Scene Fifth. —The same
Oliver stood for a while utterly stupefied by this new blow that had fallen upon him; then, with his hands stretched out in the darkness and feeling before him with his feet, he moved blindly forward. At last he found the lantern where it stood upon the floor, and kneeling down he raised the lid and felt within. Even if he had found a candle, it would have been of no use to him, for he could not have lighted it, but nothing was there but the hot, melted grease in which the wick had expired.
Oliver sat down upon the floor and hid his face upon his knees. How long he sat there he never could tell; it might have been seconds, it might have been minutes, it might have been an hour; for, like one in a broken sleep, there was to him no measurement of time.
Suddenly a thought flashed upon him, like light in the darkness: he remembered the chimney in the room beyond. Why should he not escape in that way? At the thought a great torrent of hope swept upon him; his heart swelled as though it would burst. He rose to his feet, and feeling blindly in the blackness, came first to the table, and then to the tapestried wall beyond. Inch by inch, and foot by foot he felt his way along it, now stumbling over a cushioned couch in the darkness, and now over the edge of one of the rugs. So at last he came to the corner of the room. Thence with out-stretched fingers he felt his way along over the silent folds of the hangings until he met the emptiness of the door-way.
In the same manner he crept along the wall of the room beyond, overturning in his passage a light table laden with plates and glasses, that fell with a deafening crash and tinkle of broken glass. Oliver paused for a moment in the bewilderment of the sudden noise, and then began his slow onward way again.
Thus crawling slowly along, and guiding himself by the walls, he came out through the passage-way beyond the dining apartment, and so into the laboratory. Here he had no difficulty in finding the chimney, for the moonlight shed a faint, ghostly light down the broad flue above, glimmering in a pale flickering sheen upon the bottles and glass retorts that stood around.
Creeping cautiously forward, Oliver came to the chimney-place, climbed upon one of the furnaces, and peered upward. Not twenty feet above he could see the silvery moonlit sky. Then his heart sank within him like a plummet of lead. For just over his head were grated bars of iron, thick and ponderous, that, crossing the chimney from side to side, were built into the solid brick and stone masonry of the flue. Oliver clambered down out of the furnace again, and sat him down upon the edge of it. There for a time he perched, staring despairingly into the darkness beyond. "What shall I do next?" he muttered to himself – "what shall I do next?"
It could serve no use for him to stay where he was, among the crucibles and retorts; he might as well go into one of the other rooms. There, at least, would be a comfortable place to rest himself, and he began to feel heavily and stupidly sleepy.
Foot by foot and step by step he felt his way back again into the farthest room. He gave no thought to that other occupant, hushed in the silent sleep of death; but flinging himself down upon the first couch that he found, gathered the musty, mildewed cushions under his head, closed his eyes, and sunk heavily into the depths of a dark, dreamless sleep.
How long Oliver Munier lay in the blankness of this heavy sleep he could never know. It must have been for a great while, as he afterwards discovered. His waking was sudden and sharp, and even before he was fairly awake he knew that he heard a sound.
He opened his eyes wide and listened. There was a soft rustling, a velvety footfall, and the sound of quick, short breathing, in the silent darkness, like that of a little child. Finally he heard a suppressed sneeze.
He sat up upon the couch, and at the noise of his movements the other sound ceased, only for the quick breathing.
"Who is there?" whispered Oliver through the darkness.
For a moment or two the silence was unbroken; then came a dull, monotonous, musical sound, somewhat like the humming of a hive of bees, but rougher and more rattling. Oliver, listening with all his soul, heard the same rustling footsteps as before, and now they were coming straight towards him. There was a moment's pause, and then something leaped upon the couch beside him.
Oliver sat as though turned to stone.
He felt a faint breath upon his hand as it rested upon the cushion at his side, and then something pressed against his wrist and his arm. It was soft, warm, furry. It was a cat.
In the gush of relief at this honest, homely animal companionship Oliver broke down from his tension of nervous strain to laughing and crying at once. Reaching out his hand, he began to stroke the creature, whereupon it bowed its back and rubbed against him in dumb response.
A sudden light flashed upon him. The cat was alive; it was good honest flesh and blood; there was nothing ghostly or demoniacal about it; where it had entered it would have to go forth again, and where it so passed to and fro there must be some means of ingress and egress. Why should he not avail himself of its aid to find his way out into the daylight again?
