Kitabı oku: «The Wolf-Leader», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XX
TRUE TO TRYST

ON quitting the Countess’s room, Thibault had left the castle by the way which he had described to her, and soon found himself safe beyond its walls and outside the park. And now, for the first time in his life, Thibault had really nowhere to go. His hut was burnt, he was without a friend, and like Cain, he was a wanderer on the face of the earth. He turned to the unfailing shelter of the forest, and there made his way to the lower end of Chavigny; as the day was breaking he came across a solitary house, and asked if he could buy some bread. The woman belonging to it, her husband being away, gave him some, but refused to receive payment for it; his appearance frightened her. Having now food sufficient for the day, Thibault returned to the forest, with the intention of spending his time till evening in a part which he knew between Fleury and Longpont, where the trees were especially thick and tall. As he was looking for a resting place behind a rock, his eye was attracted by a shining object lying at the bottom of a slope, and his curiosity led him to climb down and see what it was. The shining object was the silver badge belonging to a huntsman’s shoulder-belt; the shoulder-belt was slung round the neck of a dead body, or rather of a skeleton, for the flesh had been entirely eaten off the bones, which were as clean as if prepared for an anatomist’s study or a painter’s studio. The skeleton looked as if it had only lain there since the preceding night.

“Ah! ah!” said Thibault, “this is probably the work of my friends, the wolves; they evidently profited by the permission which I gave them.”

Curious to know if possible who the victim was, he examined it more closely; his curiosity was soon satisfied, for the badge, which the wolves had no doubt rejected as less easily digestible than the rest, was lying on the chest of the skeleton, like a ticket on a bale of goods.

J. B. Lestocq,

Head Keeper to the Comte de Mont-Gobert

“Well done!” laughed Thibault, “here is one at least who did not live long to enjoy the result of his murderous act.”

Then, contracting his brow, he muttered to himself, in a low voice, and this time without laughing:

“Is there perhaps, after all, what people call a Providence?”

Lestocq’s death was not difficult to account for. He had probably been executing some order for his master that night, and on the road between Mont-Gobert and Longpont, had been attacked by wolves. He had defended himself with the same knife with which he had wounded the Baron, for Thibault found the knife a few paces off, at a spot where the ground showed traces of a severe struggle; at last, being disarmed, the ferocious beasts had dragged him into the hollow, and there devoured him.

Thibault was becoming so indifferent to everything that he felt neither pleasure nor regret, neither satisfaction nor remorse, at Lestocq’s death; all he thought was, that it simplified matters for the Countess, as she would now only have her husband upon whom she need revenge herself. Then he went and found a place where the rocks afforded him the best shelter from the wind, and prepared to spend his day there in peace. Towards mid-day, he heard the horn of the Lord of Vez, and the cry of his hounds; the mighty huntsman was after game, but the chase did not pass near enough to Thibault to disturb him.

At last the night came. At nine o’clock Thibault rose and set out for the Castle of Mont-Gobert. He found the breach, followed the path he knew, and came to the little hut where Lisette had been awaiting him on the night when he had come in the guise of Raoul. The poor girl was there this evening, but alarmed and trembling. Thibault wished to carry out the old traditions and tried to kiss her, but she sprang back with visible signs of fear.

“Do not touch me,” she said, “or I shall call out.”

“Oh, indeed! my pretty one,” said Thibault, “you were not so sour-tempered the other day with the Baron Raoul.”

“May be not,” said the girl, “but a great many things have happened since the other day.”

“And many more to happen still,” said Thibault in a lively tone.

“I think,” said the waiting-maid in a mournful voice, “that the climax is already reached.”

Then, as she went on in front.

“If you wish to come,” she added, “follow me.”

Thibault followed her; Lisette, without the slightest effort at concealment, walked straight across the open space that lay between the trees and the castle.

“You are courageous to-day,” said Thibault, “and supposing some one were to see us…”

“There is no fear now,” she answered, “the eyes that could have seen us are all closed.”

Although he did not understand what the young girl meant by these words, the tone in which they were spoken made Thibault shiver.

He continued to follow her in silence as they went up the winding-stairs to the first floor. As Lisette laid her hand on the key of the door, Thibault suddenly stopped her. Something in the silence and solitude of the castle filled him with fear; it seemed as if a curse might have fallen on the place.

