Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  There was a little delay as he paid for these things; and then he took in the little tray, and handed me a cup of coffee.

  I declined the tray; so he placed it on his own knees, to act as a miniature table.

  “I can’t endure being waited for and hurried,” he said, “I like to sip my coffee at leisure.”

  I agreed. It really was the very perfection of coffee.

  “I, like Monsieur le Marquis, have slept very little for the last two or three nights; and find it difficult to keep awake. This coffee will do wonders for me; it refreshes one so.”

  Before we had half done, the carriage was again in motion.

  For a time our coffee made us chatty, and our conversation was animated.

  The Marquis was extremely goodnatured, as well as clever, and gave me a brilliant and amusing account of Parisian life, schemes, and dangers, all put so as to furnish me with practical warnings of the most valuable kind.

  In spite of the amusing and curious stories which the Marquis related, with so much point and colour, I felt myself again becoming gradually drowsy and dreamy.

  Perceiving this, no doubt, the Marquis goodnaturedly suffered our conversation to subside into silence. The window next him was open. He threw his cup out of it; and did the same kind office for mine, and finally the little tray flew after, and I heard it clank on the road; a valuable waif, no doubt, for some early wayfarer in wooden shoes.

  I leaned back in my corner; I had my beloved souvenir — my white rose — close to my heart, folded, now, in white paper. It inspired all manner of romantic dreams. I began to grow more and more sleepy. But actual slumber did not come. I was still viewing, with my half-closed eyes, from my corner, diagonally, the interior of the carriage.

  I wished for sleep; but the barrier between waking and sleeping seemed absolutely insurmountable; and instead, I entered into a state of novel and indescribable indolence.

  The Marquis lifted his despatch-box from the floor, placed it on his knees, unlocked it, and took out what proved to be a lamp, which he hung with two hooks, attached to it, to the window opposite to him. He lighted it with a match, put on his spectacles, and taking out a bundle of letters, began to read them carefully.

  We were making way very slowly. My impatience had hitherto employed four horses from stage to stage. We were in this emergency, only too happy to have secured two. But the difference in pace was depressing.

  I grew tired of the monotony of seeing the spectacled Marquis reading, folding, and docketing, letter after letter. I wished to shut out the image which wearied me, but something prevented my being able to shut my eyes. I tried again and again; but, positively, I had lost the power of closing them.

  I would have rubbed my eyes, but I could not stir my hand, my will no longer acted on my body — I found that I could not move one joint, or muscle, no more than I could, by an effort of my will, have turned the carriage about.

  Up to this I had experienced no sense of horror. Whatever it was, simple nightmare was not the cause. I was awfully frightened! Was I in a fit?

  It was horrible to see my goodnatured companion pursue his occupation so serenely, when he might have dissipated my horrors by a single shake.

  I made a stupendous exertion to call out but in vain; I repeated the effort again and again, with no result.

  My companion now tied up his letters, and looked out of the window, humming an air from an opera. He drew back his head, and said, turning to me —

  “Yes, I see the lights; we shall be there in two or three minutes.”

  He looked more closely at me, and with a kind smile, and a little shrug, he said, “Poor child! how fatigued he must have been — how profoundly he sleeps! when the carriage stops he will waken.”

  He then replaced his letters in the despatch-box, locked it, put his spectacles in his pocket, and again looked out of the window.

  We had entered a little town. I suppose it was past two o’clock by this time. The carriage drew up, I saw an inn-door open, and a light issuing from it.

  “Here we are!” said my companion, turning gaily to me. But I did not awake.

  “Yes, how tired he must have been!” he exclaimed, after he had waited for an answer.

  My servant was at the carriage door, and opened it.

  “Your master sleeps soundly, he is so fatigued! It would be cruel to disturb him. You and I will go in, while they change the horses, and take some refreshment, and choose something that Monsieur Beckett will like to take in the carriage, for when he awakes by-and-by, he will, I am sure, be hungry.”

  He trimmed his lamp, poured in some oil; and taking care not to disturb me, with another kind smile, and another word or caution to my servant, he got out, and I heard him talking to St. Clair, as they entered the inn-door, and I was left in my corner, in the carriage, in the same state.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  A THREE MINUTES’ VISIT.

  I have suffered extreme and protracted bodily pain, at different periods of my life, but anything like that misery, thank God, I never endured before or since. I earnestly hope it may not resemble any type of death, to which we are liable. I was, indeed, a spirit in prison; and unspeakable was my dumb and unmoving agony.

  The power of thought remained clear and active. Dull terror filled my mind. How would this end? Was it actual death?

  You will understand that my faculty of observing was unimpaired. I could hear and see anything as distinctly as ever I did in my life. It was simply that my will had, as it were, lost its hold of my body.

  I told you that the Marquis d’Harmonville had not extinguished his carriage lamp on going into this village inn. I was listening intently, longing for his return, which might result, by some lucky accident, in awaking me from my catalepsy.

  Without any sound of steps approaching, to announce an arrival, the carriage-door suddenly opened, and a total stranger got in silently, and shut the door.

