the ponderous mail into the first deep well she came to, that the price of blood might be lost to men for ever.

As she disappeared, a cry almost left the paralysed tongue of Bandolo, on seeing all the fruit of his crimes and avarice vanishing into smoke, together with the prophecy of the gitana and his hopes of a count's coronet; and as he sank lower and lower upon the clay floor, and the power of a narcotic that was to last for six-and-thirty hours spread over him, the tramp of a horse's hoofs receding into the distant paths of the wood, were the last sounds he heard; and they informed him, that his beautiful prisoner and his beloved gold were gone together.