In a few moments he had torn the mouldy silken covers of one of the cushions into small strips, had twisted these strips into a cord, and had then tied the cord around the cat's neck. Wherever the creature went now he would follow as a blind man follows his dog. He began to whistle in the excess of his relief at the new light of hope which had dawned upon him. The sound awoke shrill echoes in the black vaulted spaces, and he stopped abruptly. "Very well," said he, half aloud. "But nevertheless, my American uncle, here is a new way out of our troubles."
By force of habit he thrust his hands into his pocket; the two bottles of water were still there.
It seemed to Oliver an age before this miraculously sent conductor, this feline saving angel, made ready to take its departure. It was hours; but there was nothing for him to do but to wait patiently for the creature to choose its own time for leaving, for should he undertake to urge it, it might grow frightened and break away from him, and so lose him the clew of escape. Yes, there was nothing to do but to wait patiently until his guide chose to bestir itself.
Oliver was ravenously hungry, but once or twice, in spite of the gnawing of his stomach, he fell into a doze in the dead, monotonous silence of the place. Nevertheless, through all his napping, he held tight to the silken cord. It was from such a doze as this that he was awakened by feeling a twitching at the silken string, which he had wrapped around his hand for the sake of precaution. The cat was stirring.
Oliver loosened the cord so as to give the animal as much freedom as possible, and then rose to his feet. The cat, disturbed by his moving, leaped lightly to the floor. It gave a faint mew, and rubbed once or twice against his legs. Oliver waited with a beating heart. At last the cat started straight across the floor, and Oliver, holding the string, followed after it. The next minute he ran against the corner of the table, stumbled over the chair that stood beside it, overturning the mildewed lute, which fell with a hollow, musical crash.
The cat had gone under the table, and Oliver had perforce to go down upon his hands and knees and follow. When he arose again he was bewildered, and knew not where he was; he had lost his bearings in the blank darkness around him.
The cat had become alarmed, and was now struggling at the string that held it, and Oliver was afraid that it would snap the cord and get away from him. He followed more rapidly, and the next moment pitched headlong across the couch in the corner. The silent occupant rattled dryly, and Oliver heard something fall with a crash upon the floor, roll for a space, and then vibrate into silence. "Oh, mon Dieu!" he cried, and crossed himself. He knew very well what it was that had fallen. But the cat was now struggling furiously, and there was no time to lose in qualms. He scrambled to his feet, still holding tight to the silken cord. There was no trouble now in following the lead of the animal. The next moment his head struck with terrible force against the hard stone wall; he saw forty thousand swimming stars, and for a moment was stunned and bewildered with the force of the blow.
When his wits came back to him the cat was gone, but he still held the end of the silken cord in his hand. He stooped, and felt the direction which the cord took. It ran between two of the lighter silken hangings upon the wall. He parted them and felt within, and his hand encountered empty nothingness. He felt above, below, and on each side, and his touch met the smooth, cold stones of the wall. The open space was about two feet high and three feet wide. It was thence the cat had gone.
Oliver's only chance was to follow after; accordingly he dropped upon his knees and felt within. For a foot or more the bottom of the space ran upon a line of the floor, then it dropped suddenly and sheerly as the wall of a house. How far it was to the bottom Oliver had no means of knowing. He reached down at arm's-length, but could not touch it. He crawled out of the hole again, and then reversing himself, went in feet foremost. He dropped his legs over the edge of the open space, but still he felt nothing. Upon either side he could touch the sides of the passage with his toes; below, they touched nothing. He dropped himself lower, but still felt nothing. Lower still, and still felt nothing. He let himself go to his arm's-length, and hung there flat against the wall, and felt about with his feet, but still they touched nothing.
How far was it to the bottom of that black passage? If he let go his hold, would he be dashed to pieces below? A great wave of fright swept over him, and he struggled vehemently to raise himself up to the edge of the hole again whence he had descended, but he was helpless, powerless. In his frantic struggles his feet clashed against the sides of the passage-way, but he could nowhere gain purchase to raise himself so much as a foot.
His struggles grew fainter and fainter, and at last he hung helplessly clinging to the edge of the hole above him with cramped and nervous fingers. A red light seemed to dance before his eyes, and he felt his strength crumbling away from him like undermined earth. He breathed a short prayer, loosed his hold – and fell about six inches to the bottom of the shaft beneath.