  The lamp gave about as strong a light as a wax-candle, so I could see the intruder perfectly. He was a young man, with a dark grey, loose surtout, made with a sort of hood, which was pulled over his head. I thought, as he moved, that I saw the gold band of a military undress cap under it; and I certainly saw the lace and buttons of a uniform, on the cuffs of the coat that were visible under the wide sleeves of his outside wrapper.

  This young man had thick moustaches, and an imperial, and I observed that he had a red scar running upward from his lip across his cheek.

  He entered, shut the door softly, and sat down beside me. It was all done in a moment; leaning toward me, and shading his eyes with his gloved hand, he examined my face closely, for a few seconds.

  This man had come as noiselessly as a ghost; and everything he did was accomplished with the rapidity and decision, that indicated a well defined and prearranged plan. His designs were evidently sinister. I thought he was going to rob, and, perhaps, murder me. I lay, nevertheless, like a corpse under his hands. He inserted his hand in my breast pocket, from which he took my precious white rose and all the letters it contained, among which was a paper of some consequence to me.

  My letters he glanced at. They were plainly not what he wanted. My precious rose, too, he laid aside with them. It was evidently about the paper I have mentioned, that he was concerned; for the moment he opened it, he began with a pencil, in a small pocketbook, to make rapid notes of its contents.

  This man seemed to glide through his work with a noiseless and cool celerity which argued, I thought, the training of the police-department.

  He rearranged the papers, possibly in the very order in which he had found them, replaced them in my breastpocket, and was gone.

  His visit, I think, did not quite last three minutes. Very soon after his disappearance, I heard the voice of the Marquis once more. He got in, and I saw him look at me, and smile, half envying me, I fancied, my sound repose. If he had but known all!

  He resumed his reading and docketing, by the light of the little lamp which had just subser
ved the purposes of a spy.

  We were now out of the town, pursuing our journey at the same moderate pace. We had left the scene of my police visit, as I should have termed it, now two leagues behind us, when I suddenly felt a strange throbbing in one ear, and a sensation as if air passed through it into my throat. It seemed as if a bubble of air, formed deep in my ear, swelled, and burst there. The indescribable tension of my brain seemed all at once to give way; there was an odd humming in my head, and a sort of vibration through every nerve of my body, such as I have experienced in a limb that has been, in popular phraseology, asleep. I uttered a cry and half rose from my seat, and then fell back trembling, and with a sense of mortal faintness.

  The Marquis stared at me, took my hand, and earnestly asked if I was ill. I could answer only with a deep groan.

  Gradually the process of restoration was completed; and I was able, though very faintly, to tell him how very ill I had been; and then to describe the violation of my letters, during the time of his absence from the carriage.

  “Good heaven!” he exclaimed, “the miscreant did not get at my dispatch-box?”

  I satisfied him, so far as I had observed, on that point. He placed the box on the seat beside him, and opened and examined its contents very minutely.

  “Yes, undisturbed; all safe, thank heaven!” he murmured. “There are half-a-dozen letters here, that I would not have some people read, for a great deal.”

  He now asked with a very kind anxiety all about the illness I complained of. When he had heard me, he said —

  “A friend of mine once had an attack as like yours as possible. It was on board-ship, and followed a state of high excitement. He was a brave man like you; and was called on to exert both his strength and his courage suddenly. An hour or two after, fatigue overpowered him, and he appeared to fall into a sound sleep. He really sank into a state which he afterwards described so, that I think it must have been precisely the same affection as yours.”

  “I am happy to think that my attack was not unique. Did he ever experience a return of it.”

  “I knew him for years after, and never heard of any such thing. What strikes me is a parallel in the predisposing causes of each attack. Your unexpected, and gallant hand-to-hand encounter, at such desperate odds, with an experienced swordsman, like that insane colonel of dragoons, your fatigue, and, finally, your composing yourself, as my other friend did, to sleep.”

  “I wish,” he resumed, “one could make out who that coquin was, who examined your letters. It is not worth turning back, however, because we should learn nothing. Those people always manage so adroitly. I am satisfied, however, that he must have been an agent of the police. A rogue of any other kind would have robbed you.”

  I talked very little, being ill and exhausted, but the Marquis talked on agreeably.

  “We grow so intimate,” said he, at last, “that I must remind you that I am not, for the present, the Marquis d’Harmonville, but only Monsieur Droqville; nevertheless, when we get to Paris, although I cannot see you often, I may be of use. I shall ask you to name to me the hotel at which you mean to put up; because the Marquis being, as you are aware, on his travels, the Hotel d’Harmonville is, for the present, tenanted only by two or three old servants, who must not even see Monsieur Droqville. That gentleman will, nevertheless, contrive to get you access to the box of Monsieur le Marquis, at the Opera; as well, possibly, as to other places more difficult; and so soon as the diplomatic office of the Marquis d’Harmonville is ended, and he at liberty to declare himself, he will not excuse his friend, Monsieur Beckett, from fulfilling his promise to visit him this autumn at the Château d’Harmonville.”

  You may be sure I thanked the Marquis.

