"If I could know," said Bertie, "when I shall be interrogated it would be much."
"No mortal man in the Bastille can tell you that," the King's Lieutenant interrupted, "not even De Launey himself. The examiner, or judge, comes at fitful times and without warning. He came a week ago; he may come again next week; he may not come again for a year, or for two years."
"Is it because he did not concern himself with my case a week ago that I am now moved?" Bertie asked wistfully; "is it because I am passed over and may have to wait a long time now that this change takes place?"
The officer shrugged his shoulders and turned his face away. He was a soldier and had a heart within him, in spite of being the Lieutenant of the Bastille, and he could not reply that Bertie had guessed accurately, that it was because he had been passed over, and might, in consequence, be passed over for years, that he was now removed from the chapel.
"I see. I understand," Bertie said. "I understand very well. I may linger on here till I am old; I may become, if I live long enough, the oldest prisoner!" Then, once more addressing the Lieutenant, he said, though without any hope of receiving an answer:
"If I could only know to whom or what I owe this incarceration it might ease my mind; might, perhaps, enable me to confute the charge that in years to come may be brought against me. Can you not help me! – me, a brother soldier?"
Bluet and Pierre had left the chapel with the furniture and bedding, so that they were alone now, and the Lieutenant, glancing round the place, said softly:
"Have you no suspicion? Can you not guess? Does not your memory point to one whom you have injured?"
"My memory," replied Bertie, "points to one who has injured me and those I love so deeply that, if had the power, he would have caused me to be sent here. But even his devilish malignity could not procure him that. He cannot have the power."
He had thought of Fordingbridge over and over again as the man whose hand might have inflicted this last deadly blow, yet he could never convince himself that it could indeed be he. He would be almost as much an outcast now, if in the city, as he would have been in London with a price upon his head. How, he had asked himself, could it be Fordingbridge?
And the Lieutenant's next words, uttered in almost a whisper, in spite of their being still alone, seemed to confirm his doubts.
"Think again," he said; "reflect on some other than this one you mention; on one whom you injured, whose ambition you thwarted in its dearest design; on one who is powerful, has the ear of the King, who could send you here, and did so. Reflect!"
Bertie drew back in amazement and stared at the Lieutenant, unable to believe his own ears. Then he repeated:
"Whose ambition I thwarted! One who is powerful-the friend of the King! Oh, 'tis impossible, impossible! Some awful mistake has been made. I know no one such as that. No one."
Then, clasping his hands together, while his voice rang out clear and distinct in that vaulted chapel, he exclaimed, "For God's sake, help me in this! For God's sake, tell me to whom you refer!"
"Hush!" said the other. "Hush! They are coming back. And as for the name, it must never pass my lips. If the recollection of your own actions cannot help you now, I can do no more;" and, seeing the turnkeys at the door, he said in his usual tones, "Monsieur, follow me to your new apartment."
Dazed with what he had heard, Elphinston obeyed him, and slowly they went through the gloomy passages and up more stairs through iron-plated doors, until they stood at the one which opened into the calotte of the tower above the chapel-so called because, being the topmost chamber in the roof, it resembled a calotte, or fool's cap, or extinguisher.
"Messieurs," said the Lieutenant to the inmates of the room when the door had been unlocked and unbarred, "allow me to present to you a comrade. Let me trust you will be agreeable to each other. Monsieur de Chevagny, you are the father of the house; I commit him to you." Then, glancing over to a bed in the corner, on which a dark-haired man lay sleeping with his face turned to the wall, the Lieutenant shrugged his shoulders and said, "Mon Dieu! le fou sleeps heavily. Well, we need not disturb him. No presentations are necessary with him."
The man addressed as Chevagny-whom Bertie could not but regard with interest, despite the whirl in which his brain was at the strange, inexplicable revelations of the Lieutenant-rose with courtesy from a chair as his name was mentioned, and, coming towards Bertie, held out a thin hand. His hair was snow-white and of great length, while his face, partly from age and partly, perhaps, from long confinement, was shrivelled and wan. What his clothes might have originally been it was impossible to guess; now they were a mass of rags and tatters, patched in some places, in others hanging in shreds. Round his neck he wore for a cravat the sleeve of an old shirt; while the soles of his shoes, which were full of holes, were joined to the upper parts by pieces of pack thread. All over his face there grew a great beard as white as the hair on his head, and this may have helped to keep him warm, especially as over his breast it was tucked inside a shirt that was almost black from long wear. Yet, with all this ragged misery, those features of his face which his hair and beard allowed to be seen were refined and elegant, were the features of a well-born man.