He crouched there for a while, weak and trembling in the reaction from his terror. At last he heaved a great sigh and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Then, rousing himself and feeling about him, he found that the passage-way continued at right angles with the bottom of the shaft. It seemed to Oliver that he could distinguish a faint gray light in the gloom with which he was enveloped. Nor was he mistaken, for, crawling slowly and painfully forward, he found that the light grew brighter and brighter.
Presently the passage took an upward turn, and by-and-by became so steep that Oliver could hardly struggle forward. At last it again became level and easy to traverse; and still the light grew brighter and brighter.
Suddenly the passage-way became horizontal again, and Oliver stopped in his forward scrambling, and, sitting helplessly down, began crying; for there in front of him, a few yards distant, the gray light of the fading evening shone in at a square window-like hole, and into it swept the sweet fresh open air, fragrant as violets after the close, dank smell of the rooms he had left.
It was through this passage-way that the silent rooms behind must have been supplied with pure air. At last Oliver roused himself, and scrambled forward and through the hole. He found that he had come through a blank wall and upon a little brick ledge or shelf that ran along it.
Not far away sat the cat by means of whose aid he had come forth thus to freedom – the end of the silken cord was still around its neck. It was a black and white mangy-looking creature, but Oliver could have kissed it in his joy. He reached out his hand towards it and called to it, but instead of answering it leaped from the brick ledge to the pavement beneath, and the next moment had disappeared into a blind alley across the narrow court upon which Oliver had come through the hole in the wall.
Oliver sat for a moment or two upon the brick ledge, looking about him. Across the way was a high windowless wall of a house, and below that, at a considerable distance, a low building with a double row of windows extending along the length of it. Close to him was a narrow door-way – the only other opening in the wall through which he had just come. The ledge upon which he sat ended abruptly at that door-way. Above him, and at the end of the alley-way, was another blind windowless wall. All this Oliver observed as he sat upon the ledge, swinging his heels. Then he turned and dropped lightly to the pavement beneath. Something chinked in his pocket as he did so; it was the two bottles of water.
"Thank Heaven!" said Oliver, heaving a sigh. "I am safe at last."
There was a sharp click of the latch of the door near to where he stood, and then it opened. "Good-day, monsieur," said a familiar voice. "Your uncle waits supper for you." It was Gaspard, the servant, who stood in the door-way, bowing and grimacing respectfully as he held it open.
Oliver staggered back against the wall behind him, and there leaned, sick and dizzy. Presently he groaned, sick at heart, and looked up and down the length of the narrow street, but not another soul was in sight; there was nothing for him to do but to enter the door that Gaspard held open for him.
"Straight ahead, monsieur," said Gaspard, bowing as Oliver passed him. "I will show you to your uncle, who is waiting for you." He closed the door as he spoke, and, as Oliver stood aside, he passed him with another respectful bow, and led the way down the long, gloomy passage-way, lit only by a narrow window at the farther end.
Scene Sixth. —The master's house
At the end of the passage-way Gaspard opened another door, and then, motioning with his hand, bowed respectfully for the third time.
Oliver passed through the door-way, and it was as though he had stepped from the threshhold of one world into another. Never in his life had he seen anything like that world. He turned his head this way and that, looking about him in dumb bewilderment. In confused perception he saw white and gold panels, twinkling lights, tapestried furniture, inlaid cabinets glittering with glass and china, painted screens whereon shepherds and shepherdesses piped and danced, and white-wigged ladies and gentlemen bowed and postured. A black satin mask, a painted fan, and a slender glove lay upon the blue damask upholstery of a white and gold sofa that stood against the wall – the mask, the fan, and the glove of a fine lady. But all these things Oliver saw only in the moment of passing, for Gaspard led the way directly up the long room with a step silent as that of a cat. A heavy green silk curtain hung in the door-way. Gaspard drew it aside, and Oliver, still as in a dream, passed through and found himself in a small room crowded with rare books, porcelains, crystals, and what not.
But he had no sight for them; for in front of a glowing fire, protected by a square screen exquisitely painted, and reclining in the midst of cushions on a tapestried sofa, clad in a loose, richly-embroidered, quilted dressing-robe, his white hand holding a book, between the leaves of which his finger was thrust, his smiling face turned towards Oliver – sat the master.
As Oliver entered past the bowing Gaspard, he tossed the book aside upon the table, and sprang to his feet.
"Ah, Oliver, my dear child!" he cried. "Is it then thou again? Embrace me!" and he took the limp Oliver into his arms. "Where hast thou been?" And he drew back and looked into Oliver's face.
