Chapter XVIII
THE CHURCHYARD
Our dinner was really good, so were the wines; better, perhaps, at thisout-of-the-way inn, than at some of the more pretentious hotels inParis. The moral effect of a really good dinner is immense--we all feltit. The serenity and good nature that follow are more solid andcomfortable than the tumultuous benevolences of Bacchus.
My friends were happy, therefore, and very chatty; which latter relievedme of the trouble of talking, and prompted them to entertain me and oneanother incessantly with agreeable stories and conversation, of which,until suddenly a subject emerged which interested me powerfully, Iconfess, so much were my thoughts engaged elsewhere, I heard next tonothing.
"Yes," said Carmaignac, continuing a conversation which had escaped me,"there was another case, beside that Russian nobleman, odder still. Iremembered it this morning, but cannot recall the name. He was a tenantof the very same room. By-the-by, Monsieur, might it not be as well," headded, turning to me with a laugh, half joke whole earnest, as they say,"if you were to get into another apartment, now that the house is nolonger crowded? that is, if you mean to make any stay here."
"A thousand thanks! no. I'm thinking of changing my hotel; and I can runinto town so easily at night; and though I stay here for this night atleast, I don't expect to vanish like those others. But you say there isanother adventure, of the same kind, connected with the same room. Dolet us hear it. But take some wine first."
The story he told was curious.
"It happened," said Carmaignac, "as well as I recollect, before eitherof the other cases. A French gentleman--I wish I could remember hisname--the son of a merchant, came to this inn (the Dragon Volant),and was put by the landlord into the same room of which we have beenspeaking. _Your_ apartment, Monsieur. He was by no means young--pastforty--and very far from good-looking. The people here said that he wasthe ugliest man, and the most good-natured, that ever lived. He playedon the fiddle, sang, and wrote poetry. His habits were odd and desultory.He would sometimes sit all day in his room writing, singing, andfiddling, and go out at night for a walk. An eccentric man! He wasby no means a millionaire, but he had a _modicum bonum_, youunderstand--a trifle more than half a million of francs. He consultedhis stockbroker about investing this money in foreign stocks, and drewthe entire sum from his banker. You now have the situation of affairswhen the catastrophe occurred."
"Pray fill your glass," I said.
"Dutch courage, Monsieur, to face the catastrophe!" said Whistlewick,filling his own.
"Now, that was the last that ever was heard of his money," resumedCarmaignac. "You shall hear about himself. The night after thisfinancial operation he was seized with a poetic frenzy: he sent for thethen landlord of this house, and told him that he long meditated anepic, and meant to commence that night, and that he was on no account tobe disturbed until nine o'clock in the morning. He had two pairs of waxcandles, a little cold supper on a side-table, his desk open, paperenough upon it to contain the entire Henriade, and a proportionate storeof pens and ink.
"Seated at this desk he was seen by the waiter who brought him a cup ofcoffee at nine o'clock, at which time the intruder said he was writingfast enough to set fire to the paper--that was his phrase; he did notlook up, he appeared too much engrossed. But when the waiter came back,half an hour afterwards, the door was locked; and the poet, from within,answered that he must not be disturbed.
"Away went the _garcon_, and next morning at nine o'clock knockedat his door and, receiving no answer, looked through the key-hole; thelights were still burning, the window-shutters were closed as he hadleft them; he renewed his knocking, knocked louder, no answer came. Hereported this continued and alarming silence to the innkeeper, who,finding that his guest had not left his key in the lock, succeeded infinding another that opened it. The candles were just giving up theghost in their sockets, but there was light enough to ascertain that thetenant of the room was gone! The bed had not been disturbed; thewindow-shutter was barred. He must have let himself out, and, lockingthe door on the outside, put the key in his pocket, and so made his wayout of the house. Here, however, was another difficulty: the DragonVolant shut its doors and made all fast at twelve o'clock; after thathour no one could leave the house, except by obtaining the key andletting himself out, and of necessity leaving the door unsecured, orelse by collusion and aid of some person in the house.
"Now it happened that, some time after the doors were secured, athalf-past twelve, a servant who had not been apprised of his order to beleft undisturbed, seeing a light shine through the key-hole, knocked atthe door to inquire whether the poet wanted anything. He was very littleobliged to his disturber, and dismissed him with a renewed charge thathe was not to be interrupted again during the night. This incidentestablished the fact that he was in the house after the doors had beenlocked and barred. The inn-keeper himself kept the keys, and swore thathe found them hung on the wall above his head, in his bed, in theirusual place, in the morning; and that nobody could have taken them awaywithout awakening him. That was all we could discover. The Count de St.Alyre, to whom this house belongs, was very active and very muchchagrined. But nothing was discovered."
"And nothing heard since of the epic poet?" I asked.
"Nothing--not the slightest clue--he never turned up again. I suppose heis dead; if he is not, he must have got into some devilish bad scrape,of which we have heard nothing, that compelled him to abscond with allthe secrecy and expedition in his power. All that we know for certain isthat, having occupied the room in which you sleep, he vanished, nobodyever knew how, and never was heard of since."
"You have now mentioned three cases," I said, "and all from the sameroom."
