Philip was so angry with Berenger, so excited, and so determined to show that nothing ailed him, that for a short time he was roused, and seemed to be recovering; but in a few days he flagged again, only, if possible with more gruffness, moodiness, and pertinacity in not allowing that anything was amiss. It was the bitterest drop of all in Berenger’s cup, when in the end of January he looked back at what Philip had been only a month before, and saw how he had wasted away and lost strength; the impulse rather to ruin himself that destroy his brother came with such force that he could scarcely escape it by his ever-recurring cry for help to withstand it. And then Diane, in her splendid beauty and withchery, would rise before him, so that he knew how a relaxation of the lengthened weary effort would make his whole self break its bonds and go out to her. Dreams of felicity and liberty, and not with Eustacie, would even come over him, and he would awaken to disappointment before he came to a sense of relief and thankfulness that he was still his own. The dislike, distaste, and dread that came so easily in his time of pain and weakness were less easy to maintain in his full health and forced inactivity. Occupation of mind and hope seemed the only chance of enabling either of the two to weather this most dreary desert period; and Berenger, setting his thoughts resolutely to consider what would be the best means of rousing Philip, decided at length that any endeavour to escape, however arduous and desperate, would be better than his present apathetic languor, even if it led to nothing. After the first examination of their prison, Berenger had had no thought of escape; he was then still weak and unenterprising. He had for many months lived in hopes of interference from home; and, besides, the likelihood that so English a party as his own would be quickly pursued and recaptured, where they did not know their road and had no passports, had deterred him lest should fall into still straiter imprisonment. But he had since gained, in the course of his rides, and by observation from the top of the tower, a much fuller knowledge of the country. He knew the way to the grange du Temple, and to the chief towns in the neighbourhood. Philip and Humfrey had both lost something of their intensely national look and speech, and, moreover, was having broken out again, there was hope of falling in with Huguenot partisans even nearer that at La Rochelle. But whether successful or not, some enterprise was absolutely needed to save Philip from his despondent apathy; and Berenger, who in these eighteen months had grown into the strength and vigour of manhood, felt as if he had force and power for almost any effort save this hopeless waiting.
He held council with Humfrey, who suggested that it might be well to examine the vaults below the keep. He had a few days before, while going after some of the firewood stored below the ground-floor chamber, observed a door, locked, but with such rusty iron hinges that they might possibly yield to vigorous efforts with a stone; and who could tell where the underground passages might come out?
Berenger eagerly seized the idea. Philip’s mood of contradiction prompted him to pronounce it useless folly, and he vouchsafed no interest in the arrangements for securing light, by selecting all the bits of firewood fittest for torches, and saving all the oil possible from the two lamps they were allowed. The chief difficulty was that Guibert was not trusted, so that all had to be done out of his sight; and on the first day Berenger was obliged to make the exploration alone, since Humfrey was forced to engross Guibert in some occupation out of sight, and Philip had refused to have anything to do with it, or be like a rat routing in the corners of his trap.
However, Berenger had only just ascertained that the ironwork was so entirely rusted away as to offer no impediment, when Philip came languidly roaming into the cellar, saying, ‘Here! I’ll hold the torch! You’ll be losing yourself in this wolf’s mouth of a place if you go alone.’
The investigation justified Philip’s predictions of its uselessness. Nothing was detected but rats, and vaults, and cobwebs; it was cold, earthy, and damp; and when they thought they must have penetrated far beyond the precincts of the keep, they heard Humfrey’s voice close to them, warning them that it was nearly dinner-time.
The next day brought them a more promising discovery, namely of a long straight passage, with a gleam of light at the end of it; and this for the first time excited Philip’s interest or curiosity. He would have hastened along it at once, but for the warning summons from Humfrey; and in the excitement of even this grain of interest, he ate more heartily at supper than he had done for weeks, and was afterwards more eager to prove to Berenger that night was the best time to pursue their researches.
And Berenger, when convinced that Guibert was sound asleep, thought so too, and accompanied by Humfrey, they descended into the passage. The light, of course, was no longer visible, but the form of the crypt, through which they now passed, was less antique than that under the keep, and it was plain they were beneath a later portion of the Castle. The gallery concluded in a wall, with a small barred, unglazed window, perfectly dark, so that Berenger, who alone could reach to the bottom of it, could not uses where it looked out.
