CHAPTER XVI
AT THE PAVILION IN THE WOOD
I have written it above that this discovery altered my opinion of the Château de l'Épée and of its mistress just about as suddenly as a man's opinion could be altered. It is one thing to believe that you're asked to a house to play cards; it is another to wake up to the fact that you are the guest of queer folks who can't afford to be seen in the daylight, and whose object in lying low doesn't altogether explain itself. That the Comte de Faugère was lying low, I never had a doubt from the start of it. And yet this continued to be the puzzle—that he was at the château, while they gave it out that he was in Paris.
It was daylight that morning before I went to sleep. There were moments when I said that I would have it out with Sir Nicolas Steele before another day was passed; other moments when I remembered what a poor hand he was at holding his tongue, and resolved that I would get deeper down into it before I shared it with him. "Maybe," said I, "it doesn't concern us any more than the pump in the court yonder; maybe it concerns us very much indeed.
In either case, his is not the head to deal with it, for he's blind set on the woman and won't listen to reason."
This thought prevailed in the end, and I went to shave him in the morning just like a man got up from a long night's sleep. I found him irritable and not over disposed to talk; and I could see that he had been losing pretty heavily the night before. In fact, he was almost dressed before he said any thing at all, and then he spoke short and almost curt.
"Is it good quarters ye have below?" he asked.
"The best," said I; "they've put us out at the little place in the park yonder."
"Ay, 'tis the picture of a house," said he, "and some very pretty company in it."
"That's so, sir," said I; "there must be a wonderful lot of money on this very landing."
"Ye speak truth," cried he; "the duke alone has enough to buy a kingdom."
"So I've been told," said I, trying my best to draw him out; "and a rare one for cards he is, they tell me."
"I'll not deny it," he exclaimed, as he took the towel from my hands; "he plays like a gentleman."
"Like a what, sir?" said I, sudden, for I couldn't keep the thing back.
"Like a gentleman," he answered, very slow and deliberately, "and it's me that should know, for I lost three hundred to him last night."
"I'm sorry to hear that, sir," said I, "and madame not liking the play, either."
"Sure, she doesn't like it at all; but what could she do in her own house when the duke brings out his cloth, and says, 'Just one game for the luck of it?' Faith, he carries a board wherever he goes, and you might as well expect a child not to touch the jam as to keep his fingers off it. And 'tis wonderful luck he has, too. He won on manque fifteen times running last night. I've never seen the like."
"Let's hope his luck will change, sir," said I, as he put on his coat to go down stairs; "we couldn't afford many nights like that."
"Indeed, and we couldn't, and she'll not be allowing it, either. She detests the play entirely—and no wonder, with a brother that's half a Jesuit, and the lesson her husband taught her not yet forgotten. He lost a fortune at the cards in Paris, ye may know. Bedad! they say he would have played with the priest that came to anoint him."
This was all the talk we had that day, for he spent the morning riding in the woods with Mme. Pauline; and when he dressed for dinner at night he was in such a fluster to make himself fine that I could not get a word with him. As the thing stood, he could not tell me any thing which would help me to get to the bottom of the mystery in the park; and that was the matter my mind ran upon. Hour after hour I'd been thinking of it, yet not a foot further had I got; and I was just about burning with curiosity when eleven o'clock at night came, and I set off through the woods to take a second look at the pavilion. This time, however, I went warily, creeping like a shadow through the trees; and once at the little house, I did not content myself with watching it from the thicket opposite, as I had done the night before; but I lay down boldly at that side of it nearest the wood, and so placed myself that I could not only see my man, but hear him. And this I did without danger. The windows of the place looked out back and front; there was a thick bush to hide my body; and a great shadow, for the moon shone bright and clear, lying half over the lawn in the clearing. I was as safe from sight as a bird in the corn; the place could not have served me better if I had planned it myself.
Half an hour, perhaps, I lay thus crouching upon the grass before I heard any sound or saw any more. But, and this just when I was thinking that I had come out on a fool's errand, there was then a low whistling in the trees, and the door of the pavilion opened to let out the Comte de Faugère. At the same moment, the lad who had met him on the previous evening sprang out from the shadows of the copse, and stood a minute with the moonlight shining brightly on his face. I say "his face," but it should be "her face." The pair had not been there ten seconds when I recognized both of them. For the new-comer was no other than Mme. Pauline dressed up in boy's clothes. And the man she came to meet made no bones at all about his welcome; he took her in his arms and kissed her for five minutes together.
You may think that this discovery surprised me. I can never remember any thing in all my life which so completely knocked me over. For minutes together my brain was in a perfect whirl. Who, then, I asked myself, is the Comte de Faugère? why does his sister wear a man's clothes and meet him at twelve o'clock at night in a wood? why does he kiss her like a boy-lover kissing a schoolgirl? A hundred answers flashed upon my mind—one as impossible as the other—a hundred speculations were raised only to be put aside again. Listen as I would, I could get no help from the talk between them. For a long time nothing but stray words came to me; when at last the pair turned toward the house together, the few sentences I put together were so much Greek.
"Jean leaves to-morrow," said she, and I could see that their arms were locked together; "it will be forty-eight hours, I fear."
"What of Marmontel?" said he in answer to this.
"A week should work that," she replied; "but he is an old fool."
They walked a few more steps in silence, and then, just as they were at the door, he said;
"It was understood about the signals and the lantern."
"Of course it was—and the wine," she answered; and with this on her lips, she disappeared into the pavilion with him. I heard him lock the door—and then, precisely as it was on the first night I had seen them, there was a dead silence in the woods, and every living thing seemed to have fled.
"Bigg," said I to myself, crawling at last from my hiding-place, "if ever you ran against a stone wall, this is the day. You can make as much of it as you could of a mummy. The best place for you is bed—and after that Paris."
I made up my mind to this, and, buttoning my coat round me, I ran back sharply to the château. It was all too new, too surprising for me to make head or tail of it, and I do believe that I ran all the way to the great house, with the word "signals" ringing in my ears. When at length I did stop, I was gasping for breath on the lawn before the drawing-room windows; and I saw, as I stood, that Mme. Pauline's guests were still round the roulette board. But she herself was not there,—I knew she could not be,—and as for the others, the only one who interested me was Sir Nicolas himself. It did not take me very long to learn how it had gone with him. One glance at his face told me the story. He had been losing heavily again.
For five minutes, perhaps, I watched the party, and being certain at last that nothing more was to be gained by cooling my heels on the lawn, I went up to my bit of a bedroom and lay down, dressed as I was, to think. I knew well enough that I should have little sleep that night; but it was not until I began to work right through the story that I learned what a task I had set myself. For, you see, I could not get a starting-point. If the woman had asked us down there to skin us, how came it that Marmontel always kept the bank? He was not her confederate, that I was ready to swear. And how did this supposition fit in with the little box in the park and a brother who took the girl in his arms just like a soldier cuddling a housemaid? It didn't fit anyhow, I said. Look at it as you would, there was no light through it. Of one thing only was I sure—Mme. Pauline was no sister to the Comte de Faugère. Yet how did that concern our fortunes?