"Three. Yes, all equally unintelligible. When men are murdered, thegreat and immediate difficulty the assassins encounter is how to concealthe body. It is very hard to believe that three persons should have beenconsecutively murdered in the same room, and their bodies so effectuallydisposed of that no trace of them was ever discovered."
From this we passed to other topics, and the grave Monsieur Carmaignacamused us with a perfectly prodigious collection of scandalous anecdote,which his opportunities in the police department had enabled him toaccumulate.
My guests happily had engagements in Paris, and left me about ten.
I went up to my room, and looked out upon the grounds of the Chateau dela Carque. The moonlight was broken by clouds, and the view of the parkin this desultory light acquired a melancholy and fantastic character.
The strange anecdotes recounted of the room in which I stood by MonsieurCarmaignac returned vaguely upon my mind, drowning in sudden shadows thegaiety of the more frivolous stories with which he had followed them. Ilooked round me on the room that lay in ominous gloom, with an almostdisagreeable sensation. I took my pistols now with an undefinedapprehension that they might be really needed before my return tonight.This feeling, be it understood, in no wise chilled my ardor. Never hadmy enthusiasm mounted higher. My adventure absorbed and carried me away;but it added a strange and stern excitement to the expedition.
I loitered for a time in my room. I had ascertained the exact point atwhich the little churchyard lay. It was about a mile away. I did notwish to reach it earlier than necessary.
I stole quietly out and sauntered along the road to my left, and thenceentered a narrower track, still to my left, which, skirting the parkwall and describing a circuitous route all the way, under grand oldtrees, passes the ancient cemetery. That cemetery is embowered in treesand occupies little more than half an acre of ground to the left of theroad, interposing between it and the park of the Chateau de la Carque.
Here, at this haunted spot, I paused and listened. The place was utterlysilent. A thick cloud had darkened the moon, so that I could distinguishlittle more than the outlines of near objects, and that vaguely enough;and sometimes, as it were, floating in black fog, the white surface of atombstone emerged.
Among the forms that met my eye against the iron-g
rey of the horizon,were some of those shrubs or trees that grow like our junipers, some sixfeet high, in form like a miniature poplar, with the darker foliage ofthe yew. I do not know the name of the plant, but I have often seen itin such funereal places.
Knowing that I was a little too early, I sat down upon the edge of atombstone to wait, as, for aught I knew, the beautiful Countess mighthave wise reasons for not caring that I should enter the grounds of thechateau earlier than she had appointed. In the listless state induced bywaiting, I sat there, with my eyes on the object straight before me,which chanced to be that faint black outline I have described. It wasright before me, about half-a-dozen steps away.
The moon now began to escape from under the skirt of the cloud that hadhid her face for so long; and, as the light gradually improved, the treeon which I had been lazily staring began to take a new shape. It was nolonger a tree, but a man standing motionless. Brighter and brighter grewthe moonlight, clearer and clearer the image became, and at last stoodout perfectly distinctly. It was Colonel Gaillarde. Luckily, he was notlooking toward me. I could only see him in profile; but there was nomistaking the white moustache, the _farouche_ visage, and the gauntsix-foot stature. There he was, his shoulder toward me, listening andwatching, plainly, for some signal or person expected, straight in frontof him.
If he were, by chance, to turn his eyes in my direction, I knew that Imust reckon upon an instantaneous renewal of the combat only commencedin the hall of Belle Etoile. In any case, could malignant fortune haveposted, at this place and hour, a more dangerous watcher? What ecstasyto him, by a single discovery, to hit me so hard, and blast the Countessde St. Alyre, whom he seemed to hate.
He raised his arm; he whistled softly; I heard an answering whistle aslow; and, to my relief, the Colonel advanced in the direction of thissound, widening the distance between us at every step; and immediately Iheard talking, but in a low and cautious key. I recognized, I thought,even so, the peculiar voice of Gaillarde. I stole softly forward in thedirection in which those sounds were audible. In doing so, I had, ofcourse, to use the extremest caution.
I thought I saw a hat above a jagged piece of ruined wall, and then asecond--yes, I saw two hats conversing; the voices came from under them.They moved off, not in the direction of the park, but of the road, and Ilay along the grass, peeping over a grave, as a skirmisher mightobserving the enemy. One after the other, the figures emerged full intoview as they mounted the stile at the roadside. The Colonel, who waslast, stood on the wall for awhile, looking about him, and then jumpeddown on the road. I heard their steps and talk as they moved awaytogether, with their backs toward me, in the direction which led themfarther and farther from the Dragon Volant.
I waited until these sounds were quite lost in distance before I enteredthe park. I followed the instructions I had received from the Countessde St. Alyre, and made my way among brushwood and thickets to the pointnearest the ruinous temple, and crossed the short intervening space ofopen ground rapidly.
I was now once more under the gigantic boughs of the old lime andchestnut trees; softly, and with a heart throbbing fast, I approachedthe little structure.
The moon was now shining steadily, pouring down its radiance on the softfoliage, and here and there mottling the verdure under my feet.
I reached the steps; I was among its worn marble shafts. She was notthere, nor in the inner sanctuary, the arched windows of which werescreened almost entirely by masses of ivy. The lady had not yet arrived.