‘We must return by daylight; then, maybe, we may judge,’ sighed Philip.
‘Hark!’ exclaimed Berenger.
‘Rats,’ said Philip.
‘No—listen—a voice! Take care!’ he added, in a lower tone, ‘we may be close on some of the servants.’
But, much nearer than he expected, a voice on his right hand demanded, ‘Does any good Christian hear me?’
‘Who is there?’ exclaimed Philip.
‘Ah! good sir, do I hear the voice of a companion in misery? Or, if you be free, would you but send tidings to my poor father?’
‘It is a Norman accent!’ cried Berenger. ‘Ah! ah! can it be poor Landry Osbert?’
‘I am—I am that wretch. Oh, would that M. le Baron could know!’
‘My dear, faithful foster-brother! They deceived me,’ cried Berenger, in great agitation, as an absolute howl came from the other side of the wall: ‘M. le Baron come to this! Woe worth the day!’ and Berenger with difficulty mitigated his affectionate servant’s lamentations enough to learn from him how he had been seized almost at the gates of Bellaise, closely interrogated, deprived of the letter to Madame la Baronne, and thrown into this dungeon. The Chevalier. Not an unmerciful man, according to the time, had probably meant to release him as soon as the marriage between his son and niece should have rendered it superfluous to detain this witness to Berenger’s existence. There, then, the poor fellow had lain for three years, and his work during this weary time had been the scraping with a potsherd at the stone of his wall, and his pertinacious perseverance had succeeded in forming a hole just large enough to enable him to see the light of the torch carried by the gentlemen. On his side, he said, there was nothing but a strong iron door, and a heavily-barred window, looking, like that in the passage, into the fosse within the walled garden; but, on the other hand, if he could enlarge his hole sufficiently to creep through it, he could escape with them in case of their finding a subterranean outlet. The opening within his cell was, of course, much larger than the very small space he had made by loosening a stone towards the passage, but he was obliged always to build up each side of his burrow at the hours of his jailer’s visit, lest his work should be detected, and to stamp the rubbish into his floor. But while they talked, Humfrey and Philip, with their knives, scraped so diligently that two more stones could be displaced; and, looking down the widening hole through the prodigious mass of wall, they could see a ghastly, ragged, long-bearded scarecrow, with an almost piteous expression of joy on his face, at once again seeing familiar faces. And when, at his earnest entreaty, Berenger stood so as to allow his countenance to be as visible as the torch could make it through the ‘wall’s-hole,’ the vault echoed with the poor fellow’s delighted cry. ‘I am happy! M. le Baron is himself again. The assassin’s cruel work is gone! Ah! thanks to the saints! Blessed be St. Lucie, it was not in vain that I entreated her!’
The torches were, however, waxing so low that the sight could not long be afforded poor Osbert; and, with a promise to return to him next day, the party returned to the upper air, where they warmed themselves over the fire, and held council over measures for the present relief of the captive. Berenger grieved that he had given him up so entirely for lost as to have made no exertions on his behalf, and declared his resolution of entreating that he might be allowed to enjoy comparative comfort with them in the keep. It was a risk, but the Chevalier might fairly suppose that the knowledge of Osbert’s situation had oozed out through the servants, and gratitude and humanity alike impelled Berenger to run some risk for his foster-brother’s sake. He was greatly touched at the poor fellow’s devotion, and somewhat amused, though with an almost tearful smile at the joy with which he had proclaimed—what Berenger was quite unaware of, since the keep furnished no mirrors—the disappearance of his scars. ‘’Tis even so,’ said Philip, ‘though I never heeded it. You are as white from crown to beard as one of the statues at Paris; but the great red gash is a mere seam, save when yon old Satan angers you, and then it blushes for all the rest of your face.’
‘And the cheek-wound is hidden, I suppose,’ said Berenger, feeling under the long fair moustache and the beard, which was developing into respectable proportions.
‘Hidden? ay, entirely. No one would think your bald crown had only twenty-one years over it; but you are a personable fellow still, quite enough to please Daphne,’ said Philip.
‘Pshaw!’ replied Berenger, pleased nevertheless to hear the shadow of a jest again from Philip.
