The Road to Paris Part 36

He now pressed on to the tower. At some rods from it, he dismounted and tied his horse. He then advanced cautiously, to make sure that the place was deserted. Suddenly he stopped, at sound of a furious gallop on the road from Ca.s.sel to Melsungen. While he listened, the horse's footfalls came to an abrupt stop. After a few minutes of silence, there arose the sound of some one treading crisp leaves, and forcing a way through underbrush. d.i.c.k grasped his sword and waited, knowing he would have to face but one person,--for the galloping had been of a solitary horse.

The newcomer soon appeared on foot, among the trees. It was Captain von Romberg, in great excitement and alarm.

"You are still here!" he gasped, seizing d.i.c.k's hand. "Thank G.o.d, I am in time!"

"In time for what?" asked d.i.c.k.

"In time to save you and our comrades. Come, the others are in the tower, are they not?"

"The others are on their way, under a guard, to Spangenberg."

"My G.o.d! Then I am too late! I thought I might give a half-hour's warning! We have been betrayed!"

"So it is evident. What do you know of it? Come, my dear Count, sit here on this log, and tell me."

The two sat down together at one side of the doorway, outside the tower.

"I got word from--a certain lady," began Von Romberg, in a half breathless, heart-broken voice, "to come to her at once, as she was suddenly at the point of death. This was a short time before I was to have started for the meeting this afternoon. When I entered her room I found her perfectly well, but in great trepidation. She said I must not leave her house till night. When I insisted on going, now that I had found she was not ill, she broke down, and told me everything. You must know she is the--she is on close terms with the secretary of Rothenstein, minister of police. Through this secretary she had learned that we have all been terribly tricked. Our conspiracy was instigated with the Landgrave's own authority! It was an idea of old Rothenstein's, and the villain who carried it out was Mesmer!"

"But,--I don't understand. Why should the Landgrave authorize a conspiracy against himself?"

"In order to have a reason, in the eyes of his subjects and of other powers, for removing certain objectionable persons from his way. You are an Englishman, St. Valier a Frenchman. Without a good pretext he would not dare have you two imprisoned, lest your governments might call him to account. Moreover, if he took any arbitrary step against yourself, the people might think he was secretly angry at you for having saved the Landgravine's life. And then, this woman told me, there is a lady whose hatred the Landgrave does not wish to incur, and he would incur it by causing your destruction; but now it will appear that you have brought destruction on yourself by plotting high treason."

"What a diabolical scheme!"

"You see, my dear Wetheral, we, who have supposed ourselves to be conspirators, are the ones who have really been conspired against. All was perfectly arranged. Even the choice of officers by lot was so managed by Mesmer, who conducted the drawing, that you and St. Valier were designated."

"The base-hearted Landgrave would remove both her protectors! But what proof will there be against us, beyond Mesmer's testimony? And will not Mesmer's testimony betray the Landgrave's whole design?"

"Mesmer will give no testimony. They have proof sufficient, of the kind they desire. This very afternoon they found the signed compact in your room; they knew from Mesmer exactly where it was hidden. Mesmer will not even appear among the accused. It was part of the plan that he should be allowed to escape, and to stay out of the country till the others were disposed of. To that escape and absence, the rest of us would attribute his not being punished with us,--and not to his having sold us to the Landgrave. Thus the world was to be kept from knowing the despicable part this wretch had played. And now mark how little these villains trust one another. Fearful, I suppose, lest the Landgrave would after all let him suffer, in order to make sure of his silence, Mesmer stipulated that he should be allowed to escape at the moment of arrest.

Mesmer once inside a prison, he doubtless thought, the Landgrave might consider a dungeon--or a grave--the safest place for a man who possessed the secret of so detestable a transaction. And, to keep his treachery the more hidden, he provided that the arrest and his apparent escape should be entrusted to an officer not acquainted with him."

"But how then could the officer know which man was to escape?"

"Mesmer was to be distinguished by a cloak of a particular color," said Romberg.

"The devil!" cried d.i.c.k, smiling despite all circ.u.mstances. "And the cloak happened to be on me at the time of the escape."

"Listen!" said Romberg, abruptly. "Some one is coming."

The sounds of an approach were indeed heard from the side towards the depths of the forest. The two gentlemen rose, and grasped their swords.

A moment later a man stepped into view, whom they both recognized by sight. He was a French valet of the Landgrave's.

"Pardon, messieurs!" he exclaimed, after a start of fright at so suddenly coming upon the two threatening-looking gentlemen. "I have come here merely to look for a riding-whip dropped by Mademoiselle de St.

Valier a short time ago." And he stepped into the tower, where he began to search with his feet the paving, which was in comparative darkness.

For a moment d.i.c.k's heart was stilled. The blood left his cheeks; power left his voice. He followed the valet in. "Do you mean to say that Mademoiselle de St. Valier was here in this tower a short while ago?" he asked, in a forced voice, when he could speak at all. He remembered the cloaked lady riding from the copse with the Landgrave.

