CHAPTER L
Martial de Sairmeuse's unexpected visit to the Chateau de Courtornieuhad alarmed Aunt Medea even more than Blanche.
In ten seconds, more ideas passed through her brain than had visited itfor ten years.
She saw the gendarmes at the chateau; she saw her niece arrested,incarcerated in the Montaignac prison, and brought before the Court ofAssizes.
If this were all she had to fear! But suppose she, too, werecompromised, suspected of complicity, dragged before the judge, and evenaccused of being the sole culprit!
Finding the suspense intolerable, she left her room; and, stealing ontiptoe to the great drawing-room, she applied her ear to the door of thelittle blue salon, in which Blanche and Martial were seated.
The conversation which she heard convinced her that her fears weregroundless.
She drew a long breath, as if a mighty burden had been lifted from herbreast. But a new idea, which was to grow, flourish, and bear fruit, hadjust taken root in her brain.
When Martial left the room, Aunt Medea at once opened the communicatingdoor and entered the blue salon, thus avowing that she had been alistener.
Twenty-four hours earlier she would not have dreamed of committing suchan enormity.
"Well, Blanche, we were frightened at nothing," she exclaimed.
Blanche did not reply.
She was deliberating, forcing herself to weigh the probable consequencesof all these events which had succeeded each other with such marvellousrapidity.
"Perhaps the hour of my revenge is almost here," murmured Blanche, as ifcommuning with herself.
"What do you say?" inquired Aunt Medea, with evident curiosity.
"I say, aunt, that in less than a month I shall be Marquise de Sairmeusein reality as well as in name. My husband will return to me, andthen--oh, then!"
"God grant it!" said Aunt Medea, hypocritically.
In her secret heart she had but little faith in this prediction, andwhether it was realized or not mattered little to her.
"Still another proof that your jealousy led you astray; and that--thatwhat you did at the Borderie was unnecessary," she said, in that lowtone that accomplices always use in speaking of their crime.
Such had been the opinion of Blanche; but she now shook her head, andgloomily replied:
"You are wrong; that which took place at the Borderie has restored myhusband to me. I understand it all, now. It is true that Marie-Anne wasnot Martial's mistress, but Martial loved her. He loved her, and therebuffs which he received only increased his passion. It was for hersake that he abandoned me; and never, while she lived, would he havethought of me. His emotion on seeing me was the remnant of the emotionwhich had been awakened by another. His tenderness was only theexpression of his sorrow. Whatever happens, I shall have only herleavings--what she has disdained!" the young marquise added, bitterly;and her eyes flashed, and she stamped her foot in ungovernable anger."And shall I regret what I have done?" she exclaimed; "never! no,never!"
From that moment, she was herself again, brave and determined.
But horrible fears assailed her when the inquest began.
Officials came from Montaignac charged with investigating the affair.They examined a host of witnesses, and there was even talk of sendingto Paris for one of those detectives skilled in unravelling all themysteries of crime.
Aunt Medea was half crazed with terror; and her fear was so apparentthat it caused Blanche great anxiety.
"You will end by betraying us," she remarked, one evening.
"Ah! my terror is beyond my control."
"If that is the case, do not leave your room."
"It would be more prudent, certainly."
"You can say that you are not well; your meals shall be served in yourown apartment."
Aunt Medea's face brightened. In her inmost heart she was enraptured. Tohave her meals served in her own room, in her bed in the morning, andon a little table by the fire in the evening, had long been the ambitionand the dream of the poor dependent. But how to accomplish it! Two orthree times, being a trifle indisposed, she had ventured to ask if herbreakfast might be brought to her room, but her request had been harshlyrefused.
"If Aunt Medea is hungry, she will come down and take her place at thetable as usual," had been the response of Mme. Blanche.
To be treated in this way in a chateau where there were a dozen servantsstanding about idle was hard indeed.
But now----
Every morning, in obedience to a formal order from Blanche, the cookcame up to receive Aunt Medea's commands; she was permitted to dictatethe bill-of-fare each day, and to order the dishes that she preferred.
These new joys awakened many strange thoughts in her mind, anddissipated much of the regret which she had felt for the crime at theBorderie.
The inquest was the subject of all her conversation with her niece. Theyhad all the latest information in regard to the facts developed by theinvestigation through the butler, who took a great interest in suchmatters, and who had won the good-will of the agents from Montaignac, bymaking them familiar with the contents of his wine-cellar.
Through him, Blanche and her aunt learned that suspicion pointed to thedeceased Chupin. Had he not been seen prowling around the Borderie onthe very evening that the crime was committed? The testimony of theyoung peasant who had warned Jean Lacheneur seemed decisive.
The motive was evident; at least, everyone thought so. Twenty personshad heard Chupin declare, with frightful oaths, that he should never betranquil in mind while a Lacheneur was left upon earth.
So that which might have ruined Blanche, saved her; and the death of theold poacher seemed really providential.
Why should she suspect that Chupin had revealed her secret before hisdeath?