It was quite true. These months of quiescence—enforced though they were—had given his health and constitution time to rally after the terrible shock they had sustained. The severe bleedings had, indeed, rendered his complexion perfectly colourless; but there was something in this, as well as in the height which the loss of hair gave his brow, which, added to the depth and loftiness of countenance that this long period of patience and resolution had impressed on his naturally fine features, without taking away that open candour that had first attracted Diane when he was a rosy lad. His frame had strengthened at the same time, and assumed the proportions of manhood; so that, instead of being the overgrown maypole that Narcisse used to sneer at, he was now broad-shouldered and robust, exceedingly powerful, and so well made that his height, upwards of six feet, was scarcely observed, except by comparison with the rest of the world.
And his character had not stood still. He had first come to Paris a good, honest, docile, though high-spirited boy: and though manly affections, cares, and sorrows had been thrust on him, he had met them like the boy that he was, hardly conscious how deep they went. Then had come the long dream of physical suffering, with only one thought pertinaciously held throughout—that of constancy to his lost wife; and from this he had only thoroughly wakened in his captivity, the resolution still holding fast, but with more of reflection and principle, less of mere instinct, than when his powers were lost or distracted in the effort of constant endurance of pain and weakness. The charge of Philip, the endeavour both of educating him and keeping up his spirits, as well as the controversy with Pere Bonami, had been no insignificant parts of the discipline of these months; and, little as the Chevalier had intended it, he had trained his young kinsman into a far more substantial and perilous adversary, both in body and mind, than when he had caged him in his castle of the Blackbird’s Nest.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE ENEMY IN PRESENCE
Then came and looked him in the face,
An angel beautiful and bright,
And then he knew it was a fiend,
That miserable knight.
—COLERIDGE
‘Father, dear father, what is it? What makes you look so ill, so haggard?’ cried Diane de Selinville, when summoned the next morning to meet her father in the parlour of the convent.
‘Ah, child! see here. Your brother will have us make an end of it. He has found her.’
‘Eustacie! Ah, and where?’
‘That he will not say, but see here. This is all billet tells me: “The hare who has doubled so long is traced to her form. My dogs are on her, and in a week’s time she will be ours. I request you, sir, to send me a good purse of crowns to reward my huntsmen; and in the meantime—one way or the other—that pet of my sister’s must be disposed of. Kept too long, these beasts always become savage. Either let him be presented to the royal menagerie, or there is a still surer way.”’
‘And that is all he says!’ exclaimed Diane.
‘All! He was always cautions. He mentions no names. And now, child, what is to be done? To give him up to the King is, at the best, life-long imprisonment, yet, if he were still here when my son returns—Alas! alas! child, I have been ruined body and soul between you! How could you make me send after and imprison him? It was a mere assassination!’ and the old man beat his head with grief and perplexity.
‘Father!’ cried Diane, tearfully, ‘I cannot see you thus. We meant it for the best. We shall yet save him.’
‘Save him! Ah, daughter, I tossed all night long thinking how to save him, so strong, so noble, so firm, so patient, so good even to the old man who has destroyed his hope—his life! Ah! I have thought till my brain whirls.’
‘Poor father! I knew you would love him,’ said Diane, tenderly. ‘Ah! we will save him yet. He shall be the best of sons to you. Look, it is only to tell him that she whom he calls his wife is already in my brother’s hands, wedded to him.’
‘Daughter,’—and he pushed back his gray hair with a weary distressed gesture,—‘I am tired of wiles; I am old; I can carry them out no longer.’
‘But this is very simple; it may already be true—at least it will soon be true. Only tell him that she is my brother’s wife. Then will his generosity awaken, then will he see that to persist in the validity of his marriage would be misery, dishonour to her, then–’
‘Child, you know not how hard he is in his sense of right. Even for his brother’s sake he would not give way an inch, and the boy was as obstinate as he!’
‘Ah! but this comes nearer. He will be stung; his generosity will be piqued. He will see that the kindest thing he can do will be to nullify his claim, and the child–’
The Chevalier groaned, struck his brow with his fist, and muttered, ‘That will concern no one—that has been provided for. Ah! ah! children, if I lose my own soul for you, you–’
‘Father, my sweet father, say not these cruel things. Did not the Queen’s confessor tell us that all means were lawful that brought a soul to the Church? and here are two.’
