The Knight of Malta Part 32

Unfortunately, the Bohemian had disappeared.

To the great astonishment of the inmates of Maison-Forte, he did not return in the evening. Raimond V., who liked him, ordered his men who guarded the bridge to be prepared to lower it when the Bohemian appeared, notwithstanding the regulations of the castle.

Morning came, and still the vagabond was absent. They supposed that, after drinking, he had fallen asleep in some tavern of La Ciotat. They were still more astonished not to find the two pigeons in the cage where he kept them ordinarily closely confined.

Greatly disturbed by these strange happenings, which had been transpiring for some time, Reine, half through curiosity and half through conviction, finally yielded to the entreaties of Stephanette, who had the most wonderful ideas of the watchman's abilities and knowledge, and decided to consult the old seaman on the mysteries of which Maison-Forte was the theatre.

So many extraordinary things had been told of Master Peyrou's predictions, that Reine, although little given to superst.i.tion, felt the influence of the general opinion.

She was going to interrogate Peyrou, when, to her amazement, he accosted her with a question about the Bohemian.

"Mademoiselle, did the vagabond enter Maison-Forte last night?" said Peyrou, quickly.

"No; my father is much concerned about him. They think that he must have spent the night drinking in some tavern in La Ciotat."

"That would be astonishing," added Stephanette, "for the poor fellow seems to be of exemplary sobriety."

"This poor fellow," exclaimed the watchman, "is a spy of the pirates."

"He!" exclaimed Reine.

"Yes, he, himself, mademoiselle; a chebec was cruising a part of the night in view from the gulf, waiting, no doubt, for a signal from this vagabond to disembark."

In a few words the watchman acquainted Reine with the adventure of the pigeon, informing her on what indisputable grounds he suspected the Bohemian of having communication with the pirates; showed her the satchel and letter, and gave them to her, that the baron might have the writing translated by one of the brother monks in La Ciotat, who, having been a slave in Tunis for a long time, was familiar with Arabic.

When she learned the odious suspicions which attached to the Bohemian, without accounting to herself for her fear, Reine dared not confide the object of her visit to the watchman.

Stephanette looked at her mistress, utterly confounded, and cried:

"Our Lady! who would have believed that this unbeliever, who sang so well, could be such an abominable scoundrel? And to think I pitied him enough to give him a flame-coloured ribbon! Ah, my dear mistress, and the portrait of--"

Reine by an imperious sign forbade Stephanette to continue.

"Good-bye, good watchman," said Mlle, des Anbiez, "I am going back to Maison-Forte at once, to warn my father to be on his guard."

"Do not forget, Stephanette, to send Luquin Trinquetaille here. I must make arrangements with him to have one more young watchman," said Peyrou. "I have not slept the whole night. This dangerous knave is perhaps wandering about these rocks, and may come and a.s.sa.s.sinate me at the setting of the moon. The pirates are somewhere in the gulf, hidden in some one of the coves where they often ambuscade, to wait for their prey; for, alas! our coasts are not protected."

"Be easy, Master Peyrou, Luquin is coming with his two cousins; just tell him that you are watching for the Bohemian, and he will not delay to come as fast as his long legs can bring him. And to think I gave a ribbon to a pirate!" added Stephanette, clasping her hands. "Perhaps he is one of those brigands who ravaged all this coast last year."

"Go, go, my girl, and hurry. I must confer with the captain about a little cruise he can undertake even to-day with his polacre. We must warn the consuls to arm some fishing-boats immediately, with sure and determined men. We must give the alarm all along the sh.o.r.e, arm the entrance into the gulf, which is defended only by the cannon of Maison-Forte, and be prepared for any surprise, for these brigands rush on the coast like a hurricane. So Luquin must come on the instant Do you hear, Stephanette? The safety of the city depends on it."

"Be easy, Master Peyrou, although it breaks my heart to know that my poor Luquin is going to run such danger. I love him too much to advise him to be a coward."

During this rapid conversation between the watchman and her servant, Reine, lost in deep reverie, had descended a few steps of the path which conducted to the platform upon which stood the sentry-box.

This path, which was very steep, wound around the outside of the promontory, and formed at this spot a sort of comice, whose projection reached considerably over the base of this immense wall of rocks, more than three hundred feet above the level of the sea.

A young girl less habituated to walks and to mountain climbing would have feared to venture on this narrow pa.s.sage. From the side of the sea, its only parapet was a few asperities of rock, more or less p.r.o.nounced.

Reine, accustomed to brave these perils from her infancy, thought nothing of danger. The emotion that agitated her since her interview with the watchman absorbed her entirely.