“Where are we going?” said Thibault, scarcely knowing himself what he said.

“You know well enough, surely.”

“Into the Countess’s room?”

“Into the Countess’s room.”

“She is waiting for me?”

“She is waiting for you.”

And Lisette opened the door. “Go in,” she said.

Thibault went in, and Lisette shut the door behind him and waited outside.

It was the same exquisite room, lighted in the same manner, filled with the same sweet scent. Thibault looked round for the Countess, he expected to see her appear at the dressing-room door, but the door remained closed. Not a sound was to be heard in the room, except the ticking of the Sèvres clock, and the beating of Thibault’s heart. He began to look about him with a feeling of shuddering fear for which he could not account; then his eyes fell on the bed; the Countess was lying asleep upon it. In her hair were the same diamond pins, round her neck the same pearls; she was dressed in the same pink silk dressing-gown, and had on the same little slippers of cloth of silver which she had worn to receive the Baron Raoul.

Thibault went up to her; the Countess did not stir.

“You are sleeping, fair Countess?” he said, leaning over to look at her.

But all at once, he started upright, staring before him, his hair standing on end, the sweat breaking out on his forehead. The terrible truth was beginning to dawn upon him; was the Countess sleeping the sleep of this world or of eternity?

He fetched a light from the mantel-piece, and with trembling hand, held it to the face of the mysterious sleeper. It was pale as ivory, with the delicate veins traced over the temples, and the lips still red. A drop of pink burning wax fell on this still face of sleep; it did not awake the Countess.

“Ah!” cried Thibault, “what is this?” and he put down the candle, which his shaking hand could no longer hold, on the night-table.

The Countess lay with her arms stretched out close to her sides; she appeared to be clasping something in either hand. With some effort, Thibault was able to open the left one; within it he found the little bottle, which she had taken from her dressing case the night before. He opened the other hand; within it lay a piece of paper on which were written these few words: “True to tryst,” – yes, true and faithful unto death, for the Countess was dead!

All Thibault’s illusions were fading one after the other, like the dreams of the night which gradually fade away, as the sleeper becomes more and more thoroughly awake. There was a difference, however, for other men find their dead alive again in their dreams; but with Thibault, his dead did not arise and walk, but remained lying for ever in their last sleep.

He wiped his forehead, went to the door leading into the corridor, and opened it, to find Lisette on her knees, praying.

“Is the Countess dead then?” asked Thibault.

“The Countess is dead, and the Count is dead.”

“From the effect of the wounds given him by the Baron Raoul?”

“No, from the blow with the dagger given him by the Countess.”

“Ah!” said Thibault, grimacing hideously, in his effort to force a laugh in the midst of this grim drama, “all this tale you hint at is new to me.”

Then Lisette told him the tale in full. It was a plain tale, but a terrible one.

The Countess had remained in bed part of the day, listening to the village bells of Puiseux, which were tolling as the Baron’s body was being borne from thence to Vauparfond, where he was to be laid in the family grave. Towards four o’clock the bells ceased; then the Countess rose, took the dagger from under her pillow, hid it in her breast, and went towards her husband’s room. She found the valet in attendance in good spirits; the doctor had just left, having examined the wound, and declared the Count’s life out of danger.

“Madame will agree that it is a thing to rejoice at!” said the valet.

“Yes, to rejoice at indeed.”

And the Countess went on into her husband’s room. Five minutes later she left it again.

“The Count is sleeping,” she said, “do not go in until he calls.”

The valet bowed and sat down in the ante-room to be in readiness at the first call from his master. The Countess went back to her room.

“Undress me, Lisette,” she said to her waiting maid, “and give me the clothes that I had on the last time he came.”

The maid obeyed; we have already seen how every detail of toilet was arranged exactly as it had been on that fatal night. Then the Countess wrote a few words on a piece of paper, which she folded and kept in her right hand. After that, she lay down on her bed.

“Will Madame not take anything,” asked the maid.

The Countess opened her left hand, and showed her a little bottle she was holding inside it.

“Yes, Lisette,” she said, “I am going to take what is in this bottle.”

“What, nothing but that!” said Lisette.

“It will be enough, Lisette; for after I have taken it, I shall have need of nothing more.”