"Sir," he said to Bertie as he held out his hand, "what there is here I welcome you to, and I can only pray that it may not be your lot to grow as familiar with this place as I have become. For now-now-" and Bertie could see his old lips tremble as he spoke, "this place has grown through my unhappiness to be the only spot on earth that I know of-my only home."
"Monsieur le Marquis," said Bertie, "for your greeting, sad as it is and sad as is the spot where we meet, I thank you. So long as I am here-so long! – I shall respect and pity you."
He had taken no heed of the figure on the bed while he was speaking, having, indeed, his back turned to it, but now it forced him to observe it.
For, as he spoke for the first time, that figure-its wild eyes staring as though about to start from its head, and its hands opening and shutting convulsively-was kneeling on the bed, muttering, whining, gasping behind him.
And, turning round suddenly and seeing its contortions and its awful maniacal fear, Bertie reeled back across the calotte, exclaiming:
"My God! Fordingbridge! Face to face at last!"
CHAPTER XXIV
BROKEN HEARTS
Yet in that very moment he knew that once more Fordingbridge had escaped his vengeance. He recognised in the creature which had flung itself at his feet and was moving, grimacing, and chattering there, that he was mad-that he could no longer right his wrongs by choking the life out of it. Those wild, misty eyes, extended to their utmost with fear and maniacal frenzy, told only too plainly that the brain behind them was gone for ever, that henceforward he had to do with a thing that lived, it was true, but had no sense nor reason. Yet the maniac recognised him, he observed, was striving in his way to sue for mercy-could he be so mad as to be safe from his revenge?
"You know him?" asked the marquis, in his sad, weak voice, he having witnessed the scene with astonishment. "You know him?"
"To my bitter cost. Until to-day I thought-so much has he wronged me-that to him also I owed my detention here. Yet that, it seems now, can hardly be. Monsieur, how long has he been your companion?"
De Chevagny paused a moment as though endeavouring to count the time since first his companion had been there-his blue eyes gazing out wistfully to the Rue St. Antoine, the roofs of which could plainly be seen from this room-then he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I cannot tell. I do not know. I have lost the power of keeping count. Yet-yet-it must be many weeks. We had no fire when first he came, and-and-the swallows were- No," he broke off, "I cannot remember."
That told Bertie much; told him that it could scarcely have been Fordingbridge who had been the cause, even though indirect, of his being seized and sent here. They must have come in almost at the same time. Who, then, was the strange, mysterious man of power-the friend of the King, of whom the Lieutenant had spoken, the man whose deadly vengeance he had incurred?
"Begone!" he said to his old enemy, still grovelling at his feet; "away from me, I say. Heavens!" he exclaimed, "must this companionship be added to my other sufferings? Is the Bastille so small, or are its chambers so crowded, that this wretch and I could not be kept apart? Oh, what an irony of Fate that I who have sought him so long must meet him thus!"
"Monsieur," said De Chevagny, while still Fordingbridge knelt at Bertie's feet, wringing his hands and muttering, "monsieur, if his wrongs to you, his evil doings, are not beyond all forgiveness, you may pardon him now, almost pity him. He is doomed to death, I hear; nothing, not even his madness, can save him."
"Pity him!" exclaimed Bertie, "pity him! He has ruined, broken my life for ever; how can I pity him? And, even though he be not the cause of my presence here, I curse the hour that he was born, the day that threw him across my path!"
"They say," repeated the wretched maniac, his eyes glinting about the room in his frenzy, "they say nothing can save me. The priests will have my blood, will have me broken upon the wheel, will even refuse me absolution at the last. Yet I confessed to one of them-I confessed-I should be spared."
"What fresh crime have you committed that brings you here?" asked Elphinston sternly of him. "What deed of treachery-or worse?"