Her gait, sometimes slow, sometimes hurried, seemed to share the nature of her tumultuous emotions.

Stephanette soon joined her. Surprised at the pallor of her mistress, she was about to ask the cause of it, when Reine said to her, in an altered voice, with a gesture which did not admit of a reply, "Walk in front of me, Stephanette, do not concern yourself whether I follow you or not."

Stephanette preceded her mistress at once, directing her steps in all haste toward Maison-Forte.

The agitation of Reine des Anbiez was extreme. The relations which seemed to exist between the Bohemian and the unknown were too evident for her not to have the most painful suspicions of this young man whom the vagabond called the emir.

Many circ.u.mstances, which had not impressed her at the time, now made Reine believe that the Bohemian was an emissary of the unknown. No doubt it was the vagabond who had placed in her chamber the various objects which had caused her so much surprise. Adopting this hypothesis, there was, however, one objection which presented itself to her mind,--she had found the crystal vase and the miniature on vellum before the arrival of the vagabond.

Suddenly a ray of light entered her mind; she remembered that one day, in order to display his agility to Stephanette, the Bohemian had descended to the terrace by the balcony, upon which opened the window of her oratory, and that he had remounted by the same way. Another time he had slid down from the terrace on the rocks, which lined the sh.o.r.e, and had remounted from the rocks to the terrace, by the aid of the asperities of the wall and the plants which had taken root there.

Although he arrived for the first time at the castle with the recorder, might not this vagabond, before that day, have been hidden in the environage of La Ciotat? Could he not have entered Maison-Forte twice during the night, then, to avoid suspicion, returned in the recorder's train, as if he had met it by chance?

These thoughts, reinforced by recent observations, soon a.s.sumed incontrovertible certainty in the mind of Reine. The stranger and his two companions were, without doubt, pirates, who, with false names and false credentials, had given out that they were Muscovites, and had thus imposed upon the credulity of the Marshal of Vitry.

The first idea of Reine, then,--an idea absolute and imperious,--was to forget for ever the man upon whom rested such terrible suspicion.

Religion, duty, and the will of her father were so many insurmountable and sacred obstacles which the young girl could not think of braving.

Up to that time, her youthful and lively imagination had found inexhaustible nourishment in the strange adventure of the rocks of Ollioules.

All the chaste dreams of her young girlhood were, so to speak, concentrated and realised in the person of Erebus, that unknown one, brave and timid at the same time, audacious and charming, who had saved the life of her father.

She could not help being touched by the delicate and mysterious persistence with which Erebus had always tried to recall himself to her memory. Doubtless she had never heard the voice of this stranger; doubtless she was ignorant of his mind and character, whether or not they responded to the graces of his person. But in these long reveries in which a young girl thinks of him who has fascinated her, does she not invest him with the most excellent qualities? does she not make him say all that she desires to hear?

Thus had Reine thought of Erebus. First she wished to banish him from her thought, but, unfortunately, to yield to a sentiment against which we have struggled is only to render it all the more powerful and irresistible.

Reine then loved Erebus, perhaps unconsciously, when the watchman's fatal revelation showed the object of her love in such unattractive colours.

The grandeur of the sacrifice that she was required to make enlightened her as to the power of the affection with which she had, so to speak, played until the fatal moment arrived.

For the first time this sudden revelation taught her the depth of her love.

Impenetrable mysteries of the human heart! During the first phases of this mysterious love she had regarded her marriage with Honorat as possible.

From the moment in which she knew who the unknown one was, from that moment she felt that, notwithstanding the voice of duty ordered her to forget him, the memory of Erebus would henceforth dominate her whole existence, and she could never marry the chevalier.

She recognised the truth with terror, that, notwithstanding her efforts to master her feelings, her heart belonged to her no longer, and she was incapable of deceiving Honorat.

She wished to make a last sacrifice, to give up the rosary and portrait which she possessed, imposing this resolution upon herself as a sort of expiation of her reserve and reticence toward her father.

The young girl suffered much before she was able to fulfil this resolution.

In this mental struggle, Reine was walking on the edge of the comice formed by the rocks above the beach on which the waves of the sea were breaking.

She wore over her dress a sort of brown mantle with a hood turned up on the shoulders. This hood allowed her bare head to be seen, as well as her long brown curls that floated in the wind. Her countenance had an expression of sweet and resigned melancholy; sometimes, however, her blue eyes shone with a new brightness, and she lifted up her n.o.ble, beautiful head with an expression of wounded pride.

She loved pa.s.sionately, but without hope, and she was going to throw to the winds the feeble tokens of this impossible love.