When the butler told her that the judges and the police agents hadreturned to Montaignac, she had great difficulty in concealing her joy.
"There is no longer anything to fear," she said to Aunt Medea.
She had, indeed, escaped the justice of man. There remained the justiceof God.
A few weeks before, this thought of "the justice of God" might, perhaps,have brought a smile to the lips of Mme. Blanche.
She then regarded it as an imaginary evil, designed to hold timorousspirits in check.
On the morning that followed her crime, she almost shrugged hershoulders at the thought of Marie-Anne's dying threats.
She remembered her promise, but she did not intend to fulfil it.
She had considered the matter, and she saw the terrible risk to whichshe exposed herself if she endeavored to find the missing child.
"The father will be sure to discover it," she thought.
But she was to realize the power of her victim's threats that sameevening.
Overcome with fatigue, she retired to her room at an early hour, andinstead of reading, as she was accustomed to do before retiring, sheextinguished her candle as soon as she had undressed, saying:
"I must sleep."
But sleep had fled. Her crime was ever in her thoughts; it rose beforeher in all its horror and atrocity. She knew that she was lying uponher bed, at Courtornieu; and yet it seemed as if she was there inChanlouineau's house, pouring out poison, then watching its effects,concealed in the dressing-room.
She was struggling against these thoughts; she was exerting all herstrength of will to drive away these terrible memories, when she thoughtshe heard the key turn in the lock. She lifted her head from the pillowwith a start.
Then, by the uncertain light of her night-lamp, she thought she saw thedoor open slowly and noiselessly. Marie-Anne entered--gliding in likea phantom. She seated herself in an arm-chair near the bed. Great tearswere rolling down her cheeks, and she looked sadly, yet threateningly,around her.
The murderess hid her face under the bed-covers; and her whole bodywas bathed in an icy perspiration. For her, this was not a mereapparition--it was a frightful reality.
But hers was not a nature to submit unresisting
ly to such an impression.She shook off the stupor that was creeping over her, and tried to reasonwith herself aloud, as if the sound of her voice would reassure her.
"I am dreaming!" she said. "Do the dead return to life? Am I childishenough to be frightened by phantoms born of my own imaginations?"
She said this, but the phantom did not disappear.
She shut her eyes, but still she saw it through her closedeyelids--through the coverings which she had drawn up over her head, shesaw it still.
Not until daybreak did Mme. Blanche fall asleep.
And it was the same the next night, and the night following that, andalways and always; and the terrors of each night were augmented by theterrors of the nights which had preceded it.
During the day, in the bright sunshine, she regained her courage, andbecame sceptical again. Then she railed at herself.
"To be afraid of something that does not exist, is folly!" she said,vehemently. "To-night I will conquer my absurd weakness."
But when evening came all her brave resolution vanished, and the samefear seized her when night appeared with its _cortege_ of spectres.
It is true that Mme. Blanche attributed her tortures at night to thedisquietude she suffered during the day.
For the officials were at Sairmeuse then, and she trembled. A merenothing might divert suspicion from Chupin and direct it toward her.What if some peasant had seen her with Chupin? What if some triflingcircumstance should furnish a clew which would lead straight toCourtornieu?
"When the investigation is over, I shall forget," she thought.
It ended, but she did not forget.
Darwin has said:
"It is when their safety is assured that great criminals really feelremorse."
Mme. Blanche might have vouched for the truth of this assertion, made bythe most profound thinker and closest observer of the age.
And yet, the agony she was enduring did not make her abandon, for asingle moment, the plan she had conceived on the day of Martial's visit.
She played her part so well, that, deeply moved, almost repentant, hereturned five or six times, and at last, one day, he besought her toallow him to remain.
But even the joy of this triumph did not restore her peace of mind.
Between her and her husband rose that dread apparition; and Marie-Anne'sdistorted features were ever before her. She knew only too well thatthis heart-broken man had no love to give her, and that she would neverhave the slightest influence over him. And to crown all, to her alreadyintolerable sufferings was added another, more poignant than all therest.
Speaking one evening of Marie-Anne's death, Martial forgot himself,and spoke of his oath of vengeance. He deeply regretted that Chupin wasdead, he remarked, for he should have experienced an intense delight inmaking the wretch who murdered her _die_ a lingering death in the midstof the most frightful tortures.
He spoke with extreme violence and in a voice vibrant with his stillpowerful passion.
And Blanche, in terror, asked herself what would be her fate if herhusband ever discovered that she was the culprit--and he might discoverit.
She now began to regret that she had not kept the promise she had madeto her victim; and she resolved to commence the search for Marie-Anne'schild.
To do this effectually it was necessary for her to be in a largecity--Paris, for example--where she could procure discreet and skilfulagents.
It was necessary to persuade Martial to remove to the capital. Aided bythe Duc de Sairmeuse, she did not find this a very difficult task; andone morning, Mme. Blanche, with a radiant face, announced to Aunt Medea:
"Aunt, we leave just one week from to-day."