CHAPTER XVII.
I TAKE A VOW.
For an instant I was so shaken by that dead weight on my arm, by that white drawn face turned blindly up to mine, that my heart stopped in my bosom; for I recalled that other white face and that other limp form I had seen but a moment since. Then I shook the horror off.
“She has only fainted,” I told myself. “She is not dead; she cannot be dead; it is nothing; it will pass in a moment;” and gripping my teeth together in a very agony of effort I lifted her in my arms and set off up the hillside toward the ledge which Pasdeloup had pointed out. How I reached it I know not, for ere I covered half the distance the world was reeling red before me and the blood pounding like a hammer in my brain. But reach it I did, and pushing aside that curtain of vines, I saw behind it the dark entrance to the cavern, framed by the solid rock. I stooped and entered, then laid my burden gently on the hard, dry floor, and flung myself well-nigh senseless beside her.
But a moment or two sufficed to give me back my breath, and struggling to my feet I first assured myself that the leafy curtain had fallen naturally into place. Then I made a quick circuit of the cavern. I found it rudely circular, with a diameter of perhaps a rod and a height of half as much. Pasdeloup had doubtless occupied it more than once, for in one corner was a pile of dry moss, which had evidently served for a bed. To this I bore that still, limp body and fell to chafing wrist and temple, with a harrowing fear again gripping my heart. She was so pale, so haggard, her hands were so cold and nerveless, that I was almost ready to believe that the horrors and hardships of the night had slain her. There was no pulse, no respiration....
Despairingly I let the limp hand fall. My path lay clear before me—I would share the fate of my companions—I would die beside them!
I bent and kissed her lips, softly, reverently. And in that instant a gentle sigh came from them, her eyes opened and she lay looking up at me.
“Then you are not dead!” I cried. “You are not dead!” And I caught up her hands again and chafed them madly, feeling with joy indescribable the warmth of life returning to them.
She lay still a moment longer, then gently drew her hands away and raised herself to a sitting posture.
“Where are we?” she questioned, staring about her in the green half-light which filtered through the leafy curtain.
“We are in a cavern which Pasdeloup knew of,” I explained. “We are safe.”
“I thought we were under the ocean,” she said, still staring about her. “Far down in the depths of the ocean—I have always fancied it must be like this. But where are the others?” she demanded suddenly.
“That I do not know,” I answered as cheerfully as I could. “No doubt they have escaped in another direction;” but in my heart I knew the absurdity of such a hope.
“You left them, then?” she questioned, looking at me from under level brows.
“M. le Comte commanded it,” I answered flushing. “Do you not remember?”
She pressed her hands to her temples.
“I remember nothing,” she said at last, “except that we climbed a great mountain, and that your arm was about me, aiding me.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that her memory stopped there.
“Shall I go back and look for them?” I asked.
“No, no!” she protested, and caught my hand. “Do not leave me here—at least not yet!”
“I shall have to go before long. We must have food.”
“I want no food—I feel as though I never shall.”
“Nevertheless you must eat. You must be strong and brave. We have a long journey before us.”
“A long journey?”
“Yes; we shall not be really safe until we are among M. le Comte’s friends in the Bocage.”
“Is that far?” she asked.
“Not so far but that we shall win through safely,” I assured her.
She lay back again upon the moss with a long sigh of utter weariness.
“You must sleep,” I added, gently. “Do not fight it off—yield to it. You will need your strength—all of it—for to-night.”
“For to-night?”
“Yes; we dare not start until darkness comes, and we must get forward as far as we can ere daybreak. You can sleep in perfect security. No one suspects that we are hidden here.”
She did not answer, but turned on one side, laid her head upon her arm and closed her eyes. Sleep, I knew, would claim her in a moment.
I crept forward to the mouth of the cavern and sitting down behind the screen of vines pulled them aside a little and peered down the valley, in the hope that I might see Pasdeloup and M. le Comte making their way toward us. But there was no one in sight, nor could I hear any sound of conflict in the direction whence we had come. It might be, I told myself, that Pasdeloup by some miracle had again succeeded in saving his master, and that they had fled together in some other direction; but I felt there were limits to the power of even his supreme devotion. Certainly no situation could have been more critical and hopeless than that in which I had left my friend.
Whatever the result of that struggle, there was evidently nothing left for me to do save to stand sentinel over my companion and see that no harm came to her. I sat down with my back against the wall of stone and composed myself as comfortably as I could to watch the valley. Indeed my posture was too comfortable. The knowledge that we were safe, the lifting of the cloud of horror, the slackening of the strain under which I had labored, left me strangely weary. My eyelids drooped, and before I realized the danger I was sound asleep.
I awoke with a guilty start, but a single glance down into the valley reassured me—no danger threatened us from that direction. How long I had slept I could not guess, but it must have been some hours, for I felt refreshed, invigorated, ready for anything—ready especially to undertake an energetic search for food to appease the gnawing in my stomach.
But first I turned back into the cave and bent over my companion. She was still sleeping peacefully. A ray of light which had fought its way through the leafy curtain fell upon her face in benediction. I saw how sleep had wiped away the lines of weariness and care, and I knew she would be ready for the task which nightfall would bring with it.