"I slew him," said Fordingbridge, still shaking all over, "because I hated him, because he wrought my downfall. I came behind him on-on-the place, I had the knife up my sleeve thus," and he bent his hand as though to illustrate the holding of a concealed dagger's hilt in it, "and when he turned from me I drove it home. He was dead a moment afterwards. Dead! Dead at my feet!" and he leered hideously as he spoke.
"Who was it you assassinated thus, in a manner so well becoming all your actions? Some poor, feeble creature unable to protect himself; some old man or stripling, perhaps, and unarmed?"
Was it well that Bertie did not suspect? If he had known, if he could but have known or guessed that, so far from being such as he imagined, the victim had been his own stalwart friend and comrade who had fallen beneath the foul assassin's knife, could he have restrained himself enough not to have dashed his brains out against the prison walls?
"Ha! ha!" laughed Fordingbridge, while at the same time there came into his eyes the awful look of cunning so peculiar to maniacs-"ha! ha! I know. But the secret's mine-mine-and the priests'. Yet, though I confided in them-confessed to them-they still denounced me, will now slay me. They say," he went on, putting out a long, shaking finger and endeavouring to touch the arm of the poor old marquis, who shrank back from him as from some foul creature, "they say that not even my English peerage can save me, since the priests are determined to have vengeance. Do you think that is so? Will they kill an English peer?"
"There is," said De Chevagny coldly-for now he knew that the creature he had pitied when first he came to this room was a cold-blooded assassin who had probably gone mad from terror afterwards-"there is no reason why they should not. The priests have slain many French peers who were not murderers-Son Eminence Grise more than a hundred, they say. Why should they not slay an English peer who is such as you are?"
"But not by the wheel," Fordingbridge moaned, "not by the wheel. Oh, to think of it!" and again he mowed and mouthed as he spoke. "I have seen men killed thus-there was one at-at-I forget the place-my memory is gone-but I saw him. They broke his bones with iron bars, and finished by beating in his chest-bone, and-" breaking off inconsequently, "I want my dinner; I am hungry."
In disgust the others turned away from him, while he threw himself on his bed in the corner and moaned again that he was hungry.
"I have had many strange companions in this cell in my time," said Chevagny, in his quiet, sad tones, "but never one like this. It is an insult to put such as he is in with us."
"Will they execute him as he fears?" asked Bertie. "I had always thought that the Bastille detained its prisoners or sent them forth free. I knew not that condemned men went from it to meet their death."
"Many have so gone forth," the other replied, "though generally only traitors. Yet this man stands in evil case, too; he has murdered, I judge from what he has now said, a priest-a Jesuit; if so, he must die, for the Jesuits are powerful in the Bastille-Gerville, the chaplain, is himself one. And, if he is a murderer, he should die."
"In truth he should," replied Bertie, "nor would I lift a finger to save him. For he is a murderer in more senses than one: he has slain two lives already-my own and another. I had sworn to myself to kill him if we ever met; we have done so, and lo! I cannot slay him. No matter, let the Place de Grève do its work!"
That he should feel no pity for the wretch lying there on his bed was not strange; he had wrought far too much bitter woe to Elphinston for such a sentiment to rise into his heart. Indeed, instead of pity, there had come into his mind now a great desire to discover, if possible, who the victim could be whom Fordingbridge had slain. He had not actually said it was a priest, though the Marquis de Chevagny had suggested that it was one, and as Bertie pondered on all this a terrible idea flashed into his mind-was the victim Archibald Sholto? He knew that Fordingbridge hated him, he knew that Archibald possessed many secrets of his; could it be that he had come upon him unawares and slain him? If so, if such was the case, then it was not strange that the Jesuits had determined upon his execution. And as he reflected on all this he determined that, if Fordingbridge were not taken away to his doom at once, he would find out who it was that had fallen victim to his treachery.
Bluet came in as he made these resolutions, and began busying himself with preparing their midday meal, laying three covers at the table in the middle of the room. As, usual the fellow was in his accustomed semi-drunken condition, which Bertie had long since discovered was owing to his habit of abstracting some or all of the prisoners' wine ere he brought it to them-a pleasing custom none complained of, since he was, otherwise, an obliging rascal; and, as usual, he began to chatter in his familiar manner to those in the calotte.