"Yes, monsieur," replied the lackey, adding in a significant tone, "and in very excellent company. Ah, here is the whip, and very far back in the tower, too."

"You rascal!" cried d.i.c.k, his energy returning with vehemence, and seized the valet by arm and neck. "Do you dare say that Mademoiselle de St. Valier was in this tower alone with the Landgrave? Come into the light, you miserable cur, that I may see the lie on your villainous face!" And d.i.c.k dragged the fellow from the tower.

"Let me go, monsieur!" whimpered the lackey, wriggling in terror. "_Mon Dieu_, is it the fault of a poor servant if a lady-in-waiting allows herself to be seduced by the Landgrave? Don't make an honest man pay for the sins of a prince's harlot!"

"My G.o.d, Romberg, do you hear that?" cried d.i.c.k, throwing the valet to the ground. "And do you _see_ that?" he added, picking up the whip, of which he now recognized the curiously formed handle, though his last sight of it had been on that New Jersey road where, three years and a half ago, he had volunteered to recover her stolen miniature.

Von Romberg, who had begun to understand the situation in a general way, shook his head sadly, and said, with quiet tenderness, "We must not expect too much of the s.e.x, my friend."

d.i.c.k sank down on the log, dropping the whip, and began to weep like a child. The wild suspicion had seized him that Catherine might have favored the prospective marriage to himself either as a cloak for a liaison with the Landgrave or as a refuge on the possible termination of such liaison. The valet, making no attempt to recover the whip, now used his opportunity to rise and dash off through the woods.

Suddenly d.i.c.k started up, and faced his kindly, pitying friend.

"I will find out!" he cried. "The thing is too d.a.m.nable for belief. I'll not hold a woman guilty till I've seen with my own eyes, or heard from her own lips. I will go to her as fast as my horse can carry me!"

"But," said Romberg, in great alarm, grasping him with strong arms around the body, "is she in Ca.s.sel?"

"She is in the palace. Don't delay me, Romberg, for G.o.d's sake!"

"But they will arrest you. You are guilty of high treason, man. They are doubtless searching for you now. It is madness and suicide to go to the palace. My friend, would you throw yourself into the Landgrave's hands?"

For d.i.c.k, exerting all his strength, was violently getting the better of Romberg's hindering embrace.

"I would learn the truth!" he cried. "If that lackey lied, I shall either escape again or be content to die. I would rather die and know her pure, than live forever and doubt her honor." And, hurling Romberg away from him, he was free.

"And what if you find the story true?" called Romberg after him, in a voice of sympathetic dismay.

"I will kill the Landgrave!" cried d.i.c.k, and bounded through the bushes, towards his horse.

Late that night Catherine de St. Valier sat in her apartment in the palace, accompanied only by one of the inferior attendants, a girl named Gretel, who was devoted to her. At one side of the chamber a pair of curtains concealed the alcove in which the bed was. At the other side was a door communicating with a corridor. The chamber window overlooked, at some height, an open s.p.a.ce--a kind of small park--at the rear of the palace. Outside the window was a little balcony, and not far away was one of a few tall trees that grew in the small park. On a dressing-table was a candelabrum, with but one of its branches lighted, so that the interior of the room was dim to the sight. The night had recently clouded over, and only at intervals could the moon be seen through the dark window.

Catherine sat on a small couch, her face as pale as death, gazing at the opposite wall with wide-open eyes, in which grief and horror had given way to a kind of trance-like stupor. Now and then she would give a slight start, and a tremor would pa.s.s through her body, which was attired in a loose white gown lightly confined at the waist. At such moments she would turn her eyes furtively towards the door leading from the corridor. Near this door sat the maid, Gretel, silently watching with pitying eyes the half dead lady-in-waiting.

Suddenly the window, which was made of two cas.e.m.e.nts running each from top to bottom, was flung rudely open, and in from the balcony stepped a man, who immediately stood still and looked around until his eyes fell on Catherine.

She rose quickly to her feet, and, with bowed head, said, in a low and lifeless voice:

"You find me waiting, your highness."

"Highness!" echoed the intruder. "Then you did expect him. It is true.

My G.o.d!"

She gazed at him like a woman struck dumb with astonishment, then staggered to the dressing-table, took up the candle, and moved swiftly towards him, holding the light so as to illumine his face.

"It is his spirit," she whispered, having made sure that the features were those of Wetheral. The girl, Gretel, now gently took the light from Catherine's hand, lest Catherine might, in her half swooning condition, drop it, and replaced it on the dressing-table.

"It is no spirit, mademoiselle," said d.i.c.k, in a broken voice, "but a living man who might better be dead, for his last hope is killed, his faith crushed, his heart torn with misery! Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d! Oh, Catherine, Catherine!" And he fell prostrate on the couch, hiding his weeping eyes upon his arm, and yielding his body to be shaken by sobs.

Catherine stood looking at him, while her bewildered ideas approached a definite shape. But, before she could speak, he sprang to his feet, his grief having been succeeded by a wave of fierce and bitter reproach.