I drew her cloak more closely about her, then went out softly, leaving her undisturbed. I glanced up and down the valley to assure myself that I was unobserved, drew carefully together the veil of vines behind me, then paused a moment to reflect. I had two things to do—I must secure food, and I must discover if possible the fate of our companions. I resolved to do the latter first, and so proceeded cautiously down the valley, keeping a sharp lookout on every side. I thought for a time that I had got my directions strangely reversed, for the sun appeared to be rising in the west instead of in the east; but I soon perceived that it was not rising at all, but setting, and that instead of being mid-morning, it was mid-afternoon. I had slept not three or four hours, as I had fancied, but eight or nine.
That discovery had the effect of hastening my steps and lessening my caution. I had no time to lose, and whatever the result of the fight at the cliff, it was improbable that any of the enemy had lingered so long in the neighborhood. So I went forward boldly and as swiftly as I could, down the hill, into the narrow bed of the torrent where now murmured the clear waters of a little brook, over the rough stones, around a jagged point of rock—and the scene of the fight lay before me.
For a moment I saw only the rocks, the red earth. Then my eye was caught by a huddled mass so trampled into the mud as to be almost indistinguishable from it, yet unmistakably a human body. I hastened to it; I bent above it and stared down into the battered and blackened face. Disfigured, repulsive as it was, I knew it instantly—it was Pasdeloup.
With a sudden feeling of suffocation I stood erect and looked about me, trembling at the thought of the dread objects my eyes sought and yet shrank from. Then I drew a quick breath of relief, of joy, of thankfulness. Pasdeloup had sacrificed his life, indeed, but not in vain. His master had escaped—by some miracle he had escaped, bearing his wife with him. But which way had he gone? Why had he not pressed forward to the cave? Which way——
I stopped, shivering, my eyes burning into my brain; for there, in cruel exposure half way down the slope, were two objects....
How I got down to them, shaken as I was by the agony of that discovery, I know not. I remember only the tempest of wild rage which burst within me as I looked down at those mutilated figures. And I held my clenched hands above my head and swore, as there was a God in heaven, that I would have vengeance on the devil who had done this thing. He should pay for it—he should pay to the uttermost, drop by drop. I vowed myself to the task. By my father’s memory, by my mother’s honor, by my hope of heaven, I swore that for me there should be no rest, no happiness, no contentment, until I had pulled this monster down and sent his soul to the torture which awaited it.
For an instant the mad thought seized me to set off at once on the trail of the murderers, to harry them, cleave them asunder, seize the fiend who had set them on and wring his life out. A superhuman strength possessed me, a divine ardor of vengeance; and not for an instant did I doubt that God would nerve my arm to accomplish all this. But suddenly I remembered that another duty had been laid upon me. I must discharge that first; I must go on to the Bocage. Then I could turn back to Dange.
I grew calmer after a time; that divine rage passed and left me weak and shaken. I sat limply down upon a nearby stone and gazed at those desecrated bodies, with hot tears starting from my eyes at thought of the gallant man and fair woman for whom this hideous fate had been reserved. In that moment of anguish there was but one comforting reflection—she had died with her husband’s arms about her, his voice in her ears, his kisses on her lips.
Yet, deserted, insentient as they were, I could not leave these bodies here to rot in the sun, food for carrion birds and unclean beasts of the night. Nor could I spare the time to bury them, for the sun was already sinking toward the horizon. I glanced despairingly about me—then I saw the way.
Twenty feet above the bed of the stream some tremendous freshet had eaten into the bank and so undermined it that it seemed to hang tottering in the air. In a moment I had carried the bodies, one by one, into the shadow of this bank and laid them tenderly side by side. Then I hesitated—but only for an instant. I went straight to the spot where Pasdeloup lay, and half dragging, half carrying, placed him at last beside his master, where he surely had the right to lie—where I was certain he would have wished to lie.
As I was about to turn away a sudden thought struck me. I had donned my gayest suit the night before,—the suit indeed I had not thought to wear until I approached the high altar at Poitiers,—and though it was already sadly soiled and torn, it must still attract attention to a man with no better means of conveyance than his legs. Here was a disguise ready to my hand; for under the rude garments which Pasdeloup had worn—stained as they were with blood and dirt—no one would suspect the Royalist. In a moment I had stripped off his stockings, blouse and breeches, cleaned the caked mud from them as well as I could, and throwing my own garments over him, donned his,—not without a shiver of repugnance,—taking care to transfer to my new attire my purse, my ammunition, and the one pistol which remained to me, and to secure the knife which had already done such execution, and which I found gripped in his right hand. I tied his coarse handkerchief about my head, and stopping only for a little prayer clambered to the top of the bank and with my sword began to loosen the overhanging earth. Great cracks showed here and there, and it must soon have fallen of its own weight. So very little remained for me to do, and at the end of a moment’s work I saw the cracks slowly widen.
Then, with a dull crash which echoed along the valley, the earth fell upon the bodies, burying them to a depth of many feet, safe from desecration by the fang of brute or the eye of man.
The tears were streaming down my face as I turned away; but I could not linger, for darkness was at hand and I had already been too long absent from my charge. I flung my sword far down the cliff, for I would have no further need of it, then with all the speed at my command I retraced my steps along the bed of the stream and upward toward the ledge of rock. As I approached it I fancied I saw a figure slip quickly out of sight behind the vines. Dreading I knew not what, I hastened my steps, swept aside the curtain and stooped to enter.
But even as I did so there came a burst of flame almost in my face, and I felt a sharp, vivid pain tear across my cheek.