"Ma foi!" he exclaimed, "if things go on as they now are, we shall soon have no guests at all. The examiners come again to-night; we are informed they will dine with le vieux singe De Launey; there will be some clearances to-morrow morning."
It was natural that at these words hope should spring into the breast of Elphinston; that he should be excited with the thought that now his case might be considered. Also, perhaps, it was natural that to De Chevagny they caused not the slightest emotion.
"Is-is there any possibility, any chance of knowing who will be called before them?" asked the former. "Can you, Bluet, give any guess?"
"Mon Dieu! non," replied the other, "not the least. When D'Argenson, who is the presiding Examiner, has supped-and, Heavens! he will punish old De Launey's vin de Brequiny, which is a wine to make the goats dance-then he will call for the list of our visitors, and will go over it from the first here to the last; and from that list he will select the names of some, but who they will be D'Argenson and his friend, the devil, alone can tell."
"There will be one," said the marquis softly, "whose name at least he will not select-one who is forgotten by all outside these walls. Yet, how well he was known and loved once by many-by many!"
"Ah, Monsieur le Marquis," said the good-natured vagabond, trying to cheer him, "what should we within the walls do if he did not forget you? Mon Dieu! I would disband myself, would go forth also if you, the father of our company, our Bastille flower, left us. Non, non, marquis, we cannot part with you. You are our father, our pride."
"I was here," said the poor old prisoner, shaking his head-and as he did so he shook a drop from each of his eyes on to his long beard-"when Bernaville was Governor. He put me first in the Tour de la Comte, where Lauzun had been, and where, when he tried to escape, they hanged his servant outside his door as a warning; him they dared not hang; and then I thought always that the Examiner-it was D'Argenson's father in those far-off days-might send for me. But he never did, he never did. And none have sent for me yet, and never will. You will go," he said, looking at Elphinston, "as the others have gone, and he," looking at the maniac on the bed, "will go to his doom, but I shall remain until I go, too-unto my grave. Ah, my grave, my grave! And then-I may see again the young wife they took me from-'tis almost forty-three years ago-and the little babe I left slumbering on her breast; the little child that we were going to make so brave a feast over and christen Brigide because it was my mother's name, because it had blue eyes like hers."
Bertie had turned his face away from the old man to hide his tears, and now he took him by the hand and wrung it softly, while Bluet, who, for a turnkey of the Bastille, seemed also much affected, exclaimed boisterously:
"Courage, courage, monsieur! We may lose you yet to our desolation. And Madame la Marquise may welcome you still-without doubt she lives for you-and la petite mademoiselle, now surely a great lady, as a De Chevagny must be. Heart of grace, monsieur, heart of grace, and see the fine dinner I have brought you! Regardez moi ça. Here is a fish-ombre chevalier, of the best-and two pigeons, some beef with the gravy in it, and a salad, some rennets and biscuits, and, for the wine, two little bottles. Because, you see, monsieur," turning to Bertie with a husky whisper, "here in the calottes the visitors drink not with such abundance as in the chapel rooms. 'Tis not my fault."
"Why," exclaimed the marquis, in a stern voice very different from that in which he had just spoken, and regarding the table fiercely, "have you placed three covers? Who are the three?"
"Mon Dieu! you are three, monsieur. Le fou-the English lord-must eat too, is it not so? The portion is for three, and a good one at that."
"He is a villain!" exclaimed the old marquis, his eyes flashing. "He shall not sit at the table. I thought his drivellings of murder were not true, until this gentleman came, and that he was a harmless idiot. Now, I know he is a villain. And-and-I am a gentleman-a peer of France-he shall not sit at meat with me."
"Faith! then he must eat on his bed. Here, fool," Bluet exclaimed, going up to Fordingbridge, who seemed more dazed than ever, though he had been regarding the food eagerly; "the marquis will not have you at the table; eat there!" and he flung a platter down before him, on which there was some of the beef and salad, and an apple, or rennet, all mixed together.
The miserable wretch sprang at the portion like a wild beast that was famished, and devoured it in a few moments, and then threw himself on the bed again and either slept or pretended to do so, while the marquis and Bertie, taking no notice of him, discussed their meal, which, in spite of Bluet's eulogies, was not a very solid one. And during its progress they took the opportunity of telling each other a good deal of their various affairs and history, though, since the poor marquis had been immured so many years, his did not take long in the recital. Yet it was pitiful to hear.
