By your leave, General," and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke. It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to alert observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at once if he had caught sight of the General's face.
Everything that passed through the soldier's mind was faithfully revealed in his frank countenance.
"Is it known who the murderer is?" asked he.
"No," said the other, now in the saddle. "He left the bureau full of banknotes and gold untouched.""It was revenge, then," said the Marquis.
"On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn't time to take it, that was all," and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost out of sight by this time.
For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home, their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General's anger vanished, he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant's lying excuse.
While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene;and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low voice, "Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece."The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The Marquise's eyes sparkled with curiosity.
"Well, mamma?" she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
"I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--""/I/?" cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
"Are you afraid?"
"No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man's footsteps.""If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene,"said her mother with cold dignity. "If your father were to come back and did not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice your absence.""Madame, if you bid me go, I will go," said Helene, "but I shall lose my father's good opinion--""What is this!" cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. "But since you take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now /order/ you to go upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child.
When your father told you to say nothing about this thing that happened, he did not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once--and learn that a daughter ought never to judge her mother."The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose without a word and left the room.
"My mother can always easily obtain her pardon," thought the girl;"but as for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does she mean to rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of his house?"These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment, as she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end.
When she stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful pitch. Feelings hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at the summons of these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never believed that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as she set the key in the lock; so great indeed was her agitation, that she stopped for a moment and laid her hand on her heart, as if to still the heavy throbs that sounded in her ears. Then she opened the door.
The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer's ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly lit by the bull's-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of some dead knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from every tense feature. His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he seemed to be watching some struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts passed swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a character of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame bore out the impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked power and strength personified; he stood facing the darkness as if it were the visible image of his own future.