And as she spoke, she put the bottle to her mouth and drank the contents at a draught. Then she said:

“You saw that man, Lisette, who waited for us in the road; I have a meeting with him this evening, here in my room, at half past nine. You know where to go and wait for him, and you will bring him here. I do not wish that anyone should be able to say that I was not true to my word, ever after I am dead.”

Thibault had nothing to say; the agreement made between them had been kept. Only the Countess had accomplished her revenge herself, single-handed, as everyone understood, when the valet feeling uneasy about his master, and going softly into his room to look at him, found him lying on his back with a dagger in his heart; and then hurrying to tell Madame what had happened, found the Countess dead also.

The news of this double death soon spread through the Castle, and all the servants had fled, saying that the exterminating Angel was in the Castle; the waiting-maid alone remained to carry out her dead mistress’s wishes.

Thibault had nothing more to do at the castle, so he left the Countess on her bed, with Lisette near her, and went down stairs. As Lisette had said, there was no fear now of meeting either master or servants; the servants had run away, the master and mistress were dead. Thibault once more made for the breach in the wall. The sky was dark, and if it had not been January, you might have imagined a thunder storm was brewing; there was barely light enough to see the footpath, as he went along. Once or twice Thibault paused; he fancied he had detected the sound of the dry branches cracking under someone’s footsteps keeping pace with his, both to right and left.

Having come to the breach, Thibault distinctly heard a voice say: “that’s the man!” and at the same moment, two gendarmes, concealed on the farther side of the wall, seized Thibault by the collar, while two others came up behind.

It appeared that Cramoisi, jealous with regard to Lisette, had been prowling about at nights on the watch, and had, only the evening before, noticed a strange man come in and go out of the park along the more secluded paths, and he had reported the fact to the head of the police. When the recent serious events that had taken place at the Castle became generally known, orders were given to send four men and take up any suspicious looking person seen prowling about. Two of the men, with Cramoisi for guide, had ambushed on the farther side of the breach, and the two others had dogged Thibault through the park. Then as we have seen, at the signal given by Cramoisi, they had all four fallen upon him as he issued from the breach.

There was a long and obstinate struggle; Thibault was not a man that even four others could overcome without difficulty; but he had no weapon by him, and his resistance was therefore useless. The gendarmes had been more bent on securing him, on account of having recognised that it was Thibault, and Thibault was beginning to earn a very bad name, so many misfortunes having become associated with it; so Thibault was knocked down, and finally bound and led off between two mounted men. The other two gendarmes walked one in front, and one behind. Thibault had merely struggled out of a natural feeling of self-defence and pride, for his power to inflict evil was, as we know, unlimited, and he had but to wish his assailants dead, and they would have fallen lifeless at his feet. But he thought there was time enough for that; as long as there still remained a wish to him, he could escape from man’s justice, even though he were at the foot of the scaffold.

So, Thibault, securely bound, his hands tied, and fetters upon his feet, walked along between his four gendarmes, apparently in a state of resignation. One of the gendarmes held the end of the rope with which he was bound, and the four men made jokes and laughed at him, asking the wizard Thibault, why, being possessed of such power, he had allowed himself to be taken. And Thibault replied to their scoffings with the well-known Proverb: “He laughs best who laughs last,” and the gendarmes expressed a wish that they might be the ones to do so.

On leaving Puiseux behind, they came to the forest. The weather was growing more and more threatening; the dark clouds hung so low that the trees looked as if they were holding up a huge black veil, and it was impossible to see four steps ahead. But he, Thibault saw; saw lights swiftly passing, and crossing one another, in the darkness on either side. Closer and closer drew the lights, and pattering footfalls were heard among the dry leaves. The horses became restive, shied and snorted, sniffing the air and trembling beneath their riders, while the coarse laughter of the men themselves died down. It was Thibault’s turn to laugh now.

“What are you laughing at?” asked one of the gendarmes. “I am laughing at your having left off laughing,” said Thibault.

The lights drew nearer, and the footfalls became more distinct, at the sound of Thibault’s voice. Then a more ominous sound was heard, a sound of teeth striking together, as jaws opened and shut.

“Yes, yes, my friends,” said Thibault, “you have tasted human flesh, and you found it good.”