"I had been married but a year," he said. "I was young-but twenty-five-well to do; nay, rich and happy. Then I wrote a little ballade, a harmless one, upon La Vallière; it was sung about the streets, it reached Marly and Versailles, and-and-that was all! A week later I was here-and it is forty-three years ago. O Jeanne, my wife! O Brigide, my little child, my babe! where are you both now? Forty-three years! Forty-three years! Forty-three years! If they should see me they would not know me. Jeanne could not recognize in me the young husband who was torn from her side; my little girl never knew me, will never know me now."
That Bertie's expressions of pity and sympathy with the poor old prisoner eased his grief he could not flatter himself, nothing could bring comfort, he knew, to that broken heart and wasted life. Moreover, he was himself too appalled, too overshadowed, by the dread of what might be his own fate to give much consolation to the other. He was young, almost as young as the marquis had been when he was brought here; he might be here, in this very calotte, forty-three years hence. Could there be any horror greater than this to look forward to? Anything more dreadful than such as this, to freeze the very life out of him!
Yet, he hoped that it was not possible; he even hoped that to-night, when the judges came, might see his liberty announced. For he knew now that he must be the victim of some awful error; there was no man in France whom he had injured, no man whom he knew who held the rank and power which the King's Lieutenant said his enemy held. How, then, could he have come here except by a mistake?
Bluet brought their supper at eight o'clock and announced to them that D'Argenson had arrived with two other examiners, or judges, as they were termed indifferently; that they were supping with De Launey, and that, when this was finished, they would proceed to the great hall, where those who were to be examined would be summoned one by one before them.
"And when-when," asked Bertie, "shall I know if-if-I am passed over?" while it seemed to him as he spoke as though his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth so that he was scarcely intelligible.
Bluet shrugged his shoulders ere he answered, then he said:
"'Tis scarce possible to say. Mon Dieu! in this place day and night scarce know distinction. They may sit till daybreak-I have known them do it when making a great clearance, and we have had to rouse our guests from their beds to go before them. Yet, 'tis not always so; ordinarily, by midnight, the affair is finished."
"So that," said Bertie, "I can know nothing for certain until the morrow."
Again Bluet shrugged his shoulders, again he answered dubiously that, "en vêrité, that might be so;" and then, saying that "Monsieur le Capitaine must hope for the best," he took himself off.
So, in this hapless frame of mind, Bertie sat down to pass the first night in his new lodging. That he should sleep was impossible, and therefore bidding the marquis, who had already got into his bed, "Good-night," he dragged a chair in front of the barred fireplace and sat there brooding through the hours. Of Fordingbridge, who was lying outside his bed, neither of the others had taken any heed, and even when he muttered incoherently Bertie regarded him not.
As he sat there watching the fire die, he heard the great clock over the gateway strike eleven; as he still sat on, listening for any sound which might announce the coming of those who would be sent to fetch him, he heard it strike twelve. Yet still no one came. By this time the candle in the socket high up out of reach was flickering and flaring at its last ebb and throwing great shadows on the walls; and once, as he looked round the room, disturbed by some movement of Fordingbridge's, he saw that the latter was sitting up on his bed peering at him with his great hollow vacant eyes, in which the glare of madness was almost intensified by the unsteady waverings of the candle's flame. Then, as the great clock tolled one, the light went out, and he heard Fordingbridge throw himself back on his bed.
Still the time went on-once Fordingbridge laughed in the dark, an imbecile, vacant laugh; once, he could have sworn, he heard him mutter "Sholto!" and once he moved uneasily on his pallet and groaned-and then the clock struck two. But still he sat on in the darkness before the dead fire, waiting, waiting. And, at last, he heard a sound of a door opening in a distant corridor, then another, and then footsteps approaching. And a moment later Bluet's voice was speaking outside.
"Monsieur," he heard him say, "Je regrette beau-coup, but the judges have departed; monsieur's chance is not yet arrived."
And with a heartbroken groan Bertie groped his way to where his bed had been placed and flung himself upon it, while, as he did so, he heard his maniacal foe at the other end of the calotte muttering to himself and laughing once more.