Messengers of Evil Part 35

"Ah! This is interesting!" he cried. The manservant had made himself scarce; and Fandor, un.o.bserved, could wrap up the piece of soap in his handkerchief and hide it in the lowest drawer of the chest of drawers, under a pile of linen. He was whistling now.

"That bit of soap is interesting--very!" he cried. "Let the police come!

I am not afraid of their blundering!... Now to see how Elizabeth is getting on!"

When he reached her side, he found she had recovered full consciousness, and was preparing to answer the questions of a police superintendent, who, summoned by the bankers, had hastened to the scene of action. He was a stout, apoplectic man, very full of his own importance.

"Come now, mademoiselle, tell us just how things happened from beginning to end! We ask nothing better than to believe you, but do not conceal any detail--not the slightest...."

Poor Elizabeth Dollon, when she heard this speech, stared at the pompous police official, astonished. What had she to conceal? What had she to gain by lying? What did he think, this fat policeman, who took it upon himself to issue orders, when he should rather have tried to comfort her! Nevertheless, she at once began telling him all that she knew with regard to the affair. She told him of her letter to Fandor: that her room had been visited the evening before: by whom she did not know ...

that she had not said a word about it to anyone, fearing vengeance would fall on her, frightened, not understanding what it all meant....

Then she came to what the police dignitary called "her suicide." As she finished her recital with a reference to her rescue by Fandor, she looked at the young journalist. It was a look of great grat.i.tude and a kind of ardent tenderness, with a touch of fear in it.

"Strange, very strange!" p.r.o.nounced the superintendent of police, who had been taking notes with an air of great gravity. "So very strange, mademoiselle, that it is very difficult to credit your statements!...

very difficult indeed!..."

Whilst he was speaking, Fandor was saying to himself:

"Decidedly, it is that!... Just what I was thinking! It is quite clear, clear as the sun in the sky, evident, indisputable!" And he refused, very politely of course--for one has to respect the authorities--to accompany the superintendent, who, in his turn, went upstairs to Elizabeth's room, in order to carry out the necessary legal verification....

XIV

SOMEONE TELEPHONED

The nuns of the order of Saint Augustin were not expelled in consequence of the Decrees. This was a special favour, but one fully justified, because of the incalculable benefits this community conferred on suffering humanity. The vast convent of rue de la Glaciere continues to serve as a shelter for these holy women, and as a sort of hospital for the sick. For close on a hundred years, generation after generation of those living near its walls have heard the convent clock sound the hours in solemn tones; so, too, the convent chapel's shrill-voiced bells have never failed to remind the faithful that the daily offices of their church are being said and sung by the holy sisters within the hallowed walls.

In the vast quarter of Paris, peopled with hospitals and prisons, the convent shows a stern front in the shape of a high, blackened wall. A great courtyard gate, in which a window with iron bars and grating is the only visible opening to the exterior world.

About half-past six in the morning, slightly out of breath with his rapid walk from the Metropolitan station, Jerome Fandor rang the convent door bell. The sound could be heard echoing and re-echoing in the vaulted corridors, till it died away in the stony distance. There was a silence: then the iron-barred window was half opened, and Fandor heard a voice asking:

"What do you want, monsieur?"

"I wish to speak to Madame the Superior," replied Fandor.

The window was closed again and a lengthy silence followed. Then, slowly, the heavy entrance gate swung half open. Fandor entered the convent. Under the arched doorway, a nun received him with a slight salutation, and turned her back.

"Kindly follow me," she murmured.

Fandor followed along a narrow pa.s.sage, on one side of which were cells, whilst on the other, it opened by means of large bays, on a vast rectangular cloister quite deserted. A door-window in the pa.s.sage was ajar: the nun stopped here and said:

"Kindly wait in this parlour, and be good enough to let me have your card. I will inform our Mother Superior that you wish to see her."