He was answered by a low growl of approbation, half like a dog’s, and half like a hyena’s.

“Quite so,” said Thibault, “I understand; after having made a meal of a keeper, you would not mind tasting a gendarme.”

The gendarmes themselves were beginning to shudder with fear. “To whom are you talking?” they asked him.

“To those who can answer me,” said Thibault; and he gave a howl. Twenty or more howls responded, some from close at hand, some from farther off.

“H’m!” said one of the gendarmes, “what are these beasts that are following us? this good-for-nothing seems to understand their language?”

“What!” said the shoe-maker, “you take Thibault the wolf-master prisoner, you carry him through the forest at night, and then you ask what are the lights and the howls that follow him!.. Do you hear, friends?” cried Thibault, “these gentlemen are asking who you are. Answer them, all of you together, that they may have no further doubt on the matter.”

The wolves, obedient to their master’s voice, gave one prolonged, unanimous howl. The horses panted and shivered, and one or two of them reared. The gendarmes endeavoured to calm their animals, patting and gentling them.

“That is nothing,” said Thibault, “wait till you see each horse with two wolves hanging on to its hind-quarters and another at its throat.”

The wolves now came in between the horses’ legs, and began caressing Thibault; one of them stood up, and put its front paws on Thibault’s chest, as if asking for orders.

“Presently, presently,” said Thibault, “there is plenty of time; do not be selfish, give your comrades time to come up.”

The men could no longer control their horses, which were rearing and shying, and although going at a foot’s pace, were streaming with sweat.

“Do you not think,” said Thibault, “you would do best now to come to terms with me? That is, if you were to let me free on condition that you all sleep in your beds to-night.”

“Go at a walking pace,” said one of the gendarmes, “as long as we do that, we have nothing to fear.”

Another one drew his sword. A second or two later there was a howl of pain; one of the wolves had seized hold of this gendarme’s boot, and the latter had pierced him through with his weapon.

“I call that a very imprudent thing to do,” said Thibault; “the wolves eat each other, whatever the proverb may say, and once having tasted blood, I do not know that even I shall have the power to hold them back.”

The wolves threw themselves in a body on their wounded comrade, and in five minutes there was nothing left of its carcase but the bare bones. The gendarmes had profited by this respite to get on ahead, but without releasing Thibault, whom they obliged to run alongside of them; what he had foreseen, however, happened. There was a sudden sound as of an approaching hurricane – the whole pack was in pursuit, following them up at full gallop. The horses, having once started trotting, refused to go at a walking pace again, and frightened by the stamping, the smell, and the howls, now set off galloping, in spite of their riders’ efforts to hold them in. The man who had hold of the rope, now requiring both hands to master his horse, let go of Thibault; and the wolves leaped on to the horses, clinging desperately to the cruppers and withers and throats of the terrified animals. No sooner had the latter felt the sharp teeth of their assailants, than they scattered, rushing in every direction.

“Hurrah, wolves! hurrah!” cried Thibault. But the fierce animals had no need of encouragement, and soon each horse had six or seven more wolves in pursuit of him.

Horses and wolves disappeared, some one way some the other, and the men’s cries of distress, the agonised neighings of the horses, and the furious howls of the wolves became gradually fainter and fainter as they travelled farther away.

Thibault was left free once more, and alone. His hands however were still bound, and his feet fettered. First he tried to undo the cord with his teeth, but this he found impossible. Then he tried to wrench his bonds apart by the power of his muscles, but that too was unavailing; the only result of his efforts was to make the cord cut into his flesh. It was his turn to bellow with pain and anger. At last, tired of trying to wrest his hands free, he lifted them, bound as they were, to heaven, and cried:

“Oh! black wolf! friend, let these cords that bind me be loosened; thou knowest well that it is only to do evil that I wish for my hands to be free.”

And at the same moment his fetters were broken and fell to the ground, and Thibault beat his hands together with another roar, this time of joy.

CHAPTER XXI
THE GENIUS OF EVIL

THE next evening, about nine o’clock, a man might be seen walking along the Puits-Sarrasin road and making for the Osiéres forest-path.