‘Two! Why, the youth’s heresy is part of his point of honour. Child, child, the two will be murdered in my very house, and the guilt will be on my soul.’
‘No, father! We will—we will save him. See, only tell him this.’
‘This—what? My brain is confused. I have thought long—long.’
‘Only this, father, dear father. You shall not be tormented any more, if only you will tell him that my brother has made Eustacie his wife, then will I do all the rest.’
Diane coaxed, soothed, and encouraged her father by her caresses, till he mounted his mule to return to the castle at dinner-time, and she promised to come early in the afternoon to follow up the stroke he was to give. She had never seen him falter before,—he had followed out his policy with a clear head and unsparing hand,—but now that Berenger’s character was better known to him, and the crisis long delayed had come so suddenly before his eyes, his whole powers seemed to reel under the alternative.
The dinner-bell clanged as he arrived at the castle, and the prisoners were marched into the hall, both intent upon making their request on Osbert’s behalf, and therefore as impatient for the conclusion of the meal, and the absence of the servants, as was their host. His hands trembled so much that Berenger was obliged to carve for him; he made the merest feint of eating; and now and then raised his hand to his head as if to bring back scattered ideas.
The last servant quitted the room, when Berenger perceived that the old man was hardly in a state to attend to his request, and yet the miserable frost-bitten state of poor Landry seemed to compel him to speak.
‘Sir,’ he began, ‘you could do me a great kindness.’
The Chevalier looked up at him with glassy eyes.
‘My son,’ he said, with an effort, ‘I also had something to say. Ah! let me think. I have had enough. Call my daughter,’ he added, feeling helplessly with his hands, so that Berenger started up in alarm, and received him in his arms just in time to prevent his sinking to the floor senseless.
‘It is a stroke,’ exclaimed Berenger. ‘Call, Phil! Send the gendarmes.’
The gendarmes might be used to the sight of death of their own causing, but they had a horror of that which came by Nature’s hand. The purple face and loud gasps of the stricken man terrified them out of their senses. ‘C’est un coup,’’ was the cry, and they went clattering off to the servants. These, all men but one old crone, came in a mass to the door, looked in, beheld their master rigid and prostrate on the floor, supported by the prisoner, and with fresh shrieks about ‘Mesdames! a priest! a doctor!’ away they rushed. The two brothers were not in much less consternation, only they retained their senses. Berenger loosened the ruff and doublet, and bade Philip practice that art of letting blood which he had learnt for his benefit. When Madame de Selinville and her aunt, with their escort, having been met half-way from Bellaise, arrived sooner than could have been expected, they found every door open from hall to entrance gateway, not a person keeping watch, and the old man lying deathlike upon cushions in the hall, Philip bandaging his arm, and Berenger rubbing his temples with wine and the hottest spices on the table. ‘He is better—he is alive,’ said Berenger, as they entered; and as both ladies would have fallen on him with shrieks and sobs, he bade them listen, assured them that the only chance of life was in immediate care, and entreated that bedding might be brought down, and strong essences fetched to apply to the nose and temples. They obeyed, and the sister infirmarer had arrived from the convent, he had opened his eyes, and, as he saw Berenger, tried to murmur something that sounded like ‘Mon fils.‘
‘He lives!—he speaks!—he can receive the sacraments!’ was the immediate exclamation; and as preparations began to be made, the brothers saw that their presence was no longer needed, and returned to their own tower.
‘So, sir,’ said the gendarme sergeant, as they walked down the passage, ‘you did not seize the moment for escape.’
‘I never thought of it,’ said Berenger.
‘I hope, sir, you will not be the worse for it,’ said the sergeant. ‘An honourable gentleman you have ever proved yourself to me, and I will bear testimony that you did the poor old gentleman no hurt; but nobles will have it their own way, and pay little heed to a poor soldier.’
‘What do you mean, friend?’
‘Why, you see, sir, it is unlucky that you two happened to be alone with M. le Chevalier. No one can tell what may be said when they seek an occasion against a person.’