  The nearer we got to Paris, the more I valued his protection. The countenance of a great man on the spot, just then, taking so kind an interest in the stranger whom he had, as it were, blundered upon, might make my visit ever so many degrees more delightful than I had anticipated.

  Nothing could be more gracious than the manner and looks of the Marquis; and, as I still thanked him, the carriage suddenly stopped in front of the place where a relay of horses awaited us, and where, as it turned out, we were to part.

  CHAPTER IX.

  GOSSIP AND COUNSEL.

  My eventful journey was over, at last. I sat in my hotel window looking out upon brilliant Paris, which had, in a moment, recovered all its gaiety, and more than its accustomed bustle. Every one has read of the kind of excitement that followed the catastrophe of Napoleon, and the second restoration of the Bourbons. I need not, therefore, even if, at this distance, I could, recall and describe my experiences and impressions of the peculiar aspect of Paris, in those strange times. It was, to be sure, my first visit. But, often as I have seen it since, I don’t think I ever saw that delightful capital in a state, pleasurably, so excited and exciting.

  I had been two days in Paris, and had seen all sorts of sights, and experienced none of that rudeness and insolence of which others complained, from the exasperated officers of the defeated French army.

  I must say this, also. My romance had taken complete possession of me; and the chance of seeing the object of my dream, gave a secret and delightful interest to my rambles and drives in the streets and environs, and my visits to the galleries and other sights of the metropolis.

  I had neither seen nor heard of Count or Countess, nor had the Marquis d’Harmonville made any sign. I had quite recovered the strange indisposition under which I had suffered during my night journey.

  It was now evening, and I was beginning to fear that my patrician acquaintance had quite forgotten me, when the waiter presented me the card of ‘Monsieur Droqville;’ and, with no small elation and hurry, I desired him to show the gentleman up.

  In came the Marquis d’Harmonville, kind and gracious as ever.

  “I am a night-bird at present,” said he, so soon as we had exchanged the little speeches which are usual. “I keep in the shade, during the daytime, and even now I hardly ventured to come in a close carriage. The friends for whom I have undertaken a rather critical service, have so ordained it. They think all is lost, if I am known to be in Paris. First let me present you with these orders for my box. I am so vexed that I cannot command it oftener during the next fortnight; during my absence, I had directed my secretary to give it for any night to the first of my friends who might apply, and the result is, that I find next to nothing left at my disposal.”

  I thanked him very much.

  “And now, a word, in my office of Mentor. You have not come here, of course, without introductions?”

  I produced half-a-dozen letters, the addresses of which he looked at.

  “Don’t mind these letters,” he said. “I will introduce you. I will take you myself from house to house. One friend at your side is worth many letters. Make no intimacies, no acquaintances, until then. You young men like best to exhaust the public amusements of a great city, before embarrassing yourself with the engagements of society. Go to all these. It will occupy you, day and night, for at least three weeks. When this is over, I shall be at liberty, and will myself introduce you to the brilliant but comparatively quiet routine of society. Place yourself in my hands; and in Paris remember, when once in society, you are always there.”

  I thanked him very much, and promised to follow his counsels implicitly.

  He seemed pleased, and said —

  “I shall now tell you some of the places you ought to go to. Take your map, and write letters or numbers upon the points I will indicate, and we will make out a little list. All the places that I shall mention to you are worth seeing.”

  In this methodical way, and with a great deal of amusing and scandalous anecdote, he furnished me with a catalogue and a guide, which, to a seeker of novelty and pleasure, was invaluable.

  “In a fortnight, perhaps in a week,” he said, “I shall be at leisure to be of real use to you. In the meantime, be on your guard. You must not play; you will be robbed if yo
u do. Remember, you are surrounded, here, by plausible swindlers and villains of all kinds, who subsist by devouring strangers. Trust no one but those you know.”

  I thanked him again, and promised to profit by his advice. But my heart was too full of the beautiful lady of the Belle Etoile, to allow our interview to close without an effort to learn something about her. I therefore asked for the Count and Countess de St. Alyre, whom I had had the good fortune to extricate from an extremely unpleasant row in the hall of the inn.

  Alas! he had not seen them since. He did not know where they were staying. They had a fine old house only a few leagues from Paris; but he thought it probable that they would remain, for a few days at least, in the city, as preparations would, no doubt, be necessary, after so long an absence, for their reception at home.

  “How long have they been away?”

  “About eight months, I think.”

  “They are poor, I think you said?”

  “What you would consider poor. But, Monsieur, the Count has an income which affords them the comforts, and even the elegancies of life, living as they do, in a very quiet and retired way, in this cheap country.”

  “Then they are very happy?”

  “One would say they ought to be happy.”

  “And what prevents?”

  “He is jealous.”

  “But his wife — she gives him no cause?”

  “I am afraid she does.”

  “How, Monsieur?”

  “I always thought she was a little too — a great deal too— “

  “Too what, Monsieur?”

  “Too handsome. But although she has remarkably fine eyes, exquisite features, and the most delicate complexion in the world, I believe that she is a woman of probity. You have never seen her?”