"I do not know," croaked Oliver, helplessly.
"Ah! Thou hast been gone a long time. Thou art hungry?"
"I was," said Oliver, wretchedly; "but I am not hungry now."
"Nay," said the other; "thou must be hungry. See! Another little supper;" and he motioned with his hand.
Oliver had not noticed it before, but there was a table spread with a white damask cloth, and with chairs placed for two.
"Let Gaspard show you to your apartment, where you may wash and refresh yourself, and by that time the little supper will be ready."
Oliver wondered what all this meant. He could scarcely believe that the smooth-spoken master and the quiet and well-trained serving-man were the same two as those white-faced demons who had grinned and gnashed at him across the blood-red line drawn around the door-way yonder, and yet he could not doubt it.
The supper was over, and the master, with his fingers locked around his glass, leaned across the table towards Oliver, who, after all, had made a good meal of it.
"And those bottles of water," said he. "Did we then bring them with us from that place down yonder?" He jerked his head over his shoulder.
The question was so sudden and so startling that Oliver sank back in his seat, with all the strength gone out of his back – and he was just beginning to feel more easy. He could not speak a word in answer, but he nodded his head.
"Then give them to me," said the other, sharply. And Oliver saw the delicate pointed fingers hook in spite of themselves.
But Oliver was no longer the Oliver that had sat on the bench in front of the inn at Flourens that little while ago; he had passed through much of late, he had gained wisdom, shrewdness, cunning. Instead of helplessly handing the two phials over to the other, as he might have done a few hours before, he suddenly pushed back his chair, and rose to his feet. Not far from him was a window that looked out upon the street; he stepped quickly to it, and flung it open. "Look!" he cried, in a ringing voice. "I know you now – you and your servant. You are devils! You are stronger than I, but I have some power." He drew forth the two bottles from his pocket. "See!" said he, "here is what you have set your soul upon, and for which you desired to kill me. Without you promise me all that I ask, I will fling them both out upon the pavement beneath. And what then? They will be broken, and the water will run down into the gutter and be gone."
There was a moment of dead silence, during which Oliver stood by the open window with the two phials in his hand, and the master sat looking smilingly at him. After a while the smile broke into a laugh.
"Come, Oliver," said he, "you have learned much since I first saw you at Flourens. You are grand in your heroics. What, then, would you have of me, that you thus threaten?"
Oliver thought for a moment. "I would have you let me go from here safe and sound," said he.
"Very good," said the other. "And what else?"
"That you promise I shall suffer no harm either from you or your servant Gaspard."
"Very good. And what else?"
"That you tell me the secret of that dreadful place where I have been."
"Very good. And what else?"
"That you show me the virtue of this water."
"Very good. And what else?"
"That you let me have half the gain that is to be had from it."
"Very good. And what else?"
Oliver thought for a moment or two. "Why this!" said he; "that you tell me why you sought me out at Flourens, and how you knew that I had escaped from that pit into which you had locked me."
"Very good. And what else?"
Oliver thought for another little while. "Nothing else," said he at last.
Once more the other laughed. "If I refuse," said he, "you throw those bottles out of the window?"
Oliver nodded.
"And you know what would then happen?"
Oliver nodded again.
"And if I promise," said he, "what then?"
"I will give to you those bottles that you seek," said Oliver.
"But what shall I promise by? My honor?"
Oliver shook his head.
The other laughed. "Do you not trust that?" said he. "No? By what, then, shall I promise?"
A sudden flash of recollection passed through Oliver's mind, a sudden inspiration came to him. "Promise by this," he cried, in a ringing voice – .
and he drew the figure which he had seen depicted upon the red line around the door-way at the bottom of the stone steps – the line that had kept back Gaspard and his master like a wall of adamant. The other's face grew as black as thunder. There was a sharp click – he had crushed the glass in his hand to fragments. A drop of blood fell from his palm upon the table-cloth, but he did not seem to notice it.
"Promise by that?" said he, a little hoarsely.
"Yes," said Oliver; "by that sign."
The other swallowed as though a hard lump were in his throat. "Very well," said he; "I promise."
Oliver saw that the promise would be kept. He closed the window near to which he stood. When he turned around, the other's face was smooth and smiling again.
"And now sit down," said he, "and let us finish our little supper, then I will tell you the story of those rooms yonder, and of the dead lady whom you found there."