To the brothers, however, this suggestion sounded so horrible and unnatural, that they threw it from them. They applied themselves at every moment possible to enlarging Osbert’ hole, and seeking an outlet from the dungeon; but this they had not been able to discover, and it was necessary to be constantly on their guard in visiting the vaults, lest their absence from their apartment should be detected. They believed that if Narcisse arrived at the castle, they should find in him a far less gentle jailer than the poor old man, for whose state their kindly young hearts could not but grieve.
They heard that he had recovered consciousness enough to have made a sort of confession; and Pere Bonami brought them his formal request, as a dying man, for their pardon for all the injuries he had done them; but his speech was too much affected for any specification of what these were. The first thing they heard in early morning was that, in the course of the night, he had breathed his last; and all day the bells of all the churches round were answering one another with the slow, swinging, melancholy notes of the knell.
In the early twilight, Pere Bonami brought a message that Madame de Selinville requested M. le Baron to come and speak with her, and he was accordingly conducted, with the gendarme behind him, to a small chamber opening into the hall—the same where the incantations of the Italian pedlar had been played off before Philip and Diane. The gendarme remained outside the door by which they entered the little dark room, only lighted by one little lamp.
‘Here, daughter,’ said the priest, ‘is your cousin. He can answer the question you have so much at heart;’ and with these words Pere Bonami passed beneath the black curtain that covered the entrance into the hall, admitting as he raised it for a moment a floor of pure light from the wax tapers, and allowing the cadence of the chanting of the priests to fall on the ear. At first Berenger was scarcely able to discern the pale face that looked as if tears were all dried up, and even before his eyes had clearly perceived her in the gloom, she was standing before him with clasped hands, demanding, in a hoarse, breathless whisper, ‘Had he said anything to you?’
‘Anything? No, cousin,’ said Berenger, in a kind tone. ‘He had seemed suffering and oppressed all dinner-time, and when the servants left us, he murmured a few confused words, then sank.’
‘Ah, ah, he spoke it not! Thank Heaven! Ah! it is a load gone. Then neither will I speak it,’ sighed Diane, half aloud. ‘Ah! cousin, he loved you.’
‘He often was kind to us,’ said Berenger, impelled to speak as tenderly as he could of the enemy, who had certainly tortured him, but as if he loved him.
‘He bade us save you,’ said Diane, her eyes shining with strange wild light in the gloom. ‘He laid it on my aunt and me to save you; you must let us. It must be done before my brother comes,’ she added, in hurried accents. ‘The messengers are gone; he may be here any moment. He must find you in the chapel—as—as my betrothed!’
‘And you sent for me here to tempt me—close to such a chamber as that?’ demanded Berenger, his gentleness becoming sternness, as much with his own worse self as with her.
‘Listen. Ah! it is the only way. Listen, cousin. Do you know what killed my father? It was my brother’s letter saying things must be brought to an end: either you must be given up to the King, or worse—worse. And now, without him to stand between you and my brother, you are lost. Oh! take pity on his poor soul that has left his body, and bring not you blood on his head.’
‘Nay,’ said Berenger, ‘if he repented, the after consequences to me will have no effect on him now.’
‘Have pity then on yourself—on your brother.’
‘I have,’ said Berenger. ‘He had rather die with me than see me a traitor.’
‘And least of all,’ she exclaimed, with choking grief, ‘have you compassion on me!—on me who have lost the only one who felt for me—on me who have loved you with every fibre of my heart—on me who have lived on the music of your hardest, coldest word—on me who would lay my life, my honour, in the dust for one grateful glance from you—and whom you condemn to the anguish of—your death! Aye, and for what? For the mere shadow of a little girl, who had no force to love you, or whom you know nothing—nothing! Oh! are you a crystal rock or are you a man? See, I kneel to you to save yourself and me.’
There were hot tears dropping from Berenger’s eyes as he caught Diane’s hand, and held it forcibly to prevent her thus abasing herself. Her wild words and gestures thrilled him in every pulse and wrung his heart, and it was with a stifled, agitated voice that he said—
‘God help you and me both, Diane! To do what you ask would—would be no saving of either. Nay, if you will kneel,’ as she struggled with him, ‘let it be to Him who alone can bring us through;’ and releasing her hand, he dropped on his knees by her side, and covered his face with his hands, in an earnest supplication that the spirit of resistance which he almost felt slipping from him might be renewed. The action hushed and silenced her, and as he rose he spoke no other word, but silently drew back so much of the curtain that he could see into the hall, where the dead man still lay uncoffined upon the bed where his own hands had laid him, and the low, sweet requiem of kneeling priests floated round him. Rest, rest, and calm they breathed into one sorely tried living soul, and the perturbed heart was quelled by the sense how short the passage was to the world where captivity and longing would be ended. He beckoned to Pere Bonami to return to Diane, and then, protected by his presence from any further demonstrations, kissed her hand and left her.