The room in which our journalist found himself was severely furnished: its walls were white, on them hung a great ivory crucifix, and here and there, a simple religious picture framed in ebony. A few chairs were ranged in a circle about an oval table: on the floor, polished till it shone like a mirror, were a few small mats, which gave a touch of common-place comfort to the icy regularity of this parlour, set apart for official visits.

What emotions, what dramas, what joys, have had this parlour for a setting! It is there that the life of the cloister touches mundane existence; it is there the nuns receive their future companions in the religious life and their weeping families; it is there the parents of those in the convent infirmary come to hear from the doctor's lips the decrees of life or death; for the convent is not only a retreat, it is an asylum for the sick, the ailing, recommended to their patients by the most eminent doctors, the most prominent surgeons.

Accustomed though he was to every kind of human misery, Fandor shuddered at the thought of all these walls had seen and heard. His reflections were broken by the arrival of a little old lady, whose eyes shone strangely luminous in her pale and wrinkled face--a face showing the highest distinction.

Fandor made a deep bow: it might have expressed the reverence of the world to religion.

"Madame la Superieure," murmured he, "I have come to pay my respects to you and to ask for news of your boarder."

The Mother Superior, in a gay tone, which contrasted with her cold and reserved appearance, replied at once:

"Ah, you preferred to come yourself! You had not the patience to wait at the telephone? I quite understand. Would you believe it, while the sister, who has charge of this young girl, was being sent for, the communication was cut off. That is why we could not give you any information."

Fandor stared.

"But I do not understand, madame?"

The Mother Superior replied:

"Was it not you then who telephoned this morning to ask for news of Mademoiselle Dollon?"

"I certainly did not do so!"

"In that case, I do not understand what it means, either! But it does not matter much: you shall see your protegee now."

The Mother Superior rang: a sister appeared.

"Sister, will you take this gentleman to Mademoiselle Dollon! She was walking in the park a short while ago, and is probably there now....

Monsieur, I bid you good day."

Gliding swiftly and noiselessly over the polished floor, the Mother Superior disappeared. The nun led the way and Fandor followed: he was very much upset by what the Mother Superior had just told him.

"How had Elizabeth's place of refuge been so quickly discovered?... Who could have telephoned to get news of her?"

The nun had led Fandor across the great rectangular courtyard; then by corridors, and many winding, vaulted pa.s.sages, they had come out on to a terrace, overlooking an immense park, which extended further than the eye could see. Here were bosky dells, ancient trees, bowers and grooves, meadows where milky mothers chewed the cud in the shade of blossoming apple trees. It might have been in Normandy, a hundred leagues from Paris!

The nun turned to the admiring Fandor.

"The young lady you seek, monsieur, is coming along this path: there she is!... I will leave you."

Fandor had seen Elizabeth's graceful figure moving towards him, thrown into charming relief by the country landscape flooded with sunshine. In her modest mourning dress, with her fair shining hair, she appeared prettier than ever: a touching figure of sorrowing beauty!

Elizabeth pressed Fandor's hands warmly.

"Oh, thank you, monsieur, thank you!" she cried, "for having come to see me this morning. I know how little spare time you have! I feel vexed with myself for putting you out so ... but you see"--Elizabeth could not repress a sob--"I am so alone ... so desolate ... I have lost everything I cared for ... and you are the only person I can trust and confide in now!... I feel like a bit of wreckage at the mercy of wind and wave; I feel as though I were surrounded by enemies: I live in a nightmare....

What should I do without you to turn to?..."

Our young journalist, moved by such great misfortune so simply, so candidly expressed, returned the pressure of Elizabeth's hands.

"You know, mademoiselle," he said softly, but in a voice vibrating with sympathetic emotion--the only sign of feeling he permitted himself to show--"you know that you can count absolutely on me. In getting you to take a few days' rest in this retreat, I felt I was doing what was best for you. You are not solitary; but your surroundings are peaceful and friendly, and should you have enemies, though I am loath to think it, you are sheltered here beyond their reach. With reference to that, have you given your address to anyone, since yesterday?"

"To no one," replied Elizabeth. "Has anyone by chance?..."