It was Thibault, on his way to pay a last visit to the hut, and to see if any remains of it had been left by the fire. A heap of smoking cinders alone marked the place where it had stood; and as Thibault came in sight of it, he saw the wolves, as if he had appointed them to meet him there, forming an immense circle round the ruins, and looking upon them with an expression of mournful anger. They seemed to understand that by destroying this poor hut, made of earth and branches, the one who, by the compact with the black wolf, had been given them for master, had been made a victim. As Thibault entered the circle, all the wolves gave simultaneously a long and sinister sounding howl, as if to make him understand that they were ready to help in avenging him.

Thibault went and sat down on the spot where the hearth had stood; it was recognisable from a few blackened stones still remaining, which were otherwise uninjured, and by a higher heap of cinders just at that spot. He stayed there some minutes, absorbed in his unhappy thoughts. But he was not reflecting that the ruin which he saw around him was the consequence and the punishment of his jealous and covetous desires, which had gone on gathering strength. He felt neither repentance nor regret. That which dominated all other feeling in him was his satisfaction at the thought of being henceforth able to render to his fellow-creatures evil for evil, his pride in having, thanks to his terrible auxiliaries, the power to fight against those who persecuted him.

And as the wolves continued their melancholy howling: “Yes, my friends,” said Thibault, “yes, your howls answer to the cry of my heart… My fellow-creatures have destroyed my hut, they have cast to the winds the ashes of the tools wherewith I earned my daily bread; their hatred pursues me as it pursues you, I expect from them neither mercy nor pity. We are their enemies as they are ours; and I will have neither mercy nor compassion on them. Come then, let us go from this hut to the Castle, and carry thither the desolation which they have brought home to me.”

And then the master of the wolves, like a chief of banditti followed by his desperadoes, set off with his pack in quest of pillage and carnage.

This time it was neither red-deer, nor fallow-deer, nor any timid game of which they were in pursuit. Sheltered by the darkness of the night Thibault first directed his course to the Château of Vez, for there was lodged his chief enemy. The Baron had three farms belonging to the estate, stables filled with horses, and others filled with cows, and the park was full of sheep. All these places were attacked the first night, and on the morrow two horses, four cows, and ten sheep were found killed.

The Baron was doubtful at first if this could be the work of the beasts against which he waged so fierce a warfare; there seemed something partaking rather of intelligence and revenge in it than of the mere unreasoning attacks of a pack of wild animals. Still it seemed manifest that the wolves must have been the aggressors, judging by the marks of teeth on the carcases and the footprints left on the ground. Next night the Baron set watchers to lie in wait, but Thibault and his wolves were at work on the farther side of the forest. This time it was the stables and parks of Soucy and of Vivierès which were decimated, and the following night those of Boursonnes and Yvors. The work of annihilation, once begun, must be carried out with desperate determination, and the master never left his wolves now; he slept with them in their dens, and lived in the midst of them, stimulating their thirst for blood.

Many a woodman, many a heath-gatherer, came face to face in the thickets with the menacing white teeth of a wolf, and was either carried off and eaten, or just saved his life by the aid of his courage and his bill-hook. Guided by a human intelligence, the wolves had become organised and disciplined, and were far more formidable than a band of discontented soldiery let loose in a conquered country.

The terror of them became general; no one dared go beyond the towns and villages unarmed; horses and cattle were all fed inside the stables, and the men themselves, their work done, waited for one another, so as not to go about singly. The Bishop of Soissons ordered public prayer to be made, asking God to send a thaw, for the unusual ferocity of the wolves was attributed to the great quantity of snow that had fallen. But the report also went about that the wolves were incited to their work, and led about by a man; that this man was more indefatigable, more cruel and insatiable than the wolves themselves; that in imitation of his companions he ate raw flesh and quenched his thirst in blood. And the people went further and said that this man was Thibault.

The Bishop pronounced sentence of excommunication against the former shoe-maker. The Lord of Vez, however, had little faith in the thunders of the Church being of much effect, unless supported by some well-conducted hunting. He was somewhat cast down at so much blood being spilt, and his pride was sorely hurt that his, the Grand Master’s, own cattle should have suffered so heavily from the very wolves he was especially appointed to destroy.