He told Philip as little as possible of this interview, but his brother remarked how much time he spent over the Psalms that evening.
The next day the brothers saw from their upper winder the arrival of Narcisse, or, as he had called himself for the last three years, the Marquis de Nid-de-Merle, with many attendant gentlemen, and a band of fifty or sixty gendarmes. The court was filled with their horses, and rang with their calls for refreshment. And the captives judged it wise to remain in their upper room incase they should be called for.
They were proved to have been wise in so doing; for about an hour after their arrival there was a great clanging of steel boots, and Narcisse de Ribaumont, followed by a portly, heavily-armed gentleman, wearing a scarf of office, by two of the servants, and by two gendarmes, entered the room. It was the first time the cousins had met since le baiser d’Eutacie had been hissed into Berenger’s ear. Narcisse looked older, sallower, and more worn than at that time; and Philip, seeing his enemy for the first time, contrasted him with the stately presence of Berenger, and felt as if a rat were strangling a noble steed.
Each young man punctiliously removed his hat, and Nid-de-Merle, without deigning further salutation, addressed his companion. ‘Sir, you are here on the part of the King, and to you I deliver up these prisoners, who, having been detained here on a charge of carrying on a treasonable correspondence, and protected by my father out of consideration for the family, have requited his goodness by an attempt to strangle him, which has caused his death.’
Philip actually made a leap of indignation; Berenger, better prepared, said to the officer, ‘Sir, I am happy to be placed in charged of a King’s servant, who will no doubt see justice done, and shelter us from the private malice that could alone devise so monstrous an accusation. We are ready to clear ourselves upon oath over the corpse, and all the household and our own guards can bear witness.’
‘The witnesses are here,’ said Narcisse, pointing to the servants, ill-looking men, who immediately began to depose to having found their master purple-faced and struggling in the hands of the two young men, who had been left alone with him after dinner.
Berenger felt that there was little use in self-defence. It was a fabrication the more easily to secure his cousin’s purpose of destroying him, and his best hope lay in passing into the hands of persons who were less directly interested in his ruin. He drew himself up to his full height, saying, ‘If there be justice in France, our innocence will be proved. I demand, sir, that you examine the abbess, the priest, the steward, the sergeant of gendarmes: they are impartial witnesses, and will serve the King’s justice, if justice be his purpose. Or, if this be but M. de Nid-de-Merle’s way of completing the work he left unfinished four years ago, I am ready. Only let my brother go free. He is heir to nothing here.’
‘Enough, sir. Words against the King’s justice will be reckoned against you,’ said the officer. ‘I shall do myself the honour of attending the funeral the day after to-morrow, and then I shall convey you to Tours, to answer for this deed at your leisure. Monsieur le Marquis, are the prisoners secure here, or would you have them garde a vue.’
‘No need for that,’ said Narcisse, lightly; ‘had there been any exit they would have found it long ago. Your good fellows outside the door keep them safe enough. M. le Baron de Ribaumont, I have the honour to wish you a good morning.’
Berenger returned his bow with one full of defiance, and the door was again locked upon the prisoners; while Philip exclaimed, ‘The cowardly villain, Berry; is it a hanging matter?’
‘Not for noble blood,’ said Berenger. ‘We are more likely to be brought to no trial, but to lie prisoners for life;’ then, as Philip grew white and shivered with a sick horror, he added bravely, ‘But they shall not have us, Philip. We know the vaults well enough to play at hide and seek with them there, and even if we find no egress we may hold out till they think us fled and leave open the doors!’
Philip’s face lighted up again, and they did their best by way of preparation, collecting wood for torches, and putting aside food at their meals. It was a very forlorn hope, but the occupation it caused was effectual in keeping up Philip’s spirits, and saving him from despondency.