White Lies Part 54

"Ha! ha! colonel! Let us see where this staircase leads. I have an idea it will prove a short cut."

"Where to?"

"To the saloon, or somewhere, or else to some of Jacintha's haunts.

Serve her right for going to sleep at the mouth of her den."

"Forward then--no, halt! Suppose it leads to the bedrooms? Mind this is a thundering place for ceremony. We shall get drummed out of the barracks if we don't mind our etiquette."

At this they hesitated; and Edouard himself thought, on the whole, it would be better to go and hammer at the front door.

Now while they hesitated, a soft delicious harmony of female voices suddenly rose, and seemed to come and run round the walls. The men looked at one another in astonishment; for the effect was magical. The staircase being enclosed on all sides with stone walls and floored with stone, they were like flies inside a violoncello; the voices rang above, below, and on every side of the vibrating walls. In some epochs spirits as hardy as Raynal's, and wits as quick as Riviere's, would have fled then and there to the nearest public, and told over cups how they had heard the dames of Beaurepaire, long since dead, holding their revel, and the conscious old devil's nest of a chateau quivering to the ghostly strains.

But this was an incredulous age. They listened, and listened, and decided the sounds came from up-stairs.

"Let us mount, and surprise these singing witches," said Edouard.

"Surprise them! what for? It is not the enemy--for once. What is the good of surprising our friends?"

Storming parties and surprises were no novelty and therefore no treat to Raynal.

"It will be so delightful to see their faces at first sight of you. O colonel, for my sake! Don't spoil it by going tamely in at the front door, after coming at night from Egypt for half an hour."

Raynal grumbled something about its being a childish trick; but to please Edouard consented at last; only stipulated for a light: "or else," said he, "we shall surprise ourselves instead with a broken neck, going over ground we don't know to surprise the natives--our skirmishers got nicked that way now and then in Egypt."

"Yes, colonel, I will go first with Jacintha's candle." Edouard mounted the stairs on tiptoe. Raynal followed. The solid stone steps did not prate. The men had mounted a considerable way, when puff a blast of wind came through a hole, and out went Edouard's candle. He turned sharply round to Raynal. "Peste!" said he in a vicious whisper. But the other laid his hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Look to the front." He looked, and, his own candle being out, saw a glimmer on ahead. He crept towards it. It was a taper shooting a feeble light across a small aperture. They caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a small apartment.

Yet Edouard recognized the carpet of the tapestried room--which was a very large room. Creeping a yard nearer, he discovered that it was the tapestried room, and that what had seemed the further wall was only the screen, behind which were lights, and two women singing a duet.

He whispered to Raynal, "It is the tapestried room."

"Is it a sitting-room?" whispered Raynal.

"Yes! yes! Mind and not knock your foot against the wood."

And Raynal went softly up and put his foot quietly through the aperture, which he now saw was made by a panel drawn back close to the ground; and stood in the tapestried chamber. The carpet was thick; the voices favored the stealthy advance; the floor of the old house was like a rock; and Edouard put his face through the aperture, glowing all over with antic.i.p.ation of the little scream of joy that would welcome his friend dropping in so nice and suddenly from Egypt.

The feeling was rendered still more piquant by a sharp curiosity that had been growing on him for some minutes past. For why was this pa.s.sage opened to-night?--he had never seen it opened before. And why was Jacintha lying sentinel at the foot of the stairs?

But this was not all. Now that they were in the room both men became conscious of another sound besides the ladies' voices--a very peculiar sound. It also came from behind the screen. They both heard it, and showed, by the puzzled looks they cast at one another, that neither could make out what on earth it was. It consisted of a succession of little rustles, followed by little thumps on the floor.

But what was curious, too, this rustle, thump--rustle, thump--fell exactly into the time of the music; so that, clearly, either the rustle thump was being played to the tune, or the tune sung to the rustle thump.

This last touch of mystery inflamed Edouard's impatience beyond bearing: he pointed eagerly and merrily to the corner of the screen. Raynal obeyed, and stepped very slowly and cautiously towards it.

Rustle, thump! rustle, thump! rustle, thump! with the rhythm of harmonious voices.

Edouard got his head and foot into the room without taking his eye off Raynal.

Rustle, thump! rustle, thump! rustle, thump!

Raynal was now at the screen, and quietly put his head round it, and his hand upon it.

Edouard was bursting with expectation.

No result. What is this? Don't they see him? Why does he not speak to them? He seems transfixed.

Rustle, thump! rustle, thump; accompanied now for a few notes by one voice only, Rose's.

Suddenly there burst a shriek from Josephine, so loud, so fearful, that it made even Raynal stagger back a step, the screen in his hand.

Then another scream of terror and anguish from Rose. Then a fainter cry, and the heavy helpless fall of a human body.

Raynal sprang forward whirling the screen to the earth in terrible agitation, and Edouard bounded over it as it fell at his feet. He did not take a second step. The scene that caught his eye stupefied and paralyzed him in full career, and froze him to the spot with amazement and strange misgivings.

CHAPTER XIX.

To return for a moment to Rose. She parted from Edouard, and went in at the front door: but the next moment she opened it softly and watched her lover unseen. "Dear Edouard!" she murmured: and then she thought, "how sad it is that I must deceive him, even to-night: must make up an excuse to get him from me, when we were so happy together. Ah! he little knows how I shall welcome our wedding-day. When once I can see my poor martyr on the road to peace and content under the good doctor's care. And oh!

the happiness of having no more secrets from him I love! Dear Edouard!

when once we are married, I never, never, will have a secret from you again--I swear it."

As a comment on these words she now stepped cautiously out, and peered in every direction.

"St--st!" she whispered. No answer came to this signal.

Rose returned into the house and bolted the door inside. She went up to the tapestried room, and found the doctor in the act of wishing Josephine good-night. The baroness, fatigued a little by her walk, had mounted no higher than her own bedroom, which was on the first floor just under the tapestried room. Rose followed the doctor out. "Dear friend, one word. Josephine talked of telling Raynal. You have not encouraged her to do that?"

"Certainly not, while he is in Egypt."

"Still less on his return. Doctor, you don't know that man. Josephine does not know him. But I do. He would kill her if he knew. He would kill her that minute. He would not wait: he would not listen to excuses: he is a man of iron. Or if he spared her he would kill Camille: and that would destroy her by the cruellest of all deaths! My friend, I am a wicked, miserable girl. I am the cause of all this misery!"

She then told Aubertin all about the anonymous letter, and what Raynal had said to her in consequence.

"He never would have married her had he known she loved another. He asked me was it so. I told him a falsehood. At least I equivocated, and to equivocate with one so loyal and simple was to deceive him. I am the only sinner: that sweet angel is the only sufferer. Is this the justice of Heaven? Doctor, my remorse is great. No one knows what I feel when I look at my work. Edouard thinks I love her so much better than I do him. He is wrong: it is not love only, it is pity: it is remorse for the sorrow I have brought on her, and the wrong I have done poor Raynal."

The high-spirited girl was greatly agitated: and Aubertin, though he did not acquit her of all blame, soothed her, and made excuses for her.

"We must not always judge by results," said he. "Things turned unfortunately. You did for the best. I forgive you for one. That is, I will forgive you if you promise not to act again without my advice."

"Oh, never! never!"

"And, above all, no imprudence about that child. In three little weeks they will be together without risk of discovery. Well, you don't answer me."

Rose's blood turned cold. "Dear friend," she stammered, "I quite agree with you."

"Promise, then."