At the same time, he could not but feel a secret delight, at the thought of the triumphant view-halloos in store for him, and of the fame which he could not fail to win among all sportsmen of repute. His passion for the chase, excited by the way in which his adversaries the wolves had so openly entered upon the struggle, became absolutely overpowering; he allowed neither respite nor repose; he took no sleep himself and ate his meals in the saddle. All night long he scoured the country in company with l’Eveillé and Engoulevent, who, in consideration of his marriage had been raised to the rank of pricker; and the dawn had no sooner appeared before he was again in the saddle, ready to start and chase the wolf until it was too dark to distinguish the hounds. But alas! all his knowledge of the art of Venery, all his courage, all his perseverance, were lost labour. He occasionally brought down some wretched cub, some miserable beast eaten with mange, some imprudent glutton which had so gorged itself with carnage that its breath would not hold out after an hour or two’s run; but the larger, well-grown wolves, with their thick dark coats, their muscles like steel springs and their long slender feet – not one of these lost a hair in the war that was being made upon them. Thanks to Thibault they met their enemies in arms on nearly equal ground.

As the Baron of Vez remained for ever with his dogs, so did Thibault with his wolves; after a night of sack and pillage, he kept the pack awake on the watch to help the one that the Baron had started. This wolf again, following Thibault’s instructions, had recourse at first to stratagem. It doubled, crossed its tracks, waded in the streams, leaped up into the bending trees so as to make it more difficult still for huntsmen and hounds to follow the scent, and finally when it felt its powers failing, it adopted bolder measures and went straight ahead. Then the other wolves and their master intervened; at the least sign of hesitation on the part of the hounds, they managed so cleverly to put them on the wrong scent, that it required an experienced eye to detect that the dogs were not all following up the same track, and nothing less than the Baron’s profound knowledge could decide which was the right one. Even he sometimes was mistaken.

Again, the wolves in their turn followed the huntsmen; it was a pack hunting a pack; only the one hunted in silence, which made it far the more formidable of the two. Did a tired hound fall behind, or another get separated from the main body, it was seized and killed in an instant, and Engoulevent, whom we have had occasion to mention several times before and who had taken poor Marcotte’s place, having hastened one day to the help of one of his hounds that was uttering cries of distress, was himself attacked and only owed his life to the swiftness of his horse.

It was not long before the Baron’s pack was decimated; his best hounds were nearly dead with fatigue, and his more second-rate ones had perished by the wolves’ teeth. The stable was in no better condition than the kennel; Bayard was foundered, Tancred had sprained a tendon leaping over a ditch, and a strained fetlock had placed Valourous on the list of invalids. Sultan, luckier than his three companions had fallen honourably on the field of battle, having succumbed to a sixteen hours’ run under the weight of his gigantic master, who never for a moment lost courage notwithstanding the fact that the dead bodies of his finest and most faithful servitors lay heaped around him.

The Baron, following the example of the noble-hearted Romans who exhausted the resources of military art against the Carthaginians who were for ever re-appearing as enemies, the Baron, I repeat, changed his tactics and tried what battues could accomplish. He called on all available men among the peasants, and beat up the game throughout the forest with such a formidable number of men, that not so much as a hare was left in its form near any spot which they had passed.

But Thibault made it his business to find out beforehand where these battues were going to take place, and if he ascertained that the beaters were on the side of the forest towards Viviers or Soucy, he and his wolves made an excursion to Boursonnes or Yvors; and if the Baron and his men were busy near Haramont or Longpré, the people of Corcy and Vertefeuille were made painfully aware of Thibault and his wolves.

In vain the Lord of Vez drew his cordon at night round the suspected enclosures, so as to begin the attack with daylight; never once did his men succeed in starting a wolf, for not once did Thibault make a mistake in his calculations. If by chance he had not been well informed, and was uncertain in what direction the Baron and his men were going, he called all his wolves together, sending express couriers after them as the night set in; he then led them unobserved down the wooded lane leading to Lessart-l’Abbesse, which at that time ran between the forest of Compiègne and the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and so was able to pass from one to the other. This state of things went on for several months. Both the Baron and Thibault carried out the task each had set before himself, with equally passionate energy; the latter, like his adversary, seemed to have required some supernatural power, whereby he was able to resist fatigue and excitement; and this was the more remarkable seeing that during the short intervals of respite accorded by the Lord of Vez, the Wolf-leader was by no means at peace in himself.